English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

@Gigili needs more context. Is this a translation? Is it in fiction? Is it about drinking water? Is it in a travel guide book (and if so in what context)?

It could mean drinking water from a spring that is not gassy/bubbly

Give the full sentence

Færd

11:54 AM

@Gigili, does your name have anything to do with tickling?

.

Spagirl

12:10 PM

@Gigili Is this 'still water' in the context of bottled water? if so, it means 'not fizzy' and is a description designed to contrast with 'sparkling' which means 'fizzy'.

yasar

12:28 PM

Hi, I am not a native speaker, I have a qucik question, which of these usages is correct "It was I who did ...." or "It was me who did ... "

Just win baby

It was I who did...

yasar

12:42 PM

It was me sound more natural to me for some reason :/

How about in response to question -> "Was it you?"

Mitch

@yasar Both are correct. 'It was I ...' is formal (sometimes too formal or old-fashioned). "It was me..." is informal (sometimes too informal). People trying to sound fancy will use "It was I..." People normally use "It was me..." but there is a trend towards saying "It was I..." for more people.

Using 'grammatical logic' (which is not necessarily the correct thing because of rule exceptions), you'd think that the nominative ('I') is called for no matter what because it is 'to be', but that is just not the case. If you knock on the door and the other person says "Who is is?" the answer is usually "It is me".

But currently the trend is toward giving the nominative for everything (hypercorrection). eg people are weirdly saying 'between you and I' even though all prepositions in English always take the accusative (eg 'to me', not 'to I').

@yasar "Yes, it was me." Is the most natural.

terdon

12:59 PM

@Mitch This isn't a case of hyper correction though. While I quite agree that it is me is fine these days, the grammar school "correct" version would be It is I. I really don't think this is the same trend as has created such common abominations as I bought it for my wife and I and all that crap.

Mitch

1:19 PM

@terdon ok. I'm putting all the use of 'I' in non-head positions together, as hypercorrection. so you say that 'between you and I' is definitely hypercorrection?

Then what do you call the 'It is I' vs 'It is me' variation (both 'acceptable' nowadays)

in other news, one more dad-joke pun, after this it wil only be puns that are bad by themselves.

Why do chicken coops only have two doors?

Because if they had four, they’d be chicken sedans.

terdon

@Mitch Yes, I would say that. I hope you won't now make me eat my words, but my rule of thumb is that the sentence should read the same way when you inverse it. So, since for I and my wife is clearly wrong, so then is for my wife and I. Compare that to me and my wife and my wife and me.

@Mitch That one I, in my ignorant opinion, consider to be common enough by now to constitute a linguistic shift.

Mitch

@terdon which direction? from I to me or me to I?

@terdon or without the conjunction (just a single element instead of A and B)

terdon

@Mitch From I to me. My father still uses it is I and can't bring himself to use It's me. Or so he thinks; I've caught him out a few times. But he was born in the late thirties. It's me is what I would use, most of the time.

@Mitch Yep

tchrist

Not many people this side of Thomas Jefferson use inverse as a verb.

’Tis I who am your dark father, Luke.

terdon

@tchrist Oh? Invert wouldn't work there, would you have said reverse it?

tchrist

1:26 PM

Yes.

terdon

Huh.

tchrist

> (surveying) To compute the bearing and distance between two points.

Flip it around, even.

terdon

I feel inverse is more accurate than reverse here. For some reason, foo bar reversed make me think of rab oof not bar foo.

tchrist

I honestly don't know whether "It is I" was ever dominant over "It is me" in regular folks' speech.

Nor am I sure I know how to figure that out.

terdon

books.google.com/ngrams/…

tchrist

1:28 PM

That's not so good a way.

terdon

That ngram suggests it started falling in the 20ies. For what it's worth.

@tchrist No. Best I could come up with though.

tchrist

That's curated writing, not attested speech.

Which is why I said it's hard to get historical data on that.

terdon

I'd be inclined to think it was common but I was raised by someone who'd correct me when I didn't use it so I'm clearly biased.

tchrist

But not by someone who raised crops and reared children, apparently. :)

Very Victorian, I know.

terdon

One out of two isn't too bad!

