English Language Learners

StoneyB

01:24

@GATA Well, here it is 2061 ... whip is a complicated word. From its first appearance it's had two distinct meanings: to beat (and hence to drive as if by beating), and to move swiftly, which merge in a third sense, to cause something to move swiftly - "The wind whips her hair into her face". I think the use with 'past' implies the third sense: her strides drive the air past her, like a boat's wake.

3

GATA

02:38

@StoneyB Thank you very much :)

GATA

02:55

I hope you are not Offended by me comparing you to Halley's comet. I meant it in a good way :) thank you again.

Damkerng T.

03:21

@snailplane I know that that "who" is fine. It's just that I don't like to argue more. Arguing with Jim that "Buffalo buffallo* buffalo" doesn't need any capitalization wore me down enough already.

@snailboat Thank you for great information!

Anonymous

Ah, that's perfectly understandable.

Anonymous

I just leave comments sometimes when I see misinformation.

Damkerng T.

In my opinion, the main site is getting polluted by misinformation more and more.

Anonymous

I don't think I personally consider arbitrary strings of buffalo grammatical regardless of capitalization, but I'm curious to see that discussion

Damkerng T.

It was still in the comment.

The fact that Jim requires capitalization reflects that he didn't really analyze the sentence himself.

Anonymous

03:30

Can you link me? I'm in my phone

Anonymous

On

Anonymous

(Help! I can't escape from my phone!)

Damkerng T.

I believe that anyone who really analyzed it, read the explanation, and agree with the explanation, would have no problem to understand that "Buffalo buffallo* buffalo" is possible.

a moment

And #6 ought to have some capital 'Buffalo's in there. One possible sequence (there are many) is: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. — Jim yesterday

Though it's arguable that capitalization is not needed (as we can add another level of nesting), I will keep the merit of the original one, which is the same one we can find on Wikipedia. Thank you for the suggestion. Edited. — Damkerng T. yesterday

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I'll have to refresh my memory. Let's see.

Anonymous

The basic idea is that Buffalo buffalo is a NP. And so is plain ol' buffalo.

Damkerng T.

03:38

Yes.

Anonymous

So if we replace the words... Using Wikipedia's example, "New York bison New York bison bully, bully New York bison"

Anonymous

(Doing word replacement to me is the easiest way to make it make sense in my head, if only temporarily)

Anonymous

We scratch the New Yorks

Anonymous

Bison bison bully, bully bison

Damkerng T.

You're correct.

Anonymous

03:39

People ~~that~~ people bully, bully people.

Anonymous

People ~~that~~ people bully bully people.

Damkerng T.

Exactly!

Anonymous

Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo.

Anonymous

Buffalo ~~that~~ buffalo buffalo, buffalo buffalo.

Anonymous

Seems reasonable to me.

Damkerng T.

03:41

And you can add another level of nesting.

Anonymous

However, I still don't personally think arbitrary strings of buffalo are grammatical.

Anonymous

I think this has to do with what I believe grammaticality is.

Damkerng T.

Which is why I said that we have to agree with the widely accepted analysis first.

Anonymous

Yep! I saw that. :-)

Damkerng T.

(to see that "Buffalo buffallo* buffalo" is possible)

Anonymous

03:43

Let's say sentences can be wrong grammatically (ungrammatical), semantically (nonsensical), or pragmatically (infelicitous).

Anonymous

And we'll borrow Chomsky's example, Colorless green ideas, yada yada yada.

Anonymous

Let's say colorless green ideas is grammatical but nonsensical.

Anonymous

When we hear the words, we intuitively see that words are fitting together the way we expect them to: we've got a couple adjectives and a noun.

Anonymous

Either the adjectives are coordinated, or it's nested: adj [ adj noun ]

Damkerng T.

Maybe it can be, if we try to stretch own imagination really hard.

Anonymous

03:45

It doesn't take any stretch for me at all.

Anonymous

adj [ adj noun ] or ( adj, adj ) [ noun ] both parse readily for me.

Anonymous

The fact that it doesn't make sense doesn't mean the words don't fit together the way I expect.

Damkerng T.

I mean colorless green ideas.

