Language Overflow

Q: western of -- is that an adverb?

8:24 AM

0

Q: he charged the gunman

Example: Army vet Chris Mintz charged the gunman after pulling alarms and telling students to run. What does it exactly mean when you are charging someone as used in the example sentence above? Typically when you charge someone, it means that you are demanding that they pay you money for th...

meaning

Hmm... charge without a preposition in that meaning is quite hard to find!

Perhaps finding some shoulder charges is easier.

Charge is an interesting word...

It seems like it can be used in this sense with or without a preposition, with the same (or a similar) meaning.

0

Source: Putin Bombs Assad’s Enemies, Not ISIS, and Orders U.S. Out Example: Russia also conducted "multiple strikes" western of the regime-controlled Damascus-Aleppo corridor, a senior defense official told The Daily Beast. It sounds like western of is used here as an adverb to mean that t...

grammar

> Russia also conducted "multiple strikes" western of the regime-controlled Damascus-Aleppo corridor, a senior defense official told The Daily Beast.

Interesting!

This is clearly a mistake -- a typo or an incomplete edit. It should be west. — StoneyB 2 days ago

Anonymous

I agree, it was a typo or braino of some sort.

8:39 AM

Good late evening!

Anonymous

Morning! :-)

Anonymous

It's as you say—evening and late both! But it's morning, too, I suppose.

@snailboat I thought so, too!

Anonymous

I'm tired, but I have a headache and won't be going to sleep just yet.

Anonymous

My snails seem happy, though :-)

8:54 AM

@snailboat Are snails nocturnal?

Maybe they just like it when it's dark. :D

Anonymous

This species is essentially nocturnal, but their sleep cycle varies.

Anonymous

They do prefer the dark, or at the very least hide from direct sunlight if they can.

Anonymous

Earlier I watched them for a while. Luna was trying her best to eat, but Ponyo was trying her best to get Luna's attention :-) It was kind of funny watching them.

@snailboat That's kinda cute!

Ponyo used her eye stalks to get Luna's attention perhaps?

Anonymous

They're pretty active lately! I think they're excited about El Niño.

Anonymous

9:01 AM

Oh, yes, they bump their eye stalks together a lot.

Makes me think of our high fives.

:D

Anonymous

There's so much vocabulary associTed with high fives.

Anonymous

Oops, my 'a' became shift!

Anonymous

Like, on the down low! if you want a high five, except low :-)

@snailboat Happens to me quite a lot!

Q: What is member of the public?

9:59 AM

> It was returned to the open market when ownership expired, and bought by a member of the public.

0

I read an article in which I found the following line: It was returned to the open market when ownership expired, and bought by a member of the public. To my mind, they want to convey that some person has bought it. But then, in the following sentence, 'they contacted the firm' is written, ...

meaning-in-context

Journalism?

Anonymous

They = that member of the public… Hmm, it wouldn't make much sense if that member of the public worked for the firm in question, would it?

nods -- I think they just meant "someone".

But they probably felt that "someone" is too plain.

I don't know whether that someone is a common man either!

(I mean, he or she could be very uncommon. :P)

Yay! J.R. came to the rescue!

10:37 AM

I've scanned about halfway through PEU for every item with "passive".

And I just realized how overwhelming this is!

@DamkerngT. No, given the rest of the context, CopperKettle is definitely right. — Dan Bron 2 mins ago

I don't mind being wrong, but wouldn't that mean that it's a typo in the original?!

Let's check it in Google Books! (if it's possible)

books.google.com/books?id=58ITBwAAQBAJ&pg=PT710

Oh, I see!

It's not a typo!

And all of us (CopperKettle, Dan Bron, and I) were wrong!

Wait, perhaps it's not what I think.

Q: Some complex passive voice sentences

11:44 AM

in ELL's Cabin, 45 mins ago, by Araucaria

@jimsug OK, so why ain't it (and I know the problem with the meaning that results, but what is it about he grammar) It used to be eaten on Saturdays and It intended to be eaten on Saturdays

2

I'm playing with advanced passive voice. Can you check correctness of these sentences and say what is wrong? ACTIVE: He has been putting it up the whole life. PASSIVE: It has been being put up the whole life. ACTIVE: We used to say it in similar situations. PASSIVE: It was used...

passive-voice

in ELL's Cabin, 45 mins ago, by Araucaria

@jimsug Or maybe whyzitnot It was used to be eaten on Saturdays which is the mistake the OP made ...?

