The Reading Room

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Bookworm

03:46

Q: How could somebody welcome his visitor warmly while regarding this visit as a bad thing in "Markenmore Mystery"?

In The Markenmore Mystery (1922) by J. S. Fletcher, Mr. Fransemmery, a juryman, went to Mrs. Braxfield, a rural witness, while Mr. Blick, a detective, was in her house: Mrs. Braxfield herself opened the door of Woodland Cottage to Mr. Fransemmery, and making out his identity by the light of the ...

b_jonas

@Tsundoku Does the more case endings actually make them harder to learn? I wonder.

I mean Hungarian has this thing in conjugation or declination where you have to guess (or look up in a dictionary) of the form that the word ends up in, the hardest ones being where you have to decide between an -a- or -o- sound, and if you guess wrong often enough then that's one of the easiest ways how native speakers recognize that you're a foreigner.

Despite that there are also cases where native speakers disagree on what the correct form is, but they do know that and will recognize that you're a foreigner only if you mess up any of the ones where everyone agrees, despite that that's impossible to guess other than by memorizing a dictionary.

But it's not actually like having over a dozen noun cases makes the language harder to use than German which has only four cases, I thought it was the opposite.

b_jonas

04:16

@Tsundoku can you mention Lewis Carroll in literature.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1566/139 ? We have a lewis-carroll with seven questions.

8 hours later…

Bookworm

11:50

Q: What did Andre Aciman mean by the line "Love, which exempts no one who's loved from loving" in Call me by your name?

While Elio describes the events of the summer, he refers to a quote by Francesca he remembers from Inferno. "Love, which exempts no one who's loved from loving". What does Andre Aciman mean by this line?

meaning

2 hours later…

Tsundoku

13:20

@b_jonas I have added Lewis Carroll. It's interesting that even Dodgson's non-fiction, which he published under his real name, has been republished or discussed as if it were published under his pen name.

@b_jonas For people whose native language does not have a case system, declinations such as in Hungarian can seem daunting. If you add rules for vowel harmony, it becomes even harder.

Rajorshi Koyal

What is the difference between over and above as a preposition?

bobble

14:07

@Randal'Thor re: sarcasm. I didn't have a good analysis for that but and I really would like to take it out, but I thought I had to address all of their questions

It's annoying for multi-part meaning questions, especially when the parts aren't that related to reach other, because of I know the answer to all but one part then what should I do? Not answer? Answer but leave that part out? Answer with a poor sub-answer for that part? I went with the last this time, should I not other times?

@RajorshiKoyal you've been repeatedly told that this room is not your personal grammar tutoring service. Search it, there's some decent explanations on the Internet.

1 hour later…

Tsundoku

15:25

The latest Dutch translation of Dante's Divine Comedy removed Muhammad from one of the circles of hell in order to avoid offending muslims. (Popes are still in hell, though). See Gestrichene Mohammed-Passage bei Dante - Ein Fall von falscher Fürsorge.

I have posted a link to a German article because searching for an English one about the topic led to really really conservative publications complaining about wokeness.

Original source in Dutch: Lies Lavrijsen maakte een nieuwe vertaling van het eerste deel van de Divina Comedia van Dante (last month; 17 minutes into the interview).

6 hours later…

Bookworm

21:52

Q: What happens to fudge after he resigns?

Cornelius Fudge was last seen after resigning at Albus Dumbledore's funeral. What happens to him after that?