English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

> in Ostfriesland einen Wassergraben

That's it!

A sloot.

Not to confuse with a sleutel.

Indeed not.

So is the o long in Schlot?

10:05 PM

Aye.

As opposed to, say, Schlott?

OK.

There's schlottern. To shiver.

Hmm.

any connection?

I think we should stop lest we find out that all words in all languages are six degrees from Kevin Bacon.

10:06 PM

We don't have that, I'm afraid.

no way; this is fun!

Nor does English, I think?

spot the misuse of the semicolon

what does English have or not have?

@TomW It may be defensible?

@TomW A cognate of schlottern.

Grimm say it's from MHD slottern, slotern.

woerterbuchnetz.de/DWB/?lemma=schlottern

Also sluttern, schluttern.

10:08 PM

I can't think of any potential cognates.

I don't think so

And then there's schludern. To be careless, thoughtless.

not fully understanding what you're asking for...

Cognates are Nates with a cog.

A word in English that is from the same Proto-Indo-European root as schlottern.

10:09 PM

@Cerberus Slotterdijk.

right, have the capacity to google. It seems not.

Cog- = "same"; nat- = "born".

Hence, nacimiento.

> Mhd. slot[t]ern "wackeln, zittern" (entsprechend niederd. sluddern, niederl. slodderen) ist eine Intensivbildung zu gleichbed. mhd. sloten und gehört wie schleudern und lottern zu der unter schlummern dargestellten idg. Wurzel *[s]leu- "schlaff [herabhängend]".

Although it might amuse you that the closest word that I can think of to 'chimney' is 'to chime' - for a bell, which does indeed reside inside a structure similar to a chimney

I don't have the faintest idea whether they're related

10:11 PM

@TomW chime is related to cymbal, not chimney.

Slodderen...okay, I see. That verb is not really in use, but a sloddervos (vos = fox) is someone who doesn't pick up after himself.

Chimney is related to caminata and camera.

Hmm.

Blast you English, for creating such a mess in your wake

So English slumber is related to schlottern (and Dutch sluimeren too).

10:12 PM

> late 13c., "furnace;" early 14c., "chimney stack of a fireplace;" late 14c., "fireplace in a residential space;" from Old French cheminee "fireplace; room with a fireplace; hearth; chimney stack" (12c., Modern French cheminée), from Late Latin (camera) caminata "fireplace; room with a fireplace," from Latin caminatus, adjective of caminus "furnace, forge; hearth, oven; flue," from Greek kaminos "furnace, oven, brick kiln."

@TomW All languages are a mess!

Especially Esperanto.

@RegDwighт I had no idea, btw. Good to know.

@Cerberus really? Cheminee is so obvious. Everything else follows.

Now chime and cymbal...

I have heard that non-anglo people are eternally surprised that anglo (British, American, Aus/NZ) people learn so little about the structure and origin of their own language in school

10:13 PM

@RegDwighт Ahhh from Greek ka(i)-ô "to burn", as in holocaust!

I'm not making this up!

@TomW Yeah.

I'm no exception to this

they didn't really do any

@RegDwighт The French is obvious, yes, but I have to say caminus was only dimly present in my minds.

I lack the vocabulary to really debate this because it's what you're meant to learn in school, and we neglect it

@TomW I am surprised at how Anglo-Saxons always say they learn so little! Whether or not it is true in comparison, I cannot say.

10:15 PM

@TomW well then be informed that water, vodka, Undine, hydrant, whiskey, and wet are all the same word.

Yay!

that's part of the reason we're so bad at other people's languages

we don't even understand our own

I had no idea about vodka and whiskey, and I would have had to check on unda and hydôr...

@TomW Hmm...but are you so bad?

Oh, and also zoo, bio, and quick.

And how about the French?

@RegDwighт Quick, really?

10:16 PM

Not to mention everything with chl in it. All the same word.

I have an infantile understanding of German and can say 'please', 'thank you' and 'beer' in about four others

Oct 27 '12 at 13:44, by tchrist

Comm. Teut.: OE. cwicu, c(w)ucu and cwic, c(w)uc-, = OFris. quik, quek (mod.Fris. quick, queck), OS. quik (MDutch quic, Dutch kwik), OHG. quec, quecch- and chec, checch- (MHG. quec, queck- and kec, keck-, G. keck lively, pert, bold; also dial. queck, quick), ONor. kvik-r, kvikv- and kyk-r, kykv- (MSw. qvik, qvek, Sw. qvick; Da. kvik, also kvæg sb., ‘cattle’, and kvæg-, kvik- in combs. as kvæg- or kviksand):-OTeut. *kwikwo-z.
The origin of the second k is obscure; it is absent in the Gothic *qius (in pl. qiwai):-*kwiwo-z, from the common Aryan *gwī̆wo- which appears in Skr. jīvá, L. vīvus (f…

I'm pretty good amongst my friends for the amount of language ability I retained

@RegDwighт I see that you are right about vivus/bios/quick, I only knew the first two were related. As to zôô, I didn't know that one either.

it's definitely a middle-class pastime

10:18 PM

@TomW Sehr gut!

What is middle class?

You have to know in Dutchland they have no classes, only queens.

if you haven't been to university and really tried hard to travel or engage with the rest of the world, there's basically zero chance you'll know any foreign languages at all

middle-class = people who aspire to professional occupations and assume they'll take some sort of higher education

HUGE GENERALISATION APPROACHING

@TomW Oh haha, so the upper classes don't go to university in your country?

sceptical look

that was definitely not what I said

Sceptical? Quick, I must get antisceptics.

10:21 PM

they know they'll go there, regardless of ability

Money won't buy you etymology, though.

It's not like the languages that are taught here aren't taught backwards, either.

