English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…

Not for the faint of heart or those easily triggered by English (or other languages) in the raw. That doesn't mean we want to talk about YouTube comments or hemorrhoids or other such topics.

12m ago – M.A.R.

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Michael Myers

Feb 15, 2011 19:50

> Hawkins: Ah my dear sir, Giacomo is a master of many many tongues indeed. French: (mixed with vowely gibberish) Je le parle le fleur ce magnifique (throws kiss with both hands), Italian: (More vowely gibberish, clasps hands, kisses fingertips), German: Was haben Sie ausgehoebn in das Kneibinbabn? Das Schmerz . . . (angry gibberish and pointing), which means in any language, why tarry? Let us off to the castle!

Martha

Feb 15, 2011 19:22

Somewhere I have a button that says something like "I'm not anal, I'm a pedant. There's a difference. Let me explain it to you..."

Martha

Feb 15, 2011 17:32

One of the interesting things in the special was how Watson would sometimes get the most incredible things right (yes, jokes included), while getting simple fact-based questions wrong (because he didn't understand the category, or similar)

Robusto

Feb 15, 2011 15:01

If you're a front-end developer, you need to know all flavors of HTML, CSS, Javascript, ASP, JSP, Flash, Flex, Java, C#, Perl, SQL ... the list goes on. Plus jQuery, Dojo, Prototype, and any other framework someone thrusts on you. And you have to make all this shit work together in any browser on any platform.

Robusto

Feb 14, 2011 11:03

**Franco-American Spaghetti Western**

With Sparkling Freedom (not champagne)
And Patriot Bread (not Au Bon Pain)
We spit out all that beaujolais
To celebrate the U.S.A.

In our Americanized edition
Voila's lost to the magician
Fries are "freedom", never French
Chaise longue is your "American Bench"

Our women never put on rouge
Our winter sports eschew the luge
Our soldiers never camouflage
Our hospitals must not triage

Amid the buzz of language saws
We toss the salad called Niçoise;
We'd not have any strength to boast

Kosmonaut

Feb 11, 2011 16:19

Someone could ask for a recipe for a really tasty egg salad sandwich and probably get at least one answer before it could be closed.

Robusto

Feb 11, 2011 03:37

@GnomeSlice: Good jobbing do you now!

Robusto

Feb 10, 2011 19:21

Who was it said "If you torture numbers long enough they'll confess to anything?"

JSBangs

Feb 8, 2011 17:38

don't worry, soon we'll get back to talking about agglutination again

Robusto

Feb 3, 2011 20:28

My wife is Japanese-American, but speaks little or no Japanese. I studied Japanese and speak it fairly well. When we would go into sushi restaurants, they would speak to her in Japanese, she would look at me, I would translate, then she would respond in English and I would tell the waiter what she said in Japanese.

Robusto

Feb 3, 2011 03:08

But there is no present tense in English, remember that!

Vitaly

Feb 3, 2011 01:50

@Robusto Thanks. I was just thinking of @'ing myself and saying something like, “@Vitaly, Apparently, yes, since one of the hundred or so meanings of for is concerning, but I am no native speaker either.”

RegDwight

Feb 2, 2011 14:40

►

nohat

Feb 1, 2011 18:22

A: Is [acceptability] a meta-tag?

I believe acceptability is not a meta-tag and it should be restored. It is a tag that could work by itself. And it is only too vague and shifty a term to people who don’t really know anything about how English works. The term “acceptability” is essentially a synonym for “grammaticality” and has a...

nohat

Feb 1, 2011 18:21

@Robusto I really do think that further division of "acceptability" starts to get into too granular territory. It doesn't make sense to answer a question about a very narrow sense of acceptability. A discussion of the acceptability of some usage should cover all ranges of acceptability.

RegDwight

Feb 1, 2011 11:20

We now have well over 4000 users. What's 2 downvotes, (or even 10) in that context?

RegDwight

Feb 1, 2011 11:16

I must say that a few downvotes here or there is nothing to get upset about. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least two answers that got a downvote (along with many upvotes) for no reason whatsoever, one by Robusto, one by nohat.

Robusto

Feb 1, 2011 03:48

The lioness does all the hunting. The lion just lies around and waits to be fed.

RegDwight

Jan 31, 2011 15:40

BTW, I started flagging obvious dupes and off-topic questions for mod attention, as you suggested. Still not quite sure if that's the correct course of action.

RegDwight

Jan 29, 2011 19:00

Q: How to prevent an endless deluge of questions about “that” and “which”

I know we have already asked about this problem twice, but English.SE has now had its third question about the difference between that and which (first, second). The “Ask Question” page is supposed to pop up a list of related questions, but because that and which are both “stop words”, When you s...

RegDwight

Jan 28, 2011 15:27

@kiamlaluno: just visit my user profile, click on "accounts", and you'll be surprised to learn how many StackExchanges are out there.

RegDwight

Jan 28, 2011 15:13

ROFL, I keep correcting that, but I forget about the hzphen.

Kosmonaut

Jan 28, 2011 15:12

Don't you mean "German kezboard"? :)

drachenstern

Jan 20, 2011 15:53

github.com/rchern/StackExchangeScripts <-- Chat modificatons, you'll want to install the SEChatModifications by downloading it to your computer if you're using IE9, Firefox or Chrome