English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

O0oO0oOO0ooO

00:06

hehe "I'm going to sue you for sexual her-ass-ment"

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

01:16

Harassment nothing to me.

David Wallace

02:16

That sentence no verb.

Noah

05:15

Hello

O0oO0oOO0ooO

05:31

Sony is birthday gift for 12 years old son of lower-middle class family who cannot afford Samsung

Apple if fashion decorations, you cannot do any serious work on Apple products

Apple is*

Noah

05:45

I dont think everybody agrees with your last statement

I have been using them for years now, and I have done any serious work you can think of.

Noah

09:36

Hello

Why is there noone in this room

Kind of strange.

Stack Exchange

10:56

Limerick Machine: It would be scratchy, too

posted on July 14, 2013 by sgdi

There once was a man in the buff Who said that “enough is enough It’s too warm for clothes, Or any of those I’m def’nit’ly not wearing a ruff."

Stéphane Bruckert

12:17

There is a french club which has "Make me dreaming" for slogan. Is it correctly said? Shouldn't we say "Make me dream"?

tchrist

Yes.

But I’d’ve thought its slogan would’ve been in French.

Stéphane Bruckert

"Yes" as an answer to which question? ^^

MartyIX

Hello. Is the following sentence all right: "We think these repairing techniques are just a last resort how to use an inappropriate crossover operator."?

tchrist

12:34

@StéphaneBruckert It should be “Make me dream”.

Stéphane Bruckert

ok thank you!

Robusto

I wonder how many of our questions simply boil down to "Why isn't English more like [insert language of your choice]?"

tchrist

Not that many, I’d guess.

Robusto

It includes all the "Why does English use articles?" etc. questions.

tchrist

Many why questions are fundamentally unanswerable.

Robusto

12:42

Why is that?

tchrist

unanswers

Robusto

unasks

I hate these dictionary sites that include common misspellings and pass them off as real words until you look them up. See conspicious. Why even list that? It's listed in Wiktionary, therefore someone's web service assumes it's a real word.

I would call that a bruit-force search.

tchrist

Noisy.

Robusto

I was aiming for rumor.

If a celebrity is someone who is famous for being well known, then any old mistake is a fact because Google repeats it ad infinitum.

tchrist

@Reg Just kill him.

If my calculations are correct, it’s now been more than a year that our daily spammer has defaced our site. Whatever happened to “If at first you don’t succeed, give up and go home — no use being a damned fool!” ?

RegDwighт

13:08

@tchrist I keep killing him im Minutentakt.

tchrist

Yeah, I see that.

Seems so Groundhog-Day-like.

RegDwighт

I don't quite get his logic, though. Why would I need your contact data if I did not want to buy your book? Does not compute.

tchrist

And now he’s turned into my pimp, too.

My phone never rings.

So disappoint.

Robusto

If I was your pimp I wouldn't have you waiting by the phone. You'd be out on the street, hustling up work 24/7.

RegDwighт

That's quite some efficiency. You must have went to pimp Harvard.

Gotta write down the post numbers. 119205 119207. Someone tweened him with an answer.

tchrist

13:15

I’m reading a book told in the second person. It’s hard to make that work well cover-to-cover. Dunno if I think this one does.

There there is the problem of each chapter being a different viewpoint character.

Now and then you find an inserted letter told from the first person. It’s almost a relief when you hit those.

RegDwighт

Hm. How does it sound at all? To me that would read like a letter.

@tchrist a letter within a letter?

Mind blown.

tchrist

It’s in the present tense.

Yeah, the nesting.

Lemme find an excerpt. It’s Charlie Stross’s Rule 34.

RegDwighт

I think songs and poetry in general get away with second person, no?

Robusto

@tchrist Sounds gimmicky in the extreme.

@RegDwighт Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

RegDwighт

@Robusto that's like no person at all.

(But technically it's the first, of course.)

Robusto

13:18

@RegDwighт You're so vain you prob'ly think this song is about you.

RegDwighт

Better.

tchrist

RegDwighт

You are so beautiful to me. Can't you see?

Robusto

Ugh. To both of youse.

RegDwighт

@tchrist some tedious prose in there.

tchrist

13:20

It’s a whole book of that. Kinda wears me down.

