English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2017-02-22

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4:19 AM

Oh, another thing is the safety protocols. No sane person wants to be playing a game like Sword Art Online with Kiyaba's rule...

4:36 AM

Have a fall vs take a fall. Hmm..

Maybe the second one is more often used metaphorically?

> Did you have a fall? Your face is bleeding.

> the pressure was on and someone had to take a fall.

But not always:

> Just steer clear of sports in which you're more likely to take a fall or otherwise get injured

And in the sense of taking the blame, take the fall is more common than a fall.

5:09 AM

How come I leave the room but my avatar stays on the board?

Anyway. From Beowulf:

> In off the moors, down through the mist bands
God-cursed Grendel came greedily loping.

In off? How do you read that?

5:32 AM

I think it's a punctuation problem:

> In , off the moors, down through the mist bands,

> God-cursed Grendel came greedily loping.

2 hours later…

7:11 AM

user image

1 hour later…

8:36 AM

@tchrist Hey, since I know you enjoy classical music, I have a question for you. What do you think of Gliere's 3rd symphony? I have an opportunity to hear it for $5, and I wanted to know if it's worth hearing.

9:29 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected: Act of omission and commission by Jahaan on english.SE

@Mitch So which drink did you guys make?

@Tonepoet Do you play strategy games like Age of Empires? Some strategy games have taken hundreds of hours from my life. :)

But that game is quite old now.

In American English I hear sounds like "ja" and "cho" etc. like "didja", "whatcho" etc. I, on the other hand always pronounce separate "you" in "did you" and a separate "you" in "what you".

@englishstudent why dja do that?

9:44 AM

gets frustrated with pronunciations

@M.A.R. Um, do what exactly?

oh you wrote an example?

When you speak fast enough, they autoconvert to ja and cho in my experience

@M.A.R. Yeah it seems that way. Do you pronounce the same way as natives?

But I don't hear "ja" and "cho" in British English much. Maybe I don't pay close attention to their pronunciations?

@englishstudent you can't possibly pronounce something like all the natives

Not even natives pronounce something like all the natives

I just like to keep my own natural accent.

@englishstudent because us learners are dazzled by their non-rhotic speech :)

9:48 AM

It helps actually. Working towards fluency is good though.

10:17 AM

@ktm5124 I listened to it on youtube a little. If you like it then go for it I guess.

@SadBunny Is "graag gedaan" more common or "welkom" in Dutch to mean "you are welcome"?

3 hours later…

1:18 PM

@englishstudent Welkom just means "welcome": it doesn't mean "you're welcome".

2:00 PM

@Cerberus Thanks. So in Dutch when someone says "Dank u" you can say both "graag gedaan" and "welkom" I'm guessing right?

I was just learning basic words in other languages, it is cool to know these words (and phrases.)

2:25 PM

@Færd You just don't say that (in AmE). You'd say "Did you fall?"

@Færd probably. both sound fine though

@Færd Sort of. but commas not really right. What happened? He came in. Where did he come in from? Off the moors. YOu could 'come in from off the moors', 3 prepositions in a row, no commas. It's the poetry part that's misleading (ie the fact that it is in a poem with its own rules and meter and breaking of rules that canmake you doubt things)

@englishstudent We started off with carbonated water, added some stuff we cooked and distilled and separated, and we got something that tastes like carbonated water that's gone flat and a bitter aftertaste.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Manually reported question: What is androbe? by androbee on english.SE

Phonological history of English consonant clusters

The phonological history of the English language includes various changes in the phonology of consonant clusters. == H-cluster reductions == The H-cluster reductions are various consonant reductions that have occurred in the history of English, involving consonant clusters beginning with /h/ that have lost the /h/ (or become reduced to /h/) in some or all dialects. === Reductions of /hw/ === The cluster /hw/ (spelled ⟨wh⟩ since Middle English) has been subject to two kinds of reduction: Reduction to /h/ before rounded vowels (due to /hw/ being perceived as a /h/ with the labialization...

dang it...didn't do the section that's important.

anyway, it's Yod-coalescence, which is a fancy word for palatalization, which is a fancy word for a stop followed by a y often turns into an affricate like 'ch'.

and since 'you' starts with a 'y' (or yod or /j/), which is very common in English, that happens all over. Didja = Did you, Woudja = would you, doncha = don't you, etc, etc, etc.

@englishstudent "Yod-coalescence has traditionally been resisted in RP." ANd in articulate AmE (newscaster speak) they try not to do it.

@englishstudent No, you cannot say "welkom". That is only used to bid someone welcome.

You can say "graag gedaan", or "geen dank".

