Language Overflow

Damkerng T.

09:06

@snailboat It makes me think that we probably don't have enough people in a lot of stacks.

The SE model seems to require an amount of people to work smoothly.

Sockpuppets could be a problem, but I think SE staff must already know this.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. People are allowed to have multiple accounts, generally speaking.

Anonymous

It's a problem only if you use them to do bad things, like voting for each other.

Anonymous

I could start a new account here on ELL called Secret Snail, and no one would know it was me.

Damkerng T.

Hah! That sounds like-- Hmm...

Anonymous

Then I could ask questions.

Anonymous

09:09

I mean, I can ask questions now.

Damkerng T.

nods -- It could even work if a small group of people want to take over a stack.

Anonymous

But if I signed up for that account, I could ask questions secretly.

Anonymous

@Man_From_India I'd noticed that I hadn't seen you around as much!

Anonymous

@Man_From_India I hope your internet gets better! :-)

Damkerng T.

@snailboat He mentioned that he now works in a new office. :D

I don't know if he's affected by the flood, though.

Ah, my water is ready!

Anonymous

09:15

I've actually felt like creating a second account like that for a long time, ever since one of the other Japanese.SE moderators mentioned the idea. He said that if you made a non-moderator account, then you could use that one to close vote normally instead of always using the moderator close thingy.

Anonymous

But they actually made it so moderators can't use regular close votes on purpose.

Anonymous

They say if you're afraid to close stuff you think needs closing, you probably shouldn't be moderating.

Anonymous

So I never made one for that reason.

Anonymous

Once in a while I think "Gee, I've annoyed some of the most knowledgeable users on Japanese.SE by suspending them or issuing warnings. It doesn't really seem like those folks are eager to help me out anymore. What if I asked my dumb questions with another account?"

Anonymous

But I think if I made another account, everyone would know it was me right away anyway :-)

Anonymous

09:17

So I never did that, either.

Anonymous

Besides, I think I'd just confuse myself switching between accounts.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Oh!

Anonymous

I confuse myself enough with just one account :-)

Anonymous

But I definitely thought about it before.

Anonymous

One of the ELU moderators has a second account. I think she uses it for her chat bot.

Damkerng T.

09:19

@snailboat This one is quite believable. :P

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Haha, isn't it, though? :-)

Damkerng T.

I think I confuse myself enough with lots of tabs. :D

Anonymous

I do that too.

Anonymous

I also tend to have two browsers open.

Anonymous

See, I use Firefox for just about everything. But my academic search stuff where I grab PDFs of papers doesn't work unless I use Chrome.

Damkerng T.

09:20

Hah!

I don't like it when a site favors only one or a few browsers.

Probably that's why I didn't go to eye-bee-em.

Oh, my friend who chose to work there had a good story about how it's like in big corporates.

Anonymous

Uh-huh?

Damkerng T.

After working their for several years, he'd finally gotten promoted.

As a young soon-to-be executive, he had to attend a regional meeting.

Which all soon-to-be executives around the region would attend.

I think that year was a though year, so this topic came up during their meeting/seminar:

"What is the best way to turn our company back into the profitable zone?"

And then they did some brainstorming.

I think it was either one from Hong Kong or Singapore who stated plainly.

Just fire everyone under such and such conditions. Problem solved.

!

Anonymous

Well then!

Damkerng T.

^Some typos and mistakes up there, but I think you could understand my story. :-)

He (my friend) made me guess before he told me about that solution (which was the winner idea in the meeting).

That thought never crossed my mind!

Anonymous

Oh, sure, the typos didn't cause any harm :-)

Anonymous

09:29

@DamkerngT. At my first job, I started in a team of 30 people.

Anonymous

The team shrank and shrank around me the longer I worked there . . .

Damkerng T.

30 sounds like a good number. Not too small, not too big.

Oh!

Anonymous

After our stock tanked, the CFO unofficially ran the company.

Anonymous

And what she decided was very simple.

Anonymous

She promised the investors a return of $X per head

Anonymous

09:30

A fixed amount.

Damkerng T.

Oh, how could she be sure?

Anonymous

Very simple.

Anonymous

At the end of each quarter, any group that made less than that per head

Anonymous

Had people laid off until the ratio evened out

Anonymous

So every group was always at least that profitable.

Damkerng T.

09:31

Hah!

