English Language Learners

F.E.

05:11

. . . yawn . . .

F.E.

05:51

Speaking about Maleficent . . . :D

Writers often try to tie in the stuff at the end with stuff at the beginning. For instance, at the end, King Stefan throws the end of a chain around Maleficent's ankle as she is flying around, and she ends up dragging him out the window. That event is the bookend for the earlier event when they were younger and having fun, when he asked her what they did for fun and then the next shot was of him holding on to her ankle as she flew over the creek and got his feet wet.

As Maleficent goes flying out that window (with King Stefan dangling on the end of the metal chain), you'll notice that she wraps herself in her wings and twirls through the glass window. How she flew there is a duplicate (sort of) of a scene very early in the movie, where they show Maleficent flying up into the sky in a similar manner.

So, it's kinda neat seeing how the scriptwriters are doing that, and some of that was necessary (e.g. showing that Maleficent can fly that way, by protecting herself with her wings), and perhaps not necessary, showing the matching bookends of Maleficent dragging Stefan by him clinging to her ankle.

Another thing I noticed in my last viewing (which was Wednesday) was that in the ending scene, when Maleficent got her wings back, there was a shot where King Stefan saw how Maleficent and his daughter were looking at each other (godmother to goddaughter), and King Stefan realized that he had "lost" his only daughter to his worst enemy, Maleficent.

It's sorta like, what is worse than having your only child cursed to be in a sleep-like death? Worse than having your child be dead? . . . It is, having your child adapt your worst enemy as her family!

I was surprised the scriptwriters didn't have King Stefan shout out something like that, so that the audience would then realize what had happened. Something like, "You stole my daughter's heart!" or "You turned my daughter against me!" or etc.

In repeat viewings, it gives you the opportunity to spot what the scriptwriters were trying to do, or could've done if they had more time to do it.

Of course, there's the obvious disconnect in the movie, how they ended up with Queen Aurora, and yet, in the beginning, the Moors didn't have royalty--the Moor-folk were all individuals. That's because they changed the beginning (according to wikipedia), and had cut out the royal line of fairies (which had Maleficent as a niece of a king and queen, I think)--they changed it by replacing the beginning with a voice-over with a different pre-history.

Damkerng T.

07:01

Thanks. Nevertheless, I am willing to know the fact that which of the conditional sentences can be inverted. I mean proper conditional, possible,or impposible? — nima_persian 58 mins ago

Hmm... I am willing to know ... -- That's an uncommon usage for me!

Hmm... ... proper conditional, possible,or impposible -- Someone somewhere out there might've defined the term proper conditional, I guess. What would improper conditionals mean for them, I'm curious.

The 2002 CGEL considers "where" to be a preposition, and considers the expression "where you go" in [1.a.iii] to be a preposition phrase. On page 1050 fn 6, the authors of CGEL explain that traditional grammars classify "where" as an adverb. — F.E. 2 hours ago

Look! Look who commented that! Hooray!

Damkerng T.

07:52

0

Q: X differs from Y in that Z: better way to say it?

I wrote: De-identification differs from anonymization in that the latter is supposed to be irreversible while the former allows a trusted party to re-identify the data. To my non-native ears, "in that" sounds like basic English. When facing a "X differs from Y in that Z" structure, is the...

phrase-usage

Everyone doesn't want to sound "basic", I guess. :)

They probably want to sound sophisticated.

There are a lot of native English speakers who insist of usages that they consider "correct," such as not using the phrase comprised of to mean "composed of. However, when describing language usage, there is no such thing as correct. If everybody wants to use banana to mean apple, then it is not wrong and it is not "better" not to do so. If someone, any one, only one, person wants to say John considered 15 alternatives and then reached agreement, who am I to dictate to that one person how to use language? — CarSmack 7 hours ago

That's another interesting point of view, but um... hmm... I should leave it. Anyway, the guy made his point. It's just not a very good point for learners, imo.

22

A: Plural of "that's my boy"

I'd go with "Them's my boys!" It is not "grammatical" but it preserves the casual and dialectical feel of the original, as well as the prosodic features.

"Them's my boys!" keeps going up! Yay!

Damkerng T.

08:12

@F.E. I'm looking forward to an opportunity to watch that scene! :)

Damkerng T.

