Language Overflow

The Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution allows citizens to refuse to answer questions in court or to the police if the answer would incriminate them.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@snailboat Dunno. I'm writing up meta to see if people like the idea, and then roll with it, either on main, or meta.

I personally am not really sure if meta's good for such a post. It's not what other SEs do.

Jim Reynolds

For example, if you are asked, "Did you kill Mr. Dead," a judge cannot force you to answer. You can cite the Fifth Amendment as an excuse to say "no comment".

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@JimReynolds no comment.

Jim Reynolds

12:25 PM

Why you little !!

Have you ever wanted to unplug the robot?

Even for a moment?

Anonymous

What SEs put glossaries on main?

Anonymous

Honestly, in my experience SE sites are really very inconsistent when it comes to what goes on main or meta.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@JimReynolds The robot runs on neutrinos. He won't turn off if I unplug him.

@snailboat Meta.SE. :P

Damkerng T.

Remote charging is available now. So, technically, you can't unplug some robots. :P

Anonymous

So there isn't really a coherent "what other SEs do" in many cases.

Jim Reynolds

12:26 PM

O.O

Anonymous

Meta.SE doesn't have a main site.

Jim Reynolds

Is he a quantumbot?

Damkerng T.

I'll take the fifth. :D

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

He doesn't belong to any category.

Anonymous

That's our Damkerng, always pleading the fifth!

Damkerng T.

12:28 PM

Hehe!

Tag wikis could use lots of improvement, though.

I think some tags don't even have any description!

Anonymous

Yeah. I've always been too lazy to write any good ones. I think I wrote a couple bad ones.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@DamkerngT. That happens in all of SEs.

Anonymous

We need to axe maybe a third of our tags entirely.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

+1

Anonymous

A lot of them can be synonymized away.

Anonymous

12:31 PM

I don't know if we can really do a tag cleanup on ELL without moderator support, though.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

I want to keep working on the Japanese.SE tags :-)

Anonymous

We've made a lot of progress, but we have a lot left to do.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Chem's tags are so cool they correct themselves.

Anonymous

The two of us on Japanese.SE who care most about cleaning up the tags are moderators.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

12:33 PM

@snailboat Such an ideal world this anime land is.

Anonymous

Also, we don't have as many questions on Japanese.SE. Still, it's quite hard! The tag system is kind of square peggish on natural language sites.

Anonymous

I don't use Anime.SE much. I like cartoons, though :-)

Anonymous

Have you seen Anime.SE? It's got zillions of identification requests.

Damkerng T.

I haven't used it.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@snailboat It happens to all "media" SEs.

Damkerng T.

12:36 PM

I have a hunch that I can answer some of them. :-)

Anonymous

I just go there once every few months and check the Japanese language tag to see if anyone asked about any interesting language bits.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Movies.SE is drowning in them.

LOL @Stoney you look awesome!

StoneyB, St. Louis, MO

110k 1 9 39

(Click on the profile and see him with the hat)

Damkerng T.

Oh, it suits his avatar really well!

CopperKettle

Nice!

Damkerng T.

12:54 PM

@JimReynolds Are you still around?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@Dam are you still around?

Damkerng T.

Of course, I am!

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

OK retract your downvote on the newest meta post please.

Damkerng T.

I didn't downvote that one.

Anonymous

I did.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

12:58 PM

@snailboat It seems the main point of the post was something else.

Anonymous

I think I understood it fine.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Oh. I understood it not fine.

But anyway your votes are yours.

Damkerng T.

Anyway, @JimReynolds, I'd like to tell you that we've successfully reopened the question: ell.stackexchange.com/q/75977/3281! -- Waiting for your answer. --Your friendly robot.

Anonymous

Ah, it was sitting at 4 for a while :-)

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@DamkerngT. Here's an em-dash: —

Damkerng T.

1:00 PM

Thx! xD

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Howdy @Stoney

StoneyB

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Old actors never die -- they just use heavier makeup.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

1 min ago, by Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@DamkerngT. Here's an em-dash: —

CopperKettle

@DamkerngT. That's why I now have the Thalia Hat.

Damkerng T.

Ah, that's a really smart move!

CopperKettle

1:06 PM

(0:

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

I'm now used to Copper leaving chat a bazillion times.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

1:34 PM

0

Q: What if we write a glossary post for linguistic terms we use in tags?

