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tchrist
tchrist
3:21 AM
@Cerberus Is it glossonym or glottonym?
glossonym
Noun: glossonym (plural glossonyms)
  1. the name of a language
glottonym
Noun: glottonym (plural glottonyms)
  1. Alternative form of glossonym...
I guess the former.
Glotónimo
El glotónimo es un término procedente del griego que hace referencia al nombre de una lengua. Se descompone en glotta ("lengua") y ónoma ("nombre"). Es sinónimo de glosónimo. Un autoglotónimo es la denominación que los hablantes dan a su propia lengua; por el contrario, un heteroglotónimo es una denominación extranjera, o exónima, de la lengua de un determinado grupo humano. En ocasiones un mismo idioma puede tener distintas denominaciones por razones históricas, culturales, situación social, distribución territorial, tratamiento legal, promoción institucional, o diferenciación de otras comunidades...
> Como ejemplos se pueden considerar los nombres "castellano" y "español" o "valenciano" y "catalán";2 1 el asturiano y el leonés;3 el serbocroata y los idiomas serbio, croata y bosnio;4 el neerlandés y el flamenco; el rumano y el moldavo; el ruteno y el ucraniano.
Curious how they put some of those in square-quotes but not others.
Glottonymie
La glottonymie ou glossonymie est la discipline qui étudie les noms de langue ou glottonymes / glossonymes. == Étymologie == Ces dénominations proviennent du grec γλῶττα, glôtta, « langue » (forme du dialecte attique) ou γλῶσσα, glôssa (forme du dialecte ionien et de la koinè)., == Exemples et cas particuliers == === Exemples === Le plus souvent, le glottonyme est identique au gentilé (à part la majuscule) : Les Français parlent le français. Les Turcs parlent le turc. === Exceptions === Mais il existe des exceptions : La Somalie: Somalien est le gentilé. somali est le glottonyme (ma...
You're not helping, Messrs Frenchmen.
Glotònim
Un glotònim és la paraula que s'usa per a referir-se a una llengua. Els noms reconeguts de llengües estan recollits a la Llista de codis ISO 639-3, però hi ha diverses polèmiques obertes entorn dels glotònims. Quan hi ha més d'un nom per al mateix idioma, com el valencià i el català. Quan la distinció entre llengua i dialecte no és clara. Quan es tracta d'una llengua de transició, un pidgin o un idioma encara no consolidat....
Oh my:
> Usage of a vocative-exclamative case. When nouns are in the vocative, the closing of post-tonic vowels (e into i and o into u) disappears and those vowels open. El Ramiru quíi venil (Ramiro wants to come), but Ramiro, ven pacá (Ramiro, come here!). Sé quién lo vidu, Pepi (I know who saw it, Pepe did), but Sé quién lo vidu, Pepe (I know who saw it, Pepe).
This is a charasteristic shared with the Fala language. Extremaduran and the Fala language are actually the only western Romance languages with a distinct form of vocative case for nouns formed with a change in the ending.
I'd say that looks like non-reduction of post-tonic o/e for vocatives.
200,000 native speakers.
ALL of this is because of thousands of years of Roman civilization.
In contrast, English is barely over a millennium in England.
'
So much variation.
 
Tonepoet
Tonepoet
4:15 AM
@Mitch Hmm, worth note is that it's just as much for our benefit as theirs. People who disregard the established conventions are harder to comprehensibility than people who conform to them, with the degree of incomprehension depending upon the degree of the transgression. Also, thank you for answering my question.
 
 
2 hours later…
SmokeDetector
SmokeDetector
5:47 AM
 
 
2 hours later…
englishstudent
englishstudent
7:26 AM
@Tonepoet But isn't "verbage" used as a noun? According to this dictionary.. Correct me if I'm wrong though.
 
Tonepoet
Tonepoet
@englishstudent Google does not have its own dictionary. They seem to have sourced their data from Oxford Dictionaries Online in that case, which does not mention verbage. I suspect the search engine query may have perverted the results.
 
 
3 hours later…
Abcd
Abcd
10:17 AM
I am searching for a suitable term:
I want to convey : "your school's celebrations would be no less good than ours"
Any word to replace that?
 
