English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

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curiousdannii

02:20

@mods: I don't want to bump this again, but I think it would be an excellent change to pursue!

Q: Can a placeholder text be added to the question body box?

I posted this suggestion to another post, but thought it would be worth its own separate feature request. Is it already possible to add a placeholder text to the question body box, or would the SE developers be able to add this functionality? If so, we can then discuss what the text should be. T...

SmokeDetector

02:53

[ SmokeDetector ] Manually reported question: What's the etymology of the modern internet phrase "fuckboy?" by Steven Stewart-Gallus on english.stackexchange.com …

tchrist

You're on fire tonight, Smokester.

SmokeDetector

03:10

[ SmokeDetector ] Blacklisted user: What's the origin of this vulgar internet slang term? by Steven Stewart-Gallus on english.stackexchange.com …

nedibes

Help, please! I just accidentally flagged a comment when trying to upvote it--and then flagged it again when trying to unflag it. Can this be fixed? The comment is in this thread english.stackexchange.com/questions/335296/…. Many thanks for any assistance.

1 hour later…

tchrist

04:21

@terdon This starting at 9:25 is hilarious but I have nearly nobody else to share it with.

8 hours later…

terdon

12:34

@tchrist Damn, I actually laughed out loud! "De Jon Nieve a Jaehaerys Arena hay un trecho" :)

tchrist

12:56

@terdon Yeah, he made me laugh more than once in that sequence.

He’s playing on the refrain del dicho al hecho hay mucho trecho in that one though.

terdon

sip

tchrist

"Say what? Repeat please" "I can't repeat, I'm dying".

"¿con hache intercalada?"

terdon

13:12

No, jota, o ene. (or however the hell those are written in Spanish)

tchrist

That's right.

The Spanish mouth really doesn't fit well around certain sound combinations.

And he’s making two syllables out of each ae pair, not making a diphthong like ai. No wonder it is hard to say Yaejaeris.

"hache intercalada" and "i griega" are wicked because you can't hear them to spell them.

terdon

I was wondering about that. Given the Spanish proclivity for ignoring foreign pronunciation, I'm surprised he's not saying 'Jaehaerys' with a full jota.

Sounds like he'd be using a Y.

tchrist

That's because the "stressed" Y at the start can take on that sound when an emphatic.

terdon

@tchrist Can you give an example?

Ya voy!

Of course.

tchrist

or inyección.

terdon

13:21

But still, I applaud his attempt. Most would have said Jaehaerys as in Joder.

tchrist

¿Quién lo quiere? ¡Yo sí!

It's an unstable allophone, so it varies per utterance.

My opinion's no better than anyone else's, but I don’t actually think Jon’s birth name was Jaehaeris; I think it was Aemon, for various reasons.

Definitely easier to say. :)

terdon

@tchrist I haven't read much speculation about the name, is anyone claiming to have deciphered it from the episode?

tchrist

Well, yes they are but they're full of it.

The showrunners intentionally made it impossible.

My hunch is based on book evidence.

terdon

@tchrist That's what I thought.

@tchrist I thought you disliked the books.

tchrist

I haven't not read them. The last two are not novels. The first three are.

The last two are scattered serial installments without any arc conclusions.

They aren't as bad as Jordan, but blah.

terdon

13:30

@tchrist They aren't on the same scale of badness as Jordan. Let's be fair.

tchrist

Exactly.

terdon

At least some character's actions make sense.

tchrist

Jordan is horrible.

terdon

@tchrist Well, you could make a decent trilogy out of him.

tchrist

> But he had not left the Wall for that; he had left because he was after all his father's son, and Robb's brother. The gift of a sword, even a sword as fine as Longclaw, did not make him a Mormont. Nor was he Aemon Targaryen. Three times the old man had chosen, and three times he had chosen honor, but that was him. Even now, Jon could not decide whether the maester had stayed because he was weak and craven, or because he was strong and true.

terdon

13:30

As long as you get another writer on it.

tchrist

> Every morning they had trained together, since they were big enough to walk; Snow and Stark, spinning and slashing about the wards of Winterfell, shouting and laughing, sometimes crying when there was no one else to see. They were not little boys when they fought, but knights and mighty heroes. "I'm Prince Aemon the Dragonknight," Jon would call out, and Robb would shout back, "Well, I'm Florian the Fool."