13:21

Dictionaries seem not to define hack precisely for this usage; however, they seem to define something really close, but more restricted to the context of computer systems and information technology. To me, when something is hacked (in this sense), it usually means that that thing is modified in an unintended manner, usually an unauthorized modification. — Damkerng T. 1 hour ago

@DamkerngT. modified in an unintended manner? Is that what computer hackers are doing? I thought that computer hackers have been making intended modifications of computer contents/databases. Also, if either/both the subtitle and sentences in the article itself gives an explanatory sentence, that's something else for a langauge learner to learn to pick up on to improve one's language skills. — CarSmack 29 mins ago

@CarSmack Obviously, it wasn't the best phrase I said in my life. So thank you for the correction. :) However, I think it shouldn't be too difficult to read "using/modifying a thing (usually a tool or a device) in an unintended manner" as "using/modifying that thing (or that tool or that device) for its unintended purpose--abusing it". I can't say for sure if this usage is common enough for everyone (it's common enough for me); for example, hammering a screw into its socket would be qualified as a "hacking", imo. When a device is abused in a similar way, saying that it's hacked is fine to me. — Damkerng T. 4 mins ago

It's a little strange seeing that comment from someone who said:

> There are a lot of native English speakers who insist of usages that they consider "correct," such as not using the phrase comprised of to mean "composed of. However, when describing language usage, there is no such thing as correct. If everybody wants to use banana to mean apple, then it is not wrong and it is not "better" not to do so. ...

:D

StoneyB

@DamkerngT. Correct does not mean, as you and the dictionaries think, conforming to the accepted standard; in practice, it means conforming to my standard. Obviously you are using correct incorrectly! :)

Damkerng T.

But, but, I think I haven't said that correct word myself. :)

There are a lot of native English speakers who insist of usages that they consider "correct," such as not using the phrase comprised of to mean "composed of. However, when describing language usage, there is no such thing as correct. If everybody wants to use banana to mean apple, then it is not wrong and it is not "better" not to do so. If someone, any one, only one, person wants to say John considered 15 alternatives and then reached agreement, who am I to dictate to that one person how to use language? — CarSmack 13 hours ago

Damkerng T.

14:06

Hmm... Somehow I feel that parsing complicated sentences is a common problem among our learners. I wonder if they'd struggle in their own first languages too. Probably not.

It'd be interesting to see how research on the correlation between the reading skill in L1 and L2 would tell us.

Off to see World War Z. :)

Anonymous

14:22

Descriptivism does not mean considering all usage equally acceptable

StoneyB

15:04

@snailboat Quite so. Nor does 'prescriptivism' preclude sensitivity to register and discourse situation. That's why I don't use those terms, which these days are mostly deployed as partisan labels.

Anonymous

@StoneyB Mark Liberman once wrote:

Anonymous

> Let me decline to enlist on either side of this concocted War of the 'Scriptivists, and speak instead on behalf of a third group: the Rational People.

Anonymous

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=748

Anonymous

Also: languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=199

Anonymous

15:23

Interesting perspectives, at least

user8153

@snailboat

hi

He stood across the street. Is this correct English? It means to stand on the other side

?

user116848

15:50

Yeah, I think it is correct English.

Damkerng T.

16:03

Across the street is a place. He stood there is fine. He stood across the street should be fine, as well as He walked to across the street.

(Using the past tense could avoid undesirable aspect nitpicking, I think.)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Walked to across the street is a bit strange.

Anonymous

Walked across the street is more normal

Damkerng T.

It's definitely not something I would normally say, but it seems like some native speakers use it.

Anonymous

Give me an example

Damkerng T.

The way I understand it, walked to across ... and walked across ... are different.

Anonymous

16:11

I walked to across the street from the mall seems okay to me. But that's different.

Damkerng T.

> After dinner we walked to across the street to play at the splash pad, before driving to a camp site right outside of Colorado National Monument.

(Just a random sentence from Google, not from corpora.)

Anonymous

Yeah, there "across the street" seems to be used as a location

Damkerng T.

Does made my way to across the street count?

(Strange. I couldn't find "walked to across the street" on Google Books. :)

Anonymous

Or in COCA

Anonymous

But I think it is possible under some circumstances for across the street to be used like a location

Anonymous

16:15

But if "He walked across the street" is possible as a description of events, it's probably preferable to "He walked to across the street"

Damkerng T.

nods -- I think it's unlikely to say "He walked to across the street" because it would be more natural to think of the destination specifically; like a hotel, or a park, etc. in most circumstances.