 
2 hours later…
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
12:12 PM
@Abcd you want a single word to replace that sentence? No, English doesn't a single word for that particular situation
 
Abcd
Abcd
Can someone please read my letter?
Write a letter to the police, reporting some strange movements and sounds around your house at night.
It's really short :
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
1:10 PM
@tchrist If you were from Attica, you'd say glotta; from Ionia, glossa.
 
terdon
terdon
Odd. I'm from Attica and say γλώσσα. :P
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
Eek!
Don't give in to your Ionian colonisers!
Especially what with the strange letter-things.
 
Mitch
Mitch
1:36 PM
 
Tonepoet
Tonepoet
2:20 PM
 
Mitch
Mitch
2:35 PM
@Tonepoet I don't lament that particular formal statement by Wiktionary (that sounds like a reasonable statement of what a 'word' is given that it is still a vague concept. I lament that the statement doesn't address how people should know by now that 'X is a word' is not the same is 'Should I use this word?'.
There are neologisms and made-up words that have never been heard before but are understandable when spoken. Then there are standard words and non-standard variations (e.g. 'irregardless'). The latter can have widespread use, but are still deprecated (you will totally look like an idiot/uneducated/made a mistake if you use it). A malapropism like verbage may be more common now because someone famous made the mistake of using it - it's a word now because people use it and understand its meaning.
But it's still a mistake.
Points off on an English paper. Ridiculed if used in public.
 
Tonepoet
Tonepoet
The declaratory statement itself is fine, although I dislike that the implementation. I don't think merely three usages on permanently recorded media are a sufficient barrier to noise and I'm not really sure what function the "spanning at least a year" qualification is supposed to serve.
 
Mitch
Mitch
As to 'disambiguity', I'm not sure what that means. Some of the uses in quotes in your meta answer are by respected scholars... but then there're a lot of 'acceptable' neologisms in philosophy. But I still don't know what 'disambiguity' means. It's a BS word. Usually there is an existing word or phrase that takes care of it. 'unambiguity' 'lack of ambiguity' sometimes...other times it doesn't seem like a malapropism at all just a BS filler vaguely evoking something about ... difference?
@Tonepoet Oh. Yeah. Implementation. Wikipedia is crap.
"spanning at least a year" sounds like a way to prevent ephemeral slang from being preserved too quickly. OED has some time constraints.
 
englishstudent
englishstudent
ok thanks @Mitch and @Tonepoet
 
Mitch
Mitch
@englishstudent no problemo (which no Spanish speaker ever said ever)
 
Tonepoet
Tonepoet
@Mitch I see. I believe the O.E.D. uses ten years as its span of time, doesn't it?
 
Mitch
Mitch
2:45 PM
no idea
 
englishstudent
englishstudent
I'm just so used to trusting dictionary by google blindly that I couldn't foresee it as a mistake. It is quite handy so I use it, I just copy paste the word in the search bar above and get the definition, but often times I go to main dictionaries (like Websters etc.) to see more.
@Mitch In movies though right?
I think I have heard that in movies. I don't know about real life. Never encountered any Spanish speaker in real life.
I have met Dutch people in real life though. They are very polite.
 
Mitch
Mitch
@englishstudent I thnk you see the difficulties that could pose already by using the word 'blindly'. You really have to look at the details, go into the link and see the multiple examples (examples are just as important as the definition).
Also, you need to look at more than one dictionary. I see google definitions from multiple dictionaries all the time that are 'off'. Not incorrect, just not how I would put it (sometimes from one dictionary sometimes from another so not consistent one dictionary that I agree with)
 
englishstudent
englishstudent
@Mitch Hah yes you are absolutely right. I can be lazy you know. :)
 
Mitch
Mitch
@englishstudent in regular informal spech by Americans. Not by Mexicans I don't think. yeah maybe in movies. I don't actually know for certain. I've heard that it is ungrammatical in Spanish.
 
Tonepoet
Tonepoet
@englishstudent Hmm, yes. Many people do that. If you ever do post anything on the website, please go to the direct source if you want to use that definition, so you know who you must cite. Most of my edits are primarily motivated by fixing instances of non-attribution or misattribution.
 
Mitch
Mitch
2:53 PM
@englishstudent I'm sure the Dutch say 'no problemo' too
 
englishstudent
englishstudent
But I love going through dictionary definitions. One of my hobbies actually.
 