Anonymous

Needless to say, this was not a long-term strategy.

Damkerng T.

Totally agree!

Anonymous

When I started working there, no one had ever been laid off, and people pretty much never quit

Anonymous

They changed a lot over the years . . .

Anonymous

> Why punctuation rules are more flexible in Japanese is an interesting question. It is possible that the relatively free Japanese word order lets writers avoid ambiguities without resort to commas, by changing word order. Alternatively, as the Japanese language did not have punctuation until relatively recently, punctuation rules may not have been regularized.

Anonymous

09:34

(Effects of punctuation on the processing of temporarily ambiguous sentences in Japanese)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Your grammar has linkers, right?

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Linkers? Like conjunctions?

Anonymous

I mean, you used that word.

Damkerng T.

Oh, my ESL grammar! Yes!

Anonymous

"Linker".

Damkerng T.

09:35

I thought you asked about Thai grammar.

ESL = Entity, Specifier, Linker. :D

Anonymous

I just happened across this: gc.cuny.edu/CUNY_GC/media/CUNY-Graduate-Center/PDF/Programs/…

Damkerng T.

Oh, I read "tii" as "tu"!

> 3b. khon thˆıi ke`N [person-THII-smart]

There are several ways to think of that. Another way besides the ones the paper mentioned is: a/the person who is smart.

Anonymous

Like a relative clause.

Damkerng T.

THII (ที่) can mean "at".

Anonymous

How do you make a relative clause in Thai? Is it simple?

Damkerng T.

09:40

It's exactly that "at"! :D

Anonymous

A-ha!

Damkerng T.

(or this THII)

Anonymous

This paper is surprisingly long.

Anonymous

Hey! They conclude that of is meaningless. :-)

Damkerng T.

The basic formula (we cite them in school) for that is ที่-ซึ่ง-อัน (THII-SUHNG-AHN).

They are the three words that we usually use for that in our translations.

The problem is it's unclear when we will use which.

Anonymous

09:41

They also claim that tʰîi is meaningless.

Anonymous

(Sorry, I don't know how to write it in Thai)

Damkerng T.

But as you know, native speakers usually know which is the right one in a given sentence.

@snailboat ที่-ซึ่ง-อัน = THII-SUHNG-AHN

Anonymous

Oh, you just wrote it

Anonymous

ที่! :-)

Damkerng T.

Yes!

Anonymous

09:42

What does the little tiny mark at the top of ที่ mean?

Damkerng T.

Let me have a closer look.

Oh, I think they meant the tonal mark.

It's tone #2.

Anonymous

My browser is always zoomed in.

Anonymous

Is that ^?

Damkerng T.

Yes! Rise-then-fall.

It's the 7th row (of the nine), 3rd column (of the five).

Oh, my cursor was in the screenshot too!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Interesting thing is, the "cursor" is called "mouse" in Persian.

Damkerng T.

09:48

We have five tones. What I think of tone #2 is the third column.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Sometimes I call it a mouse cursor.

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Makes sense.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Yes. That thing's shape does look like a mouse's.

Damkerng T.

@DamkerngT. You mean I could be right on the possible and probable as noun but the probably and possibly as adjective refers to the degree ? To me, it is probable that tomorrow is rainy is just a chance not how much (tomorrow have this chance), but probably, tomorrow is rainy means there is a high chance that tomorrow is rainy. about it is possible that tomorrow is rainy means almost high chance, as it implies we have observed some signs, though possibly tomorrow is rainy means a low chance — Ahmad 26 mins ago

I thought 3 comments should've been enough!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

75

A: What posts get deleted, and why?

125313 posts were deleted on Stack Overflow during the past 30 days. That breaks down as follows: Post Type Deleted by... Posts Deleted % of total --------- ----------------------------------------------------------- ------------- ---------- Answ...

Wow.

Imagine that much deletion in ELL.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M ELL doesn't have that many questions!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

09:52

ELL doesn't have that many comments, let alone posts.

Anonymous

How many comments do we have, then?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Can it be 100k?!

To SEDE!

@snailboat We have 90k comments.

Anonymous

Wow, which post has 476 comments?

Anonymous

Oh wow

Anonymous

10

Q: What exactly is the word "there" in an existential construction? And related questions

Consider the example below: "There was a cat under the table." There have been numerous questions asked that have involved the topic of existential constructions and the word "there" that is used in them. I would like to see some grammatical rationales that will explain what that word "ther...

