Language Overflow

user2684291

15:00

About 58%, yes.

Damkerng T.

Oops! Sorry! I meant to type 98%!

:D

user2684291

Actually I'd say about 58.1%, 1 repeating.

Damkerng T.

LOL

Anonymous

Isn't it? I mean, Siri gets better at recognizing what you say if you keep using it, whether you're a native speaker or not, I think?

Damkerng T.

They're pretty good, though. Much better than a few years ago. I guess it can recognize my speech correctly at about 80-90% accuracy.

Anonymous

15:01

A lot of voice recognition is speaker-adaptive, anyway.

Anonymous

I don't actually know how Siri works.

Damkerng T.

@snailplane Probably. It looks to me like Google seems to be able to understand my English better and better.

Somewhere between 60-80%, I'd say, depending on topic.

Anonymous

Siri can understand my Japanese better than my English.

Damkerng T.

Haha! That's weird, isn't it!

(I guess my question tag wasn't kosher, but never mind that. :-)

Anonymous

I think sometimes question tags are used not to elicit agreement but to establish rapport.

Anonymous

15:05

Think of all the times people say "I know, right?" :-)

user2684291

Ik,r?

Anonymous

> #Yes, you do know.

Anonymous

Obviously an infelicitous response because the original speaker wasn't eliciting agreement.

Anonymous

So I've marked it with a # to indicate the infelicity (= inappropriate in context).

Damkerng T.

I can't remember how Chinese /r/ is pronounced. It could be the root cause of the /r/, bright /l/, dark /l/ confusion.

Curling back, yeah!

user2684291

15:15

@DamkerngT. Do people actually use these? I've never used it seriously, and it hasn't gained steam, so I'd be a pariah if I used it in public, I reckon. I suspect it could be useful when giving instructions to a navigation device while you're riding a bike, or such.

Damkerng T.

@user2684291 I find myself using Okay Google more often when I'm on mobile.

I've been using both Siri and Google Voice for dictation for quite a while, but only every once in a while.

I think it's quite okay when it can work at 90% accuracy or better.

Below 80%, it's probably not worth it.

Anonymous

People use Siri for stuff, yeah.

Anonymous

If I'm saying something I say a lot, like if I tell Siri to set a timer, it's pretty close to 100% recognition.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

I think Siri learned. :-)

Damkerng T.

15:19

I think I always use Siri when I use iPad IMDb app. Though sometimes it fails. (Or probably it's me who fail!)

user2684291

I was just thinking about that, timers, that could really be useful.

Anonymous

I wish I could increase the timeout very slightly.

Anonymous

Sometimes I pause to think mid-utterance and it thinks I'm done.

Damkerng T.

Happens to me quite often, too!

Anonymous

@user2684291 The iPhone has a built-in timer with a kind of poor interface, and you have to navigate to it which takes time. Being able to just press the button and tell Siri to set a timer is better, although if the iPhone had a better UI it might be about equal.

Anonymous

15:21

I could look for another timer app, maybe.

Anonymous

But I haven't bothered.

Anonymous

One of the weird things about the UI is that there doesn't appear to be any way to set the seconds on the timer. You can set it to an hour and a half, but you can't do 16 minutes 30 seconds.

Anonymous

If you use Siri, you can.

user2684291

I hate Apple's inflexibility.

Anonymous

I love my iPhone, but a lot of the design decisions that went into it are pretty bad.

Anonymous

15:23

It's strange how complicated and counterintuitive mobile UI is.

Yan

Hi Everyone, I am a newbie here

Anonymous

I've already spent the time learning how to use it, so it doesn't matter to me anymore whether it's counterintuitive, but it's striking.

Yan

My phone is set for British English

Anonymous

They're supposed to be super user-friendly, but they're the opposite.

Anonymous

Hi, @Yan! Welcome to ELL chat :-)

Yan

15:24

and I always ask a question not just repeating a word

Thank you Snailplane

I was excited when I found this site

still am now

user2684291

For example, I hate that on Macs you can't use another color of the bar and windows but the three they have included by default. I don't even care about the design and it bothers me.

