At least on the violin absolutely anyone can get a sound out of it. Using absolutely any part of their body.
Seriously though, I can't even remember when was the last time a YouTube video actually made me laugh. But I just can't watch the poor girl's face gymnastics without losing it.
@Cerberus Did you see the arête question? Any opinion about what to do with it?
I know what it means because I’ve read it used with respect to Ancient Greece, but as is pointed out in comments not even the OED covers that imported use.
I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is not about English, but a foreign-language word cited in an English text in a way identical to how it would be cited in most other languages. — Janus Bahs JacquetJun 1 at 15:54
@tchrist Lately I've been noticing a lot, and I mean a lot of native speakers on YouTube always getting their verb to agree with the last noun preceding it. No matter what.
I mostly hear it on YouTube where it's either spoken spontaneously so there is no text, or it's scripted by people who I know for a fact go through their script a million times and give it to others to crosscheck.
So every which way I look at it, it's just a thing now and we'll only be seeing more of it.
Well I dunno. It doesn't really. Your brain is hardwired to have a stack. Even if in English it's not as deep as in German, or God forbid Dutch where it's theoretically infinite actually.
I just refuse to believe that saying "I have a car full of apples that goes really fast" is suddenly more taxing on our brains than saying "I have a car full of apples that go really fast".
That said, it's not abnormal for extemporaneous speech to contain the occasional random inflectional error in languages that can have such, especially across a distance or with the partial restarts characteristic of random chatter.
@RegDwigнt The wrong one is definitely taxing on mine.
Certainly I've heard native speakers of Spanish back up to correct themselves with a digo when they notice they've botched the gender or number etc.
But yeah, the uncurated stuff on the internet gets no dispensation.
@tchrist It stops being random when you binge-watch a popular YouTube channel with carefully scripted critiques, each 30 minutes long, and there's instances of this in every single one of them.
And they have like 1.5 million subscribers that of course as is customary on YouTube take issue with every single tiny mistake, perceived or real, but not one of them ever comments how "a car" in English is singular and not plural.
So in conclusion, it totally is a thing now, on both sides of the pond.
English is getting simpler still, folks!
Who knows, maybe we'll kick out the articles after all before Trump even resigns.
At the Perl Conference last week I heard a native speaker repeatably pronounce immiscible with an /sk/. I felt really bad for him because he kept doing it. But I couldn't bring myself to tell him, even privately later.
And that is how language changes. One idiot says "boef" instead of "cow", and everyone looks the other way. Until they look back and suddenly the fields are full of grazing bovines.
When I read/hear all that stuff you're talking about I sometimes feel like a good education is wasted, like I wasted my time learning to do things right when there's apparently no penalty for doing things wrong.
The usual argument goes that people will think less of you somehow, but the truth is, most people won't because in order to realize that you even made a mistake they have to be educated themselves.
Being an idiot is not a problem when everyone else is.
I know Cerberus will violently disagree with that, as he indeed has many times in the past. But that's how it's.
Yes, it's just that. Once you have tasted of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and bad grammar, you cannot disregard noticing the difference. But few ever do, so you've wasted your apple.
The worst thing is like, when someone corrects someone on YouTube or wherever and then immediately suffixes it with "sorry". Or prefixes it with "don't want to be that guy, but".
No, not sorry. That idiot should be sorry, not you.
They are the one who couldn't learn the proper spelling of "its", which hundreds of millions of other people from all over the world mastered in first grade.
From far and wide, they’ve come to list-
en, watch, and judge her plea.
Beneath the lights her skin aglist-
en drips and drabbles free.
Before she speaks she stops to moist-
en lips all cracked and dry;
Refreshed for now, she lifts her voice
and pleading asks them, “Why?”
She tells them just how much, how oft-
en all well-spoken men
That certain t’s they oft would soft-
en up, and how and when.
This once a trait of working class
infects its rulers too,
She tells them just how much, how oft-
en all well-spoken men
That certain t’s they oft would soft-
en up, and how and when.
This once a trait of working class
infects its rulers too,
Who know no better than to fast-
en t’s where once taboo.
Which was whom I was referring to there in my Ballad of Shameless Enjambment.
In Bb major, its high note is an F. People who aren't singers can seldom manage even that. And play it in C and now you have a G so you can just give up on the general populace.
@tchrist That's my range actually. I'd feel more comfortable singing it a tone higher. The lowest note is pretty much the lowest I can manage. The heights I can go higher.
Let me just check what my violin transcription says that I've prepared for July 4th.
I can make it to a high G without too terribly much pain, at least in the afternoon or evening. But I'm more comfortable around Eb especially in the morning. But by night I can't get below a C.
This addition in square brackets is not supposed to be part of the running text; it is a note to inform the reader that moral excellence is the term that this translator chose for the Greek word ἀρετή. The purpose of such a note is to allow those who know some Greek to understand the possible nua...
I don't know that it's even reasonable to map all those little "states" from back when there were Electors and Stadtholders and such to modern countries. German-speaking seems German enough to be German, Germany notwithstanding.
Well I dunno. It doesn't really. Your brain is hardwired to have a stack. Even if in English it's not as deep as in German, or God forbid Dutch where it's theoretically infinite actually.
