English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

tchrist

12:15 AM

@Cerberus That was "you two" not "two Kudos".

Cerberus

Ah, yes.

Oh, well.

Never miss a pedantic opportunity, not even an apparent one.

terdon

I guess when a pedant is wrong, he's a perdant.

tchrist

ewe

terdon

Doe you not like?

tchrist

I no hind.

Have a hart.

terdon

12:28 AM

Is there a word in English for the specific type of pun called a contrepèterie in French?

I don't think so, it's not a very common type.

Not in English anyway, it's very popular in French.

tchrist

Does it have to be lewd?

terdon

No, it just tends to be.

Huh, apparently, it's called a spoonerism.

Spoonerism

A spoonerism is an error in speech or deliberate play on words in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched (see metathesis) between two words in a phrase. An example is saying "The Lord is a shoving leopard" instead of "The Lord is a loving shepherd." While spoonerisms are commonly heard as slips of the tongue resulting from unintentionally getting one's words in a tangle, they can also be used intentionally as a play on words. == Etymology == It is named after the Reverend William Archibald Spooner (1844–1930), Warden of New College, Oxford, who was notoriously prone to...

It finally occurred to me to check whether WP had a link to the equivalent English page.

ya visto

Look again

Gorsh.

12:34 AM

centrepoterie

terdon

@crl ?

crl

@terdon juste une contrepètrie sur "contrepèterie"

terdon

Ah! Pas une orthographie alternative donc!

Those are horrible for a non-native to understand. I think I may have understood 3 after 4 years of living in France.

tchrist

I do love checking out all the crooks and nannies.

crl

They (contrepeteries) are mostly vulgar, but funny anyway

tchrist

12:40 AM

We’ll do the nativity test: crl, do you get my joke? :)

crl

1 min ago, by tchrist

I do love checking out all the crooks and nannies.

this ^?

Yep.

No :(

@terdon See? :)

@tchrist Yup.

12:41 AM

Foos on the other shit now.

terdon

@crl nooks and crannies is an expression.

crl

Ah, well

terdon

@tchrist So I can get them, it's just that odd language that threw me off!

@crl Yes, you need to know the original idiom well enough to recognize it even when changed. That implies a certain level of mastery of the language.

Your English seems much better than my French and you still don't get those.

tchrist

@crl I figured you probably knew crooks but perhaps not nannies — but that you wouldn’t immediately recognize the swapped starts of a common expression whose individual words are a bit uncommon, especially crannies.

crl

Yes, right

There are some invariant contrepeteries too: "Il fait beau et chaud"

terdon

12:46 AM

Dammit!

crl

hmm, I found it there, but now I'm thinking "cheau" isn't a valid word

terdon

I don't get it.

tchrist

Show and tell. :)

terdon

@crl Yay! I got the first one!

Est-ce que tu es déjà arrivé à pied par la Chine?

Shier par la pine?

crl

As a graduate from "les Mines" this one is good too "École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris"

@terdon chier, yes

defecate :)

terdon

12:49 AM

@crl Yes it's the penis I didn't get at first.

It doesn't rhyme.

tchrist

@terdon If at first you don’t succeed....

terdon

Or is Chine not replacing penis?

@tchrist I'd rather not try if it's all the shame to you.

tchrist

Hey, I was being kind: notice I forgot to misspell succeed.

terdon

Oooh, too many options there.

@crl Salut Fred ?

Oh, and piné: une variante de pénis. Now I get the les Mines one.

crl

@terdon From the comment "Phalllus raide"

terdon

12:53 AM

Ugh

OK

crl

pine

== Français == === Étymologie === (xiii e siècle) Origine incertaine [1] : peut-être du franc-comtois pine (« pigne, pomme de pin » ou « sifflet, flûte ») ; ou une variante de pénis. === Nom commun === pine /pin/ féminin (Argot) (Vulgaire) Sexe masculin, membre viril, pénis, verge, vit. Voilà Gautier tournant, à propos d’un mot jeté par nous sur le Faune de Munich, tournant sur le beau pur de la sculpture grecque, qu’il reconnaît aux testicules des statues. Et le voilà à nous décrire la pine grecque et comme l’ingénuité du phallus dont parle Aristophane. — (Frères Goncourt, Journal) Ne...

terdon

C'est trop drôle membre viril. Same expression exists in Spanish.

crl

à ne pas confondre avec épine

tchrist

Shoot, you mean it’s not in English!?

crl

@tchrist they would have been swapped :p

tchrist

12:57 AM

I’ll try to re-member. :)

terdon

@crl Bon, ça dépend de la largeur.

