English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

00:02

P.S. By notes I meant the footnotes.

A note is a string of text placed at the bottom of a page in a book or document or at the end of a chapter, volume, or the whole text. The note can provide an author's comments on the main text or citations of a reference work in support of the text. Footnotes are notes at the foot of the page while endnotes are collected under a separate heading at the end of a chapter, volume, or entire work. Unlike footnotes, endnotes have the advantage of not affecting the layout of the main text, but may cause inconvenience to readers who have to move back and forth between the main text and the endnotes....

tchrist

02:21

@alphabet Lo and behold!

> †1.
a. transitive. To shrink with horror or repugnance from; to recoil from. Obsolete.
?a1425 tr. Guy de Chauliac Grande Chirurgie (N.Y. Acad. Med.) f. 62v Idroforbicus, after þat he abhorreþ [?c1425 Paris abhorreth i. styggeþ] water, is neuer cured.
?a1475 (▸?a1425) tr. R. Higden Polychron. (Harl. 2261) (1869) II. 219 (MED) Bestes and other creatures..flee in grete parte the siȝhte of man, abhorrenge his towchenge.
a1522 G. Douglas tr. Virgil Æneid (1960) xiii. x. 47 Abhor thou nocht the fyre and flambis brycht, From thy deir spowsys hed glaid to the hycht.

This is nice: One either abhors or adores the paintings with their primary colour and thick black outlines.

alphabet

02:38

@tchrist I assume this is in response to my comment on the "abhor" question?

tchrist

'Tis.

Abhors or adores is a nicely alliterative pairing, like appealing or appalling is.

Funky semi-rhymes. Assonance.

My real point is that the toy dictionaries are tantamount to useless.

alphabet

@tchrist To me those uses of "abhor" sound quite strange, if not outright wrong. For my part, I would only use it to describe a sort of extreme moral revulsion. But it seems others disagree.

tchrist

It's something that's repugnant.

For me.

> As much as it abhorred her, she would have no choice but to be intimate with Decimus as soon as possible.

Disgusted her.

But that's all under sense 4. It doesn't include sense 2.

alphabet

In that sentence (without context) it seems like she finds it objectively wrong and repugnant, not just subjectively.

tchrist

I certainly would use "He absolutely abhors visiting" for a fancy kint of hate.

It's like hate but stronger.

> He absolutely abhors visiting and thinks there ought to be a law against invitations that go beyond dinner and bridge.

Like detests with all his heart and mind and soul.

You must only know the gross-out sense 4, not the deep hatred of sense 2.

These are different things, albeit of course not wholly unrelated to each other.

alphabet

02:46

I find that example quite odd, like a sort of extreme exaggeration.

tchrist

> To abhor evil is to have it in a moral detestation; to shrink back from it with a shuddering horror, as one would shrink back from a hissing, stinging serpent.

Maybe that one could go either way.

"To abhor VERBing" seems unremarkable to me.

alphabet

That sentence seems to be saying that his dislike of visiting is so strong that he acts as if he finds it somehow morally or objectively repulsive.

"I abhor visiting" sounds quite wrong to me. "I abhor committing such crimes" or "I abhor acting violently" would seem like more felicitous uses.

If not wrong, then a sort of literary exaggeration.

tchrist

It just means that you really hate it. But hate is of a different register, so you need to find a Latinate verb when moving in that world.

I can check to see the synonym set for sense 2 compared with the one for sense 4. I bet they're different.

There's some difference.

alphabet

I don't think I would use it that way. To me, abhor means that you think your revulsion to it is somehow objectively correct or necessary, that other people should also find it repugnant.

But apparently people have differing intuitions on this.

tchrist

Sadly, those two are for 1b and 1a respectively.

They don't seem to have a distinct categorization for 2, 3, or 4. Checking more.

I've just crap with web browsing.

They do have some.

That's your gross-out sense 4.

"New" additions to that list include skeeve (1986) and squick (1991).

It all under the subcategory of hatred involving repugnance.

