English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

12:00 AM

Billions and billiards of mendicant Sino-Indians cannot be being wrong please.

12:28 AM

I just read this elsewhere:

> Is this assumption that there is one right way and a multitude of wrong ways for every element of language part of the way English is taught?

I think this is another symptom of test-driven English-language instruction.

tchrist

12:48 AM

tchrist

1:00 AM

35 Kinds of Hot, Sexy Homophone Action‌, including two four-ways: carat, carrot, caret, karat and medal, mettle, meddle, metal.

tchrist

1:39 AM

Anybody up for prostituting themselves on this one?

-1

Q: the meaning of pro

I have some doubt with the word pro. some of the soft wares and app are called as pro version.. what does it really mean. when I google the meaning of pro, it showing me the result " professional and prostitute". then why they are keeping the name pro to the software or apps as pro version?

meaning

If that one’s too hard, try this:

0

A: Meaning of 'The difference between involvement and commitment is like ham and eggs. The chicken is involved; the pig is committed'

the chicken, a she not a chi, on cocaine and committing a rapecrime, does only wise, admit escape is not ode involved. catch me, without if in this typeline, cause if should give choise planned and slave of the drappery citizen spawn vomit ,read future.

tchrist

2:20 AM

english.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/78970

tchrist

2:39 AM

-4

A: Difference between "On your mark, get set, go" and "Ready, steady, go"

I love you. You love me. We're a happy family. With a hug right here, and a kiss from me to you. You love me, and I love you too!

tchrist

2:56 AM

I still think Saint Vincent and the Grenadines should be some sort of lounge-lizard band.

George Pompidou

4:27 AM

that man got the words wrong

to the barney thing

fits hedgie habitat with a thermostat and heatlamp so that Momoko won't get too chilly.

kwak

8:43 AM

@tchrist yep I'm no-smoking-driven

►

I don't understand the end

cpx

10:32 AM

Today, I asked this question on ELL.

I don't get it how the examples I gave weren't actually in past perfect.

Jez

11:15 AM

@kwak what award did that win? crappiest piece of video ever?

Robusto

11:43 AM

@kwak I don't understand any of it.

kwak

@Robusto @Jez eheh good question, the weirdest no smoking short film award

Robusto

kwak

@Robusto @Jez I know the sense now

The film shows that 2 min later, the protagonist that does the film doesn't even respect the message behind (no-smoking)

Ceci n'est pas une pipe, ceci est une affiche, ceci est un slogan

Robusto

11:59 AM

@kwak I'm left with one feeling: so what?

kwak

@Robusto the young boy, cleared the cigarette, then after playing, he smoked

Robusto

So what?

kwak

it's like doing something and its opposite

Robusto

So?

kwak

it's like saving water, then spoiling it

so a contradiction in the movie itself

Robusto

12:06 PM

I am left unmoved.

kwak

:))

Gigili

@Alraxite Don't be too sure

I'm with Robusto this time, even though I had a fight with him and he accused me of being unthankful to those who answer my questions, but emm... I am with him on this one. So don't speak too soon.

Haha, a very nice response to an outdated message!

kwak

12:31 PM

you're belligerent

tchrist

@kwak It’s been so long since I’ve been forced to endure second-hand smoke that I’d nearly forgotten how much it drove me over the edge.

Anonymous

12:49 PM

Hello @ll.

Anonymous

I am having a small problem understand a verb's relationship-terms with: root verb, infinitive, conjugation, and tenses. Can one say all of them are branches of a verb?

Anonymous

Or briefly what is a root verb, infinitive, conjugation, and tense to a verb?

tchrist

Huh?

Are you looking for the word inflection?

Anonymous

@tchrist No. (I don't think so).. I just need to explain to someone how to make use of verbs in English. And, after explaining what a verb is, and its importance, I can't continue on describing how, root verb, infinitive, conjugation, and tense all relate to a verb.

tchrist

Those four terms are not very useful.

I mean, they aren’t orthogonal.

Gigili

1:02 PM

@kwak Keep your opinion to yourself.

Or, I have an idea

tchrist

I don’t know what a root verb is supposed to be; that sounds like a stem used in strongly inflected systems.

The base form or bare infinitive of a verb is its citation form, such as eat, drink, be, have. Defective verbs like modals do not have an infinitive.

