English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

@Cerberus Okay, class, let's see who knows their amendments.

I remember 11 September.

Anyone: Right To Bear Arms?

Bill of Rights?

6:02 PM

Cerb Yes, but which amendment number?

1?

I have no idea.

Anyone?

United States Bill of Rights

The first ten are called The Bill of Rights:

The Bill of Rights is the collective name for the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. These limitations serve to protect the natural rights of liberty and property. They guarantee a number of personal freedoms, limit the government's power in judicial and other proceedings, and reserve some powers to the states and the public. While originally the amendments applied only to the federal government, most of their provisions have since been held to apply to the states by way of the Fourteenth Amendment. The amendments were introduced by James Madison to the 1st United S...

@MετάEd 2

Robusto wins.

I couldn't name more than a few Dutch constitutional changes, let alone American ones.

6:02 PM

Okay class: Prohibition?

1 is Freedom of Speech, etc.

@MετάEd 20th

Also known as The Volstead Act.

20th is not what I'm looking for.

I'm looking for the alcohol prohibition amendment.

Sorry, 18th.

Oh, I actually know non-discrimination is in article 1 of our constitution. But I don't know what else is in article 1, and I wouldn't know about the other articles, although I have a general idea of what's in the constitution as a whole and in what period it was added. To some degree.

Robusto pulls it out of his hat.

6:04 PM

I knew it was right next to women's suffrage, I just went the wrong way.

Next: Slavery abolished?

1865ish?

I know the approximate dates.

As an historian.

But no numbers.

13

So do you actively learn these numbers in school?

Which was quickly followed by the 14th amendment, which is really, really important, and which was abrogated by a vote of Congress a little over a year ago.

6:06 PM

What does the 4th Amendment do?

Okay, Robusto, let's see some other hands.

The 4th Amendment is boring and bureaucratic. Procedural.

What?

Woohoo, I had the date exactly right, 1865.

Are you joking?

6:07 PM

Do you also learn the dates in school?

Yes.

Good.

The 4th Amendment is the entire basis for privacy laws in the US.

Well, that might be overstating it a bit.

Wouldn't it be more convenient to call it by a descriptive name, like "the amendment on privacy"?

Or is this heresy?

Well, if you start doing that, then you limit the interpretation.

6:08 PM

Numbers are like initialisms: hard to remember.

How do you mean?

@Cerberus wtf do you mean?

@KitFox Wait, sorry, I was thinking of Article IV of the Constitution. I got my fours mixed.

A number does not describe the content of the amendment.

If you call it the amendment that prevents unreasonable search and seizure, then how can you stretch it later on to mean things like government invasion of personal property?

@Cerberus Right, I just find initialisms easy to remember :D

6:09 PM

@KitFox I don't know, can't you?

@MετάEd Really?

You are an extraordinary beast.

@Cerberus I am quite ordinary, I'm afraid. Maybe I just don't understand the problem you mean. Give an example.

1 for the money

2 for the show

etc, etc.

3 to get ready

4 to go

In BrE they just say "ready, steady ... go!"

@MετάEd Well, if I tell you to remember that L&S stands for Lewis & Short, the Latin dictionary, and I mention L&S a few weeks later, is that easier to remember than when I say "Lewis & Short", or "a Latin dictionary"?

Hmm ... the site is behaving in a funky manner.

6:16 PM

@Robusto Yes, it's very annoying.

I can't talk!

whimpers

I know!

It's terrible. I am speechless.

and ... we're back.

Only intermittently.

@Cerberus I won't remember any new word a few weeks later, whether it's an initialism or just a plain word I don't know.

I had to do a cacheless reload of the chat page.

The main English.SE was down too.

6:19 PM

SE was down for me for a minute just now

SO too

@MετάEd How about "the OLD" versus "the Oxford Latin Dictionary"? Surely the latter is easier to recall?

You don't even need to remember it, because its title is descriptive enough.

@Cerberus Hmm. What do NED and OED stand for again? :-)

NED, no idea.

New English Dictionary?

Nasty Erudite Drunk

See, it's just what you use and are familiar with. Yes, that's it. Which is the old OED, by the way.

6:20 PM

OED, we have used that one so often.

@Cerberus Right. Same with words that are not initialisms. You remember the ones you use.

@MετάEd You are just saying "anything can be memorised eventually".

Initialisms are not special is what I am saying.