Anonymous

It's probably possible in conversation

Anonymous

In planned speech, probably less likely

Damkerng T.

World War Z is strange, imo.

I feel like a lot of things happened in the movie, and yet it seems to have nothing much. Very weird.

The mechanic they used to craft their script must be interesting. :)

Anonymous

It's a zombie movie, right?

Damkerng T.

16:21

Yes.

Anonymous

I don't like zombie things. But they're popular, and my friends sometimes make me watch them :-)

Damkerng T.

It takes a new approach (I think) to the zombie genre.

Anonymous

Uh-huh?

Damkerng T.

I bet that they planned to make a sequel before their production started.

Anonymous

My friends had me watch this show called The Walking Dead. I agreed, only because I got to watch it with Japanese subtitles on :-)

Damkerng T.

16:23

This one seems to focus on a family thing, a helping-each-other thing, a trying-to-save-the-world thing, etc.

Anonymous

At first there's a zombie apocalypse, but then they sit around on a farm for an entire season

Damkerng T.

Essentially, they sent Brad Pitt to travel half the world on a search for the patient zero.

Anonymous

Oh! Patient Zero.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

That's an interesting English term.

Anonymous

16:25

I wonder if the meaning is obvious to most people who hear it

Damkerng T.

I'm not sure, but I heard something similar often enough.

(By the way, Brad Pitt found something else, not the Patient Zero.)

Anonymous

I don't know if it's really Proper for me to Capitalize it, but sometimes I capitalize thing Anyway.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I bet it's usually just "patient zero" rather than "the patient zero"

user8153

damkerng yours is so wrong.

Damkerng T.

I wondered that myself too while I was typing it. :)

user8153

16:28

ok

Damkerng T.

Care to tell me which message?

Anonymous

Do you mean "to [ across the street ]"?

Anonymous

Although in many cases phrases like this are strange, it would be wrong to say that they're always ungrammatical or unacceptable. In many cases they're fine

Damkerng T.

It's interesting when someone starts a conversion with "Yours is so wrong". :)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Maybe you're right, but yours is wrong.

Anonymous

16:31

I don't know what yours is. :-)

Damkerng T.

Fixed. :)

StoneyB

@snailboat Thanks for the references. The first reflects my opinion pretty closely; the second is striking, although its conclusions are not so finely drawn as I would like.

Anonymous

> To is not generally used this way: we say He crawled under the bed rather than ?He crawled to under the bed (see Ch.8, §4.3). It is not wholly excluded, however: we can have They have moved to across the river ("They have relocated to a place across the river"). (CGEL, p.640)

StoneyB

@snailboat No, on review I find I misunderstood the writer's point, and I withdraw my criticism.

user116848

Yeah right. I have watched 'Walking Dead' too. All they do is bicker and fight with each other and occasionally kill some zombies :)

Damkerng T.

16:37

I think they aren't bickering with anyone; they seem to get straight right to their main interests. :)

Chomping is perhaps too cute for our zombies.

Anonymous

Oh, have you watched that show too, Damkerng?

Anonymous

It's very popular.

Damkerng T.

I had to. Even though I tried to avoid them the best I could, I still had to!

Anonymous

I tried to avoid it, but sometimes I cave to peer pressure. :-)

Anonymous

Actually, I try not to watch horror shows or movies if I can.

user116848

16:39

But the show is very gory sometimes. Don't you guys think?

Damkerng T.

Some people really like that. :)

Anonymous

@Arrowfar It's definitely a gore-'n-bicker-fest.

user116848

So what kind of TV do you like Ms boat?

Damkerng T.

Oh, another thing that makes WWZ different. Zombies in this movies move so fast!

Anonymous

That is a good question. I don't know of any shows I like at the moment. I'm sure there are some good ones.

user116848

16:41

Yeah gore-'n-bicker-fest. Nice word!

user116848

Or should I say 'words' :)

Anonymous

@Arrowfar I'm not sure what its theoretical status is. Maybe it's a post-syntactic compound.

user116848

Zombies movies suck! I guess.

