Language Overflow

Usernew

07:27

0

Q: "Today current local will be rain" makes sense?

I'm studying English listening to CNN student news. http://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/26/studentnews/sn-content-weds/index.html At 5:54, the audio sounds like "Today current local will be rain" (also the script). However, I think, but not sure, the sentence is grammatically broken. Shouldn't it be...

"Today current local will be rain"

*current local weather will be rainy

Damkerng T.

That sounds really strange!

Robospeak?

Usernew

yeah

yes

that's why it's better to ask another robot :P

Damkerng T.

Haha!

This robot thinks that robot could use a better grammartron!

Usernew

:D

should I simply say, "No, it's doesn't make any sense" :D

perhaps the robot is just in alpha version.

Damkerng T.

I think it makes some sense, but people wouldn't normally say that.

Usernew

07:32

yes

It's feeded

that's the problem

but I still think it should be "rainy," and not "rain"

Damkerng T.

nods

Usernew

It's a poor case of ____? I don't know

yesterday I heard something like, "Hold your rainbow, my pony friend" :D

that's a cute and girly version of "hold your horses, man"

Damkerng T.

Hehe!

Usernew

:D

I'm not sure if it's a technical glitch or a badly edited script, but I'm pretty sure "Today current local will be rain" is grammatically incorrect. — Varun KN 26 mins ago

I don't think it's a technical glitch.

Damkerng T.

I think it's technically not that ungrammatical.

Usernew

07:41

the comment?

Damkerng T.

The forecast that the robot said.

I can imagine a weatherman saying something like "Today's forecast is rain, more rain, and damn more rain!"

Usernew

I think that too, but really odd and never heard of that

hahaha!

or today, it will rain, blah blah

Damkerng T.

nods

Usernew

perhaps a typo?

Damkerng T.

A typo? Of what?

Usernew

07:45

rain

Damkerng T.

(And where?!)

Usernew

instead of rainy

cz that makes more sense

Damkerng T.

Hmm... I think rain is a little better than rainy, personally.

V.V.

3

Usernew

is that @snailboat? @V.V.

Damkerng T.

07:46

Oh, I'm sure @snailboat loves it!

Usernew

@DamkerngT. hmm

snails have a really weird way of mating

but let's not talk about that.

Damkerng T.

I think a more idiomatic way in weather reports would be something like "Today will be cloudy with a chance of rain".

"Today will be rainy" would be fine.

Usernew

did some google book search

"weather will be rainy" 420 results

Damkerng T.

But "Today current local will be"? I don't know how I should finish that sentence!

Usernew

"weather will be rain" 2

@DamkerngT. that's really a weird sentence

V.V.

07:53

@snailboat, it's for you!

Damkerng T.

What if you change weather to forecast?

Usernew

google.co.in/…

1 result for ""weather forecast will be rainy"

Damkerng T.

"Today's forecast will be rainy" sounds odd.

Usernew

"weather forecast will be rain"

0 result

maybe I am not searching correctly :D

Damkerng T.

Try "forecast is rain".

Usernew

07:55

here we have more results for "rain"

"forecast is rain" 334

"forecast is rainy" 4

I think we should watch some weather forecast :D

Damkerng T.

I think forecast will be rain is weird because of the tense.

Usernew

yeah, I guess.

o/

Damkerng T.

But rain as a forecast is fine. The/Today's weather will be rainy is also fine.

Usernew

have to go now

Damkerng T.

Okay, see you!

Usernew

07:57

yes, endless possibilities?

see ya!

Damkerng T.

The problem with the robot's weather report is I'm not sure what it means by Today current local!

Let's see if we can find that in books.

Okay, two false positives.

We can conclude that that robot is weird. :P

CowperKettle

08:15

@V.V. Beautiful photo!

Good morning all!

@snailboat I wonder if this is a for-insertion:

> For the wages were low and the hours were long
And the labor was all I could bear.
Now you've got new machines **for** to take my place
And you tell me it's not mine to share.

Really, V.V.; a very baroque photo.