It's obvious why It was used to be eaten on Saturdays is not correct.

But why is it not Eating it on Saturdays was used to?

(I suppose that the canon form is We used to eat it on Saturdays.)

That's why the passive transformation exercises may not be very useful.

12:40 PM

One problem with the passive canonical post is that the passive touches almost everything that's related to sentence constructions.

So perhaps, we could assume something (the reader's basic knowledge), and limit our canonical post somewhat.

And theories are less important than examples, imho.

@DamkerngT. I've learned 80% of my current TeX knowledge witnessing examples.

nods

@Araucaria lists 31 cases. If we give, say 3 examples of transformations for each case, we would still have less than 100 examples. That means it's pretty much doable.

The problem is to come up with good canonical examples to point out the nuances.

And organize them in an easy to digest manner.

@DamkerngT. The problem is how "real-life", easy or digestible examples should be.

12:56 PM

Another direction I could do (if I have time) is to categorize the passive questions on ELL.

Q: Is Islam the greatest murder machine in history?

2

After a deep analysis "American Thinker" makes the following claim: (http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/05/the_greatest_murder_machine_in_history.html): Though the numbers are not clear, what is obvious is that Islam is the greatest murder machine in history bar none, possibly exce...

islam

Gee . . .

@Dam you should run or I'll murder you, apparently.

I think @Araucaria's answer (to the meta post) has a good point, but if I'm not mistaken, 80% of the passive questions are more or less common cases.

I think that question is not constructive.

Trolling, perhaps?

Dunno, don't really care. But I find these attributions very offensive.

I can feel that. Sorry that you had to read that kind of thing on SE.

In reality, less than 0.00001% of so-called Muslims are terrorists, and we continually shout "They're not Muslims by our standards".

Whatever.

1:00 PM

@DamkerngT. I haven't got round to writing about the first page yet, but each question on the first page is entirely different. That raising verb question was on the first page, for example ...

nods -- I'll try to review some of them tonight.

I think the raising of verbs is actually relatively easy in classrooms.

The learner needs to know which verb they need to passivize.

1 hour ago, by Damkerng T.

But why is it not Eating it on Saturdays was used to?

Q: Can you sharpen scissors by cutting Aluminum foil?

35

I needed to sharpen a pair of scissors, so I did a quick Google search to learn the technique. I was very surprised to find a number of sites suggesting that scissors can be sharpened by cutting a piece of aluminum foil. It doesn't make any sense to me, and I didn't bother to try it. But there...

consumer-products

This is more difficult to explain.

Interesting question!

Aye!

Q: Did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle call J.B. Rhine a "monumental ass" in print?

1:07 PM

Huh LOL:

20

I need help confirming or debunking what may be an urban legend in the paranormal literature regarding the rocky public relationship between spiritualism believer (and famous author) Arthur Conan Doyle and American parapsychologist J.B. Rhine. The story starts when Rhine attended a seance by the ...

history literature

@DamkerngT. So you reckon the The food was intended to be eaten indoors and The food was used to be eaten indoors, and The food intended to be eaten indoors and The food used to be eaten indoors are easy to teach?

IMHO, yes. But it's easy for teachers to do it wrong.

@DamkerngT. Hmm, yes, that's possible. Can you stick that in a CP?

CP?

@DamkerngT. Canonical Post!

1:09 PM

Oh, I see. Perhaps.

I'm trying to gather information from two viewpoints.

(I mentioned that a little in another room.)

@DamkerngT. Might be worth looking at my more recent discussion with FF under his post. There's lots of opportunity for accidental bad teaching when it comes to the passive! We don't want any of it appearing in a CP!

nods -- It's a bit sad that some exercises seem to expect bad answers as the answers!

I mean when they teach students to passivize sentences mechanically.

@Araucaria That's the very thing that I'm wondering.

@DamkerngT. Yes, very true. Problem is that it's actually quite hard to write good excercises! So there's lots of bad stuff around ...

Should we or should we not include those mechanical passivize transformation rules in our CP?

I mean, on one hand it could be misleading, but on the other hand, the rules are precisely what they need in their classes.

(Hence, my idea of the two POVs.)

(One is the passive in real English, and the other is the passive in exam English in NNS countries.)