Mitch
Mitch
@englishstudent Yeah it's fun. The first foray into scholarship (before the Internet).
'no hay problema' is what Google Translate gives. GT is probably trustworthy here given the large amounts of English and Spanish translation data they have. (I wouldn't bet the farm on it though)
 
englishstudent
englishstudent
@Mitch oh okay, so is it like a jumble of English and Spanish words? Hm so "no problema" with "a" is a correct phrase. We will call that "phrase" not "word" right?
 
Tonepoet
Tonepoet
Or maybe I just can't read an ngram with an incline that steep properly. =P
 
englishstudent
englishstudent
@Tonepoet Yes I understand that perfectly but you will notice that some definitions in the google dictionary are quite easy to grasp, maybe it just picks up all the easiest definitions from other main dictionaries?
I don't know why but people love it. :)
 
Tonepoet
Tonepoet
3:04 PM
@englishstudent It usually sources Oxford Living Dictionaries (formerly known as Oxford Dictionaries Online) though I noticed they also seem to have cited the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus during my last edit.
 
englishstudent
englishstudent
Yes Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary gives easy definitions too. Unlike Websters for instance. I'm using the word "easy" here, because to me, a non native speaker, those definitions don't take much mental energy to grasp.
 
Tonepoet
Tonepoet
Note that Oxford Living Dictionaries is more or less an aggregate collection of Oxford's more recently printed works, and most of the definitions are from the Oxford Dictionary of English by Angus Stevenson.
 
terdon
terdon
@Mitch Yeah, either "no hay problema" or "ningun problema".
 
Tonepoet
Tonepoet
@englishstudent Well that's the point of a learner's dictionary. However the harder to parse definitions are probably more accurate than the immediate gist of a word that a learner's dictionary will give you.
 
englishstudent
englishstudent
@Tonepoet Yeah that's a good point. I agree.
For me Websters is a post tea/coffee dictionary. It demands focus; a little, but still.
 
terdon
terdon
3:15 PM
@englishstudent Which one? Do you mean Merriam-Webster or the old Webster's from the 19th century?
 
Tonepoet
Tonepoet
@terdon I think he means Merriam-Webster in this case.
 
englishstudent
englishstudent
@terdon hi. I mean Merriam-Webster.
 
terdon
terdon
Oh. OK, I hadn't realized its definitions were complicated. I thought you meant the, rather archaic, Webster's that Tonepoet is so fond of ;)
 
englishstudent
englishstudent
@Tonepoet Is the 19th century dictionary the one that you linked the other day? The green one?
I'll have to dig up the link. hm.
 
tchrist
tchrist
@terdon Wrap your brain around all the samples here:
3
A: Are questions about Mirandês on-topic?

tchristI would always wish for our community to be inclusive where possible. But I honestly don’t know that Mirandês is a good match for us. We could always try and see how it works out. It could be an experiment, and we could always change our minds later. I would argue, as Jacinto has suggested, that...

 
englishstudent
englishstudent
3:18 PM
@terdon I see :)
 
Tonepoet
Tonepoet
 
terdon
terdon
@tchrist Bloody hell. Those things are fascinating though. I love how I can sort of squint my eyes and read any one of them.
 
englishstudent
englishstudent
@Tonepoet I will start looking at that dictionary from now on and give you my feedback.
 
terdon
terdon
It is odd how Mirandês seems closer to Portuguese than Castillian though. I'm sure you're right about the phylogeny, but that's how I'd categorize it from the tiny excerpt I just read.
 
tchrist
tchrist
Quite so! And by the time you hit the Italian stool pigeon camped out at the bottom, it doesn't seem at all so out of place as it would have right out of the blew.
@terdon I think it's because of the history of that village.
Mirandés has 7-10k speakers. Did you know there are 200,000 Extremeñu speakers? I did not.
 
terdon
terdon
3:25 PM
@tchrist Exactly :)
No, I had no idea. That's quite impressive, actually.
By the way, sorry I never answered your question about pronunciation but I saw it at a time when I couldn't post and, anyway, I have no idea how to pronounce that. Plus, my pronunciation of words with a Greek origin like that one is too often informed by my Greek so is probably not representative of what your average English speaking biologist would come up with.
 