Yan

Good to find people who are in the same boat

user2684291

You can't increase the size of the font, you have to increase the resolution.

Seriously disappointing.

I mean lower it, sorry.

Yan

have you searched on Google about it

There might be another forum about using Macs

user2684291

When you mentioned that thing with seconds on a goddamn timer, it rang so typical of them.

mike

15:28

with OSX, you can change font sizes (for the most part) on a per app basis

unless I'm mistaken

but there isn't a system-wide means of doing so

without adjusting resolution

user2684291

You can't change the system font, I know, my mom has a Mac.

And everything is too small for me even... what use is the resolution in which you might wanna see a movie when you can't click on its name in the file system app thingy, lol.

Anonymous

I'm pretty universally unhappy with all modern computers.

Anonymous

But I have different things to complain about for all of them :-)

Anonymous

I won't grump too much about it, though. I just keep trying to find the path of least resistance and keep moving forward.

Damkerng T.

@Yan Yay! -- Welcome to the room!

user2684291

15:33

@Yan Yeah.

Yan

Thank you for your welcome

Hope I will learn and grow here with you

user2684291

Likewise.

Yan

;-)

Anonymous

@Yan Feel free to talk about English, or to talk about other topics if you just want to practice English.

Damkerng T.

@Yan Just stick around and you'll surely grow. I know because I've learned so many things here. :-)

Anonymous

15:38

Other languages and linguistics are recurring topics here too :-)

Yan

I have had a lot frustration since I moved to uk

About English

Dark L is the last battle of my pronunciation problems

Damkerng T.

I wonder if dark L is common in the UK as well.

Yan

Much better than before

And I asked my colleague earlier he said it is ok

Damkerng T.

nods -- I just know that in some dialects over there, /l/ will be pronounced like /w/.

Yan

Very common

They like to use the word dull

But that is when the person can't pronounce words with dark L

W is a bit similar and in some cases it might sound similar and not everyone can notice the difference

user2684291

15:43

How is W similar?

Yan

I am Chinese and I used to use O instead of L

Damkerng T.

A good example (if we think about it) might be talk. It sounds quite like "tawk" in some dialects.

Anyway, /w/ for /l/ is mentioned in this clip:

Dec 14 '16 at 21:25, by Damkerng T.

Learn the Cockney accent with Jason Statham

►

Anonymous

British English uses both dark /l/ and light /l/.

Anonymous

American English does too, but many American English speakers use only dark /l/.

user2684291

@DamkerngT. "Talk" is pronounced as t-aw-k.

Anonymous

15:47

@DamkerngT. This is called /l/-vocalization.

Yan

New York maybe sound like tawk

Anonymous

Learners usually try to learn accents which do not contain /l/-vocalization.

Damkerng T.

@user2684291 Some people's talk has the /w/ sound more pronoucned! :)

Yan

And Boston as well

user2684291

I see, sorry, my attention's a bit diverted at the moment.

Yan

15:48

Personal experience google or Siri are really good for pronunciation practice

Damkerng T.

@snailplane Ah, it has its own Wikipedia page!

Anonymous

Dark /l/ is "velarized", meaning the back of the tongue is raised up.

Damkerng T.

> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-vocalization

Yan

You can set the system language as uk or us English

Anonymous

Vocalized /l/ happens in some accents, where the dark /l/ sound loses the tongue gesture at the front of the mouth.

Anonymous

15:49

Most typically.

Yan

Real is a very good example for Chinese speakers a lot of us don't have any problems at all to pronounce it

Because we use o

But not me anymore

yubraj

Hi Everyone!

Damkerng T.

Hi!

Yan

After these few months' struggles

yubraj

Hope all of you're fine !

Yan

15:51

That isn't Jason statham

In the video

Damkerng T.

Thanks you too and happy new year

Yan

Happy new year to everyone

Damkerng T.

Right that's definitely not Jason Statham

Yan

Sorry I forgot to say it at the beginning

Damkerng T.

OKay, enough with Siri. :-)

I don't like it because it looses all punctuation marks!

@Yan Happy New Year!

Yan

15:54

No emoticons with

Either

Not with

Damkerng T.

