Language Overflow

CowperKettle

05:46

1

Q: “Friday I am in love” or “On Friday I am in love”?

The question itself is wider. If I am not mistaken, putting “Friday” in the song title means “On Friday”. Can we use it everyday and not only with days of the week but other time markers, like “February, she is gone to Australia”?

CowperKettle

06:30

Word of the morn: platinum-free interval

Anonymous

07:31

@snailboat: I wrote a userscript to filter the downvote list to show only those that have been edited. It's not linked from here, but from a couple of near-duplicates and such-like. It works fairly well, but it can take as long as a few minutes to pull together the list. — Nathan Tuggy 23 mins ago

2

CowperKettle

o/

CowperKettle

08:01

-1

Q: Is hairs off and bald in front due to electricity leak for 2 years?

My notebook may leak electricity or hacked to release electromagnetic wave for 2 years. I did not notice it for 2 years , and have two years feeling uncomfortable such as dizzy in brain and experience heart rate 34 at Jan 2018 and heart rate 43 at Dec 2018 and Jan 2019 Since 2017, my hairs off ...

cancer blood brain electricity electromagnetism

CowperKettle

10:14

Factoid of the day: normal body temperature in cats: 37.7 - 39.1°C

New Meta Question

12:59

0

Q: Community Promotion Ads — 2019

2019 is here! And with the new year, as usual, comes a new iteration of Community Promotion Ads! Let’s refresh these for the coming year :) What are Community Promotion Ads? Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The...

discussion community-ads

CowperKettle

13:21

Shakespeare of the eve: Let the sky rain potatoes!

Anonymous

@CowperKettle Factoid is a really interesting word. The -oid suffix suggests that they're not actually facts, and that's what the word originally meant, but most people don't know that and just think it means, well, a fact. A little bite-size fact you can drop on people sans context that'll make them go "Huh."

CowperKettle

14:14

On my planetoid, each humble factoid
Can rival a fact in its might,
For low gravity pull made each dweller a fool
With a strongly diminished insight.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

I had a nice question to ask on Biology.SE

Only to see it was already asked (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

9

Q: What is the rationale behind tapering of immunosuppressant dose a while after transplant?

MMF, Cyclosporine, Prednisolone, Tacrolimus the dose of whatever immunosuppressant used is reduced in around 6 months - 1 year after the transplant. What is the rationale behind this? Wouldn't any allograft, howsoever old, still remain foreign? Does the body learn to consider the graft self? O...

human-biology immunology transplantation immunosuppression

CowperKettle

Seems like a good question, by the upvotes

There's also the Medical StackExchange now

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

Well, my question might just mutate into another one, then

Shadow Wizard

14:48

poking @M.A.R.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

Shhh I'm studying

Shadow Wizard

taking @M.A.R's book away

userr2684291

15:18

@snailboat Hm, interesting factoid.

:}

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

15:48

Your smiloid is cute

Anonymous

17:52

I think upvotes can be a bigger problem than downvotes on ELL.

Anonymous

From time to time, at any rate.

CowperKettle

18:22

@snailboat Because of the herd mentality leading to more upvotes?

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

18:35

@CowperKettle Because some learners seem to think just because an answerer 'sounds' like a native speaker and their answer hasn't received any criticism in the form of comments their answer must be right

I'm not sure any other SE suffers so much from bad practices from the related topic's practitioners

There are so many misconceptions and so little correct learner guidance around and that means their evaluation of content suffers

There's also the "I don't say it to my neighbor so it must be wrong" native speakers

I just Deja Vu'd. I think we've had this similar conversation among me, @Snail and Damkerng at least thrice

Anonymous

It's very easy to be both a native speaker and incorrect. Just ask me! I do it all the time :-)

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

I don't think you can ever be incorrect even if I ask you to

I'm not a native speaker but I remember I immediately felt why a native speaker of language X would immediately feel like an expert in a Q/A about that language when I was starting out on ELL

Anonymous

If everything native speakers said about the languages they speak were automatically correct, then those native speakers would probably disagree a lot less often than they actually do.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

Imagining "irregardless" vanish

Hey, even the spell checker doesn't mind it

44

Q: Writing.SE clamours for graduation

Writing.SE has raised the issue of our desire to graduate a year ago Here it is: we're tired of being a beta site. We believe we have been a consistently successful site, we've been around for more than eight years, we have a strong base of avid users, we have 100% answered questions, and we get...

discussion graduating-sites

Anonymous

That's interesting. It is a well-established lexeme. That is, it's clearly a word, and that's a matter of fact rather than opinion.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

18:43

I'm not really certain there's anything fun about graduation anymore, but increasing rep levels is a good point.

Anonymous

The question is, what are speakers' attitudes toward irregardless? And does it appear in the speech of educated native speakers when they're trying to speak Standard English?

