English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

tchrist

4:00 AM

And stuff that I have abhor slips from my mind like vinegar falling from oil.

You can tell me it seven times, and still it will find no lasting purchase.

It is like how @Cerberus cannot remember that water freezes at his age. :)

Cerberus

So it is.

tchrist

I notice that Hobbes uses more SOV ordering than Pope does. Reminds me more of German, well and of Dutch.

2

A: Could somebody translate this into modern English?

TL;DR: A 1990 translation is provided as the last citation at the bottom. 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 ψυ...

I did give the fellow a translation into his own language, but only in a comment to the OP.

@GEdgar Towards that purpose the translation by Odorico Mendes will probably serve our poster: Por este cetro juro, que estroncado / Jamais rebentará, pois na montanha / Folhas e casca cerceou-lhe o gume; / Por este, que os Grajúgenas arvoram / Do justo guarda e das leis divinas, / Juro, Atrida, é solene o juramento, / Suspirarão sem falta por Aquiles; / Nem lhes serás de auxílio, quando em barda / Esse Heitor homicida os vá segando. / Então de raiva e nojo hás de comer-te, / Porque o maior dos Gregos rebaixaste. — tchrist 36 mins ago

Funny how he is always Peleus’s son, when the fact that he is Thetis’s son is more important.

Patro-somethings.

Or patri-.

It’s funny how often the word Greek appears in many translations.

Because, well, it’s hard to spot in the original.

What’s twice a demilune?

The full moon was so bright last night against the snow.

And shall be so again tonight, I am sure.

Oh how nice, plenilune is an English word!

Who knew?

First citation from the early 1400s, lattermost from the end of the last century.

Er, end of the 19th century.

This is not the lattermost, but it amuses:

> 1845 De Quincey Coleridge & Opium-eating Wks. 1859 XII. 92 ― The wrath of Andrew, previously in a crescent state, actually dilated to a plenilunar orb.

Jasper bails with nada to say again.

@Cerberus SEE WHAT YOU’VE MADE ME DO!?

Hm, maybe I knew that plenilune was an English word, for how else would I have known to look in the OED for it?

Hm.

French?

I don't think so.

Cerberus

4:17 AM

Sorry, I had to take the baguette out of the oven.

And the meatballs.

tchrist

I wasn’t asking about your private life. :)

A warm baguette sounds nice ’bout now.

Why are you making supper so late?

So the answer to the riddle of what is twice a demilune is clearly a plenilune.

Not a lune. :)

Cerberus

@tchrist +1

@tchrist Because I have just come home.

Well, an hour ago.

@tchrist How do you mean, surely you know that Achaios...

tchrist

@Cerberus Yes yes yes. But none of the English translations I have read actually say "Greek", only the Spanish and Portuguese ones.

Cerberus

@tchrist Or you just made it up.

tchrist

Then I am like unto a mathematician, who "makes things up" by discovering that they are already there!

infinitesimal

4:26 AM

-_-

Cerberus

@tchrist Hmm true...

tchrist

Or does he discover that they are there by making them up?

Cerberus

Perhaps the Romance translations are more recent?

tchrist

The Fagles is from 1990.

Cerberus

@tchrist That is one of the most popular questions on Phil.se.

If I recall correctly.

tchrist

4:27 AM

I think with lexemes we need not be so Platonic.

Cerberus

@tchrist Then I am at a loss.

I am far from a Platonist.

tchrist

Fagles, like Simmons, uses the Latinization of the Greek words, not the "Greek" word.

Cerberus

You mean the Romanisation?

tchrist

It's more than just using Latin translit: Achaeans, Danaans, Argives.

Romanization would be a straight translit.

Cerberus

What I mean by Romanisation is "Juno" or "Greek".

tchrist

4:30 AM

We don't have Achaioi, Danaoi, Argeioi or whatever the last one works out to.

Cerberus

Adapting things to the Roman panth...omnideum(?).

tchrist

So, no -i words. :)

Cerberus

Adapting things to the Latin language is mainly just translitteration.

tchrist

Latin script.

Not Latin language.

Cerberus

Not merely the script.

tchrist

4:32 AM

Rex Danaum is to the language.

Cerberus

ARGEIOI is Latin script.

tchrist

Exactly.

