English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

tchrist

00:12

@MattE.Эллен metacpan.org/pod/Moo

@Robusto I'm sick just thinking of it.;

Mitch

01:03

@MattE.Эллен I think you really meant Motorola. It stings either way

@Cerberus The bakers go to all this work and time building these great creations and then in a split second the judges cut into it ruining the work, and then they complain that it's too moist or the color is not to their liking.

tchrist

01:15

@Robusto "The attackers fled after the shooting, according to the police, who did not say what had prompted the gunfire. Chief Wilson said that it was too early to tell whether the shooting was gang-related."

Cerberus

@Mitch Exactly! How is that boring?

It's hearth-wrenching.

Robusto

02:09

@Cerberus Natürlich.

@tchrist Yeah. I don't get it. The Denver metro area has a lot to be happy about. I even considered retiring there. But there is something disturbing beneath the surface.

CowperKettle

“Irresponsible” Russian Anti-Satellite Test Creates Orbital Debris Field, Endangering the Space Station and Crew

Facepalm

Russia's State Space agency is headed by a dangerous, thievious clown under the name Rogozin. Has zero engineering education, zero space gear expirience. Was a nationalist politician and journalist in his youth.

Дмитрий Рогозин зигует на русском марше в 2007 году

►

This is Dmitry Rogozin back in 2007 during the nationalist Russian March in Moscow.

He ends his speech, aimed against "guests from the Caucasian region" with "Glory to Russia!" and forward-thrusted fist.

> On November 21, 2019, Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) released an investigation about Dmitry Rogozin. The investigation told about Rogozin’s multi-million dollar salary that exceeded the salary of the head of NASA, as well as houses and land owned by him and his father-in-law.

spisok-putina.org/en/personas/rogozin-2

He is a large-scale thief who emerged from a Soviet nomenclatura family (family deeply embedded in the USSR's secret service structures)

> According to estimates of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, the cost of Rogozin’s house is approximately 200 million rubles, that is, an amount greater than what he could earn as an official in his entire life.

And these investigations have only covered the amounts that could be brought to light using available documents. God only knows how much money he has stashed away illegally, without any documentation.

And the whole of Russia knows he's a thief, and nothing could be done.

CowperKettle

02:38

Yekaterinburg journalists took to the streets and asked 50 random people about covid vaccines.

This woman on the photo:

> I have never got vaccinated from covid, and I won't ever. I hope. Unless they grab me and inject me by force. Everybody understands what their aim is. Vaccines cause thrombosis, and those who had them won't survive to get their pension from the state. This is a good measure to save budget money.

Cerberus

Sound economic theory.

CowperKettle

03:06

I asked a Russian neural network to create a picture titled "Magnificent Gosha" (a hypochoristic of the name Gregory)

In reality, "Magnificent Gosha" is the title of a well-known Soviet cartoon that I loved.

I expected the AI to come up with some variation on it.

Apparently, it did not watch cartoons.

Великолепный Гоша. Мультфильмы для взрослых. Все серии (1981-85)

►

Or maybe it's Magnificent Gosha in his youth.

Cerberus

03:57

@CowperKettle *hypocoristic

@CowperKettle But it does watch alien hands.

I didn't know Gosha was from Gregory!

CowperKettle

Oops

Pardon me, it's really from Georgy

Georgy (given name)

Georgy (Russian: Георгий, romanized: Georgiy; Bulgarian: Георги, romanized: Georgi) is a masculine given name, derived from the Greek name Georgios. It corresponds to the English name George. The name Georgi is the most used masculine name in Bulgaria and the most given to new-born boys in the country, with the family name Georgiev/Georgieva also widely used. In Romanian the name is written as Gheorghe to signify the hard g sound. Russian derivations from Georgios are also Yegor and Yury. Notable people with the surname include: Georgi Markov (1929–1978), Bulgarian dissident Georgy Adamovich...

3

Q: Формы имени Георгий "...он же Гоша, он же Жора..."

Пожалуй, ни у одного другого имени нет столько форм, сколько у имени Георгий. Вспомним знаменитое: "Он же Гоша, он же Жора, он же Гога". Только официальных "паспортных" вариантов я знаю три: Геогрий, Юрий и Егор. Вообще, само имя очень распространено среди понтийских греков (сколько я их знаю, по...

