English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

tchrist

1:29 AM

Every time I read our Lesbesgue question, I mispronounce it naughtily.

Tonepoet

@Rubisco Sidequel sounds yucky. I'm almost tempted to say parallel should be used...

It already even has the -el in it. =P

Færd

4:02 AM

> cedar (n.)

> Old English ceder, blended in Middle English with Old French cedre, both from Latin cedrus, from Greek kedros "cedar, juniper," origin uncertain.

Cedar translates as سدر ([sedr]) in Arabic.

Færd

4:18 AM

But something like [erez] in Hebrew.

I wonder where the Arabic word is from.

Rubisco

10:35 AM

From Arabic

tchrist

2:23 PM

@Færd There exist quite a few examples of Arabic borrowing words from Latin, and even some where the daughters of Latin reborrowed those borrowed words back into themselves from Arabic. So it could have gone either way or both; these are all more likely than a common ancestor, since Arabic is a Semitic language not one derived from Proto-Indo-European.

Cerberus

2:39 PM

Just as there are Latin words that Italian got via Celtic.

tchrist

Exactly.

The one that first came to mind is Spanish alcázar, but there are many others.

> alcázar: Del ár. hisp. alqáṣr, este del ár. clás. qaṣr, y este del lat. castra 'campamento'.

> Espacio que media, en la cubierta superior de los buques, desde el palo mayor hasta la popa o hasta la toldilla, si la hay

Cerberus

Ah, yes, that's a nice one.

tchrist

Can you say poop deck? :)

I fear that I now must learn why.

> popa: Del lat. puppis, con la a de prora.

What’s Latin puppis?

Nobody knows.

puppis

Noun: puppis f ‎(genitive puppis); third declension

stern, poop of a ship
(by extension) a ship
(figuratively) backside of a person

Rather, the etymology is there marked of uncertain origin.

I swear I never knew this.

@Tonepoet blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2016/04/rise-hot-take

YOU

3:05 PM

Is this correct sentence: How many lies you will use?

lies is correct word to use in plural of a lie?

tchrist

@YOU Yes. One lie, two lies.

YOU

Thank you!

tchrist

Given that nearly two thirds of the words in English come from Romance roots and only a quarter from Germanic roots, this seems odd.

> The peasants, who served, spoke a West Germanic language, Old English, the ancestor of both modern English and modern German.

I think not.

Old English is not the ancestor of modern German.

Ah, as the comments draw attention to.

NVZ

3:21 PM

What is the technique called when I refer to myself as "a person", or "a man", in place of "I"?

tchrist

Lorathi?

awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Jaqen_H'ghar

NVZ

For eg. I am from India. If I say instead, A man is from India.

tchrist

One has no word for this.

> He speaks in the traditional manner of Lorathi, omitting names and avoiding first and second gramattical persons.

NVZ

@tchrist yes, great example. A man is very grateful. I ask this cuz I saw on a CV, under "summary" A person has experience of about 1 year in site supervision, purchasing materials and execution in construction and maintenance environment.

tchrist

Don't say that in English unless you’re Lorathi.

NVZ

3:25 PM

So, that's not a good thing for a CV, I understand.

Mitch

@tchrist you should add the classic 'iced tea' to your answer

tchrist

ICT

Mitch

2

A: What is the point of the Microsoft-Word tag?

TL;DR: We certainly don't need it. It has no point. It's a meta tag, one of the bad ones It is irrelevant to the question if my own Sprachgefühl, Microsoft Word, the editor of my novel, a teacher or the pattern answer of some certificate or English test triggers my concern about a sentence or w...

2

Looking for community approval...

NVZ

@tchrist Also found this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illeism#Fictional_characters

Illeism /ˈɪli.ɪzəm/ (from Latin ille meaning "he, that") is the act of referring to oneself in the third person instead of first person.

tchrist

There you go.

Mitch

3:45 PM

@tchrist Yes. Yes, you can say 'poop deck'

Tonepoet

4:46 PM

@tchrist I saw it and it doesn't satisfy me very much. I also checked the Corpus of Contemporary American English only to see musical usages recorded in 1998. I'm tempted to go down to the local library and skim over what they have in the newspaper archives.

If I could only remember what gives me such a strong hunch that it's older...

BladorthinTheGrey

What do you guys think about my suggestion for a new way of discussing references on EL&U?

tchrist

5:02 PM

@BladorthinTheGrey I don’t understand what you mean about chat being old-fashioned.