Cerberus

But not the Latin language, usually.

ARCHIVI would be the Latin language.

Or however they actually Latinise that.

crl

LatinScript: a premice of JavaScript

Cerberus

If at all.

The Java script is written on Java.

tchrist

4:34 AM

I was looking for arch- in Ilias Latina.

crl

@Cerberus Don't tell that to JavaScripters, they particularly don't like this

Cerberus

I know.

tchrist

@Cerberus Usually it is written in C as God and Dennis intended.

Cerberus

The name JavaScript is a terrible mistake.

crl

Indeed

tchrist

4:35 AM

It is marketeering.

Cerberus

@tchrist What is?

tchrist

@Cerberus The Javascript interpreter.

crl

They could have named it LavaScript, the hot language

Cerberus

I don't think I need to repeat my earlier statements about the influence of advertising on our language(s)...

Ah.

tchrist

They should have named it Acorn.

Cerberus

4:36 AM

That is an existing language, isn't it?

tchrist

Is it?

crl

@tchrist or in c++ code.google.com/p/v8

tchrist

The original name for what we now call Java was Oak.

crl

but c++ dilutes in c, in my noob opinion

tchrist

@crl Yes.

@crl Funny kind of dilute. :)

I mostly like C. I mostly dislike C++.

Yes, there are aspect of each where I go the other way, but the basic statement holds true.

@crl How n00b?

crl

4:39 AM

I dislike the most the echo statements in c++, the cout >> "stuff" things

Cerberus

Oh.

tchrist

@crl No shit.

Hate those.

They are a trick.

crl

@tchrist I know some basics, but would code in c++ like in Java, not an expert of templates for example

Cerberus

Acornsoft LISP

Acornsoft LISP (marketed simply as LISP) is a dialect and commercial implementation of the Lisp programming language, released in the early 1980s for the 8-bit Acorn Atom, BBC Micro and Acorn Electron computers. == Description == Acornsoft LISP was released on cassette, disk and ROM cartridge. The ROM cartridge version had instantaneous loading as well as a greater amount of available free RAM for user definitions. In contrast with large-scale LISP implementations, Acornsoft's variant only had a modest number of built-in definitions as it had to fit in the limited memory space of the 8-bit Acorn...

tchrist

Today I had to disassemble Java bytecode to figure out what was really going on. None of the juniors of the team ever thought of doing that. What a sheltered life in Academe!

Cerberus

4:40 AM

Life?

tchrist

@crl Templates are an area that I find really fucked up in Java.

crl

templates in C++ I meant

tchrist

I don’t want to get into it, but Java type erasure and generics and arrays are just bending over backwards to spite your face.

@crl It’s all too damned complicated in my never so humble opinion. Teaching pigs to sing.

crl

Java int[] that can't be just casted in Integer[] is annoying, but real Javaers use ArrayList or even Java8 Streams now, which don't seem so easy

tchrist

@crl Did you find Spanish "fast" to learn? I ask because of the conversation way in the scroll log about Rob's progress.

@crl Whenever you have a buttload of people working on some piece of software, they will make it ever more complicated.

And that sucks.

crl

4:44 AM

@tchrist When you're French it's pretty easy

tchrist

I imagine.

That’s why I said other Romance speakers don’t count in the metrics.

crl

You even fall in traps, making your own Frenchized words, adding a -a

tchrist

That sounds amusing. Like what?

Cerberus

> You possess a rare gift. Never have I seen it before.

Nothing odd about this?

There is something about the inversion combined with it...

tchrist

@crl It’s ok to add -a to la planète, but you need to swap the gender for el planeta. :)

Cerberus

4:46 AM

Weird.

tchrist

@Cerberus It’s a bit fancy.

Cerberus

Somehow, the inversion seems...unbalanced.

tchrist

Randy has just brought in a vole. Damn it.

@Cerberus Seems ok to me.

Cerberus

Congratulations!

OK.

Perhaps it was just the tone, then.

crl

@tchrist for example, you would think "je rêve" -> "revo" if you don't know "soñar" yet

Cerberus

4:47 AM

I heard this spoken in a video.

This is the first time I see it.

ducks, runs, and hides

tchrist

@crl That one is funny.

As in diverting.