But you will actually not hear people say this often.

They will usually either not respond to a "thank you", or they will respond more elaborately, as in "het was een kleine moeite" ("it was a small effort") or the like.

@englishstudent Excellent!

@Mitch I'm not sure a I understand the brackets.

Either your assertion is about English in general, or it is only about American English; but probably not "reader, take your pick as to the extent of my assertion".

3:12 PM

@englishstudent Hmm, the only real time strategy game I really enjoyed so far were from the Myth series and I didn't quite play those games through. I generally prefer turn based games. Final Fantasy Tactics, Disgaea Hour of Darkness and The Battle for Wesnoth are all quite enjoyable. I should probably give an Ages of Empires game a try though, since it is quite a reputable series.

@Cerberus Remove the parens. I realized after I said 'You just don't say that' that I wasn't sure about other than my own. So I added the parenthetical. I don't understand you misunderstanding, but then maybe I'm not using parens the way they are intended or the way you expect.

3:28 PM

@Tonepoet I've added Disgaea 2 PC to my watchlist!

It seems weird.

3:44 PM

I'll also keep the Battle for Wesnoth in mind.

FF Tactics I once tried to run in an emulator, but it didn't work.

@Mitch I'm not sure this specific type of uncertainty is clear from the brackets, but I understand what you mean now.

3:57 PM

@Cerberus Then, to content, do you think that in BrE they say naturally 'Did you have a fall?'

@Cerberus Wesnoth is a great game, especially for free online multiplayer matches but it has a steep learning curve. If you need help learning any of the game's rules, I'd be glad to help.

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch in Google ngrams, "did you have a fall" only appears in American books, not British!

@Mitch I would not connect it with a specific region.

I would just use it to describe a memorable incident where someone fell.

@Cerberus Also you may want to consider playing War of the Lions on ios or android. It's an allegedly improved version of the same game. I just have the original disc.

@Tonepoet Ah, good to know!

4:19 PM

@Cerberus Dank je. Nice explanation.

@Mitch That sounds cool.

@englishstudent Geen dank!

:)

@Tonepoet The Battle for Wesnoth looks nice, looking forward to playing it one day. I have heard a lot about Final Fantasy... oh you are talking about a different Final Fantasy I see, this one is a role playing game, hm.

@englishstudent Most Final Fantasy games are R.P.Gs. This one is a tactical R.P.G. though which is why I mentioned it.

Ah yes.

@Tonepoet So do you always play them on a PlayStation or on a PC too? I usually play them on PC but not all games work on PC of course. Plus graphics card etc. is always a hassle on PC.

@Mitch Thanks for the explanation. I didn't know about "Yod-coalescence".

@englishstudent I usually prefer to buy physical copies of games because of copyright considerations. I think maintaining first sale doctrine is important. That usually means buying the Playstation edition, since Valve's Steam has made it so that most P.C. games only offer downloadable copies.

4:28 PM

@Mitch By "RP" you mean UK accent right?

@englishstudent I think it stands for Received Pronunciation, which is a particular kind of British accent.

@Tonepoet oh okay.

@Tonepoet Yeah that's what I was thinking. Thanks.

U.K. or even just "British" is overly broad because there are a variety of accents in those regions. Don't forget that Scotland is a part of the U.K.

@englishstudent yes. exactly. or rather, inexactly. There are many -strong- and non-trivial percentage regional and social accents in the UK. RP is the most well-known 'posh' Oxbridge-Jeeves and Wooster accent, full non-rhotic/bath-trap split.

In contrast, American English is much more homogeneous. There are regional accents but they are not strong (not very different, very understandable) and low percentage.

@MattE.Эллен argh! damn you, the actual written record

I'm not going to say google is wrong exactly.

Matt E. Эллен

not exactly

4:40 PM

Well, yes, I am going to say that.

Google is wrong.

Matt E. Эллен

but it doesn't show any instances of "Have you taken a tumble"

or that text

@Mitch That's actually quite strange. The United States of America is a few times more populous than the entire U.K. and more vast too.

@MattE.Эллен That would make sense, since I haven't.

Quite light on my feet, dontcha know

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch then how did you get that lump on your head?

4:41 PM

@Tonepoet yes. and land area too

Matt E. Эллен

oh... sorry... that is your head

@MattE.Эллен also light-headed

haha jnx

@Tonepoet I don't know about these days but a few years ago downloading games via torrent was common here too (wrong I know but... many people do it). I buy the PC versions. Some DVDs have the PlayStation version written on them but still I have bought wrong copies several times by mistake. Oh yes, these days we have Steam too.

