Language Overflow

Anonymous

00:00

Historical Note: A mullet was never, at any time in history, ever cool. It was [is] worn by people who simply didn't realise how bad it made them look. That is one reason why all the other nicknames for it listed below have negative connotations. — Tetsujin 13 hours ago

Anonymous

Tetsujin tells it like it is.

CowperKettle

01:30

@Cardinal nope (0:

CowperKettle

01:47

@snailplane Good morning! Who knows, maybe it was cool in Ancient Greece, say. (0:

Anonymous

Good morning :-)

Lawrence

@snailplane I suppose we usually think we know what we're talking about. :)

Anonymous

@Lawrence I'm sorry for writing such confusing messages. My explanation was probably not very well written :-)

Lawrence

@CowperKettle Maybe he was referring to the cylindrical object between the two camp fire bases, next to rock that looks like a tree stump. Picture follows. :P

Lawrence

02:16

@snailplane No problem :) . I'm just not as familiar with the technical terms used in linguistics, so my parsing is somewhat pedestrian. The attempts bring out interesting flavours, though, including ones that never went into the stew to start with. :P

CowperKettle

02:52

@Lawrence Haha (0:

But no, there were no real kettles there.

I have a real old big copper kettle, but it weighs too much, and is too big

It probably has a capacity of 3 liters, I may check

CowperKettle

03:22

Word of the day: weldments

Anonymous

05:10

This question asks at least ten different things:

Anonymous

1

Q: What does "constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red crêpe paper" mean?

I have several questions about the sentence "THE PLAY—for which Briony had designed the posters, programs and tickets, constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red crêpe paper—was written by her in a two-day tempest of composition, ca...

Anonymous

If we can pretend for a moment that this is a site mostly inhabited by programmers, maybe we could use an analogy:

Anonymous

This question appears to have very high coupling and low cohesion.

Anonymous

A question should do one thing and do it well.

Anonymous

Low coupling, high cohesion.

Anonymous

05:11

That way it'll be reusable in new contexts (by future users coming in from Google).

Anonymous

And it'll be effective when it's used.

Anonymous

I don't think we should really try to collect questions like the above for our site.

Anonymous

What does everyone think?

Cardinal

07:09

@snailplane Therefore, we should always use plural verbs after "the majority of people/.."

Damkerng T.

07:32

@snailplane I agree, though I think we can think of the whole question as a struggle to read the phrase constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side with a request for confirmation on the meaning of lined the box in red crepe paper.

That way, the problem isn't different from many other questions on our site much.

CowperKettle

07:46

> 1. The aim of the trial was to determine the proportion of patients in each group in whom X-ray examination revealed disease progression 24 weeks after the start of therapy.

> 2. The aim of the trial was to find out how many patients in each group had signs of disease progression 24 weeks after the initiation of therapy, as revealed by X-ray examination

Sawasdee khrap! I wonder which one is better.

The Russian original seemed hard to translate, so I made several versions.

Damkerng T.

Sawasdee khrap!

I think if in whom #1 is replaced with whose, it'll sound much better.

CowperKettle

> 1.1. The aim of the trial was to determine the proportion of patients in each group whose X-rays had signs of disease progression 24 weeks after the start of therapy.

Damkerng T.

#2 is fine, too, though it reads a little (just a little) more casual.

CowperKettle

Thank you! It's surely shorter

Damkerng T.

Hehe!

CowperKettle

07:49

It's just that I'm having the Russian original in mind, which makes me to repeat the formulas like "during X-ray examination" etc.

I should train in re-writing my English translations after I've forgotten the original

Damkerng T.

Forgetting is usually almost mandatory for me when I want to proofread my own writing!

CowperKettle

(0:

Damkerng T.

:D

CowperKettle

Yes, it takes forgetting to properly reweld one's weldments.

I'm trying to remember this word. (0:

Damkerng T.

I see what you're doing there! :D

V.V.

07:56

Hi, Dam.

Damkerng T.

Hi!

V.V.

Do people use "spousehood " nowadays?

Damkerng T.

I could guess its meaning though I can't say I've heard it before.

Avicenna

Hi!

V.V.

Hi,Avi.

Damkerng T.

08:00

Hi!

Avicenna

@DEAD @Færd @Cardinal Happy Qorban!

