English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

@Cerberus Haven’t you yet figured out that you have everything exactly backwards here? How am I to survive eight hours without feline attention? Inconceivable!

Cerberus

Ah.

Mahnax

Coffee on wheels.

Cerberus

12:14 AM

@tchrist Hah. You should be asleep!

I didn't know Starbucks had a drive-through.

tchrist

Of course.

Mahnax

They should change the name from "Drive-Through" to "Feel Free To Use Your Car Phone Loudly While Ordering".

Cerberus

Haha yay!

Sounds like fun.

tchrist

But who would hunt down the moths in my bedroom but for the kitties?

Mahnax

"Hi, welcome to Starbucks, what can I get for you today?"
"Hold on, I'm on the phone."

No problem, I'll wait.

tchrist

12:16 AM

@Mahnax Push the button that moves the conveyor belt one car forward.

Cerberus

"You wanted hot cocoa on your face? OK, coming right up!"

Mahnax

@tchrist Hehe, that button would be a dream come true.

Cerberus

@tchrist If you want them there, then you shouldn't complain!

Mahnax

Luckily, my new store doesn't have a DT at all.

tchrist

@Cerberus I was not complaining.

Mahnax

12:16 AM

Speaking of work, I did a fourteen hour shift yesterday.

tchrist

I just don’t understand how one puts kitties to bed.

Cerberus

Push the button that makes the car fall through a hole into tartarus.

tchrist

Like Dr Who?

Cerberus

Four-teen hours, that is long.

I have never seen Dr Who.

Mahnax

One time a lady was chatting with a friend on the phone about flooring for her kitchen, and she was considering laminate. I very briefly considered interjecting with a suggestion that she get hardwood or tile instead.

tchrist

12:17 AM

Nor have I, but the Tardis is quite famous.

Cerberus

You should have!

I think tile is best in a kitchen.

tchrist

Lean out the window and yell to the next car that they should place their order, since the person next to you is on the phone and will be served after them.

Wait, that won’t work. Speakers. Darn it.

Cerberus

Or play very loud waiting music through the speaker at them.

Until they drive on.

tchrist

Play the Jeopardy theme.

Cerberus

Or install a jammer.

Or a giant laser.

tchrist

12:21 AM

@Cerberus Katzenjammer?

The Katzenjammer Kids

The Katzenjammer Kids is an American comic strip created by the German immigrant Rudolph Dirks and drawn by Harold H. Knerr for 37 years (1912 to 1949). It debuted December 12, 1897 in the American Humorist, the Sunday supplement of William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. Dirks was the first cartoonist to express dialogue in comic characters through the use of speech balloons. After a series of legal battles between 1912 and 1914, Dirks left the Hearst organization and began a new strip, first titled Hans and Fritz and then The Captain and the Kids. It featured the same characters se...

Cerberus

Kattengejammer, why not!

Mahnax

There's a way to make our filtered water taps make a loud screechy noise. Maybe I'll turn on my headset and then let them listen to that?

Cerberus

Yes!

Anything to disrupt their call.

Mahnax

Nah, I wouldn't. It's not really a big deal. Just irritating.

tchrist

It’s unthinkable how casually discourteous our society has become.

Cerberus

12:22 AM

@Mahnax We know.

Mahnax

@tchrist It's kind of frustrating.

tchrist

@Mahnax Like.

Mahnax

@tchrist Hm?

tchrist

That was the Rated-G version of "No shit".

No kidding.

Mahnax

Oh, OK.

tchrist

12:25 AM

As in Like, really!

Mahnax

Yesterday I told a guy his total and he just glared at me and said "Holy fuck!"

Cerberus

Haha.

Mahnax

I responded with "I beg your pardon?" and he repeated himself.

shrugs

Cerberus

Next time, just stare at him until he pays.

Mahnax

The prices are on the board, mate. It was your duty to look at 'em before you got this far.

Cerberus

12:26 AM

Is Starbucks expensive?

Mahnax

Anyway, enough whining. Nobody wants to hear that.

@Cerberus Relatively.

Cerberus

Moderate whining from time to time is fine.

Hm OK.