No, under disgust, not hate.

alphabet

03:01

This usage strikes me as quite odd; I wouldn't use the word that way. But apparently others find it acceptable.

tchrist

It occurs in six categories:

1. the world > relative properties > relationship > difference > be different [verb (intransitive)] ►abhor (1531)
2. the mind > emotion > hatred > dislike > disgust > excite repugnance in [verb (transitive)] ►abhor (1531)
3. the mind > emotion > hatred > feeling against or a settled dislike > impulse of aversion > rise in repugnance against something [verb (intransitive)] > shrink from in repugnance, disgust, or dislike ►abhor (c1520)
4. the mind > emotion > hatred > feeling against or a settled dislike > impulse of aversion > turn away from or regard with aver…

alphabet

It has triangles in it so it must be true.

tchrist

Tolkien's conlang for elves has a DHEL- root that he glosses as "feel fear and disgust".

mac(tchrist)% env PERL_UNICODE=SAD ack -i '\babhor\w*'

books/Lays_of_Beleriand_-_JRR_Tolkien.txt
2530:its thirst cooling in the thrice-abhorred              1370
7219:and hatred of the king abhorred               200
11083:of wolves and beasts of blood abhorred,
11609:nor do the work of Orcs abhorred;            3045
12514:Come forth, whom earth and heaven abhors!

books/silmarillion
3789:Sauron 'The Abhorred' (in Sindarin called Gorthaur); greatest of the servants of Melkor, in his origin a Maia of AulÃ«. 26, 47, 52, 169, 187-8, 195-8, 206-8, 210-3, 216, 330, 333-40, 343, 346-8, 353-77

Some encoding errors there as the files are not all the same, but you get the idea.

Sauron was "the Abhorred".

alphabet

Presumably that description of Sauron uses abhor in the moral sense.

tchrist

That he glosses it as BOTH fear and disgust is interesting.

> 'abominable, abhorrent'

The Abominable Snowman!

He doesn't use any of the English words that derive from abhor in anything published within his lifetime. Even in The Silmarillion it is only in the index that his son prepared.

The OED places the verb abhor in Frequency Band 5. But they place the verb hate in Band 6. Very different.

> Etymology: < classical Latin abhorrēre to shrink back from, recoil from, to be averse to or opposed to, to be incompatible with, to be uncongenial or repugnant (to), to be at variance (with), to be different from < ab- ab- prefix + horrēre to bristle, to shudder (see horre v.).

Compare Middle French, French abhorrer, †abhorrir to have a horror of, be disgusted by (1488; compare Old French avourrir (13th cent. in Rashi)), to recoil from, flee from (1532), to disagree with (1564). Compare also Occitan aborrir, Catalan avorrir (13th cent.), Spanish aburrir (1220–50 as †aborrir), Italian abo…

It's a learnèd word.

Hate is of course native, original, and descends to us from time immemorial from our Germanic ancestry.

> Origin: A word inherited from Germanic.
Etymology: Cognate with or formed similarly to Old Frisian hatia , hātia , (with i-mutation) hetia (West Frisian hate ), Old Dutch haton (Middle Dutch hāten , Dutch haten ), Old Saxon haton (Middle Low German hāten ), Old High German hazzōn , hazzēn (Middle High German hazzen , German hassen ), Old Icelandic hata , Old Swedish hata (Swedish hata ), Old Danish hadhe (Danish hade ), Gothic hatan , hatjan < the same Germanic base as hete n.1

The verb inflects as a weak Class II verb in Old English, as in other older Germanic languages; compare Old Sax…

First hate citation is:

> eOE King Ælfred tr. Gregory Pastoral Care (Tiber.) (Junius transcript) (1871) xxxiii. 222 Lufiað eowre fiend, & doð þæm wel þe eow ær hatedon [OE Corpus Cambr. hatedon; L. oderunt].

But abhor is new. Its earliest use, the obsolete sense 1, is from the fifteenth century:

> ?a1425 tr. Guy de Chauliac Grande Chirurgie (N.Y. Acad. Med.) f. 62v Idroforbicus, after þat he abhorreþ [?c1425 Paris abhorreth i. styggeþ] water, is neuer cured.

