English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

crl

12:08 AM

Isn't masters already a plural? What are you saying @tog22?

tog22

I don't think it is - you say "I have a Masters degree"

Not "I have Masters degrees"

I'm simply asking whether "including people with Masters from top universities" is grammatical

terdon

@tog22 Yes. It's the degrees that should be plural, not the Masters. You would also say "people with bachelor's degrees" or "people with school diplomas".

Just say "including people with Masters degrees from top universities"

tog22

thanks!

terdon

You're welcome.

crl

oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/master I didn't know, right, masters probably comes from master's and is treated as singular

terdon

12:23 AM

@crl Yes, you have mastery of the subject presumably.

tchrist

Messrs degrees.

infinitesimal

As opposed to doctory? of the subject :D

crl

not opposed, but inferior to :)

tchrist

Les Misérables 2012 Master of the House

►

MASTERS IN THIS HALL - The Life Treasury of Christmas Music (1963)

►

infinitesimal

Masters and Johnson?

tchrist

12:29 AM

Master of Tides - Lindsey Stirling

►

MALMÖ - Time & Tide waits for no man (Official Music video)

►

Elton John - No Man Is An Island (1980)

►

@RegDwigнt ^^^^^^^^^^

crl

1:28 AM

imgur.com/gallery/yzprP

Are they trying to say Cologne?

Funny... the internet becomes a pile of s%!#

in JavaScript on Stack Overflow Chat, 9 mins ago, by crl

Robusto

1:44 AM

@crl haha, stupid tweeters. They should all smell like their BF´s colon.

tchrist

Tweakers?

Robusto

People who tweet. Tweeters.

22 mins ago, by crl

http://imgur.com/gallery/yzprP

tchrist

Just as bad, really.

Tonight I quelled my rage.

Barely.

But it was a raging topic, so I should not have it held against me.

0

A: Could somebody translate this into modern English?

You have it easy compared to those many of us who struggled to read that epic song of rage with words beginning thus: μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί᾽ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε᾽ ἔθηκε πολλὰς δ᾽ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνε88σσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶ...

Robusto

Oh_

tchrist

Pretty sure that 1898 counts as Modern English.

Unlike menin aeide, thea, Peleiadeo Achileos.

Fagles opens thus:

> Rage — Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.
Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,
Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.

Robusto

1:55 AM

I voted for Greek.

tchrist

Heh.

Robusto

Poor wittle ignoramus, can´t dope out standard English.

tchrist

I cannot speak ill of Pope, but mixing Greek and Latin names for his gods always confused me.

Robusto

I'm tempted to go all stupid on his ass.

tchrist

As I said, my rage I quelled.

Barely.

Fagles is all-Greek, all-the-time. So it is Athena sent by Hera not Minerva sent by Juno. And it is Odysseus not Ulysses.

Robusto

1:57 AM

Goddess, dude, hit me with a song, make it about Achilles
who capped all them honkies that didn't step off

tchrist

House Atrides, cursed forever.

Just ask Leto.

Robusto

@PeterShor: The force-fitting of the original scansion into heroic couplets, perhaps? — Robusto 43 secs ago

@tchrist Jared? ^_^

tchrist

I don’t imagine you’ve read Dan Simmons’s Ilium–Olympos diptych?

Robusto

> You can now read 77.4% of all real Spanish text

@tchrist I have not.

I have to say, I haven't gotten this far this fast in a language before. Maybe Spanish is just that easy, or maybe duolingo is not too shabby.

tchrist

@Robusto The Duke. Paul Atreides’ father on Arrakis.

Robusto

2:01 AM

@tchrist I know. I was making a joke.

tchrist

@Robusto Or you had time and IQ points to spare.

@Robusto I enjoyed the first half more than the second half, but it is still worth reading, at least once surely.

Robusto

@tchrist BTW, I believe you mean House Atreides.

@tchrist I will enqueue it.

tchrist

@Robusto No, I used the Pope. :)

Robusto

OIC

tchrist

Papal dispensation, if you will.

Robusto

2:04 AM

Papel dispensation, get it in writing.

tchrist

In his foreword, Simmons talks about the mixing of Latin and Greek names in some of the translations. He says that it’s like when you’re playing those games with little toy soldiers as a lad: sometimes you have to play with all green guys.

Robusto

@tchrist Or you play with some from one set and some from another, only the ones from the other set are larger and stupid-looking.

tchrist

> When my kid brother and I used to take our toy soldiers out of the box, we had no problem playing with our blue and gray Civil War soldiers alongside our green World War II guys. I prefer to think of this as a precocious example of what John Keats called “Negative Capability.” (We also had a Viking, a cowboy, an Indian, and a Roman Centurion flinging grenades, but they were in our Time Commando Platoon. Some anomalies demand what the Hollywood people insist on calling a backstory.)

