Language Overflow

« first day (814 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (2715 days later) »

CowperKettle

05:32

Word of the Day: send-up (what's the etymology?)

> a send-up of (the??) Arthurian legend (never sure about articles)

2 hours later…

V.V.

07:27

Morning, @M.A.R.! Hope you are fine.

M.A.R.

08:22

@V.V. Hi

3 hours later…

CowperKettle

11:23

One of the streets here is called Ulitsa Kolokolnaya (Bell Street)

Guess which

Jasper

12:01

@CowperKettle I don't see any street shaped like a bell, so I don't know!

1 hour later…

Jasper

13:03

Hello @Lawrence!

Lawrence

@Jasper Hi!

Jasper

@Lawrence I don't go to ELU anymore. I prefer ELL now. =)

Lawrence

@Jasper I don't hang out much on the ELU chat either at the moment.

I'm not particularly regular here either, though.

Jasper

I see. Good to see you again.

Lawrence

@Jasper Thanks. How are you these days? I noticed you've gone from collecting dictionaries to buying other kinds of books.

@CowperKettle The definite article makes it about legends about Arthur. Without the definite article, it could be legends that simply have the same 'flavour'.

Jasper

13:08

@Lawrence Me? My books all fall into the following categories: Buddhism, LaTeX, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, mathematics. No more, no less, for now. If you want to talk more to me, you can email me. Email in my profile. =) I am still sick, still trying to get better.

@CowperKettle By the way, why CowperKettle? Your copper kettle doesn't look like a cow to me!

Lawrence

@Jasper You were looking at buying Bibles at one point - did that eventuate? (I'm happy to just correspond here; if it's too personal, just let me know.) As long as one is alive, there is always hope.

@Jasper Something to do with William Cowper, if I remember correctly.

Jasper

@Lawrence Oh no, I don't really have that now.

@Lawrence Who is WC?

Lawrence

@Jasper A poet.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Cowper

Oops, that didn't 'one-box' itself.

And it's a bit cheeky of you to call him WC. :P

Jasper

WC is just an abbreviation to save time, no cheeks at all, LOL.

Lawrence

Haha, I thought so. :)

Still, allusions to water, what with kettles and all.

Hi @Catija & @M.A.R.!

Jasper

13:15

'Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens' is a line in a song.

And the first thing I thought of when I saw the copper kettle is that song.

Lawrence

@Jasper I guess those aren't as high up his list of favourite things. :)

@Catija Your user-picture reminds me - it doesn't seem so long ago that we were congratulating someone here about a little one. How time flies.

Jasper

@Lawrence Do you also have a little one? I don't, and I am the little one, LOL.

Lawrence

@Jasper Were you subscribed to English Language Learners previously?

Jasper

@Lawrence Not as much as ELU. But I will probably stay a little longer than usual this time.

Lawrence

@Jasper This is quite a comfortable community to just hang out and pass the time in, isn't it?

Jasper

13:23

@Lawrence Yeah, and I prefer the blue chat to the red one in ELU, LOL.

Lawrence

@Jasper Red chat? I needed to go back and check - hmm, yes, the background there's kind of reddish.

Jasper

@Lawrence Well, like brownish.

Lawrence

@Jasper Definitely light-brown.

Beige, perhaps.

Not too different from the background colour for our own messages here. (Others' messages come up with a white background on my display.)

Feeds

Q: Would Past/Present

SOURCE (Paris Review, "Breaking It Down" by Lydia Davis) I was listening to the radio to improve my listening skills ( because usually I listen and read transcript at the same tame ) and they talked about the text below. In the sentence "And I would go on living like that. I would be able to go...

tense

Lawrence

See you around, @Jasper!

1 hour later…

yubraj

14:55

3 hours later…

Jasper

18:07

My poem only got one star, LOL.

5 hours later…

Jasper

22:40

Not much activity on the main site on Sundays.

Seems that people only post on work days to skive at work, LOL.

userr2684291

The background's (grayish-)green for me here, but then I do have the colors inverted. It's a nice shade of matte green; a little lighter than the blackboard one I've seen in high school/university.

Jasper

@userr2684291 Oh didn't see you the whole day lol

userr2684291

@Jasper Hey. Yeah, I didn't drop by.

Jasper

@userr2684291 Sorry, what do you mean by colours inverted?

userr2684291

@Jasper I mean that I'm using a Chrome extension which inverts colors of webpages.

Jasper

22:50

@userr2684291 Ah I see. I was thinking maybe you had some eyesight problems and needed to invert all colours.

userr2684291

I mean, it also has additional settings so the colors aren't flat-out inverted and that's it.

Anonymous

Good afternoon! :-)

Jasper

When I use Linux, there are many themes for the desktop and some of them gives you really weird colours.

@snailplane It's almost 7 AM here, lol.

userr2684291

@Jasper I don't, but I realized I probably would if I didn't use some sort of extension like that one.

Jasper

@userr2684291 LOL. Maybe I should try it out too

userr2684291

22:53

Hello, snailplane.

Anonymous

Yeah, I just sorta pretend time zones don't exist. I just randomly pick greetings, so sometimes they match up with where I am, sometimes they match up with where the person I'm talking to is, and sometimes they're just something else entirely. :-)

Anonymous

I think that in a lot of languages the established set of greetings don't really cover the case where you're talking to a bunch of people around the world at the same time.

Jasper

By the way @userr2684291 it is well known now to some people that I just say I am in Antarctica when asked about my location (just a joke). And if I am near the South pole, then I can change time zones quite easily. =D

Anonymous

Yeah, I know where Jasper lives. He lives in Antarctica.

userr2684291

I'm pretty sure I know where Jasper lives, too.

Jasper

22:55

You will only know my secrets if you email me, lol.

Of course, you can make your guesses, but I cannot confirm or deny them, lol.

userr2684291

@snailplane Hello (everyone) and its derivatives cover it all.

And the same for all Germanic languages, I'd assume. We have a similar thing in my first language, and Russian, and other Slavic languages, so that eliminates a handful of them.

Jasper

I was really surprised to find out that there is a crazy running competition in the world.

You run 7 marathons on 7 continents in a week, 1 per day.

Yes, they really do run even in Antarctica this time.

OMG, I can't even finish 1 marathon, LOL.

userr2684291

You probably can, but with breaks.

Jasper

LOL, everyone can run a marathon with breaks.

userr2684291

What's that... 42 km? Psh, I finish that thing every 3 days.

Where's my medal?

Jasper

23:04

Yeah. But long ago I did 4 km every day regularly.

userr2684291

I just run for about 48 minutes every day. I don't measure the distance anymore, although I did when I was starting out. I could do it tomorrow if you want, haha.

Jasper

@userr2684291 WTF, why 48?

userr2684291

It's a long story, hahah.

Jasper

Hmm OK. I already have some guesses in my beautiful mind, lol.

By the way, Wikipedia changes the daily article at 0000 GMT.

userr2684291

I initially aimed for 45 minutes, but there was always something that made me stop, perhaps my shoelaces got untied, or I stopped at some store because I had to buy something, etc. So I'd always add about 2 or 3 minutes to the initial amount until I just decided to make it 48 and not worry about it anymore.

That's about it, I think.

Jasper

23:15

Sounds crazy enough, lol.

userr2684291