What's up?

Everything cool?

Damkerng T.

It's raining over here, so yes, a bit cool. :P

V.V.

At night it's even cold.

Avicenna

@DamkerngT. Cool that's raining and cool! :D

Damkerng T.

@Avicenna Hehe!

Avicenna

08:04

@V.V. Your fall's started?

Here it starts after about 10 days!

How about Thailand is it fall there?

@DamkerngT. How about Thailand is it fall there?

Damkerng T.

Seasons over here are a bit different.

There are just three main seasons: winter, summer, and rainy season

See, it's either cold or hot or wet. :D

Avicenna

Wow! Funny!

Damkerng T.

Hehe!

Avicenna

So how many months winter, summer, and rainy?

Damkerng T.

Roughly four, each.

Avicenna

08:08

Here we have 3 month each.

Damkerng T.

nods -- Fall (or autumn) has already started, perhaps?

Deo

Are winter/summer/rainy seasons consecutive, or are they go like this: winter/half of rainy months/summer/half of rainy months?

Damkerng T.

@Deo It used to come in sequence. It's been a bit chaotic lately, in the recent years.

Avicenna

@DamkerngT. And 6 first months are 31 days. And the last 5 mouths 30 days. The last month is 29 days and each 5 years it's 30 days.

Deo

Each 4 years*

Actually, leap years are a bit more complicated than that.

Avicenna

08:12

Yes, I guess.

Deo

Leap years are each 4th year, excluding each 100th year and including back each 400th year.

Avicenna

After four 365 days, the fifth year is 366 days!

@Deo You remind me of @DEAD! :D

Deo

Dead who?

Avicenna

@DEAD is a cool chatter hear. You may meet him!

@DamkerngT. So you have snow in winter, or it's just cold?

Deo

Now I want to play Seasons :)

Damkerng T.

08:18

It still is the rainy season over here. It's even raining at the moment!

CowperKettle

08:47

Why are "effective" and "efficient" used often, and "efficacious" rarely?

Deo

Because most people don't know that word? (me, for example)

Damkerng T.

@CowperKettle Because people just choose to use effective in almost all contexts, perhaps.

In other words, efficacious competes with effective and loses, except for chiefly one main domain.

Avicenna

09:33

Most everyone

It's strange for me. I just saw it in a book.

Damkerng T.

@Avicenna It's like Most people, but instead of people, it's everyone! :-)

Avicenna

Yes, it is. But I have never heard it!

1

Q: The exact meaning of "must+have+past participle"

Are these sentences interchangeable? I think I have left my keys at home. I must have left my keys at home. For example: If somebody asks us "where have you left your keys?" which answer would be correct to this question, 1 or 2? and why?

sentence-meaning synonyms

I think we can use them interchangably. "I think" means you're not so sure. But "must have" implies you're almost sure.

V.V.

2

We have just met in the garden.

Damkerng T.

@Avicenna I think the comments are a bit confusing, but this is probably the area where English usage varies the most across dialects. (I mean modal verbs.)

Try saying As you will have seen, ... to an American and see their reaction.

If your face or your accent doesn't look or sound like a Brit, chances are they may think there's something wrong about your English.

@V.V. Nice butterfly!

Avicenna

@DamkerngT. Why? What will happen? Shall I try it with saying it to StoneyB?

Damkerng T.

09:47

@Avicenna StoneyB may be an exception. His knowledge of English is unfathomable!

Avicenna

They don't use future perfect much?

Anonymous

No one does.

Avicenna

But they teach it in their conversation books.

@snailplane o.O

Deo

And you believed that books?

It was obviously a decoy

Anonymous

@Avicenna Must have typically expresses a conclusion the speaker thinks is necessarily true based on some evidence and reasoning, but which they don't know for a fact is true.

Avicenna

09:51

@snailplane You mean by verb see or generally?

@snailplane nods.

Anonymous

@Avicenna The construction with will have is fine in both AmE and BrE but is infrequent in both.

Lawrence

@snailplane That's the OP's style: a series of short questions, usually for verification of their own understanding, which is provided against each checkpoint. On one hand, it shows some level of 'research' (which is more than provided by some questions that are left open), and they are normally related to a piece of text and sharply focused per sub-question. On the other hand, the answers are mostly binary - an extreme example is this.

