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3:00 PM
@Mitch hoosegow
 
@tchrist Oh... um.. that guy.... guillermo something... the labyrinth with the girl and the civil war...
 
Bull.
 
@Robusto Progress!
@tchrist Nope, no bull, I really saw it.
 
Don’t expect to win the no bull prize for that one.
 
@tchrist I thought that was from Wolof or some other West African language.
Pan's Labyrinth.
 
3:02 PM
@Mitch Moosejaw.
 
That's how Samson defeated the Philistines.
The far northern philistines.
 
> ¿Te perdiste? El cielo está muy lejos de aquí.
Spanish pickup line. Funny how pickup lines seem cornier in other languages.
 
Juzgó el juicio que los banditos no pagasen más — aparte de sus vidas.
And thus was the hoosegow invented.
 
@Robusto They're universally corny.
 
Hm, sequence of tenses bites.
 
3:04 PM
But they seem cornier in other languages.
And I don't think Telemundo is doing anybody any favors in that regard.
 
Telenovelas.
 
The dumbest puns are super hilarious when learning.
 
Tellysavalas.
 
@Mitch How do you know?
@Mitch So true!!
 
@tchrist I don't find those engaging. At all. Nobody is shooting anybody. Nobody is jumping from the wing of a harrier jet onto the top of a crumbling building and then on to the next building before it crumbles and then into the bomb shelter, closing the door before everything explodes.
 
3:07 PM
@Mitch ¿Cómo se dice lluvia en alemán? Gotas caen.
 
@Cerberus I'm making fun of your age. because you're are relatively so young. I have no idea how well you spoke 5 years ago.
@tchrist Hilarious!! Ha ha haha ha ha ahha!
I don't get it.
 
> You can now read 73.2% of all real Spanish text
tick, tick, tick . . .
 
Rob, do you get my joke?
 
@Mitch The fact that it is a different language exercises your brain, and it likes to be exercised. A joke is funny when it exercises your brain, so it is perceived as funnier while your brain is being exercised by collateral factors.
@Mitch Umm this is not 2004.
 
@tchrist Not really. What does "drops fall" have to do with German?
 
3:09 PM
Phonoaesthetics.
 
Something to do with Gothic?
 
Sounds like Gotes Kein, or something.
 
@Cerberus And you wonder why everyone else isn't laughing literally out loud at the connection. It's so fascinating! Why isn't everyone else laughing? Hilarious! 'bow' and 'bow' are even spelled the same!
 
It sounds like it should be German.
 
@tchrist Well, you kind of reached around the corner for that one.
 
3:10 PM
What do you call a bra in German? Keepemfromfloppin.
 
@Robusto Look who's talking!!!
 
It’s that kind of joke.
 
Sep 5 '12 at 20:40, by Robusto
And what do you call a Scottish hat salesman in Germany? A Hüt Mann.
Now there's a bilingual pun.
 
@Cerberus native speakers are stupid. they can't even speak their own language.
 
Umm wha?
 
3:11 PM
@Robusto I’m not very good with Scottish.
 
Or . . .
Jul 31 '12 at 15:05, by Robusto
When you hit a French chicken in the stomach, does it say oeuf ?
@tchrist The joke is on the Scottish cliché "hoot mon".
 
Un œuf suffit.
@Robusto See, what’d I tell ya?
 
> Hola Cerberus,

Hemos migrado el foro a vBulletin, otro sistema de foros más avanzado. Como consecuencia de este cambio, tendrás que recuperar la contraseña para poder volver a entrar al foro. Puedes hacerlo en el siguiente enlace:
...
(Si no funciona ese enlace, haz click en "¿Olvidó su contraseña o nombre de usuario?")

Introduce tu correo (el mismo que usabas en el anterior sistema), y se te enviarán las instrucciones para recuperar tu clave.

Sentimos las molestias que esto te pueda causar.
 
@Robusto Cliché? I barely knew her!
 
Spanish is fairly easy if you understand the context.
 
3:14 PM
Tell that to a Mandarin speaker.
 
I can't, since I don't speak Mandarin.
 
I speak mandarin oranges.
 
> My wife and her sister used to work on the Portuguese archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean.
Azores?
No!! They were travel agents.
 