There are other indicators, but those are the strongest ones I know.

terdon

Hmm. I find the second more compelling than the first. But hmm indeed.

tchrist

There's the irony of Maester Aemon wishing he could lend a lone member of his family his council but Dany is too far away.

It would be just like Martin to have Jon say he wasn't Aemon Targaryen — and be wrong about that.

Jon indeed left for the Wall because he was his father’s son, but he didn’t know that at the time. :) That would place him beyond Robert’s wrath, just as the maester was.

Martin asked the showrunners the easy question of who Jon’s mother was, and because they gave the right answer, he let them produce the series. He should have asked them what Jon's birth name was. :)

Aemon is respelled from Irish Éamon, which is itself borrowed from Old English for what we now have as Edmund. But I always think of the old word eam meaning "uncle".

terdon

@tchrist Did he? Heh.

tchrist

@terdon He did.

terdon

13:41

Man, I hope the next book hurries up.

tchrist

I expect an announcement once the series hype dies down a bit.

Having read some of the pieces of the first book in the pulp monthlies, I read the book when it first came out. Which means I've been waiting for Benjen ("littlest") Stark to come back and tell us what happened to him, and to learn who Jon Snow's real parents were, for TWENTY FUCKING YEARS. Without the show, I’d still be waiting.

It’s a long, long, long, long time.

I’m convinced that Martin had Tyrion accompany Jon to the Wall so that he could set up the end game where those two could ultimately meet again. Plus that way Jon could travel there with both his uncles. There were a lot of "Stranger on a Train" ironies there, too.

I could have lived with the series being just a trilogy.

As originally intended.

terdon

@tchrist :) I feel your pain. It's been around 15 for me.

tchrist

I think the publisher will want the book on the shelves for Christmas, so actually for Thanksgiving. They need at least three months lead time for a super-rush job, but preferably four or five so they can do some reasonable editing for a @#$$%^^ change.

The last book suffered a lot from not having been copyedited. It suffered more by having all its plot arcs bumped to the next installment.

user252685

have you guys watched fermat's last tango?

tchrist

Nope.

Not I said the fly.

user252685

13:52

it's kinda long for a musical...

...available on youtube if you're interested :)

tchrist

You can hold a fermata as long as you please.

terdon

No si fermenta.

tchrist

fermosa

formosa

user252685

they basically call fermat a liar in the musical

terdon

14:08

Well, yeah. Easy, innit? "I've got this really cool proof but, um, it's kinda long so, eh, I can't fit it in the margin. But it's really, really neat, shame you can't read it, really."

user252685

i think he made other such claims that turned out to be true...

...just sayin

2 hours later…

crl

16:06

Scolopendra cataracta

Scolopendra cataracta (waterfall centipede) is a species of centipede in the family Scolopendridae that is endemic to Laos and Thailand. It is the first known amphibious centipede, growing to up to 20 cm in length and with a bite described as "agonising" and "excruciating". It is commonly referred to as the aquatic centipede. == Discovery == George Beccaloni is an entomologist and curator at the Natural History Museum, London, working with the A. R. Wallace insect collection and species in the orders blattodea, dermaptera, mantodea, orthopteran and phasmida and the families grylloblattodea and...

el deprisa sonrisa de tu esposa

Jossie Calderon

16:30

I have an issue with grammatical errors...

Do I have a problem?

In this article‌, the sentence, "The attack deals another blow to a city struggling to show it's ready to host the games." throws me off.

Do I need therapy?

3 hours later…

Færd

19:41

@JossieCalderon merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deal%20a%20blow

Why therapy?

Færd

20:06

Does dab have its literal meaning in smack dab? Or does it mean anything?

The British (also?) say smack bang, which makes more sense to me.

Yeah I guess it does have its literal meaning:

> c. 1300, dabben "to strike," of unknown origin, perhaps imitative. Modern sense of "strike with a slight, quick pressure" developed by mid-16c., influenced by French dauber ...

(etym)

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