The translator needed it, so just stole it.

alphabet

03:22

Is it just me, or is Wikipedia's audio sample for /ɤ̞/ exceedingly odd?

tchrist

The Latin gloss in Aelfred is the same word that gives us odious: the third-person plural present active indicative of odi(o) / odivi, which was "late"-(re)-borrowed into the Romance languages as the infinitive odiar.

@alphabet In which way? The variations? Or just the vowel in general? Its neighbor ɯ is also "hard".

Oh it's trying to be an unrounded o, that's why.

As opposed to the one I mentioned, which is trying to be an unrounded u, so to speak.

It's very weird for us to think of unrounded versions of either o or u.

tchrist

04:01

@alphabet It's the opposite phenomenon of English speakers trying to make the rounded /i/ or /e/ or /ɛ/, meaning /y/, /ø/, /œ/. We only have the rounded or the non-rounded variant in that position, so trying to add rounding to a position where we lack it or to subtract rounding from a position where we already have it seems weird to us.

Sure makes you glad of Latin and Italian and Spanish though. :)

No pussy-footing around with weird vowels.

alphabet

04:25

@tchrist It's because (unlike the other audio samples) the speaker repeats it three times, and it doesn't sound like it's quite the same vowel each time.

tchrist

Yes, it's varying.

alphabet

Also he sounds like he's about to vomit.

Or otherwise in distress.

"Round your lips and we shoot!"

@tchrist Indeed. It's that thing where rounding makes a vowel sound backer (further back?), so unrounding a back vowel means your lips and tongue are working against each other.

As usual, of course, the IPA vowel symbols are only vaguely related to how vowels are actually articulated, because nobody makes vowels just by moving their tongue around and deciding whether to round their lips, and instead people target specific formant frequencies...

...but since we (except for those with a sense of absolute pitch) can't hear formant frequencies directly, this makes it hard to come up with some objectively sensible method for transcribing vowels.

M.A.R.

05:36

This was my first thought as well. @Greybeard Do you usually feel hostility towards the other player(s) in a game? — Barmar 15 hours ago

This is how you know Barmar hasn't played a video game

Xanne

07:07

Wordle 745 3/6

🟨⬜⬜⬜🟩
⬜🟩⬜🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Finally doing better.

jlliagre

@tchrist The French haïr shares the same Germanic ancestry. Québécois might use the variant haguir.

Wordle 745 3/6

⬜⬜🟨⬜🟨
⬜🟩🟨🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Vikas

08:20

London-Bombay (Mumbai) bus, 1960.

jlliagre

10:02

2

Robusto

12:16

@jlliagre That would be hell on earth.

#Worldle #529 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
⭐⭐⭐
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

🌎 Jul 4, 2023 🌍
🔥 19 | Avg. Guesses: 4.44
🟥🟩 = 2

globle-game.com
#globle

Wordle 745 3/6

🟨⬛🟨🟨⬛
⬛🟨⬛🟨⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

jlliagre

12:55

#Worldle #529 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
🪙
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

Daily Quordle 526
4️⃣6️⃣
7️⃣5️⃣
m-w.com/games/quordle/

Daily Octordle #526
🕛5️⃣
🔟4️⃣
8️⃣🕚
6️⃣7️⃣
Score: 63

@Robusto Fan heaters to keep you warm. That's what we want to cross Southern Europe, Turkey and Iran by bus in August!

Robusto

@jlliagre And my luck I'd be sitting next to a fat guy.

jlliagre

@Robusto Worst, that fat guy might be me ;-)

Robusto

At least we'd have good conversation.

Daily Octordle #526
🕚2️⃣
6️⃣4️⃣
🔟3️⃣
8️⃣7️⃣
Score: 51

Second lowest score.

Pretty lucky.

