English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

12:07 AM

Didn't we have a question in the past year or so regarding the statement "Even Homer nods"? I think I gave some response or other, but I don't recall, and the SE search is hopeless.

infinitesimal

Homer Simpson?

Robusto

Anyway, I just found a Japanese proverb that the source translates as "Even Homer nods." It is: 上手の手から水が漏れる. Jouzu no te kara mizu ga moreru. (Water leaks from skillful hands.)

infinitesimal

what's that suppose to mean?

An expert sometimes makes a slip. icic

Robusto

No matter how skilled you are, you are bound to screw up.

infinitesimal

we're all only human

Robusto

12:22 AM

Speaking of only human: When Bill gates was worth only $40 billion, he announced that he planned to give away all his money. Today he's worth nearly twice as much. So either he's poor at planning, or else he was planning something else.

@tchrist: Haré Krishna

Stupid me. I thought begin and start were synonyms. I guess duolingo has other ideas.

Cerberus

Haha, yes.

The pitfalls of...translation.

@Robusto Did he say "when"?

Robusto

@Cerberus He said starting more or less immediately. That was ten years ago.

Cerberus

But did he say when the give-away was supposed to be complete?

He is giving away lots of money every year, isn't he?

Robusto

No idea.

Cerberus

I believe he is.

Robusto

12:33 AM

But he could give away a lot of money and still be obscenely rich.

And it doesn't look like he's on track to finish anytime soon.

Cerberus

And is trying to convince other billionaires to also give away half their money.

He is one of a few who actually do something good for society.

But, yeah, it seems unlikely that he will ever give away anywhere near all of it.

Robusto

You should look up the various meanings of fillet. Words get to mean more than one thing, and it is not VERY strange at all that they do. — Robusto 32 secs ago

0

Q: Is "fillet" a different word in "salmon fillet" than in "leather fillet"

In the question "Is there a name for words which are pronounced differently depending on which definition is being used?" it was suggested by two people that when the word "fillet" is used to describe a thin strip of leather, it is a different word than when "fillet" is used to describe a thin st...

Cerberus

Yeah.

The heart of the matter is that there is no one definition of "word", and that the statement as quoted is meaningless without definition.

tchrist

1:09 AM

WHY don’t ESL books tell unnatives to stop saying the ungrammatical “First time I see that” when only “First time I have seen that” is permissible in English?

Yes, I know English is different “from every other language” in this regard. All the more reason to explain it.

Other languages’ present tense usage often does not match with that of English.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector ] Offensive body detected: I don't know what the word definable means can you help me? by tesirrae on english.stackexchange.com

tchrist

@Robusto It’s all a bunch of either beginning programmers or else pineapples trying to pass TOEFL exams. For all of them, it is inconceivable that there not be just one single possible answer to any question and all.

Cerberus

1:36 AM

@tchrist I still think it is more like informal.

Short for the present perfect, if you will.

tchrist

It’s not informal.

Cerberus

It's not exactly rare in print either.

tchrist

It’s not English.

I’m going to play the native speaker card here.

Anything with nth time forbids the simple present in English. Try it. This is the first time he .... This is the second time he ... This is the last time he ....

Any attempt to use simple present there fails to be grammatical.

I cannot tell you why. I can only tell you that it is absolutely true.

> I will give her a rose the first time I see her.

That one is allowed.

Cerberus

I agree that the present perfect is preferable.

I just think you're exaggerating.

tchrist

Not preferable.

Cerberus

1:39 AM

books.google.com/ngrams/…

tchrist

Bah.

Are you serious?

Cerberus

Whatever it be, it's not necessarily non-native.

tchrist

It is.

Do you know how many times you’ve scoffed at ngrams?

Be truthful: there are logs. :)

Cerberus

google.nl/…

tchrist

Show me an actual sentence.

Cerberus

1:40 AM

Well, I have looked at the results in Books, of course.

The link above.

tchrist

Links are not sentences.

Give me sentences.

Cerberus

Well, the sentences are there.

