English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Sure.

user116848

Oh, Hi! Cerbs

By the way, I wonder why the relatives of people who died in a plane crash tend to gather at the airport. There is nothing they can do there, and it a horrible environment.

user116848

12:31 AM

It seems horrible. But I didn't read the news.

The Russians (probably) shot a plane underway from Amsterdam to Malaysia.

@YoichiOishi Yes, I know that it would be a homophone of おいしい. I wasn't sure if you would have joked about that in Japanese, though. Given the number of word parts that sound alike, I've also wondered if punning is looked on as too easy.

A friend of mine was on board.

user116848

Let me google it.....

Not a close friend. But it still really sucks.

user116848

12:32 AM

No! so what happened to your friend?

Well, the Russians shot his plane, so he is dead.

280 people died.

@Cerberus Look, you're in the Russian army, you have missiles available, you're bored, and you see a jet go by at 33,000 feet. How do you not shoot it down?

user116848

Sucks!

You might want to check whether it is a commercial airliner.

user116848

Robusto is Russian then.

12:33 AM

Not quite.

user116848

:)

user116848

So why it is always them?

It was probably the pro-Russian rebels mixed with Russian troops who control part of Ukraine.

The plane was shot down near the Russo-Ukranian border.

user116848

It was a Malaysian jet, right?

@Cerberus Only 180 degrees off.

12:36 AM

@Arrowfar Yes, I believe so. But most passengers were Dutch.

I tell you this, I'm never getting on a Malaysian airliner.

The same might have happened to any plane flying in that area.

user116848

But it could be any airliner.

But it happened to a Malaysian.

And another Malaysian plane got lost in the ocean a few months ago.

Coincidence? I wonder.

Eurocontrol had cleared the area at 1km altitude for commercial flights.

The Malaysians are not to blame.

12:38 AM

@Cerberus I guess Ukraine must be out of [Euro]control then.

@Cerberus I know that, silly. I'm making a joke here. Work with me.

If you can't laugh at senseless tragedy, what can you laugh at? Sheesh.

I'm sorry, not in the mood.

I've just heard the news.

Sent my condolences to his brother, who is also my friend.

@Cerberus Oh, sorry. Didn't realize you had a personal stake in this.

It's OK.

My phone was dead and when I came home I saw the Facebook messages.

The times we live in are scarier than we realize.

Yeah. Well, it's just extremely bad luck.

You'd still sooner die in a car crash.

At least there will be hell to pay for Putin.

12:42 AM

@Cerberus I'd sooner die from an overdose of happiness.

And by happiness you mean...moon dust?

user116848

Yes, Robusto is Russian.

user116848

:)

Russians are always so very happy...

@Cerberus Nah. I need the good stuff.

12:44 AM

Your nurse drag outfit?

Apr 17 '11 at 12:34, by Robusto

That's me on the left.

@Cerberus I can't bring that out now that Jasper's back.

user116848

@Cerberus "However later he proceeded to tell his readers he was an excellent liar and he is always lying too". Can we say here "...and he was always lying too". Or there is a choice?

user116848

It's from some blog here cathefeline.blogspot.com

@Arrowfar What exactly do you want to imply? That he always lies (then and now), that he always lied (then), or that he was lying at the time?

@Robusto Maybe it will cheer him up...

12:51 AM

@Cerberus It might scare him away. And then certain passive-aggressive types would blame me for his leaving again.

user116848

@Robusto I want tenses to look even. I pasted the blog's link.

@Cerberus Speaking of which, I just pinged thou.

@Arrowfar "Mr.Haas however later he proceeded to tell his readers he was an excellent liar and moreover was always lying as well." It's the only way to be sure.

@Arrowfar I would prefer the past tense. The present tense is possible, but in that context (I have read the post) it sounds a bit informal. the rest of the post is also informal.

@Robusto If so, then I'm sure it would be for an even shorter time. Certain types are to be ignored.

user116848

@Robusto So past tense, right? That's what I thought. Present looks informal. Thanks.

@Robusto That's thee for you!

12:55 AM

@Cerberus No, it's the thee, thou thrice-barking doggy.

I couldn't pronounce that.

Pang.

> The imprecision and the lack of immediate perspicuity into which English occasionally deviates and from which German occasionally emerges, is quite foreign to Greek. — H.D.F. Kitto, The Greeks

> When they descended from the northern mountains they brought no art with them, but they did bring a language, and in the Greek language — in its very structure — are to be found that clarity and control, that command of structure, which we see pre-eminently in Classical Greek art and miss in the earlier. — Ibid.