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch filament or neon?

@Tonepoet You are right, UK is a big place.

4:43 PM

@Cerberus It sounds like talking to children (or like a children's book). Or maybe that's what I think of as BrE because Lewis Carroll/Beatrix Potter/Barrie.

@Mitch okay thanks.

@englishstudent and that's just our imagination. Reality will be much duller.

@englishstudent actually same here. I'd just call it palatalization.

@Tonepoet but the starting population is much younger (~200 years when British immigration slowed considerably), and there's more internal migration (so mixing of accents tends to flatten out differences) but older than Australia so time to as a whole move further away from BrE

@MattE.Эллен bioluminescence. which reminds me, need to go to the organic chemical store and pick up some luciferin

Matt E. Эллен

you're welcome

@Mitch Btw did you hear my accent? I posted a recording here a few days and people said I sound Indian. What are your thoughts? I can't let go of that accent easily but I'm comfortable while speaking in that accent. Copying a accent seems like a lot of work and no fun :/ So I'm keeping my own.

@Mitch It's probably also worth noting that for most of those 200 years, Webster's dictionaries were relatively standardized textbooks. Shortly after Noah Webster died, Merriam-Webster bought the rights to his books, and reduced the price considerably at a very good time in the late 1840s. Massachusetts enacted the first compulsory education laws in the United States in 1852 and they ordered a whole slew of them if I recall correctly.

4:55 PM

So does knowing and researching about different dictionaries come under the heading of "linguistics" or is it some separate branch or specialty?

I can't help but imagine that having written pronunciation keys really helped to homogenize pronunciation.

@englishstudent Hmm, it is difficult for me to form an opinion right now. The dictionaries themselves are certainly linguistic in nature as they try to make a proper record of orthography, pronunciation, semantics and etymology. However the book itself isn't a language.

@englishstudent I think I responded way back when. I have no problem understanding it at all (it is clear), but it sounds subcontinental to me (but India is a big place with lots of different Indian-English accents. If that's what you consider to be you natural English speaking voice then no need to go changing just to please others (unless people have a hard time understanding).

Some people like to be able to mimic others' accents, and some people want to assimilate. Some people don't out of patriotism (it's a sign of where I grew up), self esteem (some people feel bad about their accent because other people are jerks), laziness (it's hard to do accents), not in a situation where anybody notices (like everybody else speaks the same way).

@englishstudent Michael Myers (of SNL) was really good at mimicking accents. Actually when I say 'really good' I mean he tried all the time, not sure about the accuracy.

5:10 PM

@Tonepoet You are right, it isn't a language but still an interesting field (whatever the name is). So just like Webster's who knows maybe we get Tonepoet's Dictionary of American English in the future. :)

Michael Mayors, Michael Myers, Michael Mayers

@Mitch Yes thank you. You did comment but I thought you were talking about my written English.

@englishstudent It's labeled 'lexicography'

@M.A.R. one of those guys. or somebody else

@Mitch The last point is very good. All is important as long as people understand what I'm saying.

@englishstudent Oh

5:12 PM

@Mitch That's not quite right Mitch. Lexicography is the creation of dictionaries.

@Tonepoet wait...what was @englishstudent asking about then? Using dictionaries?

or just researching the history of dictionary production?

@Mitch He is the same "mimime" guy from Austin Powers right?

SNL is awesome, I just haven't watched it in a while.

They always have a nice song at the end.

Matt E. Эллен

@englishstudent he is Austin Powers, and Dr. Evil

@MattE.Эллен Ah yes. :)

Matt E. Эллен

and Wayne, from Wayne's world

5:14 PM

anyway, it tends to categorize somewhere deep under linguistics

@Mitch I am not going to speak for somebody else who is currently present, so if @englishstudent would like to explain in greater detail that would be appreciated.

@Tonepoet you already have started speaking for him by 'correcting' me.

@Mitch Yep. I mixed it up.

@englishstudent haha I underedited you

whatever that means

:)

5:19 PM

@Mitch To a lesser extent yes. I have told you based upon my interpretation of a statement as to what a person probably does not mean, but I would rather not place my own words into someone's else's mouth if it can be easily avoided.

Wait.. is the head of a pin the flat top that sort of goes extra that you can push, or is it the sharp point?

@Mitch I was asking this.

If it's the former, then duh I think a whole bunch of angels could dance their.

Angels are like pixies, right? like Tinkerbell?

Just trying to get the science straight.

@englishstudent The part in question is what is "knowing and researching about different dictionaries" called. Knowing and researching is maybe somewhat vague and Tonepoet is wary of assuming what you meant.

