Language Overflow

Man_From_India

17:05

I don't remember much about this topic any more. But I think the answer and the comment says it all. I think it's pretty clear.

Both are possible. And both almost mean the same thing. The one with hadn't states an hypothetical situation, and the one with hasn't is a plain form.

Anonymous

Hmm.

Man_From_India

snail, cow and hippo might give you better answer :-)

Anonymous

I think there might be room for another answer.

Anonymous

Wait, who's hippo? :-)

CowperKettle

(0Ж

Man_From_India

17:08

hehe...the pic of catija :-)

IͶΔ

@Man_From_India "YOUR FACE IS HIPPO" -- Catija

CowperKettle

Flanders & Swann - The Hippopotamus Song (Live)

►

Man_From_India

:-)

IͶΔ

O_O

Man_From_India

I really like the pic of hippo in catija's DP

CowperKettle

17:10

@IͶΔ It's a great song. "Mud, mud, glorious mud, nothing quite like it for cooling the blood"

Man_From_India

@snailboat we are getting off track. Please help @lekonchekon and me with your answer.

And I love this :-)

dancing hippo and dog

►

IͶΔ

@ColleenV Sorry -- I was unclear. On each of the five questions I looked at, the 10k+ user who'd answered had not voted to close. And, while I agree that high rep doesn't necessarily imply expertise, the whole SE model of increasing privileges with rep assumes that it does. By the time a user has 10k rep, they ought to be familiar with how the site works and what the community expectations are. The picture I'm seeing here is that the community (even the high-rep community) doesn't have coherent expectations. That's not somethign I've seen on other SE sites I'm active on, and it worries me. — David Richerby 1 min ago

This is my big day.

Somebody's finally understanding me on meta.

@DavidRicherby The problem here is that every native speaker of English considers themselves an expert, and because the medium that we're using to communicate is English, learners don' — ColleenV 35 secs ago

Catches Screenshot

Sometimes typos are awkward.

lekon chekon

@Man_From_India

I see.

Anonymous

17:29

ELL doesn't actually have many "experts", but to be fair, many questions can be answered by non-experts :-)

IͶΔ

Hmm.

Man_From_India

That was an easy one. Even I with my so little knowledge managed to get some point (up-vote) :D

CowperKettle

(0:

Maybe we should start a tag called "compound adjectives":

0

Q: What's the meaning of " with the out-running tide"?

I came across the sentence like " The ship began to move gently down the river with the out-running tide". I checked "out-running tide" in dictionary but I can't look for them. Could you teach me?

> The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveller hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Anonymous

18:39

0

A: Is "in" before "losing" correct in the following phrases?

There is nothing wrong with your sentences as they currently stand, the comma is unnecessary but does not make the sentence incorrect. In general, you will loose weight by participating in the sport of your choice, in particular you will loose the weight which you have gained through years of in...

Anonymous

A maze of bold and italics!

Anonymous

> In general, you will loose weight by participating in the sport of your choice, in particular you will loose the weight which you have gained through years of inactivity.

Anonymous

Set your weight free by participating in the sport of your choice.

IͶΔ

Haha

Peter, Peter, Peter

Is he doing that on purpose?

Maybe he's found real fun in random bold-italic formatting.

CowperKettle

He thinks that that way it is easier for the reader.

Easier to spot the salient information.

Anonymous

18:49

But he's using four different levels of formatting, [-bold -italic] [+bold -italic] [-bold +italic] [+bold +italic], and I don't think it's particularly clear what each level is supposed to indicate.

IͶΔ

@snailboat Stress maybe?

Anonymous

Maybe if he put a key at the bottom of the answer explaining what they were intended to communicate.

Anonymous

@IͶΔ Can't be.

IͶΔ

He's literally shouting. -> Bold italic

He's emphasizing. -> Italic

CowperKettle

Sometimes people with some conditions tend to heavily modify their texts, but then their texts are usually illogical. This is not the case with Peter.

IͶΔ

18:50

He's spitting. -> Bold

CowperKettle

@Eli Please be careful; the information Peter has given you in his comment is incorrect. You cannot delete both ins. I am interested doing the sport and losing weight isn't a valid way to rephrase I am interested in doing the sport and in losing weight. You can remove the second in, although a good answer might suggest whether the meaning changes if you do so. — snailboat 8 mins ago

Did Peter say that one could omit both ins?

