Language Overflow

Jude

03:47

Happy New Year peeps!

The Voice 2015 Blind Audition - Jordan Smith: “Chandelier"

►

CowperKettle

04:06

@Jude Naya Saal Mubarak Ho

Russian Edition - Chandelier Sia Cover

►

Jude

04:20

@CowperKettle nice!

CowperKettle

(0:

Боня и Кузьмич (KIESZA - HIDEAWAY COVER)

►

Jude

hahahah.... that's a funny chronograph

CowperKettle

(0:

I love that it's like 100% Russian typical village

"Боня и Кузьмич" и их новый хит - взорвет ли дуэт YouTube?

►

They are a nice couple (0:

Perm Region, village Nizhnaya Chervoda

Perm Krai

Perm Krai (Russian: Пе́рмский край, tr. Permsky kray; IPA: [ˈpʲɛrmskʲɪj ˈkraj]) is a federal subject of Russia (a krai) that came into existence on December 1, 2005 as a result of the 2004 referendum on the merger of Perm Oblast and Komi-Permyak Autonomous Okrug. The city of Perm is the administrative center. Population: 2,635,276 (2010 Census). Komi-Permyak Okrug retained its autonomous status within Perm Krai during the transitional period of 2006–2008. It also retained a budget separate from that of the krai, keeping all federal transfers. Starting in 2009, Komi-Permyak Okrug's budget became...

That's not far from me! Maybe about 200 km to the west

Or even less

QuokMoon

05:06

Good morning

Jude

Good Morning!

QuokMoon

I want to ensure that added recipient in email is correct.

"Am I did add a correct recipient for floating leave ?"

Jude

How about Did I add a correct recipient for floating leave?

CowperKettle

Yes, you should use did

am is a form of is

Anonymous

05:30

@QuokMoon The basic sentence is I added X. To make it into a question, we need to swap the subject I with an auxiliary verb, but we don't have one; added is not an auxiliary. So we add the dummy auxiliary do. (It's called a "dummy" because it doesn't change the meaning of the sentence.) So we get I did add X. Now we can swap the subject I and auxiliary did to make a question: Did I add X?

Anonymous

Correct here is definite, so we probably want to say the correct recipient, not a correct recipient.

Anonymous

I did add X becomes Did I add X? But we can't form a sentence like *I am do add X because the auxiliary do doesn't combine with other auxiliaries, which means *Am I do add X? is also ungrammatical. It would be ungrammatical anyway since you have two finite verb forms (am and did); only the first verb should be finite.

QuokMoon

05:59

Ok
It's look like I am learning a mathematics by using assumption.
Thanks all of you.

Did I add a the correct recipient for floating leave?

Anonymous

A and the don't go together.

QuokMoon

06:14

ooopss.. Sorry it was a typo mistake. thanks

CowperKettle

Happy 2017, Snails

Anonymous

Happy 2017 :-)

Pandya

06:43

Is "giving alias" = "aliasing"?

Damkerng T.

0

Q: I 'had' better get going (Why 'had'??)

I specifically want to know why the past tense of the word 'have' is used in this phrase. In modern casual English(at least in the US), everyone says ' I should better get going' or they completely omit the word 'had' and say (and even write) 'I better get going'. I've read all posts on the inter...

Hmm... "everyone says ' I should better get going' or they completely omit the word 'had' and say (and even write) 'I better get going'"

Interesting

Anonymous

07:12

@DamkerngT. Hmm . . . nope!

V.V.

Privet-privet!

Anonymous

Privet! :-)

V.V.

That's an interesting question, but it's etymological.

Damkerng T.

@V.V. Privet!

Happy New Year, everyone!

V.V.

You too!

Damkerng T.

07:17

Thanks!

0

Q: Usage of "this" before a long phrase

Someone wrote: Finally this university semester finished. Every university semester with different students and classes, always bring me many new experiences. I feel while "this semester" sounds fluent, "this university semester" or "Every university semester" doesn't sound fluent! I don't ...

determiners

I think this is a new trend, a proofreader's proofreading question!

