Language Overflow

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

00:47

0

Q: How to answer the following questions

Would you like to do sth.? What/How about doing sth.? Why not do sth.? For the 3 questions above, can we use “Yes, I’d like/love to.” and “Yes, I’d like that.” to answer? And what’s the difference between these 2 answers? Is “yes” necessary?

sentence-usage

Is "yes" necessary? Only if it's me asking you

@MichaelRybkin - To be fair, the definition on the page you link to reads: To go away; to disappear. I have no problem with a learner who has trouble understanding what it means for a town to "go away" or "disappear." After all, a town is not exactly like a wandering vagrant or a rabbit in magician's hat. It's figurative language that might be hard for a learner to conceptualize. — J.R. ♦ Dec 28 '18 at 22:12

Oh you'd be surprised

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

01:18

@Colleen can mods know if close votes aged away on a post? If so, will they have the post ID?

Because if the CV queue doesn't shrink, that's probably what's going to happen or what is already happening and unlike SO it's avoidable

Ugh, that was annoying. And tiring.

Hope the system doesn't think I serially voted

ColleenV

02:01

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ mods can figure out what happened to a particular post but we don’t get warned about votes aging away

CowperKettle

02:19

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ multi-k guys are not o-k

@FumbleFingers Ah, so Apple's first product presentation was in the Garden of Eden

Jasper

03:17

Other than grammarly.com ads on youtube videos, the other ads I keep seeing are wix.com ads, but that is OK. I think wix.com really helps you to create websites easily.

CowperKettle

06:08

@ColleenV Reminded me of "Suzie Creamcheese … honey … what's got into ya?"

Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention .- Son of Susy Creamcheese

►

CowperKettle

06:22

Word of the day: argyle

> For example, the surface of a golf ball was displayed on a teapot; zebra stripes were placed on a camel; and the pattern of a blue and red argyle sock was shown on an elephant. VGG-19 ranked its top choices and chose the correct item as its first choice for only five of 40 objects.

Rajat Audichya

07:21

Hello everyone, I am finding it hard to frame a sentence, Can someone guide me here?

Rajat Audichya

07:48

No one here I guess

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

08:38

@ColleenV Not warned, that'd be a stupid 'feature'. Just some page with some stats like "aged away votes: 35 last month"

@RajatAudichya Don't ask to ask. Just ask! Not everyone is present all day, but we'll come by your question and answer if we can/will/[insert modal here]

@CowperKettle Is that like an infant gargoyle?

CowperKettle

10:19

Word of the noon: Dunning–Kruger effect - a cognitive bias in which people of low ability have illusory superiority and mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is.

CowperKettle

10:49

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ I haven't looked up the etymology yet

> "diamond-shaped pattern of two or more colors in fabric," said to be so called from similarity to tartans worn by Campbell clan of Argyll, Scotland. The place name is literally "land of the Gaels," with first element from Old Irish airer "country." Argyle socks is from 1935.

New Meta Question

11:31

0

Q: Do we have any forum on Stack Exchange for queries on Shakespearean English queries?

I am looking forward to ask interpretation on poetry and Shakespeare's drama play's text. Is there any forum to discuss the same. Is ELL Stack Exchange relevant for such questions?

discussion resource-request

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

@NewMetaQuestion Upvote because you asked before you asked

Weird how this one turned out:

0

A: "the Book, the Qur'an, is without a doubt revealed from Allah." What is the meaning of this sentence?

Let's break apart your sentence: The Book, the Qur'an, is without a doubt revealed from Allah. "The Book" is the subject, and "the Qur'an" is an appositive. Now, there are two possibilities either of your interpretations would work: "is revealed" is the verb in the main sentence, and "wit...

All three answers are standing at +1/-1, and all three received a downvote after they received an upvote

Somebody desperately wants the question to remain in the unanswered list o.O

ColleenV

@CowperKettle lol I love Zappa

@RajatAudichya if no one is in chat, go ahead and post your question anyhow. Someone will come by eventually :)

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ I don’t know of any way to get that info - there might be stats in SEDE to measure reviews that rolled off the queue from lack of reviewers

CowperKettle

14:31

1

Q: "Had not gone" or "didn't go" and "every night" in conditional

Help please! You’re always tired. If you had not gone to bed so late every night, you wouldn’t be tired all the time. Or: If you didn’t go to bed so late every night, you wouldn’t be tired all the time. I'm not sure which one is correct. “All the time” and “every night” points out...

conditional-constructions

This one stumps me

Can we say "If you don't go to bed so lave every night, you will not be tired all the time"?

Out of her two options, I would pick the second.

And.. shouldn't her first option end in "you would not have been tired all the time"?

