Language Overflow

Anonymous

00:49

@Færd I imagine in common speech, people would be most likely to pick for out of that set.

Anonymous

Just my personal impression.

Anonymous

01:17

thestack.com/cloud/2016/07/18/…

Anonymous

> Netflix has announced that it will be streaming new episodes of the highly-anticipated Star Trek TV reboot within 24 hours of their first network showing when the project launches in early 2017 – in all of its 188 foreign territories.

Anonymous

At least there won't be any "This video is not available in your country" for Star Trek!

user208178

hello @snailplane I hope you are well.

user208178

so you changed your name I noticed :-)

user208178

they launched Netflix here as well this year.

user208178

01:26

In Jan I guess.

Anonymous

in English Language & Usage, May 4 at 19:17, by snail plane

Planes are slightly faster than snails, so sometimes snails like to use them to move around.

user208178

heh good one!

CowperKettle

Guten morgen!

user208178

Morning!

user208178

you are early. it is 6:30 am.

CowperKettle

01:32

Yes.. I'll go for a walk, then resume translation..

user208178

me, I have very bad timings.

CowperKettle

"bad timings"?

user208178

yeah, I mean some days I'm a night owl and others a morning bird.

CowperKettle

ah!

user208178

so you changed your name as well.

user208178

01:33

nice

CowperKettle

Good sleep is important. One should sleep with no noise and with no lights on.

user208178

I was "Vitamin C" when I created this account :-)

user208178

yeah <nods>

CowperKettle

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...

BBL!

user208178

See you later.

Færd

02:27

@snailplane Thanks. Your personal impression is valuable for me.

This Ngram is too vague to be meaningful, but still: adjective of/for/about

CowperKettle

Word of the morning: brake-harrow

> Morton's revolving brake harrow (fig. 355.) is a very powerful implement in strong clayey soils infested with couch.

Infested with.. couch?

> Couch grass, a species of persistent grass, Elymus repens, usually considered a weed.

> And more than that—a furlong on—why, there!
What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,
Or brake, not wheel—that harrow fit to reel
Men’s bodies out like silk? with all the air
Of Tophet’s tool, on earth left unaware,
Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.

I thought Tophet was a personal name..

Tophet

For the sacred precinct of Carthage with that name, see Carthage. In the Hebrew Bible Tophet or Topheth (Hebrew: תוֹפֶת‎‎; Greek: Ταφεθ; Latin: Topheth) was a location in Jerusalem in the Gehinnom where worshipers influenced by the ancient Canaanite religion engaged in the human sacrifice of children to the gods Moloch and Baal by burning them alive. Tophet became a theological or poetic synonym for hell within Christendom. The traditional explanation that a burning rubbish heap in the Valley of Hinnom south of Jerusalem gave rise to the idea of a fiery Gehenna of judgment is attributed to Rabbi...

CowperKettle

03:23

When a plastic-making factory is left suddenly without feedstock, can we say that it was put into a "circulation mode"? Meaning, it just circulates the existing feedstock without producing anything, to keep the facilities operational.

Maybe there is some other expression in English

Damkerng T.

03:39

@CowperKettle Hmm... couch? Is it a sofa?

@CowperKettle I can't think of a factory in that condition, not to mention a word for it!

CowperKettle

@DamkerngT. Good morning!

I found out it's okay.

Refineries are put into circulation mode - you can google it.

Only it's "circulation mode" without an article, like Snailboat's "pog form".

Damkerng T.

Oh, it's a refinery. I was thinking about those plasticware factories.

CowperKettle

No, it's not a refinery in my case, but close

Damkerng T.

nods -- "pog form".

CowperKettle

It makes high density polyethylene from feedstock.. almost like a refinery

Now I'll go and be infested with couch for awhile.. zzz-zzz..

Damkerng T.

03:45

nods

LOL

Chinese scientist who makes Americans laugh

►

Chemists can make jokes, too!

Damkerng T.

04:08

@snailplane I've never played Pogs, though. BTW, good evening!