> In the first place, Greek, like its cousin Latin, is a highly inflected language, with a most elaborate and delicate syntax, and the further back one can go in the history of the language, the more elaborate are the inflections, and (in many ways) the more delicate is the syntax. — Ibid.

> Greek syntax is much more varied, much less rigid, than Latin — as the young student of Classics soon discovers, to his joy or his sorry, according to temperament. Consequently, it is the nature of Greek to express with extreme accuracy not only the relation between ideas, but also shades of meaning and emotion. — Ibid.

*his joy or his sorrow

Crapola, I hate making typos.

@Cerberus: Thoughts on the above quotations?

@Robusto This is probably subjective, but I find Latin and German far more "perspicuous" than Greek. Not that I don't like Greek, but it is a bit loose and mottled.

@Robusto Is this about the Dorians, or about Greeks in general?

@Robusto Elaborate, certainly. And more elaborate than New Greek, absolutely.

@Cerberus The Hellenes, I believe. In fact, yes.

@Robusto Greek is certainly more varied and less rigid. As so whether it is extremely accurate, I am doubtful.

1:10 AM

The passage that begins "When they descended" has this preface: "For the intellectual strain in Classical Greek art we must turn to the Hellenes — and not without evidence.

@Robusto I didn't even notice, my subconscious easily mended the chink.

@Robusto So the Hellenes as opposed to the Minoans?

Or does he mean later Greeks, after the Mycenaeans?

@Cerberus Definitely the Hellenes as opposed to the Minoans. The whole chapter talks about the supplanting of the latter by the former.

Ah OK.

Q: Why was this comment deleted?

4

A few days ago I read this question about why there is no "autumntime" or "falltime". I added this comment: We just use fall or autumn in those cases, both as nouns and adjectives. Not really sure why. We just do it that way. That's not to say you couldn't say "autumntime" if you really wante...

discussion

Newly updated.

I don't think we know much about the language of the Minoans?

Except that it was not Greek or even Indo-European.

Ah...

1:13 AM

@Cerberus Unless lightning has struck in the last 50 years and we've been able to decipher the fragments we possess, no.

@Cerberus Supposedly the Minoans came originally from the African Mediterranean, west of Egypt. Tunisia, perhaps? Hmm, and I thought the Phoenicians migrated in the opposite direction.

That would seem possible.

Carthage was supposedly a Phoenician outpost at first.

Egypt exerted a certain cultural influence on Greece, especially in prehistoric or very early historic Greece.

Like certain Greek Gods. Dionysus springs to mount, Dennis.

Egypt was the rich kingdom that overshadowed Crete.

WHY do I type mount when I mean mind?

1:17 AM

@Cerberus Is there someone named Dennis you are anxious to mount, perhaps?

Indeed, it was. The influence may have worked its way into Minoan culture before they moved out of Africa, who knows?

@Robusto Bad character, bad!

Don't make me bring out the hose.

Hahaha.

Yes, Carthage was founded by Tyrian colonists.

@Robusto Ping.

Pung.

> Greece . . . is one of those countries which have a climate, and not merely weather. — Kitto, Ibid.

> As Zimmern has said, the usual Attic dinner consisted of two courses, the first a kind of porridge, and the second, a kind of porridge.

1:37 AM

Umm lovely.

But isn't it the same in most of the world?

Not at my house. We almost never have porridge.

Cooked rice is a kind of a porridge...

Well, you are not premodern!

> Hence, no doubt, the startling difference between the Homeric and the classical Greek diet; in Homer, the heroes eat an ox every two or three hundred verses, and to eat fish is a token of extreme destitution; in classical times fish was a luxury, and meat almost unknown.

Fish, a token of destitution in Homer? I did not know that.

But why would fish be a luxury in classical times, and meat almost unknown? Homeric tales are about the elite. They dined well.

The elite at Athens no doubt dined equally well.

(Look, I used at!)

The author is drawing the distinction between the healthy Mediterranean diet of Classical Greece and the somewhat sick-making diet of more-or-less modern Europe.

@Cerberus Good doggy!

> The leisure which the Athenian enjoyed is popularly attributed to the existence of slavery. Slavery had something to do with it, but not so much as the fact that three-quarters of the things which we slave for the Greek simply did without. — Ibid.

1:45 AM

@Robusto Ah. Well, in many ways the rich eat less healthy food...

@Robusto Weren't you among those who protested against my contention that at could be used with cities?

