English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

@tchrist most of them have tables in their introductory material showing the IPA equivalents for their pronunciation scheme

it's just a different set of arbitrary symbols

user19161

@nohat I like your use of arbitrary there. Will Hunting said in his movie that marshmellows are just as arbitrary as coffee.

merriam-webster.com/help/MWOL%20Pronunciation%20Guide.pdf

and I know this flips tchrist's lid, but there is this tradition of something called Americanist phonetic notation

which is still used!

but the long and the short of it is no one would buy an American English dictionary with IPA in it. "Oh that's the dictionary with the funny pronunciation key. Get the one you can understand"

however! don't blame me... I think nothing has done more to promulgate general public awareness of IPA than Wikipedia

and I was one of the first people to push hard to make IPA the official transcription system for Wikipedia

so I've done my public duty for IPA

user19161

@nohat Well done! Perhaps you could write to the major American dictionaries and tell them that too.

and indeed you will find that the original author of almost all the articles about specific sounds is ... me

en.wikipedia.org/w/…

KitFox

12:16 AM

@tchrist What's my fault now?

user19161

@nohat Oh, I did not know that until now. Have a cookie!

user19161

12:27 AM

Hello @waiwai.

user19161

yesterday, by Jasper Loy

I would like to give him a medal.

user19161

I have a medal for you! ^

KitFox

@nohat Hey, nice question. But oughtn't it go on Writers?

@KitFox It's really more of a usage question, isn't it?

@nohat That is exactly how I feel. "What is this funny pronunciation stuff? I'm going to get one I understand." Which I did. The OED uses IPA. Of course. It is more professional-looking that way.

KitFox

12:29 AM

@nohat I can see your point, although you specifically address formal writing.

And hello!

And good night!

user19161

@KitFox See you in your dreams!

Why do you say goodbye when I say hello? Hello hello?

@KitFox Persons of Clue posing questions.

@KitFox are questions about formal writing not appropriate here?

Heh.

user19161

By the way, have you guys figured who the person upvoting all the 9 and 24 vote questions is?

12:34 AM

I can’t parse that.

:)

Unless you were aiming for the royal we and missed.

Did you mean am? :)

Joseph Weissman

But multiples of 5 are so much cleaner! :)

/not it

They are, they are.

Multiples of 100 are nice, too.

user19161

@JosephWeissman So it was you?!

Joseph Weissman

No, I'm just kidding

user19161

That just makes the badges appear on the main site.

user19161

12:36 AM

It looked beautiful.

A: Is there a correct gender-neutral, singular pronoun ("his" versus "her" versus "their")?

97

Singular they enjoys a long history of usage in English and can be used here: "Each student should save their questions until the end." However, “singular they” also enjoys a long history of criticism. If you are anxious about being criticized (for what is in fact a perfectly grammatical constru...

96

A: What is a suitable word to describe a place where two rivers meet?

In geography, a confluence is the meeting of two or more bodies of water. It usually refers to the point where two streams flow together, merging into a single stream.

Those two are close.

3 more votes guys

i want that golden ticket

maybe i should edit the answer and add some ngrams or something

user19161

@tchrist He looked very different in his older photo, Ed.

I tried to rally the troops the other day, too, but got no takers.

user19161

@nohat Do you get a cookie when you reach 100?

12:40 AM

It is a bit more challenging finding the Enlightened candidates. But it can be done.

@JasperLoy no, I get a private tour of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory

Just hope it is the Gene Wilder version.

I never thought my life could be / Anything but catastrophe / But suddenly I begin to see / A bit of good luck for me

@JasperLoy Here ya go then. You can give them all silvers.

And since it is different people, it isn’t Generally Considered Naughty.

Or start here and work your way backwards, avoiding CW and Thurzy.

Ah, I found our only remaining Enlightened candidate. I’m sure it will look good on him.

@nohat I can't believe that I got the gold badge for that dumb "want/wont" answer and you don't have it yet on any of your answers.

12:53 AM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Well, you can do something about that. :)

@tchrist I already voted on his 97-pointer a long time ago

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I am satisfied knowing that anyone found my answers useful.

Yeah, me too. I am a big supporter of the whole notion.

That’s why I have turned into being a Community Agitator, since I cannot make it happen with my own vote anymore.

I think the Enlightened badge script only runs every hour.

Q: What usage arguments are persuasive?

