Language Overflow

CowperKettle

03:36

International Women's Day (IWD), originally called International Working Women's Day, is celebrated on March 8 every year. It commemorates the struggle for women's rights. The earliest Women's Day observance was held on February 28, 1909, in New York and organized by the Socialist Party of America. A Women's Day demonstration on March 8, 1917 in Petrograd sparked the Russian Revolution. Declared a national holiday in the Soviet Russia in 1917, it was predominantly celebrated by the socialist movement and communist countries until it was adopted in 1977 by the United Nations. == History == The...

Happy IWD!

A state holiday in Russia

CowperKettle

04:43

Stack Exchange

06:29

1

Q: "We’d like to see the baby’s weight going steadily up."

"We’d like to see the baby’s weight going steadily up." Here, "going up" is gerund , and 'baby's weight' is the subject of gerund? Is my analysis correct?

gerunds

CowperKettle

06:48

Bought some flowers for Mom

A curious pigeon looked on

Through the dirty, dirty window panes

When we first moved here from Siberia, I wondered how the locals manage to stay warm with only two layers of glass in their windows (not the usual three)

CowperKettle

07:21

Anonymous

09:08

Lang-8 is apparently no longer taking new user registrations. They're sending everyone to their Q&A site, HiNative.

Anonymous

Which leads me to wonder, where exactly should we send people from Alternative websites for proofreading, if not Lang-8?

Anonymous

And if we don't have a site to send them to, should we change the reason? @DamkerngT. @ColleenV @M.A.R.

CowperKettle

@snailplane that's too bad

I hope HiNative has the same functionality

Happy 8th of March!

zona.media/article/2017/08/03/old-believers

A story about a US girl who was sent into a remote Siberial Old Believers settlement in taiga and held captive from 13 to 28 years old, until she escaped

15 years

She contracted asthma aged 17 and they forbade her to take any drugs

She reached Krasnoyarsk in 2015 and contacted her relatives in the US

And with the Russian bureaucracy she spent several months trying to get home

CowperKettle

10:58

Word of the Day: fireweed

2

(Иван-чай in Russian)

skill patrol

11:11

Is that related to firewater?

CowperKettle

I think not

I think it relates to the shape of the flower (?)

skill patrol

I see.

CowperKettle

We may imagine it as a sheaf of fire

skill patrol

Right.

CowperKettle

Maybe a fireweed field looks like it is on fire

skill patrol

11:14

Interesting.

CowperKettle

11:28

Today is a holiday and I don't know what to do.

Maybe go and ride the bicycle across the city

Damkerng T.

11:59

@snailplane Oh!

I wonder what happened to their site, and how their Q&A site works.

user62015

Hi

Damkerng T.

Hi!

user62015

I have a question

Damkerng T.

Yes?

user62015

People, especially the elderly, (a)/ are often forced to move to cities (b)/ where there are hospitals that can cater for their health needs. (c)/ No error (d)

I think C

hospitals that

hospitals those

What do you think?

Damkerng T.

12:06

No, hospitals that is fine.

user62015

Okay, then?

Damkerng T.

I'm not sure, but the sentence looks fine to me.

user62015

But answer says c

so I thought that one

Damkerng T.

Then they might want cater to.

user62015

Please wait.

Let me check.

I think, there are both options.

macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/cater-to

macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/cater-for

Both are same or different?

Damkerng T.

12:11

Unfortunately, Macmillan doesn't help much this time.

user62015

I agree.

Damkerng T.

Let's see if n-gram helps.

user62015

Okay. I have one more question

I think I know the answer but want to confirm that.

India is a land of great political leaders (a)/ who ruled the country effectively (b)/ and also by protecting its national interest . (c)/ No Error (d)

Section is c

their national interest instead of its

Damkerng T.

user62015

What do you suggest?

Thanks, checking.

How do you search this type of map on google?

Damkerng T.

12:15

@user62015 Why do you think their is better than it?

user62015

Because of leaders

Damkerng T.

> cater * their needs,catered * their needs,caters * their needs

user62015

Ok.

Damkerng T.

@user62015 Hmm... whose interest is this?

user62015

At this level I think country's

Then its is fine.

Damkerng T.

12:18

nods -- It makes more sense than the leaders', right?

user62015

Yes.

Damkerng T.

Yay!

user62015

Then no error?

But Answer says C

Damkerng T.

Hmm...

user62015

Then I got confused?

No error?

Damkerng T.

12:20

It's not a very good sentence, but it should be okay.

I don't know how to fix C to improve the sentence, though.

user62015

Thanks.

Indian English........aahahahha

We don't speak this way but in exams we have to face

Damkerng T.

No problem. Personally, think we need to rewrite it, rather than fixing the C part.

@user62015 Hehehe!

user62015

I think to make the exams hard as population is high

hahahhaa

Damkerng T.

:D

user62015

Thanks.

Have a nice time. Bye for now.

"Cater for sb or sth = to provide food and drinks for a social event
Cater to sth or sb = to provide the things that a particular type or person wants"

Damkerng T.

12:26

I think they're overlapping.

user62015

Yes. I agree.

Damkerng T.

But as you can see in the chart, if it's their needs, to is the more common choice.

user62015

I agree.

V.V.

2

Damkerng T.

Cute!

Good evening!

user62015

12:29

Bye

Damkerng T.

Have a nice evening!