tchrist
tchrist
That makes sense.
Idioma extremeño
Este artículo se refiere a la variedad lingüística específica del norte de Extremadura. Para las variedades del castellano habladas en el conjunto de Extremadura, véase Castúo El extremeño —estremeñu— es una modalidad lingüística hablada en el noroeste de Extremadura y una parte del sur de Salamanca, con un desarrollo que lleva a incluirla dentro del diasistema lingüístico asturleonés (ya desde autores como Menéndez Pidal, Manuel Alvar, Emilio Alarcos Llorach y otros) junto con el cántabro (o montañés), el mirandés y las diversas formas de asturiano o leonés, que incluye entre sus peculiaridades...
Apparently it's part of that group as well.
 
terdon
terdon
> Este artículo se refiere a la variedad lingüística específica del norte de Extremadura. Para las variedades del castellano habladas en el conjunto de Extremadura, véase Castúo
Oh. The accents seemed stranger on the WP page for some reason.
 
tchrist
tchrist
Castúo has a weird accent, in a way.
 
terdon
terdon
 
tchrist
tchrist
It's not a common phonological pattern, final ÚO.
Oh naughty browser.
 
terdon
terdon
3:28 PM
Unicode failure, I guess. I thought that was an accent grave and was wodnering what language I was reading.
 
Mitch
Mitch
@englishstudent It is old fashioned. many of the definitions (for more abstract words) are out-of-date. Good for history of word meanings, but not the best for current usage/meaning.
 
tchrist
tchrist
Looks like castúo is a dialect of castellano.
 
englishstudent
englishstudent
@Mitch oh okay. Thanks for letting me know.
 
tchrist
tchrist
Oh another thing: it makes much more sense to say castellano in that context of so many other Iberian languages, seen from within.
 
terdon
terdon
Yes, so presumably the Castellano spoken in Extremadura.
 
Tonepoet
Tonepoet
3:30 PM
@englishstudent You had probably better stock up on tea and coffee then. The 19th century vocabulary was more limited, so he had much more space to define words and specific inflections of the words than a modern Webster's dictionary would, at least, on a per page basis anyway.
 
terdon
terdon
@tchrist As opposed to? Español?
 
tchrist
tchrist
Yes.
It's not like one is right and one wrong, but it makes better sense in that context.
 
terdon
terdon
@tchrist Oh? Tell that to an Argentinian nationalist. I've met people who get seriously annoyed if you refer to Castellano as Español.
 
englishstudent
englishstudent
@Tonepoet :-)
 
tchrist
tchrist
@terdon I try not to argue about that. When I'm already talking about English and French and German, the context has me call it Spanish. When I'm talking about Asturian and Catalan and Galician, the context has me call it Castilian.
 
terdon
terdon
3:34 PM
Seems very reasonable.
 
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
3:49 PM
@terdon seems like a trivial thing to get annoyed about
 
terdon
terdon
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Doesn't it though? And yet. . .
There's no accounting for nationalism.
 
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
Although.... if someone called the language I spoke "American"......
 
tchrist
tchrist
@terdon I think that's like how to a Dutchman English compared seems more Frenchlike with its borrowed vocabulary from the Norman Conquest. The Mirandese have borrowed quite a lot from Portuguese, more than Asturian "has". But Asturian has plenty that seems a bit Galician in it anyway.
There are as many languages in the Romance dialect continuum as there are places, and perhaps as there are speakers.
 
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
@tchrist That's like the situation with Chinese. In fact, it's more like Romance + Germanic + a couple others... basically like all of Europe. Imagine if Europeans were said to speak "European" and only one specific language (Say, the French dialect used in Brussels) was the official language and all other languages were forced to twist their speech into Brussels French to write it down.
 
tchrist
tchrist
You can read some French, right?
@terdon Here's another fun pair of translations, with Occitan (not French) on the left and Catalan (not Spanish) on the right, but people who know neither might think it one of those:
 
terdon
terdon
4:00 PM
Hmm. I would never have mistaken the Occitan for French, too different. I might have confused it with Catalan had I not paid close attention though.
I had a friend in Barcelona, a singer songwriter, who used to sing an old Occitan lullaby. I loved hearing it and trying to understand it, but always thought it sounded more Italian than anything else. That might just have been his accent though.
 
Tonepoet
Tonepoet
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 They already have.
 