"I feel while "this semester" sounds fluent, "this university semester" or "Every university semester" doesn't sound fluent!" -- Hmm...

Hi! @АлексейШиманский

V.V.

What does he mean saying "fluent"?

Damkerng T.

Doesn't sound like a native speaker, perhaps.

Алексей Шиманский

@DamkerngT. Good morning)

Damkerng T.

@АлексейШиманский Good morning, and Happy New Year!

Алексей Шиманский

@DamkerngT. why year? why not me? :D

V.V.

07:24

The more determiners he puts before the noun, the heavier the structure.

Damkerng T.

@АлексейШиманский Hopefully, the implication that you are happy in a happy year is true! :D

@V.V. nods -- But it shouldn't be a problem.

Maybe saying a university semester in a context where semester means a university semester is somewhat redundant.

V.V.

Алексей, "all included", привет.

Damkerng T.

07:42

0

Q: The use of "work with" vs. "work at/on"

In one of my previous questions, Tiercelet left a comment: It's a pleasure to work with such well-thought-out and nuanced questions! It seems work with has a similar meaning to work on or work at here. However, I have consulted multiple dictionaries. They don't have examples for work ...

phrase-meaning difference phrasal-verbs

That work with is indeed odd.

(to me)

It's a pleasure to work with such well-thought-out and nuanced questions! -- but questions aren't tools. Nor is it a person.

Алексей Шиманский

@V.V. И вам не хворать))

Damkerng T.

I wonder how Tiercelet internalized this work with.

Anonymous

A is a determiner, but university is an attributive noun.

Anonymous

Adding more determiners would be like when our friend earlier typed a the :-)

V.V.

09:13

!!translate/не хворать

Ellbot

ru: не хворать
en: do not fall ill

V.V.

Well-done, dear.

QuokMoon

11:26

http://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/114191/using-words-again-and-anymore-in-a-specific-example

It seem "Again" is nice replacement of last text .

"Any more" help in negative or question kind of sentence .

Jude

11:39

anyone there?

This is totally off topic to chatroom. But I will ask it here. Probably you might not mind it

I am looking for a research idea for my Bachelors degree as final year project

Where can I find a good research idea?

I mean it's ok even if i have to pay some bucks for it

Mick

@Jude The best person to talk to is your personal (or course) tutor, assuming that you have one. He (or she) will know your strengths and weaknesses, and should be able to suggest a suitable topic: one that matches your capabilities, and perhaps one that they themselves are familiar with.

Damkerng T.

@QuokMoon Either choice is fine, but that doesn't mean they mean the same thing. They're close but not identical.

Mick's is good advice.

V.V.

12:30

Your shirt's all bunched up at the back. What is" 's"," has" or" is"?

Can it have the passive?

Mick

It could be either. If we get rid of "all", we can have "Your shirt is bunched up" or "Your shirt has bunched up". I would be more likely to use "is " with "all", though.

V.V.

Thank you. I found it looking up dict.Cambridge. org.

Wanted to know if it had the passive. Because "open " doesn't seem to have it. The door opens, the door is open.

"Is opened" is impossible, right?

Mick

I don't know much about the technicalities of the passive voice, I'm afraid.

I think, for the passive voice, you need both an object and a subject. I'm not sure if you can have a dummy subject.

V.V.

But you can say if you heard or used it. They say not all transitive verbs are used in the passive.

Some verbs are weird, like "open ", "spin"

Mick

12:49

I suppose that "The door is opened." is grammatical (but I couldn't definitively say that, or even if it is in the passive voice -- my knowledge of English grammar is that weak". However, in my mind, it begs the question "by whom?"

V.V.

Interesting

Mick

Remember, I only studied English up to age 16, and that was almost 50 years ago.

Also, I only got mediocre grades. :(

V.V.

It doesn't matter much, because you "feel" it.

I do the same on the Russian site and feel the same answering

Mick

It's a problem for native speakers on a site like this: they generally know "what", but they often can't tell you "why".

V.V.

But nobody except you can tell us what is natural and correct.