And no, the language used by an English lit graduate working as a professional editor is probably not representative of that used by your average native speaker.

tchrist

1:33 PM

I shouldn't imagine they would be.

Which is another of those constructed phrases.

Tonight is Midsummer’s Eve, is it not?

Mitch

@terdon Old people. Pfft. What do they know?

terdon

@tchrist Tomorrow, I think. The equinox is the night of the 21st, isn't it?

Solstice, d'uh!

Mitch

@terdon methinks it is a conundrum.

me talk like grog. grog make fire. him smart

terdon

Nope, I stand corrected, it's the 20th so tonight is indeed midsummer's eve.

@Mitch snort

Mitch

@tchrist better'n extraverse. "I'll extraverse you if it's the last thing I do"

@tchrist It's all downhill from here

@terdon Did you look at the instances there? It is a mess. for 'I' it is mostly talking about "It is I" as the 'proper' grammatical way to say it (as though they knew we were going to ask google books!) or a sentence ending with '... it is.' and the next starting with 'I'.

terdon

1:52 PM

@Mitch No I hadn't, but I'm not surprised.

Mitch

but for 'me', mostly the same but actually a few instances were "It is me" is used naturally (and I didn't see any "it is I')

Which is not to support one way or the other but to emphasize what @tchrist said, that ngrams (for this problem) is not a good measure.

terdon

True

Mitch

2:04 PM

ngrams is a great start. hm... COCA

COCA gives 349 to 69, I to me, with none of the punctuation confusions that ngrams has.

terdon

@Mitch Can you sort by date though?

Mitch

But that's last ten years. and as @tchrist says, curated writing not attested speech

but frankly attested speech is near impossible until our microwave ovens have collected all speech continuously.

@terdon it does that by default. only goes back to 2008

terdon

Yeah, so not much more help for the historical trends.

Mitch

10 years is hardly a good time span for usage change except for a neologism

eg 'you're toast'

terdon

@Mitch Is that a neologism?

So quoth etymonline:

> Slang meaning "a goner, person or thing already doomed or destroyed" is recorded by 1987, perhaps from notion of computer circuits being "fried," and with unconscious echoes of earlier figurative phrase to be had on toast (1886) "to be served up for eating."

So, new enough, I guess.

Mitch

2:16 PM

@terdon yes, when used to mean "You're done for" "your participation has ended", "You life as electrified ectoplasm is about to be Ghostbusted" (which I thought it was from, Bill Murray)

it exploded after the movie came out

One more:

> Don't byte off more than you can queue

>When does a Dad joke become a Dad joke?

When it becomes apparent.

> Did you hear about the constipated mathematician? He worked it out with a pencil.

user288256

3:05 PM

@Mitch This is the second "constipation" joke you have made since yesterday

Kit Z. Fox

and the quarterback is toast

RegDwigнt

tchrist

mmm

RegDwigнt

They claim no photoshop, just makeup and lighting.

Quite cool any which way.

Kit Z. Fox

purdy

user288256

3:18 PM

I wasn't familiar with "purdy" in the "pretty" sense. Is it US English?

user288256

Btw nice word

terdon

@RegDwigнt They?

RegDwigнt

Well there's a lady and a bloke, in case you can't tell behind all the makeup.

facebook.com/Belluchiko/posts/10209465386446687

Bella Grigoryants and Andrey Kessin.

@Ghalib it mimics the actual pronunciation of the actual word in the Southern States.

But yeah it's very common.

user288256

oh okay. Thanks.

RegDwigнt

Jon Purdy, United States

25.9k 4 77 125

See. It says "United States".

Tonepoet

3:25 PM

@RegDwigнt Oh, I always assumed that it was supposed to represent a thoughtless slurring of the word, since I am most accustomed to the context of Ooh! Purdy. Esp. in animation, when it's used in contexts of temptation.

Mitch

> Why are constipated people so rude? They don't give a crap

user288256

@Mitch Funneh.

Mitch

@RegDwigнt I wanna see a Picasso face, with three eyes, and nostrils on the same side of the nose

@RegDwigнt only in mock affectation. nobody says it sincerely

user288256

@Mitch So this was your third "constipation" joke since yesterday, I'm genuinely curious about your thought process now, man.

user288256

=)

user288256

3:31 PM

@Mitch Btw I asked you a English question here in chat yesterday. Mind giving me an answer. If you are free that is.

user288256

Or maybe later. Your choice.