Mahnax

One large coffee is $2.78.

A large chai is $4.99.

Cerberus

How about a small cup?

tchrist

It depends. If all you want is a large coffee, it’s ok.

Mahnax

12:27 AM

8oz of coffee is $1.94.

12oz is $2.05.

16oz is $2.47.

16oz latte is $4.36.

Cerberus

That would probably be cheap here, although I don't know about ounces, nor what a normal size is here.

20oz is $2.78 then?

Yessir.

@Cerberus glares

Latte is just with milk, or is it different?

Mahnax

12:28 AM

@Cerberus Espresso and steamed milk.

Café au lait.

tchrist

8oz = 1 cup

Mahnax

The European café au lait, not the North American one.

Cerberus

@tchrist You know I cannot remember factoids that are random to me. I cannot remember what an espresso is either, because I don't drink it.

tchrist

@Cerberus You have a computer.

Cerberus

I also have laziness.

Mahnax

12:29 AM

@Cerberus Espresso is a concentrated coffee beverage. Usually 1-2oz of strong black liquid. 30-60ml.

Cerberus

OK thanks.

Of course "concentrated" is relative?

Mahnax

@Cerberus To filter coffee, sure. But it's brewed under pressure.

tchrist

@Cerberus What you call sloth I call contumacity.

Cerberus

I have never in my life ordered coffee for myself...

Mahnax

Anyways, I've gotta run, folks. TTYL!

tchrist

12:30 AM

Bye!!

Cerberus

@tchrist Umm just because your memory is good, you can't imagine other people's isn't?

Bye!

You don't believe I forgot what espresso was, either?

tchrist

@Cerberus You have never displayed any signs of having a poor memory.

To the contrary, in fact.

macbook# units '8 oz' pounds
	* 0.5
	/ 2
macbook# units '12 oz' pounds
	* 0.75
	/ 1.3333333
macbook# units '16 oz' pounds
	* 1
	/ 1
macbook# units '20 oz' pounds
	* 1.25
	/ 0.8
macbook# units '8 floz' pint
	* 0.5
	/ 2
macbook# units '20 floz' pint
	* 1.25
	/ 0.8
macbook# units '20 floz' quart
	* 0.625
	/ 1.6
macbook# units '20 floz' gallon
	* 0.15625
	/ 6.4
macbook# units '20 floz' brpint
	* 1.0408406
	/ 0.9607619
macbook# units '20 floz' cups
	* 2.5
	/ 0.4
macbook# units '20 oz' kilogram
	* 0.56699046

Here’s a mnemonic for you: A pint’s a pound the world around, except in England where a pint of warter’s a pound and quarter.

And it is supposed to rhyme.

Although a pint will generally set you back more than a pound.

Cerberus

@tchrist Umm I am known as the person in this room with a bad memory.

tchrist

@Cerberus I recall no such thing.

Cerberus

Jun 21 at 5:43, by Alraxite

You have an astonishing memory for someone with three brains' worth of storage.

tchrist

12:38 AM

This is like the old couple where he’s mostly deaf and she’s mostly blind arguing about how to get somewhere.

Cerberus

Jun 18 at 14:26, by Robusto

@Cerberus But you're so forgetful. How can you be sure you have enough memory if you keep on forgetting?

You keep forgetting how bad my memory is!

tchrist

@Cerberus You know I cannot remember factoids that are random to me.

Cerberus

Apr 23 '11 at 23:24, by RegDwight

@Cerberus No, I don't keep forgetting. My memory is fine. :P

@tchrist Neither can I.

Do you want me to quote all references to the state of my memory between April of 2011 and now?

tchrist

And we’re back to the old couple who can’t understand what each other is arguing about.

Cerberus

Always.

tchrist

12:42 AM

@Cerberus By memory, sure. Not by cheating.

Cerberus

facepaw

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

good evening

Cerberus

Evening.

How is Your Legoness?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

legoy

I added some doors to my lego apartment

and a rug

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Square?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

12:49 AM

square doors? no, rectangular

Cerberus

I didn't know you lived in a Lego apartment, how large is it?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

about 32x24

Cerberus

Is that enough for your wife to put her Galaxy Nexus in, let alone herself?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

a lego GN fits.