1:28 PM

@DamkerngT. Well, I suppose it'll have to do both. Maybe the straight transformation stuff could come at the end, like an appendix kind of thing?

@Araucaria That would be perfect!

@Araucaria Because I'm trying to do both, I can progress only slowly. If you take the real English side, I will turn my focus onto the strange patterns in NNS exams. And may have to ask for your opinions on the patterns. (Some of them are just weird, imo.)

@DamkerngT. One thing you'll need to cover is passives that are used with extrapositions (probably what Swann was getting at in PEU when he said that we "can't" use clauses as Subjects of passive sentences.

nods -- I think we have some of those in NNS books.

@DamkerngT. Thanks for the invitation, but I'm too busy to write a good CP on the passive. And I'm not sure I'd want to. It's too big a meal (like having too much food on your plate).

@DamkerngT. Do we get any extra privileges on here when we hit 10K, btw?

I think so!

In any case, aim for 25k, because the bar will be raised soon.

(That's part of the reason why I "move". :-)

(Still not very aggressively, though.)

jimsug

1:38 PM

@Araucaria The highest beta privilege is at 5k

Q: How to distinguish "two previous" from"previous two"?

@Araucaria I think at the moment, 10k will allow you to access the mod tools on ELL.

(I'm on my iPad, so I'm a bit slow to check anything.)

Oh, right! The highest bar is only 5k (for now).

0

a. His two previous books b. His previous two books ............. His 2 latest previous books His 2 previous latest books His previous latest 2 books His latest previous 2 books His previous 2 latest books His latest 2 previous books I am wondering what is the difference could be between th...

meaning

The main question itself is quite straightforward.

But!

> His 2 latest previous books
His 2 previous latest books
His previous latest 2 books
His latest previous 2 books
His previous 2 latest books
His latest 2 previous books

What are these?

"His 2 previous latest books" -- what's that supposed to mean?

"His previous 2 latest books"?

A: reference, speech and event time

2:51 PM

@snailboat I'm sorry...

0

This is probably best explained with a picture! (I apologize for the quality of my illustration. :-) The main point of the picture (and of course, this answer) is to illustrate that we have more than one alternative to deliver our thoughts. In the picture the Event "I'm trying snails!" happen...

books.google.com/ngrams/… — TRomano Jun 5 at 10:50

That's an interesting n-gram results!

You and he were wins He and you were hands down.

3:36 PM

Gentlemen, thanks for your response. I also marked the answer as 'is', but this is the sentence in one of the grammar books I am following for my competitive exam and as per its answer, it says use 'the before flow'. — Seema Bhukar 3 hours ago

I don't know how many times I've seen that the answers on different websites do not agree.

Particularly on this kind of test.

@SeemaBhukar Don’t use the “before” anything, and stay away from as per, too. — tchrist 16 secs ago

Hello, @tchrist!

Hi.

It's rather unfortunate that he wrote 'the before flow' instead of: 'the' before 'flow'.

Lack of use–mention distinction leads to many a pessimal parse.

3:43 PM

Indeed!

4:01 PM

ell.stackexchange.com/site-analytics

The traffic is obviously higher.

But the votes and the Qs and As are about the same.

right/right hand, hole/drain stuff/thing razor/blade make/turn cap/plug secure/safe. Lot's of grammar mistakes too. — Araucaria 42 mins ago

Wow! That's a lot more strict than mine! (But I think it's like that in the exam.)

Hello, @StoneyB!

@DamkerngT. Hi! anything interesting here I should read?

We had a rather long discussion on the passive a few hours ago, but in the main room.

I posted some afterthoughts in here, too, but mostly only mine and with some feedback from Araucaria.

Hello, @GAMPUB!

GAM PUB

Hi, this is my first visit in the chat rooms, I was headed to the French Language Beta discussions...

Oh, okay! See you around!

I'll poke around ... I'd like to see a passive CP of the sort Araucaria describes. But I doubt it's going to solve the problem which I think prompted Wendi's post, which is the large number of really bad problems which teachers are putting to our visitors -- 'passivize' sentence X, with a main clause which can't be passivized.

4:13 PM

@StoneyB I planned to add that part based on my collection of these strange exercises. :D

3 hours ago, by Damkerng T.

(One is the passive in real English, and the other is the passive in exam English in NNS countries.)

