Language Overflow

Damkerng T.

00:40

@user62015 What an unfathomable sentence!

Anonymous

01:02

@user62015 There are too many errors in that sentence. I can't understand it.

Man_From_India

Good evening SnailP :-)

Good morning DT

Damkerng T.

Good evening and morning!

Anonymous

01:30

Good morning :-)

CowperKettle

02:07

Good 7:00 A.M.

Anonymous

@CowperKettle Good same time it is here, but with A.M. and P.M. swapped, except an hour off since Daylight Saving Time ended!

CowperKettle

(0:

@snailplane Russia has no Saving Time.. since Dmitry Medvedev abolished it

Anonymous

I wish we didn't either. Ours just ended for the year.

Anonymous

So now we're on Pacific Standard Time.

CowperKettle

Why do you wish it? It looks like a good thing to increase the light time for people

Anonymous

02:16

It's hard on people and economically wasteful.

Anonymous

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4189320

CowperKettle

When I lived in Siberia, it seemed very good. Suddenly the sun started rising an hour earlier, and it was not as gloomy

or setting an hour later? I don't recall

I remember that in winter, it was not until the 3rd lesson that the sun rose

Anonymous

> In our study, we found a significant increase in the volume of PCI for AMI on the Monday following the spring DST time change with no significant change in the total volume of PCI for AMI in the week after DST. Manipulations of the sleep–wake cycle have been linked to imbalance of the autonomic nervous system, rise in proinflammatory cytokines and depression.14 Our study corroborates prior work showing that Monday carries the highest risk of AMI.15

CowperKettle

> 8:25 am
3:01 pm

(sunrise and sunset in Noyabrsk today)

Anonymous

Here's the cite for #14 ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10543671

Anonymous

02:19

@CowperKettle Short!

CowperKettle

@snailplane I seee. The same is observed for people who work night shifts, long shifts, irregular shifts

Anonymous

6:50 am and 4:56 pm here.

CowperKettle

Sure! California is the latitude of Uzbekistan!

Anonymous

In the summer, days are quite long here.

CowperKettle

In the summer in Noyabrsk, from about June 10 to July 10, it's all a big day.

You can walk out at 1 AM and read a newspaper

Anchorage, Alaska

Anchorage (officially called the Municipality of Anchorage) (Dena'ina Athabascan: Dgheyaytnu) is a unified home rule municipality in the U.S. state of Alaska. With an estimated 298,695 residents in 2015, it is Alaska's most populous city and contains more than 40 percent of the state's total population; among the 50 states, only New York has a higher percentage of residents who live in its most populous city. All together, the Anchorage metropolitan area, which combines Anchorage with the neighboring Matanuska-Susitna Borough, had a population of 396,142 in 2013. Anchorage is located in the south...

Noyabrsk is about 200 km north of Anchorage (0:

A beautiful city, with mountains

I'd better be translating now.. BBL

Damkerng T.

02:29

Have fun!

Phrase of the Day: differential privacy

Also interesting in the age of Big Data: cs.utexas.edu/~shmat/shmat_oak08netflix.pdf

(It's about de-anynomization.)

CowperKettle

Word of the day: counterstain

CowperKettle

06:13

この竹垣に竹立てかけたのは、竹立てかけたかったから竹立てかけた。

Stack Exchange

0

Q: How to ask an English learner to clarify a question without knowing their current grasp of English?

Let's suppose that a learner asks a question (on this site) about something which would be immediately relevant to any person living in a primarily English-speaking community, and does not provide any information about their current grasp of the English language. If someone wanted to leave a co...

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle No swearing in this chat

@StackExchange Noice

yubraj sharma

06:54

Hi

M.A.R.

Low

yubraj sharma

Hope All is fine !

M.A.R.

All is fine, but I'm about to go AFK

yubraj sharma

AFK ?

M.A.R.

Nov 12 at 8:00, by M.A.R.

7

Q: What does AFK mean?

I have heard my friend talk about being AFK on a Minecraft server, but I have not heard it being used in single player so I assume it refers to online gaming but i don't know what it means and what it stands for.

terminology

yubraj sharma

06:57

Umm ....Nods

V.V.

@M.A.R. Low!Hi!

M.A.R.

Hey

V.V.

How's life?

M.A.R.

Awesome

V.V.

Fine.

M.A.R.

07:02

Yours?

V.V.

Super, won one contest.

yubraj sharma

This question has a bounty ell.stackexchange.com/questions/109008/…

0

Q: How to use "Having to + VERB"

I know "have to" expresses 'obligations to do something' and I know how to use it in the sentences. For example: People have to leave their rural areas. But I have seen ‘having to’ being used as gerunds and in the present continuous tense. For example: People are having to leave thei...

infinitive-vs-gerund present-continuous

Whom to offer bounty if desired answer isn't received?