Are you envisioning something like the meta discussion attached to individual Wikipedia articles?

Tonepoet

@BladorthinTheGrey Since your asking for opinions, I'm not sure of mine yet. We have a dictionary tag that confuses me muchly. It's not so much a tag for requesting resources as it is discussing the aspects of dictionaries. You might want to mention that.

tchrist

> however, chat is awkward, old fashioned and hard to follow.

@BladorthinTheGrey ^^^^^^^^^

I don’t understand.

I rather doubt that chat would be considered old-fashioned by Samuel Johnson or Noah Webster, let alone by Ward Christensen, Tim Berners-Lee, or even Tim O’Reilly. So I would like a neophile’s preferred alternative to this palaeophilic device.

Tonepoet

@BladorthinTheGrey I think some of us do try to do more than just say resource requests are off-topic though, and point people to one of the two resource list threads. Maybe if we added more of the popularly requested categories to the meta-thread we might be able to make it more useful.

tchrist

@BladorthinTheGrey Are you by chance using a hand-held computer, perhaps a watch?

Tonepoet

@tchrist By the way, speaking of the meta-thread, I prefer it in every way to the thread on the main website except two: One is that Waiwai's moderator notice makes the current policy clear and the other is that the main website is the one presently linked in the help-center.

Is it possible for a moderator to make their comment take priority over others, or change the help-center?

tchrist

5:17 PM

@Tonepoet What does it mean for a comment to take priority?

@NVZ So many people with genders issues! :)

> Born and raised in Louisiana, Brook moved to New York from Austin, where she lived for more than four years. She joins a growing contingent of Baton Rouge expats who have found their way to the big city. Brook is an avid (if mediocre) pool player and hopes one day to master english with a "little e." She enjoys writing in her journal, playing in the rain, and is an accomplished illeist.

And yes, we can change the Help Center "on-topic" section if necessary.

ᴋɴᴏᴄᴋ-ᴋɴᴏᴄᴋ Is this thing on?

Waiwai’s comment is the topmost one displayed, and highly upvoted. One could place it within the post proper were one so inclined.

BladorthinTheGrey

@tchrist My suggestion is exactly the opposite of Wikipedia's talk tab: "This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject."

Something akin to another tab could fit though.

I'm suggesting a way of looking at a subject in more depth and talking to others about it

tchrist

I don't believe that the Powers That Be are interested in creating another discussion area.

BladorthinTheGrey

Really!

tchrist

I could be wrong, but that’s my hunch.

Meta and chat are what we have.

BladorthinTheGrey

Do you have any links to a blog post or anything?

tchrist

5:30 PM

There are plenty of other places on the internet where one can engage in forum discussions.

It has to do with the original motivations for creating SO/SE in the first place.

BladorthinTheGrey

I know Stack Overflow had some idea about Documentation, but I hadn't heard anything else.

tchrist

It was too hard to find actual answers because of forum discussions.

Please explain what you mean by old-fashioned.

Documentation is not a discussion forum, if that's what you mean.

Tonepoet

@tchrist Waiwai's comment on the resource thread is the first one for some reason. I was hoping it might be possible for a moderator to "pin" a policy related comment.

tchrist

@Tonepoet It is somewhat possible.

And that has there been done.

@BladorthinTheGrey How does chat not serve your discussion needs, and how exactly is it old-fashioned? Are you using an Apple Watch or some other picayune device for your viewport?

Tonepoet

Come to think of it it's less necessary than I thought given that the header post already has the info. I wonder why I hadn't noticed before. I guess the only reason must be my own foolishness.

tchrist

5:37 PM

For what it's worth, I do think that the microsoft-word tag should have a custom pop-up explaining that ELU does not provide a help-line for the convicted monopolist’s buggy products.

3

Tonepoet

@tchrist Are you sure about that? =P

tchrist

@Tonepoet I am.

The problem is that there are at least two classes of question hiding under that smelly ol’ bumbershoot.

Tonepoet

'tis a joke mostly, although that is a Microsoft Word corroborated question. Quite interesting too given that I never thought about the collocation of the definite article with aforementioned before. =P

tchrist

One class of question is “How do I get the monopolist’s software to do this or not, or not to do that or this?”

NVZ

@tchrist aha! :)

tchrist

5:42 PM

Those remain far outside our charter here.

Tonepoet

I'm supposing the other class is "Why is the monopolist's software telling me my perfectly good grammar is bad?"

tchrist

It is.

That is less clearly out of scope, but significant barriers to answering such questions remain.

