English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2014-06-20 (page 1 of 7)

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12:14 AM

Many more hapaxes.

These are the real ones.

> ä abandon abhor acme aesthetically agony algebraic allotrope amortize ancillary Andúril Ångström
antemillennial anthropomorphizing antithesis antony antonym apocalypse apothecary après-ski artesian
asbestos ASCIIer asexually aspartame asphyxiant asymmetry asynchronously autovifivication auxiliary
avant-garde azure badger balrog Barbie baton bazooka begat behooves belfries bestow Björk Bokmål
Bombadil brassière búsqueda ç caña canonicalization canonicalize carambola cargo-cult carnage
carriageable cavalierly cerebral chartreuse chromatic circumlocutions circumvented Cirth claptrap

Note the balrog.

Those are sorted using the default Unicode Collation Algorithm, not a tailored one.

Interesting that Þórinn falls after Zeus but before ασβετος. I’m surprised the thorn actually falls after the z(ed), in a way. But cross-script sorting is not a well-defined problem, or at least, not one with a well-defined solution last I checked.

@JohanLarsson You don't sound black to me.

@Cerberus fckff

Thank you.

@tchrist What is ασβετος?

@Cerberus Probably a typo.

And what corpus is this?

Oh.

I think he means ασβεστος?

12:27 AM

Yeah.

I saw that, too.

Probably.

Should be ἅσβεστος or something.

Why the h?

I confess my spellchecker has let me down.

It is from the Proto-Indo-European nasal negation, vocalised as a(n)- in Greek.

12:28 AM

@Cerberus I wondered that myself. But watch:

> Etymology: The mod. form is a. L. asbestos (mod.L. asbestus), a. Gr. ἅσβεστος, prop. adj. ‘inextinguishable, unquenchable,’ f. ἁ not + σβεστ-ός, f. σβεν-νύ-ναι to quench. OFr. had also, adopted from L., asbestos, later abestos, whence an Eng. form abestos; but the common OFr. form was a. L. acc. asbeston, phonetically changed to abeston, and (by confusion with albus white) albeston; hence the earlier Eng. forms asbeston, abeston, abiston, albeston, and (by assimilation to stone) albestone. Mod.Fr. is asbeste, formerly also abeste, whence Eng. abest, abbest, asbest. The current form is asb…

Why did they add the spirit?

Error in OED?

You need a spiritus, but not that one.

Oh my.

Wait.

Yes, an error. And a strange one.

I’ll bet anything I have my spirits swapped in the transliteration.

Spiritus mundi.

12:30 AM

Let me check.

No word in Greek can start with a vowel unless there is a spirit hovering over it.

@tchrist Ah, I think this has happened before?

@Cerberus YES! And I fixed it somewhere else than here.

The SMGL is <L>Gr.</L> <gk>a&lenis.&acu.sbestoj</gk>, prop. adj. inextinguishable, unquenchable,' f. <gk>a&lenis.</gk> not + <gk>sbest-o&acu.j</gk>, f. <gk>sben-nu&acu.-nai</gk> to quench.`

I'm punchy today. I answered "Electra" to "Who was the wife of Agamemnon?"

My OED has the right spiritus.

So how does that happen to you?

checks

12:31 AM

That's what happens when you wake up at 4:00 a.m.

That's early.

Why?

Dunno.

I, too, am "punchy". It happens to the best of us.

OK so it was unwanted.

I map the &lenis. entity to COMBINING REVERSED COMMA ABOVE.

But I solved a difficult programming exercise between the hours of 6:00 and 11:00. Still, it seemed like I made all the progress in the last hour of that period.

12:32 AM

@tchrist Why do you actively map things?

It should be COMBINING COMMA ABOVE, not the REVERSED version.

@Cerberus Duh, so I can read them.

I have SGML.

@Cerberus Uh, have you met him yet?

I have to translate that.

What if you don't? Why don't I need to do that?

@Robusto I know, this is probably not going to work. But I seriously wonder why he needs to do this at all.

@Cerberus Because somebody else wrote your program.