This is undisputed.

@MattЭллен Hey, who you calling erudite?

6:21 PM

1 min ago, by Cerberus

@MετάEd How about "the OLD" versus "the Oxford Latin Dictionary"? Surely the latter is easier to recall?

@KitFox Shouldn't be reading so many books.

@Cerberus I won't second guess myself on that. I find it easier to recall EtymOnline than Online Etymology Dictionary though.

I mean just pasisvely.

@KitFox Ned

Why do we still have the flying penis? I thought that would go away with the holidays.

When someone says "the Oxford Latin Dictionary", you will understand, even if you haven't memorised the phrase at all. Not so for "the OLD".

6:23 PM

everyday's an athiest holiday

@Robusto Damned Christians.

@MattЭллен Atheists don't ride sleighs.

@Cerberus Damned Christians and their flying penises!

They prefer walking, or monorails.

@Robusto Yes!

@Cerberus I dispute this fact. I've ridden sleds, isn't that close enough?

@MattЭллен Points for slipping in a reference to an earlier, excellent-but-little-noticed book plug.

6:24 PM

@MattЭллен Turncoat!

@Cerberus sleighs me.

Sleighs me?

Shoot me?

Beats me?

sleigh / slay are homophones.

@Cerberus turncoat? did I mean sledges?

> CERBERUS, n. The watch-dog of Hades, whose duty it was to guard the entrance — against whom or what does not clearly appear; everybody, sooner or later, had to go there, and nobody wanted to carry off the entrance.

> Cerberus is known to have had three heads, and some of the poets have credited him with as many as a hundred. Professor Graybill, whose clerky erudition and profound knowledge of Greek give his opinion great weight, has averaged all the estimates, and makes the number twenty-seven — a judgment that would be entirely conclusive if Professor Graybill had known (a) something about dogs, and (b) something about arithmetic.

> — Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

6:28 PM

That is I.

How was sleeping @David?

> The first thing to say is that language is not written language: written language is a highly divergent subset of language, with a lot of special properties not shared by language in general. Language does not have letters: it has sounds (or in the case of sign language, signs).

user19161

@KitFox What's a moderatrix?

@KitFox Hmm, did you say something and I miss it?

Another arbitrary doctrine enforced by so many linguists.

6:30 PM

Oh, no I said I would. That's right. Sorry.

Hiya.

I've just woken up. Forgive me for being slow.

@JasonBourne Same as a moderator only with vulva.

No boobs!?

No. She drives a Vulva, which is a female Volvo.

6:31 PM

Kit, I've told you about that before. Please do not use your vulva for moderation.

I don't want a moderatrix with man-boobs.

Actually, all Volvos are female.

user19161

@mitch You entered the moment I was thinking about you!

@Cerberus totally disagree. or rather, just partially.

@Mitch With what?

6:31 PM

@JasonBourne Really? I would like to return the favor but really my mind was empty.

user19161

@Mitch I have something to tell you.

@Cerberus that 'language is not written'.

These linguists are battling against the hordes who confuse written and spoken language, and who assign primacy to writing.

Arguably a worthy cause.

@Mitch Well, go tell most Anglo-Saxon linguists.

the problem linguists have is that lots of (for lack of a better term) newbies make all sorts of inferences about language that are totalyl wrong because they're talking about spelling, or patterns that only come up in writing.

They have these silly ideas about being the priests of everyday terminology.

user19161

6:33 PM

Remember that time I told you about the 30 year old male and 45 year old female? Well, the former thought that the age gap was too big, so nothing happened in the end. @mitch

@Mitch Yeah, exactly.

@KitFox Thank you again for pinging me yesterday about the writing assignment. Hopefully next week fewer people will be sick and I'll have time to come.

@Cerberus I think that's the cause I'm fighting, and I thought you were saying that cause is arbitrary (and possibly wrong)

@JasonBourne Yes, I remember.

user19161

@Mitch So that's the end of the story. QED.

@JasonBourne There's also the relevant adage 'at night all cats are gray'

6:35 PM

@Mitch Not exactly, but it is very complex, and the position these linguists take up is not only overbearing, but also a gross simplification, if not wrong.

@JasonBourne is it a happy or sad or 'oh well' ending?

@Cerberus so you think 'writing' is language also?

(to toally oversimplfy things?

What is "is"?

Ah.

user19161

@Mitch Neither. There was nothing to begin with.

