English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

user19161

12:05 AM

I just downvoted some posts to keep my rep at a multiple of 5.

user19161

@tchrist I gave you some presents just now. =)

tchrist

12:27 AM

@JasperLoy I earned 272 yesterday. That may be my second highest ever. I need to undownvote more often.

cpx

@JasperLoy Done!

Peter PAD

12:45 AM

hey everyone, is there any word or phrasal verb in English describe "after doing something that you intend to do"

RegDwighт

That's... a lot of information to pack in a single word, and how can it possibly be a verb?

"After X" is a prepositional phrase. Verbs don't function as prepositional phrases.

@tchrist I have 2169 downvotes. Sounds like a gold mine on paper. Except that 50% of my votes are on questions, and god knows how many of the rest on deleted stuff.

Peter PAD

thanks

RegDwighт

No problem.

If you have context, we can have a second look.

Peter PAD

1:07 AM

Phrasal verbs are difficult to remember. Any solution ?

RegDwighт

Yes. Do not study them. Just use them.

You will forget everything you don't use. Maths, geography, musical theory. Language is no different. Unless it's your mother tongue.

Peter PAD

definitely true

RegDwighт

@tchrist he sure likes using "if you will". It's giving me a headache. Stupid fillers.

And with that I guess I'm logging off for today.

CU all tomorrow.

user19161

1:24 AM

@cpx Well done!

user19161

I am such a rep whore ain't I?

user19161

@RegDwighт 2169? Geezis!

tchrist

2:36 AM

Wow, my tide-and-time question is sitting at slot #3 on the supercollider.

Mahnax

2:48 AM

@tchrist Congrats on 25.001k!

tchrist

I did?

I'll have to downvote something. :)

Mahnax

Yessir.

tchrist

I hadn’t even noticed. I did do a lot of rep whoring and rep cranking yesterday though.

Got several new hats, too.

But no mystery ones.

Mahnax

Aww.

Gah, I have to erase and re-sync my iPod with this new update?

tchrist

I’m ahead in the hat race. And I think I need only one more repcap for the only hat I’ve been trying for.

Erase is not good.

Mahnax

2:51 AM

It doesn't seem to be erasing, but it said it would. Huh.

In my stocking I got smoked almonds. Yum.

tchrist

Those are certainly tasty.

Oh drat, you just reminded me I forgot to give something out. BRB.

Mahnax

Have fun!

Oh, it totally did erase my iPod.

Stupid stupid.

tchrist

3:06 AM

Were you backed up?

Mahnax

Yeah, but I have to re-sync everything.

> Copying 505 of 2304: …

It's actually pretty quick.

tchrist

That’s a relief.

Mahnax

Yeah. When I updated, all of my music disappeared, and I had a small panic attack.

Then I realized that iTunes had simply changed the path to the music collection and all I had to do was change it back.

tchrist

Good for you to notice.

Mahnax

Heh, thanks.

I had my music in a hidden folder for some reason.

So I had to use my command line to find it, haha.

I did $ find . -name '*.mp3' and found it like that.

cornbread ninja

3:16 AM

evenin'!

Mahnax

Hi Cornbread! Happy Christmas!

cornbread ninja

how long have I been in here? rubs head

@Mahnax Happy Christmas, &c to you! ;)

Mahnax

@cornbreadninja Dank(e)!

cornbread ninja

I am making my list for thank-you cards

punctuation be damned

Mahnax

Are you drunk?

cornbread ninja

3:17 AM

Should I be?

Mahnax

Well, no.

Not necessarily.

cornbread ninja

Grandma usually opens a bottle of Asti Spumante, but that didn't happen this year.

Mahnax

My grandmother opened up some white zinfandel.

cornbread ninja

It was a different kind of Christmas this year.

user19161

@Mahnax Is that some wine?

Mahnax

3:19 AM

@JasperLoy Yes.

Two dollars a bottle, for a sort of silly reason. Good wine, apparently.

cornbread ninja

@JasperLoy hello! so is asti spumante

two buck chuck?

user19161

@cornbreadninja I decided not to wear the stupid SE hats!