With Ilium, however, I thought a certain consistency was required. Those readers who teethed, as I did, on …

Robusto

Anything special about gerunds here? — Kris 14 hours ago

I don't answer Kris anymore.

Whatever he says, he always seems to be trolling.

tchrist

@Robusto Gods no.

> the more faithful version sometimes sounds like a cat coughing up a hairball

@Cerberus ^^^^^^^

> Rage.

Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles, of Peleus’ son, murderous,
man-killer, fated to die, sing of the rage that cost the Achaeans
so many good men and sent so many vital, hearty souls down to the
dreary House of Death. And while you’re at it, O Muse, sing of the
rage of the gods themselves, so petulant and so powerful here on
their new Olympos, and of the rage of the post-humans, dead and
gone though they might be, and of the rage of those few true humans
left, self-absorbed and useless though they may have become. While

crl

2:11 AM

El gerundio

tchrist

¡Geronimo!

Robusto

@tchrist When I was writing my series about 11th century England I tried to cleave to Anglo-Saxon names as much as possible, but relaxed the stricture slightly here and there when I felt the original to be too abstruse. For example, I always used Mercia instead of Miercna rīce, even though I had no problem calling Surry Suth Rige, etc.

tchrist

@Rob In case it wasn’t obvious, that’s the opening salvo from Ilium.

Robusto

@tchrist You think I don't recognize The Iliad?

tchrist

No no no.

Now you misunderstand me.

I meant that the long quote is from Dan Simmons.

Robusto

2:13 AM

@tchrist Oh, I see.

tchrist

> On second thought, O Muse, sing of nothing to me. I know you. I
have been bound and servant to you, O Muse, you incomparable bitch.
And I do not trust you, O Muse. Not one little bit.

When line-broken close to the start of the real Iliad, it is an amusing as hell of a way to start out.

Robusto

@tchrist I wouldn't trust her either.

tchrist

Although I didn’t read it that way. I rebroke it for you pleasure.

Robusto

Sí, gracias.

tchrist

Corpse fires.

Robusto

2:16 AM

BTW, this Spanish keyboard makes diacriticism easy as pie.

tchrist

Por donde fueres, haz lo que vieres.

It won’t rhyme in modern Spanish, alas.

Por donde vayas, haz lo que veas.

Not at all as pretty.

Robusto

When in Rome?

tchrist

Yep.

Wheresoever thou shalt go, do whatever thou might see.

Wherever you go, do what you see.

Less pretty.

The first uses the old future subjunctive so that it rhymes.

There's just like -ra imperfect subjunctives but use -re forms. People don't use them any more in Spanish, except sometimes in legal contracts to cover all bases.

Portuguese still uses them a lot.

Robusto

All that remains of my course.

I downloaded a Spanish dictionary for my phone, but there are so many I may try out several.

tchrist

How does that work, the colored ones are yet to go?

Robusto

2:20 AM

@tchrist The gold ones are complete, the colored ones are current, and the grayed ones are not available till the colored ones are finished.

tchrist

Oh I see.

Robusto

What you don't see is about 57 gold ones upscrolled.

tchrist

You seemed to do well enough with all the tenses when you did Borges.

Robusto

@tchrist Yeah, I'm getting the hang of it. Just takes practice.

tchrist

So you're working on imperfect subjunctives now?

Robusto

2:21 AM

I made a point to seek out more info on objective pronouns.

@tchrist I will be.

That's tomorrow.

tchrist

Well, there are at least four kinds of "objective" pronouns.

Robusto

Why I sought out more info.

tchrist

I’m trying to think of the right terminology for you.

Robusto

Most irregular verbs are included in the list. If a verb is not included here, it is probably regular.

haber (to have), hablar (to speak), hacer (to make, do), heder* (to stink), helar* (to freeze), hender* (to split), hendir* (to split), herrar* (to put on a horseshoe), herir* (to offend), hervir* (to boil), hincar* (to thrust)

holgar* (to be unnecessary), hollar* (to tread on), homologar* (to approve), hornear* (to bake), hospitalizar* (to hospitalize), hostigar* (to harass), hostilizar* (to hospitalize), huir (to flee), honrar* (to honor), humanizar* (to humanize), humedecer* (to make …

Seriously, this is all the irregular verbs?

tchrist

There are datives like le dije que, there are accusatives like lo sé, there are prepositional objects like para mí, and there are tonic genitives like para el mío.

Robusto

2:24 AM

I haven't covered the postfix variety yet.

tchrist

The hardest is how the datives and accusatives fit together, and that's mostly just learning the the L*-L* pattern if forbidden, converting the dative to se instead.

