English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2014-04-26 (page 2 of 3)

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5:30 PM

@JohanLarsson Once again in Swedish?

Skrev vacker kod i Sverige!

Hmm, interesting.

Matt Эллен

I wonder if vacker is related to Dutch lekker

probably not

we have läcker as well

> I loved "Stop Making Sense" when it hit the movie theaters back in the mid 80's. I was Very Disappointed with the DVD. It Was Not the movie !! It was all this bogus and unnecessary commentary laid over a classic piece of performing arts. The ceaseless drivel totally ruined this classic live music performance. I would Very Much like to get the Original Movie & not this dubbed nonsense. I am very unsatisfied.

I'm Very Not Surprised.

Matt Эллен

5:33 PM

@JohanLarsson well, that's obviously cognate :D

!!define cognate

yeah? define...

Matt Эллен

KitSox is on strike. She wants better pay

ok I did it manually

Matt Эллен

OK :)

@MattЭллен On strike, is she? Then she'll get nothing at all, and precious little of it as well!

Matt Эллен

5:36 PM

hopefully she hasn't programmed all the other bots not to cross the picket

I don't get the "lesbian sister of biology" joke. I mean, I want to—who wouldn't?—but I just don't.

Matt Эллен

I don't think it's meant to make sense. Urban dictionary... you know

This is what happens when you outsource your jokes to a bot.

I don't get all the stars as of lately. I know where they come from though. :)

Matt Эллен

:D

The leonid meteor shower?

5:38 PM

No. That isn't until November.

Matt Эллен

I'm stumped then

You're stumped in November? I thought you were stumped now, not then.

Matt Эллен

I'm always stumped

it was a redundant statement

i really should improve my SeaMonkey extension but i can't get the motivation!

Redundancy undoubtedly redounds around the redoubts.

Matt Эллен

5:41 PM

Imagine that if you succeed in improving your extension that you'll feel good about yourself

i have spurts of motivation, for no apparent reason

like today, i tidied up my house

i hadn't done that in a year

still need to vacuum, dust everywhere

sigh

What's the point? You'll just have to tidy up again next year.

@JohanLarsson Is the v pronounced like f, as in German? Or is it vocalized?

Matt Эллен

Tree day and the 28th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. Super!

Tree day? Why tree, mon? Dem good tings come in trees, ya?

@Robusto like the w in water. Also try asking so I can answer :D

Matt Эллен

5:47 PM

@Robusto Arbor day

smartarb

@JohanLarsson Obviously you just did answer.

yeah but after stretching my abilities beyond

How did I cause your abilities to stretch? And if I did, isn't that a good thing?

Matt Эллен

if your abilities break, you can build them again, stronger!

You have the technology!

5:49 PM

@Robusto By challenging them I guess, and yes it is a good thing.

╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪

Matt Эллен

traintracks?

No. Box Drawings Vertical Single And Horizontal Double (U+256A).

Matt Эллен

Oh

▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄

Upper Half Block and Lower Half Block (U+2584).

░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░

Light Shade (U+2591).

╞╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╡

There's the BDVSAHD with end caps.

Looks much better.

Matt Эллен

5:53 PM

💡

that could do with a light shade

Or a lampshade.

Matt Эллен

yeah, I couldn't find the unicode for that, except for the Han symbol, which wouldn't have worked so well

If there were one Han symbol, I guess it would be Han Solo.

@Robusto don't feed my inner procrastinator!

no, i need something like "if you don't vacuum before tomorrow, you'll die"

Ask a girl over to your place. That'll make you put in some work.

Matt Эллен

5:56 PM

if you don't vacuum right now, tomorrow someone will visit and you'll be embarrassed by all the dust bunnies

@Robusto hah. as if one would turn up.

You could call an escort service.

Matt Эллен

or join tinder

that's a legal grey area in this conservative country

What is tinder, besides the obvious fire starter?

5:57 PM

our feminazis are adament that giving it away is fine, but being paid for it is usually dodgy

not to mention a bunch of busybody conservative men

Well, if they're giving it away, so much the better.

Matt Эллен

@Robusto it's the most superficial dating site ever. people mostly use it to hook up

yeah but they're not.

Matt Эллен

Also, tinder is only available as a phone app and requires facebook

5 hours ago, by Robusto

A cynic I used to work with preferred prostitutes because, as he said, "If you're not paying money you're paying too much."

5:58 PM

you lost me with the requires facebook

Matt Эллен

@Jez yeah. it's annoying but makes signing up very easy if you already have facebook

looks like it's escorts for you!

too many sites do. i'll never sign up for anything via facebook

Matt Эллен

they don' require facebook

probably

i'd have to reactivate my FB account, which i won't do

@MattЭллен as i said, legal grey area

Mine is still active, but I haven't been on it in over a year.

Apr 23 at 13:14, by Robusto

I absolute hate that every public information source feels obligated to have a social-networking bar on every fucking page.

6:01 PM

yup.