An infinitive is one sort of nonfinite verb, just as the -ing form is a nonfinite form.

Finite forms are those that are inflected for person, number, and time.

Finite forms are shown in He eats versus He ate.

Anonymous

@tchrist I thought infinitive verbs are ones prefixed by to .. as in to eat, to sleep...

tchrist

I suppose by conjugation you might mean rattling off the inflections for each person and number, like I eat, (thou eatest), he/she/it/they eat, you eat, they eat.

@bivoc No, that is called a to-infinitive.

Anonymous

@tchrist Maybe this would make more sense, if I was telling you that I am using French and my targeted audience are French beginners. I just want to teach them the bare minimum of the language followed by explaining what is a grammar.

tchrist

If she helps you eat or he made you do something, then eat and do are still in the infinitive.

Whereas helps and made are finite forms.

Anonymous

1:08 PM

So basic stuff. They don't even know the parts of speech

tchrist

If they don’t know parts of speech, then I don’t know how to help you. It has been too long since I was seven years old to recall what that is like.

I don’t even know what “explaining what is a grammar” might mean.

If you are teaching French, I suggest FLU not ELU. :)

Anonymous

Well, they just speak their native languages, which they inherited, rather than learned in school. So, the concept of grammar, or parts of speech is just very new to them.

Anonymous

I explained very well, the parts of speech but the verb and it's sub-parts .... whoo (big headache)

Anonymous

I'm semi-illiterate myself.

tchrist

Ou bien, si on enseigne le français, je suggère FLU non ELU.

Anonymous

1:12 PM

That may explain the issue too.

tchrist

Also, the English model won’t always work for French, nor vice versa.

Anonymous

@tchrist I used this simple example as introduction to the parts of speech..

Anonymous

Not very bad, for a beginner.

tchrist

Verbs can be finite or nonfinite. Infinitives and participles are nonfinite forms of a verb. Finite forms are inflected for time, person, number.

If there is no time, then the verb is not finite.

Only finite verbs can be the main verb of an independent clause.

I’m trying to state things that are true for both English and French, but this will become increasingly difficult as one becomes more detailed.

Anonymous

The details are the problem here.

Anonymous

1:19 PM

I wouldn't know every detail myself, I am just tying to convey the general idea.

tchrist

French has a reasonably strong inflectional model in its verbs, which it inherited from Latin. English does not.

Anonymous

Well, in the sense one can group together verb, pronoun, adverb, adjective.. and so on as parts of speech, how would you group and refer root, infinitive, conjunctions ?

tchrist

So you’re using English to French to students whose first language is neither?

Anonymous

Yes.

tchrist

See, this whole root thing is not making sense for me.

It sounds like stem.

When inflecting a verb in French, the stem used will vary form the citation form depending on the tense used.

Anonymous

1:23 PM

eat == root , to eat == infinitive , he/she/ ate/eats/... == conjunctions

tchrist

Well, that isn’t really right.

Anonymous

at-least that is how I was thought

tchrist

Too many holes to patch. Sorry. Can’t help.

Anonymous

No problems :)

Anonymous

thanks anyway.

Anonymous

1:25 PM

Where is that evil @Cerberus :p

tchrist

1:48 PM

@bivoc He is a vampire who seldom rises before the sun sets.

Anonymous

lol.

Anonymous

While trying to teach the alphabets I noticed that W is pronounced as in Double V in French, which makes sense considering W seems as a double form of V (VV) but in English its known as Double U while clearly isn't written as such.

Anonymous

I'm thinking, at some point somebody got confused :)

tchrist

2:06 PM

@bivoc I beg your pardon?

Anonymous

Hmm, w hy ?

tchrist

That’s printed, not written.

You said “clearly isn’t written”, which is clearly incorrect.

Writing is a manual thing; hence, manuscript.

Anonymous

Well, this means the French got it w rong, perhaps .. ?

Anonymous

I guess nothing is what is seems.

tchrist

@bivoc Not really.

Language is not subject to the same right–wrong dichotomy that something like arithmetic is.

Also, do please recall the v is a new letter.