The main difficulty for me isn't grammar but vocabulary. Never know what to choose.

"why", I will find myself, if I know what to search for.

Mick

12:59

... or is it "by who?" I never know when to use "whom" (except in fixed phrases, such as "To whom am I speaking?"). I avoid it like the plague, if I can.

V.V.

Thanks for help.

user2684291

@Mick It's correct.

V.V.

We have the same saying about the plague.

Arrowfar

Hello @Mick @V.V. and @user2684291 how is it going?

V.V.

I didn't see it in English before.

Mick

13:04

Fair t' middlin', lad.

Arrowfar

@Mick idioms.thefreedictionary.com/fair+to+middling. Nice phrase.

Anonymous

@V.V. The door is opened is perfectly fine. It's just that we rarely narrate in the present tense this way, and you need a situation that makes the passive appropriate.

V.V.

@Arrowfar Eating and doing nothing.

Anonymous

Compare it to He opens the door. That's also fine in present tense narration.

Mick

@Arrowfar Actually, it's a nice day and I'm feeling fine. I just felt like using the phrase.

Anonymous

13:07

Now, most of the time, if you want to talk about the state of the door, you should use the adjectives open or closed.

Arrowfar

Hello @snailplane what are your thoughts on this?

@Mick :)

Anonymous

But that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the passive forms of open and close.

V.V.

Snail "s the savior, what about "to spin"?

Anonymous

@Arrowfar He wants money, and he's willing to annoy you to get it. If you don't want to pay, you have to live with the annoyance.

Anonymous

Otherwise, you can contribute :-)

Anonymous

13:10

@V.V. What about it?

Arrowfar

Oh. I see.

heh!

V.V.

Can it have the passive?

Arrowfar

well, then I'll stick to Google search. It is pretty good anyway.

Anonymous

@V.V. Yes, a single thread spun by a spider

user2684291

@Arrowfar Mustn't grumble.

Anonymous

13:12

Google isn't a replacement for an actual corpus, but it's useful for different purposes.

Anonymous

Well, it's a corpus in its own way. Extremely large compared to something like COCA.

Anonymous

But they don't make result counts publicly available, and it's nothing like a balanced corpus.

Anonymous

And you can only ever view a few pages of results.

Anonymous

So it's useful for collecting examples, especially of rarer or more colloquial language, but you can't use it to figure out how common something is, or to compare across genres, or years, etc.

V.V.

Thank you Snailplane.

Anonymous

13:15

@V.V. Is. Has would be ungrammatical because of all.

Anonymous

Without all, it would be ambiguous.

V.V.

A-a-a.Why do they use abbreviations in the dictionary? They shouldn't.

Anonymous

@V.V. Dictionaries used to all be printed on paper, and they got pretty big even with the abbreviations.

Anonymous

Unless you're referring to shirt's as an abbreviation, which it isn't.

user2684291

Isn't that a contraction?

Anonymous

13:19

Yes, an orthographic representation of a clitic form of an auxiliary.

user2684291

:>

V.V.

Right,a contraction.

Damkerng T.

nods -- Another possible reason is, perhaps, it's more natural that way. It looks like modern dictionaries use things people wrote in books or typed on the web.

Anonymous

Dictionaries should use contractions when appropriate, because English often sounds unnatural without them. Learners need to be exposed to contractions as often as they occur.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. There are other sources for corpora used by dictionaries (e.g. newspapers), but yes :-)

V.V.

13:23

Learners don't know that "all" is not used with Pres.perfect.

Damkerng T.

@snailplane nods -- I'm not sure what their sources are. I remember that I was quite surprised by some examples which turned out to be something pretty new on the web.

@V.V. So they may get curious and then learn from the example! ;-)

(after doing some research like you just did! :)

V.V.

That's why I am here.

Damkerng T.

:D

I suppose that's why we all are here. :D

!!translate/ไอเดียบรรเจิด

Ellbot

th: ไอเดียบรรเจิด
en: Adobe Ideas

Damkerng T.

Huh?