This reminds me of hanging around young kids telling jokes and puns, and some of the kids try to tell them too like "Why does a dog have for legs?" "because if it had more it would eat ice cream! ha ha ha ha ha". No it doesn't make any sense. Kids are dumb like that.
 
I haven't looked it up, but I believe contraseña to be "account" and correo "nickname". Clave is of course "password".
 
3:16 PM
@Cerberus s/Spanish/Life/g
 
@Cerberus No.
Contraseña = password
 
@tchrist Haha what?
 
Countersign.
 
@Robusto You should close your mouth when you speak then.
 
Correo is post/mail.
Cuenta = account.
 
3:17 PM
@Mitch That's just absurdism, which I generally don't like very much, as in Monty Python.
@tchrist Oh, aha, yes, El Correo is the Post.
Right?
 
Yes.
 
> Ojalá fuera bizco para verte dos veces.
OK, now that's just weird.
 
That’s funny.
 
@Cerberus Well, yes, it was very absurd, but no that's not why they were laughing. They were basically cargo-culting the humor. ie "the adults say some weird things I dont understand and then laugh. So I'll do that"
 
"If only I were cross-eyed so I could see you twice."
 
3:19 PM
> ¿Te dolió cuando te caíste del cielo?
Sleazy.
 
@Mitch Hmm you think? Why not simple absurdism?
 
is duolingo teaching you these puns?
 
@Robusto Sí, ángel mío, lo hice.
 
I love learning a language by song.
Look up the text to a song you like.
 
OK, I'm now certified to flirt in Spanish. Watch out.
 
3:21 PM
@Cerberus Well, could be, but absurdism has a certain deliberateness to it. These kids, no it was just random stuff.
 
And, just like the mechanism @Mitch mentioned with respect to jokes, I like rather unremarkable pop songs in foreign languages, because the language itself makes them fun. Listening to French pop/hiphop/whatever now.
 
@Cerberus Look man, I have a refined sense of humor! no kid is going to upstage me!
 
@Mitch I don't know.
 
@Cerberus To be frank, the French songs are just not very good.
 
3:22 PM
None of them?
 
This sounds nicer, although I cannot tell you why.
 
> Tu n'ose pas, tu n'ose pas, tu n'ose pas le lui dire.
The first time I was listening to it, I had no idea what he was saying.
 
Well, it’s French.
This is to be expected. :)
 
Just like Portuguese.
 
Or Russian.
 
3:25 PM
I don't know, I think I find Russian easier?
 
Somewhat. Depends on whether it’s Brazilian. But real Fado? Good luck!
 
(Talking about how easy it is to understand a language when listening to it when you have learned it based on individual words. French has this horrible liaison that messes everything up, and tons of chained contractions.)
Spanish, Italian: good.
French, Portuguese: bad.
Perhaps Brazilian is better.
 
@Cerberus Are you asking me or telling me?
 
@Cerberus Less bad.
 
@Robusto It's subjunctive
 
3:29 PM
It's disjunctive.
Or maybe superjunctive.
 
It's dysphoric
 
Heh, I started to type maybe as "maby" . . .
 
@Cerberus I bet you got nearly no words out of the Fado above. But once you have the words to go along with it, it begins to make sense what she is singing:
> O Fado nasceu um dia,
quando o vento mal bulia
e o céu o mar prolongava,
na amurada dum veleiro,
no peito dum marinheiro
que, estando triste, cantava,
que, estando triste, cantava.

Ai, que lindeza tamanha,
meu chão , meu monte, meu vale,
de folhas, flores, frutas de oiro,
vê se vês terras de Espanha,
areias de Portugal,
olhar ceguinho de choro.

Na boca dum marinheiro
do frágil barco veleiro,
morrendo a canção magoada,
diz o pungir dos desejos
do lábio a queimar de beijos
que beija o ar, e mais nada,
 
Now they're saying no snow until next Saturday.
 
@Robusto Os la guardamos aquí hasta entonces.
 
3:35 PM
There is no snow here until forever.
 
@Robusto Something in between, because this is supposed to be somewhat universal.
 
Am I in the Spanish room?
 
@Robusto Dammit. That ruins my plans for having no plans.
@ABeautifulMind ¿No?
 
Ah, my two best friends are not here in chat.
 