> V /viː/, the 22nd letter of the modern English and the 20th of the ancient Roman alphabet, was in the latter an adoption of the early Greek vowel-symbol V, now also represented by U and Y (q.v.), but in Latin was employed also with the value of the Greek digamma (viz. w), to which it corresponds etymologically. When not purely vocalic, it still denoted this sound at the time when the earliest Latin loan-words were adopted in the Teutonic languages; consequently such words beginning with v appear in Old English with w. Under the Empire, however, the semi-vocalic sound gradually changed to …

> W /ˈdʌb(ə)ljuː/, the 23rd letter of the modern English alphabet, is an addition to the ancient Roman alphabet, having originated from a ligatured doubling of the Roman letter represented by the U and V of modern alphabets. When, in the 7th c., the Latin alphabet was first applied to the writing of English, it became necessary to provide a symbol for the sound /w/, which did not exist in contemporary Latin. This sound, a gutturally-modified bilabial voiced spirant, is acoustically almost identical with the devocalized /u/ or /ʊ/, which was the sound originally expressed by the Roman U or V…

And that w is even newer than v.

Anonymous

2:14 PM

Ok, I have to ask this, What has being new has to do with how it should be pronounced ?

tchrist

Why are you putting a space before your question mark ? Are you French ? 😜

First, u and v were not distinct letters of the Latin alphabet.

Anonymous

No. I am just used to writing it that way.

tchrist

We don’t do that in English.

Anonymous

Oh, I never knew that. Got it now.

tchrist

Second, considering that w is a doubling of u or v, it should be the cause of the no surprise that there should be some variation in calling it a doubled u or a doubled v: those were the same letter.

I’m sorry if I came across as saying there was anything “wrong” with French, or with being French. I certainly do not believe any such thing.

Anonymous

2:20 PM

I'm not French.

tchrist

It’s just that applying French standards to English always reads as something of a stranger in a strange land.

Anonymous

Its my fault actually. For some reason, I assumed that all the 26 letters just come into existence altogether at the same time :)

tchrist

You earlier said “While trying to teach the alphabets I noticed”. Unless you are teaching several different alphabets, such as the Latin alphabet and the Greek alphabet and the Cyrillic alphabet, then that doesn’t make much sense. Probably you should have used either the alphabet in the singular, or perhaps a more explicit (the names of) the letters of the alphabet. Or just the letters.

So you can teach your students the alphabet, or teach them the letters, or even teach them the letters of the alphabet. But you probably cannot teach the alphabets when you mean the other thing.

@bivoc Hm, really? Is your first language normally written in something other than the alphabet that English inherited (and subsequently modified) from the Romans’ Latin one?

I find that non-native speakers frequently write the word alphabet when they mean the word letter.

Anonymous

Ge'ez language

Ge'ez /ˈɡiːɛz/ (ግዕዝ, Gəʿəz [ɡɨʕɨz]; also transliterated Gi'iz, and less precisely called Ethiopic) is an ancient South Semitic language that originated in Eritrea and the northern region of Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa. It later became the official language of the Kingdom of Aksum and Ethiopian imperial court. Today Ge'ez remains only as the main language used in the liturgy of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Ethiopian Catholic Church, and the Beta Israel Jewish community. However, in Ethiopia Amharic (the main lingua franca of modern Ethiopia...

Anonymous

That and this is the problem.

tchrist

2:28 PM

Really? That is super-interesting!

Now you intrigue me!

Anonymous

Those are my audiences, just so you know.

Anonymous

They say that in the world of the blind the one-eyed man is king.

Anonymous

one-eyed man === me :)

Anonymous

That makes me think ... one-eyed-man or one-eyed man ?

tchrist

If the man has but one eye, he is a one-eyed man.

However, a fake pirate with an eyepatch can affect a one-eyed-man look. :)

But if one eyed man early enough in his development, he would have looked much closer to other apes than he is normally seen today.

@bivoc So cool! So the Ge’ez script is more of a syllabary than it is an alphabet?

Does each symbol in the Ge’ez script represent a syllable?

Anonymous

2:34 PM

Yes.

tchrist

I see, I see, I see.

Anonymous

There isn't a sound you can make that doesn't have its own letter within the alphabet.

Anonymous

In other words, very easy to learn.

tchrist

Well, there are lots of languages where that is true.

English simply is not one of them, alas.

Nor is French.

Anonymous

Definitely.

tchrist

2:37 PM

Things like Italian or German or Spanish are closer to that ideal.

Anonymous

I am learning the very basics of German, so far it seems good.

