Language Overflow

CowperKettle

02:12

@DamkerngT. corrective

Stack Exchange

05:53

0

Q: Why did the "system" display two different usernames for the same question, depending on the way you accessed the question?

I do not understand how the site displays usernames. And in the case of the question What is the difference between “get mad” and “ get angry” in this paragraph?, I found this has been very interesting. Perhaps someone who can look behind the scenes, perhaps by tracing ISPs, can be of some help. ...

bug

Damkerng T.

08:20

@CowperKettle Correct!

CowperKettle

09:19

Sawasdee khrap!

Word of the day: sensorgram

It should be included in Wiktionary and other dictionaries

Damkerng T.

09:55

Sawasdee khrap! @CowperKettle, @V.V.

V.V.

Sawasdee kha,Dam.

Damkerng T.

How are you? I saw you in and out a couple times last night, but you didn't post anything in chat, BTW. :)

V.V.

Fine, thanks. Had a bad connection yesterday evening.

Damkerng T.

I see. Hope it'll be all right today. (^_^)

V.V.

Still translating Joyce. Did a big rough amount yesterday.

Damkerng T.

10:00

Nice!

Joyce's style is something unlike others'.

as far as I can tell

V.V.

One big piece left, then polishing.

With lessons and the chores in between.

Damkerng T.

nods -- The piece must be a fun part, then. :-)

V.V.

So many details and descriptions!..

But it's one of his best.

What about you?

Damkerng T.

10:20

@V.V. Ah, sorry. I was away to do my little chore. :D

I have less time for ELL lately. I wish I could post some answers, but didn't find an easy question for me. :D

0

Q: Good novels to read for English learners

I'm looking for some erotic romance novels with an understandable English(I've read The Picture of Dorian Gray which has a hard English to understand and it takes me the whole time to look for words used in this novel in the dictionary, even though I don't understand what the author means). I fo...

reading

Hmm... I wonder if they really mean "erotic", or just romance.

CowperKettle

12:01

0

Q: Meaning of "taught us only by a broken heart" in "The Negro's Complaint" by William Cowper

From The Negro's Complaint by William Cowper: By our blood in Afric wasted, Ere our necks received the chain; By the miseries that we tasted, Crossing in our barks the main; By our sufferings, since ye brought us To the man-degrading mart, All sustain'd by patience, taught u...

phrase-meaning poetry

@V.V. Translating Joyce must be extremely hard. Bully for you!

CowperKettle

13:13

> The model curves are in red, the experimentally obtained curves are in other colors.

> The model curves are red, the experimentally obtained curves are of other colors.

Which is better?

Damkerng T.

I like it better with in, but either is fine, I think.

It should be split into two sentences as well, BTW.

Deo

Model curves are red. Experimental curves are blue. I want to go to bed, but have lots of work to do.

CowperKettle

(0:

Damkerng T.

13:32

Roses are red. Work is blue.

:D

Damkerng T.

14:03

ทางของฝุ่น (Dust) - Atom ชนกันต์ [Official MV]

►

The theme is something like "smoke gets in my eyes".

Most recent comment:

> Glenn the Walking Dead

> Was thinking the same55555555555

:D

(The word is "dust", but in the MV it's more like "smoke" :-)

Now listening to Earth Angel - The Penguins

Damkerng T.

14:28

False friends of the day: Somaliar, sommelier

I ran into Somaliar today, and thought it was sommelier. :P

Deo

Good thing one can be both :)

I guess my favourite pairs are coral and corrall, silicon and silicone

@CowperKettle Hey, CowperKettle, have you stumbled upon this? nanonewsnet.ru/articles/2007/…

Rubisco

@DamkerngT. Some liar!

Damkerng T.

@Deo That makes me think of the title Coraline. The character had to tell others "It's not Caroline" several times. :-)

@Rubisco Heh!

Deo

eng.thesaurus.rusnano.com/wiki/article939

Damkerng T.

BTW, the Nobel laureate in chemistry this year works on interesting stuff.

Deo

14:39

I thought they do each year :)

Rubisco

in The Periodic Table, yesterday, by Loong

@9-BBN https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2016/advanced-chemis‌tryprize2016.pdf

Damkerng T.