Anonymous

Probably depends on your linguistic religion :-)

user116848

@snailboat I see.

user116848

16:44

But people like zombie TV due to violence and stuff I guess.

Anonymous

I've enjoyed some violent TV shows. I watched another popular AMC show, Breaking Bad

user116848

Yeah 'Breaking Bad' is usually top-rated. I don't know why. People like watching meth I guess. haha.

Damkerng T.

> The search for a “Patient Zero”—popularly understood to be the first infected case of an epidemic—has been an important feature of the news media’s coverage of disease outbreaks from the late 20th century onward, including HIV/AIDS, Ebola, SARS, and H1N1.

Hmm... Is it possible to have multiple Patient Zero's for the same disease?

user116848

'Patient zero' has become very science fiction now I guess.

Damkerng T.

We have things like Day One, and Zero Day too.

user116848

16:49

Yeah.

Anonymous

@Arrowfar It was good then bad then good then bad then good, in my opinion

Anonymous

There were parts where I felt like asking myself, "Why exactly am I watching this?"

Anonymous

And other parts where it was truly great television

Anonymous

It suffered somewhat from decompression

Damkerng T.

Oh, that Breaking Bad!

Anonymous

16:58

The first season was very tightly written. A writer's strike cut it short so it had only seven episodes, and the resulting product was cohesive with pretty good pacing

Anonymous

The second season was full length, thirteen episodes, and the pacing wasn't as good.

Anonymous

It could have been seven, too.

Anonymous

The third and fourth seasons were, combined, twenty-six episodes, and could have been seven as well

Anonymous

As the series went on, the storytelling got slower.

Anonymous

This is what I referred to above as "decompression"

Damkerng T.

17:01

It looks like each season of Breaking Bad is much shorter than Lost!

Anonymous

That's true.

Anonymous

Lost was truly lost.

Anonymous

I watched that show, too.

Damkerng T.

Hehe!

Anonymous

There are a lot of problems facing writers of serial television.

Damkerng T.

17:03

Time crunch and the rating, maybe.

Anonymous

Having a goal or at least a direction is one problem.

Damkerng T.

(Not that I really know how they work.)

Anonymous

For a while, since the creators of Lost had no idea where the show was going, they put the show in a holding pattern

Anonymous

It was like a hamster running on its wheel, taking time but not going anywhere

Damkerng T.

Like Kamen Riders!

Anonymous

17:05

They finally came up with a plan, but executed it so poorly and deviated so far…

Anonymous

Well, TV serials rarely end up the way they're planned, when they have plans at all

Anonymous

One problem is that actors or characters become popular or, well, just seem good, so they decide to keep them

Anonymous

Another is that actors decide to leave the show

Damkerng T.

Or tried to raise the budget. :)

Anonymous

No matter how good your plan is, or how good your writers are, things can change beyond your control

Anonymous

17:08

@DamkerngT. I think Lost actually had a pretty giant budget for a TV show.

StoneyB

@snailboat: Can you, as our resident CGEL maven, provide any insight on CGEL's characterization of how in fused relative clauses here:

1

Q: Can this 'how' be a fused relative?

[A] Behind the flat job figures are changes in how we live now (The Age) Can’t how in above sentence have the function of the fused [free] relative? I mean, can the how have the meaning of ‘the way that’ or ‘the way in which’? A Korean English-grammar book says the how in the next sentence h...

relative-clauses

Damkerng T.

Oh, I think I've spotted a pattern they use lately. (Perhaps not very lately.) -- They seem to usually start a new season with Who are we gonna kill this season? :)

I wish I had CGEL so I could join in those questions!

Anonymous

@StoneyB I don't really understand CGEL's characterization.

Anonymous

> Examples with how are found but they are rare and quite marginal: %We will not change how we use future contracts during the term of this Prospectus; %I don't like how it looks.

Anonymous

The % symbol is meant to indicate that only certain speakers accept these sentences

Anonymous

17:10

Is that really true? They both look normal to me.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Do you mean TV shows in general?

Damkerng T.

I think I use that kind of construction quite often!

@snailboat Yep.

One striking example I remember is when they had a doctor commit suicide in a season of House. (Can't remember which season.)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Oh, sad. I haven't seen House yet.

Anonymous

My study buddy has all of House on DVD. (In Japanese, where it's called Doctor House)

Damkerng T.

Hmm... Its full name is probably House M.D.