A lego GN is 2x1

all lego cell phones are 2x1 or 1x1.

Actually I'm not sure I have a cell phone piece.

Robusto

@tchrist The boys spend the night in the laundry room. Making way for the Queen of the Night, who gets the house after they've gone to bed. They can't be in the same room at the same time, because the big guy plays too rough for the Queen.

Cerberus

1:05 AM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Even a 6.5" phone?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus lego phone pieces are necessarily a 2x1 tile. There is no "inches" in lego.

Cerberus

Inches can be converted into Lego measurements.

Why can't they be a 3x1 tile?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

1:25 AM

@Cerberus because that'd be huge. the 2x1 is already longer than the minifig's arm. It's the same area as the minifig's torso's horizontal cross-section.

anyway, time to jet.

jets

Cerberus

2:12 AM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 You haven't seen the latest Samsung phones...

tchrist

2:53 AM

Asshole.

There, I feel so much better now.

Don’t ask.

In other news, today’s bag was Lorin’s prairie vole to Randy’s giant dragonfly. I really do not know how he catches those.

Mahnax

I'm back, horray.

tchrist

Hihi.

Randy just came in for the night, empty-mouthed for a change.

Cerberus

@tchrist asks

tchrist

The mess he made several nights ago when he bit off the head of the garter snake down in the library was rather unpleasant.

Cerberus

@Mahnax Welcome back.

Mahnax

3:01 AM

Grazie.

@tchrist Dearie me.

How vicious.

…and strangely endearing.

tchrist

@Cerberus What, you mean Don’t ask don’t tell is no longer operative?

@Mahnax I was asleep, and the houseboy is an hysterical ninny about snakes, so didn’t separate the two of them and release the serpent to the back field as I have previously done.

Mahnax

@tchrist How sad. Garter snakes really aren't so bad.

tchrist

@Mahnax A garter snake is not venomous. I presume you saw the pictures I posted of the last one?

I was indeed saddened by it.

Mahnax

@tchrist Yes, I know, but I don't recall whether I saw them.

tchrist

It bothers me that we never found the missing head.

Mahnax

3:04 AM

…oh.

tchrist

looks

Jun 17 at 2:04, by tchrist

Mahnax

Wow!

tchrist

My Lord, I’ve posted like 2,000 imgur pix to this chat!

Jason Marsh

I realised there's no scores like 100 or 100% in English exams such as TOEFL or TOEIC because one cannot simply master English and attain 100% score in English literature.

Mahnax

@tchrist That includes every answer you've linked, it looks like!

tchrist

3:12 AM

@Mahnax Yes, which isn’t so bad then.

It is an interesting tracklog, though.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@JasonMarsh Presumably for any reasonable test that can be posited, there exist answers that achieve full marks for every question, and thus one need only master the test itself to acheive 100%

tchrist

My kitties feature heavily on page 3.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I don’t know how those examinations are structured, and more importantly, how marks are awarded for answers.

Jason Marsh

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yeah

►

Lexi Belle took it too much.

Cerberus

@tchrist I believe it was abolished, yes.

tchrist

@Cerberus It never operated very well in the first place.

Cerberus

3:19 AM

@tchrist Nice kitties, nice floor, poor snake.

@tchrist Obviously.

tchrist

We were firing Arabic translators in the middle of our horrible desert adventures just when we needed them most.

Cerberus

@tchrist You will find it among your Lego a year from now. When you least expect it.

tchrist

checks the gaming closet

Cerberus

@tchrist I don't think that could have saved Iraq.

tchrist

@Cerberus No — it appears that nothing could have, or can. But we needed more folks on our side who could speak the language. I can’t remember how many were fired, but it was incredible: 4 digits’ worth.

These were translators, too. Sigh.

Cerberus

3:22 AM

I wonder why so many made their sexuality public.

tchrist

I wish I could wonder whether future centuries will look back on many of our practices with the same horror as we do the Salem “witch” trials. Unfortunately, that would require doubt in my mind.

