English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

3:04 AM

Why do people keep writing ex-British spy instead of British ex-spy? It's not like he's a spy who's no longer British; it's that he's no longer a spy but is still British. Does this strange practice make sense to anyone?

Q: Term for the initial developer of a start-up?

3:29 AM

Imagine that you have developed a software from scratch for a start-up. You are not a co-founder, but you are the person who has created the source code repository, and has written pretty much all of the code. What would be the term for such position to put in a résumé? Chief Technical Officer s...

4 hours later…

SmokeDetector

7:22 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Potentially bad keyword in answer: Is an implied "I know" considered correct English in this type of phrasing by Rishi Sehrawat on english.SE

5 hours later…

Educ

12:10 PM

any help please

1 hour later…

1:29 PM

Interesting map.

What's interesting is the five bits that aren't part of the main map.

They're at a scale that's not only different from the main map's scale, but also different from one another's.

Also interesting is the three non-States they've chosen to represent.

Puerto Rico being a would-be US State, DC being the federal district of course, but NYC? Can me make them a State please? :)

The map, by the way, is of last week's influenza outbreak data. PR is white because of insufficient data.

1 hour later…

2:37 PM

What’s the difference between [ɑwˈtʃreɪdʒəz] and [ɑwˈtʃreɪdʒəs]?

The second is outrageous but the first is I’ll trade yas.

Mitch

@tchrist I don't syllabify 'outrageous' like that so it gives different phonemes. I say [ɑwt 'reɪ dʒəs]

([tʃre] is controversial for me but I'll allow it)

I've never heard of 'yas' before like that

Q: Word that expresses the sound a car makes hitting a large soft object (such as an animal or person)

I'm looking for a word that expresses the sound a car makes hitting a large soft object (such as an animal or person). For example, "The car made a loud ________ as it hit the deer in the road."

single-word-requests

2:52 PM

@Mitch I was debating the syllabification. I think I do what you do.

@Mitch I don't know how to represent "yas" in writing. It's an informal second person plural pronoun used only(?) for objects not subjects.

L-vocalization does weird things. And it's not just English where it can happen.

[ajl] > [aw]

Although perhaps most characteristic of Southern American English, the [aj] > [a] bit is common to many casual registers.

Maybe "yas" is some 1920s gangster style. Dunno.

Technically, /ɑl/ can go to [ɑɫ], [ɑɫ], [ɔɫ], [ɒɫ], [ɒw], [ɒʊ], [ɑʊ].

It's no wonder that dictionaries never provide phonetic transcriptions, only phonemic ones, but it’s a crying shame that almost no one realizes this and so mistakes one for the other.

Further confusion derives from the choice of symbol used for a given phoneme. Those are not chosen for "phonetic accuracy". They can’t be. They’re conventions adopted almost completely for notational convenience. See /r/.

This happens in all dictionaries. This happens in all languages, even in those whose spellings enjoy a one-to-one correspondence between symbol and phoneme.

I realize that understanding this requires a fairly sophisticated understanding of phonology, transcription conventions, and probably several other tangential matters. However, I also feel that we do a disservice to many of our members by having no FAQ about this.

3:29 PM

What do graminivores eat?

Why gramen, of course.

Which is now only a French word (well, or Latin), not an English one.

Spanish and Portuguese do have the common word grama there.

But English, no.

Because PIE took a different path to us than it took to them.

Note that grama and hierba, yerba, herba are doublets of each other.

Grow. Grass.

Those are how the PIE root came down to us.

Our own herb is a graft from French.

No genetic relationship to the root stock.

Or stalk.

I wouldn't try to tie English grouse into that set, though. That one’s a mystery.

3 hours later…

Q: Word for a copy of a copy when the copier has never seen the original

6:48 PM

Consider an American who opens a Chinese restaurant but has only eaten at Americanized Chinese restaurants. They are copying something which is already a distorted copy of the original. They could copy it perfectly but it would still be different from real Chinese food. Is there a word for such ...

single-word-requests word-choice

Q: The Control (Reverse) of a statement in research

7:17 PM

This is a question from the academic perspective. So, the idea I want to convey is sort of what a control setup in science: A control setup in science uses the same conditions and the same equipment as the experimental setup; however, there are no variables tested in the control setup, as...

single-word-requests expressions

2 hours later…

9:00 PM

Given the mass noun definition of 'bloom' as 'the state or period of flowering' or 'the state or period of greatest beauty, freshness, or vigour'. Is it still not correct to express: 'before the bloom of <subject/field>'? If I am to substitute, I could say 'before the period of flowering of <subject/field>' or 'before the state of flowering of <subject/field>.'

By correct I mean grammatically. This is, as can be seen, a metaphoric use of the mass noun form of 'bloom'.

Am I misunderstanding its definition in relation to its potential usage?

9:52 PM

@Monad You think you can't say "Before the bloom of the meadow"?

@Xanne can you?

Or: Before the meadow bloomed. I think "the bloom of the meadow" is okay. "Before the fruiting of the orchard" . . .

or fruition

Fruition is different.

whilst literary, it may mean "the state or action of producing fruit."

whether fruition of fruiting, though both the fruit gerund and mass noun fruition have a sort of implication of the end

yet blooming is more of a final stage but, only the beginning of it

fruition is like, you gotta pick the fruit as soon as possible

9:56 PM

Things come to fruition. I.e., they finally produce what you expected.

@Xanne not very compatible with the provided context, I see what you mean but the synonym's scope doesn't fully overlap with that of 'bloom'.

No, it doesn't Blooming and producing fruit are two different stages.

indeed.

thank you for the assurance

1 hour later…

Mitch

11:03 PM

@Monad A mass noun is an uncountable noun in that you can't count it. You can't say 'one water', 'two 'waters'. Or 'a water'. But you can still say 'the water'. You can use 'the' with mass nouns.

11:19 PM

@Mitch that was part of my confusion, I don't know the ins and outs of grammar such that I can logically decompose any such confusion. But another part of it was doubt on whether "bloom of something" can be referred to as a range (period)/point in time.

such that you can use it with words like "before"