Very well, then.

tchrist

Either there are extenuating circumstances or they are not English. That’s why I want the sentences.

Cerberus

> “You look good. How's your hand?” “It's fine, thank you.” “You should come by more often, Will. We've been back since last July, and this is the first time I see you?” “Yes, sorry. I've been awfully busy.

— D. E. Johnson - 2011

tchrist

See, that one has extenuating circumstances.

It’s like mine with will above.

You cannot put that one into present perfect any more than you can my example.

It isn’t an optionality thing. It is either required or forbidden.

I think this is one of those areas where it does more good than harm to give pineapples simplistic blanket rules.

As you point out, they are not a perfect description of how things do or do not work.

Cerberus

1:45 AM

I rather think it is a subspecies of attractio.

Attractio temporis, if you will.

tchrist

However, it is so utterly jarring to ever hear "This is the first time your father calls me" that if that class of error can be thus prevented, it is worth throwing a few babies out the window with the new toys.

Cerberus

People think, "hey, I see him now, so it's present", even though it's not so simple, and sort of break the rule.

@tchrist Oh, but then the call is not happening right now, is it?

tchrist

There are lots of places where you cannot use present tense in English but can and must in other Germanic or Romantic tongues.

I know no Slavic nor Greek.

Cerberus

No need to tell me the obvious.

Greek is very loose.

tchrist

Once or twice? :)

Cerberus

1:47 AM

Many a time.

tchrist

> Where is your father right now? He *changes the tire.

In other languages, that would be perfectly grammatical. In English, it is simply wrong.

It is the same here.

Cerberus

But that is completely different.

> Over dinner, it is the first time I see someone eat a whole chilli and with no apparent effect. I try a fraction of one and feel near to a cerebral explosion. They are those powerful little green ones.

tchrist

That doesn't work.

I am actually a bit confused by it.

Cerberus

This more like journal style.

tchrist

No pidgins in this chat.

Cerberus

1:50 AM

One Graham Spencer.

So I would consider journalling informal.

tchrist

There’s something wrong with that. I can’t put my finger on it.

Cerberus

The historic present.

It's not wrong, it's informal and journalling style.

tchrist

Disagree. I think it’s fugly-weird. Test any other native speaker.

It might be tolerable if it were "first time I get to see"

But only for that funny historical present.

And that is not the customary pineapple screwup.

Cerberus

I think maybe you're setting a bar a little bit too high.

tchrist

These are all of them wrong.

Cerberus

1:54 AM

I consider it attraction in a way similar to, but different from, I knew the race was today. It is rarer and less accepted.

tchrist

Notice how the top hits are doing their best to show that they are wrong, too.

Telling pineapples never to use simple present with nth time does far more good than harm.

For it will be a very, very, very long time before they know the language well enough to recognize valid exceptions. If ever.

Cerberus

Sure.

tchrist

Mind you, I would like to find a nice bit of documentation for this situation so that I could point people at it.

Somehow, ordinals with time — or only time — trigger the present perfect and forbid the simple present.

> I always wave the first time I see them.

That is not the same kind of present.

Cerberus

That is because the main clause is habitual.

"Always".

That's different.

tchrist

> The first time I see a flutterbug, I’ll be sure to take a picture.

Cerberus

2:05 AM

That is a subordinate clause, also different.

> This is the third time I have warned you.

tchrist

And that is a case where the present perfect is mandatory.

Cerberus

Yes.

It would be far worse to use the simple present in this case than in the example we started with.

tchrist

> La primera vez que la vea, le daré un beso.

Cerberus

Also because warn is probably not durative.

Mitch

I think the present good-enough is good enough

Cerberus

2:07 AM

Hmm?

tchrist

It is more obvious in languages with stronger subjunctives.

@Mitch Russian mole!

The vea above is present subjective for ver < videre. It would be veo 1s or ve 3s otherwise.

God did I just type vedere?

Blech.

Mitch

I had it removed

tchrist

Good.