12:34 AM

@Robusto Hmm for some people it is the converse.

I only have the SGML source.

So I write my own,.

So there is no program like that in your OS?

@Cerberus It took me the first four hours just to understand the scope of the problem. Once I did, things kind of fell into place.

Look at the obvious error:

&acu.           \N{COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT}
&asper.         \N{COMBINING REVERSED COMMA ABOVE}
&asper.         \N{COMBINING REVERSED COMMA ABOVE}
&breve.         \N{COMBINING BREVE}
&cdil.          \N{COMBINING CEDILLA}
&circ.          \N{COMBINING CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT}
&circbl.        \N{COMBINING CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT BELOW}
&dotab.         \N{COMBINING DOT ABOVE}
&dotbl.         \N{COMBINING DOT BELOW}
&frown.         \N{COMBINING BREVE}
&grave.         \N{COMBINING GRAVE ACCENT}
&hacek.         \N{COMBINING CARON}

@Cerberus I don’t really understand the question.

So asper and lenis are both mapping to the same combining mark, which is wrong.

@Robusto Then perhaps that's not so strange?

12:35 AM

&asper.         \N{COMBINING REVERSED COMMA ABOVE}
&lenis.         \N{COMBINING REVERSED COMMA ABOVE}

@tchrist I don't really understand the situation, so I don't know what to ask. But never mind.

The lenis should not have the reversed, right?

@Cerberus I only have the OED, not a program for it.

See the difference?

I guess if you have a lenis that means you dress left.

Lenis should be somewhat like a normal comma, although it doesn't look like an actual comma.

It is encoded in 7-bit ASCII SGML with a custom set of entities and tags.

12:36 AM

@tchrist Ah OK, now I understand.

You don't have something like Golden Dictionary, or the OED's own programme, or one of the other options?

@Cerberus This is correct. I have the actual data.

Is ἄσβεστος correct?

I have the actual data, too.

And a programme to display and search them.

@Cerberus I have lots of programs that search them.

Because I wrote them all.

@tchrist Yes. archimedes.fas.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/…

Golden Dictionary is nice.

user image

That’s what it translates to.

12:40 AM

That's nice.

But how many other errors could there be in your own mappings?

<LF>asbestos</LF>
<SF>asbestos</SF>
<MF>asbestos</MF>
</HL>
<MPR>&ae.&breve.zbe&sd.st<i>o&hook.&breve.</i>s, -<i>&reva.&breve.</i>s</MPR>
<IPR>
<IPH>&ae.z&sm.b&ope.st&schwa.s</IPH>,
<IPH>-&rfa.s</IPH>
</IPR>.
</HG>
<VL>Forms: &ia..
<VD>4-8</VD>
<VF>asbeston</VF>,
<VF>abeston</VF>,
<VD>4-5</VD>
<VF>abiston</VF>,
<VD>4-7</VD>
<VF>albeston(e</VF>; &ib..
<VD>6</VD>
<VF>absistos</VF>,
<VD>7</VD>
<VF>asphestus</VF>,
<VD>7-9</VD>
<VF>asbestos</VF>,
<VF>asbestus</VF>; &ig..
<VD>8</VD>
<VF>abestos</VF>,

@Cerberus Much nicer than the original, posted above.

@Cerberus That’s a queer question if I’ve ever seen one.

You ask a programmer how many bugs might be in his code that he doesn’t know about, and you expect a reasonable answer?

What original?

What I meant was of course that this seems tedious work and prone to errors, so I guess anyone but you would not consider it important enough to do it himself.

@Cerberus What I pasted is the original form that it comes in, in SGML markup with custom tags, custom identities, custom conventions. One figures it out for oneself.

Oh, "original" in that way.

I have a file like that, but in GD's format.

The untagged stuff is useless. You need it in its structured form to do anything interesting with it.

GD?

God Damned?

12:43 AM

Golden Dictionary.

Never heard of it.

It can display lots of dictionaries.

Show me the part in your version in the raw data, with the start of asbestos, like I do.

I want to see if it has structure that is usable.

It's a lot of work to look up, I'd have to load in in a text editor...