PhMgBr

08:41

@V.V. This is lovely.

^ One of the few messages in this chat from me that don't contain sarcasm

Damkerng T.

09:23

1

Q: The reaction is fastest at the boiling point of (the?) ammonia

From Sodium amide, Wikipedia: Sodium amide can be prepared by the reaction of sodium with ammonia gas, but it is usually prepared by the reaction in liquid ammonia using iron(III) nitrate as a catalyst. The reaction is fastest at the boiling point of the ammonia, c. −33 °C. Shouldn't it be ...

articles

Hmm... I think I agree with CowperKettle, the boiling point of ammonia sounds better than the ammonia to me.

PhMgBr

the boiling point of the ammonia can be right in a few contexts.

Like you're reacting some ammonia, and you're talking about some time during the reaction.

Damkerng T.

Yes, but -33 C suggests that this ammonia is nothing special at all.

PhMgBr

Not necessarily

Damkerng T.

I think, with the, we could read it as 'the ammonia in the reaction" but it's not really needed.

PhMgBr

Oh.

Now I read @Cowp's context.

It doesn't work in this case.

Damkerng T.

09:29

Wikipedia is hardly a model of really good English, I think.

But the question makes me wonder how often we use the generic the with an element name in general, in any case.

BTW, I edited a question and left the only tag "grammar" with it today. :-)

I couldn't think of a good tag for it, really.

CowperKettle

@DamkerngT. generic noun phrase, a good tag

Good afternoon, Dam!

Damkerng T.

@CowperKettle Good afternoon!

(But the question I edited wasn't about noun phrases!)

Usernew

13:27

@CowperKettle Saw Kin-dza-dza! a month ago. It was very good. But the quality of picture wasn't that good. :(

But what does the title mean?

@CowperKettle

CowperKettle

@Usernew - yes, a great movie! I'm glad you liked it. I don't recall the exact meaning of the title.

It means nothing particular in Russian. A combination of sounds. (0:

@Usernew I'm a bit busy. Maybe you could recommend similar absurd humor movies made in India. (0:

Mrstupid

an anyone help me?

I saw an ad on TV that said a line which I don't think is grammatical or maybe it is

just not sure.

the Line>

'Colgate has been there in the house.'

whereas I think it must be

'Colgate has been in the house.'

which one is right?

anyone there?

CowperKettle

13:46

Flyboard® Air Farthest flight by hoverboard (achieved on 30th April 2016 by Franky Zapata)

►

Wow! Two kilometers' flight!

Mrstupid

anyone?

johnchae

14:10

@Mrstupid I don't see a problem with the first one?

Oh, didn't notice that you'd left

CowperKettle

15:26

0

Q: Term for Having Found Out the Mundane Truth Behind Something

It's on the tip of my tongue, but doesn't want to bubble to the surface. I thought you people might be able to help me recall this word. It would apply in the following examples to fill in the blanks: After believing for years that the strange structure was created by alien lifeforms, fin...

word-request phrase-request idiom-request

"Epiphanic"? (0:

Anonymous

16:48

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=25453

CowperKettle

17:27

Nice post!

Top of the evening, Snails.

Anonymous

Good morning!

PhMgBr

17:40

Morning!

PhMgBr

18:24

Question of the day:

meta.stackexchange.com/questions/279000/why-use-co-in-node-js

Oh wait, deleted.

:'(

It was such a high quality question.

Anonymous

20:19

@CowperKettle You could ask about that for to on EL&U!

Anonymous

I believe for to infinitives of purpose developed in Early Middle English but are now archaic.

Damkerng T.

Hi! @snailboat

2

Q: Is concision needed here?

I have two question in below two sentences, which are highlighted in bold. Q1: Is it fine to retain "The shipping of raw materials being improved" in the corrected version? Q2: What is the difference between "economical" and "economic"? Please provide relevant examples to understand more. I...

word-usage

Anonymous

Hello!

Damkerng T.

I think the question above is precisely an example of questions that learners who learn to speak first may have a problem with.

Anonymous

I don't understand. Neither version seems more concise.

