« first day (430 days earlier)      last day (3106 days later) » 

08:05
0
Q: “at the 100th anniversary” or “on the 100th anniversary”?

MrtApparently, although both “at the 100th anniversary” and “on the 100th anniversary” are used commonly, using the preposition on is more common according to Google search results. I’d like to ask that whether using at is a grammar error or whether there are special structures in which it is prefer...

With great tools (in this case Google's search engine) come great confusions.
I saw it on ELU.
Ahh
I almost thought it was you because of the avatar!
Sawasdee kha Dam.
But then I thought, hmm, V.V. must know better! :D
Sawasdee khrap!
You are flattering me.
08:10
I really think so. :D
I would consult books.
I think it's the wrong sentence though.
Perhaps "look up".
Consult books should be passable, I think, though I think something like consult my references or consult my reference books may sound better.
08:26
Yes, the difficulty is that we have the same verb in R. which is both transitive and intransitive.
And in English it's advise for, I think.
Or simply advise.
advise for? In a sentence?
I think just advise is quite common (like The teacher advises her students ...).
Help somebody.
Such words are called "false friends ".
For example we have accuratny, it looks like" accurate," but the meaning is different
Afternoon!
08:34
Good afternoon!
Is it? Hi!
1
Q: What does 'to take Official Notice that' exactly mean?

MikiI encountered this phrase which said "the Examiner takes Offical Notice that A in the cited invention corresponds to B in the instant invention." when translating. I got the meanings of 'take notice' and 'official notice' from online dictionaries. Also, the 'Official Notice' is a name of the docu...

Potentially the Question of the Day!
Though I think I can understand it fine because I use I take it that ... quite often myself, it's not easy to untangle the several issues in the question.
It's a long question, but I think the OP makes their points quite well.
One of the most interesting things in the question is that the OP writes "And I think I also understand the usage of I take/took notice that... as in "I took notice that my chat system wasn't working properly." which, from my assumption, means "I realized that..."?".
In other words, it's almost as if they understand I took notice that ... but not the Examiner takes Official Notice that ...
Younger people grow in height. The rest of us grow in width (or waist size). :-) — Damkerng T. 51 secs ago
Couldn't resist. Bad robot! :D
09:00
Younger people grow in height. The rest of us grow in width (or waist size). :-) — Damkerng T. 5 mins ago
:v :v
Hehe! :P
09:13
Eheh! :P
@Cardinal These days everyone grows in width
What if a company wants to draft a new version of a pharmacopoeial monograph, and asks a R&D institute to do this? How do we call the "submission of the assignment"? I have a line that says "Decision to submit an assignment for draft monograph was taken: 15 July 2016". I'm not sure it's "assignment" though, in English.
Good afternoon, Muhammad!
I found the phrase "statement of work", but that seems to be an in-house document
09:30
@CowperKettle Hey
@CowperKettle Well, this isn't promising google.com/…
My pending break from ELL has not officially commenced as of the cuttent moment.
Basically, they submitted to the R&D institute the parameters of the Monograph they would want to have.
@JimReynolds Something tells me it's not gonna start soon either.
cuttent?
Current.
Or cuttenr
Your choice
09:34
Thank you, fans, for your rejoicing and showing of deep admiration of me.
I can't exactly call it that
Bless you, you little dear.
@DamkerngT. I would say "at"
because it is a very specific date
I understand that your SMART LITTLE MOUTH is just a manifestation of your struggle.
It's little? Starts measuring
09:38
@JimReynolds No to Jimexsit
:-D
I know it is a great loss to my many fans.
Please take comfort in these words: I do believe that it's within your power to become more like Jim.
@Cardinal Both may work. I think on would be more common and is used in general cases.
@JimReynolds :D
09:58
@Cardinal. Do you enjoy your grammar studies?
Are you enjoying?
Good afternoon, @snailplane!
Anonymous
@CowperKettle Good morning, Kettle o' Cowper!
\o Snail
Anonymous
Good morning :-)
10:21
@snailplane Maintaining or developing skeletal muscle mass, lately?
O_O
What kind of a question is that?
Hmm, who's Max?
Jasper?
Oh, apparently not.
It seems to be a new guy we haven't fully met.
Anonymous
11:19
@JimReynolds I'm trying! :-)
11:39
@snailplane Me too. I got off my gym schedule, and the evil parts of my brain think they can stop me from getting back up on that horse.
Our gym has all horse-based equipment.
12:03
@DEAD He's a pretty good guy.
Oh, 10k rep points in two months. That's awesome. I haven't noticed that he's posted a lot of answers, to be honest.
Anonymous
@DamkerngT. Wow! That's a lot of posts.
@snailplane Yes! :D
10k in 250 answers. I'd say the answers are good.
1
Q: To be aware and to be in the loop about something

A-friendSuppose you want to ask someone if they've been informed of the father of a mutual friend. I constructed the below sentences. Are you aware of the passing of Katy’s father? Are you in the loop about the passing of Katy’s father? I understand that to be in the loop means to be a...