Oh.

I just type "catent asbestos" and out pops what I pasted.

That’s why I have raw data. I can do with it as I please, being unbeholden to any other’s whim than my own.

12:45 AM

I normally never touch a good dictionary file.

I have made one such file myself, based on a website rip. It was horrible work.

Well, I don’t “touch” it: I read it.

I can do with it what I want, too.

Very well, I shall find the file for you...

The hard thing is all the unique numeric identities that stand for special glyphs that got printed.

Like the entries for Hittite and Sumerian each have a unique glyph. If it even has a Unicode representation, I would need a magnifying glass to even start to figure it out.

Another weirdo glyph appears in these entries, and I don’t know what it is yet:

    # Melchite dittography horn inceptive lay pleonasm servile shadow
    # shammatize turban
    682   => '',    # ???

It appears as &682. in the source, for those particular terms. I would have to look at the print version for those entries to figure it out.

It's in a zip file. Do I really need to unzip a file 500MB large?

Need is a strong word.

And why is it so big?

The entire file in plaintext, not compressed, is exactly 572,728,830 bytes long.

12:49 AM

Because of all the tags and stuff? That's only half the dictionary, btw.

No, with tags it is the number I just gave.

I am talking about uncompressed size.

Ok, so am I.

Perhaps my file has more tags.

I misunderstood you.

Or just newlines. :)

They have no newlines in the original.

12:50 AM

The other file is the same size, so 1GB total.

My catent program formats the SGML.

Oh, well, I happen to have enough drive space today, why not?

There are 119 entries that mention “Tolkien” in them, for example.

Searching the text file in Notepad++ takes too long, I'll browse to asbestos by hand.

The unzipping was surprisingly fast, though.

> ahead, bandersnatch, barrow, bee, beggar, blimp, bogy, bone, centum,
cheery, clippety-clop, confusticate, consuetudinal, coolth, corollary,
cracker, curious-minded, dwarf-man, egocentric, elf, elven, eyrie,
good thing, grass, half, hard, herb, hill, hobbit, horn, house,
infalling, knife, Longshanks, man, mill, mithril, morrowless, night,
nonsense, north, oath, odds, orc, out-thrust, overpass, overweight,
overweight, overweighting, paddle, pale, pen, pipe, play, plink,
prequel, prideful, put, quick, quiet, rain, rat, riddle, riding,

Which is somewhat odd.

12:53 AM

> asbestos
[b]asbestos[/b]
[m2]([c darkslategray]æzˈbɛstəs[/c], [c darkslategray]-ɒs[/c])[/m]
[m2]Forms: α. 4–8 [b]asbeston[/b], [b]abeston[/b], 4–5 [b]abiston[/b], 4–7 [b]albeston(e[/b]; β. 6 [b]absistos[/b], 7 [b]asphestus[/b], 7–9 [b]asbestos[/b], [b]asbestus[/b]; γ. 8 [b]abestos[/b], [b]-istos[/b]; δ. 7 [b]abbest[/b], 7– [b]asbest[/b].[/m]
[m2][c gray]\[The [p]mod.[/p] form is a. L. [i]asbestos[/i] ([p]mod.[/p]L. [i]asbestus[/i]), a. [p]Gr.[/p] ἄσβεστος, [p]prop.[/p] [p]adj.[/p] ‘inextinguishable, unquenchable,’ [p]f.[/p] ἀ not + σβεστ-ός, [p]f.[/p] σβεν-νύ-ναι to quench. [p]OF.[/p] had…

That's asbestos.

Ok, what’s happened is that your format is a translation of the SGML. It converts the entities to Unicode, and the other tags into a different tag setup.

I don't know why you need to map accented letters: apparently Golden Dictionary on Windows does not.

yawn

@Cerberus Because the original file is 7 bits.

@Robusto Yes, conceptual mismatch here.

?

12:55 AM

For example, the pronunciation is <IPH>&ae.z&sm.b&ope.st&schwa.s</IPH>

Strictly 7-bit ASCII SGML.

Therefore, I must map the entities to Unicode.