Yeah, IMDb lists it so, House M.D.

(I wonder if there should be a comma between House and M.D., but IMDb seems not to have one.)

Anonymous

17:16

I've watched a number of English shows dubbed in Japanese, because I tell myself that if I'm going to be sitting around watching TV, I might as well be getting Japanese practice :-)

Anonymous

Sometimes it's rather strange because of the differing conventions in English and Japanese fiction writing.

Damkerng T.

Come to think of it, I have watched only one Thai series in the last two years!

Anonymous

Other times because of differing conventions in English and Japanese acting

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Was it a good series?

Damkerng T.

It's quite good (so I watched it). :)

It's something very far from a normal life. :)

(I still watch its rerun sometimes.)

StoneyB

17:20

@snailboat They look ordinary to me, too, so I thought "Maybe CGEL doesn't call those fused relatives, because that how doesn't occur very often in bound relatives; but that seems to be right out.

Zhanlong Zheng

time to go to bed @DamkerngT.

Damkerng T.

Nope. Not yet. :D

Zhanlong Zheng

I cannot wait for the WC

Damkerng T.

Wouldn't you want to know how well Brazil is gonna do today? :)

Oh, you read my mind!

Zhanlong Zheng

I only care about who will win the trophy..

Damkerng T.

17:27

Haha!

Poor Brazil.

Zhanlong Zheng

yep. that's not a battle, but a slaughter.

Damkerng T.

I stopped counting at 4-0 that day.

Zhanlong Zheng

Which team do u think will win the trophy?

Damkerng T.

Germany!

Zhanlong Zheng

Most people think alike :-）

Damkerng T.

17:32

I hope that it's not gonna like the game with Brazil.

(Strange. I think I haven't switched to really think in English in the last sentence; otherwise, I would've used match instead of game.)

Zhanlong Zheng

Very unlikely. No major players got wounded.

Damkerng T.

nods

Zhanlong Zheng

game is better. match is for solo.

Damkerng T.

I'm not sure, but I think it's more like a football match than a game.

But I definitely call it a game in my first language.

Zhanlong Zheng

AmE it's game

Damkerng T.

17:36

This is interesting. I'm not sure if they'd call it a soccer game or a soccer match.

Zhanlong Zheng

solo is for tennis, golf, etc.

soccer game

Anonymous

@StoneyB One limitation of CGEL, not often mentioned, is that their analysis is based on a relatively limited corpus, combined with the writers' intuitions

Anonymous

If you compare it to a grammar based on a major corpus, like Longman 1999, I think in some cases you might find different conclusions with regard to what is "rare" or not

Anonymous

(I don't have Longman 1999 at hand, but I think I'll look it up later to see what they say)

Zhanlong Zheng

@snailboat Lots of comments on Amazon criticize CGEL being based mostly on British opinions.

A little pedantic for me. I will neglect some of its content.

Damkerng T.

17:45

"do a movie" means "go to a movie." (This is a use of do that you might not be familiar with, so I will edit my answer.) Let's do a movie! Let's go to a movie! going for a fashion show means choosing to go to (attend) a fashion show. In this example, fashion show is parallel to movie in go for a movie. — CarSmack 3 hours ago

I haven't heard "do a movie" before. If I heard it out of context, I might think of something else.

StoneyB

@snailboat The only 'modern' grammar I have is Bas Aarts' Oxford Modern English Grammar, which doesn't address the matter at all. I'm gonna go play around on Google Ngrams and see if there's anything interesting there.

2

Anonymous

@ZhanlongZheng I've found that CGEL has very good descriptive adequacy for American English.

Anonymous

No grammar is perfect, though.

Anonymous

By the way, there are two versions of the Longman grammar: the larger 1200-page reference grammar aimed at scholars and linguists, which I referred to as Longman 1999 (the proper title is the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English), and a smaller 500-page book for students called the Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English (which I will refer to as Longman 2002)

Anonymous

Longman 1999 is the largest modern grammar that is entirely corpus-based

Anonymous

17:55

@ZhanlongZheng The author of that book on the English verb you admire, Geoffrey Leech, is one of the collaborators on the Longman grammar

Anonymous

(Longman is the publisher rather than the author, so perhaps I should write Biber et al., but I think most people refer to it as Longman)

user116848

@snailboat So is Longman larger than CGEL? I mean in length of material etc.