@Mitch Oh okay. I will try to explain it then. I meant a field or a specialty like Tonepoet's, where a person is good at researching and talking about different dictionaries, and know a lot about them. That sort of thing. What is such an expert called?

@englishstudent The best word for that is probably lexicophile.

5:26 PM

That's a good one. Alright.

Thanks.

Do note that I can't really source that word in many of the more nominal dictionaries. I know that Merriam-Webster used it, yet they do not include it in their own dictionary.

I don't think I'm quite as much of an expert in the subject as you may think though. I've researched the various dictionaries to some extent but it's very limited knowledge.

5:52 PM

I cited the wrong name and didn't have enough time to edit the message. Oh well...

Matt E. Эллен

6:29 PM

@Mitch I dunno, it could be a robot-therapy penguin

@MattE.Эллен I do know. And it could be a wolf-seal in penguin clothes

Matt E. Эллен

so could I

takes notes

I see

How do you feel about that?

takes a draw from cigar

@Mitch Prinny, dood!

haha. penguin

Matt E. Эллен

6:52 PM

@Mitch it's a bit of an itchy costume

Interesting

Go on

What about the eggs?

Matt E. Эллен

I prefer them poached

I see. Your money for nothing and the chicks for free.

Matt E. Эллен

7:27 PM

Chicks? Oh no! I thought I ordered egg and chips!

@MattE.Эллен Well, technically speaking, you did get eggs. . .

Matt E. Эллен

but I really wanted free chips

Maybe you'll get lucky and some of the chicks will have some on their shoulders.

Unless there are the feathered variety, in which case you're screwed and chipless.

7:57 PM

@Mitch Well, I picked those out of a number of COCA hits. But I can imagine it's not something you'd normally hear in North America.

There's a similar one among M-W's example sentences for fall (noun) too:

> She's had several bad falls in recent years.

A little different, but basically the same as have a fall.

@Mitch Aha.

@Mitch Somehow I would use no commas in “come in off from the moors”, but definitely would use at least two in “In, off the moors, down through the mist bands, came Grendel”, whether it's poetry or not.

I'd have to think to figure out why.

Thanks for the responses!

@Cerberus You mean putting something in parentheses makes it optional? I don't think so. Not always, at least.

@Færd That sounds perfectly fine. You could say "Did you have several falls?" but you just wouldn't in natural idiomatic English, you'd say "Did you fall several times?"

I guess that's generally true.

@Færd How do you mean?

@Færd Oh. Is that what he meant? I use parentheses to be parenthetical (meaning an aside) as opposed to optional which means could apply or not. And an aside is a clarification.

and a clarification is about truth not optionality.

but then I may be using parens wrong

Yes, it can be a clarification.

Matt E. Эллен

8:09 PM

I use parens when I want to make it obvious that the thing in parens doesn't need to be read for the sentence to be understood

Which is an optional part of the sentence; in other words, the sentence should still work without the parenthesis.

Matt E. Эллен

yes

@Cerberus Take your pick as to the extent of my assertion = it's your choice whether to take the parenthetical part into consideration or not.

I think the reader must take that part into consideration. It's not optional.

So anything in parenthesis should be equal to a non-restrictive relative clause, not a restrictive one.

> I hate (French) authors.

This only makes sense when it was already clear from context that we're talking about French things.

Matt E. Эллен

*I eat apple (pie)

8:11 PM

Haha.

@Cerberus Yes.

Which is the case when I read Mitch's comments: I know he's talking about AmE.

@Mitch So what I am getting at is that your sentence does one of two things: either it 1.) assumes that we know we're talking about American English, of which the parenthesis is just a reminder; or 2.) it assumes that English is American English.

#2 is obviously not true, therefore ...

And I didn't see anything in the immediate context that indicated 1.

So it seemed odd.

Hence my minuscule confusion.

But Mitch explained it.

I can see that. I wasn't clear about what dialect I was talking about, nor was Mitch.

8:19 PM

What he intended was English (or at least in America).

A sort of afterthought.

But anyway, I think we've milked this subject to vacation.

an afterthought to clarify what I was really talking about.

Indeed.

only about AmE

Matt E. Эллен

so... you only meant English (in America)?

But keeping the option open that it might also be about English in general.

8:21 PM

option 1) is the direction of what I meant, but we had not established the context. And I expected the parenthetical do do that establishment.

Or you'd simply have said American English.

@Cerberus It can be fun. Sometimes I feel the 'discussion' of my blood has dropped.

Better pop a pill then.

This is the pill.

