English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

3:00 PM

Txt orthography has actually improved over the last decade or so, since there are fewer reasons to try and truncate every single word. Like phone keyboards are much improved and there's less incentive to send as short a message as possible now like there was when SMS cost money based on the character

user 858770

Lest we forget Twitter lingo grew out of the character limit.

tchrist

As short the path from curt to curmudgeon is the one from terse to termagant.

...is no sentence ChatGPT could have uttered for the TOEFL.

Robusto

@Laurel A: You can have this in blue, red, or black. B: OK, I'll take the blue.

user 858770

Do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in few!

Robusto

@user858770 Brevity is the soul of wit.

You just got crushed by Shakespeare.

user 858770

3:07 PM

:(

Robusto

He has that effect on people.

tchrist

But Polonius was a logorrheic prattler whose actions his words belied.

Robusto

@tchrist Yet his words were spot on.

Sometimes, anyway.

Shakespeare mocked him with those words.

tchrist

did

Robusto

That is why it was funny that Polonius would give such a pithy pronouncement.

tchrist

3:10 PM

13 hours ago, by Cerberus

@tchrist Blue people must all be sent to the gas chambers right away, that's different.

alphabet

@Robusto But not: "An angry person got in a fight with me. In the future, how should I deal with an angry?" (Which is closer to the asker's usage.)

Robusto

@alphabet Which do you prefer, the bitter or the sweet? The angry or the placid?

alphabet

@Robusto Neither of those follow the structure of the question under discussion, whereas my example does.

Laurel

I feel like we're mixing up two conversations

alphabet

I was talking about this question

Robusto

3:20 PM

@alphabet I think the principle is the same in both cases. In yours, you are simply omitting an alternative.

tchrist

@alphabet Y'just canna argue with a nangry doncha know. Nangries are the worst.

alphabet

@Robusto But in my example, "an angry" is clearly ungrammatical.

tchrist

I grammaticized it.

Robusto

@alphabet Yes, that is definitely skewed out of round, but I am saying there are many avenues to grammaticality.

tchrist

Is an autistic person an autistic, a female person a female, a happy person a happy, an embittered person an embittered, a white person a white, a Danish person a Danish, a gay person a gay?

Robusto

3:26 PM

:63727325 Yes, I agree, though you seem to have abandoned the position I am agreeing with.

tchrist

And even if they are, might calling them those put anybody off?

At least the part about calling a happy person a nappy.

Robusto

@tchrist Certainly "a female" and "a gay" are in wide usage.

tchrist

as lightning rods

Laurel

It's one of those things that's determined by usage more than logic. There's a question on ELL about why we don't really use "a Japanese"

Robusto

Police reports are full of references to "a male Caucasian" ...

Laurel

3:28 PM

"a gay" also sounds off to me

alphabet

@tchrist The noun for "an autistic person" is "an autist," though that term is rather frowned upon.

Robusto

@Laurel A gay, a Lesbian, and a straight walk into a bar ...

tchrist

@Laurel I keep trying to tell people that it's because we naturally try to avoid collisions with English's already trebly overloaded terminal /Z/ inflectional archimorpheme but nobody listens.

Robusto

Nobody is confused about what is being said.

tchrist

@Laurel Rather.

Robusto

3:30 PM

What about "a Black"?

Laurel

@Robusto Also sounds off

tchrist

And looks.

alphabet

@Robusto "A Black" sounds quite bad compared to "a Black person." "An African-American" is fine, though.

Laurel

But "an African American" (yeah, not an exact synonym) sounds fine

Robusto

Look, all I'm saying is you can make cases on the base of etiquette, or propriety, or whatever, but the fundamental model works and is in wide use.

Saying "it sounds off" is just a statement of preference, not grammar.

tchrist

3:32 PM

I know about uc transforms and lc transforms, about tc transforms and fc transforms, but now we have vc transforms for virtuecasing words.

alphabet

I do think "an angry" is just ungrammatical; "angry" hasn't been nouned at all, whereas "gay" and "female" sometimes are.

Laurel

Maybe it sounds off purely because it's almost always the angries who use the phrasing "a gay" (etc.)

I've never heard anyone talk about "a straight" or even "a cis"

tchrist

Until it can be inflected into the plural and the possessive and into both, it hasn't been sufficiently nouned to pass the mustard please.

@Laurel I've got a sis bro.

With a vocative comma gone missing, sorry.