имена-собственные

Гоша = Gosha

Cerberus

Hah!

I'm so glad!

To hear that even Russians don't always get where their hypocoristics come from.

Because they often sound so illogical.

I mean, who would think that Saha is from Alexander?

And Alyosha from Alexios?

@CowperKettle Funny old Gosha.

Pretty gay story.

Xanne

06:10

>Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please edit to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center. –
>Community
>Bot

The latest is welcoming friendliness.

Cerberus

@Xanne Ugh.

I think that happens when someone handles a flag, anonymously?

I forgot, but there is a new thing with standard, anonymous comments.

Very bad.

Xanne

Oh, maybe. But someone wrote the code for the bot.

I’m trying to figure out how to not trigger it, but if it’s triggered by an anonymous flag, it constitutes an anonymous nasty remark.

CowperKettle

07:49

The explosion of the satellite has left at least 1560 trackable pieces

This is the most severe orbital accident for the last 15 years.

Putin is really on a roll.

I wonder what will happen if the ISS has to be evacuated.

NASA has said that the Space Station goes near or through the cloud of debris every 90 minutes.

CowperKettle

08:11

@Cerberus - was the word helling used in Dutch to mean "the place for building or repairing a ship"? THere's the Russian word elling (эллинг) that means "airship hangar", and the etymological sites say that it allegedly came from Dutch, from the times of Peter the Great.

Xanne

Accident? Mistake, perhaps. But they hit what they aimed for.

CowperKettle

They tested their new system for destroying satellites. But for some reason they picked a satellite whose orbit was too close to the ISS. This is idiocy. Should have used some other height.

Looks like the Russian Space Agency was even not told beforehand.

They have just issued an urgent statement, but it does not say a single word about what actually happened. Just blandishments on "we are tracking all dangerous objects and strive towards security and peace" and so on.

Looks like it was the military branch. But who knows.

Jens Stoltenberg said a "large and unusual" build-up of Russian forces had been spotted on the border in recent weeks. He spoke amid speculation Russia could be planning to invade Ukraine.

Yesterday laws there passed to establish strong economic ties with the two occupied puppet "republics" in East Ukraine.

From now on, companies over theere can participate in state-funded tenders.

Hard to tell if Putin is trying to get a negotiating point or prepares to swallow DNR and LNR (the puppet states).

Basically these "states" are two cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.

I still don't know why there are two different "states" and not a single one.

But if Russia annexes them, at least it will be better for the population there. There is much lawlessness, according to media reports. Local "governments" have some degree of autonomy and use it, I guess, to siphon money sent by the Kremlin.

And they allegedly keep some brutal clandestine prisons, where they torture people -- even people who are separatists themselves. To get money, to gain influence? Who knows.

I can only imagine how horrible it has been for a simple folk to live under unrecognized bandits.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson says the European Union must choose between Ukraine's freedom or buying gas from Russia

Xanne

08:42

@CowperKettle Do you agree with Boris Johnson?

SmokeDetector

09:22

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Pattern-matching website in answer, potentially bad ip for hostname in answer (78): Comma after a coordinating conjunction preceding a parenthetical at the start of the sentence by Dan J. Armstrong on english.SE

CowperKettle

I don't know whether I agree.

There is no way of just stopping buying gas.

The peoples will just vote those politicians out of their offices.

CowperKettle

09:51

Matt E. Эллен

@Cerberus is this an answereable question:

0

Q: Usage of suffix in Arithmetic vs Arithmatic - arithmos (root)?

In creating a new English word, when does one use the suffix of -matic vs -metic? As an example: Why or how does one get arithmetic from a root word of arithmos? On the origins of the word "arithmetic" vs "arithmatic": Why is the suffix -metic? And not -matic? Why not arithmos-tic? -- Note, thi...

etymology

Or anyone else who could answer it.

Prof. Lawler says no, but maybe it needs reopenning

@CowperKettle mind = blown

I guess the whole makeup thing is a result or cause of this

CowperKettle

11:17

"A cool place, even if a bit dull".

During my jog today.

Minus 7°C

CowperKettle

11:51

Humans can infer the heartbeats of others when looking at their face

CowperKettle

12:44

> A child sits with Ukrainian soldiers at their beach defenses in Mariupol, Ukraine. Ukraine has been preparing for a possible coastal offensive by Russian forces looking to create a land bridge to occupied Crimea.