Cerberus

(Of course I'm not talking about inversion after a negation in general, by the way...)

tchrist

Er, amusing.

crl

It's just hard finding words that aren't close between French and Spanish. Ah drôle != divertido for example

Cerberus

Mujer?

tchrist

4:49 AM

Mulier.

Wait, not French.

Cerberus

That doesn't sound like proper French.

tchrist

Hembra doesn’t match with femme.

crl

Mujer != Femme yep

tchrist

Female vs woman.

Cerberus

There you go.

I have sowed disconcord.

tchrist

4:50 AM

Et semini ejus.

Cerberus

hides again

And to its seed?

tchrist

Aye.

Cerberus

Why the dative?

A Biblical quotation?

tchrist

Right.

> Quam olim Abrahae promisisti et semini eius. Hostias et preces tibi, Domine laudis offerimus tu suscipe pro animabus illis, quarum hodie memoriam facimus.

Cerberus

Ah, that semen.

tchrist

4:52 AM

What, you think I would confuse my seamen? :)

And ejus is his.

This time.

Cerberus

It is not you who was confused.

tchrist

Spanish and French have that 3rd person problem of not knowing the referent gender for su/son.

French can mark the target gender with son/sa but that is no help.

Cerberus

I thought you were referring with eius to my discord.

tchrist

Heh.

Cerberus

@tchrist It is the same in Latin.

tchrist

4:55 AM

That’s why I mentioned it.

German, in contrast, can mark both.

crl

Offtopic: TIL it's important to not remove the pawns while eating them with a king, because it can lead to a "coup Turc" ffjd.fr/lib/diagramme-fleche.php?position=B:22,23,33,38,34/… <- last pawn will eat the king

Cerberus

Nor even the referent number.

tchrist

Damn the Turk.

Cerberus

@tchrist So can Dutch, sometimes.

And Dutch and English no doubt could do so always, long ago.

tchrist

I thought you had dispensed with target gender and retained only referent gender like English.

Cerberus

4:58 AM

Well, in modern Dutch, there are no more cases or genders in most words.

Mijns inziens.

"Of my insight" = in my opinion.

A common expression.

The -s is the neuter genitive.

In both words.

tchrist

You would think mijn would suffice.

Mine eyes have seen worse.

Cerberus

It is an adverbial-kind-of genitive.

As in once.

And 's nachts.

So there are tons of expressions and idiomatic elements where the endings are still visible.

Het leed der mensen = the suffering of people.

Het leed des mensen = the suffering of man.

tchrist

I see.

You work nights.

Now perceived as a plural, not an adverbial genitive.

Cerberus

Yes, but... isn't that a simple plural?

Ah, so it was once a genitive?

tchrist

@Cerberus No.

@Cerberus Yes.

> Etymology: OE. nihtes = OFris. nachtes, -is, OS. nahtes (MDutch nachtes, nachts, Dutch ’s nachts), OHG. nahtes (G. nachts), an irreg. genitive form on the analogy of dæʒes, dages, etc. (see day sb. 1 b), but in later use prob. apprehended as a plural.

Cerberus

5:04 AM

OK.

I didn't know.

26

A: Explanation of "must needs"

Needs is an old-fashioned or even archaic adverb in modern English. It comes from the noun need and the Germanic masculine/neuter genitive ending -s, which at some point in time came to be used in older English and other Germanic languages to form adverbs. From the Oxford English Dictionary: ...

Or perhaps I did.

I just didn't know it was the archaic nihtes that was used in work nights.

tchrist

Well....

It use to be that.

These days people probably interpret it as an adverbial locution.

Like in I work winters.

Cerberus

I always assumed those were all plurals.

I never thought of the Dutch or the German.

tchrist

There are no sides to be found in besides. :)

Cerberus

Right!

Had you asked me about the precise origin of the -s in work nights, I would no doubt have come up with the genitive-become-adverbial -s.

tchrist

Doubt springs aeternal. :)

Cerberus

5:22 AM

0

A: i always see this statement from people and it bothers me

You are absolutely right. The exact same issue exists in Dutch. The relative clause that make him great defines the things, which would otherwise make no sense. So that refers back to the things and thus takes a plural verb, make. It is an extremely common mistake, caused by confusion between th...

@Jez I really liked your first chapter!