Like, what was the programmer thinking who did this?

That’s not answerable.

And that’s really all these come down to. Or mostly so.

Tonepoet

I'm not so sure that's not answerable, per se. I used usage based data in my answer hoping to suggest that it's a simple matter of the computer expecting a certain collocation over others. I might've added information suggesting that aforementioned may only have one "antecedent" but I'm not even sure how to prove that, especially since it's not exactly a pronoun, or if that hypothesis is even true for that matter.

I've also read a comment suggesting that certain arcane words are omitted from spelling checkers that might increase the likelihood of spelling a more common word incorrectly somewhere around here.

BladorthinTheGrey

That's a good point, if a given monopolist were to always autocorrect people into spelling something a certain way, the face of language could really change.

For what it's worth, I asked about Word and if it has enough up-votes to really vindicate it, I'll add a new question with a list of questions that need to be re-tagged or changed.

tchrist

5:57 PM

Alas, I fear I shall never now learn why Stack Exchange chat is held a palaeotechnic artefact of some bygone era as démodé as musty messages delivered via CCP — viz., via the Columbine Communications Protocol spelt out in IETF RFC 1149! As the poet once so famously scribed, Mais où sont les pijons d’antan?

Tonepoet

@BladorthinTheGrey I'm not so sure about that. I think the orthography of English is a mostly settled matter, particularly insofar as the spelling of existing words go. If the checker tried to suggest one spelling over another, I think the end result would simply be people dismissing the "correction" as being invalid.

tchrist

@BladorthinTheGrey This is a problem, for that is indeed what is today occurring amongst the gullible.

BladorthinTheGrey

@Tonepoet Perhaps. I still think it would have an impact on language, look at the change standard keyboards have had on the use of accents in English

tchrist

@BladorthinTheGrey That's in typewriter works.

Tonepoet

@BladorthinTheGrey I might still be using accents if it was as easy to include them as it was in older versions of Mac O.S. Just hit the E and the option key together and whatever the next letter you typed was would be an accent...

tchrist

6:02 PM

@Tonepoet Surely that’s the normal way even unto our own day!

Not in older versions, but also in those of the here and now.

BladorthinTheGrey

Yes, I always try to use a diæresis on the word naïve but find it increasingly difficult but modern keyboards make it really hard

Tonepoet

Really? I seem to recollect having problems with that somewhere along the line. Regardless, I'm not on a mac right now and alt codes are just too hard to remember.

BladorthinTheGrey

I had to use the character map for that post

tchrist

@BladorthinTheGrey I type ALT-u and i, and all is well.

Man, do I really have to star my own message?

Tonepoet

@BladorthinTheGray I've been cheating by typing @fa in here to get @Færd's name highlighted in my messages and using that as a copy/paste point. =P

BladorthinTheGrey

6:05 PM

@tchrist I would do that, but it creates up all sorts of weird and wonderful pop-ups on my browser

@Tonepoet exactly, it shouldn't have to be that hard

tchrist

Certain uses of diæ̈reses may be trickier than others — at least for muggles.

BladorthinTheGrey

Show off ;)

tchrist

blows code points through magical smoke rings

BladorthinTheGrey

Interestingly this has become a real problem in French; the prevalence of English keyboards means that words have tended towards loosing their accents.

tchrist

RELEASE THE HOUNDS!

Tonepoet

6:09 PM

@tchrist Oh and this is mostly unrelated but I recently learned that Alfred is cognate with Elf Counsel.

tchrist

LOOSE THE HOUNDS OF ACCENT!

Tonepoet

I can never watch Batman the same way again.

tchrist

@Tonepoet Oh aye.

That's common knowledge.

BladorthinTheGrey

bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35496893

Je suis cironflexe!

tchrist

T’es horse doovers!

BladorthinTheGrey

6:11 PM

Obviously this is slightly different to English, but the French have a specific governmental department for looking after their language: Academie Francaise

Tonepoet

@tchrist Maybe here among you philologists it is. Out in the uneducated world most names are completely meaningless, cough. =P

tchrist

@Tonepoet The Elf-friends of old still recall the ancient tongue.

BladorthinTheGrey

Yes, it is a shame surnames don't evolve as much in English nowadays, it would be interesting to know all about someone just from their name, e.g. 'kirk' meaning 'church' etc.

Obviously in Middle Earth this is very different

Tonepoet

@BladorthinTheGrey Captain James Tee Shirt.

tchrist

Coopers make barrels, not coops.