10

Given the recent blog post that some kinds of subjective questions are OK on Stack Exchange sites, I thought I would try to formulate a good subjective question about usage to see what kinds of arguments people find persuasive and why. So, for questions about a usage dispute: What basis do yo...

grammaticality

someone just voted up this question :-)

and I got the "nice question" badge for it

even though I closed the question

Ah, irony.

12:57 AM

heheh

too bad there is no badge for closing your own question

i guess if I delete the question, I'd get the disciplined badge

@nohat I see you are sadly lacking in both the Disciplined and the Peer Pressure badge.

which i don't have yet

jinx

Here is a secret: you can delete it, get the badge, then undelete it. :)

Worked for me. :)

i already did some naughty business like that earlier today

where i closed a question to get rid of the close votes, then reopened it

1:00 AM

Well, that works.

I am constantly being told I am not allowed to closevote things that have no closevotes on them because mine have gone the way of all things.

I was just asked to review a question with reopen votes. I myself voted to close this quesiton and it has no edits or comments. Why on earth would I want it reopened?

It did that to me, too.

Here are some more Enlightened candidates.

I haven’t checked for the whether they are the only answer, which guarantees it.

Ah there’s one.

I would like it if there was a way to see which of my questions, answers, activities, whatever, where on the cusp of badging. Then I could maybe prod things along.

Some you can.

The Q/A are easy enough.

Other stuff it depends.

Sometimes you shouldn’t look too hard. Reg and I got the Archaeologist badge all of a sudden some time ago, and it was a pleasant surprise because we'd both forgotten about its very existence.

I wish there were a feed of all activity on the site. Questions, answers, & comments. That doesn't exist does it?

1:08 AM

Darn it.

I don’t know how to do comments save through the per-user activity/comments tab.

But Q/A should feed for activity on edits at least.

@tchrist i assume you mean questions sorted by activity? The trouble with that is it just lists the question, and doesn't show me what changed.

Yes, it does if you click on it right.

Lemme look.

That’s how I find recently-deleted answers to questions.

Instead of through the more obvious way.

Click on active for questions, and then click on the actual type stamp, and it will take you directly to whatever has changed.

If I can get some downvotes on this answer I can delete it for a peer pressure badge

Even if it is an answer.

@MattЭллен I really do not understand what you mean by /'mɛərɪ/.

I somewhat disbelieve the putative schwa.

Ahah! There go the Enlighteneds. They must fire on the quarter hour.

Correction, at x:18.

It’s now @Rob 70 to @Reg 66.

@JasperLoy Here, is this shiny and pretty enough for you now? :)

1:26 AM

Wha? What score is that?

@Robusto Enlightenedmentals.

Oh, badges.

What, Reg only has 66? He needs another 600 to reach his true evil potential.

user19161

@tchrist Not as pretty as you, of course.

Flattery will get you everywhere from a planet away.

Not so much if you’re closer.

Someone is having a badge-fest. I've noticed a suspicious rise in up-votes on almost-badgeworthy answers of mine.

1:29 AM

It happened a day or three ago too.

Did you actually get badges for it, or was it just edging them closer?

A: How do we pronounce "others'"?

It's all ripe fruit.

10

There is no difference in pronunciation among others, other's, and others'. They are pronounced the same as others.

If you just got edged, the conspiracy may be wider than suspected.

This was hardly a badgeworthy answer.

user19161

OMG.

Yes my son?

1:30 AM

I mean, I'm not complaining, but I don't need the extra help.

A: Pronunciation of "a" in "make a difference"

It’s rather altruistic, since there is no benefit to the badger.

user19161

19

In ordinary speech, one pronounces it like in about. It is like in ate only if we want to stress the a for some reason or other.

user19161

Even better!

Can’t blame that one on me.

If you give me five or ten minutes, I’ll even give you a screenshot to prove it. :)

I logged on tonight and found three new badges.

1:32 AM

Tickled you?

user19161

@Robusto I would say the second sentence is not necessary.

Badgers are normally fierce and rapacious creatures. Unusual to find one helping you out.

@JasperLoy Your observation is similarly supererogatory.

Badgers are not what people think. My mom once came upon two of them in the forest. It thrilled her. They did not savage her at all.

pause while Jasper looks up the word

word-choice meaning grammaticality single-word-requests grammar verbs word-usage

Rob, do you remember the old name for badger?

user19161

1:35 AM

David Schwartz, Murphys, CA

4.4k 6 16

Time’s up. :)

It’s brock.

user19161

His cartoon looks like him!

