ELL's Cabin

Damkerng T.

00:55

@snailboat They're found at last!

Damkerng T.

02:31

0

Q: Which is correct grammatically? I would/would have be sleeping right now if I knew/had known that the class is cancelled

Which statement is correct grammatically? I would be sleeping right now if I had known that the class will get cancelled. (due to rain) I would have been sleeping right now if I knew the class is going to get cancelled. (due to heavy rain/rains) I've highlighted several parts and I wou...

Why did the OP have to give us two alternatives?

(Neither is correct, imho.)

Because two of their students or student friends wrote them?

Jim Reynolds

We don't know how they came up with the possibilities.

So, they might be incorrect in thinking that one is correct?

They might not have paid much attention to their wording and went along thinking that they were in effect asking, Which, if either, of these . . . ?

Damkerng T.

nods -- That's possible too.

Good morning!

Jim Reynolds

อรุณสวัสดิ์!

Damkerng T.

Hah! That's nice to read!

Jim Reynolds

I'm fading in and out, like some phantasmagoric spectre.

Damkerng T.

02:46

Perhaps me too.

That's a great word, by the way. :-)

Jim Reynolds

The shadow zone is sometimes a comfortable place.

Ha. Yes, I uttered it without worrying about whether it made any sense or not.

That's also sometimes best.

Damkerng T.

lol

Jim Reynolds

Sometimes it's best to make unthinking assertions about what's best.

It comforts people.

:D

Damkerng T.

nods -- I've got a hammer. Everything is a nail. :-)

Hammer is da best. QED. :P

Hey, I guessed the root words of phantasmagoria right!

Thanks to two movies: The Phantom, and Agora. :D

Jim Reynolds

O.O

Agora . . . just trying to recall from agoraphobia, though, seems in my recollection to mean "the market/marketplace"??

ok. Gathering place, assembley.

Damkerng T.

02:54

nods -- I'd looked it up (because of the movie) and remember that it could mean a wide place, too.

Jim Reynolds

Damkerng T.

Some kind of orchid?

Jim Reynolds

I wanted an equivalent of your nods, without violating your TM.

Damkerng T.

LOL!

Jim Reynolds

So I searched Google images for "agree flower".

That is the first result.

Anonymous

03:26

@ultrasawblade - I wonder why would the addition of "I will be gone for two weeks on vacation" make "before I left" more acceptable. — CopperKettle 8 hours ago

Anonymous

That is really weird . . . what other sort of context are people imagining where it's less acceptable?

Anonymous

That seems like a pretty obvious context for the sentence with left to me.

Anonymous

I think that different speakers contextualize out-of-context utterances differently when they try to rate them as acceptable or unacceptable. Sometimes a sentence can seem unacceptable until someone thinks of when it would be used.

2

Anonymous

Certainly people do declare that grammatical sentences are unacceptable all the time on ELL, which I often think is because they can't contextualize them properly.

Damkerng T.

I just thought that this sentence isn't natural an hour ago: John and Joe are not both in the room.

I think I was thinking of a different context. :D

Anonymous

03:30

> Alice: John and Joe are both in the room.
> Bob: No, John and Joe are *not* both in the room. You're hallucinating again.

Damkerng T.

Yes!

I hadn't realized that until I saw the answer. I got a good laugh (laughing at myself). :-)

Anonymous

I don't remember or haven't seen the question

Damkerng T.

@snailboat My idea about before I left is that there must be something that justified the remote or unreal thinking, and will should be enough. (I misread 'for two weeks' as 'in two weeks' the first time CopperKettle mentioned a comment above that comment.)

@snailboat Ah, it's new! I should've posted its link.

1

Q: Difference in meaning between four arrangements of "not", "both", "either", and "neither"

I have four sentences: John and Joe are not both in the room. John and Joe are both not in the room. Either John or Joe is not in the room. Neither John nor Joe is in the room. I want to know the difference in meaning between these sentences. Specifically I want to know the di...

difference sentence-meaning negation

Anonymous

Meh, I dunno.

Damkerng T.

Oh!