@snailplane And yay! for the news!

I don't know if I'll subscribe to Netflix, though. (It'll cost me ten bucks a month or so.)

Anonymous

That's fair. It's a pretty good deal here though, I think.

Anonymous

If you want to watch stuff on Netflix, anyway.

Anonymous

I haven't been watching any television lately.

Anonymous

Good evening!

Damkerng T.

nods -- It's much cheaper than my cable, anyway! (But I haven't checked what I'll get from Netflix.)

Anonymous

04:12

The only television I've been watching lately is in the waiting room at the hospital. I just can't shut it out well enough mentally to read, so I give up and watch.

Damkerng T.

Aww -- hope they have some good channels on TV. :D

Anonymous

It's not really to my taste, but that's okay. Whatchagonnado? :-)

Damkerng T.

Watching Netflix or playing Pogemon Go instead? :P

Anonymous

I've always been very bad at shutting out television and radio. I just can't focus on other things while they're playing.

Anonymous

I try to read, but after a while I realize I've been on the same page for forever :-)

Anonymous

04:15

There's no reception on my phone at the hospital.

Damkerng T.

Do they still have some newspapers and magazines around in the hospital?

@snailplane Oh, that's strange!

Anonymous

The infusion center is underground, on the basement level.

Damkerng T.

You can't make an emergency call to a hospital in a hospital, then!

Anonymous

There are magazines, but I prefer to bring a book. I always have books with me no matter where I go :-)

Anonymous

Right now the book in my purse is the Japaness translation of the first Dresden Files book.

Damkerng T.

04:16

That reminds me of someone I know. :D

Anonymous

Oops, my phone didn't catch that typo.

Damkerng T.

Oh, in Japanese?!

Anonymous

Guess I gotta catch 'em all myself!

Damkerng T.

I wasn't aware of the typo!

Anonymous

I like to read translations. It's sort of a hobby, looking at how people chose to translate things.

Anonymous

04:18

The topic of funner came up in another chat room recently.

Damkerng T.

Talking about translation, I spotted a lot of incorrect translation lately!

Anonymous

That is the regularized comparative form of the adjective fun, used in place of the periphrastic comparative more fun. But what is fun, exactly?

Damkerng T.

@snailplane funner! Not funnier? Hmm... I guess both are fine, then.

Anonymous

fun : funner :: funny : funnier

Damkerng T.

nods -- I don't know why funner sounds weird to me. :P

(Just a little)

Anonymous

04:21

Because fun hasn't really finished becoming a full fledged adjective.

Damkerng T.

Maybe I didn't expect it, and it usually is more fun after the verb be.

@snailplane A-ha!

Anonymous

It's an adjective for more innovative, younger speakers like me.

Anonymous

But it's only kind of adjective-y for many speakers.

Damkerng T.

I guess It's more fun sounds quite okay to me, but It was a funner evening sounds a bit weird.

Anonymous

The inflections -er and -est aren't available on this word for many speakers.

Anonymous

04:23

They may be perceived as nonstandard or colloquial.

Anonymous

We would expect them since fun is a one-syllable adjective, though.

Damkerng T.

nods -- Somehow I think I haven't heard them (funner, funnest) very often.

Anonymous

Instead most people use the periphrastic comparative and superlative forms.

Anonymous

What if you regard fun as a noun?

Anonymous

@Catija By the way, I'm pinging you about funner :-)

Damkerng T.

04:27

@snailplane I think it's unclear what it is in It's fun.

Anonymous

Because there's syntactic overlap between adjectives and nouns in predicative complement position, right?

Damkerng T.

Yes!

Anonymous

It's that sort of overlap that often allows words to be reanalyzed as another part of speech (lexical class).

Anonymous

Like how participial verb forms often become derived adjectives.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Now how about It's more fun? Adjective, noun, or ambiguous?

Damkerng T.

04:33

It's clearly an adjective.

Hmm... maybe not that clear, but very, very likely.

Anonymous

05:04

@DamkerngT. If I were at my computer, I'd try to demonstrate that funnest has had more success than funner, but I can't do so easily from my phone.

