English Language Learners

StoneyB

00:06

@DamkerngT. That last sentence all by itself should earn you an honorary doctorate in Literary Criticism.

learner

Hey guys again. Does any one know the meaning of "take her west". I heard it in Appleseed Alpha 2014

springfieldspringfield.co.uk/…

The whole movie script is provided in the link above

I'm not sue if it is a set phrase or just a mere part of a dialogue

Damkerng T.

@StoneyB I'm glad you like it!

@learner Hmm... Is there anyone named West in the movie? (Maybe it's "Take her, West!"

Otherwise, I'd understand that as "take her (to the) west (direction)".

learner

The only think I think of is "go west" means to kill or die or something like this

Damkerng T.

It's hard to say without knowing the context.

learner

However, the woman is very important to him and he would not want to kill her

Yeah, DT

Damkerng T.

00:15

@learner This "west" could be a place, perhaps. It sounds like he was telling someone to take her there for her own safety.

(Or maybe just the direction)

learner

If take someone West doesn't ring a bell then it is unlikely that is an idiom

Damkerng T.

nods -- By the way, I think Appleseed is a Japanese anime. I'm not sure how legit the sub is.

learner

Why don't you take the chance to watch the movie DT!

I agree with you

Damkerng T.

I think it's too new for me, probably. I usually have to wait about half a year before I can watch what everyone has already watched. :-)

learner

It is supposed to be a script

Why is that if I may say

Damkerng T.

00:22

@learner Ah, I only watch movies on my cable TV, and it's usually about half a year late.

learner

Not bad

Damkerng T.

The newest movie I've watched is Pacific Rim.

learner

Wow

Damkerng T.

Very old, right!? :D

learner

Kinda

I don't watch much TV myself

Damkerng T.

00:25

I usually have it on in the background. Sometimes it's news, sometimes documentaries, sometimes talk shows or reality shows, but quite often it'd be the movies. :-)

learner

how do you remember the scenes when you watch the movie once and you don't get the chance to pause and check? I am guessing this is how it is

Damkerng T.

Ah, because I have it in the background, there are very good chances that I will see the same thing over and over. I usually ignore most parts but when a scene I like comes up, I will pay more attention. I guess that is how.

Oh, and sometimes I tape what I really like. :-)

Jerson Zuleta

Hey!

Damkerng T.

Hey! Long time no see, eh? :-)

learner

hi

Jerson Zuleta

00:31

Been a bit busy. How's everyone doing?

Damkerng T.

I think everyone is doing quite well. It's Boxing Day today, and I have a chance to get to know CLAWS. What about you?

Jerson Zuleta

Not much, I slept in. Did nothing at all today xD

Damkerng T.

That sounds nice, too!

Jerson Zuleta

Well, uni will start soon in January so I'd better take advantage of the free time I've got left.

Damkerng T.

Sounds like you already have a plan. :D

Jerson Zuleta

00:34

Planning on leaving town for New Year's Eve.

Maybe coming back on the 6th.

Damkerng T.

Nice!

Jerson Zuleta

Hey, I got a question if you don't mind.

Damkerng T.

Shoot!

Jerson Zuleta

Alright, so I was wondering if omitting "who is", "that is", etc, in a sentence is common? The other day I asked a question about "one seldom upset" that turned out to be "one [who is] seldom upset", and I was like okay, but then I was talking to this aussie guy and he said "all things good in this world" which I assumed was "all things [that are] good in this world."

Damkerng T.

Ah, I think it would be better not to understand that as ellipsis.

It's an adjective phrase postmodifying the noun that comes before it.

Jerson Zuleta

00:38

So "all things good in this world" just like that is okay? I would say "all good things in this world."

Damkerng T.

Though usually, you can understand the meaning by inserting "that is", "which is", etc. into the phrase.

@JersonZuleta I think I'd accept both.

Jerson Zuleta

Also, I found it odd to read "husbands good, husbands bad". Instead of "good husbands, bad husbands."

Damkerng T.

The more complex the phrase is the better chance it will be moved to the back.

Hmm... "husbands good" sounds odd to me.