Anonymous

03:35

I try not to answer these backshift questions. :-)

Damkerng T.

Eh? :D

Anonymous

It's still pretty surprising to me that people think left sounds wrong, though.

Jim Reynolds

They hurt her brain.

But she can't NOT think about them.

Anonymous

I say so many dumb things in chat :-)

Anonymous

It's funny looking back at old chat logs from years past.

Anonymous

03:37

@ultrasawblade - I wonder why would the addition of "I will be gone for two weeks on vacation" make "before I left" more acceptable. — CopperKettle 8 hours ago

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Well, if what you said were dumb...

Anonymous

@CopperKettle You mean: "I wonder why the addition of blah blah would make [ . . . ]"

Damkerng T.

Oh, no! I don't wanna think of what I've said here...

Anonymous

Although in speech, people do sometimes do say things like:

Anonymous

> I wonder . . .  Why would the addition of blah blah make [ . . . ]

Anonymous

03:40

Here I've written I wonder as though it's a separate sentence. The part beginning with why does have the form of a main clause interrogative (it's marked by subject-auxiliary inversion)

CopperKettle

@snailboat Thanks!

Anonymous

But this is mainly a spoken thing, and people write it all sorts of ways.

CopperKettle

Because "the addition ..." is a longish affair..

Anonymous

Sometimes they'll just put a comma or such there:

Anonymous

> I wonder, why would the addition of blah blah make [ . . . ]

Anonymous

03:41

But if you don't indicate the separation at all, people aren't likely to read it with this structure, and they'll just think you put the words in the wrong order.

Anonymous

(In writing, people mostly don't use that structure in the first place.)

CopperKettle

@snailboat So a comma somehow allows for splitting "would" and "make"? Live and learn!

I still wonder about that though. But I see no further explanation is coming, so I'll probably give the guerdon to Shoe..

see you later!

Damkerng T.

See you!

Anonymous

@CopperKettle It's a weird construction. It's somewhat like reported speech:

Anonymous

> I wonder, "Why would the addition of blah blah make [ . . . ]

Anonymous

03:46

It's sort of like I wonder is introducing a following sentence in some way, at any rate:

Anonymous

> I wonder―why would the addition of blah blah make [ . . . ]

Anonymous

But when the interrogative clause is really subordinate, it shouldn't be marked by subject-auxiliary inversion, because subject-auxiliary inversion in interrogative clauses is a main clause phenomenon:

Anonymous

> I wonder why the addition of blah blah would make [ . . . ]

Anonymous

This is the form you should probably consider the most basic / common form, but you should at least recognize the other form when it comes up in conversation.

Anonymous

If you do use the conversational form, I'd try to indicate the separation between the introductory phrase and the following question in some way. A dash, a comma, whatever . . .

Damkerng T.

03:54

@snailboat I think it's reported speech of sort.

Hey, I found this! A little thing in life that could make you smile.

eslnow.org/reported-speech-converter

Oh, it can convert How are you? to The teacher asked the students how they were. correctly!

Gotcha!

> Direct speech:
The Teacher said to The Students: 'Who is here?'
Reported speech:
The teacher asked the students who there was

:D

Jim Reynolds

My result: Damkerng T. demanded that snailboat convert some reported speech. !!

That was from a similar tool on a BESL site.

(Blunt English as a Second Language).

Damkerng T.

BESL -- LOL!

Jim Reynolds

Also "Brutish".

:D

Anonymous

04:20

@DamkerngT. I don't think it is, but I do think it's very similar.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Oops! :-)

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Hee

Anonymous

Also, phew! That was a close one. I almost clicked the green thingy!

Anonymous

06:12

> Help! The car won't stop! I'm going to crash!!

Anonymous

What do you suppose won't means here, exactly?

Anonymous

Do you think the car is being treated as an actor and it's refusing to stop?

Anonymous

Silly question, I know :-)

Jim Reynolds

06:27

I'd characterize it as blatant vehicular recalcitrance.

Anonymous

Oh no! Someone called my bluff!