Anonymous

CGEL, in contrast, is Huddleston's brainchild (with Pullum as a major collaborator who joined the project partway), and since he is a theoretical linguist, is an explicitly theoretical approach to grammar

Anonymous

@Arrowfar Certainly not

Anonymous

But if you're judging books by whether or not they make good doorstops, both books qualify

2

user116848

18:00

Yeah.

user116848

:)

user116848

@StoneyB Mr B are you also a script writer?

user116848

@oerkelens That you in the pic? haha. I see you uploaded your photo.

oerkelens

@Arrowfar To avoid confusion, I'm the one on the right (for the viewer). On the left is an unnamed monkey.

user116848

lol

user116848

18:10

So where did this monkey come from?

oerkelens

Well, the fair question would be for the monkey to ask where I came from :)

user116848

haha

oerkelens

The monkey lives at the monkey temple (Hanuman temple) in Jaipur

And I visited there monday a week ago :)

user116848

Oh, so visited India. Yeah I noticed you mentioned that yesterday.

Anonymous

Did you take many pictures?

oerkelens

18:12

A couple of hundred, but they need to be sorted out

The coming week(s) I am going to set up a web site to show them, and other stuff that my wife and me want to have online

Damkerng T.

@oerkelens Ahh... Hanuman temple. Monkeys must be considered sacred there.

oerkelens

Yups. They even have their own swimming pool there :)

Damkerng T.

That's very nice for them!

oerkelens

They are very cute, but it's good to have a local guide with you to shoo them away when they get aggressive

StoneyB

@Arrowfar Well, I've written seven stage plays, five of which have been produced, and a couple-three hundred industrial video/multimedia scripts. I don't know if that's what you mean.

Damkerng T.

18:22

@oerkelens Oh, I can imagine that. We have something similar here in Thailand, at Lopburi.

user116848

@StoneyB Yeah. That seems cool :)

oerkelens

Well, they get aggressive to each other a lot (because some monkey takes a peanut before his turn) - but you just don;t want them to include you in the fight :P

Damkerng T.

@oerkelens I guess that you had to be careful with your belongings too. :)

oerkelens

Yup. Well, we travelled light, but that one on my shoulder started inspecting my glasses :P

Damkerng T.

:D

oerkelens

18:24

Main problem was, he was full. No longer interested in peanuts, he decided to explore me :D

But he was nice about it :P

Damkerng T.

Ah, he was a friendly one, then. A curious one. :)

oerkelens

He was indeed :)

Most of them were friendly.

Damkerng T.

@StoneyB That's a lot!

oerkelens

One mother used her baby to get peanuts

Baby was playing with my sandal/toes

Damkerng T.

@oerkelens lol

oerkelens

18:26

And the mother was like "you like that? gimme peanuts"

Damkerng T.

She sure knew how to get peanuts. :P

oerkelens

They tend to get very good at that :)

normal feeding days were Tuesday and Saturday - we were there on a Monday, so hey really, really liked us :D

StoneyB

@DamkerngT. Not really, over the course of 45 years.

Damkerng T.

@oerkelens Haha!

@StoneyB The number is still amazing to me anyway!

oerkelens

@StoneyB It's still a lot more than most people do over double that time :P

StoneyB

18:31

@oerkelens Well, most people don't get paid to do that. I wouldn't have done any of the video scripts for anything but money.

oerkelens

@StoneyB Well, it's good to have a clear motivation :P

Damkerng T.

That's even more amazing!

Anonymous

@oerkelens That's why I went into web dev.

oerkelens

@snailboat For the money?

Anonymous

Yes.

oerkelens

18:33

Even money didn't drag me in there :P

At least not full-time

Anonymous

Although I love programming, technologically most everything related to the web is a complete mess

StoneyB

Note my avatar. He said "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money."

Anonymous

At times it's unpleasant ;-)

Anonymous

But I do love programming.

oerkelens

@snailboat In general, all source code I see is a mess - except my own :P

Anonymous

18:35

(People call it "software engineering", but that seems too lofty a label for me.)

Anonymous

@oerkelens That's okay. Ten years from now, it won't be your own, it'll belong to that guy in the past who wasn't nearly as good a programmer as you are

StoneyB

I love writing, too. But we have a saying: "Never stifle your imagination - that's what clients are for."