Anonymous

And if they do say it, and they're aware that they said it, do they try to correct themselves or consider it a mistake?

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

And do they use it to mean "regardless" or regard . . . ful?

Anonymous

Those attitudes tell us that it falls under the "non-standard" category, at least as far as a lot of people are concerned.

Anonymous

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ Just think of it as negative concord. A single semantic negation expressed with multiple grammatical negations.

Anonymous

18:45

It ain't nothin' new.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

I'm so full of regards. I need to quit smoking regard herb

Anonymous

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ To me, the fun thing would be back-forming the verb irregard.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

I will irregard your position on this document?

Hmm, flows kinda better actually

I was reminded of "petaloso"

7

Q: Is brain transplantation possible?

Many organs can be transplanted nowadays, including the liver, lungs and kidneys. Can the brain be transplanted?

neuroscience neurology transplantation

BBL

userr2684291

@snailboat What about I could care less? I once caught myself using it and thinking about it, and it seemed perfectly fine as some sort of idiom.

Like, the crux of the meaning in my case relied partly on intonation and on the elaborateness of the phrase or something like that, rather than the meaning of the constituent words.

Jasper

19:11

@snailboat I think it might be a good idea to abolish voting on SE altogether.

Anonymous

@userr2684291 Yeah, that's a fair comparison.

Jasper

@snailboat Perhaps a more common problem is the use of with regards to instead of with regard to.

Anonymous

I think the stigma attached to irregardless is a bit stronger than to could care less, but that's just my personal perception. I don't think I'd ever say it.

Jasper

I hear irregardless very often too, but I always use regardless myself.

I have learnt many things after installing Windows multiple times and resetting Windows multiple times the past few days.

userr2684291

Interesting. I find it unremarkable.

Anonymous

19:16

I'm fairly certain I hear could care less in the informal speech of educated native speakers often enough, whereas I think people tend to stomp out irregardless from their own speech. The data might disagree, but that's my impression.

Anonymous

Of course, there's a cognitive bias there, the tendency to think that others hold the same judgments I do.

Anonymous

So I could just be wrong.

Anonymous

I looked through some chat logs just now and found that lots of people I talk to online write could care less, but it seems that none of them write irregardless.

Anonymous

I have chat logs going back well over a decade, so sometimes I use those as a little corpus, mainly because they're easily searchable.

userr2684291

I once or twice stopped myself from writing it, lol.

Jasper

19:20

I wonder how many people write user as userr, lol.

It is very interesting that the 2018 Macbook Air has a casing that is made from 100 per cent recycled aluminium.

userr2684291

(Irregardless.)

Anonymous

@Jasper I think if they were serious about the environment, they'd try harder to make their computers repairable rather than something to dispose of and replace at the first sign of trouble.

Jasper

@snailboat Yes, I think so too. Maybe this is just a sales gimmick, lol.

I think that although macOS is superior to Windows, PCs are superior to Macbooks.

After buying a very expensive Macbook, we still need to fork out money for the dongles, because the newer Macbooks only have USB C ports and no other ports.

Anonymous

I do use non-standard English every day, by the way. It just happens that irregardless isn't part of the language I learned growing up.

Jasper

At least one USB A port would be nice, but they don't even give you one.

userr2684291

19:26

It all depends on what you're doing.

Jasper

I don't know what English I use every day. I just call it Jasper English.

Anonymous

So when we were taught that it was incorrect, I didn't have anything to unlearn. I don't know if I would have banished it from my idiolect, but I bet I would have, since it seems like a lot of other people did.

Anonymous

@Jasper Everyone has their own personal copy of English, different from everyone else's. It's called an idiolect.

Jasper

@snailboat It is interesting that if you remove lec, you get idiot.

Anonymous

@Jasper Oh, yeah. Ever heard of the movie Idiocracy? That's supposed to be idio from idiot, but before that movie came out there used to be a word idiocrasy which meant 'idiosyncrasy'.

Anonymous

19:31

And cracy there is an alternative spelling of crasy, so they aren't distinguishable by spelling alone.

Anonymous

The reason idio and idio look very similar is that the two come from the same etymon, but over time they arrived at two very different meanings!

ColleenV

@snailboat That’s my impression as well. I’ve also tried to retrain myself on insure/ensure ever since I read a style guide from a respectable publication saying it’s ok to use insure in place of ensure.

Anonymous

@ColleenV Thanks for the data point.

ColleenV

Simpler is better. If I can drop a syllable and say regardless and have it mean the same thing, why use irregardless?

Anonymous

Yeah, I don't see any particular need for irregardless.

Anonymous

19:35

@ColleenV Flammable and inflammable are an interesting pair, since people misunderstanding them could have safety repercussions.

ColleenV

If I can understand what someone is saying, I try not to pick nits about things like irregardless and such

Anonymous

Both flammable and inflammable are considered Standard English, but you can make a solid argument that you should use one and not the other.