Perhaps I should focus on the latter part (the passive in exam English in NNS countries), and let others focus on the first part (the passive in real English).

There is actually a middle ground, which I think PEU covers it very well, but I wonder how many of those who bought PEU care to look at the subject (the passive) from the angle of the real usage. (And Swan's book, afaict, covers both angles.)

Yeah. "How to [do X in English]" is vastly different from "How to pass an exam on [doing X in English]"!

So true!

A passive example in those exams: Jute is grown in Bangladesh.

I think it's somewhat okay, but it just sounds weird to me!

Oh, wait, they might mean the plant!

Not a plant most native speakers would know the name of, let alone an East Indian one.

(I thought it was a boy's name because the next example is "A boy ...".)

> Corn is grown in Iowa.

4:23 PM

That's fine.

Jutes were grown in Denmark--so many that they had to export them to Britain.

> Danes are just Germans pretending to be Englishmen.

Another strange example: This composition is well when it is read.

Looks wrong.

nods -- I don't know what to think of that!

4:26 PM

Somebody's stab at passivizing "This composition reads well"?

It's supposed to be the passive-- yes! @StoneyB!

Indian Utes are everywhere.

Ute people

Ute people /ˈjuːt/ are in the Great Basin classification of Indigenous People, now living primarily in Utah and Colorado. There are three Ute tribal reservations: Uintah-Ouray in northeastern Utah (3,500 members); Southern Ute in Colorado (1,500 members); and Ute Mountain which primarily lies in Colorado, but extends to Utah and New Mexico (2,000 members). The name of the state of Utah was derived from the name Ute. The word Ute means "Land of the sun" in their language. "Ute" possibly derived from the Western Apache word "yudah", meaning "high up". This has led to the misconception that "Ute"...

Which, in fact, is how I had read that.

Many of them come two by two, in pais.

Compositions reading well are like wines drinking well.

A rare construction.

But a composition that reads well is not well read.

Though its writer may be.

It may however be read better by one rhetor than another.

4:31 PM

I think Swan says this one is now allowed, but it's in those exercises as well:

> That the work will be finished in time is hoped (by us).

That’s 99.87654% crap.

Requires heroic rescue readings more worthy of a super-villain than of a hero.

People just don’t say or write that stuff.

There's two sides to teaching the passive.

I side with reality.

Corpora.

Native speakers.

A) Teaching people how to emulate well-employed passives.

B) Teaching people how to understand badly-employed passives.

Neither should involve

C) Teaching people to emulate badly-employed passives.

Totally agree!

4:42 PM

@tchrist Like " It's hoped that the work will be finished before the 20th of September, which is planned to be our next Open Day" ? here.

Native speakers ≠ graceful native speakers

No one pinging me when I was gone? (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M ping!

@DamkerngT. "Allowed" and "flows well" are a bit different I believe.

Many learners aim for 'flows well' so we should advise against using such a bizarre construction.

Ah, I made a typo! -- *I think Swan says this one is not allowed.

(/¯◡ ‿ ◡)/¯ ~ ┻━┻

4:47 PM

It may not be "allowed", but it is certainly practised. In some circles it is admired.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M nods -- I think many of learners raise the bar from just "grammatical" to "native like".

Hmm, it's been some time since I wrote my last post on ELL.

But which natives? Me and tchrist? Bernard Shaw and Robert Graves? Lawyers and marketing MBAs?

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Go for it!

@StoneyB That's really a tricky question!

Guys, do you think I should go and post in meta why don't we have many editors and what do you propose to remedy this??

4:49 PM

@StoneyB Educated. Clear. Articulate. Stirring. Well-spoken. Lucid. Eloquent. Gifted of word and pen.

2

On ELL meta?

@StoneyB Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie.

@DamkerngT. No, meta.ELL. :P

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M That's very different! :( :P

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I'll give you a quick answer: we don't have enough people to answer the questions, let alone do the other stuff.

@DamkerngT. If the "average" native speaker could rise routinely to the level of Conan Doyle I'd be out of work.

You know what . . . I need a plan of attack. Whenever I try to go answer something on ELL I see something like this in the first page.

4:53 PM

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M It's always been like that.

"Please fix this horrible sentence". But if you fix it there's no question left.

@StoneyB Maybe I should ask on meta. Every question on ELL deserves editing. Not every question deserves an answer.

Just offal.