Anonymous

That is also what I'm talking about

Anonymous

Maybe it can be [ what? ]

Damkerng T.

03:46

sensical.

Anonymous

A-ha!

Anonymous

Okay, but I want to take as a given that it's not for a moment.

Anonymous

(That's why I went with "let's say", as in "for the sake of the argument")

Anonymous

Though others have argued in the past that Chomsky's phrase can be contextualized or given meaning.

Damkerng T.

Okay.

Anonymous

03:47

So I have no problem with you suggesting that it could be.

Anonymous

You wouldn't be the first to stretch your imagination that far :-)

Damkerng T.

A-ha!

I was secretly hoping that I might be the first. :-)

Anonymous

But I can readily parse it, so I'd call it a grammatical combination of words, whether or not it makes sense.

Anonymous

However, it's essentially impossible for me to read the sentence "Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo" and come up with a valid grammatical structure mentally.

Damkerng T.

I see. Shall I try?

Anonymous

03:50

If you like, but that's besides the point--

Damkerng T.

Maybe I already forgot the point. :-)

Anonymous

You can dissect it as an academic exercise, or for fun.

Anonymous

You can decode it.

Anonymous

But can you really just read the sentence and see how it parses?

Damkerng T.

I would say if I get myself used to it, I might be able to.

Anonymous

03:51

In English, we figure out a lot of syntax from the context that words appear in.

Anonymous

Other cues we get from, for example, tone of voice.

Damkerng T.

It's kinda similar to the 1-100 game (and who say 100 will win).

I think typically, we don't nest more than two levels.

Anonymous

If you said "Buffalo buffalo buffalo, buffalo buffalo" with the right intonation and prosodic pattern, I think I could hear the grammatical structure.

Damkerng T.

> The rat the cat the dog chased killed ate the malt.

That one is a good example of what I call 3-level nesting.

Anonymous

In fact, the way it sounds to me is fairly clear in my head, giving each buffalo its place in the sentence.

Damkerng T.

03:53

> The rat the cat killed ate the malt.

Anonymous

That's double center embedding.

Damkerng T.

I think the above is easy to most people.

> The rat the cat the dog chased killed ate the malt.

And this one above is rather difficult to most people.

Anonymous

Right, didn't we already talk about multiple center embedding before?

Damkerng T.

Yes, I believe so.

Anonymous

ling.helsinki.fi/~fkarlsso/ceb5.pdf

Damkerng T.

03:54

But I mean, if you get yourself used to "The rat the cat the dog chased killed ate the malt."

Then you probably can imagine this easily: "Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo, buffalo buffalo"

Anonymous

If the intonational and prosodic structure won't support it, it may not be grammatical. IMO.

Damkerng T.

> "Buffalo cats dogs buffalo buffalo, buffalo rats"

Anonymous

When we come up with definitions of grammar that depart significantly from what humans are capable of parsing, I think those definitions of grammar fall short.

Damkerng T.

I think it's not necessary.

I think this is the link between languages and mathematics.

We just don't do that heavy math stuff in our everyday language.

It's too demanding in everyday life.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Can you label that sentence syntactically?

Damkerng T.

04:00

I'd say a thousand years ago, people wouldn't like to multiply 35 * 78 mentally.

I don't know how to label it, but I can rephrase.

Anonymous

2730!

Anonymous

Yay, I did it!

Damkerng T.

"Rats cats dogs chase scare, harass people"

@snailboat What is that number?!?

Anonymous

2100 + 40 = 2140, 2140 + 240 = 2380, 2380 + 350 = 2730

Anonymous

35 * 78 = 2730 :-)

Damkerng T.

04:02

I see. :-)

I didn't expect that you would really do it. :-)

Anonymous

I was just seeing if my brain still had enough function left to do arithmetic.

Damkerng T.

But yes, that's my point, a lot more people nowadays can really do that.

Anonymous

Uh-huh?

Anonymous

So you think people could be trained to parse "difficult" sentences.

Damkerng T.

So, who knows what will happen to human beings the next millennium?

Anonymous

04:04

And therefore you don't think it's necessary for grammar to reflect the sentences people's minds actually parse.

Damkerng T.