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
@Tonepoet urge to kill rising...
 
terdon
terdon
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Huh, why? Aren't you American?
 
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
@tchrist I can read neither of those. My French is so rusty that I can only muddle through modern French
@terdon Canadian, tyvm
 
terdon
terdon
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 yes, exactly.
:P
How's that urge to kill coming along?
 
Tonepoet
Tonepoet
4:06 PM
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I'm not too worried for their safety. All of those people are already dead. >_>
 
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
@terdon well, it sorta fizzled after I realized the authors were long dead
 
terdon
terdon
:)
 
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
It's a weird feeling. Like when you have to sneeze, then suddenly don't.
 
terdon
terdon
I really need to learn to distinguish Canadian from US accents though. I have heard too few Canadians and can't really recognize the Canadian accent(s).
And I well know it's not a mistake I am likely to make twice.
(and yes, of course I knew you were Canadian, in case you were wondering)
 
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
I dunno. Lots of Americans could pass for Canadian and vice versa.
 
terdon
terdon
4:08 PM
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Oh? Even for someone familiar with the accents?
 
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
@terdon You'd need to be very familiar with all the accents in both countries, I think. There's a lot of overlap.
 
terdon
terdon
I've watched Trailer Park boys for example, and can hear some differences but I doubt I'd catch them out of context.
 
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
Yeah.
 
terdon
terdon
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Ah, I see. I had assumed the difference was obvious to the locals.
 
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
If you met them in the US, you'd probably just think they were from somewhere else in the US, I'd guess.
 
terdon
terdon
4:10 PM
And yet I've seen US shows making fun of the Canadian accent so I guess at least some Canadian accents are more easily distinguishable.
 
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
Sure. Also some of it is just uninformed joking.
 
terdon
terdon
That much I had understood, yes :)
 
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
Also some of it is making fun of "Canadian rising" which is a feature in a fairly large area of the US too.
 
terdon
terdon
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Oh? Is there an example of that in that wonderful site tchrist posted earlier?
 
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
I'm not really expert enough to say. I don't really hear Canadian rising.
 
terdon
terdon
4:15 PM
Fair enough.
> In the U.S., the raised pronunciation of about [əˈbɐʊt~əˈbəʊt] is a stereotype of Canadian English; Americans often jokingly pronounce it as a boot to imitate a Canadian accent. (even though a boat [əˈboʊt] would actually be phonetically closer to the authentic Canadian pronunciation).
Oh wow. Check out the "'Doric' Scots" pronunciation of naked
Second from the North in the map there. I've never heard anything remotely like it.
 
tchrist
tchrist
@terdon That's not always possible.
Vancouverites tend to sound Californian to me; I myself tend to sound Canadian to a Texan.
 
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
4:32 PM
There's enough variation that you'd be able to tell that maybe this person wasn't raised in this city, but try to identify which city they're from... it could be anywhere.
not to mention: people move around a lot.
I think probably 90% of the people I speak to on a daily basis were raised in cities other than Toronto
 
tchrist
tchrist
As the "broadcast standard" for "General American" migrates from the Inland North / Upper Midwest eastwards (sometime pejorative: "rust belt") to Southern California, this shifts common stereotypes and perception.
 
terdon
terdon
@tchrist So I was informed. I thought it was just my own ignorance.
 
tchrist
tchrist
Ottawa always sounded perfectly normal to me. Toronto has an edge to it.
 
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
One thing I've noticed: the people on national news broadcasts in the US sound very different from the people on local news.
@tchrist I never really notice the difference.
 
tchrist
tchrist
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 You used to have to speak like Milwaukee/Chicago/Detroit/Columbus for national broadcast news, but they've relaxed that.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Ottawa has pop. :)
 
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
4:36 PM
I think things have changed a lot lately too, as TV has influenced younger speakers more.
 
tchrist
tchrist
But the Inland North runs east across to Buffalo in Upstate New York, and plenty of New England has much in common with it.
 