Jason Marsh

500 freedom per second.

tchrist

@Cerberus This suggests that it happened in waves.

Cerberus

@tchrist Yes, of course.

tchrist

New York Times: Don’t Ask, Don’t Translate.

There’s an aphorism for this.

Cerberus

3:26 AM

So strange.

By the way, my computer will shut down in 4 minutes.

tchrist

> Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.

Cerberus

Right.

tchrist

Why shut down?

@JasonMarsh 500 fps is a pretty good clip.

Coming back?

Cerberus

Because I need to go to bed!

The only way to get me into bed is by shutting down my computer.

tchrist

Oh, I see.

Jason Marsh

3:29 AM

500 FPS, only possible with 'Murica134 Minigun (Short for M134).

tchrist

I can’t believe I’m being bitched at for being polite.

Cerberus

> ShutdownWarningTimer:
CurrentTime := A_Hour . A_min
If (CurrentTime = ShutdownTime - 5 and FiveMinutes != 1)
{
; OSD("5 minutes!","Red","60000")
SoundBeep
Msgbox 5 minutes!
FiveMinutes := 1
}
Return

ShutdownTimer:
; ^#!u::
CurrentTime := A_Hour . A_min

If (CurrentTime = ShutdownTime)
Shutdown, 8
Return

tchrist

Pascal?

No, something other.

Cerberus

Autohotkey. The only language

tchrist

It uses := for = and = for ==.

Should use the shorter form for the more common one and vice versa.

Bad Huffman encoding choice.

Huffman encoding is to optimize for the most common use, making those ones short.

That’s just one part of it, but still.

@Cerberus s/$/ I know./

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

3:33 AM

> Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness, a conservative advocacy group that opposes gays serving in the military, said the discharged linguists never should have been accepted at the elite Defense Language Institute in Monterey in the first place.

“Resources unfortunately were used to train young people who were not eligible to be in the military,” she said.

headdesk

tchrist

And of course, now that has done a 180-degree about-face.

Idjits.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist I recall programming in a language that used = for both. It never seemed to be an issue.

tchrist

Oh wait, that was from an activist group, not from the gubbermint.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Then assignment cannot have been an expression.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist yeah but there's enough idiocy to go around.

@tchrist Probably not. But that didn't seem to make any difference.

Of course, I was less experienced then, so maybe now I'd find it annoying.

But honestly it seemed pretty natural.

tchrist

I don’t use assignment as an expression that often, but sometimes I do.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

3:36 AM

Might have been QuickBasic and Visual Basic.

tchrist

if (!(x = fn(x))) { blah(); }

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist You could always have a special alternate syntax for those cases if it's that important.

tchrist

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 My first and last exposure to the B-word was DEC’s BASIC-PLUS on RSTS/E.

Begun in high school, in fact.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist I don't think I would write code that way. I like to keep my assignments separate, usually. Except in things like the C for loop syntax.

@tchrist well, qb and vb were really only inspired by Basic. They were quite different from the old school basic.

tchrist

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I don’t normally write it that way either, but it was in C, and I deemed it evil to #define unless(X) if (!(X)) :)

Normally I would just write:

x = fn(x) || die(....);

But that requires the language return not just 1 or 0 on ||.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

3:40 AM

Normally I would just write if (f(x)) { blah(); } unless I need to keep the result around somewhere. But I mainly code in Java and JS

tchrist

I don’t know. I did a lot of C programming in first half of this year. Like 25k lines.

I’d be a danger to myself and others if I got stuck with that particular pair.

This is not hyperbole.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I like Java and JS well enough. They have their warts but they get the job done.

tchrist

I used to evince a cordial dislike for Java, a dislike borne mostly out of ignorance.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Well, there's enough to dislike, that's for sure.

tchrist

After working with it for a couple of years, I am no longer ignorant and I am no longer cordial.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

3:42 AM

But every language has its flaws.

tchrist

Small solace, that.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Well, it just depends on how much the flaws impact you. If I was programming GUI apps in Java I'd probably tear my hair out. If I had hair.