@Jim I think I could write a good answer to add some additional information but I don't have any references.
I think it's a phrase that came from the time before emails.
So we circulated information in our offices or inside our groups through memos and meeting.
We circulated, so the loop
That's what I think. Perhaps you may want to add something along the lines to your answer.
A native speaker mentioning something in the language without any references is a bit safer than a non-native speaker doing the same thing, I suppose.
Anonymous
12:18
@DamkerngT. Adding a reference never hurts, though :-)
Anonymous
I don't expect everyone to know whether or not I'm a native speaker when they read my answers.
Anonymous
I'd rather my answers speak for themselves.
@snailplane Indeed! But I can't find any (actually I haven't made any real attempt. :-)
Anonymous
Of course, I need to write better answers to reach that ideal, but it's still an ideal I hold :-)
Anonymous
Not everything I write on ELL is referenced.
12:20
I sometimes feel it can be useful to an OP to get a fast answer.
Anonymous
I spent a lot of time thinking about it, and I ended up nominating myself.
2
Sometimes, I then go back and expand.
@snailplane O.O
Anonymous
So we'll see how that turns out :-)
The oil industry interests have gotten to her!
Anonymous
Haha.
12:21
JAIL SNAILPLANE !
@snailplane Yay! Hooray! Yippie!!!
Aww... I wish we could elect four new moderators!
Anonymous
Maybe there'll be a 2017 election with more slots. EL&U seems to have a neverending source of moderator positions :-)
@snailplane Hehe!
Anonymous
I'm still voting for Colleen.
I guess ColleenV will be elected as one of the new mods.
12:41
My vote is for sale.
Rep points or bitcoins.
$518 a coin. That's expensive!
BTW, question of the day: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? :-)
Maybe this guy:
:P
13:39
Wow!@snailplane, I am so glad!!!
14:02
Word of the Day: moolah
(Just heard making moolah)
14:14
Moolah, dinero, smackers, smackeroos. Show me the money! 😄
:D
Hello, @ColleenV! Welcome back!
Howdy, I'm at work so if I don't respond assume I got dragged into a meeting
I'm not at my desk, so I can't respond very fast. Hope you understand. :-)
Nice to see you in chat, anyway! :D
I recently realized that I can hang out in chat without giving it my full attention, I'm not a good multitasker (and my mobile keyboard hates me Lola)
Uh, see what I mean? Lol not Lola
LOL :D
@ColleenV Don't worry. My typing skill is worse!
15:18
You probably thought that "to be in the loop" is analogous to Russian "быть в курсе (чего-либо)", but apparently it is not. — CowperKettle 14 secs ago
> "Did you know about Sherlock's father?"
"Yes. Sheridan did it."
"Well, obviously, you're in the loop."
"How wouldn't I? I ordered Sheridan to handle his dad myself."
Now I've got a text with so much dates in the format "23.05.14" that I know that I will really have to come up with some Word script.
To batch remake them all into 23-May-2014.
(Sherlock Holmes: In the Loop plagiarized by a robot, coming to a theater near you soon.)
(0:
The Russian word "kurs" probably reminded him of "loop". Both have a sense close to "racing track"
@CowperKettle The input is in a Word format, not as text files, I suppose.
15:24
@DamkerngT. I will set up some Word script to remake the dates in the Russian original file, before loading the Word text into the Trados software.
Since the Russian original won't be used by the company anyway.
nods -- I'm not how how you'd process Word files in a batch. It's easier to handle in text files.
Wow, looks like you're going to have fun with VBA!
I won't have many files. I usually translate a single file
@DamkerngT. thank you for the link
Ah, I see!
@CowperKettle No problem. It was just a quick search, so no guarantee whatsoever. :P
15:53
If a company or a state institution undertakes quality assessment of a drug under a contractual arrangement, can we call it "Contractor" in a table?
Or is "Contractor" predominantly for construction companies?
The word sounds quite important in the document. I think I'm gonna pass this one.
The Russian original says "Contractual organization" (i.e. an organization that undertook to asssess the quality of the drug for money)
But that is not idiomatic
Evening Khrap !
Evening!
Salam, zdorovo, and sawasdee khrap!
15:59
@JimReynolds I try to !
@CowperKettle Personally, I think Contractor should work.
I think so too. Thank you!
> The Center of Expert Examination and Control of Quality of Healthcare Products at the Russian Federal Service for Surveillance in Healthcare (Roszdravnadzor)
O_O
In short, FSBI CEECQHP at Roszdravnadzor
@DamkerngT. doesn't broker work ?
@Cardinal A broker is like a middle man.
@DamkerngT. Ah- I see. brokers are human agents not organizations
16:02
Not necessarily.
It could be a man, a company, an organization, or other things. Basically, a legal entity.
If the Agreement for the performance of work is still valid, which is better in a table cell? "Status of Agreement: In force/Valid/Active/Existing/Current/Operational"
I like "In force"
> "We developed cell-based detectors called CNiFERs that can be implanted in a mouse brain and sense the release of specific neurotransmitters in real time,"
> CNiFERs stands for "cell-based neurotransmitter fluorescent engineered reporters." These detectors emit light that is readable with a two-photon microscope and are the first optical biosensors to distinguish between the nearly identical neurotransmitters dopamine and norepinephrine.
Can a two-photon microscope see through the skull and the upper layers of tissue?
@CowperKettle It sounds so!
@CowperKettle I think I like either Valid or Active.
16:18
Thank you! Let it be Active
No problem!
Me spent some minutes to be sure about the plural of 'proof of concept'. :-)
16:42
My T-shirt still has not arrived
It usually takes a month for a parcel to arrive from the US
Some people sent me books, and I sent books to them, to the US
A month is a usual term.
@snailplane, I'd like to send you a book in Russian.
Maybe that will encourage you to learn Russian.
Feel free to share your postal address.
Of course, in the US you can get any Russian book you want, I guess.
@CowperKettle A simple edit > find .... Replace as ... won't work?
There are 12 months in a year..
I'll try to tackle this issue when I have time free from translation
@DamkerngT. I think it can also be proof of concepts
17:00
@JimReynolds That would be one proof of several concepts, I suppose.
Maybe interrelated concepts.
I'd better stick with a simpler alternative, proofs of concept. :D
17:14
I would, too. It just seems that I've read that the last word of a NP is sometimes pluralized.
Maybe I'm thinking of 's: The girl next door's friend.
Anonymous
17:49
@CowperKettle I've sent you a secret private message on that other site that we are both on :-)
Anonymous
@JimReynolds I think proof-of-concepts would be treating proof of concept as a compound noun.
@snailplane Thank you! (0:
18:08
> He lived in a first-floor flat above a greengrocer's in Leyton
I cannot imagine above a greengrocer's in Leyton
Would you help me plz?
@Cardinal Think of "a greengrocer's" as a grocery store or something. It should become easy to understand now.
> She lived in a room above an ice cream shop in Bangkok.
(the sentence was mutilated made by your friendly robot :-)
@snailplane Eww... Setec Astronomy (^_^)
There are two problems:

1. I though first-floor means the house is one-story
2. I cannot justify the apastrophy
Flat makes the sentence sound BrE.
Yes, the sentence is from Cambridge book
In BrE, floors start from Ground, First, Second, etc.
18:22
Election begins in less than an hour
Oh wait, more.
@DEAD Yay! -- Oh! Okay, let's wait. :D
I would've been fairly excited, but I'm exhausted
I'm also unexcited because this time, no matter whoever gets elected, they'll do an awesome job.
IOW I don't care the slightest whether I get elected or not.
I wish we could elect half of them!
18:23
And what about the apostrophe?
Snail also ran, and Nathan promised to come to chat, so I guess this is a win for us chatters.
High five Dam
@Cardinal It's quite a common convention to name or to refer to someone's place or store or shop with 's.
@DEAD I will vote for you, you are passionate; that is very important.
Anonymous
@DamkerngT. Where I grew up, people added 's to store names all the time.
Maybe you've seen butcher's (for a butcher shop) in your grammar book.
18:25
I am passionate?!
@snailplane A-ha!
I've not been trying hard enough then
Anonymous
So for example, my family would say Jewel's to refer to Jewel.
Home's
Anonymous
Like, "I'm going to go to Jewel's and pick up some bread."
18:25
@DEAD Can I buy a home at Home's?!?
Anonymous
That's dialectal. In contrast, the butcher's is standard.
@DamkerngT. I have never seen that
@DamkerngT. I guess, if you don't go window-shopping
Who is the owner in that possessive construction?
@Cardinal Odd. I'd think that language feature or whatever it is is mentioned in most textbooks here
18:26
@Cardinal Presumably the one with the same name without the 's.
Anonymous
I use the term "genitive" in part because the apostrophe-s thingy can express many relationships other than possession.
Anonymous
That is, there isn't always an owner with apostrophe-s.
@Cardinal Remember Breakfast at Tiffany's? :-)
Anonymous
But if you'd like, you can think of the butcher's as meaning "the butcher's shop".
Yes, but I didn't focused on that movie title
18:28
What a nicely active meta
Anonymous
The butcher, I suppose, would own the shop. (Well, maybe not. :-)
I wish meta.ELL was always this active
@snailplane But quite likely! :D
@DEAD :D
So, you guys say greengrocer is a guy ? sounds weird
I hope it stays active like that some time after the election, so we get to clean some tags
18:29
> A greengrocer, also called a produce market or fruiterer, is a retail trader in fruit and vegetables; ... (Wikipedia)
Anonymous
Wow, a fruiterer?
Anonymous
I'm not familiar with that word!
We need more fruitererers! :P
Anonymous
Ooh, it's marked "chiefly British".
18:30
if so, shouldn't it begin with capital G ?
I got confused
:(
I think some of these terms are considered a common noun (as opposed to a proper noun). E.g., I think a butcher's is possible.
I think thats why I didn't compare that with Tiphany's
The capital letter
@DamkerngT. Uh, fruiterer sounds like it was created by me
@DEAD IKR! :D
IKR'er
18:33
Strange. Finding a list of nouns ending with 's is more challenging than I thought!
@DEAD I guessed BrE speakers do not pronounce /r/ sound; the pronunciation would be interesting
@Cardinal They do pronounce /r/ in some cases.
In the case 'fruiterer', only the last /r/ wouldn't be pronounced.
Hey, Man_From_India wrote about it once!
2
A: What does the butcher's (meaning the butcher's shop) become in the plural?