BladorthinTheGrey

6:16 PM

@tchrist Just as milliners make hats not mills

Helmar

Nowadays people just concentrate on creating a unique way of spelling. Leading to something like this: namenerds.com/irish/Katelyn.html

155 ways to fuck up your kid's life because it has to spell the name every single time :D

BladorthinTheGrey

As the article says, they're all very, ah, kreativv

tchrist

@Helmar The problem is that doctors no longer make spelling corrections on birth sirtifikits.

Helmar

@tchrist Maybe the root of all evil is that the parents themselves can write. In the good old times where only the doc, the priest and the town scribe could write that would not have happened.

BladorthinTheGrey

@tchrist That's probably an even better way of fucking with a child, even if a name is stupid, best to leave it than to meddle

Tonepoet

6:22 PM

@tchrist Make a law that everybody's name has to be spelled in I.P.A. =P

BladorthinTheGrey

Or that everyone has to talk in Newspeak...

tchrist

Forgot Caetlin and Catrin.

> Given Name CATRIN
GENDER: Feminine
USAGE: Welsh, German
PRONOUNCED: KAT-rin (Welsh), KAHT-reen (German)

Welsh form of KATHERINE, as well as a German short form of KATHARINA.

VARIANTS: Cathrin, Ina, Käthe, Kathrin (German)
DIMINUTIVE: Cadi (Welsh)
OTHER LANGUAGES: Aikaterine (Ancient Greek), Katalin, Kattalin (Basque), Katsiaryna (Belarusian), Katarin, Katell (Breton), Ekaterina, Katerina (Bulgarian), Caterina (Catalan), Katarina, Ina, Kata, Kate, Katica, Tina (Croatian), Kateřina, Katka (Czech), Cathrine, Katarina, Kathrine, Katrine, Caja, Carina, Ina, Kaja, Karen, Karin, Karina, Kathar…

@BladorthinTheGrey *better

You’re comparing. The comparative degree not the superlative is obligatory.

@BladorthinTheGrey You cannot loose unfettered accents, only fettered ones.

Tonepoet

@tchrist Oh c'mon now!

tchrist

Pixies!

27 mins ago, by tchrist

Alas, I fear I shall never now learn why Stack Exchange chat is held a palaeotechnic artefact of some bygone era as démodé as musty messages delivered via CCP — viz., via the Columbine Communications Protocol spelt out in IETF RFC 1149! As the poet once so famously scribed, Mais où sont les pijons d’antan?

This public service announcement will continue until enlightenment appears.

BladorthinTheGrey

=P

Helmar

6:29 PM

@BladorthinTheGrey Maybe the people just can't type properly. I switch to German keyboard layout no matter what's printed on the keys ;)

tchrist

@Helmar As I to vt100 always myself switch.

The key to the left of 1 is ESC. And there is no caps lock.

BladorthinTheGrey

Caps lock is pretty much redundant - just use shift!

tchrist

I can't really see any cause to use caps lock. I remap it to control.

Sans lock.

Tonepoet

I would say it's useful for typing out I.N.I.T.I.A.L.S. but even I forget it exists.

tchrist

Otherwise it is too hard to type ^H.

BladorthinTheGrey

6:32 PM

Meanwhile, a friend of mine leaves caps lock on and uses shift for lowercase letters!?

Helmar

Caps lock is a valuable tool for every internet troll.

BladorthinTheGrey

Very true, where else would the idiots find solace?

Helmar

@Tonepoet I:N:I:T:I:A:L:S

Tonepoet

@Helmar What system uses colons to indicate initials?

tchrist

@BladorthinTheGrey ”We do not lie, cheat, or lock caps, nor tolerate among us those who do.” –US Hacker Cadet Honor Code

3

Helmar

6:33 PM

@Tonepoet Caps lock

Tonepoet

@Helmar Your keyboard is B.R.O.K.E.N.

tchrist

ᴏʜ ᴍʏ ɢᴏᴅ ɪ ᴛʜɪɴᴋ ɪ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ʟᴏᴄᴋᴇᴅ ɪᴛ ꜰᴏʀᴇᴠᴇʀᴍᴏʀᴇ

BladorthinTheGrey

KILL IT WITH FIRE!

Tonepoet

@tchrist And so that is the story of why tchrist never returned to English Language & Usage again: He was too ashamed of himself.

tchrist

𝙸𝚝 𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍 𝚋𝚎 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚜𝚎.

