English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2019-08-11

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12:00 AM

> Die besondere Art meiner Inspiration ist die, daß ich alles kann, nicht nur auf eine bestimmte Arbeit hin. Wenn ich wahllos einen Satz hinschreibe, zum Beispiel "Er schaute aus dem Fenster", so ist er schon vollkommen.

So many great ones.

> Alle Dinge, die mir einfallen, fallen mir nicht von der Wurzel aus ein, sondern erst irgendwo gegen ihre Mitte.

So true. Indeed only more true these days now that I've long forgotten that quote, than back in the day when you'd find me reciting it left and right.

> Wenn ich etwas sage, verliert es sofort und endgültig die Wichtigkeit. Wenn ich es aufschreibe, verliert es sie auch immer, gewinnt aber manchmal eine neue.

Alas, can't find the one I'm actually looking for.

Curious that I shouldn't have marked it up. A good half of every other page is marked up in a vivid gamut of colours.

Maybe only fitting that the one and only quote I actually remembered I never actually underlined.

Du suchst.

Exactly.

Also finde ich nicht.

Genau.

Still it's quite wonderful to hold a book in your hands that you last held in your hands a quarter of a century ago.

Try that with a Kindle.

People don't know what's good for them anymore.

The other day on YouTube someone commented that you shouldn't buy CDs of classical music in this day and age where the whole world is drowning in plastic.

I commented right back, sorry to hear you only buy CDs of classical music to toss them into the ocean, but rest assured us regular folk can't afford such an eccentric hobby.

Every CD I even bought is still sitting right behind me as I'm typing this.

I have a Mozart box, a Bach box, and a Beethoven box.

12:14 AM

If anything, I prevented just that amount of plastic from being dumped into a landfill or choking a dolphin to death.

But do I ever listen to them any more?

The ones that I do listen to I've all ripped and put on my smartphone.

I mean boxes of complete works.

But that doesn't mean that I threw away the CDs.

I haven't thrown my boxes out either.

But I use them only as door stops.

And now I smell weed.

12:16 AM

Actually just a couple months ago I bought a CD box of all the music from NieR:Automata. Cost me quite some buck. But all I ever did was immediately convert it to MP3s to listen to on my phone.

I don't think I'll ever listen to the CDs.

But I would have never in a thousand years considered just buying it as a digital download.

I'd rather pay a virtual whore for virtual sex.

Hah.

Why?

Why what? Why I wouldn't buy the digital download? Or why I would pay the digital whore?

Because it's stupid, and because she has a PhD in physics, respectively.

I do have a Spotify subscription, mind. But it's not downloads I'm paying for there, so dunno. Wevs.

I suppose you are more of a collector than I.

Oh I'm a horrible hoarder.

I remember I could never bring myself to clean my writing table as a kid.

My mom was always furious.

My desk at work still looks like that to this day.

I am quite notorious at the office.

I have more shit on my desk than everyone else combined has on all of theirs and in all of their drawers. And that is not even an exaggeration.

When people come to visit, they show them all the other offices. Never invite them to mine.

When children come to visit, my office is the one they go straight to and then never want to leave.

One colleague told me that his little daughter thinks I am the most important person at the company.

Because I have all those things and everyone else has nothing.

quantity, not quality

12:27 AM

I don't collect garbage.

Not yet anyway.

I know if I did, I would definitely not stop until I'd've collected all the garbage in the world.

You want the oceans clean of plastic bottles, get me into collecting plastic bottles.

But yeah thankfully at this point it's quantity and quality.

collectionologist

I remember Donkey Kong 64 was like my favorite game ever. So many different things to collect. Insanity. Loved every minute.

I've been playing Breath of the Wild for 1500 hours now. And I don't plan on stopping until I've collected every last thing.

what about stamps or coins

Coins are mostly here. Stamps are mostly 3000 miles away.

That stamp of Hitler, mint unstamped, that one's 3000 miles away. I hope it's fine.

:O

12:34 AM

Well with that in mind, let me collect some sleep.

The last bit that I got was literally from yesterday.

See you around.

Do watch my video on how to properly play the cello.

@RegDwigнt Good luck.

cya, pal

@RegDwigнt Full desk, empty head, is what they say here.

I hate tidying up as well.

And throwing things away.

But I don't bring much stuff in.

It's just that whatever comes in never goes out.

get the most use of what you have

Indeed.