@tchrist Ouch.

tchrist

It was not a great day on ELU. I don’t know if there was a single decent question.

crl

Oh just got it, I'm slow

terdon

Is there an equivalent to miembro viril in English actually?

tchrist

merriam-webster.com/dictionary/virile%20member

terdon

1:00 AM

Oh

That was simple. I'd never seen that term.

@tchrist There was that nice one about words that describe all words including themselves.

Mitch

autologous

tchrist

Which is.

Mitch

heterologous is for words that don't describe themselves

tchrist

@Mitch Which isn’t.

Mitch

autologous words: short, simple, sesquipedalian.

tchrist

1:03 AM

curt

crl

the set of sets that don't include themselves

tchrist

Short is one letter too long.

Any easy is better.

Mitch

heterologous words: long, abecedarian, uh ... white uh pretty much all words.

terdon

White is good.

Mitch

it's pretty white

tchrist

1:04 AM

@Mitch Except heterologous.

terdon

Thanks, by the way, I didn't know either one.

Mitch

so heterologous is neither auto- nor hetero-logous

I don't see what the scandal is.

tchrist

So you’re saying it’s ambilogous?

Mitch

nice!

terdon

@Mitch heterologous. Scandal, that is.

Mitch

1:06 AM

neither-here-nor-thereologous

Pentasyllabic.

Cheating!

@tchrist not in BrE!

Recherché.

pentaslabic

1:07 AM

Which would make the USSR multislabic?

tchrist

Hexasyllabically or heptasyllabically?

Mitch

Scandal is too much, except for the outfits. Fabulous!

terdon

So, what's untrue? Auto or hetero?

tchrist

Oh, maybe those should be in Latin.

Mitch

@terdon in BrE

tchrist

1:09 AM

Sexasyllabically or septasyllabically?

Cerberus

You called?

tchrist

Mention sex and he appears!

Mitch

@terdon words aren't true or false, they're descriptive.

Cerberus

Mention Latin.

tchrist

I don’t know why I put a hex on those.

Mitch

1:10 AM

@tchrist Use sex and the authorities might take notice.

terdon

@Mitch So, does that make true and untrue autologous or heterologous?

Mitch

@Cerberus You just did.

Cerberus

Check.

Now mention something.

Mitch

@terdon heterologous since they do not describe themselves

tchrist

Mate.

Mitch

1:10 AM

Something.

Is that a thing?

some of it

Sometimes

I’d like to try it someonce.

Cerberus

Hey, I already did. Why ape me?

Someonce is actually a much nicer word than sometime.

tchrist

1:12 AM

Because of the buzz around you.

Isn’t it?

Labyrinthiform.

Cerberus

No hybrides, please.

Or is it hybres?

tchrist

Not my fault. It’s in the OED.

Mitch

@Cerberus The highlands and the islands

terdon

@tchrist autologous!

tchrist

Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture - "Fingal's Cave"

►

Cerberus

1:14 AM

Hybres is what I sought; hybrides are certain birds of prey.

@terdon Will no doubt know.

tchrist

Bulo or stringisomething?

Cerberus

Possibly bubo.

tchrist

I had gulo running through my brain.

Mitch

I heard that falcons are actually perching birds. Was that here?

tchrist

@Mitch Well, they are related to parrots.

terdon

1:18 AM

@Cerberus Oh, hybris, yes.

tchrist

> In agreement with the split of Falconiformes and Accipitriformes, comparative genome analysis published in 2008 suggested that falcons are more closely related to the parrots and passerines than to other birds including the Accipitridae, so that the traditional Falconiformes are paraphyletic even if the Cathartidae are excluded.