IͶΔ

@CowperKettle He did, didn't he?

@Snail means the comment under the answer.

CowperKettle

You can delete in before losing and it will be understood. You can delete both ins and it will still be fine. Having both ins there or both not gives it more parallel construction, but keeping the first one and deleting the second will easily still be understood — Peter Feb 4 at 18:11

Ah, now I see.

IͶΔ

It's funny how the bolding leaks into the comments too.

CowperKettle

I have been consciously cutting down on bolding the last several answers, having Peter's answers in mind.

Anonymous

18:55

Bold is okay. If you need to use it, do. You only have so many ways to format things on Stack Exchange! :-)

Anonymous

But it should probably be used sparingly.

IͶΔ

@CowperKettle Haha I need to tell Peter somehow

Anonymous

One common convention is to use bold for emphasis and italics for mention.

CowperKettle

@snailboat Hey, I should one day write my answer in neat handwriting using a quill, then scan and post the answer. (0:

Anonymous

Snail is a common noun.

CowperKettle

18:56

That would be original. (0:

Anonymous

The bold in my message right here isn't particularly helpful, but in a larger text bolding a key word here or there can help people pick out important vocabulary.

IͶΔ

@snailboat *Y*es

Haha I mixed up

@Snail is not a common noun though.

Anonymous

I'm so bad at taking pictures of books.

Anonymous

Anonymous

See, this is a larger text, and the bold for 時制（テンス tense） seems more reasonable in that context.

CowperKettle

19:01

I see the word "tense"

Oh, good evening, @Fard!

Anonymous

Whereas in my four-word example above, it seemed kind of overbearing and unnecessary.

IͶΔ

Hullo @Fard! Welcome to LO!

Fard

Hello people!

Anonymous

@CowperKettle 時制 is the Sino-Japanese word meaning 'tense', and テンス is the result of borrowing the English word tense.

IͶΔ

@snailboat Yeah, but who can tell him without stuff getting awkward and all?

CowperKettle

19:03

@snailboat I see!

Fard

@CowperKettle I have a question for you! since you're a freelance translator.

CowperKettle

@Fard Go ahead!

Anonymous

Welcome to ELL chat! Unless you've been here before. In that case, well, welcome anyway? :-)

Fard

What do you think is the best English translation of The Brothers Karamazov?

CowperKettle

@Fard Oh.. sorry, but I only read that book once, and in Russian..

Anonymous

19:05

I read a translation of that book once! But it was a long time ago, and I only read one translation.

Fard

I have never been here @snailboat!

CowperKettle

The book is so great thought that there must be at least one good translation.

Anonymous

Well then, it's official! Welcome to ELL chat, @Fard :-)

IͶΔ

Oh, that Dostoyevsky thingy?

Damn that name spelling is hard.

CowperKettle

Three's a great book-devoted website called Goodreads.

Fard

19:05

There are many translations, and long debates on which one is the best!

Ok that's fine.

IͶΔ

Dammit whatever

Anonymous

@IͶΔ It's been spelled in Latin letters more than one way.

Fard

I have read a Farsi (Iranian language) translation of the book and I just loved it.

CowperKettle

It took several attempts for a Spanish book seller woman to get me to understand that she had Solzhenitsyn on sale.

IͶΔ

@CowperKettle I rather learn Russian and read the original.

Fard

19:06

@IͶΔ I wish I had time for that.

IͶΔ

@CowperKettle Several? 7?

Anonymous

@IͶΔ Go for it! It might take a while though . . . :-)

CowperKettle

@IͶΔ Okay, start today! (0:

IͶΔ

70?

@CowperKettle I suddenly felt sleepy.

CowperKettle

@IͶΔ I don't remember, but it sounded weird. (0:

Anonymous

19:07

I'm not sure how different Russian is from Persian, but for English speakers at least, Russian is usually considered quite a challenging language to learn.