ℐ𝓉 𝒸ℴ𝓊𝓁𝒹 𝒷𝑒 𝓌ℴ𝓇𝓈𝑒𝓇.

𝕴𝖙 𝖈𝖔𝖚𝖑𝖉 𝖜𝖚𝖗𝖘𝖙 𝖇𝖊.

Tonepoet

6:40 PM

When we get better resolution screens and need to increase the size of typeface I don't think the font options will be so bad.

Right now we don't have enough pixels to properly reproduce the intended effect at 12 point, I think.

tchrist

𒁗

𓃝

Tonepoet

I may have mentioned this before, but the Chicago Font used to be Apple's Classic O.S. typeface when monitor resolutions were relatively fixed at 72 D.P.I. It looked like this:

Helmar

I think I am spontaneously developing cancer in my optical nerves.

BladorthinTheGrey

^

Tonepoet

@Helmar Okay, I deleted it.

Helmar

6:46 PM

@Tonepoet Phew, my vision is clearing up already :)

Tonepoet

The point is that was the best that could be done back then.

Helmar

Praise the technical progress

tchrist

@Helmar You would prefer perhaps Gangaikondakanchipuram Thandayuthapani?

Otherwise known as Ganja Than to his buds.

Helmar

I had a fellow student back in university with a last name like that. Before every exam everyone sat there and waited to hear how the exam supervisor would massacre it.

Tonepoet

@tchrist He was more Ganja Than Yu.

tchrist

6:51 PM

That says little, considering how I’ve never been especially ganjic.

Tonepoet

@tchrist I suppose that's because your style was more gangnamic.

Helmar

@tchrist I think I'd prefer something completely foreign sounding to a familiar sounding name with creative spelling

tchrist

Helms too they took.

34 mins ago, by tchrist

27 mins ago, by tchrist

Alas, I fear I shall never now learn why Stack Exchange chat is held a palaeotechnic artefact of some bygone era as démodé as musty messages delivered via CCP — viz., via the Columbine Communications Protocol spelt out in IETF RFC 1149! As the poet once so famously scribed, Mais où sont les pijons d’antan?

BladorthinTheGrey

I wonder for how long you're going to have to broadcast that?

tchrist

Until you explain what you meant.

BladorthinTheGrey

7:03 PM

Oh! I meant that chat is awkwardly formed because it is very hard to find anything from the past

Helmar

There is a search box in the top right.

BladorthinTheGrey

True, but that's not helpful to a newcomer

The main issue is that very rarely do people create new rooms to easily group conversations

Which sort of takes away from the point of SE as a whole - to help people looking for questions.

Helmar

The questions are on the main site.

BladorthinTheGrey

But then if you want to find out more about the topic, SE no longer helps you

That's why a 'discussion' feature could help people

Helmar

Well if you ping pong a few comments it will prompt you to continue in chat and discuss it there.

tchrist

7:11 PM

It will.

Helmar

The comment discussions I had had fruitful sequels in chat rooms

Thus, I am not sure we need any further features in that direction

BladorthinTheGrey

True, but that is just because there is no suitable place to conduct such discussions as of yet

tchrist

But chat is the place suitable.

BladorthinTheGrey

Discussions in chat rooms are private though!

tchrist

No they are not.

Helmar

7:12 PM

No

You can join them

BladorthinTheGrey

Squirms

Oh

Helmar

At least the usual comment were moved rooms

BladorthinTheGrey

I thought they couldn't be seen by those without the required 20 rep

tchrist

Seen?

I don't believe it requires any reputation to see a chat room.

Helmar

Discussion on question by Censi LI: W…

Imported from a comment discussion on english.stackexchange.co...

That's one of the current rooms were a few people continued their discussion

BladorthinTheGrey

7:14 PM

Fair enough

Does it say anything about observing chat rooms when you get the privilege 'talk in chat'?

Helmar

You can always enter chat rooms and listen with no rep at all.

tchrist

Congratulations! You have earned the privilege to Talk in Chat!

BladorthinTheGrey

Ah, well..

tchrist

See Communications Privileges.

BladorthinTheGrey

I still think it would be nicer if chat rooms were split into some sort of taxonomy though

tchrist

7:18 PM

feels an ontological argument coming on

@BladorthinTheGrey What taxonomical splitting to you?

BladorthinTheGrey

Perhaps tag-based

Mitch

What does it really mean to be ontological?

Let me tell you...

BladorthinTheGrey

dictionary.com/browse/ontological

tchrist

@BladorthinTheGrey You’re right: I see no obvious means of seeing a room’s tags from without, nor searching on them.