Rule 34 (Internet meme)

Rule 34—"If it exists, there is porn of it. No exceptions"—is a prevalent meme that Internet pornography exists for every conceivable topic. Rule 34 is one of the best-known Internet adages in current usage. Origin This memetic Internet "rule" originated from a 2003 webcomic, captioned "Rule #34 There is porn of it. No exceptions.", which was drawn by Peter Morley-Souter to depict his shock at seeing Calvin and Hobbes parody porn. Morley-Souter posted his comic on the United Kingdom website Zoom-Out in 2004, and it has been widely reproduced. Popularization Web users have made Rule 34 in...

Robusto

I You don't want to be some procedural protagonist as defined by some hack writer. Sorry.

RegDwighт

I must say third-person does not mix well with second-person. It does with first-person, though.

tchrist

Rule 34 (novel)

Rule 34 is a near-future science fiction novel by Charles Stross. It is a loose sequel to Halting State, and was released on July 5 (US) and 7th (UK), 2011. The title is a reference to Rule 34 of the Internet, which states that "If it exists, there is porn of it. No exceptions." Rule 34 was nominated for the 2012 Arthur C. Clarke Award and the 2012 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Plot summary The novel is told in but from three points of view: Edinburgh Police Inspector Kavanaugh who investigates spammers murdered in gruesome and inventive ways, and learns about similar ca...

RegDwighт

@Robusto you have to write "sorry" as "you are sorry".

Robusto

You say you want a revolution? Well, you know, we all want to change the world.

RegDwighт

13:22

Haha a friend of mine so hates that song.

Actually he hates all of Beatles pretty much because of that song, or what it represents.

tchrist

@RegDwighт Yes, because it becomes a narrative dialogue.

Locus nominated it for an award.

Locus is the critics’ award, too, not the writers’ award (Nebula) or the fans’ award (Hugo).

Didn’t win, but still.

RegDwighт

Because it starts off with some crazy riffs and all, like omg fuck the world we are rebels, but then the moment they start singing it's a complete Stilbruch, they sound like mama's boys on a Kaffeefahrt.

Robusto

@RegDwighт Haha, you said fahrt.

tchrist

What kind of beans are you using in your farting coffee?

Robusto

Jinx.

RegDwighт

13:26

@tchrist Saubohnen.

Robusto

Sow beans?

RegDwighт

Yeah.

Robusto

Yuk.

No wonder.

RegDwighт

Ackerbohne

Die Ackerbohne (Vicia faba), auch Saubohne, Schweinsbohne, Favabohne, Dicke Bohne, Große Bohne, Pferdebohne, Viehbohne, Faberbohne oder Puffbohne genannt, ist eine Pflanzenart aus der Unterfamilie Schmetterlingsblütler (Faboideae) innerhalb der Familie der Hülsenfrüchtler (Fabaceae oder Leguminosae). Diese Nutzpflanze gehört zur Gattung der Wicken (Vicia), im Gegensatz zur Gartenbohne, die der Gattung Phaseolus angehört. Kulturgeschichte Die Wildform, von der die Ackerbohne abstammt, ist nicht bekannt. Heute kommt die Ackerbohne nur als Kulturpflanze vor. Als Kandidaten genannte...

tchrist

With chianti?

Robusto

13:26

Dick beans too? Interesting.

RegDwighт

@Robusto it's also called Pferdebohne.

Oh, the article mentions that.

tchrist

Kinda ick on that one.

Robusto

Horse beans, dick beans, sow beans. Weird.

RegDwighт

The whole Palette.

tchrist

And I thought lima beans were icky.

Robusto

13:27

They are.

RegDwighт

> broad bean, fava bean, faba bean, field bean, bell bean, or tic bean

I only know homo faba. No beans.

Robusto

But coffee farts have to be counterproductive.

tchrist

Spain eats a lot of habas (or fabes in some parts). I was never fond of them.

RegDwighт

Stay put at the counter, then they are.

@tchrist F for H? Are they Japanese or what?

Probably completely unrelated etymologies.

tchrist

Gascon and Castilian had an f- > h- transform, with an intermediate stage that sounds like real /h/ but is now mute.

RegDwighт

13:30

Oh.

Wie unangenehm.

tchrist

This may have been via Basque influence.

RegDwighт

That would explain a lot. Basque fucks up everything just because.

tchrist

ferro > hierro (iron), fornus > horno (oven), ~fratello > hermano (brother)

RegDwighт

Meine Suppe ist fertig. Bis später!