Everyone just recites the same stupid words and pointless rules.

Schools suck at teaching languages.

Mahnax

@MattЭллен Hm?

I have learned more Finnish from Mahnax than I ever could at school. And I have learned absolutely no Finnish from Mahnax.

@TomW And they therefore don't study languages?

@Mahnax Hello, Finn!

Well, we're a country of travellers - at least, the middle class people whose opinions are listened to are travellers , and wherever we go, people speak fantastic english and we - those who are capable of feeling shame - realise how they'll never speak [native language of people cooking their breakfast]

Mahnax

10:23 PM

@Cerberus I see no Finn, only Finn/2.

But hello regardless!

@TomW Okay, but...most people here never learn to speak any language other than Dutch and English well.

@Mahnax Hmm I don't know how to respond to that, except by, "yes".

that's 100% more than we do

In other words, we suck at French and German.

@TomW well, but giving up before you started is the very attitude that prevents them from actually speaking that language.

Not to mention Chinese.

Mahnax

10:26 PM

@Cerberus So do we, and one of those is a national language here.

oh man

@Mahnax Haha, indeed.

@Cerberus most people never learn anything anywhere.

Chinese. I've read as much as I understand - which isn't much - and realise that my brain needs re-wiring

That's by design.

10:27 PM

@RegDwighт And yet they manage to breathe ogygen!

@Cerberus the only thing they never had to learn!

@TomW I've read zero and I understand zero, so you win! Yay!

@RegDwighт But they did.

I had a chinese housemate. He ~~spoke~~ understood a lot more english than he could speak

They didn't know how to before they were born.

That's the right approach.

10:28 PM

Haha.

Dive in and go ahead, mistakes and all.

he only let on that he was deputy director of the chinese meteorological service when he gave me his business card the day he left

I was surprised they didn't arrange better accomodation. This place is a dump

Odd.

He never told you what he did?

well, i knew he was a scientist and that he took classes at the metereological institute

@Cerberus to be fair, I never told you what I do, either.

Hippos notwithstanding.

But I must be calling it a day. Must read more of Ms LeGuin's.

Still no real progress.

10:33 PM

@RegDwighт But we don't share a kitchen.

Good night!

@Cerberus the transcript tells otherwise.

In fact I am responsible for your favorite food now.

So.

Transports and replicators don't count.

@Cerberus he was very insistent that one day we ought to come and see the Shanghai expo. I think he was from there

@RegDwighт You could be a program inside a microwave, for all I know.

@TomW Ah OK. Was he nice to live with?

@Cerberus and? That doesn't refute my point, it strengthens it.

But I'm not here.

Ouvert et haut !

10:35 PM

@RegDwighт I don't see you on the screen of my microwave?

Tom should drop by some other time.

waves at screen, knocks

@Cerberus go visit an ornithologist about that.

Yes, make him with your magical moderating powers.

@Cerberus very pleasant. Language barrier was the main issue. I think he understood everything we said but either wasn't able or wasn't confident enough to reply in any detail

10:36 PM

@RegDwighт You're not a bird any more!

@Cerberus Right. I will just superping him twice a day.

Fun!

¡Abierto y alto!

@TomW OK cool. I imagine it must be an odd experience, if pleasant, to live with someone from an alien culture.

He watched loads of news

and found it fascinating that I cooked a lot of food he recognised as obviously chinese-style

10:41 PM

Haha, of course.

He though you would only cook potatoes with buffalo steaks and peppers?

we just about managed to discuss the political status of Hong Kong and how a lot of people from there fled in the 90s, and I think we understood one another, although it was hard to tell

Hmm.

How could he possibly attend university?

Hm?

I believe we have lots of Chinese students at the university of Leiden, and they do poorly.

Partly because their English is so bad.

This guy was in his early 40s

10:44 PM

Ah.

But...

You said he was taking classes?

When I said he 'took' classes

I think he was leading them

Oh, I see.

Even harder to imagine.

He wrote us a goodbye letter as well - perfect english

1999 storm "Anatol" in Germany, is known as the "Decemberorkanen" or "Adam" in Denmark and as "Carola" in Sweden.
2011 storm "Dagmar" in Norway and Sweden is known as "Patrick" in Germany and "Tapani" in Finland.

An alternative Scottish naming system arose in 2011 via social media/twitter which resulted in the humourous naming of Hurricane Bawbag[9][10][11] and Hurricane Fannybaws.

@TomW Oh! Interesting.

Perhaps he had it checked by someone...

so i think he knew a lot more than was immediately obvious

10:49 PM

But if he could barely talk to you, how could he give a lecture?

Oh, well.

Apparently, he did.

I'm sure if you have time to research your subject and think, you have more of a chance to say what you mean

If I were asked a simple question in - say - italian - I'd hear babble - but might be able to reply if I saw it written down

Heh.

Sure, writing is easier if that's how you learned it.

I had a housemate who spoke fluent italian because her mother was, and spoke not a great deal of english - but she spoke it with a standard english accent, which just sounded wrong

i.e. there was just enough flair in it to sound grammatically correct, but no more

she also spoke quite a lot of french,and didn't manage the accent for that either

@TomW So you mean her grammar and idiom sounded a bit foreign, while her accent sounded almost native?

And by standard English, you mean RP?

Wait, it is English, right?

Yep, she was from greater london. And speaking italian she still sounded like she was from greater london, but saying words I didn't recognise

she could argue with her mother about stuff i assumed was quite complex

11:09 PM

Ah OK.

That is funny indeed.

It's also interesting how some people acquire a great accent in a fairly short time, while others retain a heavy accent even after 10 years of permanent immersion in the target accent.

I do my best to adopt the local pronunciation as best I can

being noob, that doesn't go very far