Avicenna

Yes, it's the same with Persian!

Anonymous

Will have been V-ing is even rarer.

Lawrence

@snailplane If I may ask, are you a programmer?

Avicenna

09:53

Gotta go. Thank you!

Anonymous

@Lawrence Yes :-)

Lawrence

@snailplane Hello fellow programmer! :)

Anonymous

I was taught to program at the same time I learned to read, write, and do basic math. I was raised on computers :-)

Anonymous

@Lawrence Hello! :-)

Lawrence

@snailplane For some reason, I thought you were involved with English education. Jumping to conclusions on my part.

Anonymous

10:00

Well, I've studied linguistics, but I'm not an actual English teacher. I love language, though, and I want to help people who are learning English :-)

Anonymous

I'm most interested in Japanese linguistics, but I think it's important to see how multiple languages work, and learning about my native language can shed some light on how other languages work, too.

Deo

Btw, congratulations on the occasion

Anonymous

I am very interested in coordination :-)

Anonymous

@Deo :-)

Anonymous

@Lawrence I've been learning Japanese for about eighteen years. That's one of my main interests.

Deo

10:03

It's 100000000th day of the year!

Damkerng T.

@snailplane You're doing one helluva job helping people who're learning English. Of this, I'm certain!

@Deo Argh! How many days do we have in a year!

Anonymous

@Deo Oh, that occasion! I should've known :-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Right now I can't claim to be an actual teacher, although that might change at some point. I've done tutoring, but that's about it. I love teaching, though.

Deo

@DamkerngT. I'd say we have not enough :)

I'd like to have about 600 days per year (300 of which for summer), and somewhere inbetween 40 and 50 hours per day.

Lawrence

@snailplane That explains it :) . Languages were at the bottom of the pile for me, growing up. They were so subjective! They've grown on me since, though. :)

Anonymous

10:12

Smilies are contagious. If I type enough smilies into chat here, before long we'll have one on every message :-)

Anonymous

It's like yawning.

Lawrence

@snailplane That's one contagion we'd do well to pass on. :P

Anonymous

If I tell you I'm yawning right now, you stand a good chance of yawning yourself.

Anonymous

And if you think I'm smiling, you're more likely to smile back. I think :-)

Deo

Nah, I'm not yawning, but my back itches...

Lawrence

10:14

@snailplane Maybe it's because I'm reading it as a hypothetical statement, but I'm not yawning. Oh, wait. Nope, false alarm. I'm smiling, though. :)

Anonymous

Doesn't work on me. I'm itch-proof. Agh! Turns out I just lied.

Anonymous

@Deo You got me!

Anonymous

Now I'm smiling, itching, and yawning.

Lawrence

@Deo We're a suggestive bunch. :P

Deo

Good old "and now you're breathing manually"

Now you're reading chat in a voice of Morgan Freeman

Anonymous

10:15

I would be, but I'm laughing a bit too hard :-)

Deo

And so on :)

Damkerng T.

@Deo :D

Deo

Psychic warfare! It's real!

Lawrence

That yawn keeps threatening to erupt.

Deo

It should be called "yawnalanche"

Lawrence

10:16

My 'jaw hinges' are tingling.

Anonymous

Funny how we can cause all these reactions or behaviors just by typing a few words on the screen.

Lawrence

2 mins ago, by Lawrence

@Deo We're a suggestive bunch. :P

:)

@snailplane I think it's great that we have such interaction.

It's the kind of thing that builds community.

Interspersed with discussions on language, of course.

Deo

Yeah, I missed this kind of chat in BGSE. If it's not about Magic, it's dead there

Anonymous

We do have a bit of off-topic chat in here, which I think is fine, but people should always feel free to interrupt any off-topic discussion with on-topic chat (about English or about the site).

Deo

Good thing about this chat: even if you are talking off-topic, you are still doing it in english. And have a good chance of learning it better!

2

Anonymous

10:23

Oh, yes, I think it's important to be able to practice English in here :-) That's one reason I think some off-topic chat is a good thing for ELL.

Anonymous

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=28080

Damkerng T.

Je comprends !

Anonymous

:-D

Damkerng T.