CowperKettle

@IͶΔ LOL

11

Q: "Only the masochist would choose to study Russian" or "Only a masochist would choose to study Russian"? (use of articles in generic noun phrases)

From English is not Normal, by John McWhorter: If someone were told he had a year to get as good at either Russian or Hebrew as possible, and would lose a fingernail for every mistake he made during a three-minute test of his competence, only the masochist would choose Russian – unless he alr...

articles generic-noun-phrases

IͶΔ

@CowperKettle Only thy masochist would choose to study Russian.

Oh wait. That tickles. I should give it a try.

Anonymous

@IͶΔ Hey! That dragon isn't really asleep.

CowperKettle

@IͶΔ Yes, I bet he's studying Russian.

Fard

@snailboat Persian is more related to English than Russian. Take a look at this: effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/…

IͶΔ

19:13

i.e. not related at all

To neither languages.

Fard

Oh, sorry. not related.

CowperKettle

Snails is learning Japanese, which is light years ahead of Russian in terms of complexity for the English learner.

Anonymous

Well, they're all related. English, Persian, and Russian are all Indo-European languages.

Anonymous

But that doesn't mean they're particularly similar to one another.

IͶΔ

Speaks volumes about what time can do to a language.

Anonymous

19:15

Some languages are more closely related than others.

CowperKettle

"time and tide wait for no tongue"

Anonymous

Japanese, on the other hand, hasn't been demonstrated to have a genetic relationship to any language outside the Japonic family.

StoneyB

Hi, guys. . . . @CowperKettle, when did you bovinify yourself? And why?

IͶΔ

I wonder what would be the oddest language.

Anonymous

William Cowper

William Cowper (/ˈkuːpər/ KOO-pər; 26 November 1731 – 25 April 1800) was an English poet and hymnodist. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry. Samuel Taylor Coleridge called him "the best modern poet", whilst William Wordsworth particularly admired his poem Yardley-Oak. He was a nephew of the poet Judith Madan. After being institutionalised for insanity in the period 1763–65, Cowper found refuge in a fervent...

CowperKettle

19:16

@StoneyB Good evening!

IͶΔ

@StoneyB Hullo! I think he did it because of TRomano's comment.

Anonymous

I think it was Cowper-ification.

CowperKettle

We may have to start referring to him as CowperKettle :) — TRomano Mar 1 at 18:55

IͶΔ

(/¯◡ ‿ ◡)/¯ ~ ┻━┻

Anonymous

Starred :-)

2

Anonymous

19:18

How meta!

IͶΔ

@snailboat Starred 'cause I said I'll star you.

StoneyB

@snailboat Got it. He is celebrating his Cowprophily.

CowperKettle

"Cowprophily" sounds weird...

StoneyB

Beats Cowprophagy.

CowperKettle

Eww.

@IͶΔ - your messages get flagged

IͶΔ

19:20

Ja noticed.

StoneyB

And since you are yourself a poet, albeit not yet in Cowper's league, we may think of you as a cowpro-lite.

IͶΔ

A poor soul trying to fight the tide.

CopperCowper

Anonymous

Many fine, noble animals are coprophages. It's gross to humans, but essential to these animals!

IͶΔ

CowperKettle

Hmm, I think a chemical reaction is going on:

CowperKettle

"I’m a poet, and I know it, hope I don’t blow it"

Anonymous

19:21

Oh, that got starred, did it? Uh oh :-)

3

Anonymous

Ahh! Too many starses.

IͶΔ

CoPPErKEtTlE + W -> CoWPErKEtTlE + P

Anonymous

(My god – it's full of stars!)

IͶΔ

@Cowper but where's your pee? :P

Anonymous

Here is an em dash for you: —

CowperKettle

19:23

@IͶΔ What?

IͶΔ

1 min ago, by IͶΔ

CoPPErKEtTlE + W -> CoWPErKEtTlE + P

You've reacted.

Fard

Your second P he means.

CowperKettle

Ah.

Fard

@IͶΔ Where's William Cowper's pee?

StoneyB

My math is off. Comes of spending the entire week programming spreadsheets instead of doing my own calculations.

IͶΔ

19:29

@Fard His grave?

Dunno

Anonymous

I see the little 'E' icon now in feed items, too.

Anonymous

I still see the 'E'-less banner-looking thingy in some places, though, like in the upper right corner of chat.

CowperKettle

> In the same volume Cowper also printed "The Diverting History of John Gilpin", a notable piece of comic verse. John Gilpin was later credited with saving Cowper from becoming completely insane.