Next up, I’ll confuse drinking with living.

Mitch

The present subjunctive is mandative

tchrist

And much obliging.

Mitch

2:12 AM

Du bist verpflichtet.

Cerberus

Qual di chi parla, muoversi, Il labbro suo vedèa, E con la mano esanime. Chiamarmi a se parèa

Those are probably some kind of simple past.

Mitch

If you're saying that the theory of multiverse a is a sham, then I agree. It's cargo cult science emulating bad science fiction.

tchrist

2:25 AM

@Cerberus It’s an imperfect.

But not in standard Italian.

At least, not present-day.

It should be vedeva. Someone has swallowed the v and left a stress mark behind.

But you are sweet to cite her.

Similarly, parèa is from to seem, but is in some alternate imperfect.

Parersi is to seem, from pareo. Its imperfect is supposed to be pareva. I’m sure this is some pattern that I should know about Italian dialects, but do not.

Lenition is common in that construct in many Romance languages.

This doesn’t mention it; I’ll have to dig deeper.

Indicativo imperfetto

L'imperfetto dell'indicativo è la forma verbale delle lingue romanze che si adatta principalmente ad indicare situazioni ed abitudini considerate in un momento passato. È quindi la forma più adatta, all'interno del passato, per le descrizioni o per l'enunciazione di eventi ripetuti. == Coniugazione dell'imperfetto == Questa forma verbale si coniuga aggiungendo alla radice del verbo le desinenze previste della grammatica italiana. Sono simili a quelle del presente, dalle quali si distinguono per la presenza di v insieme alla vocale tematica che caratterizza ciascuna delle tre coniugazioni: (-av...

Okay, apparently this sort of thing happens in some northern dialects.

In particular, the dialect spoken in Brechia in Lombardy has similarities in that it has lenition in that tense, but is not quite a match.

Dialetto bresciano

Il dialetto bresciano (dialèt bresà) è, insieme al bergamasco, al cremasco, ai dialetti delle zone confinanti delle province di Cremona e Mantova, un idioma del gruppo orientale della lingua lombarda, appartenente al ceppo delle lingue gallo-italiche. Il bresciano è parlato, nelle sue diverse varietà, nel territorio della provincia di Brescia, nella parte nord-occidentale della provincia di Mantova (Castiglione delle Stiviere, Solferino, Medole, Castel Goffredo, Casalmoro), in quella sud-occidentale della provincia di Trento, nella valle del Chiese, valli Giudicarie e val Rendena. == Cara...

If you skip to the imperfect, you’ll see strong lenition occurring. But it doesn’t quite match.

Jim Reynolds

2:45 AM

Does talking about grammar = dancing about choreography?

or painting by numbers?

tchrist

As much as adding up a column of numbers is "doing" mathematics.

A Beautiful Mind

@JimReynolds No idea what you are saying.

Jim Reynolds

you are both right.

I do have no idea what I'm saying.

A Beautiful Mind

Are you lonely?

tchrist

Okay, all the northern dialects — the gallo-italian ones — manifest lenition as a common trait. This is northern Italian-like not southern, as far as I can see.

But I’m not going to chase down the 3 dozen northern dialects to figure it out.

Lingue gallo-italiche

Il gallo-italico è un gruppo linguistico delle lingue italo-romanze della famiglia delle lingue indoeuropee. Le lingue gallo-italiche sono principalmente diffuse nell'Italia Settentrionale in Emilia-Romagna, Liguria, Lombardia e Piemonte, ma raggiungono anche il nord di Marche e Toscana. Isole linguistiche alloglotte sono presenti in Italia Insulare e Italia Meridionale con i dialetti gallo-italici di Sicilia, della Basilicata e una varietà ligure parlata in Sardegna. Al di fuori dei confini italiani si estendono in Svizzera (Canton Ticino e Canton Grigioni), a San Marino e a Monaco. Benché...

Jim Reynolds

2:49 AM

No. In 1995 we found another star with planets.