Mahnax

Nah, it's award-winning wine produced by some dude in the States. But his wife divorced him and sued for a portion of his wine profits, so he decided to reduce those to basically zero by selling the wine on the cheap.

user19161

But the hats still show up sometimes even after I opted out!

user19161

This is WEIRD.

cornbread ninja

3:25 AM

@JasperLoy whoa. all of the ones you'd earned?

@JasperLoy I hated hats for a minute, but I I un-hated them for Kit.

tchrist

I have a swell new hat to wear!

Mahnax

Woah, how'd you earn that?

tchrist

Work. :)

30 answers with a vote total of at least 1.

Mahnax

Cool.

tchrist

The hard-to-get hats are the ones that look coolest.

Mahnax

3:29 AM

That is the point, yes.

Peter PAD

I get around to archive some, but I'm lazy one :(

cornbread ninja

@tchrist Dang, that is a swell hat.

tchrist

My badge totals are all off-by-one.

cornbread ninja

24 hats!

tchrist

Compared to what I wish they were, that is.

@cornbreadninja Yep!

I’d like 5/50/100 instead of 4/49/99. You know?

RegDwighт

3:33 AM

@tchrist oooohhhh, @kitfox will be jealous.

tchrist

Yeah, I know. :)

I just created a tag wiki, but I don’t think that’s one.

I am close to the 5 repcap emperor’s crown.

I don’t think she’ll be getting that one.

RegDwighт

@JasperLoy I've been on the site for 28 months. That's less than 100 downvotes a month.

cornbread ninja

@tchrist I do know.

RegDwighт

@tchrist speaking of tags, I see you've been retagging and I think there's a problem.

tchrist

@RegDwighт That’s more than I have. Barely. I’m down to 1919, with about 50 more than that pre-Christmas.

@RegDwighт Oh? I’m sorry. Please tell me what I can do to help.

RegDwighт

3:36 AM

@tchrist and you are a noob. You've been registered for what, 25 months? Pfft.

tchrist

Very unnegative of me, don’t you think?

RegDwighт

@tchrist ah, nothing with you. A general conundrum that comes up every so often.

tchrist

Of course, I’ve only been posting for about six of those 24 months. :)

RegDwighт

It's kind of the problem with the system as such. Or a dilemma.

GnomeSlice

behance.net/gallery/Ramsey-Typeface-Family/6186653

RegDwighт

3:37 AM

@tchrist I didn't want to be that harsh. Let's leave it at that you're a noob.

Anyhoo.

The problem with tags is that they are really just for questions.

tchrist

If you would like me to do something differently, you know you have only to ask me.

Oh that.

RegDwighт

There's no way to tag answers.

tchrist

Yes, I know.

I have thought of that, and more than once.

Including this time.

RegDwighт

Yeah it keeps coming up, as I said.

I did notice that before with your retaggings, but that was like one question out of forty each time, so I never bothered. Or plain forgot.

tchrist

The problem is when the questioner does not know the right tag. This is often the case.

It was on the fancy rhetoric terms.

RegDwighт

3:39 AM

But this one is really special in that we don't have a single question on metathesis. Only answers.

@tchrist ah, hold on. That's a different issue still.

GnomeSlice

Trying to tag based on answers is ~~stupid~~ pointless.

RegDwighт

In those cases retagging is perfectly valid and I would say encouraged.

I do it all the time, like with hypernyms. Which people call a thousand names just not hypernyms.

But what we have here is that the question is not about metathesis at all. If the OP knew it was about metathesis, the question plain wouldn't exist.

tchrist

I try not to make a tag that is on only one question alone. That’s why I went hunting.

RegDwighт

I mean, it's kind of like asking on Photography, which camera should I use, and then someone tags it with nicon

tchrist

And the other candidate was a dupe-closed one, which Some people delete.

Yeah.

I have a cure.

RegDwighт

3:41 AM

@tchrist yes, that's the actual problem. We kind of need those tags if only to be able to find stuff later.

tchrist

I can ask a question with metawhateverousness in the question proper.

RegDwighт

Plus what kind of site are we if we don't have a metathesis tag. I mean, really.

GnomeSlice

@RegDwighт This is really bad.

RegDwighт

@tchrist oh, by all means do.

tchrist

No kidding. It’s like not having a palatalization tag.

Strange slowness.