I wonder where the story leads.

tchrist

Native Americans would not be pleased. :)

Cerberus

What?

tchrist

Native Americans were the targeted speakers.

This must be a false friend for pineapples.

Cerberus

Oh, I see it now.

I didn't read the question.

tchrist

Heh.

Cerberus

5:26 AM

Next thing you're telling me I should read the question before posting an answer.

tchrist

Farbeit from me.

No farbe were harmed in the making of this post.

Cerberus

Farbe?

Farben?

tchrist

That.

Furbearing critters of one sort or another.

Cerberus

Huh.

Farbe is colour...

I'm having a very good day, by the way.

tchrist

@Cerberus I knew that, you see.

Cerberus

5:33 AM

The Amsterdam University College and the Department of Law, both part of the university, have expressed their support for the occupation's demands.

tchrist

talk cheap

Cerberus

No, no.

The 500 of the faculty of letters have announced strikes and even occupations of other university buildings by the staff, and the departments I mentioned actually support their demands.

Can you imagine, professors occupying their own university?

Supported by all the departments? The two departments I mentioned are supposed to be the two most conservative ones.

The AUC is supposed to be the jewel in the university's Angl... neo-con crown.

The Board loves the AUC and its silly marketing mantras.

It seems we have acted in time.

It should also be noted that the Department of Law has the strongest lobby in The Hague.

tchrist

Define occupy.

Cerberus

And they are actually able to draft new rules for democracy in our university!

@tchrist Lock themselves up inside the building and suspend all normal stuff that happens there.

As we did with the central university building.

tchrist

A sit in. Camping out.

Cerberus

5:41 AM

Except that, technically, we didn't lock anything up: the doors are open 24/7. But the Board dare not enter it.

@tchrist Well, in case of a sit in, you just stay there, but anyone can use the building as normal.

tchrist

Once we had short words here for this.

Cerberus

The word sit-in is still used, except that an occupation goes much farther, at least in theory.

tchrist

Oh disruptively. I tend to think of sit ins as disruptive too.

Cerberus

We have used the word occupation (bezetting) for what we did here since the sixties.

tchrist

Sit on Wall Street.

I imagine you never heard sit on it.

Cerberus

5:43 AM

The Maagdenhuis, the central building, was also occupied in 1969, which also resulted in very serious democratisation. Which was alas undone in the 1990s, the time of neo-liberalism.

@tchrist I believe it to be a vulgar expression?

Note that maagd = virgin(/girl in older Dutch).

tchrist

In origin, probably so, but in practice this was forgotten.

Cerberus

Right.

So did they ever occupy buildings in Wall Street?

tchrist

Maagd as in the German cognate not Proust's pastry.

@Cerberus I don't know, actually. Ask Google, I'm sure the Dutch Oberlords would like to know.

@Cerberus Martin has a Maiden Vault in his histories. Now we know why.

Cerberus

@tchrist Yes, like German. I don't know about a pastry.

What's that?

@tchrist Right.

tchrist

Bit rot.

Magdalenas.

Cerberus

5:50 AM

Oh, madeleines.

They are like little cakes.

tchrist

Yup.

Cerberus

I remember now, he muses about them, doesn't he?

tchrist

Irony.

One bite and the flood of memory envelopes him.

Cerberus

Het Maagdenhuis was built as a Catholic institution for poor girls, something like that.

Right.

I never read more than a few pages.

tchrist

It is . . . dense.

I had a professor once who considered it among the greatest works ever written.

Cerberus

5:54 AM

It may very well be that.

It wasn't my genre.

tchrist

Yah.

I seem to have more books to read before I die than things to do before I die.

It all seems like too much bother.

My kitties are luring me to bed.

Cerberus

There is too much.

Just pick something and enjoy it.

Never finish a book that still displeases you have way through.

@tchrist Do you have any idea what the bit rot is?

I see it only in your lines, and only rarely.

tchrist

I have some passing idea.

Bit it is strange because I can only see it it your quotes.

Some randomly inserted code point triggered by some keystroke sequence. No idea how.

There, did it just happen on the edit?

I'm sorry, but I am too tired to see any longer. Focus is too much a chore with eyelids so heavy.

Randy is purring for bedtime.

