Language Overflow

Anonymous

00:03

Shrug :-)

jimsug

00:17

I thought some people here might enjoy this :3

Anonymous

00:38

0

A: which is more correct ? either "Thank you for your Kindly attention." or "Thank you for you Kind Attention."

The word kindly is both an adverb and adjective. Almost all the dictionaries say so. A kindly person or act is a kind one. For examples: She is a kindly old lady, It was a kindly act. I appreciate your kindly criticism. So it's grammatically correct to say "Thank you for your kindly attention"...

Anonymous

I think in English today the adjective kindly can only describe people (as in a kindly old man), so I think your kindly attention isn't really acceptable. — snailboat 7 hours ago

Anonymous

Snailboat, Cambridge and The Free Dictionary say that kindly can describe people and acts. — Khan 7 hours ago

Anonymous

Catija/Snailboat, I would appreciate your comments in reply to my comments. — Khan 5 hours ago

Anonymous

I'm not sure how to reply.

Anonymous

Here's the original sentence:

Anonymous

00:39

> Thank you for your Kindly attention.

Anonymous

Aww, I thought this was a fun question:

Anonymous

ell.stackexchange.com/questions/62969/…

Anonymous

But the author deleted it.

jimsug

That comment was so on point.

ell.stackexchange.com/questions/62969/…

:( No onebox on deleted comments... natch

Anonymous

Sad!

jimsug

00:53

> Looks good to me. As for as if the horse drank the water, who knows. There's a famous quote that says "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink it". – Dronehinge 58 mins ago

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Sometimes I wonder if the more rep points a non-native speaker gets means the more different English the non-native speaker speaks.

@jimsug Oh, the question was deleted!

Damkerng T.

01:22

@snailboat Interesting! I found 535 results of "kindly attention" on Google Books.

(I'd expected something less than a hundred.)

Hmm... I can't get past the 100th page of "kind attention". Does Google cap it at 100?

Anonymous

I guess some people do say it.

Anonymous

Google caps all their results at 1000.

Damkerng T.

A-ha!

Anonymous

Which usually means ten pages, though

Damkerng T.

Ah, my default is 10 results a page.

Anonymous

01:26

Particularly in the main results, which are heavily culled, you'll find it often drops down to significantly less.

Anonymous

You might get, for example, 530 results for a common search term if you try to drill all the way down.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

For example, if I search for "walk in the park"

Anonymous

google.co.jp/…

Damkerng T.

I'm pretty sure that kind attention is way more frequently used than kindly attention.

jimsug

01:27

googlebooks.byu.edu/?c=us&q=40710452

Anonymous

I get 345 results.

jimsug

American Google Corpus with exact numbers :D

Anonymous

That's a lot more than I'd expect.

jimsug

12890 v 1502 for kind attention and kindly attention, respectively

Damkerng T.

@jimsug A-ha!

Anonymous

01:29

What percent of kindly attention is used as a technical term in the context of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy?

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Oh, only 345? I thought the number would've been higher!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Well, I'm certain they have millions upon millions of results.

Anonymous

But you have no way to find that out through the Google search interface.

jimsug

If you click on the link, there's some interesting distribution over time.

Damkerng T.

Ah, you mean that. Got it!

Anonymous

01:30

I added your before kind[ly] attention

jimsug

Wow

googlebooks.byu.edu/?c=us&q=40710500

3711|82 for your kind|kindly attention

I wonder whether your search is including additional hits from Google-uk

Anonymous

1538 versus 14 if we start with 1930 :-)

jimsug

googlebooks.byu.edu/?c=uk&q=40710544

No hits for your kindly attention in Google-uk at all.

Damkerng T.

@jimsug Hah!

jimsug

@snailboat No mention of your kindly attention after the 80s

wait what

okay, I don't even know.

Damkerng T.

02:06

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...

> 1. John and Joe are not both in the room.
2. John and Joe are both not in the room.
3. Either John or Joe is not in the room.
4. Neither John nor Joe is in the room.

I think 1 and 2 are both awkward.

2 seems to sound a little better than 1.