:D

Anonymous

You may have got it, but I've got a nose.

Damkerng T.

10:31

Hehe!

I thought it'd be a bit handier to circle around a smiley when it doesn't have a nose. :-)

Anonymous

☺

Damkerng T.

Haha!

Anonymous

The eyes are more expressive than the nose anyway.

Damkerng T.

I have a confession to make ...

I always mispronounce integer!

Quite likely, I acquired this word too early.

Anonymous

Do you say /ˈɪntəgər/ rather than /ˈɪntədʒər/?

Damkerng T.

10:41

It's like /ˈɪntidʒər/!

Anonymous

Which syllable do you stress?

Damkerng T.

First.

Anonymous

The vowel in the second syllable can be /ɪ/ rather than /ə/.

Anonymous

That's fine.

Damkerng T.

Ahh

Anonymous

10:43

The precise quality of the vowel in the second syllable isn't terribly important, and it tends to assimilate to /ɪ/ (become more like the vowel in the first syllable).

Anonymous

The Longman Pronunciation Dictionary lists both /ɪ/ and /ə/.

Damkerng T.

I got curious about the word because there was a character in an episode of Elementary with a curious screen name, IntegerOverflow (yeah, how coincidental!), and everyone in that episode clearly pronounced it with a schwa.

Anonymous

Macmillan lists /ɪ/ in its BrE entry and /ə/ in its AmE entry. I find that interesting since I think I personally use /ɪ/, and I'm an AmE speaker.

Damkerng T.

@snailplane Thanks! That's good to know!

Holmes speaks in a British accent, and he used a schwa, too.

Lawrence

@snailplane This seems to match my perception. The main difference is that the 't' is closer to a 'd' (less aspirated?) in AmE than BrE. I think both use /ə/ in that link. AmE goes faster :) .

Anonymous

10:57

@Lawrence My browser doesn't seem to like the audio on that page. I'll have to give it a listen later.

Anonymous

I think that in careful AmE pronunciation we would use an actual aspirated t sound in integer, though.

Lawrence

@snailplane Ok.

Anonymous

But we can flap /t/ following /n/ in AmE, which makes them perceptually similar to /d/ sounds.

Lawrence

@snailplane I've heard this described as flapping, possibly at ELU. Linguists certainly use an interesting collection of terms. :)

Anonymous

Yes, and most linguists use flap and tap interchangeably for this physical movement (a quick tap of the tongue on the roof of the mouth), although a few prominent linguists distinguish the two.

Lawrence

11:01

Hmm, I think I use the smilie a lot because I feel that the content of my messages can be construed in a much darker, cynical tone otherwise.

Anonymous

I tend to type it when I'm smiling, and I'm a nervous smiler, so I smile a lot.

Anonymous

I don't really think about it. It's a very old habit :-)

Anonymous

@Lawrence The flap is, in any case, a way to pronounce both /t/ and /d/ between vowels in American English, and because the flap is voiced, people think it intuitively sounds closer to a d sound.

Anonymous

When it's following /n/, it isn't between vowels phonemically, but I think phonetically the /n/ can be realized as nasalization of the preceding vowel, so /ɪntə/ could be something like [ɪ̃ɾ̃ə]. I'm not really sure about this.

Anonymous

The squiggly over the vowel indicates that it's nasalized.

Anonymous

11:06

(The squiggly over the ɾ indicates the same thing, but ɾ is not a vowel, it's the flap we were discussing :-)

Anonymous

@Lawrence There's a free open source program called Praat you can feed audio files into, if you're interested in acoustic phonetics.

Lawrence

Hmm, inneresting. :)

(stepping away for a bit)

Lawrence

11:27

@snailplane Very nice. I've bookmarked it for future reference. Thank you.

@snailplane Either you're really young, or your parents were forward thinkers - or both! I grew up with BASIC, only studying Computer Science properly at university.

Damkerng T.

11:59

> One time a student asked me, "Will you excuse me from class? I have to go on a tennis trip.
"You *have* to go, or you *choose* to go?" I asked.
"I really *have* to," he exclaimed.
"What will happen if you don't?"
"Why, they'll kick me off the team."
"How would you like that consequence?"
"I wouldn't.
"In other words, you *choose* to go because you want the consequence of staying on the team. What will happen if you miss my class?"
"I don't know."
"Think hard. What do you think would be the natural consequence of not coming to class?"