Anonymous

09:57

> add a comment | show 471 more comments

Anonymous

HAHA. Um.

jimsug

top-voted comment:

You're being extremely pedantic. Water is, for all intents and purposes, a beverage. If your waitress says "May I take your beverage order?" and you say "Water please", she's not going to correct you. In fact, as a native English speaker I've never heard that water "isn't a beverage" until this minute. I'd suggest that this "distinction" between "beverage" and "drink" must be regional. No one I know would make such a distinction. — Calphool Feb 18 at 16:07

Anonymous

Thanks, Hot Network Questions, for creating highly ranked comments!

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Wow, my browser froze up for a while to load the comments!

jimsug

52

Q: How can native English speakers read an unknown word correctly?

I have learned English for many years, and from the first day I began to learn it I know the dictionary is necessary for the study. One of the important aspects is that English words, unlike German and Spanish, usually can not be read correctly without phonetics. But recently, I talked with som...

pronunciation

^ >10k views

Damkerng T.

09:59

@jimsug Ahh... so it's 62.

jimsug

Oh wow.

Damkerng T.

0

Q: "It is probable" vs. "probably"

We had a discussion about the meaning of "possible" and "probable" in the other question. I know possibility refers to "can", and probability refers to "likelihood", for example we may discuss if it is possible that God exists or not (through logic and argument), but if we talk about the probabi...

difference word-meaning adverbs

sad...

Anonymous

Well, it was 61.

jimsug

19

Q: Usage "in spite of" and "despite of"

What are the difference between these two prepositions: "despite of" and "in spite of"? And what is the general usage of this two: choose in different situation, followed by etc.

difference phrase-usage

Anonymous

sniffle My poor comment was only one point behind . . .

jimsug

10:01

^ 143k views :o

Anonymous

The native speakers who told you that are wrong. — snailboat Oct 19 '14 at 7:47

Anonymous

My top-voted comment.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat How could it drop back to 60?!

A user was deleted?

Anonymous

No, the other thing happened.

Anonymous

The +61 comment was upvoted to +62 :-)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

10:04

I shouldn't have said

10 mins ago, by inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

To SEDE!

Now Jimsug is getting statistical.

Anonymous

SEDE is fun sometimes.

Damkerng T.

BTW... Ahmad asking this question ell.stackexchange.com/q/63305/3281 simply means that the answers in this question ell.stackexchange.com/q/21191/3281 can't help anything. And we've got like, 9 of them!

jimsug

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I am almost always statistical.

Well, for ELL, at least.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

That's another reason for global warming.

Damkerng T.

@jimsug I thought you were from the Candor faction in Divergent. (Just kidding. :P)

jimsug

10:07

Ugh.

My mattress has a lump.

Damkerng T.

Eh?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Sometimes I don't understand these Thai Ehs.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I think it's quite similar to Japanese Eh. :D

But I think I use it for multiple meanings.

Depending on the tone (literally).

I think in Japanese, "Eh?" is in a rising tone.

Anonymous

I always thought they were English "Eh?"s I saw in this chat. :-)

Damkerng T.

Oh, some of mine are English "Eh?" too!

(Probably most of them. :-)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

10:12

Eh?

Damkerng T.

But the last one, I have to admit, it's a Japanese "Eh?" :D

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

^ That's a Persian eh.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Tell us about its meaning! :D

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Sooo, what is the difference between eh and eh?

@DamkerngT. It means eh?.

Damkerng T.

Nichijou - EHHH!?!?

►

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

10:14

@DamkerngT. Eh?

@DamkerngT. They sound like samurais fighting.

Damkerng T.

LOL

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Yakh, are all animes like that?

Anonymous

Anime is just a term for cartoons.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I think snailboat may know that better than me. :D

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Well, I think it goes without saying. So I went without saying :-)

Damkerng T.

10:24

Hehe!

@snailboat Oh, or even better... Ehhhh?! :P

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. えええーーーーっっ！？

Anonymous

Reminds me of: ja.uncyclopedia.info/wiki/…!

Damkerng T.

Anonymous

Aww :-)

Damkerng T.

^えええーーーーっっ！？

It's on the あああああああああ! page!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

10:32

What do these guys with guns in their hands mean?

Damkerng T.

preparing ~~the~~ to duck

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Oh, BTW I'm having potato chips with Jalapeno flavor.