A Russian MMA fighter living in Guam has been arrested for murder, after allegedly stabbing a doctor following an argument over the COVID-19 vaccine. 360tv.ru/news/mir/…

Akhmal Hojyiev killed this man who was pro-vaccination.

Cerberus

@CowperKettle Yes! A scheeps-helling is a place where ships are built, I think.

Scheepshelling

Een scheepshelling is een installatie op scheepswerven om schepen te water te laten en eventueel weer uit het water te halen. Een helling bestaat uit een aantal glijbanen of rails die vanaf het werfterrein tot in het water doorlopen, en is eventueel voorzien van een trekinrichting. == Functies == Men onderscheidt nieuwbouwhellingen en reparatiehellingen. Een reparatiehelling heeft naast genoemde glijbanen of rails ook een trekinstallatie om schepen omhoog te trekken en deze ook gecontroleerd te laten zakken. Een reparatiehelling kan daarom in principe wel voor nieuwbouw worden gebruikt, ...

Helling = slope.

CowperKettle

Ah! Thank you!

Then the Russian etymology site was right.

Cerberus

You can see the slope in that picture.

CowperKettle

I've added your explanation to my Anki record

Cerberus

@MattE.Эллен It seems like a fine question?

It asks about the etymology of a word or suffix.

Lawler is right that the answer explains less than it could.

CowperKettle

12:57

My mom has just told me that my nephew twice-removed has fallen ill with covid. Well, kind of. He has no symptoms. He has a positive swab test. He was vaccinated back in August.

Cerberus

Not really "fallen ill", then!

CowperKettle

His little son had fallen ill, and doctors found covid. Then they asked the whole family to take swab tests, and found that the father (Ivan, my nephew) is positive.

tchrist

@CowperKettle I don't understand "removed" used with "nephew".

CowperKettle

I hope he comes through with zero symptoms. He said he after vaccination he had taken an antibody test and it showed 300 something.

tchrist

Cousin?

CowperKettle

12:59

@tchrist Me neither. I'm terrible with these terms. He is the son of the daughter of the brother of my mother.

I hate these complicated terms of ilk.

Or elk.

Matt E. Эллен

and we're back to mooooo(se)

tchrist

Then he's your great-great-nephew or great-grand-nephew. Which is an amazing distance.

No, cousin. I'm tired.

Just woke up.

CowperKettle

My uncle's daughter is his mom.

She gave birth at 16 or 17.

I don't recall.

tchrist

Your uncle's daughter is your cousin.

Her son is your first cousin once removed.

CowperKettle

Какой заяц, какой орел, какая блоха

►

I find it hard to get into my brain.

And recall this meme with the monster suffering from being unable to understand a complicated story.

tchrist

13:03

> People who have common grandparents but different parents are first cousins. People who have common great-grandparents but no common grandparents and different parents are second cousins, and so on.

CowperKettle

We have the term "sister once removed" for "female cousin"

двоюродная сестра

tchrist

That won't work well here. :)

Do you have parents once removed, or grandparents?

You uncle's daughter is your first cousin because you share grandparents and not parents. Her son is also your first cousin but once removed.

CowperKettle

We don't have a commonly used word for grandparents. It's grandma (бабушка) and grandpa (дедушка)

babushka and dedushka

There's a rock group titled Deadushki (grandfathers)

tchrist

That "ded" bit looks like "dad".

CowperKettle

Deadушки

«Deadушки» — российский музыкальный коллектив, основанный Виктором Сологубом и Алексеем Раховым, ранее совместно работавшими в группе «Странные игры». Группа работает в жанре электронной музыки, в частности с такими стилями, как драм-н-бейс и брейкбит. Музыкальный информационный ресурс «Звуки.ру» назвал их одним из лучших электронных составов России. == История группы == В 1981 году группа «Странные игры», где играли Виктор Сологуб и Алексей Рахов, была одной из самых прогрессивных групп страны. Затем коллектив, состав которого к 1985 году вырос с 2 до 7 человек, распался на постпанковские группы...

Борис Гребенщиков и Deadушки "Сны о чем-то большем"

►

Oh. It's an electronic group.

Eleven 20-year olds in Kazan bought a 5 liter bottle of methyl alcohol. They are now on the brink of death in the ICU. znak.com/2021-11-16/…

Probably wanted to buy liquor on the cheap.