I've felt rather smothered since then, actually.

tchrist

Don’t worry: there’s a black hole in your future.

Jim Reynolds

O.O

Cerberus

@tchrist Well, I don't know the Italian tempus system, but I just read it as a passé simple, which fits the context well enough.

tchrist

@Cerberus It suits the story as an imperfect not a perfect.

Plus I found a translation. :)

Cerberus

I know what it means.

There is also a past tense on -ò.

Or maybe -ó.

tchrist

2:52 AM

It’s "was Xing" not "did X" or "got Xed".

Cerberus

I forgot which language it was.

tchrist

@Cerberus That’s normally a perfect.

Cerberus

At the moment I am listening to a lecture by a Dutch professor in English.

tchrist

On?

Cerberus

His accent is very Dutch, but clear.

On the financialisation of universities.

tchrist

2:53 AM

Dante used vedèa for vedeva.

Cerberus

His sentences are well structured and mostly idiomatic.

Not all the time, but it's good enough.

tchrist

Well, you would expect that of terza rima. :)

Cerberus

No doubt libretti are all metri causa.

They are written to the music, are they not?

tchrist

It’s a very common variant.

And you can reread most of the rest of it without thinking, plus that once you enclue.

I just don't know the details.

Cerberus

Sure.

tchrist

2:56 AM

I found only one example, from 1836, that used both: Io vedèa lei, ma non vedeva in essa

Cerberus

But is the passé simple also from the Latin imperfect? I believe not, and its meaning is also less imperfective.

tchrist

@Cerberus No, it is from the perfect.

Actually, that’s not quite right.

Well, it’s from the -avi forms, which should be perfects.

French has effaced a great deal, making it harder to see.

Cerberus

They are.

tchrist

Try Italian or Spanish to see a clearer picture.

Cerberus

I only know French.

tchrist

2:58 AM

We can fix that in 30 days or double your money back: just ask @Rob. :)

Cerberus

You can still see the Latin perfect ending in the 3rd person pluralis in the French passé simple.

tchrist

Right.

> Le passé simple trouve son origine dans le parfait latin. Le parfait latin (temps simple) correspond à la fois au passé simple et au passé composé français actuel. En ancien français il y avait hésitation entre les appellations parfait et passé simple mais l'appellation parfait est préférée car il s'agit bien avec ce temps d'exprimer un fait passé sans relation avec le présent. Le passé composé est apparu plus récemment que le passé simple mais s'employait bien sûr déjà en ancien français.

From here:

6

A: Why is the passé simple not used in spoken French?

La question du « pourquoi » une langue a telle ou telle caractéristique me semble un peu vaine. En dehors des décisions qui relèveraient d'une instance désirant contrôler la langue utilisée par les sujets qu'elle gouverne et interdirait ou imposerait telle ou telle tournure grammaticale ou lexic...

Jim Reynolds

it's the first time i see someone eat . . . I agree that it's standard. Historic present. Same as, A nun walks into an elevator .... Whether it's a nice stylistic choice there is another question.

crl

jsbin.com/yafana#8x8 pretty hard to win now

tchrist

Blech blech blech. And I thought the many Spanish languages was a complicated scenario. Every damned mountain has its own language in Italy.

One really comes to appreciate the high bar we set on ELU:

-1

Q: Confusion about the usage of past tense

I have a doubt regarding whether can we use verb in past tense while describing past events.For example,Did u found it or did u found it??And then if we are using past tense for the first sentence next sentence will be in what tense??

grammar

Oops.

Cerberus

3:12 AM

@tchrist Naturally As in most places...

tchrist

I just Mjölnirred without realizing it.

Jim Reynolds

yes, i founded it.

tchrist

@Cerberus I know: every mountain in your Land of Holes has its own language.

@JimReynolds Got any more fundatrix for us?

Fundamina are also acceptable.

crl

Jim debe de estar borracho

tchrist

Ya se lo ha notado.