Anonymous

13:28

@V.V. Well, that's not the rule.

Anonymous

> Your shirt's gotten all bunched up at the back.

Damkerng T.

Hmm... I wonder what an idiomatic way to put it (ไอเดียบรรเจิด) would be...

Anonymous

Here we have a perfect construction; 's is has.

Anonymous

But all can modify bunched, because bunched here is a participial adjective.

Anonymous

In Your shirt has bunched up at the back, the perfect construction has bunched forces us to interpret bunched as a past participle – a verb form.

Anonymous

13:31

So I don't think it's possible to insert all.

Anonymous

Actually, be bunched up is interesting.

Anonymous

You should post a question on the main site asking about all in It's (It is) all bunched up :-)

V.V.

I think I see the difference. You allow "all"with the state

Anonymous

It seems kind of like bunched up is an adjective.

user2684291

@snailplane How d'you discern between a past participle as part of a passive construction, and an (independent) participial adjective?

V.V.

13:37

Has gotten all bunched up. Yes, "bunched up " looks like an adjective. Yay!

user2684291

"Your shirt is bunched up." Is the emboldened part the former or the latter?

Anonymous

Well, in that example it's technically ambiguous.

Anonymous

Let's look at a set of examples from The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.

Anonymous

> 1. It was broken deliberately, out of spite.　　[past participle form of verb]

Anonymous

> 2. It didn't look broken to me.　　　　　　　 [past-participial adjective]

Anonymous

13:42

> 3. It was broken.　　　　　　　　　　　　　[ambiguous]

user2684291

All right, thank you.

Anonymous

They explain:

Anonymous

> The verb broken in 1 denotes an event, while the adjective broken in 2 denotes a state – and the ambiguity of 3 lies precisely in the fact that it can be interpreted in either of these ways.

Anonymous

The same ambiguity technically applies in the present tense, but practically speaking it's less ambiguous. Most often with an is + V-ed form we have a participial adjective.

Anonymous

To interpret it as a passive, we need a situation where it makes sense to interpret it that way, for example in the middle of a present tense narration.

Anonymous

13:45

But most of the time we don't have a situation like that, so we naturally interpret it as a predicate adjective.

Anonymous

When we write:

Anonymous

> The window is broken.

Anonymous

Technically, this could be interpreted as describing the event of the window being broken in present tense narration.

Anonymous

Practically speaking, a situation which allows this interpretation is rare.

Anonymous

It would almost always be interpreted as describing the state of the window.

Anonymous

13:46

The same applies to your example:

Anonymous

> Your shirt is bunched up.

Anonymous

Practically speaking, this would be interpreted almost exclusively as describing a state.

Damkerng T.

13:58

Once again, my village is back to normal. Some noisy music from afar, some dog barking sounds, etc. People are coming home after the New Year!

Oh, and the sounds of kids! :D

user2684291

14:19

@snailplane Thank you. Apparently there's also an unreliable way they mention to distinguish between them, so... that might help.

Mick

14:43

I wish Ghandi would feed his cat.

user2684291

Hahah.

Damkerng T.

15:41

1

A: Meaning of "Powerless smile"

None of the comments above have hit the right note, so I'm going to venture in. Saying so, a powerless smile drifted across his face. What is powerless is not the smile itself but the feeling of the person smiling. He feels powerless, unable to "answer [her] feelings." The writer is attempt...

Bah! Isn't a "wan smile" more or less the same as a "weak smile"?

In any case, this Japanese excerpt (assuming Robusto got it right, and I think he did because he knows Japanese) works more like Thai than I thought!

Davyd Diniz

17:18

@Mick is that a cat?

user2684291

@DavydDiniz That's Gandhi.

Davyd Diniz

17:38

@user2684291 those things under it look legs

@user2684291 look just like legs

Hanaa

Of what does this picture remind you? Is it correct? @DamkerngT. I have problem with prepositions and interrogative pronouns.

BTW, Hi all :)

Damkerng T.

I suppose it might be okay to use that, but What ... remind you of? would be more usual, I think.