They might find "Rats cats dogs chase scare, harass people" too easy.

Anonymous

But if they do, grammar will have changed. ;-)

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I do. I just think that it's just that we train ourselves not to be used to those constructions.

@snailboat Probably. Umm... I think it's likely. :-)

Anonymous

Of course, there's a major assumption there.

Damkerng T.

If only human beings still exist.

Anonymous

04:07

Hah! Well, that too.

Anonymous

But you're assuming there isn't a natural constraint featuring in our language preventing these sentences from being valid right now.

Anonymous

Which would then potentially continue to be true a thousand years from now.

Damkerng T.

I assume so, yes.

Anonymous

But the evidence is probably against that assumption.

Anonymous

So I see no reason to make it.

Damkerng T.

04:08

I mean, the levels of nesting is something trainable.

We just don't push our children to be trained on it.

Anonymous

Maybe.

Anonymous

You don't know that, though.

Damkerng T.

Of course, I can't say that for sure.

Anonymous

books.google.com/…

Anonymous

If you want to make that assumption, you should read some of the evidence against it first. :-)

Damkerng T.

04:10

Ahh... that looks nice! The title is interesting already!

It's not very short.

Strange that Google allows me to scroll down and down.

Oh, I can read the whole chapter. No missing pages!

Anonymous

I think that prosodic and intonational structure play a major role in how we parse things. It doesn't have to be present, but it's a natural part of language which conveys important information, and I think that the written sentences we find valid are related to that structure

Anonymous

I think that arbitrary levels of embedding violate constraints on prosodic and intonational structure.

Anonymous

And, if not that, then at least on working memory.

Anonymous

There are clear limits to working memory which are essentially unfixable by training.

Damkerng T.

It's curious to hear people say the sentence: The rat the cat the dog chased killed ate the malt.

Anonymous

04:16

And to understand a sentence with 400 levels of embedding would, I think, require more from our working memory than we're capable of.

Anonymous

I do think at that level it's possible to come up with a working structure, but it's difficult. So that sentence, to me, is degraded but not something I rule out

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Perhaps in the next several millenniums. :-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Well, if you really think the biological basis for working memory will change over only a few millennia. It does seem unlikely.

Damkerng T.

But I think it's quite possible that in the next few hundred years, people might be able to cope with 3 or 4 levels better than we can.

Anonymous

Maybe. But I wouldn't assume it's possible.

Damkerng T.

04:18

I'm not sure, but I think Google already made some changes.

to our brains, I mean.

Anonymous

Our brains are constantly changing in response to everything we do and experience. But I'm not sure what sort of changes you're talking about.

Damkerng T.

I noticed that a lot of people in their 60 can't cope with this load of information.

Heck, I think people in their 100s can't cope well in a shopping mall that is complex enough.

I'm not sure if it's the same there.

But I'm quite sure that when shopping malls started to show up, people needed to adapt how to navigate themselves around int he malls.

I remember those malls 30 years ago, and they can't compare to the malls we have nowadays.

Anonymous

Our malls are pretty similar to the ones we used to have.

Damkerng T.

That's what I suspected.

Your malls might have been complex enough already for a long time.

Here, the malls keep getting more and more complex.

Anonymous

Well, all my life, at any rate. But I think the earliest memory I have of being at a mall was in 1987.

Anonymous

04:25

They had hamsters.

Damkerng T.

I think 30 years ago, most of the malls here must be very simple compared to the malls in the US.

They had hamsters. :-)

Anonymous

Uh-huh!

Anonymous

Hamsters were cute back then. Still are!

Damkerng T.

They sure are!

Anonymous

My brother bought those two hamsters I mentioned I think a few weeks ago

Anonymous

04:26

I got to pet one of them today for the first time :-)

Anonymous

He doesn't seem to name his hamsters. When I used to keep pet hamsters, I always named them.

Damkerng T.

A-ha! I have another idea!

Anonymous

So one is solid color boy and the other is stripey boy.

Damkerng T.

Maybe people in the next millennium might not need to parse those complex sentences themselves.

Anonymous

Computer Aided Grammar?

Damkerng T.

04:27

Something like that, and built-in, and functions in real-time.