See now?

user image

The Greek mapping has its own rules completely. When you are inside a <gk> ... </gk> tag, everything is different.

@tchrist Okay, so you mean your work was already done in my file?

  <ET>The mod. form is a.
    <L>L.</L>
    <CF>asbestos</CF> (
    <L>mod.L.</L>
    <CF>asbestus</CF>), a.
    <L>Gr.</L> <gk>a&lenis.&acu.sbestoj</gk>, prop. adj. `inextinguishable, unquenchable,' f. <gk>a&lenis.</gk> not + <gk>sbest-o&acu.j</gk>, f. <gk>sben-nu&acu.-na
i</gk> to quench.
    <L>OFr.</L> had also, adopted from
    <L>L.</L>,
    <CF>asbestos</CF>, later
    <CF>abestos</CF>, whence an
    <L>Eng.</L> form
    <CF>abestos</CF>; but the common
    <L>OFr.</L> form was a.

@Cerberus Yes.

So the Greek is given as <gk>a&lenis.&acu.sbestoj</gk> in my file.

I have to remap that into ἄσβεστος.

By the way, you can hover over the green abbreviations and get an explanation in a pop-up.

@tchrist OK now I understand.

12:59 AM

This is the raw data file that was distributed to exactly five North American universities (in both countries) of the OED2++.

For them to do with as they could/would/should.

They have never again released the actual source, and they will not release it again to anyway.

So what you have is going to be different. It may even be missing things. I don’t know.

So sad for humanity. What copyright destroys.

Do you still have death-daggers in yours?

My file was probably based on the same source?

 × asbest → asbestos
asbestic [adj.]
asbestiform [adj.]
asbestine [adj.]
 † asˈbestinite [n.]
asbestoid [adj.]
asbeˈstoidal [adj.]
asbestos [n.]
asbestos cement ← asbestos
asbestos cloth ← asbestos
asbestos curtain ← asbestos
asbestosis [n.]
asbestous [adj.]

They have ~~removed~~ suppressed them from the OED3.

Like, look up asbestinite — do you see a dagger next to it?

Another set of sigils they got rid of are the catachrest markings.

user image

1:02 AM

Ah, so yours is from the same base. That’s what I figured.

Let me find some catachrests.

How do you mean suppressed? How else do they indicate obsolescence?

@tchrist By the way, are you suggesting Oxford only gave source files to North-American universities?

At the very least, Oxford will have the files themselves.

@Cerberus I am suggesting that they gave source files only to five NA universities. I know nothing about the productized thing.

@Cerberus Of course.

So why do you think my version was based on a NA version?

I don’t mean it that way.

Oh OK.

1:04 AM

It still has daggers in the expressed version.

The OED3 online suppresses those. I’m sure they are still in the source.

There are 251 catachrestic terms.

So how does the OED3 show obsolescence?

Isn’t that an interesting question!?

Well, you can use Obs. next to a definition.

But they kinda don’t as much as I should have expected.

I have seen more than a few marks of catachresis. If that is a word in English...

There are two different sigils they use to indicate catachresis, and I do not understand the difference.

I remember looking them up.

1:07 AM

They use &err. for one and &spu. for the other.

But of course I can't find a word that uses them.

I map the erroneous one into the CURVED STEM PARAGRAPH SIGN ORNAMENT and the spurious one into PILCROW SIGN.

Phenomenas simply has "erron.".

Ah, yes, the pilcrow sign.

I have seen that in the OED's own software, which is what I normally use.

Yes, they have all of &err., &erron., and &erroneous. in the source.

By the way, if I want to test the file that GD uses and GD's rendering of it, what would be the most sensitive things?

Maybe...Old English in quotations?

