English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

2:39 AM

@Cerberus It's just a quote from that article Robusto mentioned.

Q: What is the cadence in one’s voice called when speaking parenthetically?

2:54 AM

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When speaking, is there a specific term for the inflection of one’s voice when adding a parenthetical comment such as, I am, however , unsure about this. That drop in pitch when one says “however,” that is what I’m asking about. Thank you

Cerberus

3:30 AM

@Mitch Oh, I never saw a link?

KannE

4:06 AM

Roll me o-o-ver (Roll me o-o-ver) in the clo-o-ver (in the clo-o-ver). Roll me over in the clover; do it again; do it again (Roll me over in the clover; do it again; do it again). Hmm...I would say the cadence is...suggestive...repetitively suggestive...and echoey...Ek-O-oh, oh-oh (Ek-O-oh, oh-oh)...[E Company, US Army].

@Robusto Perhaps I did.

Perhaps I did not.

You shall never know.

500 years from now, scientists will still debate it.

Alas, if only I were around to comment at the time.

Uhaa,, thank you alot .. — Nsamaat El Layalii 4 hours ago

Yeah, Robusto. Uhaa,, thank you alot ..

No good deed goes unthanked ,, uhaa ..

4:38 AM

@RegDwigнt That title made me LMAO.

Q: Is there one phrase, expression/ idiom for a social vice of mean/self centered/inconsiderate people who always want everything first for themselves

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In south asian culture, we would use a roundabout saying as "Window seat" syndrome, that means mean/self centered/inconsiderate people (for spoil brats) always want everything first for themselves (to hell with the others). What would be an actual version of the above phrase in English language...

single-word-requests phrases expressions idioms

Q: Can 'nook' be used outside the saying 'nook and cranny'? Is it common?

5:12 AM

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I'm looking for an English word that describes something comfortable: a safe space that one prefers to chill out in quiet solitude, and something that depicts a sentiment of familiarity. I would like for the word to be informal, as per something you would say to a good friend of yours: 'And this...

single-word-requests meaning vocabulary

SmokeDetector

5:55 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Url in title, bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, blacklisted website in body, blacklisted website in title, +5 more (787): ketodiettrial.com/pure-bhb-keto/ by jeffreyros on english.SE

SmokeDetector

11:08 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Url in title, bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, blacklisted website in body, blacklisted website in title, +6 more (887): topsupplementlist.com/praltrix-south-africa/ by Ruscenteno on english.SE

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, bad keyword in username, potentially bad keyword in body, potentially bad keyword in title (289): Buy Now Teal Farms Keto by TealFarms on english.SE

-1

Q: Buy Now Teal Farms Keto

Losing weight is not minority than a onus, but if you Teal Farms Keto earlier everything seems expected easier. Yes, this is a indeed advanced skim which allows you to chip on one shoulder your fat advantage and get perfectly slim and ingrained figure. The raw is immensely near to one heart among...

Robusto

12:54 PM

@RegDwigнt The fuck are you doing up at this hour, poring over pineapple prose in EL&U. Too much alcohol on board?

But you should have saved your guffaws for this answer:

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A: Help in Translation

One expression, perhaps more familiar in the past when more English-speaking people were familiar with the Bible, is 'heap coals of fire on [one's] head'. It comes from Proverbs 25:22, where it is said to be the effect of doing a kindness to one's enemy. Many sources explain it in the context of ...

Basically, she's saying a great idiom for expressing a sudden surprising tenderness toward someone, one that assuages anger or ill feelings, is to say they set your hair on fire?

Where do we get these people?

1:43 PM

@Robusto actually no, no alcohol left at all.

I spent the night looking in every corner, but as soon as I thought I'd found something, it vanished before my very eyes.

Also, I never save my guffaws. You only live once. My supply is only limited by time, unlimited otherwise.

And I have no idea what that answer is saying, actually.

I think they just found a cool expression and wanted to leave a note for themselves.

2:06 PM

@Cerberus I didn't give one. But... here it is:

Is the Aeneid a celebration of empire or a critique?

@KannE What? I always thought it was a harvesting machine talking about being rolled through the fields to harvest the clover.