Robusto

Though that may be more obvious.

tchrist

The dative and accusative forms are identical no matter whether proclitic or enclictic, so that’s trivial.

Robusto

This is where my brain gets tired of the repetition/pattern matching and wants to learn the structure underneath.

tchrist

@Robusto Hah.

Robusto

2:26 AM

Contarle would be "count it"?

tchrist

Not really, no, they aren’t. Most of them are irregular only in orthography alone.

@Robusto No, probably to count him something.

Le is dative.

Lo is accusative.

Except for some northern speakers who have a 3-way system you needn’t worry about.

Robusto

Doesn't look like the duolingo course is going to get to the datives.

tchrist

I actually learned it that way, but I try to avoid it here because Mexicans will perceive it as error.

me, te, le, nos, os, les.

Done.

They are almost the same as the accusatives, which are me, te, lo/la, nos, os, los/las.

Only the third person differs.

Robusto

Have you been to Argentina?

tchrist

Not quite. :)

Just down to the southern border of Brazil.

Robusto

2:29 AM

Looks like an interesting place.

tchrist

Which is a rather prosaic part of that country.

Temperate not tropical.

Robusto

It's northernmost and southernmost parts are more extreme than those of the continental U.S.

tchrist

Argentina, I presume you mean.

Robusto

It would be like if the U.S. eastern seaboard extended from Quebec to Jamaica

@tchrist Yes.

tchrist

And I’m wondering what you mean by extreme. And continental. :)

Ok, degrees latitude.

Robusto

2:31 AM

My communication skills are fading with my tired brain. Up since 5:00 . . .

tchrist

Eek.

I've been up since six but didn’t finally go to sleep for good till midnight. Six hours doesn’t cut it.

Me lo dijo is somebody told me it-masculine. Te la di is I have you it-feminine.

Robusto

Hmm, after all these years they closed my very first question on ELU. I know it's unacceptable today, but at the time it was proper enough for the mods to give it a pass. And you'd think it would be grandfathered in after 4+ years.

tchrist

Heh.

The mods didn’t close it.

Robusto

Kosmonaut even has the accepted answer.

tchrist

The rabble did.

Robusto

2:35 AM

Yes. Stupid rabble.

I voted to reopen. Fuck 'em.

tchrist

Démelo is give me it-masculine. Chúpamela is suck me it-feminine. Yes, your dick is feminine. Sorry.

Robusto

Not mine, surely.

tchrist

La polla in Spain, la verga in Mexico. But still a gender bender from el penis, which is right-gendered scientific term.

It’s ok. It’s el coño but la vagina.

So the common names have the wrong genders, the scientific names the right ones.

You really need the pronoun chart.

Of course there are Vd and Vds for the formals.

But those aren’t real pronouns.

Not exactly.

You have to use 3rd person pronouns with them.

And se can always be used to make a semi-passive.

Robusto

I have been ignoring vosotros so far.

tchrist

That isn't a good chart, actually. It is missing mandatory accents.

These are better, but not all in one chart.

Pronombres en español

Los pronombres del español son los elementos deícticos que pueden referirse a una entidad que interviene en la predicación verbal. Desde el punto de vista gramatical los pronombres tienen una distribución similar a los nombres (excepto por los pronombres clíticos que preceden obligatoriamente a los verbos conjugados). Desde el punto de vista semántico no tienen referencia fija sino contextual. Los pronombres del español pueden clasificarse en: Pronombres personales Tónicos o independientes (de casos nominativo-vocativo y preposicional) Átonos o clíticos (de casos acusativo y dativo) Reflexivos...

It also covers both sides of the Atlantic as well as the voseo situation from Argentina etc.

Robusto

2:49 AM

It strikes me that languages are probably like musical instruments. Some are hard starting off, some are relatively easy, but all take about the same amount of time to truly master.

tchrist

Another similarity is that once you know one in a family, you have a faster jumpstart in others in that family.

Robusto

And yet you will get tripped up by the similarities, no doubt.

tchrist

Yeah, don’t try for the sustain pedal on an organ.

I don’t think I am a good judge on whether Spanish is easy to learn.

I started learning it when I was only 12, so it has been with me most of my life.

But I do think it is easier than German, and German easier than Latin.

It is easier than French in that the orthography isn’t fucked up.

It is easier than Portuguese in that you can tell the words apart more easily.

(European Portuguese that is.)

It is about the same as Italian in most of all those things.

Robusto

Yeah, and Japanese is about twice as hard as German. Maybe harder than that.

tchrist

Spanish and Italian are actually pretty far apart, but they sound a lot more like each other than Spanish and Portuguese do, which are actually very very close.

