“If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it,” goes the saying. Being
perpetually busy – a type A personality who can check e-mail, fold laundry, send a text
message, and cook dinner, all at once – is a state that modern technology supports and
that society encourages as something o...
@Cerberus The passage that I thought was saying Egyptian wasn't first was a bit of innuendo:
> [Egyptian] Hieroglyphic writing appeared rather suddenly, in nearly full-blown form, around 3000 B.C. ... I find it suspicious_ that no evidence of a gradual development of hieroglyphs has come down to us, even though Egypt’s dry climate would have been favorable for preserving earlier experiments in writing, and though the similarly dry climate of Sumer has yielded abundant evidence of the development of Sumerian cuneiform for at least several centuries before 3000 b.c.
Which is just innuendo.
But I distinctly remember a diagram in that book where he put Egyptian as derivative from something else. But Phoenician is probably not it then, but rather Sumerian cuneiform
I'll look for the diagram
But Jared Diamond is ... questionable in his scholarship.
@Mitch @Cerberus can't find the diagram I am thinking of (possibly doesn't exist) in a pdf, chap 12
all he ever does is say 'may', 'could have' or places it apart from 'provably independent initiation' like Sumerian cuneiform and Mayan
@englishstudent 'suspicious' 'no evidence' 'appeared rather suddenly' (implying that things don't really pop out of thin air, so it must have been borrowed or created out of idea diffusion, one of his theses about other means of civilization starting
@englishstudent 'innuendo' often comes up in sexual situations, but not always. 'sexual innuendo' is a set phrase which should imply that there are other forms of innuendo that are not sexual.
@Mitch I see, so I am confused now, because I have heard that "innuendo" is almost always of sexual nature just like the first part of its definition in Cambridge Dictionary:
> a remark or remarks that suggest something sexual
So why didn't you use "insinuation" here then?
There is a mouse in my house so I am getting Heebie Jeebies today.
So about that word "innuendo". Well, I talk to my friend sometimes who is a native speaker of English from New Zealand and we discussed this word in the past. He convinced me that it is always of sexual nature and he never trolls me, well, almost never. =) So I don't know. But thanks for the information, I was thinking something similar.
I mean when different native speakers say different things it gets confusing but he is not an expert, he just likes the language.
@M.A.R. yes alt-left seems to be wordish now. false equivalency. the alt-right are fascists and reactionaries (which most conservatives are not). What people call the alt-left is ... just more vocal (and more left).
@englishstudent I bring up UD because it is a really good example of how common it is for people to -under- generalize, to take too much of circumstances to infer meaning.
UD only mentioned out of relevancy not an actual connection about that word.
@englishstudent I was being telegraphic and not saying it right. But it's one of that book's central hypotheses supporting geographical determinism. Transfer of ideas about technology (transfer of ideas = idea diffusion) is easier in geographically contiguous areas.
JD is a well-respected ornithiologist, but his writings on anthropology, while informed by being well-travelled (due to his ornithological research), are not considered of high quality.
@Mitch So after checking the definitions in dictionaries it seems like I can use "innuendo", "insinuation" and "snide" interchangeably, right? What do you think?
I just want to be sure =)
Not sure about "snide" but the other two sound the same. I mean definition wise. Both mean indirect insult or an indirect derogatory remark.
@Mitch Ok I will. Is it freely available on the internet?
In the first pair, I much prefer your latter alternative, by being talked down to. In the second pair, I feel less strongly about it, but might again go with the longer version.
3. I can be easily ticked off by people talking down to me.
Is another version.
The thing is, one say I hate people talking down to me.
@Cerberus @Tonepoet I recant of my Latinist fallacy.
> It has been claimed that the dislike of the split infinitive is based on a comparison with classical languages. In Greek and Latin, it is impossible to split infinitives because these languages never use their infinitives together with a preposition/particle. Possibly some felt that as the construction is impossible in those languages, it was not the best English. The weakness of this argument, apart from the non sequitur of judging the syntax of one language by that of another, is that as Latin has no marker, it does not model either solution to the question of where to place one.
Guidance is pretty important, and that's usually emphasized when we notice a new user's downvoted question without any comments.
Comments are also ephemeral necessary evils — they're both pretty useful and create a lot of problems at the same time.
This post serves as a comment template list. I...
@tchrist Hmm, I based my assertion upon a similar account, as you can tell by comment under Ily's post earlier:
Unless you have evidence predating the 1834, I would recommend removing the accusations because there is no hard evidence to support them. The fact that you can't split an infinitive in Latin is suggestive, but no real reason was ever given in primary English sources other than perhaps ignorance of the practice, and most of the informative sources blame the the former Dean of Canturbury, Henry Alford, for popularizing it in 1864. Even if Latinists are to blame, who first made the mistake isn't really essential to linguistic aspect of the matter anyway. — Tonepoet2 days ago
Then again, I suppose you already saw that comment, otherwise the specific article doesn't make sense. The subject we were discussing several days ago in chat was the "preposition at end", as Fowler put it, rule.
“If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it,” goes the saying. Being
perpetually busy – a type A personality who can check e-mail, fold laundry, send a text
message, and cook dinner, all at once – is a state that modern technology supports and
that society encourages as something o...
Guidance is pretty important, and that's usually emphasized when we notice a new user's downvoted question without any comments.
Comments are also ephemeral necessary evils — they're both pretty useful and create a lot of problems at the same time.
This post serves as a comment template list. I...
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…