Damkerng T.

20:24

nods -- IIRC, these tests (GRE or GMAT) usually phrase it as "better".

Anonymous

I count 7 words in both, 13 syllables in both, and about the same length in inches on the page. I can't figure out any measure of "concision" by which one or the other would come out ahead.

Damkerng T.

Choose the best sentence or something like that.

Anonymous

Sure.

Anonymous

And I think most people would agree the second sentence is better.

Damkerng T.

nods

Maybe the way the alternatives presented made them think of "concision" in their first language.

(How often do we say "concision" in English anyway?!)

Anonymous

20:26

I pretty much never say it.

Anonymous

I replaced it with "being concise" mentally when I read it.

Damkerng T.

A-ha! Makes sense!

I can think of a word-- oh, no, it's unclear what word I'm thinking in my first language!

Anonymous

52 results for concision in COCA, 857 for concise.

Damkerng T.

It's because in Thai, it's not always clear that the word is a noun or an adjective!

Anonymous

I think we tend to favor concise overwhelmingly in regular speech, but in formal writing (say, a book review) concision might not be out of place.

Damkerng T.

20:28

nods -- I guess so.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Some languages have enough morphological marking that it's usually clear. Japanese, for example :-) English is in between.

Damkerng T.

Hah! I thought English was usually clearer than Japanese.

Anonymous

For parts of speech? Hardly!

Anonymous

English has lost a lot of its inflectional morphology over the last thousand years.

Anonymous

Japanese is still heavily inflected.

Damkerng T.

20:30

Ahh-- I wonder how Japanese speakers think of words.

Anonymous

It's interesting, really. In Japanese, adjectives have what you might call an adverbial form.

Anonymous

軽い karui 'light', 軽く karuku 'lightly'

Damkerng T.

More specifically, if they think the inflection or the particle that is added to a word is part of the word.

Oh!

Anonymous

Japanese speakers overwhelmingly consider い and く to be part of the word.

Damkerng T.

A-ha!

Anonymous

20:32

They're called 活用語尾 katsuyō gobi 'inflectional ending' in Japanese.

Anonymous

And 軽い and 軽く are two 活用形 katsuyō-kei 'inflectional forms'.

Anonymous

That is, they're both considered forms that an adjective can appear in.

Anonymous

軽く is not considered an adverb, but a form of an adjective.

Damkerng T.

Oh!

Anonymous

But among English-speaking learners it's very common to refer to 軽く as an adverb.

Anonymous

20:33

This tends to be confusing for native speakers of Japanese :-)

Anonymous

See, Japanese has lots of adverbs, but they're generally morphologically quite different.

Anonymous

You can tell 軽く is an adjective form by its shape, and by its alternation with the other adjective forms like 軽い and 軽かった.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I suppose that native speakers of Japanese learning English will have another problem the other way around. :-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. That orange is orange.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat It works in Thai, too!

Anonymous

20:35

Neat! :-)

Damkerng T.

Or "That orange is orange-orange" even. :D

(We love reduplication!)

Anonymous

The less morphologically distinct lexical classes are, the more you have to rely on function to distinguish them, and the classes themselves tend to become less important.

Anonymous

Especially because without the morphological marking to make it difficult, it's easy to convert words from one class to another, so you can do so much more freely.

Damkerng T.

I guess we can't do that as freely in Japanese.

Anonymous

Yeah. I mean, when literally every Japanese verb ends in -(r)u, the only words you can convert directly to verbs are words that, by chance, also end that way.

Anonymous

20:37

For example, daburu 'double' becomes dabur-u.

Anonymous

Whereas in a language without much inflectional morphology, it should be easier to convert from one class to another without changing the form of the word.

Anonymous

Do you think it's easy to do so in Thai?

Anonymous

It's certainly easier in English than in Japanese.

Damkerng T.

I think so. It's probably too easy that it's ambiguous!

Anonymous

And I would expect it to be easier in Thai than in English.

Damkerng T.