But for web-apps it's fine.

pipja

what's programming doing in an English Language channel :o

tchrist

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I was doing natural-language processing and computational linguistics.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@pipja Many of the regulars here are programmers.

tchrist

3:46 AM

And doing NLP and CL is certainly germane to English.

@pipja Also, this is officially the Incomprehensible Room. :)

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist hm. I've never done any coding for that so I'm not sure if Java would get in the way or not. I know you'd be annoyed by its unicode implementation, which might be relevant. (It's UCS-2)

tchrist

You can find just about anything in our logs.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@pipja Do you have an English question, or are you just here to hang out?

tchrist

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Well................................... therein lies a tale. It is not UCS-2: it’s UTF-16. but people treat it like UCS-2 and screw up.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist ah... my mistake. Yes, UTF-16. That's what I meant.

An annoying encoding to work with.

tchrist

3:48 AM

Very much so.

And the support libraries just aren’t there.

You have to use ICU, but what a pain.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

There does not appear to be any hope of them changing the standard to UCS-4 any time soon.

tchrist

They’re fossilized.

pipja

I am a semi proficient english user

so I'm here mainly to hang out

tchrist

There is a UCS-4 API for a lot of stuff, but not enough.

The regex classes though do copy everything into UCS-4 internally before doing work.

But people still are stuck thinking charAt not codePointAt, or whatever the random cAPitALIzatiON scheme is.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist Java was initially UCS-2 and its char type reflects that. The UTF-16 was retrofitted in a way to make it possible, but certainly not easy, to use the extra characters.

@tchrist yeah

tchrist

3:52 AM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I know all about that.

But it is only an explanation, not a justification nor an excuse.

pipja

man i know nothing about java or whatever you guys are talking about :3

i just know c++

tchrist

Any language where char cannot hold a code point has a serious problem.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Well... the justification is that changing it would break binary compatibility, which was deemed more important than esoteric scripts.

tchrist

And then there is the screwup with wchar_t being 16 bits on Microsoft and 32 bits elsewhere.

So it still won’t work to hold a code point.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

yeah essentially almost every language that's in popular use screws up unicode.

tchrist

3:54 AM

Some massively so.

I wrote a talk on this. Somewhere.

I could probably point you at the slides, but you know all about it, I’m sure.

Java and Javascript are particularly problematic because of the inability to fix what’s broken.

I did manage to get a lot of stuff fixed in the Java regex lib so that it is Level 1 compliant now.

Hey, did you know that on Android, the Java regex classes are actually JNI’d into the ICU C/C++ API? They don’t use the native regex class because its Unicode support is too weak.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist Java on Android doesn't use any of the native Java anything. It's a completely separate implementation.

tchrist

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Good move. You do not want to be reliant on Oracle!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Although they may have based some of the implementation on a free JDK clone... I'm struggling to think of the name of that library. Anyway. It's its own thing now.

@tchrist heh. Where I work we use Oracle JDK and Oracle DB.

But we're not Google.

Who, btw, have been sued for copying the Java API for Android.

tchrist

When you say Oracle DB, do you mean Berkeley DB or the regular Oracle SQL thingy?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist The regular SQL thing

tchrist

4:02 AM

Oracle snarfed up Keith and Margo’s Berkeley DB. It’s still free &c&c&c. Good for what it does.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

yeah they've bought a lot of open source/free software

tchrist

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Didn’t you mention that you’d studied Chinese for like ten years?

Jason Marsh

Guys, is it possible to numerically describe uncountable noun in English?

tchrist

@JasonMarsh Sure, you could have 12 ounces of water or 2 tons of rice.

> UTR #50, Unicode Vertical Text Layout
<http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr50/tr50-12.html>, is being reissued
with minor updates to the text and with a set of data updated to the
character repertoire of Unicode Version 7.0. For details on the proposed
changes in the data, please refer to the Modifications section
<http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr50/tr50-12.html#Modifications> in the UTR.

For information about how to discuss this Public Review Issue and how to
supply formal feedback, please see the review page

I’ve never looked at UTR 50 because I’ve never worked in a language needing vertical layout.

Jason Marsh

Can't you describe them excluding those figures (unit)?