Man_From_IndiaThis type of errant apostrophe is not uncommon. Fowler's Modern English Usage notes many such usage. Though it rises some eyebrows but it still appears - potato's 10p a lb. video's for rent. The use of these apostrophe is to make the noun plural, when the noun ends with a vowel. Examp...

Don't you think "butcher's shop" is different from "greengrocer's" ?
LOL -- chemist's is one of them! (I have no idea what it would look like!)
@Cardinal greengrocer's is in that list, even!
18:37
They sell us
"butcher's shop" is obviously referring to a shop belonging to a butcher.
@DamkerngT. If it were chem, I wouldn't have hesitated to flag the last two comments as 'too chatty'.
@DEAD LOL
@Cardinal or a butcher belonging to a shop
Or a belonging butchering a shop
@Cardinal Wait, what do you think greengrocer means?
18:39
A shop which sells something related to vegetables
Ah, it's a person.
That was my problem
I see
I meant that sounds like being a type of shop or whatever
I guess fruiterer is a little harder to pronounce in AmE than in BrE. :-)
(How many -ers did you say again?!)
2
Q: Please do not add hyphens after colons

JanFrequently I come across posts which include colons. So far, so good: a colon is a valid punctuation mark in the English language (see the beginning of this sentence). However, in about half of these cases the colon is followed — for reasons entirely unknown to me — by a hyphen. Resulting in som...

Thank you guys; That proves that I still need to check the dictionary even for the words that seem that I know them
18:43
19
Q: Is it proper to use a colon followed immediately by a hyphen?

way0utwestI have seen some writing where people have a list or a figure in writing and they will write something like this: The information is provided in Image 3:- Is that correct? Is this a British style?

Dictionaries are your friends!
@DEAD It's a common convention, but elsewhere!
in The Periodic Table, 1 min ago, by DEAD
@1,3-feeds Dog's bollocks. Indian typography.
Or elsewhen. :P <-- (Robo-note: non-standard English)
@DEAD Maybe its origin is not in India, but somehow it sticks there.
(And probably elsewhere, too, but I'm not sure where exactly.)
Hint: Asia
Another question: How we should pronunce the 's after plural names ending s in singular?