ColleenV

@snailboat Yeah, I think those are a different situation because it’s difficult to tell if they have the right sense or are making a mistake

Even if you understand the word a certain way, you can’t be sure sometimes that the speaker understands it the same way.

userr2684291

I doubt anyone would ever misunderstand irregardless.

Anonymous

@userr2684291 Yeah, I think it's pretty hard to misunderstand.

Anonymous

19:47

Actually, people misnegate a lot, and it's not uncommon for listeners to fail to notice the misnegation and instead to understand the misnegated utterance as it was intended.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

20:01

I've noticed I'm pretty different from other English speakers here regarding "I could care less"

It might be because of my Persian background. I can't explain why, but "I couldn't care less" makes so much sense to me, so I never get it 'wrong'.

Pretty sure I've only used the other form a couple of times in ELU chat, and it was meant for humorous effect

Anonymous

20:15

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ I looked through some chat logs, and it seemed like some speakers use could care less and others use couldn't care less.

Anonymous

I couldn't find anyone who used both versions.

userr2684291

I think us (we?), non-native speakers of English, sometimes focus a little more than usual on how we say something, i.e. we're more careful because this isn't our first language.

Doesn't mean we get it right even if we know the pertinent grammar rule, just that we pay more attention to it, lol. But that also means we're less likely to misspell words, or misuse they're or such.

But yeah, writing is a bit different than speech anyway because it's slower and you can see it all written before you hit return or whatever.

Different than doesn't make any sense to me, and in my first language it's always different from, but as you can see above, that didn't stop me from writing it.

But I might say write my homework instead of do my homework, so there's that.

Anonymous

21:14

@userr2684291 Different than is what I grew up with, but my mother successfully replaced it with different from. Well, pretty successfully, anyway. I almost always use from, but not 100% of the time. I never use different to.

Anonymous

Some speakers grow up saying different than, and end up writing it "different then". These people are shunned at parties, where spelling is paramount.

ColleenV

Another “rule” that sticks in my head is to not say “Hopefully my package will be here soon” to mean “I hope it will come soon”

Anonymous

I'm fine with hopefully. Some people are taught not to do it and they end up avoiding it, but there's nothing wrong with it.

ColleenV

@snailboat lol, you can’t get to close to them or you might catch it!

@snailboat I also think “hopefully” is fine- just another thing to pick at when you don’t want to think about what someone is trying to express.

Also further and farther...

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

@userr2684291 No not like that. You mention you sometimes resist the impulse to write could care less; that also happens to me in some other stuff. But never here, it never crosses my mind to write could care less

Jasper

21:22

@snailboat Without checking anything, it seems to me that different than is more of an American thing than a British one.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

I've said/mentioned "different than" twice in this chat, and "different from" 29 times

Sometimes "different than" sounds more right to me

Anonymous

@Jasper Yep! And different to is foreign to me as an AmE speaker.

Jasper

Also, without checking anything, it seems to me that a couple oranges is more of an American thing than a British one.

I always use different from and a couple of oranges myself.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

Hmm, due to "to", I can't search for "different to" in this chat

But I don't think I ever use it

Jasper

I just read an article about how Brexit is actually good for Europe, lol.

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ All I know is that Persian carpets are very luxurious and there is a Persian movie about a boy running with his sister's shoes.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

21:29

That works

@Jasper Economy is so literally figuratively effed up that you can basically say "X is true because X is false"

IOW, everything is a coin with an opportunity side and menace side

Jasper

That is true. Life is suffering. On one side there is life, and on the other side there is suffering.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

However, thanks to a certain person, recently every big politiconomical decision gets surrounded by a counterproductive and toxic atmosphere that halters progress and good thinking

So, really, the worst thing that can happen because of Brexit would happen because of politicians getting too busy with name calling to make careful and considered decisions

@Jasper It's true that whoever got to make something in their life had to 'suffer' some things and get out of their comfort zone, but that doesn't mean the result wouldn't be worthwhile

Jasper

21:45

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ Actually, when I said life is suffering, that is just a famous Buddhist sentence. However, the actual intended meaning of that sentence is not the literal interpretation. The intended meaning of suffering includes everything that is impermanent, imperfect, conditioned by other things.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

The only useful time to remind ourselves of our imperfection is when we're too obsessed with pursuing perfection

Once acknowledged it's probably just useless, if not depressing

Anonymous

22:16

Sometimes the pursuit of perfection leads you away, not towards. I have that problem.

2

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

22:28

@snailboat People that tend to attack problems logically and sit down and analyze the heck out of everything usually do

Actually, hmm, there probably isn't a large number of people who attack problems illogically

They usually end up not attacking at all, just defending

Pass me the weird 20-sided dice pls

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