Anonymous

.. as in a lot easier to understand.

tchrist

It is interesting that you are using English to teach French to people whose first language is neither. Is this because English is the language that all your students share in common?

German is more complicated than English as far as its inflectional morphology is concerned, but the mapping between the written word and the spoken one is much easier there, where by “much easier” I am seriously understating the difference.

By the way, I have a job interview in 20 minutes, so I will disappear before then for some time.

Anonymous

Oh, ok.

Anonymous

About your question though, I only learned French very recently. I just know the basics well enough to teach/share it, but not deep enough to avoid having to look at English for more understanding.

Anonymous

2:42 PM

Good luck

tchrist

Oh ok. I had figured that knew French from earlier. Many (but hardly all, nor even most) people in Africa do so.

Thanks.

I know so little about Ethiopia and Eritrea that what I do know would not fill a thimble; it might not even fill a sequin.

For example, I did not know that Semitic languages were spoken there.

Which is frankly somewhat embarrassingly ignorant.

overactor

Could I ask you guys something?

tchrist

2:57 PM

Considering that you have just done so, it apparently lies within your ability. :)

However, asking to ask is counterproductive.

overactor

I see it as an empty nicety.

In any case, my girlfriend just wanted me to put a basket with clothes in it on the bed and said:

"Could you put them on the bed?"

Is that incorrect?

tchrist

No, it is not incorrect. What was your specific concern about it?

But I would not question my girlfriend about such things. :)

overactor

I must say, it didn't have a positive effect on the mood.

Well, I felt like I wasn't putting the clothes on the bed so much as the basket.

And that it should be singular.

Stack Exchange

3:35 PM

Limerick Machine: A woman with beautiful eyes Was chronically prone to bad styes She dug her eyes out Filled socket…

posted on August 03, 2014 by sgdi

A woman with beautiful eyes Was chronically prone to bad styes She dug her eyes out Filled sockets with grout And never again had to cry

tchrist

3:52 PM

@overactor Always defer to one’s girlfriend in these matters. Plus I’m sure she was thinking of the clothes not the basket.

@MattЭллен ++scansion 😻

overactor

@tchrist She wanted me to leave the clothes in the basket and put the latter, with the clothes in it, on the bed.

tchrist

Are you a programmer?

overactor

Depends.

I certainly want to become one.

tchrist

Them works better here than it. Trust her.

Consider “Put that on the bed” versus “Put those on the bed”.

overactor

Is it because the clothes are what really needs to be moved?

tchrist

4:00 PM

I have no idea.

overactor

And the container really is of no importance?

Well, thanks for clearing that up.

Neither of us is a native English speaker.

tchrist

English is not as singular–plural fussy as you seem to wish to be. That’s why I asked whether you were a programmer.

overactor

Good to know that I think like one.

tchrist

There is a lot more notional agreement in English that does not always jive with a non-native speaker’s notion of formal agreement than the NNS usually expects.

A compiler for a narrowly typed programming language would require a lot more conformance of actual parameters to formal ones than normally happens in English.

overactor

It seems like rather an interesting topic.

tchrist

4:27 PM

I keep wanting to +1 edits or the check-in comments associated with them.

kwak

@tchrist Can I contact you again in 50 years to know if even with secondhand smoke we can live long?

my email is ... are you ready?

tchrist

@kwak I’ve always been a rabid antimakemeasmoker.

So you’re preaching to the choir, minister.

kwak

@tchrist me too :)

Did you get my EEEmail sir?

tchrist

The postman doesn’t ring even once on Sundays.

Smoking in someone’s face is nearly as acceptable as spitting in their face or peeing in their face.

And unlike you, I remember when it was otherwise.

Children of smokers are more prone to asthma and other respiratory ailments.

That it should have required some study to prove this shows just how X that Y are, or at least can be.

I’ll let you replace X and Y in your own head so I don’t flagged by smokers.

My email address is a matter of public record. If you send me mail, it might get to me. I might even read it. I may now and then respond. But none of these actions is a guaranteed one.

Hablando del Rey de Roma. . . .

George Pompidou

why don't you get a secret one

tchrist

4:39 PM

That would be silly.

I am not now nor have ever been a member of the spook party.

George Pompidou

oooh

Matt Эллен

@tchrist is there a possibility that you would respond to an email you haven't received?

@MattЭллен There is.