Hi @M.A.R. @DamkerngT.

CowperKettle

07:24

Word of the day: gynaecologist. A doctor who looks for problems where everybody else looks for fun.

(from the local jokes thread in the forum)

Jude

07:37

hey

how do you do?

CowperKettle

fine! I hope you are too!

I'm loosing time on social networks.. should be translating..

BBL

Arrowfar

Darn, I got cold. I feel weak and miserable :/

CowperKettle

I feel odd. Some cramp in the right leg, and foggy brain.

Arrowfar

haha

CowperKettle

I'll try jogging anyway

No, really, something with the leg muscles again, like last September. That's odd.

Arrowfar

07:42

jogging is fun.

CowperKettle

It's minus 19C now

Arrowfar

wow!

CowperKettle

But a friend jogged in the morning, and was pleased

She posted this in her Vkontakte (0:

So this is not a private photo, I hope, and is okay to post here.

Arrowfar

Nice pic.

CowperKettle

It was somewhat colder in the morn

Arrowfar

07:45

She is pretty :)

CowperKettle

Yes

Arrowfar

I think covering ones face (nostrils and mouth) is a necessity in that much cold. I used to run in 10 C and breathing seemed difficult sometimes.

I have never run in minus temperatures though.

It will be an adventure.

CowperKettle

It is okay to run with your facial inlets/outlets uncovered down to about minus 15C I guess

At lower temperatures you will start to have a burning feeling

I don't recall the exact temp

I recall that at about minus 15C the mp3 player's cable becomes rigid

^_^

Arrowfar

Heh. Wow. You guys are cool :-)

Damkerng T.

08:00

@yubrajsharma Hi!

1

Q: Does 'trip' only mean 'the travelling' or it does it include 'the tour'?

I'm still confused after reading the dictionary explanation. I think the word 'trip' normally emphasise 'the way from A to B', but does it include or mean 'a tour' as well? For example, “I won a trip to Paris.” Does that mean I won a one-way ticket to Paris, or a round trip ticket, or a round tr...

word-meaning

Arrowfar

So if mp3 player's cable becomes rigid then what about the person's face? Isn't that harmful?

Hello @DamkerngT.!

Damkerng T.

FWIW, even You won a ticket to Paris! could also include a tour!

@Arrowfar Hi!

@yubrajsharma Our mods (snailplane, ColleenV, J.R., in order of frequencies of their appearance in the chat room :-) would know better what will happen if you don't accept any answer and choose not to award anyone the bounty.

But if you meant that the existing answer doesn't help you much, you could simply leave the question as it is. (IMO)

You sure can do that.

(The decision is yours, anyway. :)

Running in that cold weather is a mystery to me...

CowperKettle

08:26

> Running in weather that cold is a mystery to me.

This might be better

Sawasdee khrap!

> calculated with reference to the dried substance

A weird expression in the British Pharmacopoeia

Damkerng T.

@CowperKettle Interesting! I think your alternative works as well, and probably better.

CowperKettle

Thank you!

I wonder if "calculated with reference to the dried substance" could be replaced with some alternative phrase, more elegant and less cumbersome

I wonder what is the US Pharmacopoeia phrase for the same

Damkerng T.

Hmm...

According to?

CowperKettle

08:42

looks like it is "calculated on the dried basis"

Damkerng T.

Nice!

CowperKettle

This is shorter and more comprehensible

Damkerng T.

Interesting, Garner uses with reference to several times (some are with XYZ reference to) in his usage book.

CowperKettle

nods

Damkerng T.

2

Q: based on MAC address -- why not "MAC addresses"?

Source: The Illustrated Network—How TCP-IP Works in a Modern Network by Walter Goralski (2009) Example: Bridges operate at the data link layer and normally deliver frames within the same broadcast domain based on MAC address. Asked a friend of mine who's a native English speaker from Ameri...

grammar

Interesting question.

> What is your visual picture of the surface of Mars, based on the descriptions in the book? Have you seen photographs of the planet?

> --The Martian

Anonymous

08:53

@CowperKettle A tongue twister! :-)

Damkerng T.

I guess either plural or singular is probably okay.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. For photograph?

Damkerng T.

Ah! What does it mean?

@snailplane The part "based on MAC address(es)".

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Oh :-)

Damkerng T.

I used "based on the descriptions" as evidence to show that the plural alternative is possible. :-)

Anonymous

08:56

@DamkerngT. Something like: "That I leaned bamboo against this bamboo fence was because I wanted to lean bamboo against something, so I leaned bamboo against that bamboo fence."