Cheers for comic verse.

StoneyB

I'll have to read that sometime. Shaw was very fond of it.

CowperKettle

The Diverting History of John Gilpin

The Diverting History of John Gilpin Shewing how he went Farther than he intended, and came safe Home again is a comic ballad by William Cowper about John Gilpin, written in 1782. The ballad concerns a draper called John Gilpin who rides a runaway horse. Cowper heard the story from Lady Anna Austen at a time of severe depression, and it cheered him up so much that he put it into verse. The poem was published anonymously in the Public Advertiser in 1782, and then published with The Task in 1785. It was very popular, to the extent that "pirate copies were being sold all across the country, together...

Even has a Wikipedia page.

Goodnight y'all!

IͶΔ

19:36

Why is it that legendary writers usually end up insane or committing suicide?

Anonymous

Good night, Kettle o' Cowper!

CowperKettle

heh (0:

IͶΔ

Night!

CowperKettle

Night, Snails!

IͶΔ

Why is it that the peak of activity for a meta.ELL post is usually a couple of days after it was posted, rather than sooner?

StoneyB

19:38

Sleep tight, and tightly coiled!

IͶΔ

@IͶΔ - In the title of your question here, you exhort the community, "Don't answer close-worthy questions!" All well and good, but not everyone will agree that a question is close-worthy, and therefore some will leave an answer instead of casting a close vote. I don't regard that as a sign that our "community is divided into two parts making opposite decisions," I regard it as a sign that we are dozens of individuals who don't always see eye-to-eye on what should be answered, and what should be closed, and what sits in the fuzzy grey area between the two. — J.R. ♦ 19 mins ago

Once again, a meta post goes to waste.

There has to be a billion posts after people bother to start realizing there's a problem.

Dammit. Now I'm again questioning myself why did I bother.

StoneyB

@IͶΔ Because folks like to chew on good questions for a while.

IͶΔ

Sad

I really should stop trying to beat a dead horse.

ELL is never going to be a high quality site.

StoneyB

@IͶΔ I think people do pay attention; but it takes a while to see results.

Anonymous

I think J.R. makes a good point, though. There are times when people vote to close questions I think deserve an answer, and times when people answer questions I think should be closed.

IͶΔ

19:41

@StoneyB It took me some white hair in the process.

Anonymous

I don't think this question should be closed as "entirely answerable with a dictionary". The OP's problem isn't failing to look up the words derive or real, it was failing to understand how the words fit together in the sentence properly. Derive real makes no sense, but derive [real and demonstrable value] does, and that's what the question is really about. It's not expressed that way because the OP was confused, but that's perfectly fine. — snailboat 47 mins ago

IͶΔ

@snailboat Sure, that happens a lot. The problem is that it's unnaturally happening a lot.

StoneyB

That's what happens when you try to hurry things up -- you hurry up your own aging process too.

IͶΔ

Hell, when some meta.ELU veteran tells me I shouldn't downvote a question because I found a result in the first Google search with rudimentary keywords, then what should I expect from the rest of the people.

StoneyB

@IͶΔ What's a "high quality site"? A site which conforms to the SE specs, or a site where people get good answers? The two are separable.

Anonymous

19:43

One problem is that it can be very difficult for someone who doesn't have a good knowledge of the problem area to distinguish good information from bad.

Anonymous

I can find all sorts of information by searching online, both good and bad, and if I'm lucky I know how to tell the difference between the two.

IͶΔ

I bet you fourteen billion dollars quite a lot of answerers on ELL haven't called any question "VLQ", except the most recent I DEMAND THAT YOU PROOFREAD crap.

@StoneyB The latter. It's all about answers.

SE specs are successful for a programming site; not necessarily for a language site.

Anonymous

Sometimes that information is implicitly couched in one theoretical framework or another, and I might assume it makes sense universally, but in fact it turns out that information does not make sense in the context of the framework implicit in a discussion in another context, and being able to figure that sort of thing out is the difference between being able to answer your own question and being confused or worse – thinking you're not confused when you really are!

IͶΔ

Esp. one that's getting closer and close to a forum.

Anonymous

It can be quite challenging to sort through the minefield of contradictory information about language online, particularly because there is no universally accepted theoretical framework with accompanying terminological decisions.