Anonymous

1

A: "Misspelled" vs. "Mistyped"

Let's take a practical example - your screen name, 'Ahmad'. Say I go to enter it into a document, but at the end of my typing the result is 'Ahmed'. There are two possible causes: I know that the name is spelt A-h-m-a-d, but have made a mistake during the transfer from brain to screen (whether...

Anonymous

Now it's an answer, but I'm not actually going to downvote it.

Jim Reynolds

It's hard to misspell a letter.

Well, maybe not if it's a long letter. O.O

Anonymous

06:45

@JimReynolds Do you consider Chinese characters to be letters? :-)

Anonymous

When I was younger, I said 'Japanese letter' and 'Chinese letter'. But at some point I learned that 'character' was the generally accepted word, and now those sound wrong to me.

Jim Reynolds

Intuitively, I'd guess not.

Anonymous

So you think 'letter' is the wrong term, just based on your intuition.

Anonymous

(I'm not trying to hold you to that judgment, I'm just curious :-)

Jim Reynolds

Right.

Anonymous

06:46

What do you think a letter is, anyway?

Anonymous

We've got Greek letters and Cyrillic letters and Latin letters.

Jim Reynolds

Yes. I've seldom if ever thought beyond a b c . z.

Anonymous

So if I said it's easy to misspell 鬱, you'd point and say "Ha! That's no letter!"

Anonymous

Alternatively, you could argue with the 'spell' part :-)

Jim Reynolds

I wouldn't think of writing a character as spelling.

Out of a lack of perspective, mind you.

Anonymous

06:48

That makes sense.

Anonymous

Sometimes it seems to me it's kind of similar.

Jim Reynolds

Sure.

Anonymous

Native speakers of English who become literate have to memorize a bunch of spellings somehow.

Jim Reynolds

If most linguists (or Chinese) considered it spelling, I'd just be educated, not surprised.

Anonymous

Memorizing 鬱 is comparable in difficulty to memorizing onomatopoeia

Anonymous

06:49

@JimReynolds Oh, they don't.

Jim Reynolds

Depressed / down!

Anonymous

Yeah!

Jim Reynolds

Wow. By the time one got through writing it, one's bad mood would have passed.

Anonymous

It's funny. That was my study buddy's mnemonic, sorta. He gave it the English name 'gloom', and when he saw it

Anonymous

He said "This character has twenty-nine strokes. THAT MAKES ME GLOOMY."

Anonymous

06:53

A lot of people actually learn to write that one because it's, well, famously hard. And it turns out it's not really hard, it's just intimidating :-)

Anonymous

In Simplified Chinese, they write 郁 instead, which is a lot less writing.

Jim Reynolds

It shows the effect that interest level or motivation can have on learning.

We will sometimes invest a lot in learning something just because it's hard.

jimsug

@snailboat I wouldn't call Chinese ideograms 'letters'.

Anonymous

@jimsug I wouldn't call them ideograms, either.

Anonymous

But yeah, I agree with you.

jimsug

06:56

Ah.

I know it was a -gram

logogram

Anonymous

Some of them are ideographic, mind you.

jimsug

Logogram

A logogram, or logograph, is a grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme (the smallest meaningful unit of language). This stands in contrast to phonograms, which represent phonemes (speech sounds) or combinations of phonemes, and determinatives, which mark semantic categories. Logograms are commonly known also as "ideograms". Strictly speaking, however, ideograms represent ideas directly rather than words and morphemes, and none of the logographic systems described here is truly ideographic. A feature of logograms is that a single logogram may be used by a plurality of languages to represent...

> Logograms are commonly known also as "ideograms".

Anonymous

But the vast majority are not ideographic.

jimsug

Indeed.

Anonymous

Less than 1% of the characters in use.

Anonymous

06:58

Most Chinese characters are semantic-phonetic compounds.

Jim Reynolds

logogram coo.

er, too coo for schoo.

jimsug

phonograms?

Damkerng T.

If Chinese writing system is logography, and Thai's is abugida, what's English?