@Laurel That's exactly it. Like a democrat plan.

alphabet

@Laurel It's not uncommon for gay people themselves to use "the gays" jokingly

Laurel

@alphabet Yeah, that's true, and apparently that's the only time anyone ever uses "a straight" as a noun either (as the memes have revealed to me)

alphabet

3:38 PM

@Laurel Also "the hets" or "the heteros"

tchrist

@alphabet Mockingly imitating the hate speech of the detractors is a common neutralization tactic.

Laurel

@alphabet Yeah, the plural of most of these is more common than the singular it would seem. And for some reason, it's perfectly OK to refer to "the Japanese"

tchrist

That's because the poor shall be with you always.

user 726941

Sure, people of colour do it all the time.

tchrist

You always get to say the ADJ with plural concord to mean the ADJ people, sometimes to mean the ADJ things.

alphabet

3:41 PM

@Laurel That's just a general feature of some nominalized adjectives. "The rich" but not "a rich"

tchrist

It's a misunderstanding to singularize those.

*A poor came begging at my door the other day.

But the poor are always begging in the streets.

Doesn't make it a noun.

alphabet

It's not relevant here, since we say "the gays," not "the gay"

tchrist

CGEL has concocted some new terminology for these.

Laurel

True

alphabet

But it does explain "the Japanese"

tchrist

3:43 PM

Some fussy mod head thing.

Robusto

@alphabet They also use faggot when it suits their purpose.

tchrist

"fused modifier head" is the CGEL concoction.

@Robusto No nags or figgers in this chat.

Robusto

Not entirely sure what that means. But it sounds censorious.

alphabet

@Robusto On occasion, though reclaiming that is fairly uncommon. "Queer" has been thoroughly reclaimed though.

tchrist

It's a googlewhack of mine.

Robusto

3:46 PM

@alphabet I've heard it used to triumphantly claim gayness to straights.

tchrist

Acta non verba.

alphabet

@Robusto Personally, as a degenerate homosexual myself, I would avoid it

tchrist

How can we regenerate the alphabet of our ancestors?

Laurel

Queer has been so thoroughly reclaimed that it's been reintroduced into the general vocabulary, unlike a lot of other words which can only be used by the population they describe

@tchrist Is there no "regenerate response" button at the bottom?

alphabet

Robert Frost: "The little horse must think it queer / to stop when there's a bathhouse near"

tchrist

3:49 PM

@Laurel In America we say "butt" not "bottom". Ask your nearest donkey.

@alphabet Dirty horsey.

Laurel

@tchrist Reminds me of this :p youtube.com/watch?v=u9DbF2PMrDs

Robusto

@alphabet Indeed. But your preference is not universal.

alphabet

@Robusto True

Robusto

Apr 3, 2013 at 16:40, by Robusto

"The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, it is queerer than we can suppose." — J. B. S. Haldane

I often substitute strange for queer in that quote to avoid juvenile joking.

tchrist

@Laurel In which a bottom feeder scandalously intersects with a butt munger.

alphabet

3:55 PM

Remember: It's Gay To Smoke

tchrist

Uh oh, intersex abuse.

Laurel

@tchrist It makes me wonder if there's a Boat-Butt merger that's happening somewhere

tchrist

@alphabet Because pot makes you gay? I always thought it was the beer.

Not all those who wander are lost.

Vikas

4:09 PM

msn.com/en-in/news/other/…

> Ukrainian army personnel recreate ‘Naatu Naatu’ video.

tchrist

They don't call it wanderlust for nothing.

alphabet

@Vikas They really missed the opportunity to change it to "NATO NATO"

Vikas

Haha

alphabet

I understand that India has, like China, decided to sit this conflict out

Vikas

You are right.

Robusto

4:16 PM

@tchrist Is that the opposite of wanderlost?

M.A.R.

4:54 PM

@alphabet but how should you deal with an angry?

tchrist

@alphabet From far and wide, they’ve come to list

M.A.R.

@Cerberus you come sit in a pharmacotherapy classroom and tell me you won't catch abbrevitis

2

jlliagre

7:35 PM

@alphabet Time to improve yourself!

I improved the alphabet

►

Robusto

8:14 PM

> A PLAN FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF ENGLISH SPELLING, by Mark Twain:
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.

tchrist

@jlliagre Here and there tiny improvements can of course be made, but nothing can ever fix the fundamental problem that we are forced to choose and use just one single spelling to represent infinitely many different pronunciations of that single spelling across the global anglosphere. We want one way of writing to equate to many ways of speaking, and until that is addressed, all reforms to align things one to one are in vain.