"husbands good, husbands bad" sounds like a title of a book or a movie. :-)

Jerson Zuleta

Well, it was certainly in a book but as part of the text, not the title.

Damkerng T.

@JersonZuleta Was it a complete sentence?

Jerson Zuleta

00:42

Let me look it up.

"Wives could be just as unfaithful to husbands good, or husbands bad."

Damkerng T.

Wow.

learner

who are

sounds like!

Damkerng T.

I think I'm more comfortable with "Wives could be just as unfaithful to husbands, good or bad (alike)."

learner

This stuff is over my head at this stage

Anonymous

It's certainly not the usual way of phrasing it

Jerson Zuleta

00:44

brb

Damkerng T.

Wait. I think (assuming that it's good English) "husbands good" and "husbands bad" could be some terms the author of the book uses to refer to kinds of husbands.

> Let's talk about husbands. There are two kinds of them: husbands good, and husbands bad. Husbands bad usually cheat on their wives. Wives could be just as unfaithful to husbands good, or husbands bad.

^I just made that up.

Damkerng T.

01:17

1

Q: A: what are your plans for next holiday ? B: I (will take - are going to take - am taking) a course in English

A: what are your plans for next holiday ? B: I (will take - are going to take - am taking) a course in English. Could anyone choose the right answer?

I think I'll try to invent a new term for this kind of English some day. (I think they simply want "will take".) I think it could be called a dialect. It's the dialect that is taught to students who learn English as a second language. In this dialect, "I'm taking a course in English next year" is not possible.

(And passing the tests will be emphasized more than mastering the language. Or to put it another way, they believe that in order to master the language one only needs to master the tests, and it'll be all done.)

Damkerng T.

01:33

Phrase of the day: do sport

Probably BrE.

> More than 30 per cent of those pupils who said they want to do sport stated that they want to be involved with football in one way or another.

> I was specifically asked the question about what I, as the minister, was going to do about the girls who say they don't want to do sport because they see it as 'unfeminine'.

Jerson Zuleta

02:37

@DamkerngT. This is the context: "We watched unfaithful husbands deceive loving wives, or nagging wives or wives too concerned with their children to give the husbands the attentions they deemed so necessary. It was vice-versa, too. Wives could be just as unfaithful to husbands good, or husbands bad. We learned love was just like a soap bubble, so shining and bright one day, and the next day it popped. "

I noticed a couple of archaic & odd phrasing in that book but that was the one that I simply couldn't find an example anywhere else. That's why it seemed so weird.

I also thought at first it could be the narrator (who's a girl around 14 years old), but she and her brother were always correcting their siblings about the correct way of saying things.

Damkerng T.

03:01

That sounds unusual to me. I mean, husbands is not like something. (It's more typical to say "something good, or something bad".)

Anonymous

05:12

@DamkerngT. Good example! Thing words often take postpositive adjectives

Anonymous

Something good, anything good, nothing good, everything good

Anonymous

@JersonZuleta Fourteen-year-old girls don't talk that way, generally speaking

Damkerng T.

I got a new mic, which is very cheap!

It's only $12, and I just got it some ten minutes ago! :-)

Anonymous

Yay!

Damkerng T.

I'm not sure, but it sounds like it's a little better (for voice recording purpose) than the old one, which is almost 10 times more expensive.

dropbox.com/s/cllfrj7t55h3fbs/…

dropbox.com/s/6zssfcs5v486cvu/…

dropbox.com/s/g07re2k6b8dqahz/…

Anonymous

05:23

I tried clicking the first couple links, but it said they're still uploading.

Damkerng T.

Oh!

Anonymous

What sort of mic is it? Is it a headset-type mic?

Damkerng T.

Yes.

It's Logitech, I think.

Ah, Dropbox says "Up to date" just now.

I ordered a few things, mainly a new router for my home office. (A lot of things are broken around here!)

Anonymous

You pronounce singular as /ˈsɪŋɡələr/

Anonymous

You need a /j/ in there: /ˈsɪŋɡjələr/

Damkerng T.

05:26

Oh! Thanks!