3

oerkelens

I love programming too - that is why I still do it after 14 years, notwithstanding all the times I was asked to get into (project) management

@snailboat I know that guy. And he's the worst!

@StoneyB In some ways, writing a script or writing code is similar I guess :)

StoneyB

@oerkelens They're very similar. I learned a lot about clarity and precision when I was programming. It's the source of my Adamantine Law: "Anything which can be misunderstood will be".

oerkelens

@snailboat I'm now officially a software engineer too - though I have no papers to warrant the title of engineer. People just are confused about "programmer" because it can be anything from a code-monkey to an independent system designer/developer

Anonymous

18:39

@oerkelens My job titles have mostly been rather silly

oerkelens

@StoneyB And in the worst possible way, at the worst possible moment?

Anonymous

(If I share them, it'll identify my employers)

oerkelens

@snailboat I'd love that on my business card: rather silly

Anonymous

I don't really know why I have business cards. I get to order 500 at a time, then I use a few in the space of a year

oerkelens

@snailboat That would probably be the case for me as well - but I cannot even complain about any code or practices. At least not in public :(

Anonymous

18:41

But hey, they're free, and you can write stuff on them :-)

StoneyB

@oerkelens Inevitably.

My boss wanted to put "Editorial Director" on my business cards. I dug in my heels: they say "The Writer".

oerkelens

It's funny though that I am not the only one who has combined coding and (script) writing (although I never went very far with that. Just one short movie for a writing club).

@StoneyB The Writer. Sounds really cool :)

Anonymous

I wrote a lot when I was a child

Anonymous

I'd make my own little books by folding some printer paper in half, stapling it together, and then bundling those, with words and illustrations written by hand

StoneyB

@oerkelens It does. Much cooler than anything else I've ever written.

Anonymous

18:44

And I kept begging my parents for "blank books", which was very exciting to me as a concept for whatever reason

Anonymous

And although everything I've ever written was terrible, especially what I wrote when I was a child, I got a lot of praise

StoneyB

@snailboat I did the same thing! ... But the illustrations were not very good.

And in my day we called it 'typing paper'. A galaxy far far away.

user116848

@StoneyB "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money."---->I don't get the saying.

user116848

Except for?

StoneyB

Only a fool writes for any reason except to get money.

user116848

18:48

@StoneyB Oh, I see. I found this: militantesthetix.co.uk/critlit/livewrite.htm

user116848

So we should only write to get money?

StoneyB

@Arrowfar That's my man Sam.

user116848

@StoneyB No. I mean seriously? We should only write to earn? Just asking.

StoneyB

@Arrowfar Not quite what Johnson said: Not 'nobody should' but 'nobody does'.

@Arrowfar For 99% of the world you can't write unless you do earn.

user116848

So what about all the people helping others on ELU and ELL. They are not getting anything. Just doing a good man's job. Right?

user116848

18:57

Yeah Samuel Johnson was poor I read. I guess that made him say that :)

Anonymous

I think most people have some use for earning money in their lifetimes

user116848

Well everyone has some use.

StoneyB

But I do earn; and at this time of year I write a lot of what goes here on my employer's nickel. Besides, I learn a lot more about my craft by writing here than I have learned anywhere else since I was quite young.

user116848

Well that's my man Mr B.

user116848

@StoneyB I don't understand . What do you learn here? I mean you are very senior in English language.

Anonymous

19:05

I can't speak for StoneyB, but I've learned a lot in the two years I've used Stack Exchange.

Anonymous

Today I learned about treecake! :-)

Damkerng T.

Baumkuchen!

user116848

@snailboat Treecake? Please do share it with us.

Anonymous

@Arrowfar Damkerng introduced me to it a few minutes ago

Anonymous

Baumkuchen

Baumkuchen is a kind of layered cake. It is a traditional dessert in many countries throughout Europe and is also a popular snack and dessert in Japan. The characteristic rings that appear when sliced resemble tree rings, and give the cake its German name, Baumkuchen, which literally translates to "tree cake". History The origins of baumkuchen and where it was first baked are disputed. One theory is that baumkuchen was invented in the German town of Salzwedel, a story the town itself popularizes, Marx Rumpolt had previously worked as a chef in Hungary and Bohemia. In 1682, a rural medic ...

user116848

19:07

Looks delicious :)

user116848

I wanna eat :)

Damkerng T.