V.V.

Privet! Just found it.@snailplane, for you.

Today is a holiday.

Having lots of telephone calls. It's warm and sunny.

userr2684291

13:30

@DamkerngT. Very well.

Animesh Ashish

Therfore on every morrow are we wreathing.
What does this mean from the poem A thing of beauty by John Keats?

@userr2684291

userr2684291

@V.V. and @snailplane – happy Women's Day. (:

@AnimeshAshish Well, it seems as though there's something after "wreathing".

"Morrow" means the next day, I think.

CowperKettle

14:11

> Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth [...]

"We are making a garland-like band of flowers in order to bind us to the earth"

I love Keats, but "A Thing of Beauty" feels too unpolished to me

I wish he re-wrote it

In his later poems there is much more skill

@V.V. Beautiful. Good to feel that the summer is just around the corner. In a month's time there will be almost no snow on the ground.

CowperKettle

14:37

The center of the city today

user62015

14:54

Removing seeds from cotton plants was (a)/ a slowest job until (b)/ Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. (c)/ No Error (d)

a slow job or a slower job

userr2684291

@user62015 Yeah.

user62015

Thanks but what a slow or a slower?

userr2684291

@user62015 I'd say the former.

user62015

Okay.

Pandya

16:02

Assume we discussed something and it resulted fruitful.

Now, I'm looking for an effective sentence regarding above like:

The discussion has proved* fruitful

Here I'm looking for the appropriate word at proved.

userr2684291

@Pandya It's fine.

Pandya

@userr2684291 ok. Any other suggestions?

userr2684291

@Pandya What's wrong with "proved"?

Pandya

@userr2684291 It's fine but I don't want to say in the sense of "peove". I want something like resulted.

@userr2684291 By the way which languages do you know?

userr2684291

@Pandya That's what it means.

Pandya

16:11

@userr2684291 oh! ok. Thanks!

CowperKettle

> The discussion turned out fruitful (but I like "proved" better)

Pandya

@CowperKettle Yes, I was wondering for it. Btw, now I think "proved" may be better as you & @userr2684291 recommending. Thanks

userr2684291

16:28

@Pandya A bit of English, German and Croatian.

@RonaldSole, so how did you make such a choice of preposition? Was it just because you are a native speaker? — Yaroslav Trofimov 56 mins ago

CowperKettle

17:06

Is it possible in English to omit the final and before the last item of a list?

> A procedure for determination of tert-butyl methyl ether, tetrahydrofuran, [...], N,N-dimethylformamide, (and) toluene.

It is possible to omit and in technical Russian

userr2684291

@CowperKettle Why?

CowperKettle

To follow more closely the Russian original sentence.

Is it possible in English (in a title page of a long report) omit the in the sentence "Head of (the) Large Molecules Unit"?

Since it's a title page where everything is concise.

> Marya Ivanova
Head of Large Molecules Unit

userr2684291

17:31

@CowperKettle I don't know why, but "a procedure for determination of" sounds unidiomatic to me. Is "determine" commonly used in contexts such as the one in your sentence to mean "identify"?

Wiktionary doesn't include that definition, at any rate.

CowperKettle

@userr2684291 I would use detection but I'm sure that the other translators working on this set of documents use determination, so for harmony's sake I'll use it thus far

Because it is "detection", IMHO.

"Identification" has a specific usage in pharmacy ("proving that the drug is in fact this exact drug"), but maybe it's even better here .

userr2684291

@CowperKettle See, I even misinterpreted it.

@CowperKettle With the sense of "detect", you want: "determining the presence of".

Wiktionary does list "find out" as a synonym for "determine", however, so I guess you could use it if you wish to employ that sense.

CowperKettle

@userr2684291 Yes, I've just wrote a letter to the other translators proposing to sync this term to "detection" or "identification".

I googled for "determination of residual organic solvents" and found a handful of articles with Chinese names of authors

userr2684291

17:47

@CowperKettle I don't know what to do about the comma/"and" thing. What I'd do is I'd try to find more things it can be used to detect (and finish the sentence with an etcetera), or remove one of the items in the list and put an "etc." at the end, haha.

CowperKettle

(0:

That's not a big issue. I used and. I was just wondering aloud

userr2684291

Yeah, but "and" can sound definitive, especially since you're providing the definition of a procedure.

I wouldn't wanna be in your shoes right now. Haha.

M.A.R.

19:53

@snailplane Shrug

CowperKettle

52

A: What do we call the small towel that we use only with hands

It is called, not surprisingly, a hand towel. Here's an example of the phrase in live usage: Macy's hand towels.

Capt. Obvious gets 52 upvotes

Good night!

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle IKR

@CowperKettle Night

skullpetrol

Cya

M.A.R.

20:14

@snailplane I was actually thinking about changing it, but didn't know how. It seems people don't usually care something is limited to an area of concern, and VTC as proofreading anyway

Stack Exchange

22:15

0

Q: With Lang-8 shutting down, where will we send proofreading questions?

We have a close reason which tells people to use "alternative websites" for proofreading: Proofreading questions are off-topic unless a specific source of concern in the text is clearly identified. See: Alternative websites for proofreading The accepted answer on this meta post directs peop...

discussion close-reasons

SmokeDetector

22:56

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected: what exactly is the difference in the meaning of the words opinion and perspective ? by stephen on ell.SE

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