@snailboat Poor hamsters.

Anonymous

What, like a transhuman post-singularity society of uploads, not faithful to the wetware but augmented with Grammar 2.0?

Damkerng T.

Probably. I really think that it's possible.

Anonymous

"Shakespeare? Pfah, he hardly used multiple center embedding at all! I need to read me some real literature!"

Damkerng T.

555

Anonymous

Oh, I had too much caffeine today. I am hyper.

Anonymous

04:34

@DamkerngT. I'm not a believer, but I think it's a nice starting point for fictional settings. Singularity fic is a nice little subgenre.

Damkerng T.

I think I can start writing a piece that is full of center-embedding.

So people in the next millennium can find my pieces as their true literature. :-)

And I will use simple sentences only when it's absolutely necessary.

@snailboat I have a mixed feeling with that subgenre. It can be equally fascinating and pretty much scary at the same time.

Anonymous

Every sentence with its own Silmarillion!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Yeah, I think so too. And my personal thoughts are that it's rather dystopian regardless of how it turns out.

Damkerng T.

I don't know that (Silmarillion), but I'm looking it up.

Anonymous

Ah, it's an allusion to Tolkien's world-building.

Damkerng T.

04:37

Ah, I found it, though still not get it.

Anonymous

The Lord of the Rings, for example, had a lot of depth--there was an entire world behind the story

Anonymous

And a lot of that stuff in the background that made it feel real was later published together as the Silmarillion.

Damkerng T.

Ah, I see.

Oh, that must be a nice read.

Anonymous

So with every sentence with its own Silmarillion, I was trying to express that each of your super-embedded sentences must contain a richness, a depth of information that's inaccessible to us poor wetware humans with Grammar 1.0

Damkerng T.

Wouldn't it be fun? :-)

Anonymous

04:40

But super-embedding may not be the way to go.

Anonymous

After all, embedded language is still serial.

Damkerng T.

I might write a 400-word complex sentence and a less-than-12-word sentence alternately, so the reader can have a good break and keep up with the story.

Anonymous

But wouldn't it be better if you simply parallelized language?

Damkerng T.

Such as? curious

Anonymous

Say, take a dozen streams of input at once and synthesize them into a mental whole.

Anonymous

04:41

A regular ol' human can't do that, but we don't care about them--they're stuck in the past!

Damkerng T.

LOL

That sounds interesting!

Cloud Atlas is a good experiment. It might be the sign for the things to come.

Anonymous

Maybe the future isn't in art, but in experienced art--as I synthesize all the works of Shakespeare mentally, I experience at once something no human has felt before, and I package this mental state up and sell it in bottles.

Damkerng T.

6 things entangled as one, not in serial, but intertwined.

Ahh... a ready-to-have experience!

Like instant noodles!

Anonymous

"Yes, that's right, one liter of culture and enlightenment, complete with celliarity and wispilless, two emotions never before experienced--I had to make up words just to describe them! Insert directly into brain!"

Damkerng T.

Wow! Where can I buy that?!

Anonymous

04:45

Just walk 250 paces into the future. Bring your quatloos.

Damkerng T.

:D

The words celliarity, wispilless, and quatloos, remind me of Dr. Seuss!

Anonymous

Well, I didn't make up quatloo.

Anonymous

Quatloo

Quatloo can refer to: *A currency used in the Star Trek episode The Gamesters of Triskelion *quatloos.com, an internet fraud awareness website.

Damkerng T.

Hah! I thought it's not a real word.

Anonymous

It's a common joke currency.

Damkerng T.

04:48

Oh, I haven't noticed that before.

I thought there was no money in Star Trek.

People were beyond money already, I think, in the story.

Anonymous

Ah, Star Trek is a mythical post-scarcity society.

Anonymous

At least, their Federation is.

Anonymous

But that doesn't keep other cultures from having money.

Anonymous

If you've ever watched Deep Space Nine, you know that the Ferengi are always talking about gold-pressed latinum.

Damkerng T.

They don't show Deep Space Nine here.

But I've heard about it. :(

Anonymous

04:50

Well, my family made something of a tradition of watching The Next Generation, and then later on we watched some episodes of Deep Space Nine.