@Deo I guess so!

@Rubisco I suppose immortality is right on the next curve, just after robots. ;-)

Rubisco

@DamkerngT. You're just jealous that humans seem to be advancing faster than robots.

C'mon, admit it

Damkerng T.

Okay, okay! :D

Damkerng T.

15:06

Word of the Day: business acumen

Did Mike Pence Upstage Trump With His Strong Debate Performance?

►

Man_From_India

12

A: "Everyone has their own stories" vs "Everyone has their own story" - which one is correct?

Both are correct, depending on what you mean to say. "Everyone has their own story" means "Each person has his or her own story" while "Everyone has their own stories" means "Each person has many stories." An individual person can have many things, and a group can collectively have one thing, s...

This answer is really strange. @DamkerngT. do you have the same opinion about it?

Damkerng T.

I agree with both answers. (I think they're more or less the same.)

Ah, I think the OP is Thai!

Man_From_India

I never looked into this matter that way.

New learning for me.

CowperKettle

15:24

> Research by the Carbon Brief website found that solar generated nearly 7,000 gigawatt hours of electricity between April and September, about 10 per cent more than the 6,300GwH produced by coal during the same period.

independent.co.uk/environment/…

Damkerng T.

Yay!

CowperKettle

Yes, it inspires some optimism.

Good morning, @snailplane.

Damkerng T.

Wind power is another good alternative. If only we ate more beans... :P

@CowperKettle Huh? I can't see her in the room!

CowperKettle

@DamkerngT. She will see the message when she wakes up.

Damkerng T.

Ah, I see!

CowperKettle

15:28

> Solar capacity nearly doubled in 2015

Bully for the Brits

Ahmad

Hi

I wrote a long sentence, can you understand it?

After calling the function on the child nodes, the Match function is called another time to match new rules. This time, the rules that depend on the values of the variables that might be set in the function calls are retrived.

CowperKettle

*retrieved

0

Q: Meaning of "in the like name of that love of ours" (and specifically of "like") in a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A sonnet translated by Elizabeth Barrett Browning from Portuguese: Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers Plucked in the garden, all the summer through And winter, and it seemed as if they grew In this close room, nor missed the sun and showers, So, in the like name of that love o...

word-meaning phrase-meaning poetry

After translating the whole day I find it hard to understand new sentences of unrelated contex.t

But overall your two sentences look okay

Damkerng T.

15:49

@Ahmad It's understandable, yes, but you may want to consider phrasing everything only in either the active or the passive voice.

Ahmad

16:10

@DamkerngT. Thanks, good point. You say After calling the function on the child nodes, the Match function is called another time to match new rules. This time, it retrieves the rules that depend on the values of the variables that might be set in the function calls.

Cardinal

Why are Nobel Prize winners getting older?
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37578899

Damkerng T.

@Cardinal It's tougher to come up with something Nobel-ish? :P

@Ahmad Try this: After calling the function on the child nodes, SOMETHING calls the Match function another time to match revised rules. This time it evaluates the rules of which the variables are set in the function calls.

or whose variables are set in the function calls

It's a bit more decisive, which I think reads better in technical documents.

In technical documents, clarity and precision trumps vagueness.

Man_From_India

17:10

@snailplane Strange things!

Why do you feel like you have to use any preposition? “I brought them home” is a perfectly good sentence. — Janus Bahs Jacquet 1 hour ago

and this

"I brought them to my home" works. The other one is completely incorrect. — AHuman 2 hours ago

CGEL says we have to use a preposition before home in I bought them home. But somehow this seems okay to me.

But the sentence I bought them to my home doesn't seem good.

Using at in place of to makes a bit better.

@DamkerngT. what is your opinion about to and at in that sentence?

Damkerng T.

I think to is better, assuming that it's brought, not bought.

Man_From_India

ok now got it. If my is not present before home, at is better, otherwise if my is there, to is better.

What do you think?

It's a bit strange the way I said.

Damkerng T.

??? Do you mean we should use I brought them at my home?

Man_From_India

yes brought, not ~~bought~~

Damkerng T.

It sounds weird to me.

