English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

RegDwigнt

10:00 PM

And the second word has such strong an association with it in absolutely everyone's mind that it overrides the first.

Any Russian reading that would think of a pencil case.

Robusto

When I was in grade school we had wooden desks that had holes for inkwells, but I never saw an inkwell in one.

RegDwigнt

They'd totally dismiss and not even parse in the first place the adjective in front of it.

Robusto

Yes. I've never even heard of an "ink pencil" before.

RegDwigнt

@Robusto yeah we had those in Russia, too. Pretty much up to the point that I got schooled.

@Robusto well not pencil, pen.

Robusto

I thought pen was pero or karandash in Russian.

RegDwigнt

10:02 PM

Yes.

Pero is "feather".

Robusto

Ah.

RegDwigнt

So it stands for the ink pen.

Karandash is the pencil. Actually a wonderful etymology I forget. From French or something. Caran d'ashe.

A stick of ashes.

Robusto

I'm amazed my memory was able to retrieve those after 50+ years of not thinking those thoughts.

RegDwigнt

Which is why I'm asking you and nobody else.

@Robusto Because to answer your question directly I think you're the fuck 50+ years old and not a day younger.

Robusto

Caran d'Ache

Caran d'Ache was the pseudonym of the 19th century French satirist and political cartoonist Emmanuel Poiré (6 November 1858 – 25 February 1909). "Caran d'Ache" comes from the Russian word karandash (карандаш), meaning pencil. While his first work glorified the Napoleonic era, he went on to create "stories without words" and as a contributor to newspapers such as the Le Figaro, he is sometimes hailed as one of the precursors of comic strips. The Swiss art products company Caran d'Ache is named after him. == Biography == Born in Moscow, 6 November 1858, he was the grandson of an Officer-Grenadier...

RegDwigнt

10:04 PM

Well fuck me. Even when I don't remember things, I remember all the things.

It's a curse. Send halp.

Robusto

Funny, but I thought Russian got that word from the French. The French get all the credit, don't they?

RegDwigнt

Certainly from the Russians they do.

Not so much from the English, who also stole 100% of French but are somehow genuinely oblivious about it.

Robusto

There are other similarities I noticed even as a high school sophomore taking Russian.

RegDwigнt

So anyway. Lemme google image the hell out of the ink pen set.

Well something like this why not. First hit but close enough.

Robusto

Yeah, I see what you mean but I've never actually seen what you mean, if you get my meaning.

RegDwigнt

10:07 PM

No matter. My point is thus:

i.mycdn.me/i?r=AyH4iRPQ2q0otWIFepML2LxRAPfbN3UwbqC2rW3FRM7d_A

Why does that not work.

Robusto

Nobody I've ever known has ever carried one of those. My father prided himself on his nice pen and pencil sets, but he always merely stuck them in his the inner pocket of his suits.

RegDwigнt

Robusto

We would probably have called such a thing a "pencil box" before the current era.

RegDwigнt

Ah there.

So anyway. This is what absolutely any Russian thinks of when they read that word, penal.

Everyone had this one model as a kid.

As you can see, a totally different thing.

But because everyone had this one model as a kid, the association is so strong and immediate, Mandelstam can prefix it with any adjective that he wants and everyone will just ignore what he actually means.

You can actually see it in that other guy's translation. It's as wrong as mine.

> A student’s pencil-box

Robusto

@RegDwigнt Kafka wrote about the penal colony, didn't he?

RegDwigнt

10:11 PM

he says.

Well. I take it back. It's more wrong than mine.

@Robusto yeah that's another unfortunate association in English. As well as with the penis. But not in Russian there's none.

It's just that thing in the image above and nothing else.

As an aside, the Germans call it mäppchen. The funniest word of all.

A little, um, well -- what exactly? A little map?

It's from Mappe. A folder.

Because they have those ones with zippers and all.

Robusto

Well, they say Landkarte for map, iirc.

RegDwigнt

As an aside aside, Germans still use ink in school.

I was endlessly amazed by that when I first moved here.

Robusto

Like dip your quill in it ink?

RegDwigнt

No, it's all high-tec and stuff. With those things they call Patronen.

Cartridge. Round. Shell.

A round of ink.

But it's still the good ol' ink on the inside.

Robusto

Ah.

RegDwigнt

10:15 PM

That's what they write with.