Anonymous

@jimsug The way the GB n-gram corpus was constructed, anything with less than 40 results was excluded entirely.

Damkerng T.

02:39

Note to self: In language learning, try not to turn it into math problems. In math, you solve problems. In language learning, imho, it's better to let your brain 'know'.

^Damkerng on English grammar.

My idea seems to share some traits with SuperMemo, though unlike SuperMemo, if SuperMemo is active learning, my idea is a passive one.

Active learning seems to be more appropriate in error corrections and unlearning, though.

Damkerng T.

04:31

Just noticed this on Amazon.com!

> What is this?
A Lexile® measure represents either an individual's reading ability (a Lexile reader measure) or the complexity of a text (a Lexile text measure). Lexile measures range from below 200L for early readers and text to above 1600L for advanced readers and materials. When used together Lexile measure help a reader find books at an appropriate level of challenge, and determine how well that reader will likely comprehend a text. When a Lexile text measure matches a Lexile reader measure, this is called a "targeted" reading experience. The reader will likely encounter some level of …

A Lexile® measure. Hmm...

So it made it to Amazon.com!

So we're going to have some sort of vocabulary/reading skill standard scale.

> Lexile measures are the GOLD STANDARD for college and career readiness.

> lexile.com/about-lexile/lexile-overview/lexile-infographic

Eww... lots of partners

> lexile.com/about-lexile/how-to-get-lexile-measures/…

They mean business!

> https://www.lexile.com/about-lexile/How-to-get-lexile-measures/
A book, article or piece of text receives a Lexile text measure when it's analyzed by MetaMetrics. We partner with over 200 publishing companies and have measured more than 150,000 books. We also partner with the nation’s largest periodical database service providers, including EBSCO, GALE and ProQuest, to provide Lexile measures for newspaper and magazine articles, as well as encyclopedia and reference content. Through these partnerships, more than 100 million articles and websites have received Lexile measures.

Soon to be big? Maybe it's like Google when Google was still young.

jimsug

> This pangram contains four as, one b, two cs, one d, thirty es, six fs, five gs, seven hs, eleven is, one j, one k, two ls, two ms, eighteen ns, fifteen os, two ps, one q, five rs, twenty-seven ss, eighteen ts, two us, seven vs, eight ws, two xs, three ys, & one z.

Autogram

An autogram (Greek: αὐτός = self, γράμμα = letter) is a sentence that describes itself in the sense of providing an inventory of its own characters. They were invented by Lee Sallows, who also coined the word ‘autogram’. An essential feature is the use of full cardinal number names such as “one”, “two”, etc., in recording character counts. Autograms are also called ‘self-enumerating’ or ‘self-documenting’ sentences. Often, letter counts only are recorded while punctuation signs are ignored, as in this example: This sentence employs two a’s, two c’s, two d’s, twenty-eight e’s, five f’s, three g...

Damkerng T.

A puzzle?

Anonymous

One of the things that can make a text very difficult to read is if the ideas are poorly conceptualized and organized.

Anonymous

Similarly, a text with more complex structure and less common words can present a clearly thought-out idea in an organized manner, and this can make it relatively easy to read.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I wonder if the Lexile measure deals with that in some way. It probably does.

Anonymous

04:42

I have strong doubts.

Anonymous

Besides that, there's a very important aspect of "reading level" that they don't mention:

jimsug

You'd need to see the logic it uses. I would imagine that it uses simple frequency counts and perhaps some collocation analysis.

Anonymous

The difficulty of a text isn't really scalar. It depends on the individual who's reading it and how their vocabulary, the ideas they understand, and so forth relate to the text.

Anonymous

One text can be very difficult for Adam but very easy for Barry, because Adam and Barry have studied different subjects, even though the book is identical for both of them.

Damkerng T.

BTW, I just realize that that's not a typical puzzle, it's an autogram! @jimsug

Anonymous

04:44

That doesn't mean Adam or Barry is a better reader than the other.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Good point. Lexile meaure is just one number.