Q: How can I get more (frequent) users to edit more in a StackExchange community?

(I'm trying to follow the advice here:)

6

The chat regulars on ELL unanimously agree on the fact that it suffers from a lack of avid editors. While we have a fairly large user base in comparison to sites almost as old as us (111 users with more than 2,000 rep and 203 with more than 1,000; query here) there is only a handful of everyday e...

user-behavior stack-exchange editing

@DamkerngT. Don't you remind me of what I have to suffer here . . .

If it doesn't deserve an answer it shouldn't be here. ... The burden of that advice seems to be "Don't edit: tell posters to edit their own stuff"

4:59 PM

They can’t.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M patting MAR...

@StoneyB I think for a start we should edit and comment, then when we and they got the hang of it we should only comment and ask for edits.

Crap posters cannot edit their own crap, especially when no grasp of English is being had by them.

I realize that that is harsh. I do think that it is also true.

@tchrist The passivize flu seems to be caught by you. :P

*To have been being caught needfully

5:04 PM

LOLROTF!

Q: why did the author choose past perfect

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M you mean like this?

0

For those of you who don't know this site has been in financial trouble for some time, today the website and database have disappeared. If you are one of the many sellers owed money by GEMM do not expect to see it, Site owner Roger Raffee had emailed several people stating that he intend...

perfect-constructions

Apart from ELU and ELL alone, the other language sites are not buried beneath a pile of crap questions. Why not?

@user177063 Hello, Alice!

user58869

hi

Because other languages are better taught?

5:14 PM

I don't know.

Maybe they draw better students.

Compare French Language, Portuguese Language, Spanish Language, Italian Language with English Language & Usage and English Language Learners to see what I mean.

Because English is the first language of users on other stacks, perhaps?

I’d also suggest German Language but that costs my brain too much work. :)

I don't mean they're inarticulate. I mean that the questions aren't so often unresearched gimme-da-codez-now ones as ELU and ELL suffer from.

But I agree that ELL and ELU are somewhat different from other language stacks.

nods

Well, I just checked out German (which is the only one of those I have any fluency in), and it seems to have pretty much the same sort of questions we get. And it has roughly the same proportion of closed questions hanging on.

Q: ¿Cuál de esas frases es correcta?

French has 218 of 3231 questions that are closed but not deleted; Spanish has 180 of 2524.

When I read the Spanish questions, some of them aren’t that great, but nothing like on ELU or ELL.

Close metrics may not be the best indicator.

So like this is just as bad:

2

Which of these forms is correct, better? Vivo en lo mismo lugar en que vivía hace un año vs Vivo en lo mismo lugar donde vivía hace un año Or maybe both are fine?

gramática

1

Q: Des trous de compréhension

Je n'arrive pas à comprendre certains mots dans cette vidéo - pouvez-vous m'aider ? À 19 secondes : Quand on est hiver, il y a le blé, ___ (pangues ?), de l'orge 46 secondes : Tout ___ (un bout, en vue?) de diversité exceptionnelle 2m45 : ils sont formés sur (le tape, l'étape ?) Merci d'avanc...

oral

Proofhearing. :)

Okay, I'm going to step away from previous statement. I had just read some rather nice questions on French so was perhaps unfairly biased.

2

Q: Cosa significa “da urlo”?

Ho un dubbio. Ho visto l'espressione in un articolo e non so cosa vuol dire. Che cosa significa “da urlo”? Nell'articolo appare l'espressione “capelli da urlo”. Cosa significa “da urlo”?

idioms vocabulary

Still not looking stuff up elsewhere first.

And yes, the Romance tongues have the Hindian doubt/question thing.

0

Q: Existe uma palavra maior do que "pneumoultrami..."? Ela é realmente usada?

No vocabulário temos a palavra pneumoultramicroscopicossilicovulcanoconiótico que é o nome dado a uma pessoa que sofre da doença causada pela inspiração de cinzas vulcanicas. Esse termo é realmente usado? Existe uma palavra maior no vocabulário português?

vocabulário

You know, I doubt pneumoultramicroscopicossilicovulcanoconiótico gets much better in any language. :)

And you won’t even know what language it’s in till you get quite near the far end of it.

5:32 PM

Thai: โรคมะเร็งปอดชนิดหนึ่งที่มีสาเหตุจากการสูดดมขี้เถ้าและฝุ่นทราย

Okay, that one has an early-onset tell.