ColleenV

15:07

@CowperKettle “If you didn’t go to bed so late every night, you wouldn’t be tired all the time.” Is how I would say it

FumbleFingers

@CowperKettle The only reason you "can't" (read: wouldn't be likely to) say If you don't go to bed so late every night, you will not be tired all the time is because in normal speech everyone would contract will not to won't. Especially given the utterance already contracted do not to don't.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

Gawd, tenses. Now I need to punch something

And I read these messages when I thought I grasped a concept and my brain was overconfident for a second

@FumbleFingers Typos are contagious. I'd get the vaccine but I'm already under immunosuppressive drug influence

FumbleFingers

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ I can't see it with a non-native speaker's perspective, obviously. But it looks pretty straightforward to me that you just need to consider whether the speaker is explaining the reason for past or ongoing (past, present, and future) tiredness.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

@FumbleFingers No the problem tends to be they almost always seem natural and correct to me until someone points out they'd never say it like that in Yorkshire

And I'm left with vague search terms trying to figure out if it's just Yorkshire or standard English in general

So I can't ever make up my mind, esp. about conditionals, unless in very obvious 'textbook' cases, and end up choking like one of those stereotypical old Volkswagens

ಠ_ಠ Lots of editable titles and questions again, and I don't feel like doing it this time grrmbl

FumbleFingers

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ A surprising amount of language is actually intended to obfuscate meaning. I would think that's partly because that makes it easier for the audience to draw whatever inference they want. Why on earth would anyone use I would think in contexts like that, you might ask. Do I actually think it or not? Under what circumstances would I think it?

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

15:21

Mhm

I always took it as some form of preparation in case you were proven wrong by someone who has a better say on it

Maybe. Replace "always" with "some cases"

Back to plant reproduction for me, ciao

FumbleFingers

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ What? Like I'm not actually prepared to have an opinion in case someone shoots it down. But this is what I would like to be able to think, if I had the courage of my convictions.

Nick

Hi, what does it take to become a good english speaker like those who deliver TED talks and such?

FumbleFingers

@Nick Mostly what it takes is having something interesting to say. Nobody listens to Ted talks just to be impressed with the fact that the speaker can communicate in English

Nick

@FumbleFingers But the eloquence through which those ideas are expressed and the flow of words and concepts one after another add to the impact of that talk.

I feel there are people who craft sentences which couple together so well to express the concept being communicated.

FumbleFingers

@Nick Well, Ted talks are usually less than 15 minutes. I'm sure most speakers diligently rehearse exactly what they're going to say, and "more or less" stick to the script. So it's really like finely-honed prose, not "general interactive conversation"

Nick

15:32

Yes, finely-honed. I'd like to hone my abilities in crafting good sounding dialogues. I love the wordplay in many books and would like to replicate that style.

FumbleFingers

...but if you listen to someone like Jordan Peterson (who never seems to have "rehearsed" what he's going to say), I think he's an absolutely brilliant speaker / communicator. But if you were to read a transcript, you'd think he was terrible (constant pauses and rephrasings, etc.). And he usually speaks very slowly, so I often crank him up to 1.25 times normal speed, just so he can get on with what he's saying

Nick

Ooh, that's also an important thing. I hear Google Assistant mimics those pauses for natural speech.

What's the good number on pauses and such?

FumbleFingers

15:51

@Nick I couldn't really say. If you listen to someone like Pewdiepie on Youtube, you'll soon notice that he usually speaks very fast, and edits out pauses. I bet not many people try to listen to him at higher than normal speed! And I'm pretty sure some other Youtube "vloggers" actually speed up their footage before they post it.

Nick

Jumpcuts are fairly common in many vlogs and similar content.

It helps the video maker keep to the topic.

FumbleFingers

16:12

@Nick weirdly, I often find that Indian speakers (especially when discussing highly technical subjects) tend to speak very quickly. But I often find them hard to follow, because they also use a lot of what I'd consider long-winded phrasing. I wish they'd use less words to say exactly what they mean.

Nick

@FumbleFingers I wish that too. Truncating phrases and concepts is important, surely.

FumbleFingers

Yeah, well part of my problem is that I'm not very good at "acclimatising" myself to the accent with IE speakers. Which is annoying, because I can usually "tune in" quite quickly to any number of strong regional British accents.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

@FumbleFingers Aye, that's what it seemed like to me at least in some cases. But I do get your point; it's not hardwired to be interpreted the same way. Or rather, hardwired to be interpreted any way the listener feels like

FumbleFingers

perhaps I just haven't watched enough Bollywood movies yet! :)

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

@FumbleFingers My mind usually enters an extraordinary form of zen while watching dumb Bollywood action. I bet that's how Einstein came up with special relativity and such

1

A: Difference between "kid", "boy", "child", "children"

A kid is a young goat, an animal. A child, is a young person, the offspring of human beings. In our so called "enlightened age" today, we are denigrating young people by labeling them as the offspring of goats, instead of properly referring to them as our children, or our child. This is all part ...