Anonymous

Dip them in habanero sauce!

Damkerng T.

Believe it or not, I've never had flavored potato chips before.

Anonymous

Good for you!

Damkerng T.

10:36

Ah, I thought flavored could be interesting!

Anonymous

Oh, well, sure.

Anonymous

I love sour cream and onion potato chips.

Anonymous

But I wouldn't recommend that people eat them, generally speaking.

Damkerng T.

BTW, I don't know if chips nowadays are GMOed.

Most of them probably are.

Anonymous

Probably. But if you're considering whether potato chips are healthy or not, there are probably more important issues to tackle.

Anonymous

10:40

What is your specific interest in GMO?

Anonymous

By the way, growing up, one of the rules my mother drilled into my head was to say food was healthful and people were healthy

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I don't know. It's just too new to me. :-)

Anonymous

But I eventually reverted to my old habits because healthful sounded strange to me.

Damkerng T.

I mean, it's too new for me to tell whether it's really safe or not.

@snailboat Dictionaries agree with her!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Yes! My mother is good at being agreed with by dictionaries.

Anonymous

10:43

Doesn't change the fact that only healthy sounds natural to me in this context, though :-)

Damkerng T.

Hehe!

Anonymous

(That would normally be a very strange passive, but I'm trying to coerce being agreed with into something conceptualized as a skill.)

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I was able to sense that it was probably similar to "Am liked by cats, I" in Japanese. :D

Anonymous

→ I upvoted for the cute picture japanese.stackexchange.com/a/26113/1478

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. 猫に好かれた私？

jimsug

10:46

Quick straw poll: How do you read the following sentence aloud?

> I want to be an actor/choreographer

Specifically, the / character, I suppose.

Anonymous

Actor slash choreographer.

Anonymous

In my vocabulary slash is a coordinator.

Anonymous

I tend to read / that way.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat 猫は私が好きです。

@jimsug I read it the same way snailboat does.

I think I got it from The Producers.

jimsug

Hmm. I've heard it stroke before, which is interesting.

Anonymous

10:48

@jimsug In BrE?

jimsug

@snailboat Quite possibly. It's hard to tell where Australians get their vocabulary from, these days.

Also, somewhat related: npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/04/24/178892759/…

Anonymous

Do AuE/NZE use stroke rather than slash?

jimsug

I know it's old news, but still.

Anonymous

In my experience stroke is a British thing and slash an American thing. My experience doesn't extend to other regions.

jimsug

@snailboat Anecdotally, I've heard slash more often than stroke.

Anonymous

10:50

I think slash is also used in BrE, though.

Anonymous

A BrE speaker might know more (is slash specifically a BrE computing thing?)

Anonymous

@jimsug Oh, yes! Though slash-as-coordinator was proposed before that: languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2584

Anonymous

Sorry, I linked to the wrong message.

Anonymous

Another thing I'd wonder is if slash has been replacing stroke in BrE.

jimsug

@snailboat It's not just its function as a coordinator, but the logical relation has extended to include elaboration, as well as alternation.

Hmm. is alternation the right word? In any case…

Anonymous

10:55

I've always taken the semantic relationship between lists of things joined with / to be rather vague, actually . . .

jimsug

is it just an alternative to the comma?

Anonymous

It doesn't seem like it. You can't do stuff like "A/B/C/D and E", can you?

jimsug

Well, without the and, I guess.

Damkerng T.

Except for the last element in the list, it does sound like a comma.

jimsug

So rather than A, B, C, and D it's A/B/C/D

Also, this is where the word slash clearly couldn't be replaced by the punctuation:

> I spent all day in the UgLi [library] yesterday writing my French paper slash posting pictures of cats on my sister’s Facebook wall.

could it? Maybe.

Damkerng T.

10:58

I think I can think of it like and.

jimsug

Ah, here:

> I really love that hot dog place on Liberty Street. Slash can we go there tomorrow?

Damkerng T.

@jimsug Hah! People really say that?

jimsug

I mean... wherever else you can use it, / does not go there, even if it were to replace . Slash

Curzan's blog: chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2013/04/24/…

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Dam You answered something recently?

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Yes. A couple questions.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

11:08

@DamkerngT. Link!

Damkerng T.