►

@tchrist You mean from Breaking Bad?

The Brockhouse surname refers to the badger’s dwelling.

1:36 AM

I never heard a badger called Brock.

No? Really?

brock /brɒk/, sb.1
Forms: 1, 4 broc, 3-7 brocke, 4-5 brokk(e, 4-6 brok, 6 broke, 3- brock.
Etymology: OE. broc, from Celtic: in OIr. brocc, Ir. and Gael. broc, Welsh and Cornish broch, Breton broc’h:-OCeltic *broccos, prob. cogn. w. Gr. φορκός grey, white; cf. the Eng. name gray, grey.
1. A badger: a name, in later times, associated especially with the epithet stinking.

It is the oldest and firstest of the 7 brock entries in the OED.

How could I have missed that?

> My dear Bagginses and Boffins, he began again; and my dear Tooks and Brandybucks, and Grubbs, and Chubbs, and Burrowses, and Hornblowers, and Bolgers, Bracegirdles, Goodbodies, Brockhouses and Proudfoots.

Et voilà.

La voilà.

> He had been taken when the ruffians smoked out a band of rebels that he led from their hidings up in the Brockenbores by the hills of Scary.

More Brocks.

Scary ones, apparently.

1:39 AM

Badger from Breaking Bad.

You don’t get to cheat on the Celtic-derived English words. No access to Germanic or Romanic cognates.

Why are badgers stinking, eh?

Because they hang around in bogs?

Note that I used a Celtic word in that answer. ^

Yes, I did. I think it is because they’re mustelids.

But the “we don’t need no stinkin’ badjas” takes on a whole new meaning.

Kind of a bog-standard refrain.

You'll get a bop on the noggin.

The only other Celtic-origin word I can think of offhand is dolmen.

(sorry I’m muxing)

1:46 AM

OK, WTF is Amazon thinking?

I bought my wife some earrings on Amazon five years ago and they think I'm female.

My expertise in women's clothing begins and ends at clumsy attempts to buy jewelry for my wife. If I ever tried to buy her clothes she'd think I'd lost my mind.

Remember when Amazon was new and people were getting freaked by this?

"Uh, dear, don't you have tools to sharpen or a computer to build or something?"

All those exotic UK names for natural features I posted a while back that weren’t Norse were Celtic.

Tor and such.

They're supposed to be so sophisticated with their analysis of buying patterns, but they consistently try to sell me shit I already bought from them, especially music. Do they think I'm senile, that I can't remember buying a particular album. I ought to be offended.

cairn bran cog coomb

dun

1:50 AM

tun => town

Hamtunscir => "home town shire" => Hampshire

Perhaps flannel.

Possibly gull.

Gravel came through French, but was originally Celtic.

Hmm ... slogan comes from Gaelic sluagh-ghairm meaning war cry.

I’m only on the k’s.

They dispute jog.

> The suggestion of a Celtic origin is not tenable. English phonology knows nothing of a change of go to jo. And the alleged Welsh gogi, given by Pughe as ‘to shake, agitate’, has no existence

Nor jag:

> There are no cognates in Teutonic or Romanic, and the Celtic gàg ‘split, rent, fissure’, sometimes compared, cannot (in our present knowledge) be connected phonetically. It is possible that the two notions of ‘cut or slash’, and ‘pierce’, ought to be referred to separate words (cf. dag. v.1 and 2); but in our ignorance of the facts, they are here left together. In the vb. the sense ‘pierce, prick’, is essentially northern, and is the only sense known in Sc.

ptarmigan!

> In Lowland Sc. use before 1600; = Gaelic tàrmachan; ulterior history and origin unknown; see Note below. Originally with initial t; the spelling with pt appears first in Sibbald 1684, and was app. pseudo-etymological, after words from Greek, presumably ptarmic, ptarmical, then known in medicine. Being unfortunately taken from Sibbald by Pennant in 1768, it has passed into ornithological and general English use.

The dummies added a t.

Well, a p, for pt.

It should be a tarmigan.

I think we already did tolmen.

Hm, a walnut has the same wal- = foreigner element as Wales and Welsh.