Anonymous

Where the phonetic portion represents the sound of a word or morpheme (generally one syllable), and the semantic portion disambiguates it from the homophones pronounced roughly the same way.

jimsug

@DamkerngT. phonograms

Anonymous

06:58

English uses the Latin alphabet.

jimsug

Not really, but still. Combinations of English letters are phonographic.

Anonymous

We're one of those lucky languages with a semi-etymological spelling principle :-)

Damkerng T.

Phonograms make me think of IPA!

Anonymous

Like Japanese until the 1940s.

Jim Reynolds

I guess that "mountain" in Chinese is an ideogram?

Anonymous

07:00

@JimReynolds 山 is a pictograph.

Anonymous

It was originally a picture of some mountains:

Anonymous

Jim Reynolds

!

Anonymous

My favorite example of a pictograph is 馬 (Simplified: 马), which is a picture of a horse:

jimsug

looks like a snail.

Anonymous

07:01

Anonymous

That's what 馬 looked like thousands of years ago :-)

Anonymous

蝸 'snail' is a semantic-phonetic character, like the sort I described earlier.

Anonymous

It's 虫 (semantic: "bug" / small or slithery thing that crawls on the ground) + 咼 (phonetic).

Jim Reynolds

Now it looks like this:

馬 is the current Taiwanese president's name.

Anonymous

But the full word 'snail' is written with that character, plus the character for 'cow': 蝸牛

Jim Reynolds

07:04

There is a similarity.

Because they hitch rides on cows?

Anonymous

Because they have two big horns and spend most of their time lazily grazing . . . or so I was told when I asked a professor of Chinese :-)

Damkerng T.

@snailboat They are miniaturized cows!

(Cows are cute, too.)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Hehe!

Anonymous

By the way, 蝸牛 is listed in dictionaries as wōniú . . . but in Taiwan it's guāniú, I guess

Anonymous

(I'm not very good at Mandarin)

Anonymous

07:09

@DamkerngT. This is true! I used to have a friend who was totally obsessed with cows.

Damkerng T.

I know it's true! :D

I'm not sure which one is cuter between a cow and a water buffalo.

Jim Reynolds

Have you seen this heartbreaking and joyous video about cows: youtube.com/watch?v=kUZ1YLhIAg8

Damkerng T.

Oh, yes! I've saved 20% of a cow.

Anonymous

I can't watch videos about cows.

Anonymous

I'll feel sad and go back to being a vegetarian.

Jim Reynolds

07:13

How, Dam?

Damkerng T.

(There is something similar to that "save the cows" program over here.)

Jim Reynolds

It's a real struggle for me, too, snailboat.

Damkerng T.

I donated 1/5 of the cost that will save a cow. :-)

Jim Reynolds

:-)

<3

And here is @inɒ, who is alleged to torture animals for fun.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

WHO DARES SUMMON ME?

Anonymous

07:15

I upset a spider earlier.

Anonymous

It was on the bottom of my hair brush, which I picked up.

Jim Reynolds

You are like a reverse Miss Muffet?

Anonymous

It curled into a ball and shook a little, and now it's playing dead.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Oh, they picked the wrong place!

Anonymous

It hasn't moved yet.

Anonymous

07:16

I'm not sure if I should move it somewhere safer or if that would just upset it.

Jim Reynolds

I hope he or she makes it's way peacefully back into his or her nest in your hair. O.O

Oops. I'm good at producing incorrect it's's and let's's.

Anonymous

@JimReynolds One of these days, Jim, pow! Straight to the moon!

Jim Reynolds

:-)

Damkerng T.

"Earth to Hermes. Earth to Hermes, please pick Jim up on your way back." "Roger!"

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. Ever watched Alien?

Damkerng T.

07:22

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M How in the world would I miss that!?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I'm pretty sure astronauts won't allow @Jim in their spaceship thingy after that incident.

Damkerng T.

Oh! True!

Anonymous

Wow, I didn't realize Alien was older than me.

Damkerng T.

"Earth to Hermes. Stay on your course. Never mind the previous request."

Anonymous

I've never actually seen it, but I'm familiar with it.