CowperKettle

15:37

HSE University researchers have found that if cortical excitability is suppressed, the conflict between self-interest and prosocial motivations is resolved in favor of the latter—but only in cases when this conflict is really present

Mitch

@Cerberus Oh sure, I gave no indication why I think it is also boring. I think maybe it just takes to long to get to the 'who-gets-shot-in-the-back-of-the-head-today' part.

CowperKettle

15:58

Simpler times, simpler minds. Back in 2005 we were not spoiled by the Internet so much.

CowperKettle

16:48

Is Russia preparing to invade Ukraine?

> Zelensky campaigned for a mandate to conclude the conflict with Russia. His administration was quietly keen to strike a deal with Moscow. Its first year in office was spent negotiating behind the scenes with the Kremlin in the belief that a deal was there to be had.

> But Zelensky learned what all Ukrainian Presidents learn: Vladimir Putin is not interested ending the conflict — at least not now.

Mitch

18:30

Y'all may or may not have seen this twitter auto-translation kerfuffle:

.

But direct from google translate just says:

CowperKettle

@Mitch Probably "a guy" and "nigga" are somehow used interchangeably in this language? (French?)

un mec is "guy" in Russian -- парень (paren')

mec

== Conventions internationales == === Symbole === mec (Linguistique) Code ISO 639-3 du mara. === Références === Documentation for ISO 639 identifier: mec, SIL International, 2021 == Français == === Étymologie === (XIXe siècle) Mot d’origine obscure. Une hypothèse pour le premier sens, attesté depuis 1821 (sous la graphie ‹ mecque ›) propose comme étymologie la conjonction « mais que » qui introduit une proposition conditionnelle, une concessive, etc. et qu’on trouve substantivé dans certains dialectes. (Quercy : mesque « motif », douna per mès-que « donner pour motif »). Ceci aura...

When I was a kid, I loved this song.

Now I understand exactly one word from it!

I can guess that "mec a moi" probably means "my guy". My boyfriend.

Patricia Kaas - Mon Mec a Moi

►

I had an LP disk of Patricia Kaas and used to listen to it while cleaning my room.

I understood not a single word.

I now google-translated the lyrics. They are good.

I wonder who was the author.

Didier Barbelivien

Didier René Henri Barbelivien (born 10 March 1954 in Paris) is a French author, lyricist, songwriter and singer. Beginning in the 1970s, he wrote a number of successful songs for artists such as: Dalida, Johnny Hallyday, Michel Sardou, Daniel Guichard, Claude François, Gilbert Montagné, Sylvie Vartan, Patti Layne, Gilbert Bécaud, Enrico Macias, Demis Roussos, Mireille Mathieu, Hervé Vilard, Michèle Torr, C. Jérôme, Christophe, Julio Iglesias, Sheila, Nicole Croisille, Patricia Kaas, Éric Charden, Jean-Pierre François, Michel Delpech, Philippe Lavil, Elsa, Gérard Lenorman, Ringo, Garou, Corynne...

He was made Chevalier (Knight) of the Légion d'honneur in 2009.

Now I will know that mec means guy

Mitch

19:20

@CowperKettle As you well know, translation is weird.

Even though a word in one language tends to be used in the same contexts as in another language, there can always be differences in application

'mec' (in French) means (in English) a regular person (male), down-to-earth, a mensch. The word is slangy, and refers to spmepne not fancy. But all of that is tenuous, very light meaning. It's mostly just an informal way to say 'man' (it comes from 'mécanique', the man who fixes your car.

The best translation into GenAmE is 'guy'. Slightly slang, but very non-committal, just a male person.

'nigga' is not used in French at all (as far as I know). In English, it's pretty much the same as the n-word, but pronounced non-rhotically and has a very friendly tone when used in the right context (AAE/spoken vocatively between friends who are AA). But most any other context it is a slur or epithet of the worst kind.

As to what Google Translate is doing, we can guess that it's training corpus some how (statistically) saw enough instances so that, instead of choosing the much more accurate and generic 'guy', picked up on a very niche context.

And then people (rightly) freak out.

I mean, most of my internal conversation is sprinkled with lots of profanity, but I try not actually say it.

I'd hope that whoever collected the training data for Google Translate would have at least been aware of the locations of slurs so as to control for them.