StoneyB

19:45

@IͶΔ Then a good question is one which provokes good answers. And that includes answers which provide questioners a new way of thinking about what they're asking.

IͶΔ

@snailboat You're such a lucky person

Fard

What I like about ELL is that there's much less noise there than ELU. I wouldn't mind waiting a bit longer for a good answer.

IͶΔ

@StoneyB And would you mind taking a look at the ELL questions today and tell me which got that answer?

Anonymous

So when someone finds a reference online that says X is a preposition, but the person who wrote that thinks preposition means something different, a silent failure to communicate may have occured . . . and this sort of thing happens all the time.

StoneyB

@IͶΔ Gimme a minute . . .

IͶΔ

19:46

@Fard The natural growing site specification.

I'm looking at the future, J.R. unfortunately does not.

And yippee, I'm starting to get downvotes on the meta post. Maybe because they do want bad questions answered?

@snailboat Concur

Anonymous

There are people who (in good faith) believe it's okay to answer questions that should be closed. I disagree, but people who do so aren't necessarily acting in bad faith as Colleen's comment implies. As you can see, FumbleFingers' answer here has 8 upvotes, and he explains why he thinks it's okay to answer while close voting.

IͶΔ

I never aimed at people. I'm sad that they took the discussion that way. Almost.

Anonymous

But it seems that, in general, there's more support for the "don't answer while close voting" point of view on meta.

Anonymous

Wendi's post and your post both have a lot more upvotes than downvotes.

Anonymous

I wouldn't worry about the downvotes too much.

IͶΔ

19:51

I don't.

The fact that people REALLY REALLY take my post to mean something it doesn't is pretty annoying.

I feel caged.

J.R. is discussing the issue as if he's defending ELL in court.

Anonymous

I'm sorry, I must have missed that entirely.

StoneyB

@IͶΔ How bout this one? ell.stackexchange.com/q/83472/32

IͶΔ

Unreferenced, but good.

It seems you went through 25 answers to reach that answer @Stoney.

Give or take.

So that means 1 out of 25 answers on ELL is what we aimed at. Wow. An achievement.

Sigh

This is one of my struggling moments on ELL again.

StoneyB

I was looking specifically for a pretty poor question which got an answer providing remarkably more than the questioner asked for. There were plenty more perfectly adequate answers to reasonable questions.

And even 1 for 25 ain't all that bad -- see Sturgeon's Law!

IͶΔ

After some time, I'll be the happy MAR again. One that has the delusions that "you can do something with meta.ELL"

Anonymous

20:00

Really, your meta post has gotten a positive reception overall. It seems many people agree with you, and for all we know some of those people might change their behavior based on your post.

IͶΔ

One can only hope.

StoneyB

I want a telephone that sends a destructive airhorn blast at junk callers.

Fard

I +1ed @IͶΔ 's meta post. But you have to close a question in a way that the questioner is really encouraged to improve their post, and not just flee away.

IͶΔ

@Fard If a closed post is edited, it will 1) get bumped and 2) get into the reopen queue.

If enough people agree that it's worth having, it will get reopened.

Fard

getting reopened is not enough.

IͶΔ

20:04

There's no fleeing. No messing. I really do wonder how this stuff sorts itself out in chem.SE.

Fard

A learner of a foreign language is kinda vulnerable,

IͶΔ

@Fard You can't force anyone into answering it. Also, that discussion is totally different.

If I don't spend my time answering a pointless helpless off-topic post, there's more chance I'll come by your improved and better post.

That's what this is all about.

Fard

I just think it should be closed in a way that the questioner doesn't feel offended.

IͶΔ

They feel offended for every single thing.

Fard

Well, that's true.

IͶΔ

20:06

My welcome comments used to get flags. WELCOME comments for God's sake.

So that "offended" doesn't work.

Fard

Not everyone flags a welcome comment!

IͶΔ

If you're told to be silent in a library and you take offence, it's your problem.

Fard

That's a special case.

IͶΔ

If you don't play by the rules and are asked to go fly a kite, it's your problem.

Fard

If the question can be improved, the OP should be guided in the comments as to how to improve it. For example.

IͶΔ

20:08

They usually are.