@jlliagre You should see if you can do today's Globle in two moves.

jlliagre

13:20

Tricky :-)

Robusto

It's hard measurement on that globe. ^_^

jlliagre

Looks like Globle is confused. I had to replay it in another browser to get the right score:

🌎 Jul 4, 2023 🌍
🔥 1 | Avg. Guesses: 3
🟥🟩 = 2

globle-game.com
#globle

🌎 Jul 4, 2023 🌍
🔥 1 | Avg. Guesses: 6.3
🟨🟨🟨⬜🟧🟥🟥🟥
🟩 = 9

globle-game.com
#globle

Le Mot (@WordleFR) #541 6/6

⬛🟨⬛🟨⬛
⬛⬛🟨⬛⬛
⬛🟩⬛🟩🟩
⬛🟩⬛🟩🟩
🟨🟩⬛🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

https://wordle.louan.me

M.A.R.

14:46

@jlliagre never realized you could make traveller's diarrhea into a package

jlliagre

@M.A.R. Yes, the famous turista :-)

jlliagre

15:49

My Le Mot graphic up there looks like Tetris.

Vikas

16:00

Modi uses word "excellency" to address and leader in summits. Haven't heard from others that much. Or maybe didn't notice. Is that a common word?

Cerberus

It is old fashioned, used to be common, Your Excellency for ministers et al.?

Vikas

@Cerberus For example this:

PM Modi's opening remarks at SCO Summit

►

alphabet

16:21

@Vikas "Your Excellency" is a title used to address certain leaders (like how judges are addresses as "your honor").

tchrist

@Cerberus For ambassadors.

Excellency

Excellency is an honorific style given to certain high-level officers of a sovereign state, officials of an international organization, or members of an aristocracy. Once entitled to the title "Excellency", the holder usually retains the right to that courtesy throughout their lifetime, although in some cases the title is attached to a particular office and is held only during tenure of that office.Generally people addressed as Excellency are heads of state, heads of government, governors, ambassadors, Roman Catholic bishops, high-ranking ecclesiastics and others holding equivalent rank, such as...

Vikas

Okay. But it seems like Modi uses it even for Prime Ministers or Presidents.

tchrist

Holland uses it for cabinet members.

@Vikas It's super-country-specific what to you for them.

> His/Her Excellency, a custom dating from the ancient times wherein the Samrāt and Sāmrājñi (सम्राट, साम्राज्ञी/Emperor, Empress), Generals, Kings, Ambassadors were addressed. A classic example is addressing Devvrat (Bhishma) as महामहिम भीष्म (His/Your Excellency Bhishma) in Mahabharat.

> However the Constitution makers[clarification needed] approved will discontinue "ancient era" styles of Mahāmahim. The same release states that in English (which is the other language in which subsidiary official communications are released in the Central Government of India in its capacity of Sahāyak Rājabhāśhā: Subsidiary Officiating language) the style Honourable shall replace the erstwhile His/Her/Your Excellency. The newer style will be Honourable.

> The corresponding changes in releases from the President's Secretariat shall be from Mahāmahim to Rāshtrapatiji.[12] The release also talks about the styles of other dignitaries, like governors. "Hon'ble" will be used before the titles "president" and "governor", while the traditional honorifics Shri or Smt. (Shrimati) should precede the name.

However, "Excellency" will continue to be used, only for interaction of leaders with foreign dignitaries and foreign dignitaries with Indian leaders as is customary international practice.

It's something in international diplomacy.

Vikas

@tchrist Oh

tchrist

Our Secretaries of State are "excellencies" internationally.

> Nevertheless, in the protocol of many foreign countries and United Nations, the president and the secretary of state are usually referred to as Excellency. Diplomatic correspondence to President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War, as during the Trent Affair, for instance, frequently addressed him as Your Excellency.

Vikas

16:36

@tchrist I have read this word Mahamahim (महामहिम) for our President and any governer of our state, in Indian Hindi newspapers. But it was around twelve years ago I read.

tchrist

> His/Her Excellency (abbreviation HE, oral address Your Excellency) – most ambassadors, high commissioners and permanent representatives to international organizations. Occasionally a different form of address is used domestically with the international equivalent of Excellency being used in all other cases.

Vikas

A quick search on YouTube shows it is still being used by news channels on YouTube for our current President.

tchrist

It's incredibly complicated. People who move in diplomatic circles have to be really careful to address everyone in the way that is expected and accepted by that person within their own culture.