RegDwigнt

Oh and this here is for me mate @Cerberus: radiooooo.com

Mitch

> Did you hear about the constipated composer? He had problems with his last movement.

RegDwigнt

Pick a country, pick a decade, listen to the radio from that time and place.

Mitch

@Ghalib dude... I can barely remember what I just said let alone you. What was your question?

Tonepoet

3:33 PM

@Mitch I heard it was a real turd.

RegDwigнt

@Mitch Kit right here says it sincerely all the time.

Anyway I got to run.

user288256

@Tonepoet You are making me puke Tone.

Mitch

@RegDwigнt I don't see that anywhere

Kit Z. Fox

@Tonepoet It was complete crap.

@Mitch That's because you aren't privy to our private conversations.

Tonepoet

Mitch

3:36 PM

@KitZ.Fox wait...is that a poop joke?

Kit Z. Fox

oh. it kind of is, isn't it?

Mitch

> Poop is a crap palindrome.

Kit Z. Fox

groan

Mitch

@KitZ.Fox well, anyway, have you heard people in real life use it sincerely?

Tonepoet

Bah, I wasted a good opportunity for a better Earthbound joke...

Mitch

3:39 PM

@KitZ.Fox like dysentery, I can't stop

Kit Z. Fox

Number one thing about traveling in foreign countries is to use your right hand. Number two, on the other hand...

Mitch

+1. a thinker

Kit Z. Fox

@Mitch I don't know if I use it sincerely. I feel like I do.

user288256

@Tonepoet Couldn't you have pasted a good looking 'shit' Tone? But it never is.., so you win.

Tonepoet

@Ghalib That's not fecal matter, it's Master Belch. He's a pile of puke.

user288256

3:41 PM

I have heard many "shit" jokes. Almost every joke has something to do with either that, or sex or...

Mitch

There's a good taxonomy of defecation. But I don't want to get into it. It's too dense.

user288256

yeah, the bar jokes.

Tonepoet

When you say almost, I suppose you mean the sole exception is the one about the chicken who crossed the road.

Mitch

> The barman says, “We don’t serve time travelers in here.” A time traveler walks into a bar.

Kit Z. Fox

That reminds me of that threading joke.

terdon

3:46 PM

@Ghalib For @Mitch, that bar is very, very low.

Kit Z. Fox

A programmer once tried to solve a problem with threads. problems. two Now she has

Mitch

> Because we read from top to bottom, left to right.
Why should I start my reply below the quoted text?
Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

Kit Z. Fox

ow ow ow

Mitch

@terdon nice. there's a bar?

Kit Z. Fox

underground, I think.

Mitch

3:48 PM

This is all because of national dad joke yesterday.

because shootings and bombings and stuff suck

Kit Z. Fox

yes

and my father being dead sucks too.

Mitch

I read the 'human progress' tweets.

and oh... sorry

Kit Z. Fox

nah, that was years ago. thanks though.

still miss him.

Mitch

no one ever forgets.

if you knew them

Kit Z. Fox

my boys and I replaced a bunch of receptacles in the kitchen for Father's Day.

Mitch

3:51 PM

like trash cans?

Kit Z. Fox

we now have three-prong outlets along the counter!

Mitch

oh. electrical

Kit Z. Fox

electrical receptacles.

yes

Mitch

any of them with the circuit breaker right in the faceplate?

Kit Z. Fox

they had been two prong ones and the coffee maker started not working sometimes, so it needed doing.

Mitch

3:52 PM

nice gift

Kit Z. Fox

yeah, we put a GFCI at the head of the circuit so we wouldn't have to run grounding wire.

it's not perfect, but it's to code.

now we don't need the adapter for the microwave!

Mitch

oh, so what I was about to say was that I look at the tweets from 'Human Progress' which shows all sorts of graphs about how ife expectancy is going up and infant mortality is going down (worldwide) and all sorts of great stats.

how great is that? because news is mostly just complaining.

complaining that is needed, but still, never not a downer.