Es una cosa estarlo y otra serlo. :)

And good bloody luck translating that one. :)

What? More love for vibrators on the starboard than for cunterblasting? I am disappoint!

crl

3:28 AM

"ser borracho" no existe? O quizas significa equivalente ser como 'Obelix' con su estado permanente con la pocion magica

tchrist

Ser borracho means that someone is a drunkard.

Not that he is drunk.

crl

es "ser un borracho"

tchrist

Probably not.

You could do it if you wanted.

> Hola! Bonsoir!

Pour traduire être saoûl, doit-on utiliser ser ou estar borracho?

Dans la phrase suivante par exemple :
-j’ai horreur d’être saoul, explique-t-il avec humilité, je bois mais je refuse l’ivresse de tout mon corps.

Que j'ai traduit :
-Tengo horror a ser borracho, explica con humildad, bebo pero me niego a cualquiera embriaguez de mi cuerpo.

crl

Ok, I believe so

tchrist

ici

I really never realized that many French people studied Spanish.

Well, apart from the Québeckers vacationing in Méjico. :)

Which I’m sure they would all like to do round about this time of the year. I know I sure would. Tired of snow.

crl

3:34 AM

I've read the same page, and they are all saying, (not the OP) that it's either estar borracho o ser un borracho

tchrist

Well, think about it like a profession.

Soy médico o soy profesor o soy trabajador.

Those don’t take an article.

crl

Yep, and even in the South-East where I live, there was a little more students in Spanish class than in Italian, surprisingly

tchrist

Interesting.

Are you in an Occitan-speaking area?

Or whatever you call the local langue d’oc language if there is one.

crl

Yes (Antibes near Nice) but I never learned than we were part of "Langue d'oc"

tchrist

Heh.

That’s a very wonderful place to be.

ici

crl

3:39 AM

Ok

tchrist

> Nice has a distinct culture due to its unique history. The local language Niçard (Nissart) is an Occitan dialect (but some Italian scholars argue that it is a Ligurian dialect). It is still spoken by a substantial minority. Strong Italian and (to a lesser extent) Corsican influences make it more intelligible than other extant Provençal dialects.

More intelligible? :)

Yes, I would have expected more students of Italian than of Spanish. Then again, the number of Spanish speakers does dwarf the number of Italian speakers worldwide.

So perhaps they hope for a job in the Americas, as one must now say in English.

You can trace an every-shifting dialect continuum of languages if you start at the boot of Italy and follow the Mediterranean coast running west.

crl

Hehe, don't know nissart at all, there is one TV channel that still broadcast news in this language

it looks like a kind of Creole (I mean like a deformation of French)

tchrist

So mixed Occitan and Ligurian? Honestly, I would not know. I mean, if it were more of an Occitan, it would be close enough to Catalan, but I’m not sure I could tease out the Italian influences, since Catalan also has such (apparent) indicators.

crl

I think Nissart has more Italian influences than Occitan, Catalan or Spanish ones

tchrist

I’ve worked in Nice and Saint-Laurent-du-Var, but I remember nearly nothing of it. I did try to catch a bit of Nissart in the streets of Nice, but I fear I may not have been sufficiently sober at the time. :)

crl

3:47 AM

Hm I'm wrong

-langues indo-européennes
  -langues romanes
    -langues occitano-romanes
      -occitan
        - niçois

tchrist

Well, I don’t think that particular genetic model is purely representative of all situations. There could be room for dispute.

But yeah, I was always taught that it was a langue d’oc of one or another sort.

crl

Were there already those buildings near St Laurent du Var?

tchrist

Unless I forgot them, no. :)

crl

There was the Airport right? (he's quite recent though)

tchrist

Yes.

Too many hops.

Hm, I think I may have landed in Nice and rented a car?

crl

3:50 AM

The (car) traffic here is a nighmare, not that there are too many cars but that also it's not well designed

tchrist

True.

Jim Reynolds

I am not drunk or a drunk. I'm working on an inspiration that just came to me: I'm composing a lecture in Dutch on The universalism of finance.

tchrist

Talk to the dog.