Style (form of address)

A style of office or form of address, also called manner of address, is an official or legally recognized form of address for a person or other entity (such as a government or company), and may often be used in conjunction with a personal title. A style, by tradition or law, precedes a reference to a person who holds a post or political office, and is sometimes used to refer to the office itself. An honorific can also be awarded to an individual in a personal capacity. Such styles are particularly associated with monarchies, where they may be used by a wife of an office holder or of a prince of...

> Hamilton v. Alabama, 376 U.S. 650 (1964), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that an African-American woman, Mary Hamilton, was entitled to the same courteous forms of address customarily reserved solely for whites in the Southern United States,[31] and that calling a black person by their first name in a formal context was "a form of racial discrimination".[32]

To them, Mr Jones and Mrs Smith sounded far too respectful to use for colored people — or really for any people who weren't WASPs of privilege and wealth.

One does not afford the underclass any courtesy at all, even terms of such.

Because people who think they're better than somebody else need a way to talk down to them so that everyone knows the pecking order.

alphabet

17:00

@Vikas The preferred form of address is "Mr. President" but that isn't always followed.

Vikas

@alphabet Okay. And if you have to address multiple presidents at once?

jlliagre

Dudes?

Vikas

17:20

Or maybe friends. But that would be too casual?

alphabet

@Vikas There's only one president of the US. You don't use "Mr. President" for former presidents.

I suppose that, if you had to address multiple presidents of different countries who all used "Mr. President," it might be a problem. In theory "Mr." has a plural, "Messrs.," but it's quite rare.

There's actually a history behind this; as I recall, George Washington adopted "Mr. President" because it didn't sound like something the British nobility would use.

Laurel

18:12

Look at this trash UI. I was trying to figure out who on earth says "we let's"

Vikas

I just came to know Zuckerberg is launching new app called Threads.

Laurel

Like Twitter but for the people who use Facebook?

Vikas

It would be interesting to see what he does different.

M.A.R.

@Laurel 's is a codename for an agent

Laurel

Technically, it's using the acute mark too

Laurel

18:38

In googling for something completely unrelated I found this: dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/…

Robusto

19:04

@jlliagre That's more like it. 👍

Cerberus

@tchrist OK other countries do as well, it's not a very well prescribed address.

tchrist

@Cerberus Yes, the flatterjabber of sycophants is universal.

alphabet

@Laurel Why is it that Scots sounds amusing/funny to English speakers? I'm reminded of how many Americans seem to perceive Australian accents.

My forthcoming paper is about ranking accents/dialects/languages from most funny to least funny /s

Robusto

@alphabet Most/least funny from whose point of reference?

alphabet

@Robusto Objectively, of course.

Robusto

19:12

Of course. We would expect nothing less from an acadamic.

alphabet

But it is odd how some accents are seen as funny and others not. I don't think we see Scottish people as amusing, but their accents (or their language) are often seen that way

Laurel

@alphabet I just have a fascination with "foreign" Englishes that started with Hawaiian Pidgin (which I discovered several years before joining this site, actually)

alphabet

It doesn't seem to correlate with our opinions of the speakers or their perceived prestige

Like I don't think (most?) people find (say) French accents or Southern US accents as funny as Australian or New Zealand accents.

But maybe I'm wrong and we need polls to establish this. (No offense to anyone with a funny accent, of course.)

Laurel

I was too ashamed to say I was in Belize in part to enjoy the language when the language I was planning to enjoy was also English :/

Robusto

@alphabet They can be played that way in film, for example, or more seriously.

alphabet

19:16

Likewise, Scottish accents seem to be funnier than Irish ones.

Robusto

It also depends on which Scottish accent.

alphabet

And Japanese accents used to be considered funny before people started calling that racist.

Robusto

That went out with the Coke-bottle glasses and overbites as emblems of Japaneseness.

alphabet

Theory: for an accent to be acceptably considered funny, it has to (a) be spoken by white people, (b) not be spoken by EFL learners, (c) sound very unusual, and (d) be from a relatively unfamiliar place.