Matt Эллен

anyway. escorts are an expensive way to get you to clean your flat. just hire a cleaner!

it's funny how they pick a certain few social networking sites, sometimes including Pinterest

The day I "like" something on Facebook will be the day my kids should shoot me.

what about all the other 1001? some of them more popular?

I have clicked two likes on Fecesbook in my life.

Use the chat all the time though.

Matt Эллен

6:02 PM

meh. I use FB all the time.

seppuku

now

Pruning the friends list also.

Gah, I can't stand it. I managed to turn off the setting that lets people broadcast emails to me, though; or maybe that was a gmail setting.

Matt Эллен

that will only make your flat dirtier, Jez

it was an imperative addressed at you

Matt Эллен

6:03 PM

I'm not going to be your second! that's gross

also, i live in a house, not a flat

Matt Эллен

well, either way

Flats are easier to clean, I'm told.

yeah, shame they suck ballz

Matt Эллен

there are fewer floors

6:04 PM

flats exist because we put too many people in too small a place

flat is the ultimate lazy

Flats are also used in stage decoration.

flat means chat

chat means cat

Matt Эллен

I live in a flat. And I use FB. I'm the antithesis of you all!

6:05 PM

renard

@MattЭллен I'm your clone.

Matt Эллен

:-o

seems like my clone is doing better than me :(

flat 36. theatre a rectangular wooden frame covered with painted canvas, etc, used to form part of a stage setting

the real reason i stopped using FB was that i got sick of seeing about everyone's relationships all the time

@MattЭллен how?

unless you're a hot girl and you want to be with me, i don't care about your relationship

6:06 PM

@MattЭллен Antithesis? I always figured you as more of a prosthesis.

@Jez do you know how to dance?

no not really

Matt Эллен

@JohanLarsson you're considering buying a house with your long term significant other. You're really enthusiastic about programming.

@Robusto I am a huge fake

@Jez Ok, sign up for a course then, then another and then ten more. Thank me later.

6:08 PM

@JohanLarsson think i havent thought of that?

when you can find a solution to social anxiety, let me know

Matt Эллен

@Jez ah. I see. I do care about my friends' relationships. although all the incremental steps in their young children's lives can be somewhat annoying

anyway, nixing FB solved the problem remarkably well

> For all the dancing people....dance the sunday sunny!

Another YouTube comment.

@Jez There is only one solution simple and painful. Do the stuff you fear!

6:10 PM

@JohanLarsson Emerson!

Maybe even fail on purpose to see that nothing happens.

@Robusto Larsson

@JohanLarsson pretty sure i would feel embarrassed

in fact, any dancing makes me feel embarrassed. i judge myself, that's how bad i am, even if i dance solo

“Always do what you are afraid to do.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

@Jez Yeah so would I but you are going to force yourself to do it and do it sober.

@Robusto oh, he's the guy who died from jumping off that cliff?

6:11 PM

@Jez buzzer Nope.

@Jez Enough of this bs now, I'm gonna nag, nag nag. You can just ignore me right now if you're not going to take action.

well i've got some of the wife experience already

I wan't you to post a video of you dancing on Wednesday!

Matt Эллен

Well, see, the "do the stuff you fear" only works if you either a) already believe in yourself or b) have a good support network to fall back on. So it's not as great advice as it seems

doesn't that Rhianna look pretty?

6:14 PM

Then we are all gonna laugh and nothing will happen. Except you moving one step closer to the pink price.

@Jez I wanna know who gave her two black eyes?

@JohanLarsson what's with the wan't? lol

I'm in douche mode :)

@Robusto she looks kind of broody like that

she's fricking nice

Trying to act like some military in a movie.

6:15 PM

Drop the h and douche gets sweeter.

Matt Эллен

say it in French and douche gets water

43.4 °F today. I wanna go back to the tropics. cries

Matt Эллен

@AwalGarg works for me

@Robusto that song has helped me avoid depression at times actually

Then it's paid for itself already.

6:18 PM

one of my top 5 certainly

@Jez Go for a beer tonight, then find the hottest woman in the place and ask her to teach you Haskell!

@JohanLarsson why, so she'll ask me what Haskell is presumably

Yeah, to see that nothing happens.

Or to learn a language!

le langue d'amour

ok /this for now

j'ai déjà appris un peu de la langue d'amour, meme si cette langue ne distingue pas entre "like" et "love"!

tout le monde loves en français

ou loves well

I have already ? a bit of love lang, but this language does not distinguish between like & love?

6:24 PM

learnt

and no, it doesn't

they have no verb for "like"

They don't need it

ils n'avaient besoin de ça

besoin means need?

@Jez I see you’re a pas-dropper.

yeah, i'm not sure why i did that. subliminally?

6:31 PM

Well, it’s not uncommon in speech.

in some circumstances it's OK to drop pas

Of course.

You always drop it when there’s another negative you can use instead.

yeah, but even when there isn't

they sometimes do

likewise they sometimes drop ne... je sais pas

Yes, I realize that.

I don’t have a good feel for it myself.

Meaning, my French these days is virtually 100% read not spoken, and written French tends not to do that.

So I am a poor judge. I just know it happens.