1:09 AM

¶ abacot [n.]
¶ abarcy [n.]
¶ abarstic -ke [adj.]
¶ abatude [n.]
¶ abishering [n.]
¶ abligurie [n.]
¶ abnormeth [n.]
¶ abstable [n.]
¶ aguiler [n.]
¶ alienatory [n.]
¶ ˈanagriph [n.]
¶ arerisement [n.]
¶ Aristarchy [n.]
¶ arpentator [n.]
¶ arriont [n.]
¶ at [n.]
¶ banket [n.2]
¶ beast [v.]
¶ beneship [n.]
¶ bewunus [n.]
¶ bixwort [n.]
¶ branded [n.]
¶ bronden [n.]
¶ ˈbullenger [n.]
¶ burgheristh [n.]
¶ busyless [adj.]
¶ buxion [n.]
¶ careatides [n. pl.] ← caryatid [n.]
¶ Carlet [n.]
¶ carnel [n.]

Ah.

@Cerberus Yes, to see if they treat esh and yogh distinctly as they should.

Example?

I have never learned OE.

Consider this pair:

¶ cotgare [n.]
❡ couch-fellow ← couch

Ah, I see a mistake already: {thbar}

1:11 AM

Where in mine?

No.

In GD.

Oh.

The OED's software shows something that looks right there.

A thorn with a bar.

&thbar.         þ̷

In the quotations supporting man.

1:12 AM

That’s how I map it.

In other words, to "\N{LATIN SMALL LETTER THORN}\N{COMBINING SHORT SOLIDUS OVERLAY}"

@tchrist I think that is displayed incorrectly for me.

So they haven’t finished the map. Very lame.

I have all the named entities mapped. Just a few of the numeric ones I don’t know yet.

user image

Ick, that doesn't look like that here.

It is displayed correct in the OED's software.

1:15 AM

I’m confused.

You say it came out as {thbar} didn’t you?

user image

@tchrist In GD, yes.

user image

^ OED's programme.

Ahah, so they use the same pilcrow for both. I wondered.

Maybe the &err. one is attached to specific senses, and the &spu. one is attached to the whole headword?

user image

@tchrist Could be...

And cotgare, same one?

Oh, so I can do this, to find all the entries with that entity:

macbook# oedgrep '&thbar\.'
a
adrink
ail
algorism
anguishous
astint
atstutte-n
cleanse
dew
dey
discern
dough
filth
fire
^C
macbook#

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Oxford ^.

1:18 AM

I Control-C’d it because of boredom, but you get the idea.

What is the left bracket all about?

user image

GD ^.

@tchrist Apparently, that is how both render your straight pilcrow; your warped pilcrow is a straight pilcrow for me.

I made the warped pilcrow because I didn’t know why they had two markings.

But I never imagined that the normal one would be a bracket!

It could be an error?

Or perhaps it makes more sense on paper.

Look up cleanse verb, and then look at the first citation for sense 3.

> C. 1000 Ælfric Exod. xxix. 36 ― Þu aclænsast Ꝥ weofod and ʒehalʒast.

I see the bar on top of the thorn in your version.

user image

1:22 AM

That’s LATIN CAPITAL LETTER THORN WITH STROKE, which I don’t have a proper font for, so it looks bad.

Oxford ^.

user image

GD ^.

Ah, so they don’t have the map.

Yeah.

I could of course just put the character straight into the text file...

What does a thorn with a bar do anyway?

No idea.

Wait.

Is it a scribal abbreviation for the ?

The Unicode tables have no comment on it:

‭ Þ  00DE       LATIN CAPITAL LETTER THORN
‭ þ  00FE       LATIN SMALL LETTER THORN
        * Icelandic, Old English, phonetics
        * Runic letter borrowed into Latin script
        x (runic letter thurisaz thurs thorn - 16A6)
‭ ᚦ  16A6       RUNIC LETTER THURISAZ THURS THORN
        x (latin small letter thorn - 00FE)
‭ Ꝥ  A764       LATIN CAPITAL LETTER THORN WITH STROKE
‭ ꝥ  A765       LATIN SMALL LETTER THORN WITH STROKE
‭ Ꝧ  A766       LATIN CAPITAL LETTER THORN WITH STROKE THROUGH DESCENDER

I was thinking it had to be a pronoun, so probably (I consider articles pronouns, especially definite ones).

1:28 AM

An article like the cannot stand for a noun, so cannot be a pronoun.