Jim Reynolds

O.o

tchrist

@crl The coastal route to Monico there is breathtaking — and not infrequently lifetaking if I recall correctly.

Cerberus

3:54 AM

@tchrist To every hobbit his own hole.

crl

*Monaco, yes quite dangerous, there's a part where you think you're going to the sea (but there's a turn at the last moment)

Cerberus

I remember being scared in a bus from Nice to Monaco.

tchrist

Don’t drive in the rain at night.

> You know, I just love Grace Kelly. Not because she was a princess, not because she was an actress, not because she was my friend, but because she was just about the nicest lady I ever met. Grace brought into my life as she brought into yours, a soft, warm light every time I saw her, and every time I saw her was a holiday of its own. No question, I'll miss her, we'll all miss her, God bless you, Princess Grace.

tchrist

4:14 AM

Japan has about a dozen cat islands.

And it’s a funny population, considering that red is recessive.

(Well, it’s not exactly recessive, but works out that way.)

See how many red kitties there are there without any black on them? Curious.

The red kitties are all either males, or else females with two red genes.

crl

They should stop to feed them..

tchrist

Well, they eat what they will.

Would you see them deliberately starved to death? The land of Hello Kitty would never do such a thing. It’s hard enough fighting off the Chinese pirates.

It’s a fishing village.

One gene that actually is recessive in the classical sense is long-haired-ness, or whatever the word is. You can see how few longhairs there are in that group, although the third photo I posted has a very nice one in it.

Cerberus

I have already seen the pictures, and the video: very nice.

tchrist

The population is clearly derived from a small founder set.

There isn’t enough diversity for any other explanation.

Cerberus

4:45 AM

Yeah they look fairly similar.

crl

imgur.com/gallery/ziOETWh smart-grid

tchrist

I can tell my kitties’ footprints apart in the virgin snow.

I have just now discovered.

crl

5:05 AM

beer!weather boulder

beer!weather antibes

@crl Antibes: 8.27C (281.42K), broken clouds

@crl Boulder: 11.15C (284.3K), moderate rain, mist

Snow you say?

Jim Reynolds

5:48 AM

It’s a fishing village.

Wouldn't any "cat island village" be such?

But aside from entertaining you, friends.... Can anyone tell me how to simply indent a line in an answer on the site?

Not block quote. Just indent.

infinitesimal

>

Jim Reynolds

And I did look at markdown help page, and the HTML one, too. :;(

Er, :'(

But I don't want the shading.

infinitesimal

Sorry dunno ...

Jim Reynolds

Well, that makes me feel better.

infinitesimal

@tchrist would know

Jim Reynolds

5:51 AM

Those who know aren't saying; those who say don't know

infinitesimal

How poetic :)

tchrist

Prefix your line with however many U+00A0 codepoints as you please.

infinitesimal

@JimReynolds^

Jim Reynolds

ok. Each is a space. How do you encode them?

It's a unicode character. How do you tell the system that it's such?

infinitesimal

@tchrist^

Jim Reynolds

5:55 AM

Thank you host!

tchrist

@crl I am currently at 11F not 11C, and am headed towards zero.

@JimReynolds Just paste them in.

Jim Reynolds

U+00A0 U+00A0 U+00A0 Does it work here?

Doh!

&U+00A0 .

Doh!

tchrist

Step 1: Write a program to output the right codepoints in the right encoding.

Step 2: Grab them with your mouse.

Jim Reynolds

O.O

tchrist

Step 3: Push them into your edit buffer.

Jim Reynolds

5:57 AM

O.0

Can you say that in here? Push it into your buffer?

tchrist

perl -CS -E 'say "x--->", "\xA0" x 12, "<---x" '

There, I drew cute little arrows for you.

With a dozen   characters between them.

Then again, you could just type   a dozen times.

Your choice. ;-)

             &n‌bsp;            &nbsp‌;             &n‌bsp;       

If it pretends not to notice, sometimes you need to start with something like LRO, but this should be fine.