RegDwighт

3:43 AM

@GnomeSlice yes. And yet, when the question is answered with Nicon and the OP accepts that as the answer, it's not like it doesn't make sense for future reference.

tchrist

Did you know that it is Neyekon in the US, but Nikkon in the UK?

RegDwighт

So what I've been doing so far with such questions is to tag them as specifically as I possibly could without mentioning the answer in the tags.

@tchrist wha?

tchrist

Oh, right. I see the problem now.

GnomeSlice

@RegDwighт Yes it does, because that's probably not the only answer on the question. This is a bad example since that question is far too subjective (there is no single best camera), and the whole point is that different answers can provide different information.

tchrist

It is something else again in Japan. More like Spanish, I think.

GnomeSlice

3:44 AM

i.e. the accepted answer might be to use a Nikon, but another answer might say to go Canon, and some readers might find that answer more helpful.

tchrist

@RegDwighт Yes, truly.

RegDwighт

@GnomeSlice yeah I knew someone would say that. Of course such a question would get closed pretty much anywhere. I'm just trying to illustrate a point, is all.)))

tchrist

I am doing lame spelling pronunciations, of course. It is always spelled the same as a marque, just said differently.

RegDwighт

So, for example, I have answered like OVER 10000 questions about metathesis. And yet none of them is labeled with that tag.

(As an aside, I seem to specialize in doors now. All doors questions go to me. Someone make a door tag.)

GnomeSlice

@RegDwighт The second part is still relevant.

RegDwighт

3:47 AM

Okay well. Let's take a different example if you're so insistent. Suppose someone asks on SO, where is the bug in this code, and then someone tags it with missing-semicolon-at-line-eight.

GnomeSlice

@RegDwighт For the record, I was agreeing with you.

RegDwighт

I know.

I don't care. I'm in the zone.

GnomeSlice

OKAY

tchrist

North America has Nikon with the vowel of Mike, the UK has it with the vowel of Nick, and the Japanese as near as I can tell has the first stressed vowel of Neekerbrackers in the first syllable, and something more like the first stressed vowel of Spanish joder in its second syllable.

What do Germans and Russians do?

RegDwighт

So wevs. Where's that MSO post anyway. There was an MSO post.

@tchrist Naikon? Seriously?

tchrist

3:49 AM

Vraiment. De veras.

As though it were a radish!!!!

RegDwighт

Ai caramba.

tchrist

At least they can’t diddle Canon's name quite so badly. But I do see Cannon a lot on the net.

Well, if you would like to take back some or all of the metanalysis tags, do please do so.

RegDwighт

Muh. MSO is impossible to search. Even with Google. Even with Lycos.

@tchrist let it sit. I'm not in a hurry.

Plus as I said people have done it in the past and I don't even remember the questions, or tags.

tchrist

It was not the tag wiki I created. I did christmas instead: here.

RegDwighт

Perhaps a meta post is imminent.

@tchrist I saw that.

The metathesis is still empty.

tchrist

3:53 AM

Do you get updates on when tag wikis are created? Is that something I can see?

RegDwighт

Sorry, I mean metaanalysis.

Mine were about metathesis. Yours were metaanalysis.

@tchrist only suggested edits.

tchrist

Are there two a's in that word?

Of course, there should be.

But are there?

RegDwighт

I checked manually before coming in here which tag wiki you meant.

tchrist

I have not been able to use SEDE to find the empty tag wikis.

RegDwighт

Metanalysis

:This article is about the term in linguistics; in the natural sciences "metanalysis" is an alternative spelling for "meta-analysis". In linguistics, metanalysis is the act of breaking down a word or phrase into segments or meanings not original to it. The term was coined by the linguist Otto Jespersen, from Greek elements meaning "a change of breakdown". One example from English is a huge number of verbs of Latinate origin appear to have been back-formed from nouns in -tion, -sion and the like: profess, relate, pollute, confect and literally hundreds more are, with rare exceptions, fi...

One.

Wevs. I'm in the zone.

tchrist

3:55 AM

The query that is there to do so does not work, and is marked as such.

RegDwighт

Be thankful I don't type in Russian.

tchrist

I am.

What do Russians call Nikon?

Spelling pronunciation is fine.

RegDwighт

@tchrist I didn't know that field is in the dump.