It could be they or them, though.

The determiners can be pronouns, though: this, that, these, those.

When they are not being determiners/adjectives.

They go in the article slot in the NP, and count as definite.

I still think it’s some scribal shortcut.

@Robusto Please read us the OE line and grace us with your opinion.

> Þu aclænsast Ꝥ weofod and ʒehalʒast.

> Þær after com swulke mon-qualm Ꝥ lute hær cwike læfden.

> Heo unwreih þene put Ꝥ hit adronc inne.

> Đer··Ꝥ fyr ne bið ʒidrysnad.

It must be the.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

So the buses in my city are going to be outfitted with "Wi-Fi": thestar.com/news/gta/transportation/2014/06/19/…

> Dærste Ꝥ··wif gehydeð in meolo··oððæt sie ʒedærsted vel ʒecnoeden [C. 975 Rushw. Gosp. cneden] all.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Why quotes?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Yet perplexingly this "wi-fi" is not for customers to use to access the internet. Instead it's for the buses to use to report their location to a central system.

> Hwat is mare madschipe Þen for to leuen on him & seggen Ꝥ he is Godes Sune?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist Because I'm not sure they're really talking about Wi-Fi at all.

1:34 AM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 How can that work?

Right.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist Hence my perplexion.

@Cerb In the last example given surely it is that.

It must be a scribal abbreviation. You should have it in your list. :)

> Þa sæde he [Epicurus] Ꝥ se lust wære Ꝥ hehste good.

> Þu steorest te sea stream Ꝥ hit fleden ne mot fir þan þu markedest.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I hate it when people throw around words like "Wi-Fi" when they have no frickin' clue whatsoever what is meant by those words.

> Eft is heofena rice ʒelic þam mangere þe sohte Ꝥ gode mere-grot.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

It's one thing for regular people to be misinformed about the minutia of the vast world of computers. It's another thing for the folks in charge of provisioning a technical system for a vast fleet of buses to be completely wrong about what they are doing.

I have the feeling that the report they requested (on the feasibility of leveraging the vehicle-locating system hardware to give free interent to riders) may have stemmed from a total obliviousity of just what that system was actually made of.

1:40 AM

@tchrist Of course I do not use noun the way most people in English use it. I use it to mean nomen.

@tchrist Cappelli only deals with Latin and Italian abbreviations. They lack those letters.

(Of course the other languages using Latin letters use many or most of the Latin abbreviations where possible.)

@tchrist Anglo-Saxon.

@Cerberus Not a language.

The language is Old English.

(If you're allowed to use this hideous initialism, then I shall be allowed to use the word Anglo-Saxon.)

No.

Uhh I did not use the word with semantic value there. It was just the sound, to trigger you.

For every NP, you shall have one Anglo-Saxon. The balance of the universe must be preserved.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus And you shall have the hoi polloi.

1:45 AM

@tchrist I believe it's an abbreviation for þá meaning "then" but I could be wrong.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 It's just a protocol, isn't it?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Consensual sex with a drunken woman!!

@Robusto I posted it as a question, since @Cerb was being obstr.

Obstructive? I was not?

I favoured your suggestions.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus It's more than just a protocol. But what it isn't is a technology that allows buses to communicate with a central system.

Honestly people who mistake "wi-fi" for "internet access" and are responsible for technology decisions are like architects who mistake "doors" for "windows"

In this link, http://anuglyhead.blogspot.in/2014/06/the-curious-case-of-runaway-grandfather.html

Is this sentence grammatically correct?

1:48 AM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 It can be used as part of such a system?

"live with people whose language was Hindi to him?"

obstetric [adj.]
obstetrical [adj.]
obˈstetrically [adv.] ← obstetrical
† obˈstetricate [v.]
† obstetriˈcation [n.]
† obˈstetricatory [adj.]
obstetrician [n.]
† obsteˈtricious [adj.]
obstetriˈcography [n.]
obˈstetrics [n.]
obˈstetricy [n.]
obˈstetrist [n.]
‖ obstetrix [n.]
† obstrepency [n.]
† obˈstreperate [v.]
obstreperous [adj.]
obstreperously [adv.]
obstreperousness [n.]
† obˈstrict [ppl. adj.]
obstriction [n.]
† obˈstrictive [adj.]
† obˈstrigillate [v.]
† obstrigiˈllation ← obˈstrigillate
† obˈstringe [v.]