Maybe I got it from my old accent.

Anonymous

I hear individually in the first recording as something like /ɪnˈdɪvɪtəli/ when it should be /ɪndɪˈvɪdʒəli/

Anonymous

Or /ɪndɪˈvɪdʒuəli/ in careful pronunciation, but the /uə/ tend to get squished together :-)

Damkerng T.

I think I put the stress on the wrong syllable!

Anonymous

Yes, second instead of third

Anonymous

The new mic has a lot more high end

Damkerng T.

05:37

Sometimes it happens when I read something casually, and there is -ly at the end of a word, which I tend to shift the stressing for no reason.

@snailboat High end?

Anonymous

High frequencies

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

I was given a Christmas cookie

Anonymous

I ate it, and now my stomach feels all wooey

Damkerng T.

Yay!

Oh!

Anonymous

05:39

It was tasty, though.

Anonymous

Maybe it had milk in it.

Damkerng T.

I remember that there is a special kind of cake for Christmas.

Anonymous

Stupid milk.

Anonymous

In Japan, they have Christmas cake.

Anonymous

We don't have "Christmas cake" here in the US, generally speaking

Anonymous

05:39

Although I suppose people might make cakes

Anonymous

And just not call them that

Anonymous

I don't know. I'm not a Christmas expert. :-)

Anonymous

I think they might have Christmas cakes in the UK

Damkerng T.

Ah, I found it. It's called Stollen.

I remember that when I was young and my aunt came back from the US, she brought a fruit cake with her. It was very delicious, except that I didn't like the rum in it. :-)

Anonymous

Ah, I haven't heard of that!

Anonymous

05:43

I think I've heard of fruitcake on Christmas before

Anonymous

But I don't know the word Stollen

Anonymous

0

A: As what do you read this letter?

It looks like a lowercase V. Is this describing an electrical signal? If so, there's a convention that DC variables use capital letters and AC variables use lowercase letters. It looks like Vm is the (constant) magnitude of the sinusoid, and v is the actual time-varying sinusoid itself. The varia...

Anonymous

> (Sorry I can't use the actual Greek letters here; ELL apparently doesn't support MathJax.)

Anonymous

But MathJax has nothing to do with that capability

Anonymous

Greek letters are all in Unicode.

Damkerng T.

05:46

Though an answer says it's Upsilon, I think it's just a lowercase v. :D

Anonymous

Nah, it's a lowercase upsilon. Lowercase 'v' is derived from it, though, so it's no coincidence that it looks like one.

Damkerng T.

Hmm... Strange. I read omega "omega", but never read that v "upsilon".

Now it looks like an upsilon.

Anonymous

Maybe you're right.

Anonymous

Maybe it's just v.

Anonymous

I dunno.

Damkerng T.

05:50

I upvoted it. Because it makes me think that I probably read it wrong all along!

Anonymous

I was sure at first, but now I have no idea. :-)

Damkerng T.

I was sure, too, that it would be a v. Now I'm not sure anymore!

Anonymous

It's funny 'cause, way back when, this definitely would've been something I'd've known.

Anonymous

I'm only 33, but already my memory feels frail :-)

Anonymous

When I was cleaning yesterday, I came across another book I had no recollection of

Anonymous

05:53

An illustrated history of Japan!

Anonymous

I definitely buy the explanation that it's just an angley v

Damkerng T.

I've never listened to anything basic physics in English before, so I'm not sure. I wonder how Feynman would read it. :-)

Anonymous

I took the relevant classes when I was a teenager.

Anonymous

ω

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I like illustrated books!

Anonymous

05:55

＾ω＾

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Hey, that doesn't look like an omega. Yeah, that looks like that!

Anonymous

But I can't get upsilon to look right in here.

Anonymous

υ

Damkerng T.

It looks like a union operator. :D

Anonymous

I want it to look like angley v

Anonymous

05:58

υ

Anonymous

But in this font, it doesn't.

Damkerng T.

Oh, the image includes lowercase m's. How would a lowercase v look like in that font? I think it's the standard font MathJax and TeX engines use.