I'm having trouble connecting calling kids a goat and the communists taking over

2

Unless the guy is a wizard and actually turns people into what he calls them. Yeah that'd be taking over

Nick

16:22

@FumbleFingers The only English dubbing of a bollywood movie was Bazigar. It's available on YouTube still.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

"Bazigar" means "actor" in Persian. It sometimes amazes me how words survived in both languages like that

FumbleFingers

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ I don't usually like dubbed movies. Would nrearly always prefer the original soundtrack with well-translated English subtitles.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

@FumbleFingers Agree. So much beauty gets lost in even the best of translations

How. Ever, not all dubs are created equal

Especially if the original screenplay is that of a dumb action movie with almost no dialog that would make you think

FumbleFingers

Absolutely! And machine-translated subtitles (movies or Youtube) really are the pits as yet. But I expect them to be a lot better in a few years, progress being what it is

Anyway - gotta leave chat now. Time for me to get stuck in with today's Guardian crossword! :)

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

I loved A Team because I watched its Persian dubbed version. There was this badass team of old-time dubbers who knew their stuff whose director was Mehrdad Raisi and their originality in dubbing and how they sounded more authentic than the actors in most scenes made the movie much better than it could ever wish to be

When I got to watch the English version literally half the words uttered by Neeson and Cooper felt like that chalk scratching sound on the blackboard

A second glaring example is Shrek 3. The dubbers used lovely idioms both common in informal slanguage and rich in meaning. The Persian Mandy's voice was way better and more fitting than the English voice actor's Mandy. The Persian Diego had the jaded tone which fit the theme the movie adopted for the character, and Sid's voice was as silly as a good-for-nothing troublemaker sloth's voice should be.

CowperKettle

16:51

nods

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ This is part of the Communist conspiracy to sap and depurify our precious bodily fluids. That's the way a hard-core Commie works.

Anonymous

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ I do wonder how these things get upvotes.

CowperKettle

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ There is a joke in Russia. "If you think that a gay pride parade can turn your kids into homosexuals, then no problem! Just take them to a military parade next, and they will be turned to hardcore heterosexual patriots! Be wary of taking them to a Disney Superheroes Parade."

ColleenV

17:07

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ I think a high quality dub of an animated movie could be better than the original, but I almost always prefer hearing the original actors in their native language for live-action. A long time ago I was subjected to a terrible dub of “Like Water for Chocolate”and it’s put me off them forever.

CowperKettle

I love one particular Russian voice-over of The Big Lebowski

I have never had the urge to watch the movie in English.

The Russian translation and the voice-over are brilliant.

ColleenV

17:18

@CowperKettle The movie is brilliant, and I think it calls for a cultural translation, not just a straight “here are the words that were spoken”

The voice is probably part of that

Anonymous

Some of the Studio Ghibli films have really great dubs.

CowperKettle

@ColleenV Russia has a long-standing tradition of excellent translation. This is the reason I don't want to watch the original. The translators have created a movie with something of a Russian spirit.

ColleenV

17:34

@CowperKettle yes, “Russian spirit” is a better way to say it. The movie demands a translation that includes the spirit of it translated as well, not just the words

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

17:47

Dude. Is it just me or are ELL HNQs random?

Usually it should be either about a sensitive or viral topic, or contain a clickbait title

There's also the rare occurrence of a quality post that got a quality answer in time

ell.stackexchange.com/questions/192257/… — this one's got neither

"Is this phrase a passive sentence?" OK well that's um

Anonymous

Nah, it's a proper HNQ. It meets all the criteria: comments from Lightness. And that's the full list.

2

Anonymous

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ That raises another question: are phrases, in fact, sentences? Hmm.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

That brings up some memories, ugh

CowperKettle

@snailboat "Ten years without parole!" --- looks like a sentence to me.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

@snailboat I think we need a huge "Overthinking" billboard in a marquee. It'd be opt in and it'd replace the curtain feeds

BRB taking Cell Cept

Back!

And there's your medical term of the day. Well, medico-trademarky

CowperKettle

18:07

@ColleenV But they did not wreck it by infusing it with Russian spirit, because it's a special translatory kind of spirit. For instance, Samuil Marshak translated Shakespeare in his own peculiar way, recreating a kind of Good Old Britain, a Russian version.

So it's not that they included some typical Russian stuff, no.

ColleenV

@CowperKettle yes, exactly. I agree with you. It should be translated entirely, not just the words.

that is the ideal translation, but it takes skill that not many have to do it properly

And some movies can’t really be done that well. I’m thinking of Hero with Jet Li en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_(2002_film)

There are certain ideas in that film that can’t be accurately translated into American. I did love the use of color in that film though.

CowperKettle

18:33

ColleenV

19:50

I got a kick out of that when I saw it in my Twitter feed.

Anonymous

Can I get that tweet in haiku form?

ColleenV

20:29

@snailboat government shutdown/why don’t we switch to metric/lobbyists furloughed

Eh the last line needs work

It’s not a proper shift

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