BladorthinTheGrey

I am right?

tchrist

7:25 PM

I wouldn’t let it go to my head if I were you, Bladorleg.

Helmar

Does any of you know a secular alternative to from your mouth to God's ears offhand?

tchrist

I sure hope so.

Helmar

thanks

Damn, doesn't fit my context, since I have a negated sentence with hope before :/

Makes it weird

Mitch

@Helmar inshallah

tchrist

I sure hope not.

Helmar

7:31 PM

eh, did Allah get downgraded?

tchrist

Si non humiliter sentiebam sed exaltavi animam meam sicut ablactatum super matrem suam ita retributio in anima mea.

Bit long, that one.

Mitch

@Helmar I meant that God willing there is such a desired non-secular version of mashallah

tchrist

Mariza - Oxalá (Fado em mim)

►

Helmar

I hope so too, hopefully one without any mention of hope, too^^

Mitch

Or whatever that is, 'may God let it be so'

'I pray so' is ecumenical side of non secular but still religious

tchrist

7:37 PM

That one’s better.

Sweetly sung.

That’s Marisa dos Reis Nunes, stage-name Mariza.

The lettered lyric lets your ear and eye connect.

So does this:

Mariza Melhor de Mim Letra Show

►

BladorthinTheGrey

EL&U chat =P

tchrist

Saio daqui onde a sombra seduz em busca da luz.

Helmar

Gotta brush up my Spanish to get that Portuguese but with the text I can understand some :)

tchrist

@Helmar Yup!

BladorthinTheGrey

Idiom by the sounds of it: 'Get out of here where the shadow lures in search of light'

tchrist

7:45 PM

The mapping of the written letters to the spoken sounds of the Portuguese of Portugal is the most complex one across any Romance tongue.

Aurea - A Impostora (Letra da Versão Completa)

►

Helmar

In direct neighborhood of Spanish, where they mostly write exactly as they speak

tchrist

Well.

Helmar

farmacia, física

tchrist

The Portuguese do as well.

But the mapping is complex.

@Helmar If you can pull out an example from one of those songs whose mapping of writing to speaking surprises you, I can explain why that happens.

Hail Ninja!

Helmar

8:02 PM

@tchrist I don't really have any basics in Portuguese besides what I can guess from Spanish and forgotten school French. ;)

tchrist

@Helmar That’s pretty much how I first started.

@Cerberus Can you understand this language?

Helmar

8:58 PM

This is the perfect comment to validate giving questions that one important down vote into the compactor.

The professor wants to retire is an A-Equi structure, whereas The professor wants me to retire is a B-Equi structure. In the first, professor is the subject of retire; in the second, it's me that's the subject. As for the OP's question, as usual it contains many false presuppositions (like that exclusive list of what "a complement can only be"), and therefore has no answer. Also as usual. — John Lawler Jun 30 at 12:40

Cerberus

9:28 PM

@tchrist Ja.

Cute.

It was easy because the context is easy.

tchrist

Cool

Cerberus

Could you?

tchrist

Nay

Don't have Dutch phonology in my head.

Some I might guess at but nothing more.

Cerberus

9:44 PM

First he said "zachtjes" or "zachies" (I don't know the spelling), "softly".

The -(e)s is the same gentive-turned-adverb as in English once, sometimes.

-je/ie is the diminutive, as in cookie, thingy, Eddie.

Tonepoet

@Cerberus I must have lost some element of my hearing. I thought he was saying sockies! XD

tchrist

10:01 PM

@Cerberus zaftig?:)

Tonepoet

10:32 PM

Oh hey! I found the printed precursor to the Wikipedia!

Nelson's Encyclopaedia

Nelson's Perpetual Loose Leaf Encyclopaedia: An International Work of Reference was an encyclopedia originally published in twelve volumes by Thomas Nelson and Sons starting in 1907. It was published in loose leaf format; subscribers received updates every six months. Its editor-in-chief was John H. Finley. It ceased publication in approximately 1934. A contemporary review in the New York Times read: ...the book that literally never does grow old, that has a concise, authoritative statement on the memorable event of yesterday as well as on the event that occurred thousands of years ago; the book...

Cerberus

@tchrist Is that Jiddisch?

@Tonepoet Nope, the /x/ is quite clear.

tchrist

10:50 PM

@Cerberus yes

Why do I look at the news?

Cerberus

Why do you?

It's the news that has become worse, not the world.

At least not in most parts.

tchrist