Jim Reynolds

&nbsp spacey

  spacey

If anything, I'm a brave experimentor.

tchrist

6:15 AM

That remains to be demonstrated.

It doesn't work in chat. Here you have to use the real code point, probably with an LRO prefix, too. It only works on the Q&A sites.

tchrist

6:33 AM

@JimReynolds Well, you can, but the more customary paired collocation is yank and put.

Jim Reynolds

@tchrist Thanks.

tchrist

What the index button yanketh, the ring button putteth.

Or the middle finger, if you go that way.

Jim Reynolds

6:54 AM

push them with your mouse. See what you can yank from your buffer?

Jez

7:18 AM

hey @KitZ.Fox @Robusto @MattE.Эллен @tchrist and other other esteemed well-read people. i'd like to pick your brains. i had a dream that kind of gave me the idea for an interesting storyline but im sure it's been done before so i want to ask whether you've read any books with a storyline like this before:

the book starts with a woman having some kind of post-death experience. then she's living in something like a North Korean concentration camp with unimaginable violence, and she knows she'll meet her death soon. every now and then, things get a bit better and eventually, she's only just entered the camp. the storyline is going in reverse.

the story goes back through her life until her birth, and then starts playing forward again. except in the second version, the world is much nicer. something very small (i can't think of what yet) causes the world to be a very different place

i also had the idea of her meeting her pregnant self in each timeline where she intervenes to prevent "a woman whom she notices" getting raped. the woman's morale would be at rock bottom. as she was helped up, she would seem numb, quietly say "thank you", and walk off shepishly.

it's a muddle of ideas at the moment but it seemed like kind of a cool premise.

i bet it's been done before though :-)

actually i only dreamed the first "storyline in reverse" part. i had the Sliding Doors idea of something small changing things when i woke up

Robusto

10:18 AM

@Jez I don't know of anything like that specifically, but remember that everything has been done before time and again, and it doesn't matter. If you like your idea and can pay it off well in the writing, that's good enough.

Matt E. Эллен

@Jez I've not read anything exactly like this. It is a little reminiscent of the merlin sickness. The end product of which is the baby travelling forward in time and growing up, then coming back in time, and it's complicated :D

Jez

@MattE.Эллен that's like my idea in reverse it seems

Matt E. Эллен

yeah.

Jez

maybe for some reason, in the second timeline, some Hitleresque figure decides to do charitable work instead of be a demagogue, avoiding the dystopia

and right at the end of her life she meets him and the reader realizes why it's not a dystopia

i was even thinking it could go back to the point where the egg was inseminated, and a different sperm did it, causing her to have some disability, which made the Hitleresque figure change :-)

infinitesimal

Playing with people's sense of time is risky to say the least.

Sorta like the chicken or the egg :-)

Jez

10:33 AM

risky?

infinitesimal

Which came first depends on how you think about cause and effect, right?

Jez

neither came first

it's exploring 2 different timelines that are very different because of one small event

but it's tracking back from the end of one to the beginning to the end of another

infinitesimal

Sounds like string theory ;-)

Or perhaps some kind of quantum entanglement

All I'm saying is you'll need to choose your words very carefully to not confuse most readers when playing with time lines.

That's why most people find reading special relatively so confusing.

Not to mention GR.

Jim Reynolds

I can understand it if you explain it to my while you stay here on Earth, and I travel to another galaxy at the speed of light. More time to digest it.

infinitesimal

:D

Robusto

12:28 PM

@tchrist: Why are they telling me No vamos a tener casa instead of No vamos a tener una/la casa? I thought it was a typo at first, but they keep repeating the dropped article before casa. Is that some kind of idiom?

Cerberus

12:48 PM

Doesn't it mean "home" rather than "a/the house"?

Robusto

@Cerberus That doesn't make sense. "We are not going to have home"?

Matt E. Эллен

google translates it as "we will not be home"

Robusto

Well, that settles it. GT is never wrong.

Matt E. Эллен

:D

I never said it was a good translation