OE. walhhnutu str. fem. = WFris. walnút (NFris. walnödd from Da.), MDutch walnote (Kilian walnot), Dutch walnoot, MLG. wallnot, -nut, LG. (Bremisch. Wörterb. wallnutt) walnut, G. walnuss (earlier wallnuss), ONor. valhnot str. fem. (Norw. valnot, Sw. valnöt, Da. valnød). The first element is OTeut. *walχo-z (OE. wealh, OHG. walah) ‘Welshman’, i.e. Celtic or Roman foreigner; see Welsh>Welsh a. The solitary OE. example (in a glossary C. 1050) is the earliest known appearance of the word in any language.

A crag is Celtic.

And a glen. And your gob.

Most of the better booze.

The stupid corgis.

2:11 AM

@Robusto Related to slay, perchance?

beak and nook.

A dam, meaning a female sheep.

Dame?

A yes, the downs, as in the white downs. Or barrow downs.

Oh.

dam: from Ancient British *damā-, meaning "female sheep or deer".

2:17 AM

Which in turn comes from...?

PIE?

More specifically...?

List of English words of British origin

I have no idea. They do not know much about the "Ancient British" tongue, beyond that it was a P-Celtic one.

The number of English words known to be derived from the Ancient British language is small - in fact, it is lower than the number of Gaulish words found in the English language, most of which were borrowed in from French. However, this is to be expected, given the socio-historical relationship between Old English and Ancient British; the influence of the British language has been more prominent in other areas such as syntax. However, it is possible that many British words have been obscured by their close similarity to Germanic words which offer a more likely etymology, and also that some o...

basket is another.

3:19 AM

has made lemon mousse

@Cerberus runs by mousse, skims with finger

mmm :d

You're allowed to do that.

Don't let any of the others see it!

So far, it seems to be setting well!

@Cerberus nice.

Is that done in the refrigerator?

No drooping/Yup.

user19161

@Cerberus Yum yum, you can send me some via email...

3:27 AM

I'll send you a glass through regular mail.

I'm sure it will survive the journey.

> . . . low quality contributions . . .

user19161

@cornbread I thought you would put up a picture of some cornbread.

Hey!

You don't know the quality of my mousse yet.

@JasperLoy I keep meaning to draw a little square piece with nunchuks

user19161

@Cerberus I think she refers to elsething.

3:28 AM

@Cerberus ! lol no, Carlo's suspension reason

user19161

@cornbreadninja Again?

user19161

Is it automatic?

I know, I know.

user19161

Hmm, I am thinking if suspending users for such a reason should be part of SE.

@JasperLoy I suppose it happened recently

3:30 AM

I believe it automatically flags the moderators, who then decide what to do about it.

user19161

I think there are not many such users, so perhaps they should not be suspended. Just let the posts speak for themselves!

sleep 100000

user19161

But then again, it is quite a reasonable idea.

exit

@cornbreadninja Just a minute and a half?

user19161

3:31 AM

@cornbreadninja Your bedtime? See you in your dreams!

Or aren't those ms?

If they are seconds, will you really be asleep for 27 hours?

You little Snow White.

user19161

@Cerberus If she is Snow White, you must be Cinderella!

Eh why? Do I look as though I were cleaning?

I rarely clean.

user19161

C for Cerberus, C for Cinderella. QED.

C in Cerberus is no more like the C in Cinderella than that one is like the C is for Cicero.

Kerberos (protocol)

Kerberos () is a computer network authentication protocol which works on the basis of "tickets" to allow nodes communicating over a non-secure network to prove their identity to one another in a secure manner. Its designers aimed primarily at a client–server model, and it provides mutual authentication—both the user and the server verify each other's identity. Kerberos protocol messages are protected against eavesdropping and replay attacks. Kerberos builds on symmetric key cryptography and requires a trusted third party, and optionally may use public-key cryptography by utilizing asymme...

@Cerberus The argument to sleep is in seconds. The argument to usleep (which should be spelt µsleep) is in microseconds. There is an API for nanosleep with a nanosecond argument, but I don’t know that that actually works anywhere for sure.

3:39 AM

@tchrist I prefer that.

@tchrist Using u for mu? That's ridiculous!

@Cerberus It’s traditional.

@Cerberus Huh?

It's not. It's bad.

A mu is a mu, or you should just say micro.

Or mu.

It’s odd, yes. But so it is.

In ASCII, you have no mus nor micros.

Bleh.

Yes you do.

musleep

microsleep

I think someone thought they were being clever.

3:41 AM

See? That wasn't so hard.