Anonymous

Hard to use corpora on this thing.

Anonymous

Funner and funnest both sound okay to me, by the way :-)

Damkerng T.

Ahh -- I guess they sound a little weird to me, but they're okay when I think about them.

@snailplane There are more funnests than funners indeed!

Anonymous

I wouldn't use them where formal standard English is expected, though.

Damkerng T.

Hmm... they rarely appear in the fiction section of the corpus either.

Anonymous

05:12

I imagine learners are still taught that both forms are wrong.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Thanks for the chart! :-)

Damkerng T.

@snailplane Could be. I haven't been taught so, though. They're more like two words that we won't talk about. :P

@snailplane My pleasure!

Anonymous

05:38

@DamkerngT. No fun is allowed while learning English!

2

CowperKettle

"When you're choosing where in Europe to go for a summer holiday"

Damkerng T.

@snailplane Now it makes perfect sense!

@CowperKettle Oh, no!

CowperKettle

@DamkerngT. A bit of black Russian humor from a local webforum

Because some Russians were killed in Nice

@snailplane But I can see that some pun is allowed!

Damkerng T.

@CowperKettle What happened in Nice was tragic.

CowperKettle

Yes

Damkerng T.

05:53

I'm afraid that it won't be the last, alas.

CowperKettle

I'm not reading about such cases. They will go on. People often go mad, and these things will happen, like earthquakes happen.

In previous times, it was the anarchists, the nationalists, now its the other kind.

Damkerng T.

I don't know what to think, when it happens again and again.

CowperKettle

Maybe just take it as a side effect of civilization. When you walk along the street, a piece of tiling can get unstuck from the 11th floor and fall on you.

Damkerng T.

Heh! -- It could happen indeed!

CowperKettle

I don't see how you can prevent any person from going mad like Breivik etc.

Or detect him in advance.

Damkerng T.

06:00

Our technologies are state of the art, the best in the history of mankind, and yet they can't help us much in this regard.

CowperKettle

God forbid if they help us. That would mean surveillance over everyone. (0:

Damkerng T.

:D -- I guess we're moving in that direction, though. :P

Things like these may help fueling it.

CowperKettle

It's better to have a terror attack now and then than a surveillance state.

Damkerng T.

nods

CowperKettle

A surveillance state can just wipe out all dissenters using the new tech.

Damkerng T.

06:04

@CowperKettle We already have full body scanners installed in, I don't know, all major airports in the west?

CowperKettle

There have been attacks on anti-Putin activists in Russia in recent months. They were picked by their posts in Vkontakte. Allegedly Putin's friend is overseeing this.

A guy who served as a Chief Cook in the Kremlin.

@DamkerngT. There are metal detectors everywhere in Yekaterinburg, but there are useless

The guards just let you pass, the stream of people is too big to stop everyone who goes into the subway.

Damkerng T.

nods

Gotta have my lunch. See you later! o/

Hello, and bye! @skillpatrol

CowperKettle

See you!

skill patrol

Hi bye

CowperKettle

How is bon appetite in Thai?

gin hâi a-ròi!

taan hâi a-ròi!

Damkerng T.

06:08

Thanks!

CowperKettle

(0:

skill patrol

(0;

^my version

CowperKettle

Yay!

CowperKettle

06:56

Dorboe utro, @V.V.!

CowperKettle

07:15

I wonder if there exist collections of sample tables in English - I mean tables with data used inside companies, so that a person can learn the terminology used in table headings. I mean, "approved by", "calibration due", etc. - to learn the officialese formulations.

skill patrol

07:26

You could ask at Quant.SE

They may know...

CowperKettle

07:41

Thank you, @skillpatrol

skill patrol

08:34

np

CowperKettle

@snailplane Is it a good read?

There is no Russian interwiki

@snailplane You should try translating some things from Japanese. Translation is hard at first, but when it's fiction, it starts to bring pleasure at a certain stage. There's the privilege of having a lot of time, unlike when you're translating for a client. You can translate a short story, then re-translate it, and you'll start noticing that you choose better words and expressions in a repeat translation.