Mick

@user2684291 You're right. In this case, I copied someone else's typo, but it's a mistake that I often make.

Damkerng T.

!!translate/Please change the color on the wall.

Ellbot

en: Please change the color on the wall.
en: Please change the color on the wall.

Damkerng T.

17:48

No, not that!

!!translate/গান্ধী

Ellbot

bn: গান্ধী
en: Gandhi

Damkerng T.

Hmm...

!!translate/कुशीनगर

Ellbot

hi: कुशीनगर
en: Kushinagar

Damkerng T.

Ahh... it's a different letter.

!!translate/বাংগালোৰ

Ellbot

bn: বাংগালোৰ
en: Bangalora

Damkerng T.

17:52

So, it's this গা.

Strange that in Thai, the two names (Gandhi and Bangalore) got different "ga"s!

Oh, wait! There are two spellings for Bangalore in Thai!

บังคาลอร์, บังกาลอร์

But Gandhi is always คานธี -- It's a ค.

!!translate/गांधी

Ellbot

hi: गांधी
en: Gandhi

Damkerng T.

I suppose the Hindi alphabet would be likelier.

Ahh... it makes sense to use ค because ग is ค (where क is ก).

user2684291

18:10

@Mick I'm sure I've made that mistake a number of times as well, but it never hurts to repeat the correct version to prod our memory.

@Hanaa Don't be afraid to put a preposition at the end of a sentence.

Mick

"Never end a sentence on a preposition." When criticized for occasionally ending a sentence on a preposition, Winston Churchill replied, "This is the type of errant pedantry up with which I will not put."

Davyd Diniz

18:26

What is a pig called after it has been killed?

user2684291

Unfortunately, that so-called zombie rule has been ingrained in people's minds. It was originally preached by linguists in an attempt to make English grammar conform to the rules of Latin, or something along these lines.

@DavydDiniz A dead pig.

V.V.

Lol

Davyd Diniz

I thought it was called pork

I have just seen a funny English class video where the teacher asks the student what a pig is called after it has been killed, the student answered the same as you, the teacher corrected him saying that fork is right

V.V.

If you mean "meat",it's pork

Davyd Diniz

but it is pig's meat

isn't it?

meat may not be defined as any kind of meal, it's a pig meat, that's why it is called pork

Do you guys want to hear a joke?

Mick

18:32

Farm animal names derive from the Anglo-Saxon (cow, sheep, pig), whereas the names for the meat derive from Norman French (beef, mutton, pork).

@DavydDiniz Go on, then.

user2684291

@DavydDiniz No, "pork" is edible meat from swine.

Davyd Diniz

Here is: Want to know how a chicken asked for books?

Mick

Tell us.

user2684291

A dead pig is a dead pig. I'm not aware of any synonyms; it's just a pig carcass at that point.

Davyd Diniz

A hungry chiken walks into a library and says: book book

you got it?

user2684291

18:36

@DavydDiniz That's a funny joke.

I've got one.

What's a bookworm's favorite fruit? ~ A liberry.

Davyd Diniz

I heard this in a podcast from Cambridge, from which I was using to improve my listening, there are 5 minutes break in each episode so that a guy can tell one funny joke, and he told this one

lol

where did you take this one from?

how to disable sound notifications?

this ringing is annoying me pretty much

Mick

There's a loudspeaker icon near the top-right of the page.

user2684291

Click on the little speaker icon/button at the upper right corner of the window.

@DavydDiniz I don't recall.

Davyd Diniz

thank you guys

have you seen the kangaroo videos?

yet ?

I have seen this video about 10 times and still don't get enough of this

user2684291

What kangaroo videos?

Davyd Diniz

18:47

Man punches a kangaroo in the face to rescue his dog (Original HD)

►

a guy was seeking for a bear as a last gift for a boy who was suffering by cancer, as they looked for the bear they found a kangaroo, and the kangaroo held their dog by its neck not letting it go, the guy approached the kangaroo and punched its face

he took space and got ready to perfom a powerfull punch

but he says "the big kang has held the dog, not the other way around" was a dog supposed to hold a kangaroo by its neck? it sounds kinda impossible, considering the kangaaro's size and physical form

Damkerng T.