Like 2 water, 3 ice, 5 snow.

tchrist

4:06 AM

@JasonMarsh I don’t understand.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist yes

tchrist

@JasonMarsh Not really.

Jason Marsh

Sorry

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@JasonMarsh In some contexts you can say 2 waters, 3 ices, 5 snows. But it's rare.

tchrist

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I’m on the Unicode Consortium’s mailing list as one of its Perl reps (we’re a dues-paying member), so I get announcements like that. I just wondered if you’d had to cope with vertical text in programming before. I have not.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

4:08 AM

@tchrist I've never tried to layout Chinese text vertically.

tchrist

Ah, ok.

Jason Marsh

What if water was a defined object and it was Water instead of water? Can you freely say "2 Waters" without disobeying the rules?

tchrist

I’ve processed Chinese horizontally, and know some of the various useful library modules for working with it, but that’s all.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Modern Chinese is LTR,TTB. It's only for traditional, old-fashioned documents that you use the TTB-RTL format.

tchrist

@JasonMarsh Sometimes that is something that you might hear someone order at a restaurant: two waters please, or two beers. That has always sounded odd to me because we always had to say two glasses of water or two bottles of beer back in the 17th century when I grew up.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

4:10 AM

@JasonMarsh It works if in the context you're restricting the meaning of the word "water" to refer to, eg, kinds of water, or bodies of water. I can't think of a good example right now.

Jason Marsh

Righto.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Like maybe you have water in 3 different flavours. You might refer to them as "three waters". But if in doubt, just use the extra words: 3 flavours of water.

Jason Marsh

Righto.

tchrist

One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish.

Jason Marsh

A quick question, do people is Usa often use "Righto"?

tchrist

4:17 AM

“Do people in the US often use Righto?’” Nope.

Maybe in gangster movies from the 30s.

Jason Marsh

the US? That is a funny rule in English grammar I reckon. It's almost like double checking you know what "US" is by putting an definite article "the" in front of it.

tchrist

@JasonMarsh The name of the country has a definite article at its front.

Just like in the Netherlands. You wouldn’t ask if people in *Netherlands do this or that.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@JasonMarsh Some place names have a definite article. Others don't. Leaving it out where it's needed, or adding it where it's not, is a mistake.

tchrist

UK is another such.

Jason Marsh

Good onya.

tchrist

4:25 AM

In English, the Czech Republic gets one, too.

I guess there aren’t all that many.

Jason Marsh

By the way, do I sound like a slightly annoying and complaining British old man?

@tchrist Too right, mate.

tchrist

@JasonMarsh No, because your article (mis)use marks you as a non-native speaker.

Or a poor typist. :)

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

With an odd vocabulary.

Jason Marsh

Bloody oath.

tchrist

@JasonMarsh That would be Bloody hell! there.

Which no one this side of the Atlantic or Pacific uses save in parodic jest.

Jason Marsh

4:30 AM

Going for a doco on telly.

Jason Marsh

4:41 AM

It's interesting how in English proverb, they say "Money don't grow on trees" and in Korea they say "Money don't grow on land".

My mum likes to say that though.

It's her favourite saying.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@JasonMarsh In English we say "Money doesn't grow on trees"

Jason Marsh

I heard someone saying it from a song. He said "Money don't grow on trees ", no "Money doesn't grow on trees".

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@JasonMarsh It's considered non-standard to use "don't" that way.

People do say it, but that don't make it right.

(well... "right")

It all boils down to how you want to sound. Who you want to impress with your language.

Jason Marsh

I think it's a cool way (Ghetto way) of speaking English. Who doesn't know you should use "doesn't" in place of "don't" in that particular sentence? You intentionally make a grammar mistake to look uneducated but you are just expressing your artistic spirit.

Same idea applies to "2 waters(z)".

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

4:56 AM

@JasonMarsh Well, colloquially, some people use "don't" there all the time and others see it as a sign of poor education. Alternatively, some people maintain the non-standard use as a sort of sign that they reject the mainstream's value judgement of their language.

I don't know how common it is to use "don't" as an artistic statement though.

Especially if you are a non-native speaker it will likely just be regarded as an error.

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…