Eliminating them by regexp can laughably backfire (eg excluding 'breast' everywhere eliminates 'breast cancer'). But the n-word is pretty much the extreme and even if it -is- the most accurate translation ever (it definitely isn't here) it would upset way too many people (rightly).

There's nothing conscious at all in Google Translate, it's just mapping (in a complex almost unfathomably mathematical way) sentences to sentences (not word to word...it does use -some- context).

It is not explicitly judging 'Oh this passage seems to be a professor of chemistry from Lille acting like a free spirited teenager and they want to translate it to what might be said by a middle aged factory worker from Pittsburgh'. It's just doing French to English using the collection of a whole bunch of Internet text and not distinguishing any kind of context at all except what might be indicated in the vocabulary choice in the short sentence and how that matches many similar prior sentences.

Frankly, I don't see how they let 'nigga' in more than 'guy' - 'guy' is way more common in all contexts

And the other weird thing is that some homolog of 'nigga' is in German/Russian/Swedish. Not translated from, actually -in- those languages.

prosody-Gabe Vereable Context

19:51

<-- "wigga" :∫

prosody-Gabe Vereable Context

20:13

I would have said "the W-word", but here that might mean "www". :/

@Mitch For me being "Gabriel" got translated to "[are you] gay" quite frequentl and overtly, for you how many times (I've always asked these questions) did people hit the obvious profane/taboo buzzword attached to your real name?

CowperKettle

@Mitch Maybe because the AI piggy-backs over some English-based AI.

Basically because it first internally translates to English, then to Russian.

But who knows.

> The formation of the Congo River 1.5–2 million years ago possibly led to the speciation of the bonobo. Bonobos live south of the river, and thereby were separated from the ancestors of the common chimpanzee, which live north of the river.

These species are poor swimmers, and a newly-emergent river led to a separation.

prosody-Gabe Vereable Context

20:28

@CowperKettle Careful, we went from @Mitch analyzing sensitive/trigger language, to your animals/speciation/evolution reference. But then that's a feature/hint in your name already... shh, hmm.

Mitch

@CowperKettle Oh...that is very plausible (and actually also likely). Because presumably 'nigga' does not exist natively in those three non-English languages, even in the Angl-centric-metastasized world culture.

CowperKettle

I was just reading my Twitter feed, and there was a mention of bonobos being highly homosexual in some tweet. I went to read up on bonobos, because I am not an expert on them. Curious.

Mitch

@CowperKettle That's also the most relevant remark - there's all sorts of hints about how it works, but even if you had the blueprints for it, there's still the gobs of training data that outside of google you just don't know.

CowperKettle

Maybe covid will mutate into a super-virus, and we'll be forced to forever isolate into separate populations, and then we'll speciate into different species too.

01:36 am. Good night!

prosody-Gabe Vereable Context

gn

/me still did not say that other word you keep using, just the W version (consciously/deliberately/intentionally). And even though I do not identify religiously at all, I've also been called jigger, the j-word. It is difficult to tell if that is positive or negative conjugation sometimes.

Mitch

20:44

@prosody-GabeVereableContext 1) kids are dicks, so yes.

2) some adults are dicks, so even now people will do it.

prosody-Gabe Vereable Context

@Mit I'm thinking from a close friend it was a friendly. S/he was trying to relate to me. Is that 3)?

Mitch

@prosody-GabeVereableContext it's hard to know. I just learned recently that, relevantly, 'jew' has been removed from the Scrabble official dictionary. I mean, on the scale of things, it has some sting to it (when used vocally), but it is not like a fully negative epithet like ... well those others.

@prosody-GabeVereableContext everything depends on context. like the n word is OK between people who are OK with it (like some AAE speakers)

prosody-Gabe Vereable Context

21:03

@Mitch Wow. I did not know. Sarah Silverman always makes Jewish jokes and calls hirself Jew constant ly. Me on the other hand, I avoid sectarian/partisan words, if I can fit/blend in (some people can tell better) it does not surface.

Mitch

Words are weird

Also people

prosody-Gabe Vereable Context

What came/comes first, the people or the words? ~

Mitch

Ahh..so philosophical.

"in the beginning was the word"

written by some dude

ou un mec

prosody-Gabe Vereable Context

21:19

Psychological. Psychology. I'm not even going there about Determination. Words/wording/language can be medicalized/diagnostic.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…