Cardinal

09:06

2

Q: Friends are constantly visiting and friends constantly visit

I am not native English speaker and new to English. Please let me know what is the difference between below sentences and which one is correct. His friends are constantly visiting him. His friends constantly visit him.

I think, both present simple and present progressive can be used to talk about people's characteristics or habits

> His friends constantly visit him.

however, the simple present sounds like sentences talking about facts

I would prefer to add some adverb:

> His friends constantly visit him two times a week.

I think this talks about one of the his friends' habit which is visiting him.

She is a great teacher. She is always reading books that are about teaching techniques.

CowperKettle

I remember there was a nice PDF called something like "meaning and the english verb"

Leech Geoffrey Meaning and the English Verb

Cardinal

nods

user208178

10:28

where do you guys find your "word of the day"? for me Webster's gives a new word everytime I search something there. Also FD (Free Dictionary).

user208178

Sawasdee khrap @DamkerngT

user208178

see ya

CowperKettle

10:47

@Arrowfar Just by reading some weird stuff..

user208178

ah that :D

CowperKettle

Word of the day: anti-E.coli host cell protein antibody

Like this. (0:

Affinity purified. (0:

user208178

man your smileys make me smile.

user208178

isn't it too much work, making "(" then "0" then ":"?

user208178

Have a good day (0:

user208178

10:54

@CowperKettle I regularly visit this place: reddit.com/r/whatstheword. It is very good place for vocabulary and asking vocabulary questions.

user208178

@DamkerngT. He looks like you: academia.stackexchange.com/users/14885/robokaren :-)

user208178

I was browsing Academia.

user208178

my word of the day: L'esprit de l'escalier

CowperKettle

@Arrowfar Have a good day too, Arrowfar! I hope it's not very hot now in Pakistan. I'm translating some pharma stuff, and I have more new words than I've had in the last 2 years. (0:

My Anki count nears 300

user208178

good luck translating!

user208178

11:10

you are right. weather is quite nice here these days.

Damkerng T.

11:31

@Arrowfar Hey, that's my twin!

user208178

Yep :D

V.V.

12:16

@CowperKettle, I left a link for you on messenger, perhaps, you will like it.

CowperKettle

Thank you!

@V.V. We don't use a comma after "perhaps" in English, only in Russian. ^_^

(The girl in the picture holds a Russian book titled "Excavator model E-505: Repair Manual")

Damkerng T.

12:48

@CowperKettle Hehe! What a girl!

ucha

hey. i have to ask a question. can i ask here or should i open a caption

...because the areas are very rich coastal ecosystems in point of land, air, freshwater and saltwater coming together?

Did i make a thing wrong after the in point of part?

Damkerng T.

It's probably okay, I think, but I don't like this in point of.

The sentence talks about areas then switches to in point of ... Is it a point, as in a place, or several points, as in several places?

BTW, is there any coast that has no air?

A couple idioms that are related to in point where "point" is not "place" are case in point, in point of fact, but I have no idea about in point of [ A FACT ]. Maybe some people use it, but I don't know those people or read their work.

Word of the Day: littoral

Færd

13:33

This man talks about 3 different ways to 'pack' your cigarettes (pound the pack hard against your palm): no pack, half pack, and full pack. He calls them three (packing) applications. I don't understand why a method or degree of doing something would be called an application.

Damkerng T.

I'm not very sure (it could be smoker-speak), but it sounds like it's just a bit more fancy word of "use" to me.

Færd

Would you call them three uses?

Damkerng T.

Ambiguously, yes.

Færd

Maybe he call them applications because you apply that method of packing to your cigarettes.

Damkerng T.

I remember that I was so confused when suddenly, people started to call computer programs "applications", too!

@Færd Could as well be the case.

Færd

13:44

I understand why that could be confusing.

Damkerng T.

I haven't watched the video through, though. I don't smoke anymore.