Last time it became evident to everyone that a big problem in choosing what tags and tag names to use is that linguistic terminology is incomprehensible for a lot of ELLs while simple and understandable tag names tend to be more popular among even avid askers. Well, in an attempt to (re-)organiz...

discussion tags

A new meta post is born:

Parth Kohli

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Thanks -- that'd really help us!

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

I see that already.

Jim Reynolds

2:51 PM

@Dam Yaaaay!

Damkerng T.

Yay!

Jim Reynolds

Yes, the question already has an answer that was accepted.

Damkerng T.

Oh!

Jim Reynolds

I think it's not perfect, but along with my comment, it's pretty good.

I don't think I want to write another one.

Damkerng T.

I see.

CopperKettle

4:05 PM

0

Q: Is adjective "free" non-restrictive in “Their campaign mounts in fury as a free Europe crumbles”?

From The Imitation Game (2014), more spefically, from a WW2-era newsreel snippet inserted into the movie to keep the viewer up to date with the events: "The German Army has fanned out across Europe, From Poland to Serbia, Lithuania to Denmark, Norway to France. The Nazi flag now flies from m...

adjectives

@snailboat - on the heels of your helpful hint

Damkerng T.

@CopperKettle But what makes it restrictive or non-restrictive?

I have a hunch that I have to read Quirk et al!

CopperKettle

@DamkerngT. The semantic properties of the sentence and the narrative as a whole?

Dunno.

Damkerng T.

I'm not sure if most users would know the meaning of restrictive in this context. Perhaps we could use an example.

CopperKettle

I'd just like to hear native speakers' opinions: do they see it as a disposable free.

@DamkerngT. I explained: I provided the same sentence with the adjective removed.

Damkerng T.

I want to know that too!

A-ha!

CopperKettle

4:14 PM

@DamkerngT. A good idea! A simple example of restrictive vs. non-restrictive adjective would be handy.

Damkerng T.

I think it's clearer now. I didn't understand that it was your example at first.

Editing it to "That is," is very important! :D

CopperKettle

(0:

It figures!

Damkerng T.

5:20 PM

Oh, what a hat!

Damkerng T.

5:41 PM

@Jasper I noticed that, too!

Keep in mind that comments don't necessarily correspond to pauses in speech. (They did originally, but that is no longer the case.) — snailboat 6 hours ago

@snailboat I think you meant "commas". :-)

Nihilist_Frost

6:32 PM

My science teacher repeatedly misspells "phosphorus".

Damkerng T.

How do they spell it?

Nihilist_Frost

@DamkerngT. "phosphorous", the adjective form!

Damkerng T.

Oh, I see!

I got "circit" in a class. :-)

Nihilist_Frost

@DamkerngT. Even worse, she insists on spelling it like that

Damkerng T.

Hmm... interesting!

Nihilist_Frost

6:45 PM

@DamkerngT. she claimed on it being AmE vs BrE spelling, but I did do the research, and found that her claims were BS

Damkerng T.

I think so (like you said).

Nihilist_Frost

@DamkerngT. It is total bull?

Bob Ross Remixed | Happy Little Clouds 10 Hours

►

beautiful

Damkerng T.

I can't find any respectable reference that includes the spelling phosphorous in the meaning of phosphorus.

Nihilist_Frost

@DamkerngT. That is because in the first place, they are two separate words!

Damkerng T.

nods

@Nihilist_Frost Weird. YouTube doesn't allow me to see the video, but it lets me hear the music!

Nihilist_Frost

6:54 PM

@DamkerngT. what error message does it give?

Damkerng T.

> An error occurred. Please try again later. Learn More

Nihilist_Frost

@DamkerngT. site error.

Damkerng T.

The video is just static white noise.

But the audio is fine.

Nihilist_Frost

@DamkerngT. My link works perfectly for me.

Damkerng T.

Oh, it works now. (I just refreshed the whole page.)

Damkerng T.

7:15 PM

> We don't make mistakes. We have happy accidents.
--[Bob Ross: The Joy of Painting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=enutOy-nsZk#t=1418)

Hello, @Hellion!

First time I've seen you in here, I think.

Damkerng T.