Anonymous

→ wikipedia

Anonymous

Hey, that didn't work. EDIT: Edited!

Damkerng T.

$user image$

:<math>\omega = v/r</math>

(From: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_frequency)

Anonymous

06:04

Angley v!

Damkerng T.

Mystery solved!

Anonymous

Or is it!?

Damkerng T.

Not sure, but it looks like so to me.

I still think this omega from Wikipedia looks a bit funny.

Anonymous

Yeah, their rendering is not so great.

Anonymous

typoma.com/publ/20041002-atypi.pdf#page=11

Anonymous

06:09

This is really confusing. :-)

Anonymous

Hey, in Japanese, there's a difference between ロ, 口, and 囗

Anonymous

Or between 匕 and ヒ

Anonymous

This is starting to remind me of that stuff. :-)

Damkerng T.

The difference between ロ and 囗 is rather obvious, but 口 and 囗 is not!

Anonymous

Depends on your font.

Damkerng T.

06:11

Ahh

Anonymous

Sometimes the difference can be pretty obvious, or sometimes they can look pretty much identical :-)

Anonymous

Damkerng T.

แ <-- Does it look sort of like 11?

Anonymous

These all look different to me, but if you asked me to guess which one I was looking at, I doubt I could do it… :-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Looks like a pair of backwards half notes! 𝅗𝅥 𝅗𝅥

Damkerng T.

06:14

@snailboat Telling which is which in that set is out of question for me. :P

Anonymous

‹th›

Anonymous

These are the ones I settled on for indicating orthography

Damkerng T.

Hmm... It looks like the middle one.

Anonymous

The letters ‹th› usually represent the phonemes /θ/ and /ð/ in English.

Anonymous

Doesn't it look the nicest? :-)

Damkerng T.

06:17

It does!

Anonymous

And I think ‹› show up on ELL for everyone. (I need to make sure still)

Anonymous

&lang; and &rang; show up as blank for some people, unfortunately

Damkerng T.

Ahh... I remember that. I think I'm one of those some people. :D

@snailboat Ah, the PDF finally came up. Now I don't know what I know anymore!

> “v” and “nu” — v is not usable: vν ... and w

> (“omicron” ο and “upsilon” υ are not used)

v and υ look the exactly same in that font!

Anonymous

06:46

Yeah,Igaveuponknowingwhichonewaswhichfornow.:-)

Anonymous

ExcusemewhileIcleanmyspacebar.

Damkerng T.

That'squitealright!

Itlooksabitfamiliartomeanyway.

Anonymous

Englishisn'treallythathardtoreadwithoutspaces.

Damkerng T.

nods

Iguessthat'swhyitworksinThai.

Anonymous

Oh, you could write any language you wanted to without spaces, but

Anonymous

06:49

You can read faster with word boundaries.

Anonymous

Of course, if you got used to English without word boundaries, you could read faster in it that way than you can now―

Damkerng T.

Ah, in Thai, spaces are more like commas. They break longer chunks into smaller chunks.

Anonymous

Ah, I didn't know you used them!

Damkerng T.

Wenormallyuseittobreaksentencesorlongphrases Likethis forexample. :D

Anonymous

Ahh :-)

Anonymous

06:51

That's kinda neat.

Anonymous

I wrote a meta post.

Anonymous

0

Q: Angle brackets to indicate orthography

Choosing the right ‹angle brackets› Linguists often enclose letters in angle brackets to let people know they're talking about orthography (the way things are written). But Unicode has lots of different angle brackets, some of which don't show up for everyone, and some of which look funny. Whi...

discussion

Damkerng T.

Yay!

Oh, I can see all the brackets!

Anonymous

That way I can find the brackets if I ever lose the notes on my computer. :-)

Anonymous

Well, I can type spaces again, for what it's worth.

Damkerng T.

06:54

I'm glad to hear that!

Anonymous

I haven't noticed quite as much cross-site activity from hat hunters this year.

Anonymous

Last year we had a lot of people showing up on various sites looking for hats.

Anonymous

This year we have some, but I think not as much.

Damkerng T.