:D

4:47 PM

is that you playing with your little friends :3

Matt Эллен

@tchrist it all makes so much sense now

tchrist

@GeorgePompidou Je n’en ai pas des petits amis.

George Pompidou

mais qui sont-ils alors?

tchrist

Ce sont probablement les petits amis de quelqu’un d’autre.

Ce n’est pas parfaitement clair pour moi que ce soient trois papillons de nuit distincts là. C’est peut–être quelque trompe l’œil.

Ou bien trompe la caméra, un truc.

tchrist

5:47 PM

►

kwak

Oh so tchrist is a guru of perl, I didn't know

MickLH

oh god

tchrist

The extreme irony of hearing East Indians sing of West Indians (notice how they have only gulls not girls) is highly entertaining.

George Pompidou

7:15 PM

ooh

how do you type special characters on windows

how the christ do you do anything on windows

this is so awful

I have to find buttons to click on for basically everything since I suspect there's no conventional shell on here

buttons around

tchrist

►

George Pompidou

oh [blushing happy emoji] I love Stephen Fry

oh [blushing happy emoji] I love Liechtenstein

the only time I've ever been to Liechtenstein my dad and I got there by accident. we boarded the wrong train out of Switzerland and the announcement system was kaputt in our car

it was very nice. there was nothing at all wrong about the place.

tchrist

►

Oh stop that.

Read this instead.

George Pompidou

who is Kent Bandy

I do not care about this person I care about Stephen Fry

watches more of that

never mind, he's talking about Richard Stallman

plays Skyrim

tchrist

He will get to ragging on Windows.

George Pompidou

7:30 PM

goes back to Stephen Fry

it's actually not fair my reaction to Stallman

he's a great guy. but he needs a haircut, shower, weight loss, and crazy pills.

tchrist

Just because Richard is himself so afflicted with bipolar disorder as to be a negative poster child for the FSF does not mean that the FSF has done no good.

George Pompidou

and like a girlfriend

yes, I know.

skullpatrol

7:42 PM

Thanks for protecting "unpeeled" pal @tchrist

:-)

George Pompidou

unpeels your face

skullpatrol

My *skull* ?

skullpatrol

8:09 PM

SKULL

tchrist

8:23 PM

From today’s New York Times: The Great Colorado Weed Experiment and High in the Rockies, a Chill Marijuana Debate.

Definitely stuff in there I’d never heard of.

Like all that.

Cerberus

10:42 PM

It's just another drug, I don't get what the big deal is...

George Pompidou

yeah, people like making a big fuss about it.

in their defense, it was a very demonized and criminalized drug historically, for being so benign compared to most drugs.

which is confusing.

but it's also kind of a big time-waster. and people who are "activists" about it and devote their lives to it are completely demented.

eh. I smoke pot sometimes, don't think much of it and don't care much about its legality.

Cerberus

Heh.

I don't care about drugs at all personally.

But I think it is ridiculous and harmful to make them illegal.

George Pompidou

hey now. how is it harmful?

are you talking about drugs across the board? cause that's mental what you're saying.

Cerberus

It fuels crime and criminalises the innocent.

I think you misread my line!

George Pompidou

you said that it's "ridiculous and harmful to make them illegal"

Cerberus

10:53 PM

Yes.

George Pompidou

it's ridiculous and harmful to make heroin illegal?

Cerberus

Coke has been illegal since forever. And yet it is easier than ever to get, on every street corner.

George Pompidou

yeah, and it ruins people's lives

Cerberus

Yes, I think all drugs should be legal. And, no, I have never used any and wouldn't.

George Pompidou

you're insane. perhaps you have never seen the effects of highly addictive drugs on someone close to you.

Cerberus

10:55 PM

If it ruins lives, which I think coke usually doesn't (everybody here uses it), that still doesn't mean you should forbid it if doing so does not help one iota.

You're not very polite.

George Pompidou

I think making drugs legal would encourage more people to use them.

and some drugs, even trying them once can lead to a wasted and destroyed life.

Cerberus

@GeorgePompidou Evidence points in the opposite direction. Cannabis has been legal here since...always, and yet people in France, America, and most other countries use more of it than we do.

Symbol politics, is what I call that.

George Pompidou

I'm not talking about cannabis, no problem with that.

Cerberus

That's not my point.

Making drugs illegal does not make more people use them, is what I said.

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…