Kit Z. Fox

yes, I understand. slow forward progress, even if it seems constantly backward.

Mitch

you have to think real hard sometimes to notice that the kind of news or lack of terrible news means that maybe things aren't so bad.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Mitch

3:56 PM

but then I looked into it and of course it turns out that the 'Human progress' site has an agenda which is anti-socialist.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Sometimes the progress isn't even that slow... look at that chart!

also good checks time ... it's still morning here, technically ... morning

Mitch

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 right! a lot of things are really doing great in only the past decade compared to formerly.

Across the world that is. sometimes I think that things are entirely standing still.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 holy crap, in a few days, days will start getting shorter (north of the equator). That isn't terribly depressing I suppose

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

yeah just the other day I was laughing at a comediean's supercut video of news anchors saying "I can't believe it's June already" and here we are, June is nearly over

Mitch

anyway, is socialism that bad? sure command economies tend not to prosper. BUt entirely market driven things can be bad too.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I can't believe it's the 21st century already. I haven't even thought about the 22nd.

Kit Z. Fox

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 The title is a bit concerning.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

4:00 PM

Kit Z. Fox

Decrease in pirates causing global warming...

and all teh kitteh videos!

Mitch

oh, guinea worm. not entirely eradicated, but from something like millions 20 years ago to under a hundred nowadays (from memory)

Tonepoet

@Mitch Too much socialism becomes communism, and while I can understand the ideals of communism, it won't work until we have a post-scarcity economy...

user288256

@terdon :)

Mitch

which if I had had guinea worm 20 years ago, I'd be sort of miffed about. Like, wth. these damn kids these days. Walking around like everything is great, They got it too good without guinea worms poking themselves out of their eyes.

Tonepoet

4:05 PM

Otherwise you're counting on people to volunteer their efforts for nothing, or even worse, compelling them to do so, which is effectively slavery.

Mitch

I wonder if a guinea worm would make a good pet though.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in answer: Etymology for “Mc‑” and “O’‑” prefix in surnames by user241553 on english.SE

user288256

5:41 PM

@Mitch This query from yesterday.

user288256

@Mitch I searched the net for "guinea worm" and I got results for "guinea worm disease".

Mitch

It's a syllogism. The statements:
tchrist: "your internet link is your lifeline to a greater world"
me:"If it's not true then your life is way too complicated"
you:"And is your life complicated?"
me:"I am spending time on the internet like you, so the natural inference given the above is no."

user288256

@Tonepoet Why it is always the chicken who is crossing the road? :P

Mitch

It's a tenuous thread, but it's there

@Ghalib good point. the skeleton doesn't cross the road.

@Ghalib Having a guinea wor thread itself through your body is called 'guinea worm disease' I suppose

Tonepoet

@Ghalib Because she's too much of a coward to stay on one side.

Mitch

5:52 PM

@Ghalib I'm spending time on the internet, so it is like the internet is a lifeline to the greater world. modus tollens: if my life is not complicated then that must be true. Yeah I guess you're right, ti's a faulty syllogism, kinda affirming the consequent

@Ghalib do you know why the skeleton did not cross the road?

Tonepoet

@Mitch Because it was constipated?

Mitch

It didn't have the guts.

!!rimshot

Does that count as a poop joke?

Probably not.

Tonepoet

@Mitch It has an incidental relation since many of the guts are digestive in nature.

user288256

@Mitch ah I see a "syllogism", thanks a lot.

user288256

@Mitch yeah

user288256

5:57 PM

@Mitch No, I only know why the skeleton didn't cross the road. But wait... I might have an answer.

user288256

@Tonepoet That's a good one.

user288256

But not really. You could do better Tone. xP

user288256

@Mitch I misread that, sorry. Yeah, the skeleton didn’t have the guts.

user288256

6:14 PM

@Mitch I like the internet but that doesn't mean my life isn't complicated. Internet seems very simple to me, so I feel like using it. I mean I don't know how to put my thoughts into words but internet is all virtual mostly, and to me that makes it quite simple (not sure if 'simple' is the right word to use here though)

YOU

6:47 PM

I need my payment for stuff done by date.
I need my payment for stuff done before date.

which is correct?