I don't know why, but I think I can feel that, too.

Do we have fewer hats?

Anonymous

Dunno.

Anonymous

06:57

I'm happy with my current hat number, so I'm not going for any more.

Damkerng T.

I think I can get a few more hats rather easily. (Like the one on 12/31. :-)

Oh, btw, do you think They don't do sport sounds odd in any way?

Anonymous

Sure. Sounds really odd to me. I can't say I've ever heard do sport before.

Anonymous

I assumed you were right earlier when you suggested it was BrE, but I didn't take the time to look it up.

Damkerng T.

Ahh... Thanks!

Oh, then, what would you say instead of do sport?

Anonymous

corpus.byu.edu/glowbe/?c=glowbe&q=35999429

Anonymous

07:01

I dunno. What's do sport mean?

Anonymous

Play sports?

Damkerng T.

I don't go out and play any sports.

Ah, I see. So it's play sports.

The phrase looked odd to me, too, when I saw it easier today. I expected an s at after sport.

And do sounds a bit off.

Anonymous

Do sports is a little strange still, but better

Anonymous

(in my dialect)

Damkerng T.

nods

Hmm... I can't remember what ZA stands for.

South Africa?

Ah, yes, indeed. corpus.byu.edu/glowbe/help/texts_e.asp

Anonymous

07:05

Yeah.

Anonymous

It's Zuid-Afrika.

Anonymous

Zuid-Afrika

Zuid-Afrika, officieel de Republiek Zuid-Afrika (Afrikaans: Republiek van Suid-Afrika, Engels: Republic of South Africa) is een land dat aan de zuidpunt van Afrika ligt. Het land grenst in het noorden aan Namibië, Botswana en Zimbabwe, in het oosten aan Mozambique en Swaziland. De onafhankelijke staat Lesotho wordt in zijn geheel door Zuid-Afrika omsloten. Zuid-Afrika heeft een rijke koloniale geschiedenis, die tot stand kwam toen Kaapstad in 1652 als Nederlandse verversingspost werd gesticht. Na anderhalve eeuw van Nederlandse kolonisatie werd de Kaapkolonie overgenomen door het Verenigd Koninkrijk...

Damkerng T.

A-ha! I wondered why it's Z instead of S.

Anonymous

Official names of South Africa

There are eleven official names of South Africa, one in each of its eleven official languages. The number is surpassed only by India. These languages include English, Afrikaans, the Nguni languages (Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele, and Swazi), as well as the Sotho languages, which include Tswana, Sotho and Northern Sotho. The remaining two languages are Venda and Tsonga. There are smaller but still significant groups of speakers of Khoi-San languages which are not official languages, but are one of the eight unofficially recognised languages. There are even smaller groups of speakers of endangered languages...

Anonymous

> South Africa's country code, ZA, is an abbreviation of this former official name, Zuid-Afrika.

Anonymous

07:11

If we look at the US results for [do] sport, we find false positives:

Anonymous

> They did sport some local treasures they were given while in Papua New Guinea: they were both presented with orders from the country on arrival, which they wore at the state dinner held in their honor (though here, as we saw on the Cambridge tour, a state dinner does not mean tiaras or other real bling), and Camilla proudly wore a necklace with a large mother of pearl shell given to her by a local woman.

Damkerng T.

Oh!

Anonymous

One apparent example of do sport appears to be from a blog comment (perhaps left by a BrE reader?)

Anonymous

So the gulf is probably wider than the numbers suggest

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

07:16

By the way, I'm happy with this new Firefox version. :-)

Damkerng T.

Ah, which version? (I'm still using an old one.)

Anonymous

Umm.

Anonymous

34.0.5

Anonymous

I skipped from 4 to 34

Damkerng T.

Wow! I remember that I tried 30.0 and it looked like it'd bloated a bit.

Maybe it's better in 34.

@snailboat I remember I jumped from 3 to 17!

(Then a few days later some folks came out and warned about security holes in 17!)

Anonymous

07:19

@DamkerngT. I dunno.

Anonymous

I was using SeaMonkey in the meantime :-)

Damkerng T.