Man_From_India

17:21

@DamkerngT. I overlooked my. I meant I brought them at home sounds fine.

Damkerng T.

Hmm... I think the most idiomatic alternative would be I brought them home.

Man_From_India

But yes, if it's my home, well, I brought them to at my home fine.

@DamkerngT. I also think it's correct. But we learned about home (preposition) as subject oriented complement.

Damkerng T.

Hmm... I think it's not quite like that.

I brought them home and I'm hoke aren't quite the same.

Man_From_India

Oh it expresses a goal.

Hmmm it's acceptable - I brought them home.

Anonymous

I brought them home and I brought them to my home are both fine.

Man_From_India

17:32

But it's I brought them at to home and I brought them to at my home.

right?

Anonymous

*I brought them at home seems to be ungrammatical.

Man_From_India

to in place of at doesn't make it any better, I think.

Anonymous

Home works fine as a PP all on its own.

Man_From_India

@snailplane nods

Man_From_India

18:05

> The road had a stony, corrugated surface which the drivers took very fast, slowing to ford streams but not for the long detours across eccentrically crated yak pastures.

I really have problem understanding this sentence.

drivers took the stony corrugated road very fast -> what does that mean?

And what does but not for the long detours across eccentrically crated yak pastures mean?

Does drivers took the road very fast mean that drivers drove fast through that road?

Damkerng T.

18:35

@Man_From_India I think so.

I just heard How tragic endings in an ad on AXN (Singapore based)!

Catija

19:11

Oooh, got my ELL shirt today :D

Rubisco

13

Q: Is question migration a waste of time?

We spend a fair amount of time talking about question migrations between sites. These conversations happen internally, publicly and semi-publicly in the network-wide moderator chat room. In the interest of reducing the time we collectively spend discussing it, let’s see if we can formulate a cle...

discussion migration

@Catija Hey

Catija

@Rubisco Mar?

Rubisco

Yup

Damkerng T.

19:29

0

Q: Does this Japanese accent need subtitles?

In this movie trailer "Paterson", a Japanese actor said "A bus driver in Paterson?" and "This is very poetic" with subtitiles. Is his accent too heavy? What about the accent of a Indian or Pakistan man with no subtitles? What is the difference?

pronunciation accent

Interestingly, I didn't get the Japanese man without reading the subtitles either. The Other accents in the clip were fine, though.

Congrats! @Catija

"Why?" is a very good question.

Anonymous

20:42

@DamkerngT. I'll never know, since I read the question before listening to the clip.

Anonymous

@Catija Me too! :-)

Damkerng T.

@snailplane It sounds like A baster riduh paratsu to me. :D

Anonymous

Well, I hear the accent, but the words come through clearly to me.

Damkerng T.

But to be fair, the next line I heard was like Thiz very poetic. :-)

user62015

25. ——— was the journey like?
(A) who (B) how (C) which (D) what

Answer says D but I think B @snailplane @DamkerngT.

Anonymous

20:49

@user62015 What sounds better to me.

Catija

@snailplane YAY! It's fun!

Damkerng T.

Hmm... either would work for me, but I'd choose what as well.

Anonymous

We could say "How was the journey?" or "What was the journey like?"

user62015

B

Anonymous

If you say how, you should get rid of like.

user62015

20:50

Okay @snailplane @DamkerngT. Thanks.

Damkerng T.

BTW, I'm not sure now, but I think it might work a little differently in AusE.

Anonymous

I know that how and what are really difficult for many learners, because other languages often draw the distinction between the two in different places.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. You could ping one of our resident AusE/NZE speakers! :-) Umm, where could we find one of those right now, I wonder? @jimsug hasn't been around.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

We must have some active AusE/NZE speakers on ELL though.

Damkerng T.

20:52

A trick that works for me is to think of it as a quick question: Like what? vs. Like how? and chances are you'll see that Like how? does not really work. @user62015

user62015

Yes

@DamkerngT.

Anonymous

Both alternatives (what was X like and how was X) seem to have the same meaning. The difference between the two seems to be more grammatical than anything else.

Damkerng T.

21:49

Word of the Day: heifer

Transcript for