But that doesn't explain why Scottish accents are funnier than Irish ones, say.

Maybe it's because (due to Scots influence) Scottish accents are even further from American English.

Cerberus

@alphabet What does an accent have to do with racial theory?

It's kind of strange to think that the Japanese language is at all tied to 'the yellow race', or whatever theories racists have.

Robusto

19:27

@alphabet Nobody thought Sean Connery's accent was amusing. Just cool.

Like I said, which Scots accent makes a difference.

alphabet

I think it's that we don't normally consider or call Japanese accents funny, because doing so would be seen as racist. But making fun of Scottish accents is OK.

Laurel

I think that some Middle English writing is hilarious in its orthography. Does that count?

alphabet

Perhaps.

Robusto

I don't think you're taking into account the rise of the Japanese "coolness" factor. In the '60s, say, when "made in Japan" was a punch line, Japanese accents were racially offensive. Thirty years later, after Japan took over the auto market, and all the kids were reading manga and watching anime, it became honorable and even cool.

Cerberus

It's a language, not a race. But w'evs!

alphabet

19:33

@Cerberus Nowhere did I say otherwise

Cerberus

Robusto just mentioned races again, but it doesn't matter.

alphabet

19:48

Why is it that I can spend 5 hours straight reading a linguistics textbook, but can't spend 5 minutes cleaning my apartment? The swarm of bees in my head are very temperamental

2

Robusto

@Cerberus Mockery of racial or national characteristics is derisive and, therefore, offensive. It is what it is.

Laurel

@alphabet Pretty sure it's called adhd :p

alphabet

@Laurel No no it's called Swarm of Angry Bees in My Head

Or it should be

Laurel

Sounds like you got here a little too late for the DSM V. Unfortunately(?) ADHD wasn't named after a nazi or something (unlike at least one other former condition) so you might need a little bit of discussion before people accept the change

alphabet

Ah well. What I lack in attentiveness, I make up for in...hmm...lost my train of thought

Cerberus

20:02

@Robusto I'm not sure whether mocking a country is 'offensive', or what that even means. However, it is different from mocking based on racial theories.

alphabet

@Cerberus There's a difference between mocking a country and mocking its inhabitants. And if your country has a large immigrant population, there will be people on hand to get offended.

Of course, Everyone's a Little Bit Racist

The best/worst line of dialogue from that is: "Lots of people tell Black jokes." "I don't." "Well, of course you don't, you're Black."

Robusto

20:35

@Cerberus I think it's selbstverständlich enough.

Mitch

23:43

@alphabet the public record in that is mixed. Formal style guides seem to say that the former president uses whatever honorific they used before being president (eg General Eisenhower). But for most news organizations seem to call former presidents 'President Obama' eg

Seems weird but that's what seems to be the case.

alphabet

@Mitch I've heard that you're technically supposed to use "Mr. Obama" (since in office he's "Mr. President").

Mitch

@Cerberus still thinking about an answer. I haven't forgotten. I can't think and type on a phone at the same time.

@alphabet yes I've heard the same 'technical' thing too. But everybody (the media) seems to use 'President Bush' etc

alphabet

@Mitch Nobody can. That explains twitter.

Mitch

snort

I don't think people on insta are expected to be thinking

Or discord

Reddit seems to be a cesspool of half thoughts

Is there anything else on the Internet?

Whatsapp is entirely personal

alphabet

@Mitch Substack, but only for thoughts that should probably remain unexpressed.

Mitch

23:53

Weibo and Telegraph I don't know about

@alphabet substack is not really conversational is it?

Substack is just blogging right?

Like medium?

alphabet

@Mitch Yes, but it attracts a surprising number of white supremacists since it's the one platform that doesn't censor them.

Mitch

Hm...I wasn't aware of that

I'm not really aware of substack as a uniform platform, just some individual blogs and the just happen to have used substack

alphabet

@Mitch I would link you to examples but I suspect (a) my comment would get flagged and (b) it's just...ick.

Mitch

No ick in chat

Yeah I wouldn't follow the links most likely

No offense

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…