@Robusto On the other hand, the remaining quarter required much more manpower than it does now.

@Cerberus I don't recall. I don't find it objectionable in that case.

Good. Perhaps it was Tom.

@Cerberus To be sure.

With respect to household chores, our lives are now less leisurely.

We are far less bothered with the means of subsistence than were people even 200 years ago.

1:53 AM

Most of us, yes.

We of the first world, anyway.

Some of us weren't bothered with getting food on the table in the past.

But more of us were than now.

Does this link work for you in Firefox, that is, do you see ticket prices?: damaris-festival.nl/tickets

I'm looking at it in Chrome. It's very slow.

Hmm it works for me in Chrome, but not in FF.

Probably some cross-site script that Noscript prudently blocks.

I don't use FF, except for testing.

2:00 AM

Oh, I thought you did.

You used to, didn't you?

Once upon a time. But I develop in Chrome, and use it more or less all the time.

Oh, except I use FF to access ELU when I'm at work, because I often have to clear my cache in Chrome.

I'm off to bed. Good night to you.

Καληνύχτα!

That's it.

2:23 AM

@Cerberus sorry about your friend

Thanks.

When I heard the news I wondered if you might have known someone on the plane.

He wasn't a close friend, but it still sucked.

It is bizarre, in a way, because he works for the OCSE, which oversees elections in Ukraine; but this plane was just an unrelated journey to Malaysia.

weird

2:36 AM

Last time I saw him, three weeks ago, he told me about how the OCSE goes about checking out whether elections are fair etc.

OCSE members and partners.

He told me how he went about collecting information during the recent elections in Egypt.

They can go anywhere and visit any polling station without announcing their plans.

They actually visited most polling stations in Egypt during the elections, so they got a pretty good impression.

He said perhaps his driver or his interpreter might spy for the régime and tell certain stations in advance when he would visit them, but he planned his visits shortly before paying them.

So it all sounded fairly effective.

It's days like today that I'm glad I live in Canada.

Yes.

One wonders why Eurocontrol let planes fly over that war zone, even at 10km alt.

Presumably they thought no military forces would do something so pointlessly stupid as deliberately target a civilian aircraft.

Presumably.

But they knew the Russians had given advanced anti-aircraft rockets to somewhat disorganised rebels.

The Russian troops mixed with them in Ukraine, but apparently they did not manage to control them well enough.

It is sad, but perhaps some good will come of this as everyone gets mad at Putin and his irresponsible strategems.

2:58 AM

Yeah hopefully. I'm not holding my breath though.

Anyway I have to get going. cya later.

Later!

3:45 AM

!!youtube raider autumn wind

Hiya.

Hi!

hi

My condolences to you, @Cerb. It's horrible, what happened.

3:49 AM

Thank you.

I'm sad but not crying.

It's really a shame. Same with the shit going on in Palestine right now. So sad.

Yeah.

This one is sad in a different way:

Translation?

> "OMG! So horrible............even busier at work the coming days" — from this girl who works at the tour operators whose clients were on the plane.

I suppose this was not meant for the general public.

So she's upset that she'll have more work to do?

3:55 AM

Yes, or so it appears.

Sad.

It's such a fuss at work when clients die in plane crashes.

I just hate it when I have to clean up after all these people dying. Can't I get a day off around here?

Then again, I think her somewhat insensitive remark would not have been a huge problem had she sent it only to her immediate colleagues.

I know!

Que dolor!

Quelle galère!

3:58 AM

This reminds me of the cheerful announcer from the game Theme Hospital, who would say through the intercom, "message to all patients: please try not to die in the corridooooorzzzz, thank you!!".

Quite so.

user116848

Hi! Mahnax.

user116848

What's this language? Spanish? French?

user116848

Que dolor!
Quelle galère!

The first is Spanish, the second French.

user116848

I guessed correct!

user116848

4:04 AM

@Mahnax You can speak them both?

@Arrowfar I speak French and a couple words of Spanish.

user116848

You French? Jasper is French too I guess.

Nah, Jasper isn't French.

You can ask him where he's from if you like.

Hi @Jasper.

@Mahnax Oh hi! You are not sleeping yet?

@JasperLoy Nope, not yet. It's only ten.

user116848

4:09 AM

Oh, I remembered. He told me he is from Singapore.

user116848

I mixed up c.c. and Jasper.

Morning & Cerbning

user116848

morning!

user116848

@JohanLarsson So how was your cooking tutorials? I heard you talking about them some days ago.