Mitch
Mitch
@englishstudent Oh one more dictionary thing to say: most dictionaries tend to brevity (Occam's razor, or printing costs constraints, or general appeal tooptimization). THat is, they tend to try to pack as much meaning with as few words as possible into a definition.
So they tend to have lot of confirmation bias for native speakers, (i.e. on reading a word a native speaker will say 'Yes, that is not wrong, every time I use the word, the definition would also work'), but the definition might miss lots of nuances and connotations. There are no exact synonyms, but there are always lists of synonyms and it is not always clear that you would definitely use one of those in a particular context, but another word never.
 
tchrist
tchrist
A real problem is that New York and New Jersey accents can subtly annoy speakers from the South and vice versa, and this builds up unconscious bias and unwillingness to pay attention to people with those accents, whereas "Iowa English" was considered to annoy neither group.
 
Mitch
Mitch
So to use mathematical words metaphorically, dictionaries are usually consistent (don't say wrong things), but are not complete (don't say everything).
 
tchrist
tchrist
You don't want people to tune out on the national news.
 
Mitch
Mitch
4:39 PM
@tchrist Because they're Iowa nice.
In the South, people will be overly polite to your face, and then stab you in the back with malice. In New Jersey, people will be jerks to your face, and then stab you in the back with malice.
In Iowa, they'll sincerely be complimentary and see the good in you, however little that might be.
 
tchrist
tchrist
Here's something many people will be oblivious to, because they’ve caught the bug themselves. The cot–caught merger used to be disallowed on broadcast, but no longer.
So if you don't have the merger, every time somebody opens their mouth it sticks out at you.
 
Mitch
Mitch
@terdon You know what the difference is between Americans and Canadians?
 
terdon
terdon
Nuclear weapons?
 
Mitch
Mitch
The difference is that Canadians know the difference and Americans don't.
 
terdon
terdon
Heh.
 
Mitch
Mitch
4:42 PM
haha
Given that, I still don't know what the difference is.
 
tchrist
tchrist
As Hollywood pushes a new don for America, Easterners still have their eggs-beer-and-mint hangover remedies.
But these are differences of phonology not of grammar.
Mind you, it's easy enough to find natives of Chicago who don't speak "broadcast English".
Or Milwaukee, or Columbus, or probably any other specific place. Although maybe not Des Moines. :)
Windsor OT is just a couple miles from Detroit MI. You can't tell them apart accentwise.
Sorry, is Windsor off-topic here?
 
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
no, it's usually ON topic
(as in, "Windsor, ON")
 
tchrist
tchrist
haha
Somebody got it.
 
 
2 hours later…
Færd
Færd
6:37 PM
The story of life, or of one aspect of it.
I don't know how popular this book is with English speakers. Maybe I'm being redundant. Even I had probably read it in my childhood—which I remembered only after I'd started the book, when I saw an old translation among my little brother's books.
Well, I'm glad I forgot it (if I'd ever read it) and had the chance to go through it again. Boy, the things I forget! Once I came across a summary I'd done of a book I didn't even know I'd read.
 
 
1 hour later…
englishstudent
englishstudent
7:51 PM
@Mitch Could you give me an example of a mathematical word that is being used metaphorically?
 
Mitch
Mitch
@Færd We had it as assigned reading in high school. I found it less boring than the other stuff they made us read. I don't know if it is commonly read in school nowadays in the US
 
englishstudent
englishstudent
@Mitch What about Mississippi? Ever visited the place? Just curious.
@Tonepoet Can we call two words like "No problemo" a "phrase"? I know it is an expression but there are many words that are in twos or threes form, so we can't call them "two words" or "three words", can I call them "phrases"?
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
@englishstudent "no problem" is actually a sentence
 
Mitch
Mitch
@englishstudent off the top of my head, the first things I think of are the obverse, informal words that are used metaphorically (but then technically/stipulatelively) in mathematics, like 'normal', 'regular', 'complete', 'natural','mapping', group, ring, field, space.... on and on
 
Tonepoet
Tonepoet
@englishstudent Yes. Also a sentence can be a phrase. The primary qualifiers are that the words are normally used together and it's short. Granted, I suppose the lot around here might prefer to reserve the word phrase to describe phrasal verbs though.
 
englishstudent
englishstudent
7:59 PM
ok. Thanks!
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
@englishstudent 'expression' is a not a classification like 'word', 'sentence' etc. An expression can be a word, a phrase, or a sentence
 
Mitch
Mitch
@englishstudent but a word -native- to mathematics that is then used metaphorically in regular speech? Oh.. you probably mean you want me to explain what I meant.
I meant that 'consistent', the technical term in logic means that what is said is actually meant, or that what has been proven is actually true...ooops, the latter is 'soundness' which is closer to what I meant.
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
Metaphorically? Tough question
BTW, @Mitch I'm writing an ELL post explaining why some stuff is wrong, but not ungrammatical. (There's a lot of learner and native speaker confusion about that) I'm thinking of categorizing the aspects of an utterance that can be 'not right'. What should I add to "phonology, grammar, semantics, pragmatics, punctuation"?
 
