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12:00 AM
Same thing.
 
One is physiology, the other mythology. Seems unwise to mix them.
 
@tchrist Technically, those politicians think God owns all the ladyparts, and that they are doing God's will. One of the very frustrating things about religion is that people honestly believe it lets them off the hook for some things.
 
"Honor" killings.
 
It's better if I don't even get started on the topic.
So I'm going to do the smart thing and stop talking about it.
 
Kit, it’s ok.
You’re outraged.
We all are.
I don’t mean we are equally outraged, either.
 
12:20 AM
@tchrist Lots of us are outraged, yes. But it's hard, I think, for most men to feel about it the way most women do. Did you see the question about the MLK letter from Birmingham jail? I don't know if you have read the letter; King's description of what it is like to be black in the 1950's is a lot like what it is still like to be female today.
And we white men, I think, are, unless we try really hard, a lot like the white clergy he's writing to, most of the time.
Clueless.
So. I'm off to buy wine and spend my weekend with my favorite women.
 
Crossdressers possibly excepted. :)
That’s not a bad idea.
 
@tchrist Yes. And in many places, black men. Things have changed since the 1950s, but not nearly enough.
 
12:44 AM
Hello.
 
Hello
 
Bonjour.
It's always funny to return to this room when I come home.
 
Is it? Some times, it seems to me to be not funny at all.
 
No? Why not?
 
So, where have you been on this fine Saturday?
 
12:48 AM
People here are nealry always good hearted.
I was at the graduation party of a friend.
 
Ah, but good-hearted isn't always the same as funny.
 
And you?
They people may not always be as funny, but the return is.
 
Umm, I don't know what I've been doing today actually. Or I'm not going to tell you. One or the other.
 
Tip: when you don't want to tell someone something, you just don't. You don't need to announce that you're not telling him something.
 
So you return in a funny manner?
Do modern Greek nouns not have the same cases as classical Greek?
 
12:53 AM
I don't think they have cases.
 
Oh, how, umm, disappointing.
 
I know.
Modern languages are not as good.
 
Slavic languages have cases.
 
But still.
 
Bosnian has approximately 7.
 
12:55 AM
I like how they can't decide how many.
And it's called Serbo-Croatian anyway.
ducks
 
Well, the dative and the locative have almost completely merged. There's a tiny handful of nouns in which the stress is slightly different between these two cases; but they're always spelt the same.
 
I see.
 
locative! Not instrumental.
I can't think why I typed that.
 
Outrageous.
 
I'll ignore the Serbo-Croatian remark, since you have recently accused me of having a low offendedness threshold.
 
12:57 AM
I believe locative and instrumental were both present in Proto-Indo-European.
@DavidWallace Aww too bad.
 
I believe you are correct.
 
At least you praeterited it.
That is something.
Err I mean, I'll ignore your remark ignoring mine, then.
 
My understanding is that PIE had 8 cases, and different of them were merged together in different descendant languages. Is that about right?
 
I guess...depends on how you count?
Vocative?
 
@Cerberus OK, and I will ignore your ignorance :-)
Nominative vocative accusative ablative genitive dative instrumental locative.
 
12:59 AM
Nom 1, gen 2, dat 3, acc 4, instr 5, loc 6, voc 7...?
Did it really have an ablative?
 
So in Latin, the ablative, instrumental and locative merged into one case, right?
And in the Slavic languages, the ablative and genitive merged.
 
Ablative and instrumental, yes; locative, partially.
 
Right; home, ground and countryside. Are there any others?
 
In Greek, ablative is distributed between genitive and dative.
 
Cities, kinda.
 
1:00 AM
@DavidWallace Yes, all cities and small islands.
 
Well, today I learnt.
 
Guess that’s done with then.
 
So Sicily no, Rhodes yes, I think.
Crete no, I think.
I always forget.
But Cretae just doesn't sound right.
 
I wonder why it works that way.
 
Interestingly, there's a large city in Croatia whose name is the word for "river". Whereas for all other cities you'd say "in ..." (in Amsterdam), for this particular city, you have to say "on" so that it doesn't mean "in the river".
 
1:02 AM
@tchrist Well, you need to be at a point, not in a region.
 
I can be at Rome. I can’t be at France.
 
So you would use the ablative with or without in if you are talking about several locations within Rome.
@DavidWallace Oh, yes, that's nice.
 
There is no word for "the" in Croatian.
 
(But actually you wouldn't use the word Roma at all in that case.)
Poor Croatian.
 
Which case? :)
 
1:04 AM
Heh.
The Fall?
La pèché originel.
 
Let’s not go back to Eve.
Kit will get boiled again.
v.s.
 
Oh?
 
Let's not boil our favourite fox.
 
@DavidWallace But they have demonstrative pronouns, I presume?
 
It’s up a little ways.
 
1:05 AM
@Cerberus Yes. So you could use one, if you really wanted to emphasise definiteness.
 
Speak for yourself. Mine is the cute little black one that lives out by back field.
 