Færd

Good for you!

You don't to watch it through.

So you're clean for how many years?

Damkerng T.

Just seeing the cigarette pack makes me feel weird. :P

@Færd Over 10 years.

Færd

Way to go!

Damkerng T.

;-)

Cardinal

13:50

Can you help with this phrase:
> "off the cost of Africa"
It describe somewhere in canary island

Damkerng T.

@Cardinal coast, perhaps?

Cardinal

> In the sixteenth century a trading ship going to Italy stopped at an island named "Canis", from the latin word for wild dog, which can be found there in profuse numbers, off the coast of Africa

@DamkerngT. yep

Damkerng T.

Was it off that confused you?

Cardinal

I am wondering does it mean the dogs were in a side of the island which was cross the Africa ?

Or it is just mean, away from the Africa

Damkerng T.

According to the sentence, the island is somewhere not so far from the coast of Africa,

and there are lots of wild dogs there.

Cardinal

13:57

aha

So, you say off the implies a location which is not too far from something

Damkerng T.

nods -- But "near" or "far" is relative.

Cardinal

nods

user208178

14:14

@DamkerngT. Nice! me, I don't even know what a cigarette tastes like.

user208178

I hear it tastes good though.

user208178

:)

user208178

Howdy @Catija how are you?

user208178

aight. Time to commute.

Damkerng T.

15:00

@Arrowfar Thanks! Well it's just smoke. :D

blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/07/16/…

Pokemon Go's penetration is quite frightening!

(Um, I hope nobody'll take it the wrong way! (-_-)")

> The mobile game has been cited for traffic accidents, injuries and for giving its users unexpected exercise as they walk around trying to find “pocket monsters.”

Apparently, the game is potentially dangerous.

But it can be unexpected exercise!

Stumbled upon this funny comment on ELL!

This is a ploy by English teachers, to earn more money. Romance language teachers are even more tricky. — CowperKettle 3 hours ago

Man_From_India

There is only three tenses in English!

1

Q: Why are there so many tenses in English?

We only need the Past Tense, Present Tense & Future Tense. (This is more than enough to express any type of situation.) But tenses are subdivided into so many forms like Animal Kingdom Classification in Biology. Why is this so?

tense

Damkerng T.

It depends on how we count them, I think. CGEL belongs to the two-tense camp, IIRC.

Man_From_India

15:15

And among them, verbs don't have inflection for future tense.

Damkerng T.

nods

Man_From_India

@DamkerngT. yes that's what I heard somewhere too.

@DamkerngT. what does CGEL say about it?

Damkerng T.

I can't remember their exact words. The book is not in my reach, either. :(

But I think to them, tense is about "form".

Man_From_India

@DamkerngT. ok no problem. I will check it. Will let you know.

Damkerng T.

Thanks!

Man_From_India

15:18

:-)

In school grammar there are many tenses. I don't know why those books pass wrong info.

They call past perfect, future continuous etc. So the number of tenses increases.

Damkerng T.

Because it's that way, traditionally, probably. Something like 36 tenses. Maybe more!

Man_From_India

Perfect and continuous are two aspects.

The concept of tense and aspects is tough to explain, I can't explain myself.

If my dad heard me saying it, he would have told I don't actually understand those concepts and that's why you can't explain :P

Damkerng T.

15:44

@Man_From_India He's right. :D

Krishn Shweta

Hello...

I Krishn or I am Krishn which one is correct?

Man_From_India

@DamkerngT. hehe :-)

Krishn Shweta

@Man_From_India say

Damkerng T.

@KrishnShweta To introduce yourself, you'd use I'm Krishn.

Man_From_India

16:00

All I know is tense related to the time when an event occurs. Aspect is more internal, it doesn't by itself say when in a time frame an event occurs. It just like it's in progress or it's done.

Krishn Shweta

Yeah... but today I was filling one form, in that it was I ___ in that blank my name should be written.