Mitch
Mitch
dictionaries are 'sound' (to borrow the math word) in that they don't say things that are wrong, but they are not complete in that they don't say everything. Everything that is proven (everything that is said) is true (soundness), but everything that is true is not necessarily provable (said).( they're not complete)
 
Tonepoet
Tonepoet
@englishstudent If you count geometry as mathematics tangent is almost used entirely in a metaphoric sense to mean something similar to digress, except as a noun instead of a verb.
 
Mitch
Mitch
8:04 PM
@M.A.R. word choice
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
Right!
 
Mitch
Mitch
(which might come under semantics, but it is a huge part of that then
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
I'd prolly explain it in semantics
 
Mitch
Mitch
I usually think of semantics as what the syntax means
like the plupperfect subjunctive is conjugated a certain way (syntax) but you would or would not use it in this particular real world circumstance (semantics)
 
englishstudent
englishstudent
@Mitch I see
@Tonepoet Yeah that makes sense.
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
8:11 PM
@Mitch any other thingies?
 
Mitch
Mitch
8:35 PM
"remember, to the toaster, all our air is cold."
@M.A.R. what kind of thingies are you talking about?
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
@Mitch Categories in which something can be wrong
 
Mitch
Mitch
@englishstudent I've never visited or even driven through. I've been to South Carolina and Georgia, if that counts.
Hm how about 'Categories in which something can be wrong'. That's a category in which somethings can be wrong.
Is that what you're talking about?
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
ಠ_ಠ
 
Mitch
Mitch
@Tonepoet no. that is not the case at all. a phrasal verb is mostly a verb plus a stand alone preposition (one not heading a prepositional phrase). one might refer to parts of a sentence in which a phrasal verb occurs as a phrase, but 'phrase' is not anywhere near the first thing you think of when you hear 'phrasal verb'
@M.A.R. I'm actually sincerely not sure what you're thinking of now.
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
@Mitch Of ಠ_ಠ, duh
 
Mitch
Mitch
8:42 PM
or your nonglyphic utterances too
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
I want to make sure I don't miss anything since it's going to be a canonical post
Why don't each of these utterances *get it right*?
> ashfjs

<!-- -->
> I can't knows how to correct write this sentence.

<!-- -->
> The little whale is eating the purple sky.

<!-- -->
> **A:** How does the food taste?
**B:** I love playing tennis!

<!-- -->
> I don't understand what's wrong with this sentence,
Actually, clarifying that punctuation is subjective is tough
It's gonna be the biggest pain in the ass.
 
Tonepoet
Tonepoet
@M.A.R. "I can't knows" looks like it violates the rules regarding subject verb agreement. I'm not sure about the rest of the sentences though.
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
@Tonepoet It's not important what it violates
@Tonepoet That said, except in prolly the most extreme forms of slang, modals can't be followed by verbs with any inflections
He can't know. I can't know. We can't know.
 
Mitch
Mitch
You can't know
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
@Mitch They can't know
 
Tonepoet
Tonepoet
8:55 PM
@M.A.R. Oh, that same sentence also uses correct as an adverb, instead of correctly...
 
Mitch
Mitch
I know
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
NO ONE CAN KNOW
@Mitch You can't know
 
Mitch
Mitch
I am all seeing
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
Prove it
 
Mitch
Mitch
@M.A.R. You don't know what I don't know
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
8:57 PM
@Mitch I know what you don't know, but I don't know how much I don't know what you don't know. I know some of the things you don't know though, but you know a lot of things that I don't know. So don't pretend to know everything you don't know or not know everything you know.
 
Mitch
Mitch
I didn't know that
But I suspected
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
I suspected you suspected.
 
Mitch
Mitch
9:09 PM
Argh! Foiled again!
 

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