Anonymous

It was mostly during the era of my childhood in which I rebelliously avoided television as much as possible--but we ate dinner together once a week, and that was while Star Trek was on

Anonymous

We had a TV in the kitchen, where we ate. We couldn't eat in the dining room, since it was full of pets--mostly hamster cages, around then.

Damkerng T.

Hahaha.

Anonymous

(Hamsters are solitary animals, you see--at least most species--so you have to keep them apart.)

Anonymous

In fact, growing up, I didn't even know "dining rooms" were meant to be eaten in. I thought they were where hamsters lived.

Damkerng T.

04:52

Oh! What will happen if you put them together in the same cage?

Anonymous

After a certain age, they may attack one another.

Damkerng T.

Oh! That's definitely not a good thing.

By the way, the cable operator introduced Syfy channel for a while, and they pulled it off, just before I could watch Caprica. -- sad

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I've heard of this Caprica. I believe my brother watched it.

Anonymous

When hamsters are young, you keep them with their mother.

Damkerng T.

I'd seen its ads (before they pulled the channel off), it looks good.

Anonymous

04:54

And you never touch them--that could have disastrous consequences when the mother smells you on them

Damkerng T.

Oh!

She couldn't remember her young ones?

Anonymous

But once they're a little older, you can pick them up and get them used to being handled, and a bit older yet, you need to separate them into different cages.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. The mother might abandon them or even kill them if they smell you on them.

Anonymous

My family bred hamsters when I was little, and we did have some unfortunate incidents where the mother killed her young. It can happen for multiple reasons, and it's very sad.

Damkerng T.

Oh, that sounds harsh.

sad for the poor thing

The examples people I know actually use work fine. — Luke yesterday

Oh, it's a 3-level, but it sounds natural.

By the way, have you seen Graduate's bounty question?

Anonymous

05:02

The examplesˢ [ ~~that~~ peopleˢ [ ~~that~~ Iˢ knowᵖ ] actually useᵖ ] work fineᵖ

2

Damkerng T.

Nice notation! I will star it so it won't be lost.

Anonymous

I just grabbed superscript S and P for "subject" and "predicate" to show that they had the same overall structure at each level of embedding

Damkerng T.

Perhaps "people I know" is short enough for most people to cope with the depth of nesting.

Anonymous

Oh, about telicity?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. That seems like a reasonable guess

Damkerng T.

05:07

Yes. (Telicity is a new word for me. I'm more used to stative vs. dynamic.)

Anonymous

Hmm.

Damkerng T.

I think Graduate confused himself by entangling the question with past perfect. It should be only about the simple tenses vs. the perfect tenses.

Anonymous

That stuff is always really confusing to me.

Damkerng T.

I'm not sure if he will get a good answer in time.

Anonymous

Well, people can always answer later, too. The reputation isn't important.

Anonymous

05:10

StoneyB gave an answer comment.

Anonymous

Oh, your april-fools question has been closed as too broad ;-)

Damkerng T.

I think StoneyB's comment is exactly what Graduate needs, but Graduate seems not to be satisfied with that.

Oh, maybe waiwai933 didn't see that infinity-upvote answer.

I think maybe nobody can see that answer, except me.

Anonymous

Sadly, I saw no such thing.

Damkerng T.

I thought everyone could see that answer, until I saw MMJZ's comment.

I'm not sure how many of the users knew that I asked it on the April Fool's Day.

I think I left enough clues, but probably not many enough. :D

An "inspirational" answer from the Unicorn is funnier.

Iirc, it's something like "Lots of questions. Very answer. Many upvotes. Wow."

:D

And the "wise" answer from the Unicorn is something like: "You are asking a wrong question. You need to ask 'Why does it matter?' Once you understand that, the answer will follow."

Anonymous

The stuff about aspect, telicity, durative blah blah blah, that stuff goes in one ear and out the other with me unless I really focus.

Anonymous

05:18

Which is unfortunate, because it's all different in different languages.

Anonymous

For example, Japanese has a construction which is often likened to "is ~~ing", which is -te iru

Anonymous

hasit-te iru "is running"

Damkerng T.

"is running" makes sense.