> The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey

Now, what should have to mean? :P

CowperKettle

> The relative retention times of the peaks that correspond to the light chain CDR sites 1, 2-1, 2-2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 are (0.72 ± 0.03), (0.48 ± 0.03), (0.23 ± 0.03), (0.69 ± 0.03), (0.42 ± 0.03), (0.75 ± 0.03) and (0.99 ± 0.03) respectively. (they are numbered, so there should be no the, right?)

Damkerng T.

I think it's quite likely that the is not necessary. (I speculated the contents of your text!)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Well, it still appears to express obligation, but the author appears to be saying that it's false obligation. The speaker is not truly obligated to do anything, but is making a decision based on the consequences. I think this is an interesting line of thinking, but I've never found it especially persuasive myself.

CowperKettle

It's a snap translation request, so I'm in the dark regarding the context, really. (0:

Anonymous

Some people say you always have a choice unless you're being held at gunpoint.

Anonymous

12:08

But that doesn't make sense to me. If you're putting it in those terms, you have a choice even if you're being held at gunpoint. The consequences are severe, but you still have a choice.

Damkerng T.

@snailplane If we follow the logic, it's indeed a choice.

Anonymous

I think it's probably better to admit that obligation has to do with consequences of choices in general, rather than to claim obligation doesn't exist.

Anonymous

I see it more as shades of grey than black and white. At gunpoint is near one extreme, and "I have to do the dishes later" is near the other (consequence: I'll have to do more dishes tomorrow if I don't do them today! Not very serious.)

Anonymous

We can still use have to to express weak to moderate obligation.

CowperKettle

@DamkerngT. Anyway, thank you

Damkerng T.

12:13

@CowperKettle No problem! Don't forget to have a second opinion, though. :-)

CowperKettle

@DamkerngT. I am the second opinion in that snap translation

D'oh.

Anonymous

@CowperKettle Sorry, I missed your message! I see Damkerng has already replied :-)

Damkerng T.

@CowperKettle Ah, right!

@snailplane His way of thinking is interesting anyway. :-)

Anonymous

2

A: "Here." or "Present."?

I've heard both used. Neither would be surprising. I think "here" is used more often because it is shorter. "Yeah", "yup", and "yo" are also common in more informal settings.

Anonymous

I'm trying to imagine taking attendance and having students say "Yo!" :-)

CowperKettle

12:15

@snailplane \o No problem, Snails. (0:

Damkerng T.

@snailplane It could happen in a class similar to one in Dangerous Minds. :D

Anonymous

Oh, I haven't seen that.

CowperKettle

Phew.. now I can actually read about the meaning of what I have just proofread.

Avicenna

12:40

@CowperKettle Yay!

CowperKettle

@DEAD - happy Eid al-Adha! The whole Yekaterinburg is in a standstill due to the celebrations.

@Avicenna Hi! (0:

Avicenna

@CowperKettle Hi! They are Muslims?

CowperKettle

@Avicenna Yes, the majority of jitney bus drivers and bus drivers here are from Central Asia

Avicenna

@Deo is just like @DEAD's twin brother!

CowperKettle

So they all went to celebrate instead of work (0:

Share taxi

A share taxi (also called shared taxi) is a mode of transport which falls between both taxicabs and buses. These vehicles for hire are typically smaller than buses and usually take passengers on a fixed or semi-fixed route without timetables, but instead departing when all seats are filled. They may stop anywhere to pick up or drop off their passengers. Often found in developing countries, the vehicles used as share taxis range from four-seat cars to minibuses. They are often owner-operated. The UITP term "informal transport" includes share taxis. == Operation == === Terminus === A give...

Avicenna

12:44

@CowperKettle :D funny!

CowperKettle

Here are photos and videos

I was walking in the park in the morning, and saw a man sitting in the grass. I thought that very strange. It was +7C and damp.

Turns out he was marking the Eid.

Strangely, he sat facing East.

I thought one should face the Mecca

The comments to the news report were closed due to all the hate speech.

Avicenna

@CowperKettle Oh!

CowperKettle

Generally people say that Central Asians should "go back".