KannE

3:45 PM

@Mitch Well, that was our version at the time; some of the young ladies sang "me" intstead of "it"...but still kinda cute and innocent compared to other versions, for sure. But it was very cute when the young men sang the "lay me down" version in their deep, echoey voices... Our whole platoon would halt (just stop traffic on one side of the street) to listen and "eyes--left" as they passed by, ha-ha, really. But they all just smiled a little and kept going. Men are shy, basically.

Q: What do you call a language spoken with a thick accent?

4:42 PM

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If one speaks a foreign language making bad mistakes so that his speech sounds strange and broken, then he is speaking the word I'm looking for English (Spanish, Russian, etc.). Is there such an expression in English? In Russian we say "ломаный русский (английский)", which is literally translat...

single-word-requests idiom-requests

There's a sudden influx of Russians on the main site. I blame Trump.

Q: Word for doing something because you want to

5:29 PM

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I forgot the name of an adjective which means that you do something because you want to. It has a complete anytonym which sounds similar (I think they just have different prefixes) but means you do it because of outside factors. Any help is appreciated :)

single-word-requests adjectives

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Q: What describes the effect of the way back seeming faster than the way there?

There's plenty of theories as to why this may be the case: Your memory may just be faulty; The perception of time changes as the first time your brain was processing 'everything' due to the route being unknown but reduced the perception of time when it recognised a familiar route and didn't need...

Q: Is there an adjective that indicates two letters are used in the same word?

6:00 PM

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The context for this question is word games like Scrabble, but it seems like it might also have minor applications elsewhere. If I played "book" and "solid" we could say that S and D have this quality, because they are used in the same word, but S and K do not, because they are used in different ...

single-word-requests adjectives

KannE

6:55 PM

It's too easy to permanently remove an upvote you made to a comment by misclicking; there should be a warning since you can't correct it... I don't think there's a warning...unless I was in a clicking frenzy. I'm not sure about that.

Q: Which is correct: their, his or our?

8:05 PM

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I am still confused using the word everyone. I have this sentence on a test. I think the answer is their. Everyone wants to do (their) (his) (our) part.

@KannE oh I forgot that feature even existed.

Meaning to say, what are you even clicking on that you misclick.

11:05 PM

Gah, I just bumped into the Uhaa again. Or stepped in it, should I say.

Y u nasty ppl keep bubbling question to top.

Maybe I need to consult @Mitch's cats on that. I've heard good things about them.

@RegDwigнt My cats are idiots

also...

yesterday, by Mitch

For the record I have no cats

Hay Jasman

Hiii

Do you have a cat?

11:20 PM

No, I don't keep pets.

Do you know of people in your building with cats?

I don't think I ever will, unless Sara wants pets in future.

Yes, there are many people here with dogs and cats.

Do they take the cats on walks like they do with dogs?

Like with a halter/leash for the cat?

Not really. Now that you mention it, seems strange people don't walk cats as much.

I have personal experience with such, such that my advice would be to never ever ever try to take a cat for a walk on a leash, even with a halter.

11:22 PM

Should a vegan get vegan food for their pets too? Hmm...

I don't have scars except in my mind.

What happened to the cat on a walk?

@JasperLoy Cats are intolerant of leashes.

@JasperLoy Oh man. I struggle with that question even though I don't have pets.

I have decided that the next song I will do will be A Flower's All You Need.

But it will be very hard to make it sound nice with my voice range and style of singing, but it will be acceptable.

I just learnt all the lyrics and note changes.

@JasperLoy The cat let the halter be put on him, but then once outside, he was so uncomfortable he walked real slow and like he didn't want any part of his body touching the halter.

I don't think I mean halter, which I hink goes around the head and muzzle, but instead something that goes around the front legs and chest and meets on the back.

11:27 PM

Anyway the bull looks very fierce.

I don't know halter. I only know the word leash. I have a limited vocabulary.

But the story isn't done. then after about 20 feet of 'walking' (slinking or doing the cat version of silly walks)...

and then the cat literally freaked out.

I am also not sure about whether ethically it is good to have pets or have zoos.

Maybe animals should just be left on their own, you know.