@Cerberus hm..but that would be misleading about my only personal thought process, which was that I thought 'English' inchoately at first, and then as an afterthought restricted to AmE.

8:22 PM

Is it bitter?

inchoately meaning I really wasn't thinking of Any English specifically but just sorta... English?

@Mitch Exactly: that's why I said you wanted to keep your options open, "or you'd simply have said".

XOR

@Cerberus What..what kinda places do you go on vacation?

Noöne goes there.

But the subject had been vacated of substance.

@Cerberus maybe more would if they knew there was such an availability of dairy products

8:24 PM

Not after vacation.

use a bucket

to capture what you can

The bucket would not be inside the subject but underneath.

the subject is large; it contains multitudes

Speaking of which, I have 35 minutes to buy milk and bread now.

I must vacate my chatting seat for now!

it's not sunday evening is it?

8:26 PM

Every day is the same.

@Cerberus Neither. You go on vacation.

oh 10pm closing isn't uncivilized

Remember that life lesson.

I prefer neverpm.

what, the one about vacations or the one about days?

Bai!

8:27 PM

later

Matt E. Эллен

CU

Take care!

do svedanya

aloha

slan

xodafez

Matt E. Эллен

Αντίο

8:28 PM

That was for you Fard

Haha! I saw that!

That could be a bit sycophantic.

Or not.

really? it always sounded over the top to me.

like "wow, I'll see you later, no need to get so serious"

The literal meaning is Would that I be sacrificed for your sake.

see, kinda serious.

i mean thank you for the concern but I feel like I owe you now.

Owe me what?

8:32 PM

Like in Star Wars, when Princess Leia says "I love you" and Han Solo replies "Yeah, I know". Kind of not the response she was expecting.

Oh, Star Wars again.

There's more!

Ask me about the Kessel Run.

Ogay. Who's that?

Gah! It's not a person it's a ...

oh forget it.

:))

8:33 PM

:D

Matt E. Эллен

It's an amount of time that can be traversed in variable amounts of distance

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

8:50 PM

It's a distance that can be traversed in variable amounts of distance

also... midichlorions

what you clean your synthesizer keyboard with

Matt E. Эллен

maybe he found a shortcut. like, an asteroid wasn't where it was predicted to be, so he cut half a parsec off the usual distance

Not unlikely from a guy who shoots first

Matt E. Эллен

so, that would mean the millennium falcon can recalculate routes on the fly, which must be difficult to do?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

EU retcon had it that the Kessel run is a complicated path that goes close to several black holes in a "cluster" and that his ship was fast enough to carry cargo through the cluster while going closer to the black holes than would otherwise be safe, therefore doing it in a shorter overall distance than a safer route would require.

Matt E. Эллен

9:06 PM

but is that part of the EU that Disney will keep?

Not if it flouts the rules set out by the Butlerian Jihad.

Matt E. Эллен

Named after the Butlerians, but not committed by them

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@MattE.Эллен There's no way to know. Currently it's "Legends" afaik, which is to say, non-canon

@MattE.Эллен I'm pretty sure the Butler did it.

rimshot

worst pun of the day!

gah, it took til this late.

Matt E. Эллен

Fanfare Sad Trombone "Wah Wah Wahhh" Sound Effect

9:22 PM

sigh

9:32 PM

Bob's Burgers supercut: All of Tina's moans

1 hour later…

10:58 PM

@Mitch It's possible that I'm mistaken about Yuck, but I have my doubts. The best resources only provide guesswork for a much too relatively recent meaning, given that records from the 1960s are likely to have survived. I also have not witnessed the word in what I consider to be the most likely spot for onomatopoeia, which is as a visualization of a sound in a comic-strip.

The sense of it describing a disease, or the feeling of itching caused by that disease is also much older and similarly disgusting.

11:14 PM

Finally, regardless of that, the exemplary context in that particular question can be interpreted either way. The sound effect at the end would certainly be a place for an onomatopoeia, but the blank at the start is a little more doubtful and "increas[ing] the expressiveness of the sentence" seems to be more like the job of an interjection to me.

11:39 PM

user image

@Tonepoet I'm not sure disgust occurs often in comics

@Mitch Humorous comics have disgust in them sometimes. Superhero Comics probably not so much. Regardless, what we'd be looking for is not an expression of disgust, but a sound effect of somebody barfing or something like that.

@Tonepoet You're trying to show evidence (or great lack of it) that it's onomatopoetic as though this is a language of some centuries lost tribe in the Amazon from scratching on bark. No need to go so far. Take my (and other commenter's) word for it, it's onomatopoetic

The 'word' sounds like something gross.

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