Robusto

What we would call a fountain pen.

RegDwigнt

Well a fountain pen to me is one of those olden things that you do dip.

But I'm an ananas.

This would be a typical Mäppchen.

Though not quite in this state of not-disorder.

Robusto

A fountain pen can, and usually does, have a nib that dispenses free-flowing ink from an internal reservoir. The kind that can drip on your shirt if you're not careful.

RegDwigнt

Tintenpatrone

Eine Tintenpatrone ist ein mit Tinte gefüllter Behälter, der in Füllfederhaltern eingesetzt wird und die für den Schreibvorgang notwendige Tinte liefert. == Füllfederhalter == === Funktionsweise === Für Füllfederhalter werden eine oder beide Mündungen der zylindrischen Patronen nach dem Befüllen in der Fertigung durch eine dünne Membran, einen Stopfen oder eine kleine Kugel aus Glas oder Plastik verschlossen. Beim Einsetzen in das jeweilige (Schreib-)Gerät wird dieser Verschluss von dem Tintenleiter, der an dieser Stelle oft verstärkt ist, durchstochen oder in die Patrone hineingedrück...

These are the kinds of what them Germans use.

Us in the USSR, we'd have our ballpoint pens and pencils and compasses. And then our mothers would do calligraphy with old-style ink feathers.

To write the school, um, what you call those in English.

Like a newspaper that you put on the wall and only on the wall.

Stengazeta in Russian. Literally wallpaper.

Robusto

I wouldn't agonize over it, though. "Pencil case" works just fine. You're never going to trigger the same associations in modern English-speaking people the way Mandelstam can with Russians.

RegDwigнt

10:20 PM

Wall newspaper

A wall newspaper or placard newspaper is a hand-lettered or printed newspaper designed to be displayed and read in public places both indoors and outdoors, utilizing vertical surfaces such as walls, boards, fences, etc. The practice dates back to at the least the years of the Roman Empire. They are often produced by governmental entities, or local authorities in locations where production costs or distribution problems might otherwise make regular newspaper distribution either difficult or unnecessary. == Twentieth-century usage == === Soviet Russia and Soviet Union === During the Russi...

@Robusto oh if anything I don't want to trigger them, in this case I want to avoid them.

Also, and orthogonally to that, I changed pencil case to pen case to fit the metre.

I actually looked that one up online, too, because I wasn't sure anyone would understand.

But some people do seem to sell pen cases so I guessed it's be acceptable enough.

So anyway. Those last 40 minutes were just one minor aside about just one word that nobody even cares about and nobody actually should.

See why I never bothered going into this business.

Robusto

I've never heard of a wall newspaper, btw.

RegDwigнt

Yeah I'm half scratching my head if they just invented it to have something to link the Russian article to.

Oh one last question that only just hits me right now. We were talking about that poor thyme kid-pick, and then at the very beginning I was talking about choosing between pick and picked. I only just managed to combine the two in my head.

If and when I don't manage to get a did into there to rhyme with kid, do you think a picked would in any way shape or form rhyme better with kid than pick does?

Robusto

@RegDwigнt Sorry, no I don't.

RegDwigнt

Neither do I.

That's why we go over these things.

Wait, is that why we go over these things?

Robusto

Here's what I'm thinking, though. It's a bit of a leap, but if you could try to find a way to rhyme kid with hid you might have something interesting.

Like "the berries your memory hid" or something.

RegDwigнt

10:30 PM

Yeah. Good thinking.

Something could be hiding in the forest as well. Like even the berries proper.

We'll see.

Robusto

True.

The berries the forest gloom hid ... something in that area

RegDwigнt

Yup.

I just too wary of getting too adventurous with it right now. Or maybe ever. Hopefully ever.

Because once I get adventurous, I can just write whatever.

Robusto

The only problem with that is: how important is the act of volition in that last line?

RegDwigнt

Fuck that guy, I'm my own poet.

@Robusto that's another last thing.

For a moment, or rather for a moment after quite a while I wasn't sure if the would wasn't introducing an unnecessary ambiguity here.

The idea is, you went to the forest many times on different occasions, but you'd never pick any berries. That kind of would.

Robusto

I see from what I've understood about what I've read (a long-circuited way of distancing myself from a language I don't speak) is that the whole poem turns on that last line.