7:28 PM

68

Q: The MIT License – Clarity on Using Stack Overflow Code

CC-BY-SA is an ideal license for a crowdsourced knowledge base. We’ve benefited immensely from it, our community has gained protection through it, and we look forward to CC-BY-SA continuing to cover prose contributions to Stack Overflow for all of eternity. But code is a bit different (pun inte...

discussion featured creative-commons license

Yay! All hail the MIT License!

Damkerng T.

7:42 PM

1

Q: A plea for better answers from learners and non-native speakers

This is a potential problem I've observed longer than a year. I asked about this during the recent election, but it was a late post and it didn't get enough votes to be included in the questionnaire. So, it has never been answered, and many may not even have seen it. The problem is anyone can po...

discussion

It just hit me. Fix the voting, the problem fixed!

Nihilist_Frost

My math teacher pronounces "hypotenuse" with a glottal stop

He's a native speaker

Damkerng T.

Hmm... I don't see a reasonable place for it! Is it between "ten" and "use"? Oh, it must be at the "h"!

Ah, another possibility: right at the "en"!

Hmm... but that would be a syllabic "n".

Nihilist_Frost

@DamkerngT. exactly

Glottal T

Damkerng T.

I think a syllabic "n" is okay, like in "mountain".

Hellion

Hello, @DamkerngT. ! First time I've been in here, I think.

Damkerng T.

7:57 PM

Welcome to the room!

Oh, nice hat!

Hellion

Ah, the glottal stop. There's an ad that's been playing on the radio around here where the speaker clearly says "button" as "Buh--in".

I can't stand that ad.

Thanks! Sadly the hat did not come with any balloons.

Nihilist_Frost

Hellion why can't you stand it?

Damkerng T.

@Hellion Hah! But it was a native speaker in the ad, I guess?

Hellion

Because that's a HORRIBLE way to pronounce "button"!

Damkerng T.

@Hellion LOL -- I starred that!

Hellion

8:01 PM

@Nihilist_Frost Yes, it is absolutely a native speaker, which makes the pronunciation all the more jarring.

wow, I manage to lose track of who says what when there are only two other people talking. :-?

tchrist

@Hellion It's pretty well documented, and nothing uncommon.

Nihilist_Frost

@Hellion then do you find it jarring to hear butter

with flap T?

tchrist

Why would one?

But butter with a flap and kitten with a glottal stop are quite different phonologic environments.

Damkerng T.

Trying to make out the hat... Oh, it's Batman!

A strange way to wear a hat! :-) @tchrist

Nihilist_Frost

@DamkerngT. upside down, that is

Hellion

8:04 PM

@DamkerngT. that's a bat's normal resting position!

Damkerng T.

Oh, right!

Nihilist_Frost

@tchrist he was pissed at our glottal stop allophone

Tried to see how he perceives "correct pronunciation"

tchrist

I don't know what correct means, but I know the other word.

Hellion

The most jarring thing about it is the clear vowel sound after the glottal stop: it's not "buh--'n", it's "buh--inn".

(what's the right way to write a glottal stop, anyway?)

tchrist

⟨ʔ⟩

Damkerng T.

8:09 PM

I never find any IPA character nearly quickly enough. :(

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Oh hey @Hellion! Welcome to LO!

Hellion

Thanks @Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. !

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

8:26 PM

@Dam king there aren't many posts on meta.ELL that I favorite.

Damkerng T.

Thanks for the fav!

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

I don't understand why we would recreate a resource that already exists in lots of other places on the Internet. The tag wiki should explain the meaning of the tag, and it's easy to browse all of the tags and read their wikis. — ColleenV 4 hours ago

@Colleen we should have something more available, shorter, and more written in a layman way for learners. Other resources on the internet are primarily written for linguists and look intimidating to a learner that doesn't know what they are. Furthermore, when applying tags, a learner doesn't know what the name of the tag they should choose is, hence this stops them from being able to search for those terms. — Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. 21 mins ago

@Hellion de nada! :)

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

8:42 PM

@Dam why did you change your hat? ಠ_ಠ

Damkerng T.

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. I just wanted to try it out. I think I'll change it back soon.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@DamkerngT. OK I spare your life.

Damkerng T.

Oh, but I just got a new hat to try!

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