Anonymous

@Fard That's what the Details, Please! close reason is supposed to be for. Although it's relatively rare for a question closed with that reason to be reopened.

IͶΔ

Actually, they typically get angry at the poor commenter that wanted to help.

This is all simple: You play by the rules, you get your question answered and upvoted. You don't play by the rules, your question gets downvoted and removed and closed and whatnot.

So if you get offended if you didn't play by the rules, then we can't talk.

-12

Q: Advice or insult?

Question goes to all as follows: If a person asks a question seeking for advice, how is he handled by higher reputation people? If advice is asked for by a student on Stack Overflow it should not be tagged as homework, but indeed be answered as an abstract. The guy will obviously approach the ...

discussion

Anonymous

@IͶΔ I don't think anyone's offended by a welcome comment, but there are people who believe messages that have no purpose other than to grease the social wheels ("Hello!" "Welcome to ELL!" "Thank you very much!") decrease the signal:noise ratio of the site. That opinion's sort of been inherited from Stack Overflow and friends, but it's not shared by everyone on the natural language sites.

Fard

That makes sense too. This way good questions will get answers on ELL, and bad questions go to other forums where people don't pay too much attention to quality.

Anonymous

So some people try to get rid of stuff like that, while other people deliberately add it to try to make the site friendlier.

IͶΔ

20:12

@snailboat Funny how most of the junky comments live nowadays.

@Fard Exactly. SE isn't meant to be for all questions.

Anonymous

ELL has always been a site where most comments stay forever, unless they're especially rude.

IͶΔ

I always think of it like this:

StoneyB

Well, tell you what, MAR . . . for the next week I will write no answers until I have explicitly considered every new question for closure. I'll come back next Saturday and report how I feel about it.

IͶΔ

> The only thing I hope happens by writing this meta post is that next time you (plural) write an answer, take a look back and see whether your answer is something someone coming from two days of cumbersome failing Google searches desperately looks for.

Anonymous

@StoneyB Dr. Donald Unger spent more than sixty years cracking the knuckles on only his left hand at least twice a day, leaving his right hand alone, to see if he got arthritis in only that hand.

2

IͶΔ

20:14

You did your research. You worked on the problem for so long you're close to tears.

That's when you come to SE.

You have a question like "guess how many watermelons can fit in my hand". You ask it somewhere else.

@snailboat And he didn't.

Fard

OK. Enjoyed my first SE-chat experience. Good night people. :)

Anonymous

Rest well, @Fard! Come back any time.

IͶΔ

G'night from Tabriz'

StoneyB

Good night, sir!

IͶΔ

@StoneyB I don't take it that far. I just look at the recent questions and I see none interest me.

Then start to get angry, then frustrated, then sad, then funny, then weird, then start reviewing close votes.

StoneyB

20:17

Well, very few of them have ever interested me. But "interesting to me" is not the definition of a good question, much less of a question which deserves an answer.

IͶΔ

@Stoney in fact, I think half my votes are "leave open", since I understand that the answerers in this community usually want to play with the questions than do serious stuff, with some exceptions.

OK I gotta hit the bed too.

StoneyB

@IͶΔ Don't get too old overnight!

I'm gonna go buy groceries.

Anonymous

Good luck!

Anonymous

2 days ago, by Damkerng T.

And it's probably too generative.

Anonymous

I feel this should probably be addressed, but it would take a while to really lay out what 'generative' means, because there have been a lot of different grammars over the years given that label that aren't necessarily particularly similar to one another.

Anonymous

20:29

But I can start by pointing out that CGEL is in no sense a formal, generative grammar. It's an informal, descriptive grammar.

Anonymous

20:40

I have dictionaries with ribbons sewn into the binding to serve as bookmarks. It's actually kind of nice, because you can easily open the dictionary to the last thing you looked up :-) I took a picture of a dictionary I have with a ribbon: i.stack.imgur.com/KKz9h.jpg — snailboat 49 secs ago

Anonymous

Does anyone else have dictionaries with bookmarks sewn in?

Anonymous

I think I have some English ones with bookmarks, but none that I use very often, so I'll have to go digging through my bookshelves to find them.

Anonymous

23:27

Okay, I looked, but I can't find an English dictionary with a bookmark sewn in.

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