@tchrist um, Никон?

GnomeSlice

@tchrist Don't be silly, in Soviet Russia, camera names you!

I can't believe I just made that joke.

tchrist

Are your vowels pure?

RegDwighт

3:56 AM

Nikon

Nikon (Nikon Corporation, , Кабусики гайся Никон, произносится «Никон» ') — японская компания, специализирующаяся на производстве оптики и электронных устройств для обработки изображений. Nikon входит в Mitsubishi Group. Основана Kōgaku Kōgyō 25 июля 1917 под названием Nippon Kogaku K.K., переименована в 1988. Президент — Митио Кария (Michio Kariya). История Nikon Corporation была основана в 1917 году при слиянии трёх производителей оптического оборудования (Seisakusho, Iwaki Glass Co, Fujii Lens) в полностью интегрированную компанию под названием Nippon Kogaku Kokyo K.K. Компания пр...

tchrist

So is it Neek or Nick?

RegDwighт

Well yeah. They really call it Nikon. Not Никон. Don't get me started.

@tchrist short I.

tchrist

In Latin?

Ok.

Like the Brits.

RegDwighт

Yeah in Latin. I mean when they advertise it and stuff.

tchrist

They advertise in Latin script??

RegDwighт

3:58 AM

Only McDonalds had the balls to actually embrace Cyrillic.

tchrist

That is weird.

I mean, can you imagine advertising in Latin script in Iran?

RegDwighт

@tchrist yeah tell me about it.

GnomeSlice

@RegDwighт M!

RegDwighт

Yet nobody gives a shit about Russia.

tchrist

Ronald did.

RegDwighт

3:59 AM

I think you were around when we discussed how they don't give a shit about cases.

tchrist

I heard McDonald’s is introducing two veggie options in India or Pakistan. They discontinued that trial long ago here. Only Burger King has veggie burgers.

RegDwighт

Writing in Latin helps with that.

tchrist

Ah.

RegDwighт

Not that that's the only reason. But for some it might be the main I guess.

Which still doesn't make sense because spoken language is primary.

tchrist

That is my own opinion, yes.

But others think otherwise.

RegDwighт

4:01 AM

@tchrist Ronald was one of the first to conquer Russia. It was still the USSR, in fact.

Same with Pepsi.

tchrist

That’s a shame.

RegDwighт

In case you didn't know, Pepsi had a license to sell their product in the USSR.

tchrist

I don’t much like Pepsi.

RegDwighт

There were special kiosks on every corner.

GnomeSlice

Anyone want to help me write for a parody Twitter account?

Ah, nevermind.

tchrist

4:02 AM

When I asked for a Coke on the plane here, she asked whether Pepsi was ok, and I said only if you have a lemon. So she compromised and gave me Dr Pepper instead.

GnomeSlice

Dr. Pepper is the shit.

tchrist

I next to never drink pop, but I was arriving in after midnight, and had far to drive, and still cannot drink coffee again freely.

They do not offer real tea, just airport tea.

RegDwighт

tchrist

And so the water is only at about 90 C, so will not brew the tea properly.

RegDwighт

Do note how they did localize the logo.

These were the times.

tchrist

4:04 AM

Hm. Is this like how in Europe they have random English words in advertising? Do they in Russia have random Latin-script words?

RegDwighт

@tchrist not many, mostly just product names.

Actually Germany is way more prone to taking English stuff verbatim. Complete with whitespaces where none belong in German.

And punctuation and word order.

It's awful.

tchrist

Like saying wind shield wiper instead of windshieldwiper?

RegDwighт

@GnomeSlice I can only drink so many at a time. By which I mean one.

@tchrist yeah. Or just using the German word FFS.

tchrist

How can they screw with word order? That would come off as ungrammatical, wouldn’t it?

RegDwighт

They import not just words, they import grammar and punctuation.

tchrist

4:07 AM

This is a problem for the language’s future.

RegDwighт

@tchrist "number one shampoo", "number one this", "number one that".

tchrist

It will creolize, if that is a word.

RegDwighт

In German, that should be "shampoo number one".

But they don't give a damn.

tchrist

It is “fashionably foreign” that way.

RegDwighт

Nah, not even that.

tchrist

4:08 AM

Just carelessness, then.