Are you a hoarder?

12:40 AM

a bit, I guess

I prefer things organised.

Ah, I see.

And would your things appear organised to other people?

yup

OK.

Congratulations.

Thanks.

Interesting second definition:

: to keep (something, such as one's thoughts) to oneself
she hoarded her intention
— Virginia Woolf
the people outside disperse their affections, you hoard yours, you nurse them into intensity

12:55 AM

Interesting.

I wonder, is that common, or is it more like a metaphor?

merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hoard

Sounds metaphorically analogous.

Like the z term in if a = success, then a = x + y + z

Hmm, is the dictionary say so, then I'll believe it.

2 hours later…

2:57 AM

> We have also found in testing that new users, in particular, panic when asked to press any key. Over 80% of them will turn around and say, "but what key should I press?" In questioning them about this response, we discovered that they are quite convinced that even though the prompt implied that all keys were OK to press, some could be dangerous. Of course, they were quite right.

эникейщик

= Русский = === Морфологические и синтаксические свойства === э·ни-ке́й-щик Существительное, одушевлённое, мужской род, 2-е склонение (тип склонения 3a по классификации А. А. Зализняка). Корень: -эникей-; суффикс: -щик. === Произношение === МФА: [ɛnʲɪˈkʲeɪ̯ɕːɪk] === Семантические свойства === ==== Значение ==== комп. жарг., шутл. шуточное название штатной должности работника, обязанностью которого является техническая поддержка пользователей компьютера внутри компании, а также сам работник, занимающий такую должность ◆ Со временем эникейщик, если он продолжает обучаться в сфере IT...

@RegDwigнt Sounds familiar^?

3:48 AM

fp feedback on autoflagged post: Is there a male equivalent of 'bitch'? [MS]

Autoflagged FP: flagged by @SmokeDetector, @ByteCommander, @quartata

4:16 AM

> I was surprised to learn that 2020 is the Chinese year of the opticians

7 hours later…

11:42 AM

@Cerberus literally never heard that one before.

@Cerberus cannot relate to that one at all. Utter nonsense. Think any workshop of any master of any trade at all. Blacksmith, painter, brocade maker, Adam Savage, Beethoven. Anyone. It's sensory overload. Full of things. Filled to the brim.

And the mess is not a mess at all. It is actually quite organized in a whole number of ways. It's just a ton of things. So it appears utterly overwhelming to someone who enters for the first time. But the person that has been working there for decades knows to navigate every inch of it.

Oh, Einstein. I forgot Einstein. His desk was famous for being "messy". There are photos of it.

Wouldn't call him an "empty head" exactly.-

It'd be the opposite

The engaged mind would find such work too dull compared to what's going on

Remember that TV program we discussed a couple months ago, "the last one of his trade". I watched every episode of it. So many different professions with absolutely nothing in common. So many different people from all corners of the world and all walks of life.

But one thing they all had in common. The "mess" they worked in.

A wonderful, gorgeous mess.

And again, I don't mean disorganized. Absolutely not. Just organized in a way that is not immediately apparent, and that indeed might not become apparent after many months of studying it.

Yeah, messes are associated with recklessness and that's why they're disliked. But this is something else and you usually can tell at first glance

Think not landfill, think apothecary of the old kind. You walk in and there's all those myriads of shelves with a billion bottles on them. It's completely impenetrable. You can't possibly find a thing. But in reality it's exceptionally neatly organized.

It's not that the guy doesn't care about his work, but that he cares too much

@Robusto Honestly can't tell if you made that up or it really happened

12:52 PM

@RegDwigнt Hmm perhaps someone just made that up...

@RegDwigнt Argh, I misspoke. It's "empty desk, empty head".

I agree about messes.

At least I tend to cover any empty surface with stuff.

1 hour later…

2:02 PM

@Cerberus See, now you're making sense.

@Cerberus well, someone did make up every single word...

But nah, I actually googled this one, apparently it's quite well established. I just never heard it before.

Even though I try to keep up with the trends and follow quite a bit of people whom I totally expect to use just that kind of lingo. But somehow they never have.

And to be fair, quite a few of the search results that I got were videos or posts titled "what is an эникейщик".

So apparently it's a niche word. Even though I follow a whole bunch of niche people. I dunno.

2:18 PM

So I teach Reg Russian.

4 hours later…

6:13 PM

@Cerberus Well I've taught you Russian before, so it's only fair you should return the favour.