Robusto

2:56 AM

Compared to Japanese, all the Western European languages might as well be English.

tchrist

And in fact, a Spaniard will have an easier time making out what an Italian is saying than what a Portuguese is saying.

If written, the reverse is true.

I think it has to do with the rhythm and timing of the respective languages.

Robusto

I must leave you to it. La cama beckons.

tchrist

Night. Enjoy.

Cerberus

3:32 AM

Hello.

@tchrist He is right, it is a dilemma.

I would use the Latinate versions myself.

tchrist

The problem is that you run out eventually.

Yes, you don’t want to sound like you are a cat coughing up a hairball.

Cerberus

I didn't mean the Roman versions: just the Latinate translitterations.

tchrist

Oh, ok. So still Athena not Minerva.

Cerberus

Yeah.

tchrist

@Cerberus You keep doing that French thing with litt.

Cerberus

3:35 AM

I prefer it.

Dutch and English sin.

tchrist

Very well.

Cerberus

I spell litteratuur whenever I can get away with it.

tchrist

Which I should hope is never.

Cerberus

On the contrary.

tchrist

In any event, Simmons did what you would elect.

Cerberus

3:37 AM

I suppose you could speak of Ulysses or Ulixes, and Juno and Jupiter, but the problem of mixture does arise.

tchrist

That way Juno does not disport herself with Polyphemos.

Cerberus

Jinx.

tchrist

But Hera may. )

Cerberus

Hah.

Did she, disport herself?

The problem is most pressing in the Aeneid.

I believe Virgil uses Greek names where necessary.

tchrist

@Cerberus I’ll bet!

Cerberus

3:40 AM

The Romans were now very particular about Latinitas, now generous with Greek words.

Liberal, one might say.

tchrist

> Iram pande mihi Pelidae, Diua, superbi
Tristia quae miseris iniecit funera Grais
Atque animas fortes heroum tradidit Orco
Latrantumque dedit rostris uolucrumque trahendos
Illorum exsangues, inhumatis ossibus, artus.

There are become Atridae in that translation.

Cerberus

That is no less Greek.

tchrist

But Achilles is Achilles. :)

Cerberus

What is that, it doesn't sound Virgilian?

tchrist

It’s the Ilias Latina.

thelatinlibrary.com/ilias.html

Ilias Latina

The Ilias Latina is a short Latin hexameter version of the Iliad of Homer that gained popularity in Antiquity and remained popular through the Middle Ages. It was very widely studied and read in Medieval schools as part of the standard Latin educational curriculum. According to Ernest Robert Curtius, it is a "crude condensation", into 1070 lines. It is attributed to Publius Baebius Italicus, said to be a Roman Senator, and to the decade 60 CE – 70 CE. It includes at least two acrostic elements: the first lines spell out ITALICUS, while the last lines spell SCRIPSIT, taken together translating ...

Cerberus

3:45 AM

I see.

I can't even parse the hexameter.

The -a in Diva should be short.

tchrist

Well, it’s vocative, so isn’t it?

Cerberus

The vocative should be short.

tchrist

But you’re saying that hexameter requires a long syllable there?

Cerberus

Yes, but I may be wrong: if the i in Pelidae is long, then it works out.

It's Greek, so I can't know the length of the i.

tchrist

Oh.

Cerberus

3:48 AM

Oh, but i was stupid.

Peleus is Pêleus, with a eta.

tchrist

Yeah.

Cerberus

So the e is long in Latin too.

Then the i must be long too.

I thought it was an epsilon.

You know how Latin/Greek scansion works?

If not, you would enjoy it.

tchrist

No, I don’t.

I don’t what would be long in Πηληϊάδεω.

Cerberus

It's fairly simple to learn.

Eta is always long.

tchrist

Ah.

Cerberus

3:51 AM

Epsilon is always short (unless it's part of a diphthong).

tchrist

Right.

Cerberus

Idem for omega and omicron.

tchrist

I was figuring.

Cerberus

The other vowels are unknown.

Diphthongs are long.

tchrist

Sure.

Cerberus

3:52 AM

A vowel that is short "by nature" becomes long if followed by two consonants.

Even across word barriers.

That's the basis.

tchrist

Why do I know that? Hm. Because Tolkien used the rule for stress, and a diphthong counted as long. A double consonant also caused the stress to step back.

Cerberus

Right!

It all makes sense.

No doubt there are some similar patterns in Germanic.

tchrist

Yes, but he studied Greek and Latin as a child.

Cerberus

But I am a bit drunk.

tchrist

Oh, that's a good idea.

Moment. :)

Cerberus