*s

Typical Reader Measures, by Grade

Grade     Reader Measures, Mid-Year
          25th percentile to 75th percentile (IQR)
1           Up to 300L
2           140L to 500L
3           330L to 700L
4           445L to 810L
5           565L to 910L
6           665L to 1000L
7           735L to 1065L
8           805L to 1100L
9           855L to 1165L
10          905L to 1195L
11 and 12   940L to 1210L

Damkerng T.

04:57

Oh, I didn't know that accidentally can be read "accidently"!

Anonymous

Yeah, I doubt most speakers notice the difference between the two pronunciations when they hear them

Anonymous

Though I imagine the shorter pronunciation is more common . . . ?

Damkerng T.

I don't know which one is more common, but for several seconds I thought that it was pronounced incorrectly as "accidently". :D

Anonymous

I don't really know, either. I'm just speculating based on what it sounds like to me when I say it with and without the syncope to myself.

Anonymous

Syncope is sometimes called syllabic compression.

Anonymous

05:03

It's usually optional, although it's more common with some words than others.

Anonymous

In certain words, it happened long ago and has become part of the word, and in these cases it's usually reflected in spelling: we write hungry and angry but not hungery or angery

Anonymous

In these cases, it's not optional.

Anonymous

The long term trend is generally toward shortening.

Anonymous

I knew if I used bold I'd get a star. Bold is like the cheat code for the star board.

Anonymous

Just to make sure it worked, I bolded literally half the sentence.

Damkerng T.

05:05

LOL

It works!

Damkerng T.

05:16

Hello, @user4215. Our main ELL room is here: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/22937/ells-cabin. See you in there!

Damkerng T.

07:03

Abugida

An abugida /ˌɑːbuːˈɡiːdə/ (from Ge'ez አቡጊዳ ’äbugida), also called an alphasyllabary, is a segmental writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as a unit: each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel notation is secondary. This contrasts with a full alphabet, in which vowels have status equal to consonants, and with an abjad, in which vowel marking is absent or optional. (In less formal contexts, all three types of script may be termed alphabets.) Abugidas include the extensive Brahmic family of scripts of South and Southeast Asia. Abugida as a term in linguistics w...

Damkerng T.

08:14

Word of the Day: rebuff

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. Meta-comment of the day:

-1 because "I then let it be there." — inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M 31 secs ago

Damkerng T.

nods

The creator of a tag will get a badge if there are enough questions using the tag, iirc.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Yes. Taxonomist.

But, Maulik is just shamelessly saying I don't care if ELL's clean or not which really annoys me.

K.

@Dam I gotta go.

BBL!

Damkerng T.

See you!

Anonymous

08:41

2

Q: Why can't I write a space between "an" and "other"?

Every time I have a space between them my answer or question gets edited. This answer suggests it's not a big deal.

spelling

Anonymous

I totally did not notice that the question was backwards.

Anonymous

Wait.

Anonymous

That's because it's forwards.

Anonymous

Phew.

Anonymous

Guess my brain was working the first time :-)

Anonymous

08:47

This is probably a sign that I should try to rest, but I'm not really feeling well, so I don't think I can sleep.

Damkerng T.

15:00

It makes me think "What is word?"

1

Q: Is there a semantic difference between advisor and adviser?

I was trying to make a semantic difference like between Russian words советник (one who occupies the position where he gives advices) and советчик (someone who made an advice) and used advisor for the first and adviser for the second. Yet my dictionary says there is no semantic difference between...

meaning word-choice

Each language has its own way to give what considered important hints in natural, unmarked speech.

Damkerng T.

15:28

Current status: 1992 tabs and 28 more windows

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

Another kind of English?

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.

Damkerng T.

16:24

> Snyder and Isler, who both live in Fayetteville, were two of 12 participants in a 10-episode installment of the Discovery Channel reality show set to premiere Sunday at 9 p.m.

> For the challenge, the survivalists were dropped off in a remote part of the Colombian forest, where they had to fend for themselves for 40 days. The segments were filmed in February and March.

> The participants - six men and six women - braved snakes, poisonous insects and extreme heat. They had little in the way of tools to use to survive.