It is programming tutorials but I watch them like ~normal~ people watch coking on TV.

user116848

4:18 AM

So there aren't really about cooking? It was a joke then?

user116848

I thought you were watching cooking.

Yeah it was a joke :)

user116848

@JohanLarsson I have a small grammar question.

user116848

Here I wrote: "I thought you were watching cooking". Is it easy to understand or should I have said: "I had thought you were watching cooking".

"Had" is better, but both are understandable.

user116848

4:26 AM

Okay.

@Arrowfar Skull knows the English, I don't. from what I have read your English is better than mine.

I'm here to lurk and learn or just waste time :)

It is of course ok to ask, just want to throw in a disclaimer.

Lurking is to actual use of English as watching cooking is to actual cooking.

user116848

Seriously? I thought you were like native guys.

@skullpatrol nice

Just jump in and practice :-)

user116848

4:33 AM

skull is native.

nope

user116848

You aren't? Then?

I lost the use of all language due to a head injury when I was young.

user116848

Funny. But I don't believe you.

So "native language" does not apply to me.

To this day I am a very slow reader.

user116848

4:37 AM

@JohanLarsson So Swedish isn't like English. I thought it was.

Svenska är väldigt olikt Engelska tycker jag. Vad tycker du?

user116848

@skullpatrol Well, I hope you get well soon enough.

Thanks pal.

user116848

@JohanLarsson What? Translation please :)

user116848

Welcome pal.

4:39 AM

@Arrowfar Swedish is not very similar to English in my opinion. What do you think? (translation)

user116848

Yeah :D

user116848

Not very similar. I didn't know :D

What is your "native" language?

@Arrowfar Write the same in your language

user116848

Mine? Urdu.

4:43 AM

!!wiki Urdu

user116848

@JohanLarsson But it is a ELU site. Not Urdu site :)

Urdu

@Arrowfar Still interesting but I can see from that ^ sign that it will be hard to read :)

user116848

@JohanLarsson Okay here it goes: "Urdu angreze say milte nahi hai. Tumhare khyaal main kya hai?"

@Arrowfar can you speak Hindi too?

4:45 AM

@skullpatrol really close to a star, have not decided yet.

user116848

@skullpatrol Yes "Urdu" fluently.

:D

user116848

:)

Is a white dwarf really close to a star @Johan?

@Arrowfar I have some friends from Pakistan who speak Urdu!

user116848

4:50 AM

@Mahnax Yeah? Cool. In France?

@Arrowfar No, I don't live in France. I live in Canada :)

I live in the universe.

user116848

Ah. :D

Are you universal?

user116848

Hello! Jasper.

4:52 AM

There is a branch of math called universal algebra.

That's being presumptuous about algebra's existence in the universe, no?

I'm sure the physicist and philosophers have something to say about that...

I have a friend whom I call physicist, poet and philosopher. I call myself mathematician, musician and mystic in this case.

user116848

@skullpatrol So you were calling 'me' a white dwarf? Just asking :)

Nighty-night, folks.

user116848

nighty.

4:59 AM

No @Arrowfar Johan said "really close to a star" the comment was for @Johan ...sorry for the mix-up :-)

user116848

Oh. I see. It's okay.

!!wiki white dwarf

White dwarf

A white dwarf, also called a degenerate dwarf, is a stellar remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. They are very dense; a white dwarf's mass is comparable to that of the Sun, and its volume is comparable to that of the Earth. Its faint luminosity comes from the emission of stored thermal energy. The nearest known white dwarf is Sirius B, 8.6 light years away, the smaller component of the Sirius binary star. There are currently thought to be eight white dwarfs among the hundred star systems nearest the Sun. The unusual faintness of white dwarfs was first recognized i...

user116848

Yeah I learned about these dead planets in school. I forgot the terminologies I guess.

user116848

It was a cool subject. Astronomy I mean.

5:11 AM

The oldest of all the Sciences.

Or, should it be the "eldest"?

I think, you use "eldest" with people only

!!define eldest

@skullpatrol eldest superlative form of

c c

5:53 AM

Normal speech:
Q: Do you have any children?
A: Yes, a boy and a girl.
Q: How old are they?
A: Edmond is sixteen and Alice is six

Alogia:
Q: Do you have any children?
A: Yes.
Q: How many?
A: Two.
Q: How old are they?
A: Six and sixteen.
Q: Are they boys or girls?
A: One of each.
Q: Who is the sixteen-year-old?
A: The boy.
Q: What is his name?
A: Edmond.
Q: And the girl's?
A: Alice.