Avicenna

@CowperKettle what you mean by marking?

CowperKettle

@Avicenna Celebrating probably is the proper word. It's Russian отмечать (mark) that slipped into my English

Avicenna

12:49

@CowperKettle I see! :-)

@CowperKettle I guess it's the same in all countries. I remember Iranian hated Afghan workers here.

CowperKettle

@Avicenna I read that Americans hated Irish workers

Avicenna

@CowperKettle We selfish humans feel like we own the world.

CowperKettle

@Avicenna yes

Yekaterinburg was a semi-closed city in the USSR, so it is doubly unusual for the locals to witness a deluge of people from other countries

I saw a black man in my local polyclinic (general practice hospital) a week ago.

For the first time in my life I saw a black man in a Russian government-run hospital

(0:

Probably a student, passing through the doctors to obtain a permit for his uni.

Avicenna

I have never seen a black man in my city! That would be really surprising to see one!

CowperKettle

@Avicenna What is your city, I have forgotten?

Avicenna

13:00

Zanjan.

CowperKettle

Maybe there are some in Tehran!

Færd

I'm black and I'm in Tehran, but I'm a bird.

CowperKettle

(0:

Paul McCartney - Blackbird （Abbey Road studio LIVE）

►

The Beatles are like John Keats, only in music instead of poetry and in the 20th century instead of the 19th

Færd

I can't listen to it right now. :)

Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird

The Lockheed SR-71 "Blackbird" is a long-range, Mach 3+ strategic reconnaissance aircraft that was operated by the United States Air Force. It was developed as a black project from the Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance aircraft in the 1960s by Lockheed and its Skunk Works division. American aerospace engineer Clarence "Kelly" Johnson was responsible for many of the design's innovative concepts. During aerial reconnaissance missions, the SR-71 operated at high speeds and altitudes to allow it to outrace threats. If a surface-to-air missile launch was detected, the standard evasive action was simply to...

CowperKettle

You always wish that Keats lived longer and wrote more, the same with the Beatles

Avicenna

13:04

@CowperKettle I guess so.

@Færd Hi! Mr. Blackbird!

Færd

@Avicenna To you too.

@CowperKettle Had lived longer, maybe?

Cardinal

Hi folk

CowperKettle

@Færd Would not simple "lived longer" fit?

Maybe we should ask on main site

Evening, @Cardinal!

Færd

@CowperKettle I'd say that when I wish for a cancer victim who's surely about to die to live longer.

Cardinal

@Avicenna Thanks

Færd

13:10

I'm not sure though.

@Cardinal Hi.

Cardinal

Question:
Sun rises -------------.

1. in the east
2. from the east
3. on the east

CowperKettle

wish he had lived longer

Cardinal

And of course, three more options devoiding definite article.

Færd

@Cardinal in.

CowperKettle

"in the east"

Færd

13:12

In Farsi the Sun rises from the east, so the English way used to confuse me.

Cardinal

@Færd That's the motive behind this question :D

CowperKettle

In Russian, it's "in the east" (technically "on the east", but that means "in")

Cardinal

@CowperKettle People in Iran mainly have colored skin.

:D

However, there are several ethnicity groups which differ in appearance.

There are pale guys as well as dark skinned .

Genre of day: Vaudeville

2

Vaudeville

Vaudeville (/ˈvɔːdᵊvɪl/; French: [vodvil]) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment. It was especially popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. A typical vaudeville performance is made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. Types of acts have included popular and classical musicians, singers, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, female and male impersonators, acrobats, illustrated songs, jugglers, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels, and movies. A vaudeville...

0:)

CowperKettle

Sorry, I'm lurking

> LIZA, go steep your long white hands
In the cool waters of that spring
Which bubbles up through shiny sands
The colour of a wild-dove's wing.
Dabble your hands, and steep them well
Until those nails are pearly white
Now rosier than a laurel bell;
Then come to me at candlelight.
Lay your cold hands across my brows,
And I shall sleep, and I shall dream
Of silver-pointed willow boughs
Dipping their fingers in a stream.

From Nets to Catch the Wind, 1921

Damkerng T.

13:39

Interestingly, it's [sun-rise-way-(direction-)east] in Thai.

CowperKettle

It's one word?