Kit Z. Fox

They are both correct.

YOU

Great!

Thank you

user288256

7:10 PM

@YOU Your name is quite different YOU.

user288256

I have yet to see ME here.

Gigili

7:54 PM

@Mitch A translation, yes, no, no, no, no, yes, no, no and yes. no...

@Færd No

.

@Spagirl Exactly. OK, thanks.

Færd

@Gigili That one is marked in ODO as British usage though.

And re your screen-name, I thought it was the gibber-word that some Farsi speakers say when tickling a child: "gigiligigiligigililililihahahaha...".

Turns out it's not that. :)

I think you should really think twice before tickling someone, esp a child, too much. Just because they don't wet their pants doesn't mean you're not torturing them. I used to do that to my little brother (he an infant, I a kid) all the frigging time. I feel so guilty about it now. He was so helpless. sigh

Mitch

8:15 PM

@Gigili That was more than 4 answers.

Færd

Save the rest for your future questions.

Mitch

@Gigili relevantly, AmE speakers/restaurants don't use 'still'. That is the term Germans use....in German. In AmE, it really is either 'tap water' (which is not fizzy) and 'mineral water' which (usually) is. If you really have to say something about the level of carbonation in AmE, you'd say 'flat water' or 'carbonated water'. Saying 'still water' is weird sounding to me.

tap and mineral water tell you that the first is flat and the second is fizzy even though you might have flat mineral water (but if your tap water is fizzy, stop drinking, you got something wrong with your plumbing)

Kit Z. Fox

plain v. fizzy?

Tonepoet

8:32 PM

@Mitch Still water is a known term, but it's usually for the sort of water that hasn't moved in a long time. It's preferred more by the mosquito as a breeding habitat than the human to drink.

It's not quite scum water, but it's still something you probably wouldn't want to drink, unless you want a guinea worm for a pet.

It is also commonly known as standing water though.

Kit Z. Fox

Standing water != still water.

Still waters run deep. Nobody says that about standing water.

Tonepoet

@KitZ.Fox I didn't say they were completely interchangeable, just that they're both used as names for the same thing. Perhaps I'm mistaken about that, and there is a distinction I've failed to detect in the past, but they seem to be used synonymously in the second paragraph of Why Drought Years Can Increase Risk of Mosquito-Borne Illnesses for instance.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Mitch No matter how much you wished it were wine, it's still water

Tonepoet

8:48 PM

@KitZ.Fox Also, I've never actually encountered that statement before. Upon further inspection, it seems to be a variant of a set phrase, so it'd be unlikely to change regardless.

Mitch

9:05 PM

@KitZ.Fox those are what I would use, but I think of as very informal and not 'official' (wait staff would recognize them but not use them)

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Jesus used the Jedi Mind Trick

@Tonepoet that's the only place I've ever heard 'still waters', and I've only ever heard 'still water' by Germans using the false friend for 'stilles Wasser'. OK maybe Brits use still water?

Tonepoet

@Mitch I think "still waters" are also used in seafaring contexts to describe waters that are easy to sail in...

Mitch

@Tonepoet OK

Tonepoet

However in the singular, it's a phrase of limited applicability. I've only ever heard it in the contexts of parasites, disease control, and perhaps causes of rot.

Mitch

water with no current is what it means.

@Tonepoet are you sure you're not referring to standing water? (which is the first phrase that comes to mind for all of those)

Tonepoet

9:21 PM

@Mitch I mentioned that already, and I provided a link to a context that used both, so I'm about as sure as I can be on a cursory check.

Mitch

I can't seem to find any evidence that BrE uses 'still water' any more or any less than AmE (via google books).

@Tonepoet That's confusing, because wiktionary says nothing and Kit already pointed out the difference between standing and still

Tonepoet

@Mitch I think it is of more interest that still water and standing water have near parity in raw usage, but I'm not really sure what kind of sentence to construct to eliminate false positives.

Mitch

10:32 PM

@Tonepoet frequency is not meaning

That's part of the problems with using ngrams superficially

Tonepoet

10:49 PM

@Mitch That's true Mitch, but it shows that the phrase isn't exclusive to German at least. XP

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…