English Language Learners

« first day (448 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (451 days later) »

Damkerng T.

05:18

@snailboat A cute little hamster!

@snailboat I think that would be mine. I mentioned "chocolates are best served cold" first. I hope its delicious taste can make up for the fault. :-)

Anonymous

05:44

Word of the day: definiendum

Damkerng T.

We shouldn't use the word itself as its own definienda or in its own definientia.

Discovery of the day: "cannot wait" does not exist in COCA!

1 hour later…

Anonymous

07:05

Likely related to how can not outnumbers cannot in COCA by a 1000:1 ratio

Anonymous

I haven't checked can 't yet but I'm sure it's up there too

Anonymous

Let's see

Anonymous

Ah, you search for ca n't

Anonymous

I broke it in the wrong spot

Anonymous

Yep, over 2000:1

Damkerng T.

07:08

Oh! That's how it works!

Word of the day (COCA specific): ca n't

Anonymous

175k for can't, 67k for can not, only 67 for cannot (no k)

Anonymous

Frankly, I'm surprised by this gigantic difference in frequency. I feel like there must be a story behind it

Damkerng T.

Maybe it's the way they clean up the data.

Anonymous

Either that or I'm remarkably imperceptive. I'd never have thought can not would outnumber cannot by such a large margin

Anonymous

Google regrettably lumps all three together in their Google books n-grams

Damkerng T.

07:11

Me either!

skullpatrol

me too

:-O

Anonymous

Does COCA have some similar massaging of the data?

Damkerng T.

I don't know if they mentioned it anywhere on their website.

Anonymous

I think "I cannot wait" would usually be contracted to "I can't wait", but the other form shouldn't be super rare, should it?

Damkerng T.

This begs another question: How do COCA transcribe their spoken corpora?

Anonymous

07:14

I'm not sure they did

Anonymous

I always assumed it was pre-transcribed

Damkerng T.

Ahh...

Anonymous

And you'll find some small problems with the data in the spoken corpus

Damkerng T.

In any case, I don't think that cannot is that rare in books.

Anonymous

Sentences that are transcribed funny and so forth

skullpatrol

07:15

Does this deserve a question post?

Anonymous

Me either. And the spoken subcorpus is only 20% of COCA

Anonymous

It sounds off-topic

Anonymous

But if you can figure out where and how it's on-topic, it sounds like a good Question to me :-)

Anonymous

Maybe a Meta site

skullpatrol

can not vs cannot vs can't

Anonymous

07:17

All three differ

Damkerng T.

I'd feel more comfortable if cannot doesn't exist at all in COCA, btw.

Anonymous

Why?

Anonymous

Also, that should be didn't

Damkerng T.

So I can be sure that it's about data massaging.

Anonymous

Remember to backshift

Damkerng T.

07:22

@snailboat I thought about didn't too, but I hesitated. TYftC!

Anonymous

"But I hesitated"

Damkerng T.

See what happened when I was too focused on cannot! :-)

Anonymous

Hehe!

Damkerng T.

I should fork another brain. :-)

One for thinking in Thai, another for thinking in English, which I already have; and yet another for processing logic and reasoning thingies!

So I can think three ways at once effortlessly. :-)

Looks like my 2nd and 3rd virtual brains are overlapping.

skullpatrol

hmm..."virtual" brain, now there is an idea :-)

to match "virtual" personae

Damkerng T.

07:30

Oh! I've never thought of that--personae--before!

Interestingly, I think my Thai default personality and English default personality are close, but not identical.

My English personality seems to be a bit more outspoken.

The patterns I use to deliver thoughts in the two languages are not identical, either.

skullpatrol

They are two different makes of "vehicles."

1 hour later…

Damkerng T.

08:52

@oerkelens You are very quick, as usual. :-)

7 hours later…

oerkelens

15:37

@DamkerngT. thank you. I am not sure what you are referring to exactly :)

Damkerng T.

16:11

@oerkelens I've already forgotten the question, but I remember that I was about to post a comment about dropping the comma in the OP's sentence or something and after I'd finished typing just about half a sentence, I saw your comment came up! That was really, really fast. :-)

oerkelens

16:41

@DamkerngT. Ah, that one :)

yups, sometimes I am fast :)

Damkerng T.

It's more like almost always, I think. :-)

If we were living in the Wild West, I surely wouldn't want to find myself in a duel up against you. :-)

oerkelens

Well, when I see something and I have the time to write - I can be fast :)

but I am not always able to spend the time :P

Damkerng T.

It's good to see you around helping our users.

Today I was a bit busy--trying to make a program written for Linux run on Windows--without much success, I would say.

still scratching my head...

oerkelens

17:16

1 hour later…

oerkelens

18:19

m.tickld.com/x/english-isnt-as-easy-as-you-think

Fantasier

Well, if you look closely, any language is just as crazy.

oerkelens

true, true :)

Fantasier

In Thai we have two words which mean '(my)self/me' and 'him/her', but in certain situations the meanings can change to 'you' and 'I'.

Tyler James Young

the only ones that tripped me up at all were ones where we don't really use one of the words anymore

I don't think anyone would write "sewer" to mean "someone who sews" anymore

some of the other questions have answers

like strange plural formations (“mouse” → “mice”)

Fantasier

It can be explained etymologically, I believe.

Tyler James Young

18:27

yup

same with verbs that change vowel sounds for past

sing, sang, sung

that used to be the norm

Anonymous

Strong verbs!

Tyler James Young

indeed

have you studied Old English, snailboat?

Anonymous

Not a lot.

Tyler James Young

it's fun to find stuff that's the same

it's like seeing a ruin

Anonymous

I'm actually just waking up

Anonymous

18:35

My friend sent me a good morning slug picture:

Anonymous

Anonymous

It's a cow slug! ;-)

Anonymous

Moo!

Tyler James Young

19:02

Anonymous

19:30

Hehe, yikes! :-)

Anonymous

Did you draw that?

Tyler James Young

21:31

I was trying to find other pictures of your cow slug

and found that

@snailboat

Anonymous

Hehe!

Anonymous

Well, it's not quite as cute, but it's certainly something :-)

Anonymous

It reminds me of Futurama.

Tyler James Young

yeah it does look like that style

Cerberus

@snailboat Ohh scary! Never seen such a thung.

Anonymous

22:09

@Cerberus Oh, no! Are you scared of slugs?

« first day (448 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (451 days later) »

all rooms

Transcript for

Apr16

Apr '1417

Apr18

English Language Learners

A room to talk about English, linguistics, or anything you wan...

join this room
about this room

00:00

06:00

12:00

18:00

all times are UTC