That kangaroo was man-sized. Quite a punch!

Reminds me of Maggie Q, who jumped right in between her dog and a buck, trying to save the dog.

Davyd Diniz

My friend regards kangaaros as bizarries aberrations, but dude, look at this kangaaro's arms and legs, if this big boy kicked me I would be knocked 20 feet away from the place I got kicked from

send me this video

I have not seen this yet, jumping in between a buck and a dog, were they fighting each other?

Damkerng T.

No video. It was her anecdote. I can't remember on which TV show I learned about this. But she told the story herself, and she got injured.

user2684291

@DavydDiniz Ah, Antipodean struggles.

Damkerng T.

19:03

It's on the web as well!

nymag.com/guides/fallpreview/2010/tv/67614

> Her dog startled a sleeping buck, which knocked it over on its belly then lowered its antlers to charge. “The only thing I could think to do to get in between the deer’s horns and my dog was to jump on the deer,” she says. It threw her into a bush, splitting her leg and side open. Q was due, two days later, on the set of an “awful movie that hasn’t been released yet, thank God!” She showed up completely “mummified” in gauze. But she showed up.

user2684291

Ah, they call it "gauze" as well — I didn't know what the direct translation was.

Jim Reynolds

19:21

If @Andrew drops in, we've been co-exploring here:

1

Q: "To" + infinitive for "prefer"

someone wrote: In general I prefer my students change every semester. I think it must be: In general I prefer my students to change every semester. or In general I prefer to have new students every semester. Do I need "to" before "change"?

prepositions

Subjunctive!

I recommend you to stop flatly ungrammatical, I think

Damkerng T.

19:36

@JimReynolds You could leave a comment under his answer. :-)

BTW, Happy New Year!

Jim Reynolds

HNY!

Damkerng T.

Ah, I see. You already posted a comment!

Jim Reynolds

I did leave some.

Ha. I was telling Mr Kettle on Facebook: I was playing this MMOG for a couple of weeks, and one teammate I talked with a lot was Thai, and another was Russian.

I felt I was in this room's parallel universe

Damkerng T.

MMOG? Which one, if I may ask? :D

@JimReynolds Full of doppelgangers, even!

Jim Reynolds

It's called Travian

Yes. So funny. And fun.

Damkerng T.

19:43

Sounds quite familiar. I must've seen its ads.

Oh, yeah, that game!

Jim Reynolds

Thank godz I got out of it, though.

Damkerng T.

Haha!

Jim Reynolds

I once lost about 18 months to it

Damkerng T.

That's more than quite a while!

Jim Reynolds

Maybe it helped sculpt me into the fine human being I am today?

Damkerng T.

19:51

Possibly. We never know what might be useful in the future. :-)

CowperKettle

20:34

Ewen Cameron Bruce

Major Ewen Cameron Bruce (10 November 1890 – 16 April 1925) was a British Army officer who served with the Heavy Branch of the Machine Gun Corps (Tank Corps from July 1917) during the First World War. He was awarded the Military Cross for his conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty in salvaging tanks under heavy shell fire at the Battle of Messines in July 1917 which resulted in him losing his left arm to a gunshot wound. After the war, Bruce went to Russia and volunteered to command a British tank mission assisting the White Army under Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel to fight the Bolsheviks in the...

A Briton who captured Stalingrad in a single tank.

History is so interesting.

CowperKettle

20:50

36

Q: Why did Britain not purchase Alaska when Russia had it up for sale?

One thing that comes up often when discussing "what-ifs" with family or friends is why the British government never nabbed Alaska when Russia had placed it up for sale and made it into Canada's fourth territory. Was it bad timing (Canada gained self-governance that year), lack of money (hard to b...

united-states 19th-century russia united-kingdom alaska

O_O

Hanaa

OK @user2684291 ^_^

CowperKettle

Good night (0:

Hanaa

21:17

Happy dreams! @CowperKettle

Transcript for