English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

cyril

12:02 AM

@Cerberus same for ChromeOS,

tchrist

1:54 AM

@Cerb That one is a bit more comprehensible, but was written just before the invasion.

Cerberus

@tchrist Right!

And I have seen figures that put the percentage even higher of people in the Crimea who mostly consider themselves Russian.

tchrist

My world has been too crazy for me today. I looked at this and cracked up immediately:

-10

Q: If the #2 pencil is the most popular, why is it still #2?

If the #2 pencil is the most popular, why is it still #2? Back when I was in high school in the '70s, the #2 pencil was #1 in sales and in popularity. In 2014 it's still the hottest-selling pencil. Why after two decades hasn't it been rated #1. It just doesn't make sense at all. What's the point?

phrase-requests

Cerberus

Hah.

This is a fixed American classification of pencils, I believe?

We use letters, like HB.

tchrist

@Cerberus Note the source is the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, not the County Statistics Service of Crimea.

Cerberus

There is no telling who is more biased than who...

But I think Wikipedia had some figures from a poll.

tchrist

2:01 AM

@Cerberus Right, as opposed to some broken classification of pencils, or some classification of broken pencils.

@Cerberus You’d trust a Pole about the Ukraine, let alone the Crimea?

Cerberus

@tchrist What?

I'm just asking for confirmation because I don't know this system.

tchrist

@Cerberus It’s like getting your dog fixed, when he wasn’t broken in the first place.

But yes.

Cerberus

Maybe it's not American?

tchrist

Oh, I imagine.

Cerberus

@tchrist Crane all you like, but an invasion is a Crime.

And you may pronounce the last word à la française, the way we do in Dutch.

tchrist

2:04 AM

@Cerberus I do not care to bring Germania into this picture.

Don’t make me look up the accusative of γέρανος.

I’ll just pretend it’s already an accusative plural with -os.

Cerberus

@tchrist Why Germania? Are you thinking of Krimis?

tchrist

Germanium is the cranesbill genus, from γέρανος.

Cerberus

Ahh.

I had no idea, I had to look up geranos.

Crane.

I did look it up.

2:09 AM

Geranium is a genus of 422 species of flowering annual, biennial, and perennial plants that are commonly known as the cranesbills. They are found throughout the temperate regions of the world and the mountains of the tropics, but mostly in the eastern part of the Mediterranean region. The long, palmately cleft leaves are broadly circular in form. The flowers have five petals and are coloured white, pink, purple or blue, often with distinctive veining. Geraniums will grow in any soil as long as it is not waterlogged. Propagation is by semiripe cuttings in summer, by seed, or by division ...

> The genus name is derived from the Greek γέρανος (géranos) or γερανός (geranós) ‘crane’. The English name ‘cranesbill’ derives from the appearance of the fruit capsule of some of the species. Species in the Geranium genus have a distinctive mechanism for seed dispersal. This consists of a beak-like column which springs open when ripe and casts the seeds some distance.

I don’t know what they are it Dutchland.

> The common name ‘cranesbill’ comes from the shape of the unsprung column, which in some species is long and looks like the bill of a crane.

We have both magenta ones and white ones here indigenously.

And the blue-purple one illustrated above is popular as a domestic cultivar.

Oddly, the tiny but ubiquitous European import called fillaree (Erodium) is also a cranesbill, and sometimes goes by the name of heronsbill.

You have to get lie down completely supine to look at them, at which point you begin to see the generic similarities.

Or rather, familial ones.

My best Latin is botanical. :)

Erodium

Erodium is a genus of flowering plants in the botanical family Geraniaceae. The genus includes about 60 species, native to North Africa, Indomalaya, The Middle East and Australia. They are perennials, annuals or subshrubs, with five-petalled flowers in shades of white, pink and purple, that strongly resemble the better-known Geranium (cranesbill). American species are known as filarees or heron's bill, whereas Eurasian ones are usually called storksbills in English. Taxonomy Carl Linnaeus grouped in the same genus (Geranium) the three similar genera Erodium, Geranium, and Pelargonium. T...

Oh lovely now they’re storksbills.

People just can’t make up their minds. Heron != Crane != Stork

In North American, what they sell as "geraniums" are actually Pelargonium.

> However, the three genera have the same characteristics in regard to their fruit, which resemble long bird beaks. That characteristic is the basis for the names: Geranium evokes the crane (Greek geranos), Pelargonium the stork (pelargos), and Erodium the heron (erodios).

Go figger.

Did you know pelargos or erodios?

Cerberus

2:26 AM

@tchrist Geranium.

@tchrist Not the names. But the flowers look familiar.

The most common plant known as geranium here, especially the red one.

tchrist

@Cerberus Yes, same here. Actually Pelargonium, but the name change didn't follow in the commoners’ speech when the botanists rezoned it.

Cerberus

Okay.

I'm not super botanic.

tchrist

At the giant local nursery I go to, though, they have all their plants arranged in alphabetic order.

But in Latin. :)

Well, by taxonomic binomial.

This is hard on the people looking for "geraniums" and finding geraniums instead.

Who’d think to look in the P's not the G's, you know?