Indeed!

StoneyB

@Arrowfar It's the difference between being an expert user of a computer program and being a programmer. I came to ELU/ELL with an expert user's knowledge of the language. Answering the very hard questions asked by you and other learners has made me look closely into the language Herself and understand, a little bit, how She works.

user116848

@StoneyB I see. Yeah you are right. Teaching others also give us insights into that particular field.

StoneyB

@snailboat The world's greatest desserts come out of the High German dialect area. Compare the Dobos Torte:

Dobos torte

Dobos torte or Dobosh (, ) is a Hungarian sponge cake layered with chocolate buttercream and topped with caramel. The five-layer pastry is named after its inventor, Hungarian confectioner József C. Dobos, who aimed to create a cake that would last longer than other pastries in an age when cooling techniques were limited. The round sides of the cake are coated with ground hazelnuts, chestnuts, walnuts or almonds, and the caramel topping helps keep it from drying out. The name is also sometimes spelled Dobos-torta or Dobostorta. History Dobosh or Dobos Torte (type of cake) was first...

The Linzer torte:

Linzer torte

The Linzer Torte (or Linzertorte) is an Austrian torte with a lattice design on top of the pastry. It is named after the city of Linz, Austria. Linzer Torte is a very short, crumbly pastry made of flour, unsalted butter, egg yolks, lemon zest, cinnamon and lemon juice, and ground nuts, usually hazelnuts, but even walnuts or almonds are used, covered with a filling of redcurrant jam or, alternatively, plum butter, thick raspberry, or apricot jam. It is covered by a lattice of dough strips. The dough is rolled out in very thin strips of pastry and arranged to form a criss-cross design on ...

user116848

19:16

Tasty :)

StoneyB

And the Sacher Torte, "a dense chocolate cake meringue based with a thin layer of apricot jam on top, coated in dark chocolate icing on the top and sides ... traditionally served with unsweetened whipped cream."

Sachertorte

() is a specific type of chocolate cake, or torte, invented by Austrian Franz Sacher in 1832 for Prince Wenzel von Metternich in Vienna, Austria. It is one of the most famous Viennese culinary specialties December 5 is National Sachertorte Day. History Origins Recipes similar to that of the Sachertorte appeared as early as the eighteenth century, one instance being in the 1718 cookbook of Conrad Hagger, another individual represented in Gartler-Hickmann's 1749 Tried and True Viennese Cookbook (Wienerisches bewährtes Kochbuch). In 1832, Prince Wenzel von Metternich charged his p...

When I become rich and famous I will retire to Vienna and spend my remaining days in a Konditorei, living off of Torten and Einspänner.

oerkelens

Of course "great" is very subjective... the French cuisine (and hence the French language) has certainly contributed some great or grand desserts...

user116848

So why there are so many rooms with ice girl in it? I don't get it. Not that I have a problem with it or anything. She seems nice.

user116848

Or just ignore my ^ question :)

Anonymous

@Arrowfar People can join chat rooms as they like. You, too, can join chat rooms that catch your interest.

user116848

19:27

Yeah. You are right.

user116848

Well, I am more interested in ELL and ELU chat rooms :)

Anonymous

I only join a few rooms.

Anonymous

If I joined more, I'd probably chat all my time away :-)

user116848

haha

user116848

Me too :)

user116848

19:43

Have you ever visited Japan Ms Boat?

user116848

Japan is very expensive I hear. Or at least Tokyo.

Anonymous

The largest part of my career was working on a major Japanese website

user116848

Which is?

Damkerng T.

21:50

@ZhanlongZheng 0-3 is perhaps not too bad. :)

Zhanlong Zheng

@DamkerngT. haha yep

without neymar Brazil is so weak, got whooped again!

Damkerng T.

I wish they would've figured out how to compensate that successfully.

Zhanlong Zheng

You mean fans or players? Korean team made a great example.

Damkerng T.

Oh, it's over as in over!

I meant the team.

Zhanlong Zheng

btw, I just woke up

Damkerng T.

21:56

Haha!

Zhanlong Zheng

There seemed to be a heated discussion I missed when I was asleep.

Damkerng T.

I spent most of the time during that on Japanese and football. :)

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