Man_From_India

@KrishnShweta then it's a part of a sentence

Krishn Shweta

Actually sentence was I Shweta studying in xx college

Man_From_India

@KrishnShweta right. shweta is an apposition of I.

Krishn Shweta

why not I am shweta

Man_From_India

16:10

@KrishnShweta because that's also not a complete sentence, I suppose.

Krishn Shweta

I mean where I Krishn is used and also I am Krishn

how we will know?

Man_From_India

I Krishna studying Literature at Oxford University am a male of 20 currently residing at university hostel.

Though this sentence doesn't sound good, it's grammatical.

Anonymous

@CowperKettle I highly recommend the Dresden Files series! But it's a bit slow to start. It gets better with each book, and starts getting really good around book three.

Anonymous

You can't really skip the first two books, though, or it won't make sense.

Krishn Shweta

@Man_From_India yes, I doesn't sound good....

However I will use I am shweta :)

Man_From_India

16:20

@KrishnShweta passing it on to @snailboat, now that she is in the room ;)

(this snail has adopted a rare skill of chatting something serious on mobile and walking on a busy road at the same time :-)

Krishn Shweta

I cant find anyone with that name.

Man_From_India

Ohh sorry, she opted for a faster mode of transport. She is now snailplane

Krishn Shweta

Is snailplane boy or girl?

Man_From_India

Elder than a girl :-)

Krishn Shweta

@snailplane Look @Man_From_India is saying something.

@DamkerngT. :)

johnchae

16:51

@KrishnShweta She might be busy atm I think.

CowperKettle

Namaste peeps.

johnchae

As to your sentence "I Shweta studying in xx college"

Krishn Shweta

hmm..

johnchae

Here is my opinion, for one thing, there's nothing connecting it to the rest of the sentence. Going from "Shweta" to 'studying' implies the topic of study is "Shweta" themselves.

(which I presume isn't the case) :p

The second problem is that "I Shweta" is redundant, you would in fact have to say something along the lines of "I, Shweta, am studying […]"

And I'd probably say "studying at xx collage", but that's more a matter of taste/dialect.

@KrishnShweta

Krishn Shweta

I see.

where are you from?

I mean which country?

@johnchae

johnchae

17:02

@KrishnShweta I'm from Vietnam, Hochiminh city to be exact.

Krishn Shweta

:) I think every word ends with nh in your native language. Is it?

@johnchae

johnchae

@KrishnShweta No, not every word obviously.

Xin chào @KrishnShweta, rất vui được làm quen với bạn.

You see, none of those ends with nh

:)

Krishn Shweta

I don't know you language.

johnchae

Well, it basically means "Nice to meet you" :)

May I ask where you're from?

Krishn Shweta

and I have one friend from your country. Her name ends with nh and her friends as well.

:) I'm from India.

Nice to meet you too Johnchae ;)

johnchae

17:14

Haha yeah right, actually I can't think of a name ends with nh off the top of my head.

Hmm

Not Nhung obviously... So no, I don't think words ending with nh are very popular in Vietnam.

:)

Krishn Shweta

Yeah, might be because I have saw only few names :D

johnchae

You might have noticed that "Nguyen" is rather popular as a last name in my country ^^

Krishn Shweta

sorry I didn't. I noticed Le at starting of name

johnchae

Yeah, Le, Pham are very popular too.

Krishn Shweta

:)

and in my country Shweta is most popular name ;)

johnchae

17:27

Oh, nice! It's a beautiful name according to my ears :p

Krishn Shweta

Yes. It is ;)

@Man_From_India what do you think??

Man_From_India

@KrishnShweta feeling so tired :(

Krishn Shweta

Okay.... sleep.

Even I'm leaving now.

CowperKettle

19:00

@KrishnShweta Sveta is a popular female name in Russia

Good night all.

Færd

19:11

3

Q: Why is an application called an application?

Sometimes it's nice to know where the words we use everyday as programmers actually come from. For example, I can explain how a computer screen relates to a flat material onto which diaporamas used to be projected. I can explain how a computer program relates to the word in the musical domain, wh...

etymology computing

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