> Indeed, a 2011 analysis of transposable element insertions shared between the genomes of falcons, passerines, and parrots, but not present in the genomes of other birds, confirmed that falcons are a sister group of the combined parrot/passerine group, together forming the clade Eufalconimorphae.

Eu.

Good birdies.

Cerberus

@terdon There are two words in Ancient Greek, one with plural hubreis, the other hubrides.

tchrist

> New World vultures do not form a monophyletic clade with the superficially similar family of Old World vultures, but similarities between the two groups are due to convergent evolution.

Mitch

@tchrist I thought all birds of prey were eagle related or owls. But I guess not.

crl

un vrai faucon, mais un faux condor

tchrist

1:21 AM

@Mitch No.

@crl As it were, yes.

> New World vultures were traditionally placed in a family of their own in the Falconiformes. ... However, recent multi-locus DNA studies ... indicate that New World vultures are related to the other birds of prey, excluding the Falconidae which are distantly related to other raptors, and are not close to storks.

Mitch

@crl un faux faucon, un vrai ... something

terdon

@Cerberus In modern Greek ύβρις is the raising yourself above the Gods one.

Hubris.

tchrist

Apotheosis? :)

terdon

Metatheosis perhaps

Mitch

un faux cul, une vraie vulve

Cerberus

1:23 AM

@terdon And the other one?

tchrist

Only the Swedes make that masculine.

Volvo. :)

Mitch

@terdon hybriviously

tchrist

♬ El condor pasa. ♬

terdon

@Cerberus I've never heard of hybrides.

Cerberus

@terdon No name for a bird of prey like that?

terdon

1:28 AM

@Cerberus Are you sure hybrides is a thing?

Cerberus

Yes, or my statements would have been really weird, no?

archimedes.fas.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/…

tchrist

Very like unto our Great Horned, the ones that were in the back yard a couple of weeks ago.

For some reason, the English call them eagle-owls. They are mighty it is true.

It was nearly 80 today. The house is hot upstairs.

terdon

@Cerberus OK, yes but we call that a μπούφος. Which also means stupid, doofus.

tchrist

How strange!

Owls are known for their wisdom, not their sophomoronic wit.

Really quite comfortable.

Cerberus

1:43 AM

@terdon Hmm odd.

tchrist

Kinda blustery though.

Every town should have its own National Center for Atmospheric Research. :)

terdon

@tchrist is there an idiomatic way of getting the output of a system call into a perl variable with an implicit chomp()?

For a one liner.

Ah!

 chomp ($foo=`cmd`)

Not quite implicit but shorter than what I had.

tchrist

2:20 AM

@terdon Yup, that's the normal way.

Robusto

10:25 AM

@tchrist This will take some getting used to.

Robusto

10:40 AM

@dorothy: Judgments about speakers of US English, based on an extremely limited sampling, are unwarranted and in fact a bit dismissive. — Robusto 9 secs ago

eleanora

1:47 PM

hi @Robusto

crl

2:29 PM

ah tricky.. consigo is also a verb conseguir, "consigo un bueno resultado"

tchrist

True. :)

crl

word collisions

tchrist

But you will have a hard time finding an ambiguous use.

Might not be impossible though with two clauses.

crl

hehe right

tchrist

I was trying to think of an ambiguous case between hay (it has there / there is/are) and ai (there by you).

But I couldn’t think of one.

> ¿Hay bebidas? Sí, las hay por ai. :)

crl

2:35 PM

didn't know ai

tchrist

It’s the second-person locative.

crl

como aqui?

tchrist

Like aquí is the the first person locative and allí is the third person locative.

Yes.

crl

ok

tchrist

Aquí = cerca de mí, Ai = cerca de ti, Allí = ni cerca de mí ni de ti

But "por ai" can also be a general thing.

Está por ai.

crl

2:37 PM

isn't there Ahi too?

tchrist

Oh.