OK.
 
Well, Kit will be my favourite fox until a fox more deserving of favouritism comes along.
 
She scampered by right in front (back) of me again the other dawn. I hadn’t seen her in a couple of months, since she was getting daily squirrels for her kits.
 
I only have seagulls.
And my friend I've just come back from had two cats sleeping in his bed.
 
1:07 AM
Tūī are frequenting my kōwhai.
 
@tchrist When at Rome...?
 
Tūī?
My what?
I can do macra.
 
French does odd things after je vais: à Paris, en France, au Portugal, aux États-Unis, en Italie.
 
Tūī are New Zealand song birds. They look like big blackbirds with cute little white beards.
 
How about without aller? Je suis à Paris, en France...
 
1:09 AM
What’s a blackbird?
 
@DavidWallace Cute.
 
A kōwhai is a native tree with pretty yellow flowers. I have a largish kōwhai in my back yard and a smallish kōwhai on my berm.
 
A black bird, you mean?
 
@tchrist guess!
 
I’m thinking.
 
1:10 AM
Can't we have some nice exotic trees here?
 
No. They ARE big black birds. They LOOK LIKE big blackbirds.
Except female blackbirds are brown.
 
Yeah.
But one doesn't think of females.
 
I come back to more unwomenly talk.
 
I meant birds!
Oh, wait...
 
Ahem.
Ok, so it is a passerine but not a corvid.
Looks like a regular icterid niche.
Well, honeyeaters, that is.
The honeyeaters are a large and diverse family of small to medium sized birds most common in Australia and New Guinea, but also found in New Zealand, the Pacific islands as far east as Samoa and Tonga, and the islands to the north and west of New Guinea known as Wallacea. Bali, on the other side of the Wallace Line, has a single species. Honeyeaters and the Australian chats make up the family Meliphagidae. In total there are 182 species in 42 genera, roughly half of them native to Australia, many of the remainder occupying New Guinea. With their closest relatives, the Maluridae (Austral...
Not that one.
 
1:14 AM
@Cerberus bird: (UK, US, slang) A girl or woman considered sexually attractive, as used by a man. Who’s that bird?
 
That one is in the hummer niche.
Not really US slang anymore.
 
@SpareOom Yeah exactly.
Hence my "oh, wait".
 
@SpareOom Does it mean the word is only used by men, or does it mean that the woman is used by a man?
 
@tchrist You have just specified it more.
And even that may come from Spanish...?
 
@Cerberus You're smarter than I gave you credit for.
 
1:15 AM
Ew.
 
Thanks...or not.
I know I look dumb.
 
What, you mean the bird slang?
 
@DavidWallace Good question.
 
@tchrist Chick.
 
I have heard women using this expression.
 
1:16 AM
@Cerberus Two heads are better than...three?
 
Most notably my mother.
 
No, independent.
 
@SpareOom I see only one.
 
The Latino slang "chica" is unrelated.
 
@DavidWallace I've only heard it in old B&W movies.
 
1:16 AM
@DavidWallace Aww.
@tchrist Oh OK.
 
It means girl or small or cute.
 
In Dutch, we also say deer.
 
@tchrist So one could be a chica chica chica?
 
@tchrist How can you be sure btw?
 
@DavidWallace No wonder. A different generation. I've never heard anyone in my generation or younger use it.
 
1:17 AM
Right, "chick" seems to be the younger equivalent to "bird".
 
But also, maybe it's still in use where you are.
 
Because "chick" comes from "chicken".
of
 
Are sure it isn't some blend?
It happens.
 
Yes.
 
I mean, it can be both.
 
1:18 AM
Because the earliest citations are before Spanish had much influence.
 
Hmm OK then.
 
1927 S. Lewis Elmer Gantry vii. 114 ― He didn’t want to marry this brainless little fluffy chick.
 
@tchrist Brilliant!
 
Was fixing David.
 
Heh.
So what does noyé mean?
 
1:20 AM
I maintain that "to" and "of" are both correct here, which is why I ignored you.
 
It means you forgot the s.
 
> mille amours noyés de bleus
 
@DavidWallace They both sound fine by my ear.
 
Is it not an adjective/participle?
 
The problem is that the definite article throws off the rules.
 
1:21 AM
Ah, it means drowned.
 
Foo is equivalent to bar; never *of.
Foo is the equivalent of bar; never *to.
 
@tchrist I have to agree.
This use of the article/pronoun always interests me in French.
 
Why?
 
Oh, wait, it's not a pronoun, d'oh.
Wrong example.
 
It’s a preceding object, back in the clause.
 
1:25 AM
It's just the article before on.
That's normal.
 
Oh right.
not: on le rêve
 
Uh.
 
They on quite a bit these days.
 
No, that is not what this is.
It is not a pronoun: it is simply an article.
I used to think it was a pronoun.
 
Yes yes yes. I agree.
 
1:27 AM
OK.
L'on = l'homme.
L'on = on.
 
It is odd.
 