Exactly!

yubraj

Same to you, happy new year

Use of "out of" -can you share an experience out of you ? Does this sentence make sense?

Damkerng T.

!!flip

Ellbot

（╯°□°）╯︵( .o.)

Damkerng T.

(That flip was for Siri! :P)

Yan

15:54

Words are not easy to express part of our emotions

How did you do that Ellbot

Damkerng T.

@yubraj Hmm... it sounds weird to me.

user2684291

@yubraj Maybe, but it's not an idiomatic way to say it, I think. "Could you share your experience with us?"

Damkerng T.

@Yan Just type !!command. I'm sorry that the commands are still undocumented! :P

Yan

I am out of time

For instance

The car is out of juice

user2684291

"I'm outta here."

yubraj

15:57

@DamkerngT. Can you share something out of your experience?

Yan

Agree with user 2684291

Damkerng T.

@yubraj That sounds better!

user2684291

@Yan If you put @ before a handle and begin to type, a suggestion will pop up and then you may tap on it or press tab to autocomplete it. Sometimes there are more suggestions.

Damkerng T.

(Note that Can you share some of your experiences with us? would sound better.)

yubraj

@DamkerngT. My queriosity is why do we use "out of"? instead of "from "?

Yan

16:00

Thank you as you can tell I am unfamiliar with this internet chat thing

Damkerng T.

Hmm... give me a real example that you think it's better or makes more sense with from.

Yan

It is hard to keep up with modern technologies

Færd

@snailplane Thanks. That jibes with my impression, thankfully.

Yan

@DamkerngT. That is a good one

user62015

Hi

Could someone help me with this question?

He said, “I must go next week”.
(a) He said that he must go next week.
(b) He said that he must go the following week.
(c) He said that he would have to go the following week.
(d) He said that he was to go the following week

Direct / Indirect speech

Yan

16:03

@user2684291 i am becoming better

user62015

Answer says C

Anonymous

@Færd I suspect there's some variation from speaker to speaker there.

Damkerng T.

@user62015 Yes, that's correct.

Yan

a

user62015

Okay.

Yan

16:04

Does it explain why?

Damkerng T.

He said he had to go the next week would be a more direct transformation.

yubraj

For example you're a principle of a school, you have been teaching for years, I ask you a question about your experience about teaching. I ask "can you share the experiences about teaching out of you ?" Or can you share your experiences from teaching? " or can you share your experiences about teaching? " or can you share your experiences of teaching? "

@DamkerngT.

Damkerng T.

@yubraj Can you share your teaching experiences? would be a more typical way to say it, IMO.

yubraj

Nods...what about "out of" ? I want to understand its usage.

Damkerng T.

Here is my assessment (remember that I'm not a native speaker, so my intuition might be different from native speakers):

> "Can you share the experiences about teaching out of you?" -- weird

> "Can you share your experiences from teaching?" -- clumsy

> "Can you share your experiences about teaching?" -- ineffective

Yan

16:09

@yubraj you have to think in English way

Agree with Damkerng

Damkerng T.

> "Can you share your experiences of teaching?" -- probably okay, but sounds too formal

Yan

'S opinion

yubraj

Oh

Anonymous

@yubraj Out of doesn't work.

Anonymous

I liked Damkerng's suggestion.

Anonymous

16:11

@DamkerngT. Maybe the documentation can go on Ellbot's chat user page :-)

Damkerng T.

@snailplane Hehe! Good idea!

user2684291

"...experiences from your teaching days", "...experiences from your days as a teacher" — do these work?

Yan

dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/…

yubraj

I heard it in a hindi video where he was saying "can you share something out of you ?"

Yan

Check it out

Damkerng T.

16:12

@user2684291 Work for me. :-)

yubraj

@user2684291 I think they work

Damkerng T.

jotting 'out of you' down in his Dialects of English map....

Yan

Listen to BBC or VOA

Anonymous

@yubraj That sounds like non-native English.

Yan

I am sure you will sense the difference after a while

user2684291

16:16

"Teaching experiences" pertains to teaching; my suggestions are more general turns of phrase, I suppose.

user62015

@DamkerngT. There?

Damkerng T.