20:41

nods -- [ส้ม-นี่-ซ้ม-ส้ม] [orange-this-orange-orange]

(BTW, in reduplication, we usually change the tone or the vowel of a word. I'm not sure about the pattern. I think we usually do that in the words before the last word.)

Obama Drops The Mic On The Press

►

Hah! I think this one is real! :-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Maybe that counts as a kind of reduplication tone sandhi! :-)

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Oh! I hadn't heard that term before!

Anonymous

I think it happens with reduplication in other tonal languages, too.

Anonymous

Although the pattern might be different in other languages.

Anonymous

Can you come up with a nonce-word and reduplicate it, and see the same phenomenon?

Anonymous

20:51

Like if someone gave you the word wug in English, and you said wug-wug.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat In Thai?

Anonymous

Yes

Anonymous

Your choice of tone for the basic word :-)

Damkerng T.

Hmm... ไม่รู้ร่ง-ไม่รู้เรื่อง

Oh, I changed only the vowel in that one!

ไม่จิ๊ง-ไม่จริง [not-true--not-true] -- The first จิ๊ง is the high tone, the second จริง is the neutral tone.

ต้อนร้ง-ต้อนรับ -- I changed both the vowel and the ending-consonant, but kept the tone the same.

Sometimes, reduplication simply duplicates the word.

สนุกมากมาก [fun-very-very] -- Which is why we commonly write it as สนุกมาก ๆ (It happens often enough that we have a character for it!)

Oh! This one is funny.

ก่งก๊ง

== ภาษาไทย == === รากศัพท์ === แผลงมาจาก ก๊ง + ก๊ง === การออกเสียง === === คำกริยา === ก่งก๊ง มึน ๆ, งง ๆ เมื่อคืนนอนดึก ตื่นขึ้นมาตอนเช้าเลยก่งก๊ง == อ้างอิง == ราชบัณฑิตยสถาน. พจนานุกรมคำใหม่ เล่ม 1 ฉบับราชบัณฑิตยสถาน. พิมพ์ครั้งที่ 2. กรุงเทพฯ : ธนาเพรส, 2553. หน้า 1....

ก่งก๊ง "kong (low) kong (high)"

I don't have a good English word for it. It's probably something like "durr".

ก๊ง "kong" is from Chinese, meaning in Thai is drink or drunken. I think the word in Chinese means the cup we use when drinking (liquor). So the sense shifted a little when it was borrowed into Thai (if I'm not mistaken).

Anonymous

21:10

Wiktionary says it's from 管, which is guǎn in Mandarin today. Literally 'pipe; tube'

Damkerng T.

Ah! I think I just wrote a run-on sentence, but what's done is done. :-)

@snailboat Oh, a pipe, not a cup?!

This page th.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%B8%81%E0%B9%8A%E0%B8%87 says กระบอก. กระบอก literally means "cylinder". I'm not sure how they used cylinders for drinking!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I tried looking to see if it had been used to refer to drinking vessels in Chinese, but I couldn't find that anywhere.

Damkerng T.

Interesting!

Anonymous

Which is not to say that it wasn't, just that my resources might be too limited to confirm it if so :-)

Damkerng T.

BTW, there are lots of words related to ก๊ง by sounds that are also related to drinking! ก๊ง กรึ๊บ กึ๊บ กรึ่ม, perhaps more.

A-ha! I know why I thought ก๊ง was a cup! It's because when we say ก๊ง in Thai, it could imply a specific amount of liquor we're going to have, i.e., one (small) drinking cup.

(I just found this sentence which reminds me of that. เหล้า 1 ก๊งจะมีปริมาณเท่ากับ 1 ถ้วยเล็ก. ~ "One ก๊ง of liquor has the same quantity as one small cup.")

Then again, I don't think anyone really uses that kind of cup anymore.

Hey, I think I just found a cup that size!

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2703907/…

The 500-year-old cup was sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong auction in April to Mr Liu for about £21million

Hahaha!

Ah! The OP deleted their question probably because of my comment!

ell.stackexchange.com/questions/89050/meaning-of-totally-ruined

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