Clever!?

I said thought.

I didn’t say they were.

It is like a Greek restaurant that uses a capital sigma for the E.

> The usleep(useconds_t usec) function suspends execution of the calling thread for (at least) usec microseconds. The sleep may be lengthened slightly by any system activity or by the time spent processing the call or by the granularity of system timers.

It could work in a comic book for children.

See, they use it all over.

Its usec arg is of type useconds_t.

See here.

It’s part of a formal standard. There’s no hope for changing it.

3:46 AM

Use condoms_t? What is that?

Not sure where you saw it, but it must be a typedef of type condoms.

You wrote it...

Whatever that means.

Where?

5 mins ago, by tchrist

Its usec arg is of type useconds_t.

That's what I assumed it stood for.

I don’t see any condoms.

3:49 AM

Use cond.

Oh.

GFod.

What else could it mean?

Please tell me you’re just trying to rile me.

usleep takes usecond args, of course.

What else could I be doing?

I don’t know. Pretending to be slow?

3:51 AM

I don't need to pretend.

We already established what a u prefix means.

And it has nothing to do with used condoms.

So say many pervs.

I’ll take your worldly experience on that one.

Err so I've heard.

MετάEd

4:42 AM

This is making me hungry. I'll have the µslics.

Grrr.

At least I have my lemon mousse, two glasses.

But I think I will save them for tomorrow.

To bring them to my friend for dessert (she has invited me for dinner).

8:33 AM

@Robusto my true evil potential is in no need of being reached. It's there already. Otherwise it would be my true evil impotential.

@Robusto same here. Except my pathetic attempts at buying jewelry for my wife are not exactly helped by the fact that she doesn't really wear jewelry. Silver is kind of okay. Gold or gems are completely out of the question. She'd rather have me buy her clothes.

8:54 AM

@RegDeighT at least you should have mentioned another place where I could post this question before closing it. — al0ne evenings 9 mins ago

Why people keep saying that, I have no idea.

user19161

9:11 AM

@RegDwighт You should comment that we usually don't do that.

I did.

I just wonder how people tick that they think of such a request in the first place.

"I know this forum is all about cooking, but certainly you can tell me where to ask my question about fixing my bike."

Not sure what's going on this morning anyway. Lots, lots of basic and/or off-topic questions.

Karma, I guess. Nohat's fault.

Post a couple advanced questions, get a boatload of crap to counterbalance them.

9:27 AM

hi!

Whoa.

user19161

@RegDwighт Well, this world is like that, full of suffering.

Look who's here.

user19161

Prosperity is here.

@JasperLoy Fate too

and I, who has some shameless advertising to do!

9:28 AM

First nohat, now F'x — what's this, a class reunion?

A: Community Promotion Ads - 2012

0

Don't let @tchrist see that one. He will die of being exposed to insufficient leading.

I'm sure that in the broad experts' community that EL&U covers, there are many fine academic specialists of the English language… to whom a site dedicated to the matters of academic life would be priceless

and because I know that ads entered later in the year don't necessarily get a lot of exposure (and votes), here I am…

I'd show you my boobs if you vote for the ad, but I'm only a green dragon so the argument might not be very convincing

Q: "stop words" list for english?

Mmmmmm... green man-dragon-boobs.

One upvote for each. Bring it on.

9

I'm generating some statistics for some english-language text and I would like to skip uninteresting words such as "a" and "the". Where can I find some lists of these uninteresting words? Is a list of these words the same as a list of the most frequently used words in English? update: these a...

language-agnostic indexing filtering stop-words language-processing

Just got asked to closevote this one.

@RegDwighт you should maintain a master list of stop words on EL&U

I mean, isn't EL&U's purpose to be able to be the definite authority on EL&U?

9:40 AM

19 hours ago, by RegDwighт

1 the AT the
20 have VH0 have
40 would VM would
41 said VVD say
60 your APPGE your
80 first MD first
91 very RR very
100 even RR even
101 good JJ good
120 in RR in
140 while CS while
160 each DD each
177 came VVD come
180 before II before
181 got VVD get
197 went VVD go
200 men NN2 man
204 made VVD make
210 took VVD take
211 little JJ little
220 around II around
240 point NN1 point
250 sure JJ sure
260 almost RR almost
261 right JJ right
275 thought VVD think
280 program NN1 program
284 knew VVD know

and then, answer the relevant question accordingly :)