@user62015 Um... There what? Sorry?!?

user62015

Could you please give me a hint how can we use "would have" at the place of "must"

As per my knowledge we can't change the modal verb

Damkerng T.

Must doesn't have its past form, so we have to use have to instead.

user62015

Option B seems fine

user2684291

16:18

I don't know how they got that, @user62015.

user62015

We can use must have or had to

Yan

I insists a

user62015

as the past form of must

Anonymous

@user62015 I think would is there as a backshifted form of will, which they might have inserted because of next week, and had is a backshifted form of have in the have to periphrastic modal construction used in place of must.

user62015

Okay. @snailplane @DamkerngT. I have been thinking the same way

and it makes sense

Yan

16:19

Direct to indirect form shouldn't changed the original content

Damkerng T.

@user62015 Yay!

user62015

@DamkerngT. @snailplane Thanks. I am done.

Damkerng T.

I'm glad you're done! :D

user62015

No,ahahhaha, last question

Mary said to Robert, “Let him come, then we shall see.”
(a) Mary said to Robert that if he came, they would see
him.
(b) Mary told Robert that they shall see him if he came.
(c) Mary told Robert that once he came, they would see
him.
(d) Mary told Robert that they would see him if he might
come

Answer says D

Why might?

Anonymous

They all seem to be wrong.

Anonymous

16:24

And anyway, I don't think there is a real answer for that one.

Anonymous

All of the answers say see him instead of see for some reason, which changes the meaning.

user62015

What answer will you right?

Yan

@user62015 where did you get these questions I don't agree with the answer

Anonymous

That makes all of them wrong.

Yan

dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/…

Anonymous

16:25

@user62015 I don't think there is an answer.

user62015

Okay. I agree.

Thanks.

Yan

Very curious where you found these questions

Misleading

yubraj

@snailplane Nods...Hi everyone! ,Hi All , Hi all of you .which one is idiomatic ?

Anonymous

The first two sound better. Hi all of you is a bit less idiomatic, maybe.

yubraj

What about using 'to' , For example'Hi to All, Hi to everyone,

Anonymous

16:31

@yubraj I don't think you should add to.

Yan

Which one is more for colloquial speech

Anonymous

When you say everyone or all, you're using those phrases as "vocatives". We add vocatives to sentences without any prepositions: "Hi, yubraj!" Sometimes we separate them with commas, and sometimes we don't.

Yan

Instead of Idiomatic maybe

Anonymous

"Vocatives" indicate who you're talking to.

Yan

You can say hi to your friends for me

Anonymous

16:33

But if I said to Damkerng, "Say 'hi' to yubraj for me!" then it would be appropriate to use to.

Anonymous

Yes, like that.

Yan

Only in this case it is reasonable

Anonymous

Because in this example, yubraj is not a vocative phrase. It's part of to yubraj, a complement taken by say.

Yan

Agree with snailplane

user2684291

What about "Hi!" ~ "'Hi' to you too."?

Yan

16:36

Yes that is ok

Anonymous

@user2684291 Works okay. Hi is used metalinguistically there.

yubraj

Umm...Nods...I think 'to' refers to direction whom we are referring to. So I used it at first When I didn't know about vocatives. I think I need to study about it quite a lot. @snailplane

Anonymous

Which you've indicated by using quotes.

user2684291

Right.

Yan

I am not very good at technical terms

Either

user2684291

16:39

Metadata is a set of data that contains information about other data.

I believe that's what snailplane meant by "metalinguistically".

yubraj

Thanks @snail

user2684291

It's more like... using the language as an object.

Which is what they meant when they said "Which you've indicated by using quotes." — I've encapsulated the language, rather than using it with its most immediate meaning.

I hope I haven't done more harm than good.

^^

Yan

I am going to leave it to you all chat next time

yubraj

Let's talk about the having+v3 -After having it pronounced by the students, I went out of the classs. Is it causative ?

Anonymous

Yes.

user2684291

16:46

I think so. You'd had it pronounced by the students...

Anonymous

> I had it pronounced by the students.
> I had the students pronounce it.

user2684291

@snailplane Would interpreting it as "You had had it..." be wrong or just unnecessary ("after" is enough an indicator)?