Admittedly, that's not even its name, just its meaning.

Q: Was bedeutet das Verb “instagrammen”?

2

Ich lese die folgende Webseite: http://www.bento.de/gadgets/bundeswehr-auf-instagram-09808/ Was bedeutet das im Titel genannte Verb instagrammen?

meaning verbs

Instagrammen? I don't even want to know what that question is supposed to be . . .

Q: What is the best translation for the term “snack”?

"What does the verb 'instagram' mean?"

2

For instance, would you use: der Snack, der Imbiss, die Kleinigkeit, der Schnellimbiss, der Happen, etc.? And when would you use which term? i.e. for what kind of snack — a snack commercially packaged or one provided at an office?

translation english-to-german differences

5:41 PM

@StoneyB It's one of the most time-wasting verbs in the history of language.

Q: »🚜 dürfen überholt werden«

8

Es gibt folgendes Straßenschild: Warum steht auf dem Schild »dürfen [die Traktoren] überholt werden« statt »dürfen überholt sein«? Ich verstehe ganz klar die Sinne und die Grammatik, aber warum wird hier das Futur genutzt?

grammar phrases future

@StoneyB Hehe what's that tractor?

Q: Wie sagt man “according to”?

It's on a road sign, posted in the question.

A question about prepositions!

4

Recently, I wanted to say something like: According to the national emergency office … but I didn’t find an expression for according to. It seems to me that the translation nach refers to a place a person is going towards; like the Spanish hacia. This is why I ask, because maybe Germans s...

translation english-to-german expressions

Mirabile visu.

@DamkerngT. Krungthep Mahanakhon Bovorn Ratanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokpop Noparatratchathani Burirom Udomratchanivet Mahasathan Amornpiman Avatarnsathit Sakkathattiyavisnukarmprasit

Ah, right! That's Bangkok's full name.

5:50 PM

And quick you were to recognize it.

1 min ago, by tchrist

@DamkerngT. Krungthep Mahanakhon Bovorn Ratanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokpop Noparatratchathani Burirom Udomratchanivet Mahasathan Amornpiman Avatarnsathit Sakkathattiyavisnukarmprasit

Is Bangkok's full name?

Yes!

Usually, we officially call Bangkok formally as "Krungthep Mahanakhon" in short. And most students have to remember it. (It actually rhymes, and now we have a few songs (i.e. melody) for it, so it's a bit easier.)

khon ~ vorn

sin ~ hin

pop ~ Nop

etc.

@DamkerngT. So what does that long name mean?

The parts that rhyme.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Basically, the city of angels.

That's impressive. The closest thing I can think of in English is actually in Spanish:

El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula

5:53 PM

Los Angeles is an abbreviation of the town’s full name as founded.

Which I was just typing.

Hehe!

Nope. Still weird to me.

"Not Angles, but Angels"

> Because the future town's name was a take on this "Queen of Heaven" Marian title, various versions of Crespí's formula would be used for the town, including the exceedingly long El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora Reina de los Ángeles sobre el Río Porciúncula.

Very easy to mistype! :P

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Wikipedia has its translation in English (very handy!),

> City of angels, great city of immortals, magnificent city of the nine gems, seat of the king, city of royal palaces, home of gods incarnate, erected by Visvakarman at Indra's behest

5:55 PM

@DamkerngT. But that's not a name, but 7 names.

@DamkerngT. Admittedly easier to mistype than with ángulos versus ángeles.

BTW, the full name tchrist quoted was the old name. Here is the current one:

> Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathaniburirom Udomratchaniwetmahasathan Amonphimanawatansathit Sakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit

People, however, can get pretty impressive:

His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty,
Franz Joseph I, by the Grace of God Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, Bohemia, King of Lombardy and Venice, of Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia, Lodomeria and Illyria; King of Jerusalem etc., Archduke of Austria; Grand Duke of Tuscany and Cracow, Duke of Lorraine, of Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and of the Bukovina; Grand Prince of Transylvania; Margrave of Moravia; Duke of Upper and Lower Silesia, of Modena, Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla, of Auschwitz, Zator and Teschen, Friuli, Ragusa (Dubrovnik) and Zara (Zadar); Princely Count of…

Wow! That's really long!

@StoneyB They could've gone on all day. Why stop?