6:36 PM

Right. 'is' is totally oversimplifying.

What does it mean to say "x is (a) language"? The article is important too.

@JasonBourne Oh. Totally hypothetical then? Or was it a friend? or was it a 'friend'?

user19161

@mitch In other news, I have decided to take it to 30k, since I accidentally went over to 26k.

@Cerberus right.

user19161

@Mitch Haha, I cannot reveal more details!

6:37 PM

it's just that most likely the spoken form (though recorded in ...

I think the concept "the English language" is a useful one. I think the variant as expressed in speech is extremely varied, and it includes reading a written text out loud. So the two cannot be entirely...distinguished.

user19161

In other news, one of my favourite sites, stagevu.com has removed many videos it seems.

But, in so far as they can be distinguished, I think the spoken variant/expression often influences the written variant/expression, but also vice versa.

user19161

Also, mysoju.com seems to be totally gone, so no more dramas for me to watch.

.. though recorded in writing...

6:39 PM

Copyright issues?

user19161

Fortunately, there is still youtube.com and youku.com.

user19161

@Cerberus Maybe.

@Mitch The spoken form can be recorded word by word in writing, yes, although the information expressed in one variant can never be transferred to the other one-to-one, without any loss of information.

@JasonBourne How inconvenient.

user19161

Talking about gays, there are many gay actors and actresses here.

Right here in this room?

(Looks around curiously)

user19161

6:41 PM

Nah, I mean where I live.

By gay actresses, do you mean drama queens? Then, yes, this room abounds in such creatures.

Or do you just mean someone who acts gay?

user19161

I wonder why the singers and actors circles seem to have a higher proportion of gays than other circles.

user19161

Does gayness go with talent in such areas? It might even be genetic...

user19161

Rejected another radical edit.

user19161

6:43 PM

Anonymous users seem not to know that this is not Wikipedia.

user19161

They can't change the intention of the original author!

user19161

Even registered users don't know.

Maybe someone who is gay is more likely to want to be a singer or an actor, for some reason.

Maybe gay people are more used to pretending to be something they are not.

2

user19161

I rejected John Lawler's edit of my post once because he added too much info to my post.

user19161

6:45 PM

I told him he should just post a separate answer.

user19161

After I rolled back his edit, some idiot gave me a downvote.

@KitFox I don't know, I think it often manifests itself at a younger age, the inclination towards acting and shows.

And dresses.

But that may be related to femininity?

user19161

@KitFox Good observation.

user19161

@Cerberus Can drama queens be male, or must they be female?

They can certainly be male!

Just like bitches.

user19161

6:47 PM

So are there drama kings?

And men can be ladies too. Our coach used to call us ladies when we did not exert ourselves the way he wanted.

Ladies sounds like a toilet.

And (straight) men sometimes call a group of their friends "ladies" too, in jest.

user19161

@Cerberus I would scold him if he talks like that.

At least in Dutch.

@JasonBourne Well, why?

It's just a little joke.

user19161

6:49 PM

@Cerberus Well, he might convey the idea that females don't exert themselves.

Besides, you don't scold your coach when you're a kid!

@JasonBourne He does indeed convey that idea, in jest.

user19161

I once had a teacher who said "Wipe that smile off your face" during his physical ed lesson.

Why did he say that?

user19161

I should have scolded him when he said that to me.

user19161

Smiling is my natural face.

6:50 PM

Were you laughing all the time and paying no attention?

user19161

I wasn't talking at all.

@JasonBourne That's nice.

@JasonBourne Were you paying attention?

user19161

He just didn't like my smile. He is an asshole.

That's bad.

user19161

@Cerberus Yes, I am a very good boy.

6:51 PM

Of course.

user19161

Nice people are always abused in this world.

user19161

It's time I show people my anger.

But saying ladies is not hostile, and it is quite innocuous when said to a group.

Oh, dear. cowers in fear

user19161

Also, there was once I went for a physical examination before enlistment into military service.

user19161

I was made to do some tests.

user19161

6:53 PM

Again, I took the tests seriously, but I smiled.

user19161

Now the results that came out from the tests were not consistent, so the person thought I was not serious and scolded me.

user19161

I should have scolded him back then.

"Scold" is a word I have never used.

Unless reading it counts as using it.

@JasonBourne That's annoying.

@DavidWallace Your eyes as users...