Robusto

@RegDwighт ふ is not really an f sound. Not a fricative at all, really, since the lips only redirect the air.

tchrist

13:32

Approximant.

Bais.

RegDwighт

@Robusto yeah I know.

Really a shortcoming of our system, not theirs.

tchrist

IPA to the rescue.

Robusto

Well, to be fair, their approximations of our phonemes can be bizarre.

tchrist

Quite.

les fabes is Asturian for las habas.

RegDwighт

@tchrist I don't believe in IPA. They can't even tell the German L from the English one.

tchrist

13:34

Like Asturians have les vaques for las vacas.

@RegDwighт You probably need diacritics.

But I don’t know which difference you mean.

Catalan swallows their L even initially; gets transcribed as a dark L.

What does German do?

RegDwighт

Oh I am sure there are ways, just that nobody uses them. Look up milk in a dictionary of your choice. Then look up Milch. Both will have the exact same L sound written down.

tchrist

Phonemic transcriptions then, not phonetic.

RegDwighт

No not really.

My understanding is that there are just kind of unwritten defaults for different languages.

tchrist

Yes, that’s correct.

Like when you see English words transcribed with /r/.

Robusto

@RegDwighт How does IPA do with hard and soft sounds in Russian?

tchrist

13:36

We all know that that isn’t true outside of Scotland or so.

RegDwighт

@Robusto ʲ

A superscript J.

Robusto

For both?

RegDwighт

Which of course is also confusing as hell. So you get Tanya Katya Vanya Tonya where the actual pronunciation is nowhere like that. There is no glide.

@Robusto haha yes, for all I care they could use it for both, won't make it more confusing to strangers.

tchrist

There isn’t??

RegDwighт

Tanya has four sounds. Not five.

And I'm not here! Soup!

tchrist

13:38

Like how Taña has four sounds, not five?

Go. Get.

RegDwighт

no wait.

Wait wait wait.

Disregard.

tchrist

hm

I didn’t say ñ was your sound, just that it counts as one.

RegDwighт

Yes, but there is a glide.

Robusto

IPA is overrated, IMO. But then, so is musical notation. There is no way to capture all the expressive variation of either languages or music in a written form.

tchrist

One never writes it with /j/.

RegDwighт

13:41

Just think of milk vs Milch again. The former L is what is called "hard" in Russian, the latter "soft". Now think of having the same pairs of sounds for all consonants, not just L.

Now take a soft N and slap an A onto it. There you have it. Tana, just with a soft N.

No way to transcribe it outside of Russian.

tchrist

So more of an approximant?

RegDwighт

Just a palatalized consonant. No rocket surgery.

tchrist

I can’t say less aspirated, since that doesn’t work with liquids.

Ah ok.

/ɲ/ is the niño sound, which is kinda but not quite like English canyon.

/ŋ/ is the cinco sound, like in English sing.

Robusto

@RegDwighт Velar consonant?

RegDwighт

No, velar is completely orthogonal to it all.

The Russians palatalize everything, velar or not.

Actually there must be YouTube videos, I guess.

tchrist

13:45

I’m starving. Must make lunch.

Or something like that.

RegDwighт

►

tchrist

I don’t do breakfast foods much.

RegDwighт

Wow that's a good video actually.

And it starts off with N directly.

Robusto

The Japanese palatalize /n/ in may places but it's not quite /ŋ/.

tchrist

They’re describing something close to /ɲ/.

RegDwighт

13:48

Wow that video is excellent. I am impressed.

Robusto

It is good. But it convinces me that learning Russian is a project for another life.

tchrist

heh

RegDwighт

Apr 18 '11 at 21:34, by Robusto

John McWhorter: "English really is easy(-ish) at first and hard later, while other languages like Russian are hard at first and then just as hard later! Show me one person who has said that learning Russian was no problem after they mastered the basics—after the basics you just keep wondering how anybody could speak the language without blacking out."

tchrist

14:30

Today I’ve learned that soccer is only an English sport, and that we do not play it in America or Canada.

Thank you for that insight, Tristan.