> buses's radios were replaced
> buses' radios replaced
18:50
@Cardinal I guess this is why we don't use buses' radios (or buses' anything) very often.
buses's's's's
I know how to right them.
My question is how to discern them when hearing
@DEAD :D
@Cardinal *get them right
and usually in the context.
It was just curiosity
18:53
I don't think they're discernible.
classes and classes' are pronounced the same, I guess, but you find out which is which depending on the context
@Cardinal curiosity killed the cat and fled to Mars
@DEAD Oh, Which cat ? the German Cat?
Dunno
Perhaps the Taiwanese cat
Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment, sometimes described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. It illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday objects. The scenario presents a cat that may be simultaneously both alive and dead, a state known as a quantum superposition, as a result of being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur. The thought experiment is also often featured in theoretical discussions of the interpretations of quantum mechanics. Schrödinger coined the...
:D
Anyway, I think I'd sleep early today. Night all \o
18:56
Have a good sleep!
o/
"Schrödinger's cat" and "butcher's shop" are different from "greengrocer's {nothing}" !
^_^
19:13
Good evening.
Anonymous
@DamkerngT. Yeah, we've mostly abandoned it over here. (Can I just say I dislike that name?)
Hi VV
@snailplane Somehow punctuation marks can get strange names!
Anonymous
@DamkerngT. I guess so :-)
" is called (lit.) mouse teeth in Thai, for example. (kinda cute, actually!)
Anonymous
19:18
Aww, it is :-)
Anonymous
They're just called in'yō fu 'quotation marks' in Japanese.
Anonymous
Probably a loan translation from English or another Western language.
@snailplane Google Translate gave me gimonfu!
Anonymous
@DamkerngT. Did you type in 'question mark'?
Anonymous
Gimon is 'question', in'yō is 'quotation'.
Anonymous
19:23
Fu is 'mark' in both.
@snailplane Ah, I mistyped the word!
Anonymous
Although I think hatena māku might be more common in regular speech.
maku is easy to guess (I think), but why hatena?
Anonymous
Because it's an interjection used before certain kinds of interrogatives. Hatena, dare no shiwaza darō?
Anonymous
You could ask about it on Japanese.SE :-)
19:32
@snailplane A-ha!
Anonymous
By the way, gimon is also used to mean 'doubt'. You could say that 'doubt' and 'question' aren't always distinguished in Japanese.
Anonymous
As in some dialects of English :-)
Interesting!
Anonymous
Gimon is the word used for interrogatives in linguistics, as in gimon-shi 'interrogative word; wh-word'
I guess gimon must've been used very often in Ikkyu san.
Anonymous
19:34
It's written 疑問 in kanji, and the first character expresses doubt.
(I don't know when or if they'll rerun it.)
Anonymous
@DamkerngT. The most basic word for doubt is probably utagai, which is written 疑い in Japanese orthography. Note that it uses the same character as 疑問 gimon :-)
Anonymous
But 疑い is a native Japanese word, while 疑問 is Sino-Japanese.
問 looks familiar!
Anonymous
You probably know it from 質問 shitsumon 'question'.
19:36
Hmm... what is it? I can't remember it. A door and a mouth.
Anonymous
It means 'question; ask'.
Ah, right!
Anonymous
There's a verb 問う tou 'ask', although you'd probably learn 質問 first.
Anonymous
Another word you learn early on is 問題 mondai 'problem'.
Anonymous
Both are very important words in Japanese classes :-)
19:40
My grade 0 story has only 聞. (^_^)
Anonymous
That's a good one to learn :-)
Anonymous
Is the word you learned 聞く?
Yes!
kikimashita
Wait, that's another word.
Anonymous
Well, 聞きました kikimashita is the polite past form of 聞く kiku.
Anonymous
20:06
Oh, we didn't get a tenth candidate, so there's no primary, I guess.
Anonymous
All of these people have already voted!
Anonymous
And the questionnaire isn't even up yet :-)
Anonymous
Oh! It is!
zaq
zaq
@snailplane Your ELL account is hidden on your network profile. This is your decision, of course, but to me it looks strange that someone would hide their association with a site, while running for a moderator there.
Anonymous
20:20
@zaq Yes, that is strange. Let me go fix that :-)
zaq
zaq
Fixed. \o/
21:12
@Cardinal It's both. We can.use greengrocer to mean the owner or the shop.
 
2 hours later…
23:24
1
Q: Do you sing a rap or say a rap?

narawagamesDo rappers sing raps or say raps? sing, because raps are songs. say, because you don't really sing a rap, you say it.

rappers rap
0
Q: Why is "cat" alike to the corresponding word in other languages whereas "dog" is not?

Konrad VilterstenI realized that cat sounds very alike to other indoeuropean languages (katze, katt, kot, gato) while dog is wildly different. I can't find any language where dog is spelled nor pronounced doggishly (for lack of a better word). As far my goolearching went, the domesticated species have appeared m...

1. this is an elu question
2. THERE IS NO ANSWER

« first day (430 days earlier)      last day (3106 days later) »