You either have to give up on having a single spelling, or else you have to give up on that spelling representing what people actually say.

From all cis-Cathayan points of view, this problem is provably impossible to solve. Weep all ye people. Until people are allowed to write whatever they say, whatever people write can never be what they all say.

It is conceivable that within the six square blocks occupied by the City of the Vatican, all speakers of Latin pronounce it identically. This is not possible with a living language spoken across the entire planet. The center cannot hold.

Therefore we're forced to write what we do not say. We've forgotten that speech is primary, not its encoding.

The real language, the spoken one, changes faster than unpasteurized milk goes off. So writing is always a lie...somewhere. You cannot fix that. Or I at least cannot.

jlliagre

8:30 PM

Don't shoot the messenger :-)

tchrist

I invite all superhuman geniuses to offer up their solution to this provably insoluble conundrum.

@jlliagre Oh I know. I wasn't meaning to do that.

jlliagre

French is anyway in the same league. Spanish does a better job.

tchrist

Agree.

It may be that that is on the surface alone, though.

Robusto

@tchrist Hard pass.

I'm in a weird situation. I've done so much reading in my life that when people speak they set fairy trails of printed text wafting through my mind.

In other words, a word isn't a word to me unless I can recognize a spelt form of it. This is true of all languages I know—curiously, except for Japanese. In that language the syllables and their representations are on such a one-to-one relationship that such is unnecessary. So one has instead to choose between kanji readings when one is in doubt.

jlliagre

10:33 PM

La palabra del día #513 4/6

⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜
⬜🟩⬜🟨🟨
⬜🟩🟨🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

https://lapalabradeldia.com/

alphabet

@tchrist I suspect that all of us read far more words than we hear on a daily basis. I don't just mean (say) books or articles; I mean things like street signs, labels, switches/dials/buttons, etc.

Obviously the Internet has increased this ratio substantially.

tchrist

> "Writing is a secondary visual representation of language and therefore speech (representation of sounds ) is the primary form of language. That is why language is characterised as the means to relate sound and meaning."

So it does not matter whether one sees more words written than one hears spoken.

Language is primarily a sound phenomenon to which we attach meaning. Writing is merely a visual way of representing the meaningful sounds of language. That's why speech is primary.

> Il brilgue: les tôves lubricilleux
Se gyrent en vrillant dans le guave.
Enmîmés sont les gougebosqueux
Et le mômerade horsgrave.

> Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen,
yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron!
Yéni ve lintë yuldar avánier
mi oromardi lisse-miruvóreva
Andúnë pella, Vardo tellumar
nu luini yassen tintilar i eleni
ómaryo airetári-lírinen.

jlliagre

11:01 PM

@tchrist Il faut se méfier des toves lubricilleux !

tchrist

Mais ce sont des tôves, n’est-ce pas?

> « As-tu tué le Jaseroque ?
Viens à mon cœur, fils rayonnais !
Ô Jour frabbejeais ! Calleau ! Callai ! »
Il cortule dans sa joie.

Curse me not its spacing.

jlliagre

All of that is perfectly cromulent!

Toves, tôves, même combat.

tchrist

@jlliagre Well certainly, as is Conan and all the rest of the Cimmerian Horde devoted to Crom the Great.

jlliagre

@tchrist Cortulons, cortulons, pendant qu'il est encore temps !

tchrist

Don't we all?

jlliagre

11:14 PM

ça se discute.

Robusto

11:53 PM

@tchrist Is this Jabberwocky en francais?

@jlliagre Does libricilleux capture the "lithe and slimy" in slithy?

Cerberus

@M.A.R. <Autosomal Dominant Compelling Helioopthalmic Outburst>

Photic sneeze reflex

The photic sneeze reflex (also known as Autosomal Dominant Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst (ACHOO) syndrome or photoptarmosis, of the combining form from Ancient Greek φῶς, phōs, "light" and πταρμός, ptarmós, "sneeze", colloquially sun sneezing or photosneezia) is an inherited and congenital autosomal dominant reflex condition that causes sneezing in response to numerous stimuli, such as looking at bright lights or periocular (surrounding the eyeball) injection. The condition affects 18–35% of the world's population, but its exact mechanism of action is not well understood. == Symptoms... ==

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…