RegDwighт

14:57

> Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart was a British Army officer of Belgian and Irish descent. He served in the Boer War, First World War, and Second World War; was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip, and ear; survived a plane crash; tunnelled out of a POW camp; and bit off his own fingers when a doctor refused to amputate them. He later wrote that "Frankly I had enjoyed the war" when describing his service in the First World War.

tchrist

15:22

The opposite of monolithic is not “non-monolithic”. Ick! Non-mono = poly. The opposite of monolithic is of course polylithic.

0

A: What's an antonym of 'monolithic' as in 'monolithic architecture'?

Of  Megaliths The opposite of monolithic is of course polylithic. These terms are used with megalithic structures. Rather than referring to something composed of a single stone, it is something composed of several or even of many stones. Wikipedia reports that: The types of megalithic stru...

tchrist

15:35

I know the flag for “this is a comment not an answer”, but where is the one for the other way around? :)

Mods can convert answers to comments, but can they convert comments to answers as well?

Noah

Hi

What's a good way to start a job interview?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

15:49

@tchrist Why did you single out snippy?

tchrist

I did?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Like, leading-wise.

I'll look again.

tchrist

Must have blanks.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Hotshot too.

tchrist

fixed

Had blank lines.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

15:50

lets out breath

Ahh.

tchrist

I’m please that the polylithic dude switched his accepted answer to mine.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Is there a symbol that means in relation to?

Congrats!

tchrist

‭ ⊰  22B0       PRECEDES UNDER RELATION
        x (precedes - 227A)
‭ ⊱  22B1       SUCCEEDS UNDER RELATION
        x (succeeds - 227B)
‭ ⨾  2A3E       Z NOTATION RELATIONAL COMPOSITION
        x (z notation schema composition - 2A1F)
‭ ⫴  2AF4       TRIPLE VERTICAL BAR BINARY RELATION
        = interleave
        x (triple vertical bar delimiter - 2980)
‭ ⫻  2AFB       TRIPLE SOLIDUS BINARY RELATION
        x (triple vertical bar binary relation - 2AF4)

Doesn’t appear to be, no.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Darn. I'll make one up. For shorthand purposes.

IRT, like the NYC subway of yore.

With a circle around it.

No, no circle.

tchrist

Hm.

Somewhere there is a site that you can hand-draw a symbol and it shows you the closest Unicode matches.

I forget where it is now.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

15:55

O_O That sounds swell.

tchrist

16:12

The produce question is like #3 in the multicollider, and I’ve topped out for the day.

My other answers are better, though.

2

Q: Word usage for "excretion"!

The feeling when a person wants to puke, is termed "nauseous". What if a person wants to excrete? What is that feeling called?

word-choice

Excrete what? A sinus full of phlegm?

That we call sneezy.

Or tears? That we call lachrymose.

I leave the other humours to the rest of you to complete.

Hello Miss Kitty.

I just discovered that the OED gives pussy posse as a synonym for vice squad.

1963 R. I. McDavid Mencken’s Amer. Lang. xi. 730 - *Pussy posse, the vice squad.
1973 Times 22 Mar. 8/7 - The police do their best. They have special teams of detectives (known as pussy posses) who mount drives against the girls.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

16:38

Constipated.

tchrist

Kinda.

That just means you can’t go.

It doesn’t say that you need to, and could if you had the chance.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Costive?

tchrist

I think that’s the same as constipated.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Bound?

tchrist

Hey, did you know that constipado in Spanish means that your head is all stuffed up?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

16:46

I did not.

tchrist

It’s one of those false friends that gets people in trouble.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Clogged? Balrogged?

tchrist

Like how embarasada means preggers.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

I gotta go.

tchrist

Zactly.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

16:47

CU

tchrist

baiz

►

You gotsta watch that.

High-diving giraffes!

I wonder how deep the deep end is?

Robusto

17:11

And you wonder why we don't have flying cars or a cure for cancer yet. It's because smart people make giraffe videos for YouTube.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

19:35

@tchrist it didn't look like they went as far down into the water as they should have.

Cerberus

21:09

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I suppose it is less of a rip-off than most of the plans those poor people can get...

But they're still paying, what, € 200 to switch to a new phone.

Even though their previous phone was only 6 months old.

That's like paying € 200 to switch from a Nexus 4 to a Galaxy S4.

The Nexus is still € 380 new, the s4 € 510.

So you're probably better off selling your old phone yourself and buying a new one.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…