A lot of people suffer from Alogia then..

:D

!!wiki Alogia

Alogia

In psychology, alogia (Greek ἀ-, “without”, and λόγος, “speech”), or poverty of speech, is a general lack of additional, unprompted content seen in normal speech. As a symptom, it is commonly seen in patients suffering from schizophrenia, and is considered as a negative symptom. It can complicate psychotherapy severely because of the considerable difficulty in holding a fluent conversation. Alogia is often considered a form of aphasia, which is a general impairment in linguistic ability. It often occurs with mental retardation and dementia as a result of damage to the left hemisphere o...

c c

Extra normal speech:
Q: Do you have any children?
A: Yes, a boy Edmond, 16 and a girl Alice, 6.

Math speak: (Boy, Edmond, 16); (Girl, Alice, 6).

And expecting (x, y, soon) :D

7:17 AM

hej Matt

Good morning

:16650959 nah, don't want to be intrusive

you guys are amazing :-)

Did I spam the WPF localization thing to you?

to me? yes, I have looked at it, thank you :)

7:23 AM

I'm thinking about publishing it on Github/nuget, do you have a good name for it?

not off the top of my head... let me refresh my memory

WPF Localization is to the point

Wpf.Localization? (namespace & dll)

Yeah, that's good

or Wpf.L10n for short?

whoosh

I'll get there eventually

Wpf.Rawr

!!wiki l10n

7:32 AM

Localization

Localization or localisation may refer to: Mathematics * Localization (algebra), a formal way to introduce the "denominators" to a given ring or a module * Localization of a category, adding to a category inverse morphisms for some collection of morphisms, constraining them to become isomorphisms * Localization of a module, a construction to introduce denominators in a module M for a ring R * Localization of a ring, in abstract algebra, a systematic method of adding multiplicative inverses to a ring * Localization of a topological space, the localization of topological spaces at primes ...

:)

"rawr" because l10n looks like lion, and that's the noise a lion makes

do you always name like this?

not in a corporate environment

but I name things according to my whims on github

NoPlWiki, for example

I started out on a PHP editor, that I probably won't ever get around to make function, and called it PINZ (Pinz Is Not Zend)

7:50 AM

Have you published on nuget?

I have not

Neither have I, feels like the first time can be painful.

good luck!

I'm gonna initialize procrastination right now.

:D

8:04 AM

!!youtube double vision foreigner

►

!!youtube chuckle vision

►

Never do more than I, I really need My mind is racing, but my body's in the lead Tonight's the night, I'm gonna push it to the limit I live all of my years in a single minute

Now that is life in the fast lane^

He said, "Call the doctor. I think I'm gonna crash."
"The doctor says he's comin', but you gotta pay him in cash."

8:29 AM

Do you run VS code analysis?

*use

9:18 AM

I don't think so

public static bool operator >(Force left, Force right)
{
    return left.Value> right.Value;
}

It wants validation of the arguments in ^

That will bloat things

Force should be a struct though

validations that they're not null?

It is the only validation I can think of

can null be passed in for a struct?

it is a class now, struct would solve it

9:26 AM

ah

@JohanLarsson Validations always do.

Struct would bloat things in another way by removing inheritance

@JohanLarsson Inheritance is hidden bloat.

you're gonna need a bigger bloat

Inheritance is not very nice but can be a way to remove duplication

@MattЭллен A tooth ferry

9:28 AM

lol

All this stuff is about sweeping the bloat under different rugs.

dunno what the R# [NotNull] does

would be nice if it did IL-weaving inserting validation

don't think it does though

I think it just creates a warning

Yeah that would be my guess also.

I could try to roll my own

useful and perhaps a manageable chunk

9:58 AM

Maybe Code Contracts is the way to go

are they available to c#?

yes, at least they used to be. Played with them a couple of years ago.

afklunch now

RegDwigнt

10:13 AM

@Cerberus I was afraid you would say that.

This shit is awful, and nobody at all will be held accountable.

That being said, when Ukrainian rebels steal a missile from the Ukrainian army, and fire it from Ukrainian territory at something that looks like a Ukrainian-army plane to them, it is quite sad to see people immediately blame the Russians.

Blame will not bring them back.

RegDwigнt

Especially not blaming the wrong people.

FFS, what use is it to say "Putin's missile"? That will help with nothing at all.

Hunt down the actual fucker who fucking fired that projectile, and give him a due process.