Years ago I had a long argument about that with a colleague who was both a better linguist and a better programmer than myself and he was also the nicest guy ever, but this one time I managed to drive him furious.
@Cerberus we talked about it before. Of course you don't.
@RegDwigнt Hmm too bad. I have this very nice, informational video about the German elections (made just before the last elections) for you. But you probably won't be able to follow it?
@Cerberus Could be. I dunno. I'm subscribed to a ton of eloquent people producing elaborate 30-minute critiques, but I've only noticed that agreement thingie recently only with one of them.
Random numbers obviously, I've not really calculated anything to any degree of accuracy.
Anyway. I'm going to bed. I need to finish composing three pieces tomorrow. And buy a flute just to spit in the face of everyone who can't play it first try.
@Mitch I think it follows the mechanical rule where every noun could be turned into a verb. So if groove as a noun means top form, to groove sth is supposed to mean to make it into its top form.
But those mechanical rules don't deserve dictionary registration unless they enjoy common usage and acknowledgement as well.
While combing through an article I was proofreading, I came to a sentence:
"I slowly swerved towards Computer Science."
The sentiment that the sentence tries to convey is of a slow change towards computer science, but swerve means, according to the dictionary, a sudden/abrupt change in directio...
Dealing with animation, I often want to described a surface that can be generally traversed as "traversable," but every time I type that word anywhere, including stack exchange, it says it's not a real word, though it seems like it should be. What other word could I use to capture a variety of me...
I was wondering what you call a person or how you can describe a person that cannot see that he or she is wrong even when the people around her present evidence that he or she is actually wrong. And then goes on to say that everybody around him or her is against them.
Is there an official name for the signs you find at tourist locations?
Example - a sign at the head of a trail that may show the trail maps, the name of the trail/area and maybe some historical or geological information?
Another example is a sign at a scenic outlook that explains what can be se...
@Robusto and you're telling that to me like I don't know it because?
I think in this room alone it's been previously mentioned like 9004 times. And I knew it 9004 days before this room even existed.
I shouldn't have gone on hiatus for this long, you seem to have forgotten that back in the day I would sign off every day by making some kind of pun on "over and out". Heck, even I myself forgot all about it and only remembered it after typing it again yesterady.
@Robusto how did you know where the fingers went? I know nothing about the flute, so I just assume it's like with all the other instruments where any two neighboring notes on the staff have fingerings that are as different from one another as you could possibly make them.
I blame Bach.
(Don't know anything about the flute, so I just assume it was Bach who invented it.)
@RegDwigнt I just knew. My fingers fit the keys right off the git-go.
I had played recorder some prior to that, but that's about it for wind instruments.
But what on piano would be your 2-3-4 fingers fit nicely onto the flute keys on top, with your left thumb handling the B and your right supporting the flute body.
One instrument that has baffled me is the shakuhachi. Not a transverse blow-hole, but I thought I ought to be able to at least get a sound out of it. I received one from a friend in Japan about 20 years ago and so far I'm completely stymied.
I thought it might be because I was too accustomed to the flute embouchure, but a friend of mine who was principal in Civic when I was in the orchestra picked it right up. "What, this is hard?" ("Fuck you," I thought.)
@Robusto well he does play in the Sydney Symphony so who knows, but from watching those guys' other joke videos his attempts in this one seemed rather genuine to me. Note how he does get better over time. He also checks his fingering a couple times, like someone who's genuinely trying to play the damn thing right.
There I go what. I'm no longer sure which side of the issue you're on. I was replying to you saying that he probably can do better, but now you're sorta saying that he can't. I'm confused.
Nobody play the tuba anyway. Fuck tuba. Euphonium FTW.
Last night on YouTube I watched an orchestrator go over each note in Holst's Planets. He managed like five bars in just under two hours. He plans on doing the entire thing. It's fucken awesome.
Yeah that's what I wondered before clicking. And it was the best thing ever. Going over as in every respect you could imagine and every respect that you couldn't. It's really quite amazing.
He talks about everything. Keys, registers, blends, articulation. For every instrument. Every note. Dude's crazy.
> „Hat man sein warum? des Lebens, so verträgt man sich fast mit jedem wie? – Der Mensch strebt nicht nach Glück; nur der Engländer tut das” (Friedrich Nietzsche).
@Robusto Yeah for reals now it caught me off guard. I've not seen that stupid smiley in years. Ever since they managed to agree with GEMA, every video was available in my country again. But apparently now people can just block their shit in individual countries themselves? Why?
While combing through an article I was proofreading, I came to a sentence:
"I slowly swerved towards Computer Science."
The sentiment that the sentence tries to convey is of a slow change towards computer science, but swerve means, according to the dictionary, a sudden/abrupt change in directio...
I was wondering what you call a person or how you can describe a person that cannot see that he or she is wrong even when the people around her present evidence that he or she is actually wrong. And then goes on to say that everybody around him or her is against them.
I am after alternative words the describe guest lists but with a more VIP feel. Can be a singular word or multiple words.
Thanks
Is there an official name for the signs you find at tourist locations?
Example - a sign at the head of a trail that may show the trail maps, the name of the trail/area and maybe some historical or geological information?
Another example is a sign at a scenic outlook that explains what can be se...
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…