> And, as the show's title makes clear, they spent their time in the jungle sans clothing.

> fayobserver.com/living/…

'Naked and Afraid XL' -- a documentary, a reality TV show, or what?

I guess it will be blurry everywhere when it's on-air over here.

Damkerng T.

18:52

> I not only think that we will tamper with Mother Nature, I think Mother wants us to.

> --Willard Gaylin (via Gattaca)

An interesting sentence, both in the meaning and in the pattern.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

\o

Damkerng T.

o/

Damkerng T.

19:51

> About the one case I can think of where an other is to be favoured over another is if translating Rimbaud's "Je est un autre", I'd favour "I is an other" to "I is another", ...

Interesting.

(from ELU: english.stackexchange.com/a/154728/11482)

12

Q: "An other" vs "another"

I just edited this answer on unix.sx. The original sentence was But it won't transform it to an other format. I changed this to But it won't transform it to another format. The second form is standard, but is the first correct?

word-choice orthography determiners spacing

in ELL's Cabin, 3 mins ago, by snailboat

Another is one word, not just in writing but in speech; you can't pronounce an other separately like you can the other.

in ELL's Cabin, 2 mins ago, by snailboat

Many speakers today are unaware that another used to be two words.

in ELL's Cabin, 2 mins ago, by snailboat

The nonstandard form "a whole nother" shows that they've resplit it on syllable lines instead of thinking of it as an + other

Anonymous

20:07

I like how I can contribute to this chat room without even trying :-)

Damkerng T.

@snailboat :D

I wonder if I can search for the text in the messages I copied from other rooms.

Oh, I can! Yay!

Anonymous

> The alternative-additive determinative another

Anonymous

> Determinative another derives historically from the compounding of the indefinite article and the adjective other; the consequence of this for the modern language is that the existence of the determinative another blocks the co-occurrence of the indefinite article and other as separate syntactic constituents: *an other book. Determinatives other than the indefinite article precede other without such compounding [ . . . ]

Anonymous

(CGEL p.391)

Damkerng T.

Oh, it sounds similar to your comment posted to that ELU answer.

Anonymous

20:19

True!

Damkerng T.

20:54

2

A: Why can't I write a space between "an" and "other"?

"other" is the only adjective in English that has three forms: other, another, others. You write "another" as one word because it is spoken as one word, but one might say it is a spelling convention.

Interesting that they say another is a form of the adjective other.

Imprecision is accumulating...

in English Language Learners, Aug 16 '14 at 21:22, by Damkerng T.

A random thought of the day: Three desirable qualities of a grammar textbook for L2 learners: accurate, comprehensive, and simplified

Damkerng T.

21:54

0

A: Difference between "even if" and "even though"

The Touchstone series English book, Level 3, that I have explains the two this way. "Even though" is similar to "but" or "despite the fact"; therefore, when using this term in a sentence one should be able to substitute the phrase "even though" for one of the alternate words, which means you ma...

Though it's not far off, I somehow don't like the substitutions much. But for even though? Hmm...

Then again, but for though is probably common in many books.

Anonymous

22:37

@DamkerngT. rogermue is a traditionalist, and "determiner" is a non-traditional category.

Anonymous

Although if you're going to take any one thing from modern linguistics and add it to your traditional grammar of English, determiner would be a great choice :-)

Damkerng T.

@snailboat It's a very nice concept, determiner.

I like the way it sounds too, for some reason. :D

Anonymous

Huddleston calls them determinatives.

Anonymous

But Quirk et al's influential grammar swapped determinative and determiner, and dictionaries these days have mostly adopted the latter as a part of speech.

Anonymous

Unfortunately, Huddleston decided to stick with his original terminology in CGEL, so now we have two different uses of those words.

Damkerng T.

22:48

As always in linguistics, we have many frameworks. :D

Anonymous

              lexical class      Function
Huddleston    determinative      Determiner
Quirk et al   Determiner         determinative

Anonymous

I capitalized the Functions.

Damkerng T.

Many thanks!

Anonymous

In favor of determinative, we can say it's like adjective

Anonymous

Which is also a word class.