Anonymous

But what about English "is dying"? It means you're going to die in the future, but you haven't quite died yet.

Anonymous

Japanese sin-de iru, on the other hand, means "is dead"

Damkerng T.

05:20

Oh, I think that ("is dying") makes sense too. For someone with terminal illness.

"is dead" as in "is already dead"?

Anonymous

Because in Japanese, sin-u "die" has no duration, so the -te iru form instead means that, at some point in the past, dying took place, and the subject is now in the resulting state

Damkerng T.

Then, how can we say "is dying" in Japanese?

Anonymous

hasiru "run" on the other hand is something you can keep doing for an expanse of time

Damkerng T.

Oh, I can't say that in Thai either!

Anonymous

Well, you could say sin-i tutu ar-u

Damkerng T.

05:22

Actually, the -ing doesn't exist in Thai, and its aspect is not really necessary.

Anonymous

To be honest, -te iru isn't a great match for -ing :-)

Anonymous

But it's what people teach when you're starting out.

Anonymous

It's actually a common source of problems for Japanese speakers learning English.

Anonymous

Consider this:

Anonymous

If a Japanese person thinks -te iru corresponds to -ing, then they might translate sin-de iru as "is dying"

Anonymous

05:24

The result is grammatical so they might not be corrected, even though it's not what they meant to say!

Anonymous

This sort of L1-L2 interaction can result in grammatical but unintended sentences, so it's rather pernicious

Damkerng T.

I think that is what makes correction very difficult. I mean good correction.

It can be easily overlooked.

And the person who corrects the text must know both languages well enough.

I can't translate "is dying" into Thai literally.

Maybe I can, in some contexts, and it might sound a little forced.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. A lot of translators, including quite talented ones, work under unfortunate conditions

Anonymous

They may be forced to translate without sufficient context, for example

Damkerng T.

That's not fair to them.

Anonymous

05:27

Maybe they're given a script, and they can't see what the accompanying visuals are like.

Anonymous

And they're often very pressed for time.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

People sometimes criticize translators for getting things "obviously" wrong, when they had no access to the information to begin with and no time to ask for it...

Anonymous

It's a sad state of affairs.

Anonymous

I think people's perception that things like Google Translate can actually translate cheapen how people see translation work, too.

Damkerng T.

05:29

I can see that subtitles translation here has been much improved lately, but sometimes it could still be just plain wrong.

@snailboat Yes. I believe so. Though sadly, that's not always the case in fact.

Anonymous

I get excited when I see a translation that is wrong and I can see how the mistake was made :-)

Damkerng T.

But sometimes, the (subtitle) translation hints that the translator can see the movie during the translation.

I don't like it when the translator tries to interpret the line instead of translate the line.

For example, in Paranorman, the last line before "CUT TO BLACK" was "So, what's happening now?"

And our translator translated it as "Why the screen is (so) black?"

Damkerng T.

05:59

One big disadvantage of a small community such as ELL is that the votes are not reliable.

We have too few in number of the voters, assuming that most voters know which answers are good, and sadly most of our users seem not to know so.

Anonymous

ELU is bigger and their votes aren't reliable either.

Damkerng T.

At least it's more reliable than here.

(I don't trust EL&U when the top answer has fewer than 3 votes. And more votes doesn't guarantee that it will be the correct answer.)

On SO, the votes can be used as a more reliable indicator.

In ELL, the votes gave me a pause often enough.

Like, "Do you know what you're doing, guys?", but of course, I've never said it out loud.

So to me, ELL's just getting more and more like those forums. Very unreliable. And full of opinions.

Fortunately, we still have a handful of great answerers on ELL.

Sometimes, I substitute "This answer is useful" with "I like this answer" or "I like this user", but obviously it usually doesn't mean "This answer is correct".

Anonymous

Maulik's answer about cacography reminded me of an early answer on ELL, which also mentioned cacography

Anonymous

Back then, no one complained about the word.

Anonymous

But it was used in a different context. The answerer didn't suggest saying cacography in his answer.

Damkerng T.

06:11

Talking about Maulik, his exchange with J.R. is quite interesting.

Anonymous

6

A: Is "here be dragons" grammatically correct?