@ABeautifulMind No, usted está en la sala español
 
3:38 PM
-a
 
I heard "O Fado ... un dia,
quando vento ...", so that's not too bad.
 
crl
Quizas duolingo hizo un generador aleatorio de palabras
 
@ABeautifulMind All the snow you could have is being transferred to us.
 
@crl Well, it's not smart random. Sometimes I get the same prompt two or three times in a row.
 
Weather is a zero-snow game.
 
3:39 PM
Meanwhile, I can't find the button "olvido vuestra contraseña" on that website.
 
@Robusto Ooh... it's clever. repeating things til you get it.
 
@Cerberus I heard "born" in nasceu, but I am keyed to listening for preterite stress.
It would be written nació in Spanish. Portuguese orthography suffers different regulation.
 
I heard "someone's at the door" right after the doorbell rang.
There must be someone there.
 
@Cerberus "I forget you guys’ password?" Why are you in modo castellano on that site?
She is a very convincing singer.
 
crl
Anyway instead of making a full lexical sentence generator, it's probably easier to fetch them from books, articles etc
 
3:43 PM
"no peito dum marinheiro que, estando triste, cantava" => "en el pecho de un marinero que, estando triste, cantaba" => "in a sailor's breast, who being sad, would sing"
Well, or chest.
Pecs, man, pecs.
 
crl
man's boob
 
I eh paraphrased.
> ¿Olvidó su contraseña o nombre de usuario?
This button I cannot find.
 
Oh.
Did you-formal forget your-formal password or username?
 
No, didn't you read the notice above?
 
Which note?
 
3:46 PM
They want me to reset my password because they were unable to migrate passwords to their new fora.
32 mins ago, by Cerberus
> Hola Cerberus,

Hemos migrado el foro a vBulletin, otro sistema de foros más avanzado. Como consecuencia de este cambio, tendrás que recuperar la contraseña para poder volver a entrar al foro. Puedes hacerlo en el siguiente enlace:
...
(Si no funciona ese enlace, haz click en "¿Olvidó su contraseña o nombre de usuario?")

Introduce tu correo (el mismo que usabas en el anterior sistema), y se te enviarán las instrucciones para recuperar tu clave.

Sentimos las molestias que esto te pueda causar.
It's not very interesting.
Notice tengo que.
 
tener que
But yes.
You’ll have to.
 
Why "but"?
I am used to using the first person singular in Latin.
 
You were using 1s for citation form as ’twere Latin. Spanish uses infinitive for that.
 
As the "dictionary form".
Right.
At first I thought I had simply jinxed you.
 
We’re sorry for the hassles this may cause you.
Notice the neuter esto, so all this mess.
 
3:50 PM
Why mess?
 
This thing. This business. I’m adding the color of the situation, you’re right.
 
Okay.
 
Esto means "this" in a way that can have no discrete antecedent, only a collection of circumstances. This matter.
 
How many ml go in a beer for you?
 
None.
I never walk a mile for a beer.
 
3:52 PM
If you convert them?
 
Proselytizing beer now, are we?
I don’t understand.
You mean in a glass of beer or a mug of beer or a pint of beer or a bottle of beer or a can of beer or a quarter-barrel of beer or a barrel of beer?
And if so, which one?
I don’t understand.
Glasses come in many sizes. So too do bottles.
Or beer bongs.
And then of course there’s always a yard of ale to be had.
 
That beats a wee dram
with a stick
 
We use those for controlling invasive species.
Not the sticks, but the weed rams.
 
A standard glass of beer in a pub.
 
a dram of whiskey will kill mold as well as sunshine.
 
3:57 PM
If someone tells you he had 7 beers last night, you assume he drank x ml.
 
ml don't even come into it. that dude drank a lot
 
@Cerberus Oh, do you have that German fetish for marking glasses with precise measurements? We think that’s crass.
 
Not precise, approximate.
 
crass = deutsch
 
Probably 10 oz?
Not sure.
 
3:58 PM
How much is that?
 
You have the technology.
 
I think in England they drink pints, which I think are about 500ml.
 
about this much shows hands about a foot apart
 
You can do it by heart, I can't. But very well.
We normally drink 250ml, at least in Amsterdam.
 
An oz is about 28g.
 
3:59 PM
Ah.
 
As any drug dealer will tell you.
 
So a bit larger than ours.
 
It might be 8 oz. It really depends.
 
At parties, they will often serve small glasses, like 150ml.
 

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