I’m spelling it wrong.

crl

It happens

tchrist

I’m trying no-coffee Sunday. It is not working. :)

crl

Nevermind :)

tchrist

My head hurts, and I drank no alcohol last night. Ug.

crl

2:38 PM

You spoke in Catalan maybe

tchrist

Heh.

Honestly, sometimes these start to run together in my head.

crl

I'm really gonna install ubuntu, windoze is slow for many things, opening folder, Eclipse is slow, etc.. ubuntu might be faster

tchrist

Start in SW France on the coast. Follow the coastline counterclockwise down to Galicia and Portugal and around Spain and up to Calauña and then over through the south of France over and down the boot of Italy until you get to the end of Sicily. How many languages have you passed through? Infinitely many, I think.

crl

counterclockwise? So I pass by North Africa?

tchrist

Yes.

terdon

2:42 PM

@crl Vols dire algo?

crl

@terdon hehe, I can't speak it though :)

tchrist

Vale.

The Catalans do say vale.

terdon

@crl I can but badly.

tchrist

Maybe Catalan is easier to understand spoken than written, so the opposite of Portuguese. :)

@crl Possibly.

terdon

@tchrist I find the opposite is true. Written Catalan is very similar to French and you can see the origin of the words. They often pronounce it in completely unexpected ways.

For example, e sounds like a and o like u.

tchrist

2:45 PM

@terdon I wasn’t saying I knew.

@terdon Well, yes. But this is weird.

terdon

Yup. Very.

tchrist

I mean e > i and o > u is normal, but e > a is weird.

o >u is normal?

Sure.

As in poor?

2:46 PM

Yes.

terdon

But that's two os

tchrist

ES el perro is PT o perro. Unstressed o is always u.

Catalan has that same thing happening.

terdon

OK

So, your definition of normal is "It happens in Portuguese"?

tchrist

If they don’t want that to happen, they write it ou.

@terdon No, in other Romance languages, too.

Not in French.

Or Castilian.

Various Italian languages, for example.

Maybe Romanian. I forget.

terdon

Which was the original? How were those pronounced in Latin?

tchrist

2:48 PM

Well...

"Short u".

Fornus > forno, horno.

Jonathan

What's another way of saying "You've got my attention" were "You are quite something else" is too strong?

tchrist

But that us was never a long u.

@Jonathan Not sure what your broader context is.

terdon

@tchrist But was the letter o was pronounced as an English o or as a u?

Jonathan

Girl that caught your eye in a bar

tchrist

Oh.

May I please have my eyes back now? :)

Jonathan

2:51 PM

Hehe

terdon

How about "Hi!"?

Jonathan

Lame

terdon

Less so than either of your suggestions really.

tchrist

@terdon As neither, mostly.

terdon

@tchrist Great. That simplifies things.

tchrist

2:52 PM

It was never /u/.

We have to talk IPA or rhyme-sets.

But it is normal in languages with reduction for unstressed vowels to move to a close position.

Front vowels moving to /u/, back vowels to /i/.

Robusto

@eleanora Hello

terdon

@tchrist Was it /ʊ/?

tchrist

Because they are just dropping the "open" characteristic in reduction. /o/ is open front, /u/ is closed front. /e/ is open back, /i/ is close back.

@terdon Short /u/ may have been.

So in fornus, the first vowel was probably not so far from English fornicate, but the second one was a short u.

We think.

Or at least, I think. Ask @Cerberus.

But the point isn't that Latin had /u/ for orthographic <o>. It never did.

terdon

OK, thanks.

tchrist

The point is that when you add reduction to a language, open vowels move to close vowels.

terdon

2:58 PM

What's reduction in this context?

tchrist

Many Romance languages have 7-vowel systems, like Italian, where there are two variants of each of <e> and <o>.

@terdon In this one? Something that happens to vowels in unstressed syllables.

Catalan and Portuguese both have reduction in unstressed syllables.

Both also have schwas, although the Portuguese one can be impossible to hear.

The word Barcelona has two schwas in Catalan, just as in English.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…