That's a whole different issue from veganism though.

started running around back and forth hissing and scratching and hissing. I had to take off my sweater and wrap it around the literally crazy cat to subdue him and take him inside.

I had scratches all over

some bleeding. but none needing stitches luckily.

OMG. I heard a story which seems to be true how some army boy got scratches all over his body because a ghost he saw did it to him.

The most important lesson of all:

Cats are jerks

But also another moral is to not try to take a cat on a walk.

11:31 PM

Have you seen ghosts before?

@JasperLoy No

Ghosts are a load of horseshit

@JasperLoy Ghosts are supposed to be able to go through walls. If so, how do they have enough coporeality to cause a person direct injury?

Don't you think I look like a ghost now?

haha no. it just looks like there's not enough light

@Mitch Well, we need to change our conception of ghosts. There are all kinds of ghosts...

@Mitch I wanted the picture to capture my melancholy.

ghosts, like leprechauns fairies witches and magic is just our mind making up patterns where they don't exist

11:35 PM

Well, I believe in ghosts, but not the ones you see on television.

@JasperLoy If you turn the light up a little more maybe that will make things happier looking

@Mitch I see. I was experimenting with the different filters in the Windows 10 Photos app. Good photo and video editor.

I read the news that a train collided into a crowd in India and killed 50 people.

ugh

And I saw the Wikipedia article on that before someone locked it. There were trolls writing crap on it.

So far I have seen Wikipedia trolling twice or thrice I think.

Of course, wrong information or wrong punctuation, about 200 or 300 times I think.

It's hard to get everything right when so many people are editing one article.

did that happen today or yesterday?

11:40 PM

Many hours ago.

oh so everybody is trying to put their mark on wikipedia recording the event

Maybe some people just purposely want to add wrong stuff for fun too.

It's like the trolls you get on SE.

Oh so they really are saying just wrong things?

@Mitch I had read that. Which is precisely the good thing about them that I was referencing.

Sometimes, yes. Vandalism, basically.

11:44 PM

@RegDwigнt Everything you say about my cats will only get you further into trouble. They don't care for false flattery.

Anyway, I will do some songs with Maria in them soon, and also one with Sara in it.

For example, by coincidence, like me, they don't believe in ghosts.

I just realised that Maria Sara = MS = Microsoft. QED.

Not because they are imaginary, but because they conducted scientific experiments to test whether the ghost hypothesis vs the control hypothesis of leprechauns accounts for real world experience better.

Do you think a computer can last a lifetime?

11:47 PM

Its own lifetime yes.

LOL

desktops dies quicker, usually too many moving parts to fail.

sold state phones/laptops lat longer.

Maybe the phones I have are very cheap, and so they last very short, lol.

My current phone is only about 40 USD.

what happens when they stop... lasting?

I just use it for calls and SMS, nothing else.

11:50 PM

but then what tells you that you need a new one?

@Mitch I could not make or receive calls anymore. It just broke down.

buttons or screen broke?

or the software?

The functionality. Something went wrong, but I can't recall exactly what.

But I don't care much about the phone, even though I care more about computers. But I care about books the most, among physical objects.

all computers nowadays, whether a desktop or smartphone or in between, have the same problems with memory filling up and bloated operating systems that eventually slow down the system to inusability.

The truth is that all OSes have bugs and will freeze now and then.

11:54 PM

@JasperLoy books are great. on a sad side, I realized that I haven't read a book in a couple years

Some try to pretend to be better than others by saying they don't freeze, which is not true.

I'm reading all the time, but just a sentence here, a paragraph there.

@Mitch For a start you can read your OED using the magnifying glass, from the first word to the last word.

But I think that is very bad for the eyes.

@JasperLoy there's progress, they don't fail as often or in the same terrible ways. But they still do freeze sometimes.

@JasperLoy i both love that and can't stand that. I have to squint real hard even with the magnifying glass.

By the way, are you familiar with Webster's New World College Dictionary?

The strange thing is that there is no website dedicated to it. You can look up entries in probably an old edition on some sites, but those sites list definitions from several dictionaries.

I am wondering why some people like it. I compared several definitions and it seems this dictionary has very unclear definitions compared to Merriam-Webster.

Maybe I picked all the wrong words to sample.