Anonymous

@user2684291 I wasn't offering an interpretation. I was just taking out the non-finite clause [having it pronounced by the students], rewriting it as a finite clause and supplying the missing subject from the matrix clause, which I hoped would make it easier to show the difference between the active and passive versions of the clause. If we're going to talk about rewriting the original to convey the same meaning, I think using perfect had to show the relationship is fine, but you should be I.

Anonymous

But I think it would be more natural without had. It's unnecessary.

Anonymous

It's just a basic sequence of two events, so the perfect isn't really called for.

engfan

17:11

Hello everyone 😃

He is a little more intelligent than I am

Or "should it be He is a little more intelligent than I".

Anonymous

@engfan All three choices are possible: than I am, than I, than me

Anonymous

Than I sounds more formal than than me. Than I am and than me both sound normal.

Anonymous

There is a usage debate stretching back hundreds of years about than.

Anonymous

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage (MWDEU) does a great job of documenting it.

Damkerng T.

Haha! -- I was finally able to fix a bug. It's a very difficult one. There was a typo of J for j, and I missed it every time I looked at it!

engfan

17:20

@DamkerngT. :Hello!!

Damkerng T.

Hello!

engfan

How are you?

Damkerng T.

I'm good, thanks! How are you?

engfan

I'm good

Long time no see😊

Damkerng T.

Oh! :D

V.V.

17:24

I imagine Dam with a butterfly net. Catching bugs.

Damkerng T.

Hehe!

V.V.

Lol

user2684291

@snailplane Thanks.

I catch myself using it when it's not needed and vice versa.

@snailplane Google Ngrams shows that "than me." has been gaining track in the previous couple of decades. Could "He likes her more than me." mean "He likes her more than I do."?

Anonymous

@user2684291 It's ambiguous, yes.

Anonymous

As in the following example:

Anonymous

17:36

> Linguists like ambiguity more than most people.

CowperKettle

> The Star of Bethlehem is an ice sculpture festival held in Yekaterinburg annually just before the Orthodox Christmas. (Do I need "the"?)

@TRomano Great, thank you!

> and yond tall anchoring bark,
Diminish'd to her cock; her cock, a buoy
Almost too small for sight

What is cock here, I wonder

mike

it's a small boat, I believe

CowperKettle

ah!

> Marsh samphire ashes were used to make soap and glass (hence its other old English name, "glasswort").

Word of the Day: samphire

Anonymous

17:55

@CowperKettle Sounds like the child of a sapphire and a vampire.

user2684291

@CowperKettle Cockboat?

Anonymous

@CowperKettle Also cog en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cog#English

Anonymous

Cog being larger

user2684291

Haha.

V.V.

!!wiki/samphire

Ellbot

18:00

Samphire

Samphire is a name given to a number of succulent halophytes that tend to be associated with water bodies. Rock samphire, Crithmum maritimum is a coastal species with white flowers that grows in the United Kingdom. This is probably the species mentioned by Shakespeare in King Lear. Golden samphire, Limbarda crithmoides is a coastal species with yellow flowers that grows across Eurasia. Several species in the genus Salicornia Blutaparon vermiculare, Central America, southeastern North America Tecticornia, Australia Sarcocornia, cosmopolitan. == Etymology == Originally "sampiere", a corruption of...

Mick

@CowperKettle The cockpit.

@V.V. Vile stuff. Never let yourself be persuaded into eating any.

Damkerng T.

18:25

money.cnn.com/video/news/2016/12/08/…

We'll see. :-)

user2684291

19:59

How do I properly use "hence" in this sentence: "I wanted to, hence I added it." or "I wanted to, hence my adding it.", or something else? In the large, what can follow "hence"?

Maybe I should ask this on the main site?

For some reason, I wanna insert "why", but that seems semantically redundant.

Actually, "I wanted to; hence, I added it." sounds fine. Never mind.

Damkerng T.

@user2684291 Yeah, exactly!

Just like however.

Hence, my addition would be okay, too, IMO.

user2684291

Yeah, the hypothesis was erroneous... I just saw someone use it without the proper punctuation and I blindly followed.

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