2

Anonymous

It's a little weird :-)

Damkerng T.

Haha!

I think tongue twisters are supposed to be like that!

M.A.R.

@yubrajsharma No one

CowperKettle

@snailplane nice

(0:

Damkerng T.

The tongue twister reminds me of this dialogue:

> Scarlett: You're outnumbered.
Laurel: I am? By who?
Scarlett: By whom. By the people you're outnumbered by.

CowperKettle

08:59

> He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts

(courtesy of Stephen King)

Damkerng T.

@CowperKettle Nice rhyme!

Arrowfar

“Pad kid poured curd pulled cold.”

M.A.R.

Yes, editing a lot of questions floods the active page and is harmful, but that's no excuse for leaving [grammar] there. And yes, there will be other tag place-holders, but if anything, that's an excuse to stop worrying about tags in the first place, rather than leaving [grammar] there. I guess the meta eventually agreed that the tag should go, but I can't get a couple of people around me to do some retagging, and Jasper is the hero ELL deserves, but doesn't need right now. I'm actually bit busy in real life too, but if you can gather some people that care to start retagging, I'm with ya. — M.A.R. 10 secs ago

Damkerng T.

> The number of questions tagged grammar has increased by ___% (someone do the math /maths)

It's 73.529411765%

M.A.R.

@DamkerngT. Huh? I thought they have decreased

They were four thousand three hundred something

Damkerng T.

09:07

It was 1700 then. It's 2950 now.

Arrowfar

@snailplane It is kind of easy to say in English. Is it a Japanese tongue twister only?

Damkerng T.

I guess 1700 is the number of grammar questions after our retagging event.

M.A.R.

@DamkerngT. We had no retagging event . . .

@DamkerngT. No, it says 1700 with [grammar] as their only tag

Damkerng T.

Oh! What was its name?

M.A.R.

We didn't have any organized events for retagging. We only had one for editing crappy titles

Damkerng T.

09:12

Oh, right!

Anonymous

09:27

@Arrowfar Well, I was translating for meaning. I think it would be difficult to come up with a translation for a tongue-twister that preserves its tongue-twistiness.

Arrowfar

heh :)

M.A.R.

45

Q: Why do Internet forums tend to prohibit responding to inactive threads?

On most Internet forums, it is frowned upon to ‘bump’, ‘resurrect’, ‘necropost’, etc., that is to post in a thread that has been idle for a reasonably long time. On many forums this is a bannable offence. And some forums implement automatic systems that lock any thread after a set period of inact...

forum

Araucaria

09:49

@M.A.R. :)

CowperKettle

10:48

> Packaging: From 100 g to 1000 g in a transparent polyethylene bag (either double-wall or bag-in-bag).

Which is better: bilayer polyethylene bag, or double-wall?

the Russian sentence says "in a double or double-layer bag"

But this Russian way could be incomprehensible to the English reader, so I tried to make it as clear as possible

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle What's wrong with two-layer?

CowperKettle

@M.A.R. I thought that maybe it could be understood as "a bag that has two (possibly different) layers"

I googled and found double-wall

M.A.R.

Double-wall is weird, but okay

CowperKettle

weird?

CowperKettle

11:02

0

Q: Two-layer bag vs. bilayer bag vs. double-wall bag vs. ...

I'm translating a paragraph that describes drug product packaging: Packaging: From 100 g to 1000 g in a transparent polyethylene bag (either double-wall or bag-in-bag). Which would be the better choice: "double-wall", "bilayer" or "two-layer"? The meaning is, the polyethylene bag has two si...

word-choice

Damkerng T.

Word of the Day: bereft

CowperKettle

I've got the feeling that the whole sentence is a bit awkward, but I posted the question just to get to know the proper word.

Damkerng T.

@CowperKettle Um, to be honest, the first word that came to my mind was double-bag(ging). :P

CowperKettle

@DamkerngT. urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=double%20bagging

You mean this?

Damkerng T.

Well, I don't think it has to be used only in that sense, but yes!

CowperKettle

11:06

> To use 2 teabags to make a cup of tea, to strengthen the flavour
"Hey Ruth, are we double bagging?"
"Of course, no weak tea for me"

Damkerng T.

Let's see if we can find it in papers.

CowperKettle

Double-bagging must be quite expensive

Damkerng T.

google.com/patents/US6935086

> A double-bag package, and method for manufacturing same, constructed by modification to existing vertical form and fill packaging machines and perforation knives.

@CowperKettle Well, two must be more expensive than one. That's a universal truth.

