Hi folks :)

Hi! o/

o/

\o

\o/

@snailboat Yes, and maybe the different answers are all viable too, so the votes are split between people's different favourites ...

@DamkerngT. Couldn't find the backslash at first!

:D

@snailboat Yes, it's weird. Very weird, and that's why I always feel uncomfortable when I say it :( which is all the time!

@snailboat What do you say?

By the way, I read the same Thai drama in another dialect, Southern Thai, just for fun! dropbox.com/s/p1dup5ucuz3y6pd/…. I haven't really used this dialect since 6 yo, so it's not really perfect (but sounds close enough to my sub-dialect). I mispronounced a few words (and used Northeastern instead of Southern ones).

@snailboat Oh, that's strange for me too ...

Hah!

We were waving with some yens!

What could we make a yen stand in for?

Hmm... some kind of drink? :P

Oh, we were magicians!

@snailboat That's why it's fun to share this languagey stuff. I think that's a really good question. I've never felt comfortable responding!

@snailboat I always thought it looked like a TV antenna. Showing my age, I guess.

@snailboat I feel a little better, then.

Wait, I still have a couple of TV antennas! Showing how I live. :P

Did he end up an EE?

Oh! That's quite a lot!

I was born last year and I don't know what a CD looks like 'cuz I only have music on my computer and my phone.

@snailboat My favorite programmer joke: How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb?

Westpondian again. What's EE / CS /UIUC?

Misfire!

@snailboat It's also THE school for folklorists. My sister and her husband were there.

@StoneyB Hmm... what's the answer?

@DamkerngT. Sorry, that's a hardware problem.

@snailboat Ok, so got EE too, what's CS?

@StoneyB Haha!

BTW, I used to be a human antenna. Our antenna didn't work often enough unless there was someone holding/touching it at the right angle. Usually, I was the lucky one.

@StoneyB I was looking at my atlas upside down ...

I never minded the concept of TV. It was the execution that got to me.

I can imagine that!

That's what grad school is for.

@snailboat Ah, erm, so what's a Computer? [No, I do know what one of those is ..., honest]

@Araucaria Not like an EE does.

@StoneyB EE's don't atlas upside down?

In three dimensions. Ask @snailboat's brother about microprocessor design.

Ah, is he one of those guys who put Easter's Eggs on CPU printed circuits? :-)

@Araucaria It's AEs who deal with atlases.

@StoneyB Oh cripes, who are they?

@Araucaria Aeronautical Engineers.

@snailboat Fersher. Otherwise they'd all be dead.

@StoneyB Oh, of course ... (do we have a stack for abbreviations?)

Like Shakespeare, I have little Latin and lesse Greeke.

We have quite a bunch of this kind of question lately. Not only from a single OP. -- Hmm... or are they only from this OP?

Is an exam somewhere coming up soon?

What's that bean-curd exam?

I always want to call it TOFU.

I don't know. LOL

I think I heard about a Bank exam last month.

@StoneyB Which one? TOEIC or IELTS?

@Araucaria TOEFL!

@StoneyB Is that an exam? (you could read that with the same intonation as "you eat ants!?")

"Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL, /ˈtoʊfəl/, toh-fəl) is a standardized test of English language ability for non-native speakers wishing to enroll in American universities. The test is accepted by many English-speaking academic and professional institutions. TOEFL is one of the two major English-language tests in the world, the other being the IELTS."

@StoneyB Oops, misread that! Yes, I know, I've taught it for a few years, urgh

It's one of the shells in the ETS arsenal.

I think the bank exam last month was IBPS.

@StoneyB But there's no grammar test in either TOEFL or IELTS ...

... so that kind of questions not going to be coming from there ...

It's all skills based, so there's a Listening, Reading, Speaking and Writing in both of those, but no Grammar ...

@Araucaria Wikipedia says you're right, so you must be. . . . The current rash of questions seem to involve a test of the victim's familiarity with English cliches.

@StoneyB Oh no, I must be wrong then!

@StoneyB but actually, TOEIC, which would be kind of no 3, the biggest one in East Asian countries perhaps, is exactly like that (maybe hence my temporary brain warp). So they might be TEOIC induced ...

TOEIC is common enough over here in the business circle.

@DamkerngT. I don't like TOEIC

(or TOEFL)

(or IELTS)

I'm sure you have good reasons-- oh, probably all of them!

but I dislike them in that order ...

nods

I was surprised when I heard that the writing task 1 of IELTS is writing a letter to a friend!

@DamkerngT. TOEIC's problematic because it's not really skills based. So you can do really well, but not be able to communicate ...

I mean, is that even realistic nowadays?

@DamkerngT. Nope :(

@DamkerngT. That's the first assignment in my wife's Freshman Comp class, too.

Hehe!

@DamkerngT. Oh, that depends on which IELTS you're doing!

Ah, I'm not sure in which IELTS I've heard about the test.

@DamkerngT. There's two ...

I have to run nuke frozen burritos for my son's dinner. 'night all!

There's Academic and General ...

Good night!

That one is General IELTS, then?

@StoneyB Ciao!

@DamkerngT. Yes, it's more for visa's and work and that kind of thing. So there's more informal / less formal/ less academic and more social English involved ...

nods -- Still, writing a letter to a friend sounds weird these days. I think writing an email is more likely. And texting them is likeliest!

@DamkerngT. The part 1 of the IELTS academic writing exam is explaining /summarising the main points of a graph or diagram to a professor who works in a different field kind of thing. It's surprisingly hard!

Oh, no, wait. I think Facetiming them is probably the likeliest!

@DamkerngT. Actually. I think you're source is a bit dated there. It is an email now, I believe ...

@Araucaria Ah, I remember that one!

@Araucaria Ahh

@DamkerngT. Did you ever try one?

No, never tried one myself.

IELTS, TOEFL, TOEIC, I mean?

None of the above. :D

@DamkerngT. Good! Slow torture!

:D

I see! Thanks!