RegDwighт

It is completely and utterly awkward even to the last hobo who couldn't care less about linguistics.

But they repeat it twenty times a day, and bam! it enters the language.

tchrist

But he should have an ear for his own language.

RegDwighт

That's a different problem still. The Germans are among the people who know and care the least about German.

tchrist

The know bit is common. The care bit, hardly rare.

RegDwighт

The amount of mistakes on the German television is breathtaking. I haven't seen anything like that anywhere else in the world. It's like they have never heard of proofreading let alone editors.

I mean, written text.

Spoken is of course the same everywhere.

tchrist

4:10 AM

But Grimm was German. Most of the 19th-century philologists who did all the PIE were, weren’t they?

RegDwighт

So they rest on their laurels.

tchrist

Written mistakes on television? Wow!

RegDwighт

If they are even aware of who Grimm were.

tchrist

There oughta be a law.

RegDwighт

Hah.

The laws are one source of the problem.

I mean the orthography reform.

tchrist

4:12 AM

Because people disagree, or are unaware?

Or something else?

RegDwighт

It was pulled off by ten-odd secretaries of the various states. Needless to say, none of them had any qualification. They might as well have rewritten the rules of linear algebra.

tchrist

I only remember the ph > f one.

Which is a common enough mutation.

RegDwighт

But no amount of protests helped, and the reform passed, and then people went like fuck off we'll keep on writing like we were taught in grade school, yada yada, everyone now writes whatever and however they like, and it's all okay with everyone.

tchrist

At least it is possible to attempt something like that in Germanspeakingland. It is simply not possible in English.

The Portuguese and Brazilians (and others) recently tried. It only got so far.

RegDwighт

But that's the point. It is not possible in German, either.

Austria passed a different reform. Switzerland said, are you insane? Go away!

tchrist

4:15 AM

Austria got rid of the sharp s, I believe I recall.

RegDwighт

And many German publishing houses or famous writers still cling onto the Old Spelling.

tchrist

So it was not one reform treaty to which they were all signatories?

RegDwighт

It's a complete, utter, unfixable mess.

tchrist

Sounds like they just made things worse than when they started.

RegDwighт

@tchrist education is in the jurisprudence of individual states.

Remember that Germany was modeled after the US.

tchrist

4:17 AM

Then what was the agreement?

RegDwighт

I can't even wrap it up that it makes sense.

German orthography reform of 1996

The German orthography reform of 1996 (Rechtschreibreform) was an attempt to simplify the spelling of the German language and thus to make it easier to learn, without substantially changing the rules familiar to all living users of the language. The reform was based on an international agreement signed in Vienna in July 1996 by the governments of the German-speaking countries of Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein and Switzerland. Luxembourg, in which German is one of the three official languages, regarded itself "as a non-German-speaking country not to be a contributory determinant upon the...

tchrist

Do each of the Länder get to pick and choose, or it all of Germany?

RegDwighт

> In 1998 the [Federal Constitutional Court of Germany] stated that because there was no law governing orthography, outside the schools people could spell as they liked.

tchrist

It would be bizarre to make a loi against spelling things a certain way.

RegDwighт

@tchrist as far as education is concerned everyone can cook their own soup, as they say in Germany, though of course reaching some sort of consensus is usually tried (and generally fails).

tchrist

4:20 AM

I wonder if spelling mistakes in advertising are legal in France? :)/2

RegDwighт

I think they still dust off the guillotine regularly just in case.

tchrist

We have lawn police. I can see the French having spelling police, ones who go around and fix people’s signs for them and then charge them for the privilege.

BRB

RegDwighт

The problem with the German reform was that educated people simply couldn't teach their kids spelling anymore, because they didn't know what the correct spelling now was, and if they taught their kids what they had learned themselves, the kids would get an F.

While uneducated people don't care either way.

So what you get is that a whole generations is suddenly spoiled.

Plus the real underlying problem was the motivation for the reform.

They did it only because German children sucked at spelling.

So rather than teaching children and making them educated people, they went into the opposite direction.

Mahnax

Hmm.

RegDwighт

Kind of like saying, our children suck at maths, so rather than teaching our children some maths we will give them all a B, problem solved.

Mahnax

4:25 AM

Fine then.