What is "laurel bell"?

Kalmia latifolia

Kalmia latifolia, commonly called mountain-laurel, calico-bush, or spoonwood, is an broadleaved evergreen shrub in the heather family, Ericaceae, that is native to the eastern United States. Its range stretches from southern Maine south to northern Florida, and west to Indiana and Louisiana. Mountain-laurel is the state flower of Connecticut and Pennsylvania. It is the namesake of Laurel County in Kentucky and the city of Laurel, Mississippi (founded 1882). == Growth == It is an evergreen shrub growing to 3–9 m tall. The leaves are 3–12 cm long and 1–4 cm wide. Its flowers are round, ranging from...

Maybe this

Damkerng T.

@CowperKettle More like 4-5 words.

CowperKettle

I see!

Oxymoron of the day: Retention Time of an Unretained Compound

Thanks, chemistry!

Lawrence

14:03

@snailplane Yes, that's true: you have a choice even if one option's consequences are dire. The "have to vs choose to" dichotomy is more useful as a mental discipline - that is, to keep in mind the reality of the choice, as opposed to the pressure of the obligation. This can help when choosing between the urgent and the important-but-not-urgent. That might be another of Covey's 7 items.

@snailplane I know someone who would do that. Very unlikely in Japan, I'd expect. They practice a lot more respect for elders and teachers as well as conformity to social norms.

V.V.

14:25

@DamkerngT. Don't know for sure, but a new learner on the RSE asked how to say "what is the distance between Bangkok and Moscow? "

Anonymous

@Lawrence That sounds like a useful way to look at it :-)

Anonymous

@Færd In Japanese, too. 東から昇る

CowperKettle

@V.V. Sounds okay to me

5

Q: Were bicycles widespread in the Soviet Union?

In the Soviet Union, did most people own a bicycle? Were streets crowded with bikes? Or was there a shortage of bikes? What was the price of bikes and were they affordable? The time period I'm most interested in is early 1960's. I'm concerned about big cities only, not rural areas.

economy soviet-union transportation cities

Damkerng T.

14:43

@V.V. It sounds fine to me, too. Or did they want to know how to say that in Thai?

V.V.

He might be a Thai.

I am not asking anything.

CowperKettle

What is RSE?

V.V.

Kettle Russian Stack Exchange

He is learning Russian.

Damkerng T.

Ahh

I'm sure I don't know how to say that in Russian. :D

V.V.

His nick is Annin.

Damkerng T.

14:56

@Lawrence (Just for laugh) It could happen in a class similar to his:

CowperKettle

-2

Q: How to say "how far is it between Bangkok and Moscow?" in russian

I want to know how to say "how far is it between Bangkok and Moscow?" in russian Thanks.

phrase

Damkerng T.

Anonymous

I wonder how often the sun rises in the east and how often it rises from the east, cross-linguistically. It can be hard to draw correspondences between adps / case markers in different languages, so I'm not sure how meaningful the question is, but a lot of languages have a basically ablative adps or case marker, so we should be able to compare in a lot of languages, I bet…

Damkerng T.

(GTO = Great Teacher Onizuka)

CowperKettle

ablative adps?

adpositions?

adpositional phrase?

Damkerng T.

14:57

It's neither in nor from in Thai, FWIW.

Anonymous

Adposition

CowperKettle

@DamkerngT. In Russian, GTO stands for "Ready for Labor and Defense" (0:

Anonymous

Meaning preposition (like English from) or postposition (like Japanese kara)

CowperKettle

Ready for Labour and Defence of the USSR

Ready for Labour and Defence of the USSR (Russian: «Готов к труду и обороне СССР» Gotov k trudu i oborone SSSR), abbreviated as GTO (Russian: ГТО) was the All-Union physical culture training programme, introduced in the USSR on March 11, 1931 on the initiative of the Komsomol. It was a complement to the Unified Sports Classification System of the USSR. While the latter provided Soviet physical education system requirements only for athletes, GTO was a programme for all Soviet people of almost all ages. By the year 1976, 220 million people were awarded GTO badges, while in 1986 the tests were passed...

@snailplane Thank you!

Damkerng T.

@CowperKettle Hehe!

Anonymous

14:59

Adp for short :-)

CowperKettle

(0:

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