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 So who are those people? Who made that mistake?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Possibly, in the same way that electricity can also be used as part of such a system.

@Cerberus Have your pick. :)

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

1:49 AM

@Cerberus The people who wrote the article I posted, and/or the people who wrote/commissioned the report the article reports on.

The story, as expressed by the newspaper, makes no sense.

@RajkumarR That's not a complete sentence

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 "Many have asked me how a Malayalee family ended up getting settled in Bhopal. Yes, it was work that brought my grandfather here and subsequently settle, but why would he search for work in a land far away and live with people whose language was Hindi to him?"

This is the complete sentence..

@RajkumarR I would read that as a variation on the idiomatic expression "x was Greek to him", which means "x was incomprehensible to him". Is that the intended meaning? But then I'd still be left wondering why Hindi was chosen as a particularly incomprehensible language.

Maybe I was thinking obstetrician. :)

Some of them juggle, too, like an obstetrix.

@Cerberus Yes. I think so..

@tchrist I pick...obstruse.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

1:52 AM

@Cerberus Yes, that's how I'd interpret it too.

@Cerberus Hindi is esoteric for many people from South India :(

@Cerberus That was mine as well.

@cer

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Perhaps I am too stupid, but I don't see the problem. The article does not say passengers, or anyone, will have Internet access through this system that uses Wifi.

@Cerberus Mallayalam is the mother tongue of the author I suppose.. So Hindi is arcane..

1:53 AM

@Cerberus masseuse : masseur :: obstruse : ????

@RajkumarR OK then it makes sense. But you'd have to know the context, the languages, to understand.

@tchrist English pronunciation sucks.

Those words shouldn't sound the same.

@Cerberus Your eloquence is waning.

Was it ever there?

@Cerberus, yes. But I still wonder is it correct grammatically/pragmatically

Your reliquies are waining.

1:56 AM

@RajkumarR Yes, it is fine.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus The article is saying that they are installing Wi-Fi on the buses, but customers can't use it, because it's part of the vehicle-locating system.

@RajkumarR Some people might not know the expression it's Greek to me, though, or not make the connection.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I have disbelief.

@Cerberus :) Like me..

@tchrist Waining?

1:57 AM

@Cerberus Try the Latin.

@cerberus Thank you..

@Cerberus Has to do with wagons.

@RajkumarR Haha, well, if you say so!

@tchrist Whom do you command?

@tchrist I lack wagons.

Try Mr Shiny's bus.

It will take you hither and yon.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

> The TTC will begin installing the technology to make its buses and streetcars Wi-Fi capable in 2016.

@Cerberus That would be the problem then. Hast thou no wainwright nigh thy demesne?

I think a rufous one passes by near you from time to time. If you can stand his voice.

1:58 AM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 That's just meant for readers who might not understand what Wifi can be used for?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

> The technology is considered crucial to making the TTC’s surface routes more reliable by alerting the control rooms that track vehicle movements to buses or streetcars that are veering off-route or off-schedule, said TTC spokesman Brad Ross.

@Cerberus They should not say they are installing Wi-Fi unless they are actually installing Wi-Fi. They should say they are installing 3G or whatever.

@tchrist I sold to a rich American, who shipped it to New York.

Rufus Wainwright

Rufus McGarrigle Wainwright (born July 22, 1973) is an American-Canadian singer-songwriter and composer. He has recorded seven albums of original music and numerous tracks on compilations and film soundtracks. He has also written a classical opera and set Shakespeare sonnets to music for a theater piece by Robert Wilson. Life and career Early years Wainwright was born in Rhinebeck, New York, to folk singers Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III. His parents divorced when he was three, and he lived with his mother in Montreal for most of his youth. Wainwright has dual US and Canadia...

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