RegDwigнt

10:34 PM

But the way it's being used right now makes it parseable that, like, I dunno, the berries were shit and that's just not the kind of berries you would ever pick.

That kind of would.

Robusto

It talks in general terms all the way through and then suddenly gets very personal, almost asking you to judge your own history.

RegDwigнt

Yes it's like the last flashes of fading memories that you have as you're dying. Random things you'd never even think you still remembered, and really why the fuck would anyone, but here it goes. Your first school day. That one summer in the country side. How your grandma was afraid of a wasp.

You don't think about it for 70 years, and then you're dying, and then you suddenly do.

Robusto

And you regret the berries you didn't pick.

RegDwigнt

Pre-cise-ly.

Robusto

"I should have picked those fucking berries!"

RegDwigнt

10:36 PM

And you had more than one chance, too. You had all the chances. But never. Never once.

Robusto

Never once.

RegDwigнt

And then you write it down and then a couple years later you're a rotting corpse in the snows of Siberia.

I need to get this shit just right and nothing else. No other kind of right will do.

Alas, a man can dream. A man can dream.

Maybe I'll get run over by a bus tomorrow, or a concert grand falls onto my head and all of this would've been for none anyway.

Which is why I'm doing this to begin with.

Robusto

So yeah, I read would as being deontic, but it might have just concerned eventuality.

RegDwigнt

Because I realize I'm uniquely qualified to do this. Not as a measure of quality, but one of capability. Nobody else is doing this.

@Robusto it's difficult in English. It's such a wonderful use of would. Nobody else has anything like it, and yet it maps quite nicely to Russian. If not for the ambiguity.

You would call her every day, and she'd never pick up.

Robusto

Yes.

RegDwigнt

10:42 PM

Who else has that. Only English does.

Robusto

True dat.

RegDwigнt

Not that I know all the 5500 languages in existence. But I know just about enough to say fuck it here's what I claim.

Robusto

The problem with poetry is that you really have to boil down about 40 gallons of thoughts into an ounce of words.

Metric equivalent: 150 liters of thoughts into 30 cc of words.

RegDwigнt

Yes. I did recommend that book to you didn't I? "On poetry".

Aug 16 '18 at 9:07, by RegDwigнt

@Robusto and I wonder if you read "On Poetry" by Glyn Maxwell.

Still on my bedside table.

Robusto

Still haven't read it, sadly.

RegDwigнt

10:47 PM

And there's only ever books on there that I intend to read, never ones that I've read. But this one I've read and it's still on there.

Robusto

I should check it out. What could it hurt?

RegDwigнt

It's like 80 pages or something.

And you don't have to binge-read it. Open on any page and it's fine.

My German is showing.

Robusto

I will look it up.

RegDwigнt

At any page.

Or actually Russian as well. На any page.

Robusto

You could say on or at there, but we usually open a book to a certain page in English.

RegDwigнt

10:49 PM

And that's only half of the questions asked on ELU today.

Robusto

We need a machine to answer dozens of questions at a time.

RegDwigнt

Why do you say that we need a machine to answer dozens of questions at a time?

I have passed my Three-Ring test. Bleep-bleep the blinkenlights.

Robusto

Sometimes it feels like a Turing-incomplete computer is asking the EL&U questions.

RegDwigнt

O ye of little faith, that computer is incomplete in more ways than there are ways.

It doesn't even know about ways.

Grammatical name and fucntoin of WAYS in this sentance plz.

Robusto

See, there are no misspelled words, only trans-spelled and cis-spelled words.

RegDwigнt

10:54 PM

Righty right and anyways. Thank you for coming. I've only been able to talk for this long, even be it about my own shit that I deeply care about, because I took a day off tomorrow. But I only took a day off tomorrow because it's my elder godson's birthday. And also I have a violin lesson right in the middle of it.

I still need to pack up his LEGO and pack up the violin. And then maybe get some sleep because I only got 3hrs last night.

Robusto

I have to go too. But you have a few things to mull over now, in any case, and I hope I've helped you think about them.

RegDwigнt

So with that in mind I'm taking your advice offline, as you tend to say.

Yes you certainly have. Some have aligned with my worries and others have added to them. Always a good sign.

Push the stack before popping it.

Robusto

And don't cross the streams.

Laterz.

RegDwigнt

I bid you a good night. And thank you.

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11:13 PM

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…