Jim Reynolds

07:23

I'll have you know that my parents told me I was perfectly normal.

Sixteen beings can't be wrong, can they?

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Ah, really!?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Well, there's lots of movies I've never seen.

Jim Reynolds

It can be very good to know what you don't want to see/experience.

Anonymous

When I was younger I had trouble watching an entire movie.

Jim Reynolds

I used to think that I would want to see pretty much anything

Anonymous

07:24

Even back before I decided TV (and by extension film) was evil, I had trouble watching movies. I always fell asleep during them, or if I didn't, I couldn't stay focused on the movie longer than 20-30 minutes.

Anonymous

Then in 1999, I suddenly decided movies were really cool, and I started going to the theater on a regular basis.

Jim Reynolds

Hmm . . . Do you know why you made that decision?

Anonymous

Well, friends dragged me to movies.

Anonymous

Plus, it was fun seeing movies in Japanese, French, and German for the first time.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@snailboat Heh, you should've sent an image of yourself sleeping in front of the TV to the movie producer who bragged about their movie's success.

Anonymous

07:28

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M That's right, you don't know what it was like in the 90s . . .  :-)

Jim Reynolds

So you just haven't gotten around to seeing Aliens? Or you've avoided it deliberately.

Anonymous

Time shock.

Anonymous

Back then, we would have waited to get the photo developed, unless it was a polaroid, and then we would have written a letter and sent it in the mail! Uphill, both ways.

Jim Reynolds

Next time, wake up and take pictures of yourself sleeping.

Anonymous

We didn't have those fancy "images" or "sending".

Jim Reynolds

07:29

That's why Snow White uttered that famous line at the drugstore photo counter.

Anonymous

@JimReynolds What line was that . . . ?

Jim Reynolds

Someday my prints will come.

Damkerng T.

@JimReynolds Huh? (curious)

LOL

Anonymous

@JimReynolds You jerk. :-)

Jim Reynolds

hehe

Some day or someday or either?

O.O

Anonymous

07:30

Puns are a form of assault. Which is especially cruel when you're dealing with a snail.

Damkerng T.

I guess it's either.

Jim Reynolds

LOL!!

Anonymous

@JimReynolds There are simply too many movies to naturally see all the ones people expect me to see.

Jim Reynolds

That took a minute.

Anonymous

It's not like I go watching movies every day, or week.

Anonymous

07:31

I used to, but it didn't last all that long.

Anonymous

Most of 1999.

Anonymous

In the mid-2000s, I bought a DVD player and started collecting DVDs.

Anonymous

So I caught up on some movies.

Anonymous

That's also when I started watching TV! Like, not televised, but watching episodes on DVD.

Anonymous

So it turns out my "anti-TV" thing was just a phase.

Anonymous

07:33

Sometimes when my housemate is flipping through channels on our living room TV, she amazes me with her encyclopedic knowledge of what actors are in what.

Anonymous

I have no idea how people keep track of so many actors in so much stuff.

Anonymous

Memorizing an anatomy & physiology text seems like less work.

Anonymous

Hey, that was multiple wh in situ! Did you notice?

Anonymous

> knowledge of [what actors are in what]

Damkerng T.

Oh, yes! (I didn't. :P)

Anonymous

07:35

Maybe I should have said "multiple wh"

Anonymous

Only one wh-phrase can be fronted at most

Anonymous

So if you have multiple wh, at least one wh-phrase is always in situ

Anonymous

Although in Bulgarian, multiple wh-phrases can be fronted! :-)

Anonymous

Uh oh, I did that thing where I keep talking and the chat screen is almost entirely me . . .

Damkerng T.

Oh! I guess they must have some problems learning English. :P

Anonymous

07:37

@DamkerngT. Haha!

Anonymous

Well, leaving things in situ is usually pretty easy to learn.

Anonymous

We have wh-fronting in English, but there isn't any in Japanese.

Anonymous

I never got confused by not having to do a thingy.

Anonymous

I think it's harder when you have to learn to do a thingy.

Anonymous

Maybe fronting only one constituent counts as a thingy.