I think it is some Chrome bug. It never happens in Safari.

Cerberus

6:24 AM

@tchrist It did not.

I see it neither in the original nor in the edit.

A Chrome bug, I see.

Google gives me nothing when I Google the character.

Jez

11:57 AM

Chrome is fucking shit. it keeps closing down when I leave it running in the background for the Hangouts app. I actually wrote a program to track chrome.exe just to make sure I wasn't going mad. after a few hours, it shuts down silently

Robusto

0

Q: Sentence Completion: "The question of ___ in photography has lately become nontrivial..."

The question of (i)_ in photography has lately become nontrivial. Prices for vintage prints (those made by a photographer soon after he or she made the negative) so drastically (ii)_____ in the 1990s that one of these photographs might fetch a hundred times as much as a nonvintage prin...

complex-sentences

We have a new prolific "look this up for me" candidate.

Johan Larsson

You could teach him Finnish

Jez

or to finish

Johan Larsson

1:19 PM

Sauna is broken, status is critical.

A Beautiful Mind

You have sauna at home?

Jez

I wish I had a Jacuzzi.

Johan Larsson

1:32 PM

@ABeautifulMind at work

Jacuzzis are ew compared to saunas

Try having a bacteria survive in 80°C dry air.

Robusto

1:44 PM

@JohanLarsson No thanks.

tchrist

2:43 PM

@Robusto That seems a strange list. It’s just a bunch of h- verbs. It also includes some that are not irregular. I don’t know what their beef is with honrar for example; I cannot think of what might be irregular about it. Similarly for humanizar etc.

Robusto

@tchrist I dunno. I'm new here. But I'm always a bit suspicious of reference sources that purport to be exhaustive yet offer only a couple dozen instances.

tchrist

And there is no way that hablar is irregular, for example.

I like the Wiktionary conjugations because they put irregularities in negrita and tell you which class of “irregularity” it is. There really aren’t that many classes of irregularity. They also point out defectives, like how the verbs for to rain and to snow are virtually unknown in the first person.

Robusto

What is the difference, if any between
A mí me gusta la física.
and simply
Me gusta la fisica.

tchrist

The redundant one is more like if you were to put I like in italics in English for stress.

Robusto

I suspect it is one of emphasis, but duolingo translates them both simply as 'I like physics'.

tchrist

2:50 PM

¿No te gusta la música? Pues a mí, sí.

terdon

@Robusto It is equivalent to I like Physics and Me, I like Physics.

Robusto

@tchrist So it is not a further specifier like 'as for me, I like physics'?

@terdon What I thought.

tchrist

@Robusto Well, kinda.

terdon

Hang on

Yeah, that's not quite right

tchrist

This is the whole issue of dative doubling for clarity or emphasis.

terdon

2:51 PM

It would be if there were a coma after the mí I guess.

tchrist

Commas aren’t mandatory.

One certainly cannot hear them.

terdon

No, but its presence would make it into me, I like music

tchrist

You can even put the a mí double at the far end: La física me gusta a mí.

terdon

But that changes the nuance again slightly.

Robusto

See, I translated A mi me gusta física exactly as "Me, I like physics" and it was marked wrong.

terdon

2:53 PM

I'd never realized quite how subtle these are.

@Robusto Yes, I can understand that. It is, despite what I said before, closer to I like Physics.

tchrist

@terdon Yes, and I’m not perfectly certain I can give exact English translations for all of them.

Robusto

> You can now read 77.6% of all real Spanish text

terdon

I am quite certain I can't. I can just sort of feel them.

tchrist

Exactly.

Robusto

I suspect the percentage is bounded.

tchrist

2:55 PM

As in asymptotically approaching 100%?

terdon

@Robusto it can be what you suggested. For example: A Jose le gusta el mar pero a mi me gusta la montaña could be translated as Jose likes the sea but me, I like the mountains.

Ugly as that is.

tchrist

All translations are paraphrases.

Robusto

Not altogether ugly.

Feb 10 '11 at 13:36, by Robusto

Still, as John Ciardi said in his introduction to his translation to The Divine Comedy, even the best translation is a failure.

tchrist

@terdon O la sierra.

Robusto

Never forget that present perfect is not a perfect present. And with that I leave to do my errands.

tchrist