Cerberus

The wrong plural must also be difficult.

tchrist

yeah

You’ll notice in my initial mention, I didn’t use it.

I was flipping Germania and Gerania.

Cerberus

2:39 AM

Ah, so that's what this was about.

tchrist

2:54 AM

I didn’t know if the Cranes were invading, or the Hun.

There’s something peculiarly pejorative when you use the singular like that. Hm, I wonder why.

It’s hard that botanists and gardeners speak different languages.

> Confusingly, "geranium" is also the common name of members of the genus Pelargonium (sometimes known as 'storksbill'), which are also in the Geraniaceae family. These are generally half-hardy plants which are either grown from seed every year, or offered as bedding in spring and discarded after flowering.

And even worse that they use identical words for different things.

So you don’t know what the person means unless you know where they are coming from.

Housewives call Pelargonium “geraniums”, both here and I assume in the Netherlands. Botanists only call a Geranium a Geranium. Well, or they say Geranium family, to avoid getting lost in all the vowels at the end.

Erodium is Geranium family, but not Geranium genus.

Damn fingers.

Pelargonium my brain mistakes for some pelagic beastie on first scan.

Oh how cool.

One of my two local species is turning into a killer:

> The species Geranium viscosissimum (sticky geranium) is considered to be protocarnivorous.

Long word for sticky.

Move along: these are not the mums you are looking for.

Those are under C.

Well, or Chr.

By Cairo.

Cerberus

@tchrist I think it is perhaps partly because it assumes that every Hun/Turk/etc. is the same?

tchrist

The Turk as the enemy, etc. Yeah.

Istanbul was Constantinople
 Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
 Been a long time gone, Constantinople
 Now it's Turkish delight on a moonlit night

 Every gal in Constantinople
 Lives in Istanbul, not Constantinople
 So if you've a date in Constantinople
 She'll be waiting in Istanbul

 Even old New York was once New Amsterdam
 Why they changed it I can't say
 People just liked it better that way

 So take me back to Constantinople
 No, you can't go back to Constantinople
 Been a long time gone, Constantinople

I also thought it was “nobody’s business but the Turk’s”, but maybe its “Turks’ ” instead.

Cerberus

When we say "de Hollander", it's usually not about something good.

Although it may have been good in the age of nationalism.

tchrist

I still think the plural of American should be Ameriken.

Cerberus

"De Hollander en zijn nobele inborst."

tchrist

3:07 AM

The Texan is a bore.

Cerberus

In what language?

The suffix -an- is part of the stem...

tchrist

Oh, I don’t know. Whichever language thinks that if you have more than one man, you’ve got men.

I know it kinda sounds that way in French, but that makes it a feminine not a plural.

How many Ameriken are here, Brunhilde?

Oh, just a few Americaines.

In Ander-Saxon, worldken means “science”. I wonder what Ameriken would thus mean?

New World Studies? Sounds horribly boring.

> CU-Boulder plans to double number of students who study abroad by 2020

Makes you wonder who the dame is.

Cerberus

CU Boulder!

I must to bed.

tchrist

Or if they just plan to enroll more gynasexuals.

Yes, I too.

gyno-? gyne-? guyno-?

I kinda like the guyno- spelling for the gynasexuals. It’s like truth-in-advertising.

Speak of the devil.

Cerberus

Usually gynaeco-.

tchrist

3:22 AM

Kinda long.

> gynaecolatry

> gynaecophysiology

> gynaecocratic

> gynarchy

Best stop there. Don’t like where it’s going.

Cerberus

Sometimes gyn(a)-.

Women can be great rulers.

Well, goodbye!

poof

tchrist

> gynomonoecious

Lord knows what that is.

Cerberus

Having only one woman in your house?

tchrist

Oh!

Cerberus

Bai!

tchrist

3:26 AM

> gynomonœcious /-mɒˈniːʃ(ɪ)əs/ a. Bot. monœ.cious, having both perfect and female flowers on the same plant. gynomonœcism /-mɒˈniːsɪz(ə)m/, the condition of being gynomonœcious. gynomonœcy /-mɒˈniːsɪ/, gynomonœcism.

Go bye.

I should sleep.

Both perfect and female, eh?

> gyno- /gaɪnə/, /dʒaɪ-/, /dʒɪ-/, before a vowel gyn- /gaɪn/, reduced form of gynæco-, used chiefly in botantical terms with the meaning ‘pistil’, ‘ovary’ (the more important are given as main-words):gynantherous /-ˈænθərəs/ a. Bot. anther: see quot. gynocardic /-ˈkɑ˞ːdɪk/ a. Chem. f. mod.L.Gynocardia (Gr. καρδία heart), a genus of the N.O. Bixaceæ, in gynocardic acid, the supposed activeprinciple of Chaulmugra oil, which is produced by the plant Gynocardia odorata. gynodiœcious/-daɪˈiːʃ(ɪ)əs/ a. Bot. diœcious, having perfect and female flowers on different plants; sogynodiœcism /-daɪˈiːsɪz…

Delish.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

4:22 AM

Pickle delish? Oh.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…