> Ils n’avaient pas besoin de mots pour se dire qu’ils s’appréciaient, mais ils n’en avaient pas assez pour se dire à quel point ils s’aimaient.

That version would be formally correct.

I wonder whether it isn’t more common to drop the ne in conversation than it is the pas.

Certainly (je) sais pas is a common enough casual answer, one you hear plenty.

> French negation can be tricky. Normally, to make a statement negative you need to surround the conjugated verb with the French pair ne... pas. However, if you've ever watched French movies or television, or chatted with native speakers, you have almost certainly heard pas (or another negative adverb) without ne, as this is a typical characteristic of informal and familiar French. Although it is nearly always written, ne is often dropped in spoken French.

@tchrist Pas problem.

6:37 PM

Then there’s the extra ne you have to put in sometimes, the “pleonastic ne”.

faites-le avant qu'il n'arrive

the two worst words in French are ne and en

they have a ton of meanings, many of which are untranslatable

Do you think so?

often, the best translation is simply to drop them

I don’t know about often, but yes, sometimes you must, at least in the case of ne.

What were you thinking of vis-à-vis en though?

"tu en as trop"

"you have too many [of it/them]"

6:40 PM

I was just writing an example with trop in fact.

but putting en after the pronoun to mean that is totally unintuative to an English speaker

“Moi, j’ai trop de coeur.” “Ma chère, j’en ai aussi.”

compared to the plain translation "in"

"en France"

Oh, but that is totally different.

This is the “of it” version, not the “in” version.

we have no instinctive feel for WTF the "en" in those above examples means

which is why i hate it

i can't perform some mental gymnastics in my brain to turn "in" to "of it"... it's just a totally different meaning using the same word

(which we'd often just not include)

6:44 PM

I don’t like the “away from” version.

it makes me laugh that at school we were always taught that the "hardest thing" about French was the tu/vous difference - have i mentioned this before?

i found that difference very easy to understand even though we don't have it in English

but i found 100 things much harder than that

> 1. Used as the object of a verb to indicate an indefinite quantity; of it, of them. Replaces the partitive article (du, de la, etc.)

Tu as combien de livres ? J'en ai trois. — How many books do you have? I have three (of them).
Y a-t-il beaucoup de pièces ? Oui. Il y en a beaucoup. — Are there many rooms? Yes, there are many (of them).
Martin a trois sandwichs, mais j'en ai seulement deux. - Martin has three sandwiches, but I have only two (of them).
Il y en a combien ? - How many of them are there?

@Jez That seems a silly thing to teach kids.

not sure i even knew about that 2nd version

It’s the #2 use there in the citation that is weirdo.

@tchrist well maybe it was just something regularly referred to as "hard to grasp"

6:46 PM

I guess it’s a locative, but unlike the normal locative pronoun y, it has a “from” component built into it.

on y va, on en vient?

I don’t know. Maybe.

by the way, anyone know whether Sean Connery's name sounds to the French like "Sean Bullshit"?

@Jez Worse.

why worse

6:49 PM

As in, a cuntery?

Conne is French for cunt, IIRC. So Connery sounds like "cuntiness"; or so I'm told.

@tchrist no, as in "conneries"

@Robusto Well, just le con not la conne, right?

Dunno. Odd if true.

Connor Connery

:-)

"Asshole Bullshit"

6:50 PM

Why would the term for vagina be masculine? I mean, if ever there was an argument against linguistic gender, that would be it.

@Robusto there are all sorts of unintuative noun genders in French. the only rule is, there is no rule. learn it by rote and tell them to stop using noun genders

> connerie — stupidité

@Jez This. Noun genders are counter-productive and counter-revolutionary. Power to the people!

@Robusto then drop the o and it gets authoritarian

@n11 Eeuuww, I'm feeling il.

6:52 PM

@n11 eh?

As in "Il Duce".

@Jez Intuitive just means familiar. And you can’t stop them.

What's worse is when the feminine gets mixed up with plural.

and drop the c, it gets double

i didn't say stop them, I said tell them to stop. we can feel superior in that we don't waste time on noun gender

6:53 PM

I don’t know what counterintuitive means here. The ones that are counterintuitive are those whose genders differ in French from in neighboring tongues.

what is "duce"?

Mussolini was Il Duce.

oh

from latin: dux: guide, chief

Or Ill Douche.

6:55 PM

I don’t know duce in French.

it doesn't look to be French or even Italian

"cognate with duke"

@tchrist nah it's not, weird

Italian for duke = duca

@tchrist it's an onomatopeae

Doge

Matt Эллен

6:56 PM

Much French
So wow

Onomatopoeia

Matt Эллен

Onomatopia: how utopia would sound

@Jez Since when do we have to stick to the script? This is The Incomprehensible Room.

Il dùca is perhaps not what you would expect if you just look at the -a, but that is far from a perfect key.

The worst thing about Italian is when a feminine singular becomes a masculine plural.

6:59 PM

5 mins ago, by Robusto

What's worse is when the feminine gets mixed up with plural.

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