Huh?

ell.stackexchange.com/questions/41451/dare-to-be-dull/…, and ell.stackexchange.com/questions/63291/…

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Gimme da links to them.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I thought you had run into it actually.

(one of them, I mean)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Not actually.

Damkerng T.

Huh? +30 at once!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

11:12

At thrice.

Damkerng T.

I still can't figure out why the other answer got +4. The only explanation I can think of is that the upvoters read the answer/question too quickly.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. Maybe cuz it's 7 months old?

Damkerng T.

It was +3 before I posted my answer, and it went to +4 before I got any upvote.

So there must be at least one user who saw both answers and think the now +4 one is correct.

Maybe it's not a real problem. I mean, there are several views people have on voting.

I remember someone said something on the meta site suggesting that on ELL, upvoting is used to suggest that the upvoted answer is correct.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. You should know better.

A lot of ELLers are blindly voting.

Damkerng T.

But recently, on our meta site, another user said that the asker shouldn't care about the votes. They should read the answers and decide on themselves which answer is correct.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

11:20

Which is, close to improbable for some people.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Oh, I think we got robo-voters too, yes.

Also, sometimes we do pity voting.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. Nah, the only robo-voter is you.

The others are human.

That's why they're usually blind.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M LOL -- That's too literal!

Hey, our vote stats page still says that nobody voted this week!

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Oh, I just remember! I think we've got a badge for voting too.

Probably that's why.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. Two badges.

Silver and gold.

Damkerng T.

We give them the incentive for voting. We don't give them the incentive for voting well.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

11:23

Yes.

Scripts actually can't decide what vote was justified.

Damkerng T.

Hehe! If we can code that, we probably don't have SE. :P

waiting for Skynet, patiently...

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

You conspiracy theorist!

On another note, I'd love to see Ultron coming.

Damkerng T.

Is it in the theater now?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

You kidding me?

It's been out for some months.

Damkerng T.

Haha! Sorry, I haven't looked into its schedule 'cause I know that it'll be many more months before I can view it.

See, I just saw Transformers 4 a couple weeks ago.

How many months was that after the theatrical release?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

11:31

3 centuries.

How am I supposed to know?

Damkerng T.

> Release dates: June 19, 2014

That's a little longer than one whole year!

Edge of Tomorrow is coming up next week.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Hehe:

We're always watching you — Ben Brocka May 15 '13 at 15:13

Damkerng T.

> Release dates: May 28, 2014

Again, over a year!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

-7

Q: Change sharing message to icons

I find the "Know someone who can answer? Share a link to this question via email, Google+, Twitter, or Facebook." a bit messy. Could this be changed to the traditional sharing buttons that appear on a lot of websites today. I think it would give a more refined look to the sight.

feature-request sharing

Damkerng T.

You left out Digg. That's racist! — Shog9 ♦ Nov 14 '13 at 1:23

Haha!

@Shog9 Digg is in there ^^ You probably didn't notice because they changed their logo. — Josh Crozier Nov 14 '13 at 1:23

Oops! I did the same mistake!

See, icons are not the best UI!

jimsug

11:39

Is Digg the checkerboard icon?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

UX actually.

@jimsug I have no idea.

Damkerng T.

@jimsug It's the blue one.

The 7th one on the top row.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. Almost all of them are blue in some way.

Oh.

"decreasing chance with greater reputation" I love little details like this. — BoltClock's a Unicorn Feb 27 '12 at 20:03

Edit revision of the day: meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/80910/3

Damkerng T.

LOL

(from the paper snailboat linked to above: Complex Noun Phrases and Linkers)

The way they gloss them, 7b in particular, is quite interesting.

> 7b. ไม่-มี-อะไร-ที่-แปลก-เกิดขึ้น-เมื่อเช้า-นี้
Maj mii araj tii plaek kerdkuhn muhachaaw nii
not have what THII strange happened morning this

They chose to gloss both เกิดขึ้น and เมื่อเช้า as one unit.

I'm not sure about the reason. I can't know their reason. I can guess two possibilities, though.

One is they really think that glossing เกิดขึ้น is better than เกิด-ขึ้น (and เมื่อเช้า is better than เมื่อ-เช้า).

Maybe they think it's indivisible or it's better not to divide them.

The other (which I think is quite likely the real reason, especially for เมื่อเช้า) is that it easier to gloss this way because of English.

Let's try to decompose them...

Transcript for