The article is sometimes added for euphonious reasons, notably to avoid /kõ/ = cunt.
Con.
 
Yes, yes.
 
But I see qu'on quite a bit too.
 
Cunt avoidance is (insert favorite word) in human culture.
 
1:28 AM
And l'on in other situations as well.
Heh.
Inserted into human nature?
 
Customary? Unknown?
One must think of females to avoid them.
 
And since one does not. . . .
That looks euphonious.
 
Voilà the inconsistency within a few lines.
 
So much for cunt-avoidance.
Twice.
concon
 
1:31 AM
Laclos is like that too.
Heh, yes.
But con- in connait is /kon/.
 
Close enough.
... que le con ait ...
Sometimes it sneaks out.
 
I suppose they might use l'on in que l'on a as well, where you have /kon/.
Dalida sings /profonde/, not /profõde/.
Which is normal?
 
It is easy to think of French on as English one or Spanish uno. But those seldom take the definite article, although you can build a phrase that does so. It just doesn’t mean the same thing
 
I think õ?
 
õ
 
1:34 AM
Yeah, and they're etymologically different.
 
What?
 
Right, I suppose it is her Italian accent.
 
The French on? Yes.
 
One + uno v. on.
 
@tchrist Fair enough.
 
1:35 AM
@SpareOom Hence the fix.
 
concedes
 
plus con!
Did you know that English “I can’t see a fucking thing” idiomatically translates into Spanish “No veo un coño”? Isn’t that curious?
 
@KitFox Wo man.
 
Woe, man!
Don’t go there.
 
I was trying to italicize only the latter half.
Should I delete that?
For Kit's benefit?
@tchrist Seriously sensitive?
 
1:40 AM
Am teasing.
And deleting it doesn’t help if it is something that would bother her.
But I was just kidding.
 
Oh, because she's a mod?
 
Right.
23 hours ago, by Robusto
@KitFox Let's not say things we can't take back.
Heh.
 
I was trying to help. XP
kinda
 
@tchrist It might, if she saw the deletion as an act of remorse.
 
... --- ...
 
1:42 AM
@SpareOom XP!
 
XP?
 
>.<
 
 
:P
I can't even see that one.
 
Use the make-it-biggerness thingie.
It’s the Christogram, of course.
 ☧  2627        CHI RHO
        = Constantine's cross, Christogram
        x (coptic symbol khi ro - 2CE9)
 
1:44 AM
I thought maybe it was. I don't know where the make big thingie is.
 
 ⳩  2CE9        COPTIC SYMBOL KHI RO
        x (chi rho - 2627)
 ᙭  166D        CANADIAN SYLLABICS CHI SIGN
        * Algonquian
        * used as a symbol to denote Christ
        x (chi rho - 2627)
 
@tchrist Only the code numbers show on this one, not a symbol.
 
so solly
 
I wasn't able to download that other font set you mentioned the other day either.
snif
 
At least the first should be in the standard font set.
I can’t believe what shitty computers Microsoft puts out.
Is Douros’s site still down?
 
1:47 AM
The Christogram is viewable, but I have no Coptic symbols.
 
No, he is there.
Oh.
 
@tchrist I have a Mac.
 
Weird.
So do I.
I guess I must have fortified mine unknowingly.
Anyway, there is the Symbola font.
 
Speaking of Sym, hi @simchona.
 
@SpareOom Hi :]
 
1:57 AM
> Chick is now treated generally as a kind of diminutive of chicken; but in s.w. dialect, chick is singular, chicken plural; and it appears to be certain that there chick, chicken, are the worn down forms of ME. chike(n, chikene, OE. cicen, cicenu, the result being to bring them apparently into the class of ox, oxen, and dial. house, housen, vurze, vurzen.
 
@tchrist I don't find the Christograph in my character palettes. That link gets me to a page with a bunch of links that don't work for me.
 
I have no idea what vurzen are.
I wonder if s.w. dialect means the westcountry in general, or just Cornwall.
 
Wurzen () is a town in the Leipzig district, in the Free State of Saxony, Germany. It is situated on the river Mulde, here crossed by two bridges, 25 km east of Leipzig, by rail N.E. of Leipzig on the main line (via Riesa) to Dresden. It has a cathedral dating from the twelfth century, a castle, at one time a residence of the bishops of Meissen and later utilized as law courts, several schools, an agricultural college and as a police station including a prison. The village has a neo-nazi history since the 70s. Nazis fought youngsters who cared for a modern liberla democracy. The then...
 
No, this must be a common noun.
 
@tchrist No; they're just different lexemes. Chicks aren't specifically baby chickens, but any baby bird.
 
1:58 AM
What is scordero' short for?
Scorderono?
 
@SpareOom "The village has a neo-nazi history since the 70s." !!!?
 
@Mechanicalsnail 1. A chicken; esp. a young chicken; sometimes, the young of any bird.
Yes, I know.
 
Vandalism?
"modern liberla democracy"
 
Hello, mollusc.
 

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