In 24-28, the UI looks native-like. (The menus, the tabs, and such look like Windows on Windows.) I remember that FF 30 looked like Eclipse!

(The way the tabs looked really stood out.)

Oh, I just noticed that one of the do sport results was taken from SE!

37

Q: How do you come up with ideas for new games?

What is the best way in your opinion to find new ideas for games? I want to invent something really new (like Gish, World of Goo, Crayon Physics etc), but I'm having problems coming up with new, creative ideas.

game-design

Will everything we write on the main be included in the corpus in the near future? :P

I'm pretty sure that something I wrote on the main is very, very unique. No one had ever said or wrote some of what I wrote before. I'm also sure that I'm not the only one who keeps making such unique utterances. :-)

Anonymous

07:37

@DamkerngT. Oh, sure.

Anonymous

Just try to find people who said their stomachs went all wooey.

Damkerng T.

LOL

@snailboat Still, I think you wouldn't write stomach went all wooey on the main. :-)

Anonymous

Well, I probably wouldn't talk about "angley v" either :-)

Anonymous

One thing I probably wouldn't do is call it "the main" rather than "the main site"

Damkerng T.

Hehe!

Ahh

Anonymous

07:39

I don't know. Maybe other people do.

Damkerng T.

So, it's one of my signatures. :-)

I'm not sure if I got it (the main) from someone else, or I just thought that it would go well with "the meta" and started using it.

Anonymous

Hmm.

Anonymous

I say "on meta" or "on the meta site"

Anonymous

Do many people say "on the meta"?

Damkerng T.

Now I'm not so sure! ^_^"

Argh! My new headset is kinda itchy!

Anonymous

07:42

D'oh!

Damkerng T.

in The Bridge, May 22 at 12:15, by Matt Эллен

it might also involve post on the meta

Found one!

Anonymous

Um.

Anonymous

That doesn't look grammatical

Damkerng T.

Hmm... I think you're right!

Anonymous

Although in that case my quibble is with post, not on the meta :-) I do see some other people write "on the meta", too.

Damkerng T.

07:46

in Root Access, Nov 18 '13 at 14:26, by DanteTheEgregore

And it's open again. Hopefully I'll still get an answer on the meta if there's one to be had. I'm still curious what the flaggers saw wrong with it.

Found another!

I found a lot of "Tavern on the Meta on Meta Stack Overflow Chat"!

Anonymous

Oh, yeah. "Tavern on the Meta" always struck me as a special case, though.

Anonymous

It's like if Meta were the name of a river.

Damkerng T.

Maybe I got it from there.

Anonymous

Interesting results if you search for "Tavern on the *"

Damkerng T.

This makes me feel like wanting to convert to use "the main site" and "the meta site" instead.

Anonymous

07:49

That's what I'd do. But that's just me.

Anonymous

I don't know if "Tavern on the Meta" is supposed to be a reference to something

Damkerng T.

@snailboat On the Green, on the Hill, on the Square, on the Lake!

@snailboat Well, I think you got a convert!

Anonymous

I don't really know why I wrote that meta post.

Anonymous

I don't really feel like writing ELL answers anymore, so it's not terribly applicable to me

Damkerng T.

Ah, I hope you didn't really mean it, or it's just temporariy.

Anonymous

07:54

Ah, well, it's only been a week since my last answer.

Damkerng T.

Ah, I wrote 8 answers this month. Must be because of the hats.

Anonymous

Ah, well, that makes four messages in a row beginning with ah!

Damkerng T.

Ah, indeed!

Anonymous

Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

Damkerng T.

08:59

Ah, I'm alone in the chat room!

quidstone

12:43

hello...

anyone???

CopperKettle

17:22

Hi everyone!

I wonder if my answer to this quirky question is on the money:

2

Q: Conditional: "are not" vs. "don't be"

Consider the following phrases (someone is talking with a friend who is challenging some mobsters) : If you are not careful, they will catch you. or If you don't be careful, they will catch you. Is the second option acceptable or usual? Are they both in according with grammar rules?

grammar conditional-constructions

CopperKettle