CowperKettle

You mean that my phrase "bag-in-bag" should better be "double bag"?

Damkerng T.

I think any alternatives in your question would convey the intended meaning.

CowperKettle

11:08

hmm okay

Damkerng T.

But I don't like the sound of "double-wall" much.

CowperKettle

ah! off with it then

> From 100 g to 1000 g in a transparent double-layer polyethylene bag (or a double bag).

This is only about 20% of the whole sentence though

That bag is inside a bigger bag, and that is inside a yet bigger one

Damkerng T.

Hah! It's triple tap!

CowperKettle

But I'm bereft of time, and must translate.

Damkerng T.

Um, I mean triple-bagging. :P

CowperKettle

11:10

BBL

Damkerng T.

Have fun!

CowperKettle

"Double-wall" is probably best, because I prefer it. — P. E. Dant 2 mins ago

And I believed you, my Thai and Iranian friends.

And here's a Britisher saying "double-wall" is okay.

Damkerng T.

Hah!

"But it doesn't go well with plastic," he implored.

CowperKettle

> From 100 g to 1000 g in a transparent double-layer polyethylene bag (or a double bag) inside a black polyethylene bag inside a triple-layer aluminium foil bag with a self-adhesive label.

I wonder if there's a way to get rid of "inside ... inside ... inside"

Damkerng T.

11:34

"in ... in ... in"?

CowperKettle

Voila!

(0:

Damkerng T.

Hee

> And who was caught in the middle of all this, without any protection? Mr. Eammer. Why? Well, let me give you some background on that character. When talkies killed the era of silent films, Mr. Eammer nearly got shaken loose in the change. He'd scornfully dismissed the new development.

"Ha," he'd said. "People come to my movies for one of two things. To fall asleep, or to look at the pretty girlies."

When the movie industry began to look for good stories and material that stimulated the mind as well as the emotion, Mr. Eammer had jeered. "Ha. People are stupid, people are sheep. They don…

(via ell.stackexchange.com/questions/109617/usage-of-kick-off)

It's unbelievable that's from 1955!

(And I thought we had made much progress in the last two decades.)

Damkerng T.

11:59

I don't argue with the grammar side of this, but a curious thing about Ethernet is that each Ethernet frame has two MAC addresses, destination and source. I suppose it's fair to say that "based on MAC address" implies "based on the destination MAC address of each frame". :-) — Damkerng T. 34 secs ago

@DamkerngT. Happy to be out pedanted! — Brian Tompsett - 汤莱恩 47 secs ago

LOL

Anonymous

4

Q: Answering questions about "formal" English

We get a lot of questions from quaerants who are concerned about the use of "formal" English, and I would really like to know how best to answer such questions. What should we tell them? There's no such thing as formal English? It's a cultural thing and therefore off-topic? It's just a matter of ...

discussion

Anonymous

This question is just bewildering to me.

Anonymous

I can't imagine why someone would think that formal English does not exist or is off-topic, or why they would think questions about style are off-topic, for that matter.

Anonymous

That's like saying: How should we handle questions about the past tense? Should we close them as off-topic because the past tense does not exist?

Anonymous

I'm just at a loss, really.

Damkerng T.

12:17

"There's no such thing as formal English?" is a wrong assumption, in my opinion.

Ah, wait, "the wrong assumption"!

Anonymous

Hmm, but you really did want it to be indefinite, right? So maybe an incorrect assumption or a mistaken assumption?

Damkerng T.

nods -- an incorrect assumption would be better!

Thanks!

I guess the OP would be okay with the singular if the entity noun is in singular, too. What if your examples are changed to "people" and "cars"? Wouldn't the plural be possible, too? — Damkerng T. 2 mins ago

The plural has no effect. I chose the cars based on color = the criterion I used when making my choice was color. This would be idiomatic: "I chose the cars based on their colors" but this would not be idiomatic: "I chose the cars based on colors". — TRomano 59 secs ago

A-ha!

Stack Exchange

12:38

0

Q: Do we focus more on building a database of answers, or helping individual learners?

Half the time when I see people post a question, there is more focus on the inadequacies of the question than on actually answering it. It shouldn't have been asked because it's a duplicate. It's put on hold because it's off-topic (proof-reading request seems to be the main reason). It has the li...

discussion

CowperKettle

@snailplane The whole History Stack Exchange should be closed on this ground

Færd

@snailplane Hi! Can I have this question migrated to ELU if no-one answers it in a few days? Or do you think it's not a good idea?

It's not that it's off-topic on ELL; frankly, most of the time I don't know what's on-topic where. I just want to take that chance too.