Anonymous

22:51

(Word class = lexical class = part of speech)

Damkerng T.

(Ah, J.R. just got the 'an other' question back on track.)

(But that's a whole nother story... :^)) :-)

Anonymous

I love that cute nose smiley!

Damkerng T.

@snailboat nods -- I agree. I just feel weird reading that the adjective other has many forms and another is one of them.

@snailboat Me too!

Anonymous

Even if your answer were correct, that wouldn't give you license to be rude. Please Be Nice. — snailboat 3 hours ago

Anonymous

@snailboat My answer is correct. If not, per SE rules, change it to your liking. Your use of the subjunctive mood in your comment is rude. — User1 2 hours ago

Anonymous

22:54

Maybe it would have been better if I'd said "Regardless of whether your answer is correct,"

Damkerng T.

Probably. To me, it didn't make any real different, but that's just me.

Anonymous

Well, the answer displays a misunderstanding of the full well vs fully well issue, as well as a lack of research.

Anonymous

So I'm not uncomfortable characterizing the answer as mistaken.

Damkerng T.

nods

books.google.com/ngrams/…

knows this fully well doesn't even appear on the chart!

Anonymous

There's a very good reason for that. :-)

Anonymous

22:59

According to this answer, which says that full well is mainly spoken and colloquial, the reason should be that most of the books in Google Books are mainly transcriptions of colloquial speech.

Anonymous

And that Google Books doesn't really contain formal writing.

Anonymous

But this is not, in fact, the case . . .

Anonymous

Full well is in fact a relatively formal collocation, and fully well is a hypercorrection

2

Anonymous

It is not "dialectal, slangy, or [ . . . ] informal"

Damkerng T.

All these threads, comments, and answers about native vs. non-native speakers in the last few days make me think of an analogy: athletes vs. coaches

Anonymous

23:07

Oh yeah?

Damkerng T.

Yes!

Anonymous

Sorry, that was an あいづち, please go on :-)

Damkerng T.

If we think of native speakers as athletes, it's clear that it's so difficult for non-native speakers to compete with them.

@snailboat Ah, don't worry. I wasn't writing anything long in the first place. :D

However, some of non-native speakers can gather more knowledge, more information, more techniques. Those in this group who chose to be teachers will propagate what they have to the next generations.

It may or may not turn out to be true, but the performance of some generation of non-native speakers in the future may not be very far behind.

Damkerng T.

23:40

> If you have a good vocabulary (and sometimes, worse still, if you have not), the temptation is to spurn the obvious word in favour of a high-falutin synonym. So edifice displaces building, for example, and to insinuate displaces to suggest. This habit is fine in moderation, and in the right company. But it soon begins to smack of showing off.

>

> In everyday speaking and writing, you are hardly likely to refer to a well-dressed barber, say, as a tonsorial artist in full sartorial splendour (except in jest). But the chances are that you do occasionally succumb to the temptation of a 'fancy' synonym - saying apropos when you just mean about, or using an archaism such as erstwhile or whence, or writing expedite in a business later instead of speed up or help.

>
--Reader's Digest: How to Write and Speak Better

A tonsorial artist in full sartorial splendor!

Anonymous

Hah!

Anonymous

I don't always use the words I should. I'm aware that I'm not a very good writer, but I use that awareness to try to focus on things like word choice and improve over time :-)

Anonymous

I think edifice and insinuate can both be The Right Word sometimes.

Anonymous

Neither is merely a "high-falutin synonym" of the other words they list.

Anonymous

> 　I suggested we go out for lunch, and he agreed.
> # I insinuated we go out for lunch, and he agreed.

jimsug

23:51

The ~~main~~ other thing is that if you don't have a lot of experience using a language, you are unlikely to know the connotations that a word... connotes, even if you know what the word means.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Yes, I'm sure they are. I think the book tries to warn the reader about the misconception. -- nods

I'm not sure how we learn the connotations of each word.

It seems like it just "happens" in my first language.

In English, maybe it's about reading a lot for most learners.

Transcript for