2 hours later…

7:43 PM

1

Q: "ill" in present continuous

Present continuous tense Rules. Auxiliary verb “am or is or are” is used in sentence. 1st form of verb or base verb + ing (presentparticiple) is used as main verb in sentence. Question: Can we form the with verb ill? For example: I am illing or I am ill. What is the right and why?

present-progressive present-continuous

Totally a good subject, for which there are possible very good answers (an extension of my comment). 'Research' could be added to the OP, but then that would answer the question.

8:20 PM

@M.A.R. A mere fiction.

@Tonepoet My question addresses one logistical aspect of the process of learning English. It is an English "meta-question". Additionally, other users of this forum will likely find RegDwight's answer useful (as I have) because everyone here has one thing in common: we all want to learn how to better use English. — Ryan Jensen 1 hour ago

@RegDwigнt I don't have the heart, nor the means, to tell him why people sometimes answer in the comments. >_> ...

Series of quickfire nos seem to be common in many languages.

Nonononono! (English)
Neineineineinein! (German)
Nananananana! (Farsi)
Lalalalalalalala! (Arabic)
etc

Yeses are less usually repeated that way, I think.

@Robusto thanx in advanced

Now this one isn't fiction.

8:36 PM

@Faerd It's mostly two letter single syllable words in general. Laughter also gets the same treatment. Hahaha in English and kekeke in Japanese for example. In English, songs are also rendered in la la las sometimes. Moreover, while I would agree that the affirmative sentiment is less common, I wouldn't be too terribly surprised if somebody said ya ya ya for reduplication of the affirmative.

@Tonepoet Yeah yeah

@Færd That reminds me of Hitler's Neineineineinein in Inglorious Basterds

Also maybe Downfall

If he does it.

I think he just does it once there.

@M.A.R. Hmm, that's not quite the same though. That's usually a closed pair than an open series. With that having been said, I suppose I'm just spouting out a bunch of blah blah. :-P

9:39 PM

@Tonepoet I occasionally answer in the comments just to mess with all the people who think I'm evil. And I like to mess with people because I am evil.

@Færd I have no scientific proof of anything, but I could imagine that in Russian да-да-да is about as common if not more common than нет-нет-нет.

But maybe that's because Russians are very agreeable people. Just look at Putin.

@RegDwigнt Demonic horned beast!

Under a fascade of angelic white feathers.

10:01 PM

Oh that's my uncle bubo bubo.

I'm bubo scandiacus, you see.

Also, your cedilla is broken. Here, I have a couple spares lying around: ç ç ç ç.

But yeah. I don't like being transparent or predictable. And not for the sake of other people's entertainment, but for the sake of entertaining myself. I've not been bored in two decades. Not for a minute.

@RegDwigнt “quite some buck”—where does that come from? (I’ve never heard it before, but I find it’s in use in some forums.)

Like, that's why people have so much fun following me on MuseScore. You never know what I'll post next. I never know it. Everything I do is always out of left field.

@Xanne as far as I was concerned that was a coinage of my own right there and then. An occasionalism, or whatever the linguistics term is.

I just took a regular phrase, "quite a lot of money", and then replaced some bits and pieces in it with random synonyms.

I do that all the time. Keeps things interesting.

That's the beauty of language — and music —; you don't have to repeat what others have said before. You can come up with your own stuff.

@RegDwigнt Well, it’s not unique. It’s just odd. Bucks are dollars, not, I think, Euros or pounds or lira or marks. Yet it shows up in English on-line forums. Maybe the Brits use it.

The Brits would say ‘a pretty penny’

10:20 PM

Well bucks are deer.

So if people think they can get away with calling a dollar a buck, I think I can get away with calling my left leg a tractor.

Again, that's the beauty of language. And music. Nothing means anything. It only means whatever meaning we give to it.

@RegDwigнt yes, one of the false positives comes up with a forum of antler collectors, which are collected after shedding. A promising deer is thus quite some buck. But unlike you leg, antlers are an annual event.

0

Q: International youth day

The United Nations’ (UN) International Youth Day is celebrated on August 12th each Year to recognize efforts of the world’s youths in enhancing global society. It's also geared to promote ways to engage them to become more actively involved in making positive contributions to their communities. T...

sentence sentence-patterns

@Xanne yeah. My leg is very much a daily event. Minutely. Secondly, even.

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