On second thought, it is not off-topic on ELL, but still i wonder if I can have it migrated, or if it's not a good idea to do so.

Anonymous

Migration is intended to find a home for good questions that happen to be off-topic on the original site, so we probably wouldn't migrate it normally, but I think we can take the wishes of the OP into account and migrate anyway once in a while, so I think that'd be okay. But can you do me a favor and ping me again when those few days have passed? :-)

Anonymous

Whew, that sentence ended up kind of unwieldy.

Damkerng T.

13:25

livescience.com/…

CowperKettle

14:06

> Clarity of solution. A (the? zero article?) 0.2 % solution of the substance in carbon dioxide-free water should be clear.

> (Rus. Pharm. XIII, vol. 1, General Monograph 1.2.1.0007.15 "Clarity and Degree of Opalescence of Liquids", visual method)

Should I always capitalize all nouns in the name of a section from the Russian Pharmacopoeia?

Or it could be "Clarity and degree of opalescence of liquids"?

Damkerng T.

@CowperKettle I'm not 100% sure, but I'd use A myself.

CowperKettle

@DamkerngT. thank you!

Damkerng T.

I hope I wasn't wrong!

@CowperKettle I think this is a matter of style.

CowperKettle

not a big deal

Damkerng T.

Mistranslation of the day:

> Original: It's not personal. If I had to do it over again, I'd f--k you both over just as hard.

> Back translation: It's not personal. If I had to do it over again, I'd f--k you both over equally hard.

The difference is subtle, but significant.

Cardinal

14:19

Hi dudes :x

Word of the Evening: voyeur

:D

Damkerng T.

Umm...

CowperKettle

books.google.com/ngrams/…

I thought it was cool down, but it's simply cool

Færd

@snailplane Sure. Thank you.

@CowperKettle Interesting.

oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/cool-down

I don't know why cool is prevalent in scientific discourse. Maybe cool down is comparatively a bit informal, as many phrasal verbs are compared to their one-word equivalents.

CowperKettle

@Færd maybe cool down only relates to volitional action ("Cool down, man")

Færd

That Oxford Learners' page does suggest that.

LDOCE doesn't, however.

> The air has cooled down a little now.

CowperKettle

14:42

whoa, it will be minus 30°C the whole Saturday

Yekaterinburg will definitely cool down

We've an Arctic air invasion

a rare thing

CowperKettle

15:09

It is usually minus 5 to minus 10 these days

CowperKettle

15:20

> Place an accurately weighed quantity of about 8.0 mg of the substance into a 10 ml volumetric flask, add

Is this a good combination: "an accurately weighted quantity of about 8.0 mg"?

There must be "accurately weighted" - it is in the original Russian text

CowperKettle

15:33

books.google.com/ngrams/…

"until completely dissolved" dominates, yet Miltitran offers only "until fully dissolved"

Damkerng T.

I find it a bit odd to see both accurately and about in the same phrase!

CowperKettle

Me either

CowperKettle

15:54

> Use the solution while fresh.

> Use the solution freshly prepared.

I like the second sentence more

This is the last sentence in a solution preparation procedure

There might exist other phrases for the same purpose though

CowperKettle

16:38

I could really use a wife sometimes.

►

CowperKettle

18:35

> I was the giant great and still
That sits upon the pillow-hill,
And sees before him, dale and plain,
The pleasant land of counterstain.

Anonymous

18:59

@CowperKettle I liked accurately weighed more than accurately weighted.

2

CowperKettle

@snailplane that was a typo! I know that it is weighed

Good evening, Snails!

I checked: no such typos in my translation. Phew

Anonymous

Good morning :-)

CowperKettle

> In order to avoid non-specific adsorption of zoledronic acid onto glass surfaces, zoledronic acid-containing solutions are prepared, stored and loaded into the autosampler using polypropylene vials.

> In order to avoid non-specific adsorption of zoledronic acid onto glass surfaces, the preparation, storage and introduction of zoledronic acid-containing solutions into autosamplers relies on the use of polypropylene vials.

I wonder which is better

I should hit the pleasant land of counterpane.

It's midnight

Jimi Hendrix - Midnight

►

Good night

M.A.R.

19:42

0

A: Do we focus more on building a database of answers, or helping individual learners?

Let's clear up some misconceptions. SE never meant to be a place for answers to all questions. We don't spoonfeed people the answer to their homework questions. We don't answer "What is the hardest part of English in your opinion?" We don't even answer "What are adjectives?", unless decided by m...

What a rare gem. I like that OP.

ColleenV

21:28

@CowperKettle I like the first one better. I might say "solutions containing zoledronic acid are prepared..."

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