Anonymous

07:38

So maybe you're right.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Wow.

I don't even wanna read the transcript.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I remember that Swan said something along that lines.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

You sure aren't on your mobile @snail.

Damkerng T.

Another potentially difficult thing is to learn to do the same thing but differently.

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I type fast, and sometimes I um, talk too much.

Anonymous

07:39

I'm sick, and my mind is racing a little bit.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Oh, yes!

Damkerng T.

Oh, your stomach is still acting up?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

It needs a kick.

Damkerng T.

I can't remember whether it was yesterday or two days ago that you mentioned that to MAR.

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Worst. Doctor. Ever.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

07:41

Thanks.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I'm not sure, but I'd guess around 26 hours.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I'm planning to be a pharmacist.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat That's what you call "not sure"?

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M So when people come to you for help, you can say "Well, I've got all these pills, but what you really need is a kick!"

Anonymous

And then you kick them.

Damkerng T.

07:41

:D

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Don't they call pharmacists chemists in the UK?

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Oh, that's new for me!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Well, that's when I remember my stomach hating me :-)

Anonymous

But I'm not sure when I said so.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Check out the glosses in this paper about Bulgarian: mila.studiok-rfc.com/papers/TassevaFDSL.pdf

Anonymous

07:43

Doesn't Bulgarian sound like a cool language?

Damkerng T.

It does! Even though I have no idea about how it sounds like!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@snailboat I dunno. Ask @Harry.

Anonymous

'You wonder whether who went there?' ← 'wonder.you (reflexive) whether who where _ is gone?'

Damkerng T.

^not sure if 'how' or 'what' is better up there.

Anonymous

What

Anonymous

07:44

You can say:

Anonymous

> I have no idea how it sounds.
> I have no idea what it sounds like.

Anonymous

But:

Anonymous

> I have no idea how it sounds like.　←　I think this is a little weird.

Damkerng T.

nods -- I felt weird after I sent it.

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Well, they do.

Damkerng T.

07:45

> Koj kakvo na kogo.

Anonymous

It seems like something you should know.

Anonymous

Pharmacist

Pharmacists, also known as chemists (Commonwealth English) or druggists (North American and, archaically, Commonwealth English), are healthcare professionals who practice in pharmacy, the field of health sciences focusing on safe and effective medication use. A pharmacist is a member of the health care team directly involved with patient care. Pharmacists undergo university-level education to understand the biochemical mechanisms and actions of drugs, drug uses, therapeutic roles, side effects, potential drug interactions, and monitoring parameters. This is mated to anatomy, physiology, and...

Damkerng T.

A-ha! Now I have some ideas what it sounds like!

"Who told what to whom?"

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Yay! I can be a pharmacist and a chemist at the same time

Anonymous

Learn Bulgarian - Bulgarian in Three Minutes - Bulgarian Manners

►

Damkerng T.

07:47

I can learn it in 3 minutes!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

OMG I just learnt it.

Jim Reynolds

I learned vulgar manners.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Jim quick. Insult me in Bulgarian.

I wanna know what it feels like.

Damkerng T.

I like the way "nyama" sounds!

Anonymous

I like the way all the words sound :-) My favorite is the /r/!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

07:51

Ya know, some accents of Turkish make it hard for speakers to pronounce /r/.

Anonymous

To pronounce what language's /r/?

Damkerng T.

Okay. I finished the clip. I can remember only one word, "Mersi". :P

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I have a bit of that accent, so I always get a headache when I concentrate on pronouncing /r/.

@snailboat All languages'.

Anonymous

Do you mean it's hard to pronounce /r/ in their own language?

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Well, /r/ can represent a lot of different sounds, depending on the language.

Anonymous

07:53

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M That's interesting!

Anonymous

American speakers say /r/ a lot of different ways.

Anonymous

But most of them sound roughly the same.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@snailboat We kinda have a problem with the basic act of pronouncing its sound.

Damkerng T.

(BTW, I'm still not sure how exactly she pronounced "Mnogo".)

