English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

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CowperKettle

10:07

Matt E. Эллен

10:20

lol

5 hours later…

CowperKettle

14:57

Viktor Mokhov

Victor Vasilievich Mokhov (Russian: Ви́ктор Васи́льевич Мо́хов; born 22 June 1950 in Skopin, Ryazan Oblast) is a Russian criminal who in 2001 kidnapped two girls, 14 and 17 years old, and kept them in a basement for almost four years. == Biography == Mokhov lived in the Russian city of Skopin about 90 km from Ryazan. He was employed as a metalworker at the Skopin automobile assembly plant. He is described as having been a good worker, always ready to help. His foreman often held him up as an exemplary worker. Towards the end of the 1970s he was married, but divorced after only three months. At...

He is coming out of the prison very soon, this year.

Cerberus

15:54

@CowperKettle It's good if he has finished his sentence, right?

@CowperKettle Good inspiration for a story à la The Birds.

The Birds (story)

"The Birds" is a horror story by the British writer Daphne du Maurier, first published in her 1952 collection The Apple Tree. It is the story of a farmhand, his family, and his community that are attacked by flocks of birds in kamikaze fashion. The story is set in du Maurier's home county of Cornwall shortly after the end of the Second World War. By the end of the story it becomes clear that all of Britain is under aerial assault. The story was the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's film The Birds, released in 1963, the same year that The Apple Tree was reprinted as The Birds and Other Stories...

1 hour later…

Mitch

17:07

Something has bothered me forever.

Two songs

David Bowie – Space Oddity (Official Video)

►

Elton John - Rocket Man (Official Music Video)

►

The lyrics are not identical, but the story is ... identical

The music is not identical, melody, harmony whatever, but a lot of the effects are ... identical.

And a (cursory) search nobody seems to think that this is a problem. There are hints that people have noticed a similarity. But...

Shouldn't somebody have sued somebody?

CowperKettle

17:30

The Middle Ages were called the Dark Ages because there were too many knights.

I listened to Elton John on a cassette a long time ago, but never to David Bowie

Somewhy I never came across Bowie when I was young.

I had a real life girlfriend whose Internet name was Ziggy Stardust though.

Strangely, she is a Stalinist.

A Stalinist who was an ardent fan of Bowie and Freddie Mercury. They gathered once a week in the 1990s in the center of Yekaterinburg, Queen lovers.

Life is very complex.

M.A.R.

You seem to have a life complex

Cerberus

18:13

@CowperKettle The Middle Ages are not called the Dark Ages.

There are several periods which are called Dark Ages, one of which is the period after the big collapse of the Bronze Age (ca. 1200–950 BC), another the Early Middle Ages (ca. 500–800).

Mitch

@Cerberus After the Bronze age collapsed in Greece, was it back to the Stone Age? And when did the next age start up again there?

@CowperKettle David Bowie is much better than Elton John

Cerberus

@Mitch Stone, what is that?

Sounds very advanced.

We had wooden sticks back in the day.

It is not "the Broze Age itself collapsed", but rather "a huge collapse which took place during the Bronze Age".

Bohemian relativist

18:52

are you interested in physics?

do you think a psychologist can help a physicist?

Bohemian relativist

19:07

how to pronounce this letter?

Bohemian relativist

19:26

sigh

I have learnt English for so long, but have never visited an Engllish-speaking country.

Now I am placed in a country whose language I am just start to learn.

Mitch

@Cerberus It's like rock but you chip away at it so that it has an edge or usable surface. You don't have to melt it or anything. It's sorta what came before Bronze I think.

@Cerberus You're the one who said 'collapse of the Bronze Age'

But like in all 'dark ages' a bunch of stuff was happening, but maybe not written down, or just not as well organized.

@Bohemianrelativist Is their graduate program (with a lot of non-natives) in their native language? Or is it in English?

But sure, going to the grocery store you will need to know the local language.

Bohemian relativist

19:42

@Mitch it depends on the courses you choose - only some of them are in English.

I only choose courses taught in English.

@Mitch you don't need to know.

Conrado

20:00

@Mitch The good thing is that our own present age is very well organized⸮

Word of the day: percontation point, proposed at latest since 158_.

Cerberus

@Mitch The word of can denote several different conexions.

The great extinction of the Cretaceous.

Does that mean the Cretaceous went extinct? No.

It means an extinction related to the Cretaceous.

The word of can denote various relations.

One could be that similar to the primary complement of a verb (collapse of Mitch ~= Mitch collapses), but it can also indicate a different relation, like the housing of Vespasian (housing built by Vespasian, not Vespasian's activity of housing people in his palace).

Conrado

1 hour later…

Mitch

21:41

@Cerberus You make a great case...for something that is irrelevant.

Whatever the possibilities of 'of' (of which there are many), in 'the collapse of the Bronze Age' implies that the Bronze Age is over.

'The collapse of the Minoan Civilization' would be more accurate, and anyway, why bother with the Bronze Age since the collapse of the Minoan civilization didn't signal anything about the beginning, middle, or end of the Bronze Age.

Cerberus

@Mitch It does not!

@Mitch It's not Minoan.

It is the collapse of a large number of civilisations, quite some time after the Minoan collapse.

> The half-century between c. 1200 and 1150 BCE saw the cultural collapse of the Mycenaean kingdoms, of the Kassites in Babylonia, of the Hittite Empire in Anatolia and the Levant, and the New Kingdom of Egypt;[1] the destruction of Ugarit and the Amorite states in the Levant, the fragmentation of the Luwian states of western Anatolia, and a period of chaos in Canaan.[2] The deterioration of these governments interrupted trade routes and severely reduced literacy in much of this area.[3]

In the first phase of this period, almost every city between Pylos and Gaza was violently destroyed, an…

ozera ozera

22:46

Hello, I wish to discuss with someone an email I have written for critiquing purposes. Is english.SE a place to do this?

Conrado

@ozeraozera Hello! The English stack is not for proofreading (nor the ELU chat-room). Actually, I don't think any of them are. However, perhaps you may get answers on the stack for some very specific point related to language use/grammar (not a "general critique"). Be as specific as possible and show what you have already learned about your question. Cheers!

ozera ozera

I do not understand the tags I would need to use for my specific questions. E.g, can I write "Drs. ABC and DEF" instead of "Dr. ABC and Dr. DEF". What tag would that be?