Deliberate misspelling is very common in literature. Cacography is deliberate misspelling intended to convey humorous sense or just exaggerating someone's illiteracy. See also Sensational spelling. It has similar effect, but using literate, but rare or dialectal spelling of a word or phrase. I...

Nico

@snailboat Good morning/evening! I saw your comment about "the Internet" and I thought to tell you that I really welcome people editing my questions and comments. I'm sure there are plenty of nuances I'm missing when I write.

Anonymous

@Nico Ah! So if I see something like that in your answers in the future, I can just change it to "the Internet" without asking? :-)

Nico

yes, please

Anonymous

Sure thing!

Damkerng T.

06:13

@snailboat Ah, bytebuster lives in Thailand too!

Nico

It'll not only help the answer, but also it'll help me pay attention to those things

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I think he's a linguist who learned Thai as one of his L2s, IIRC

Damkerng T.

nods -- I think I can recall chatting with him once. I think he lives in Pattaya, maybe.

I would say that Here be dragons is grammatical.

But it sounds like Medieval English to me.

Anonymous

I don't think it's grammatical in today's English.

Damkerng T.

If someone says something like that, I will think that she is trying to be poetic.

Somehow, it's more beautiful than "Here are the dragons."

Anonymous

06:20

"Here are the dragons," said the waiter. "Enjoy!"

Damkerng T.

Yummy, yummy, married couple!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. The only way I can make it grammatical in my mind is if it's an imperative, directing the listener to "be dragons", with here as a discourse marker (and therefore with no grammatical significance of its own)

Anonymous

But then it should probably have a comma...

Anonymous

Of course if it had a comma, then here would probably also work as a location, telling the listener where to be dragons :-)

Damkerng T.

That's what I had in mind, something like what Merlin would say.

Anonymous

06:30

I think I give up.

Damkerng T.

> If thou be there, sweet brother, take my hand.

> Here be the athame, the conductor of all power. Here be the white hilt, the blade of the daytime. Here be the wand, the voice of the devas. Here be the censer, the caller of wind. Here be the cords, which bind us to our oath.

Isn't that beautiful?

(also sounds very witches-ish)

Anonymous

Yeah, it sounds like modern faux archaism to me.

Anonymous

Athame is a strong hint to that effect, too.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. This one is different because of the if.

Anonymous

It's much improved with if

Damkerng T.

06:43

I see.

Anonymous

Athame is one of those words that's supposed to sound ancient but was actually invented relatively recently, I believe.

Damkerng T.

Hah!

Anonymous

There's a whole set of associated vocabulary and phrasing in that subculture, or set of subculture.

Anonymous

Like the phrase "so mote it be", using the archaic modal mote (from mōtan, the source of our modern must)

Damkerng T.

1

Q: If 'get ready' is not proper here, what should it be?

In Indian dialect, the commonest phrase you find among us is get ready when we have plan to go out. It does not matter whether we are going to party, movie, outside eating or whatever... if we are going out of the home, we use this phrase to tell a person that they should get ready by... puttin...

I don't understand the question, but I think "get ready" (or "get oneself ready") is quite similar to AmE.

I'm rather sure that we can say "Get yourself ready. Quick!" in that situation.

Anonymous

06:54

People here say get ready without a following for/to... meaning pretty much what Maulik describes

Damkerng T.

What I'm not sure is what Maulik thinks it means.

Anonymous

"School's in ten minutes." "Yeah, I'm still getting ready."

Damkerng T.

Oh! That sounds a little strange.

Anonymous

How so?

Damkerng T.

I expected myself. -- Like, "Yeah, I'm getting myself ready, mom!"

Maybe it's unnecessary.

Anonymous

06:57

> (Voiceover) A Friday morning away from home for a conference and Faye Lange, before heading out, takes a minute for what she herself describes as...
> (Faye Lange) What is arguably the most difficult part of my day, getting ready.

Damkerng T.

Hehe. That's nice! Who is Faye Lange, btw?

Anonymous

Someone who's quoted in COCA in one of the 107 results for "getting ready ." :-)

Damkerng T.

I see. Thanks!

Anonymous

Beyond that, I don't know.

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