Anonymous

So most of us aren't aware that we articulate them differently.

Damkerng T.

07:54

Ahh... I think I figured it out.

Jim Reynolds

If you were a weather reporter in the southwest US, MAR, you might have to say "lower Colorado river area."

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Like positioning the tongue like that, ya know.

Damkerng T.

Is it "coloRAdo"?

Anonymous

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I guess so.

Anonymous

07:55

This image is from Acoustic Strategies for Production of American English "retroflex" /r/ (Zhang et al., 2003)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I have at least heard it like that once @Dam king.

Damkerng T.

Or "COlorado"?

(I think I haven't heard this word often enough.)

Jim Reynolds

Hm, call-uh-RAH-dough.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Hmm, right as always.

Damkerng T.

@JimReynolds nods -- Thanks!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

07:57

@snailboat The guyses haz cancer for sure.

Jim Reynolds

The strategy is to cut your head in half lengthwise?

Damkerng T.

LOL

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Yeah.

Anonymous

The image is titled "American English speakers producing /r/."

Anonymous

It never ceases to amaze me how large the nasal cavity is.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

07:58

Or rather, "Dead American English speakers producing /r/."

Hey are they zombies? Excited

Anonymous

We're all zombies. Humans died out a while ago. You forgot because you're a zombie and your brain doesn't work as well as it used to.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Though any sufficiently fat human is indistinguishable from zombie.

Is it just me or do you guys also shiver when you use benefiting?

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Well, it's progressive. :P

Damkerng T.

15:35

0

Q: Was/Were/Had Been + Adjective

a)What exact meaning in context of below sentence by using "Had been exactly the same"? Co-incidentally, the gap between the two amounts had been exactly the same that had been found in Colah's cupboard. b)If I use "was exactly the same" does it change the meaning of context? Co-inciden...

meaning-in-context tense

ORIGINAL: Co-incidentally, the gap between the two amounts had been exactly the same that had been found in Colah's cupboard.

POSSIBLE FIX?: Coincidentally, the gap between the two amounts was exactly the same as the one that had been found in Colah's cupboard.

Yummy Sushi

16:07

Yahoo! I gained the access to this chatroom since my reputation on StackExchange network is above 15!

Um... Perhaps I totally ignore the time difference between Asian and the United State...

Damkerng T.

@YummySushi :-)

@YummySushi Congrats!

Yummy Sushi

Damkerng, Thanks! xD

Damkerng T.

Also, welcome to the room, officially. :D

Yummy Sushi

I'm really glad, but it seems that the outside of my window is in ghostly dark... I have to go to bed now...

Damkerng T.

Aww... Good night! Sleep tight and don't let anything bite!

1

A: A proposal for a meta post that shows our users how to salvage/improve questions

Original: i have a question about english grammar, which had confused me for a long time,pls!! help me!! in the following two sentences,why they use"thinking" behind the comma?i mean is something like a word ommited after the comma? 1.I WAITED FOR TW...

applauds

Yummy Sushi

16:17

Especially mosquitoes :d They always seem to be ready for biting me... But I think I can make a strong repel since my mosquito-repellent spray is all ready now! Thank you again xD

Damkerng T.

Oh, you keep a mosquito-repellent spray can handy. There must be a lot of mosquitoes over here! :P

But I don't think that's weird or anything, since I've got a lot of bees myself!

Stack Exchange

0

Q: Answering: correctness vs. practicality

I am a native AmE speaker, and have been wondering if my answers are on-topic here. This thread brought up a good point, but didn't quite address my question. I am wondering if it is appropriate to answer from experience rather than grammatical knowledge. I have been, and my answers are gettin...

discussion answers

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

17:10

Thumbs up In fact, I think I should blame 1) the internet & 2) the fact that most newcomers find here a forum where the quality doesn't matter. — inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M 31 secs ago

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

17:22

Correctness vs. practicality I don't see how they're conflicting each other. I reckon you'd be fine as long as your answers are correct. And most of the times, the intuition of a native speaker is appreciated in "meaning and company" tags. — inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M 15 secs ago

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