English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

tchrist

01:24

@Cerberus And what do you call a ponytail?

Cerberus

@tchrist Paardenstaart.

So horsetail.

By the way, most of the regulars here will probably know the word lackaday, right?

tchrist

What about pigtails?

Cerberus

Ehh I think just staartjes.

Little tails.

tchrist

Oh. I thought paarden's taarts were cakes made of horseflesh. :)

Cerberus

Heh.

We rarely use both a connecting -n- and a connecting -s- together.

tchrist

01:32

How did you come to use staart for what comes at the animal’s end?

Cerberus

Just the shape, I guess?

Any flexible, oblong extension can be a metaphorical staart, I suppose.

tchrist

Here I was expecting a tale of prehistoric hunter-gatherers on the hunt, and how the staart was the first thing they’d see of their prey.

Cerberus

Hah.

Hunter-gatherers hunting their fellows, but with pony tails?

tchrist

Only little girls wear pigtails. Anybody can wear a ponytail.

Cerberus

A story can also have a staartje, as in...a little epilogue (I would say less than that).

@tchrist But it's funnier with pigtails.

tchrist

01:36

Hm, a coda.

> Here ends the SILMARILLION. If it has passed from the high and the beautiful to darkness and ruin, that was of old the fate of Arda Marred; and if any change shall come and the Marring be amended, Manwë and Varda may know; but they have not revealed it, and it is not declared in the dooms of Mandos.

Cerberus

The LotR is the coda?

tchrist

No, that little bit is the coda to the published Silmarillion.

Cerberus

Ah OK.

tchrist

I removed the italics because it occurs partway through the book proper.

Cerberus

I guess it is somewhat similar. But if a story has a staartje, that rather means there was a minor development that took place after the story, and it is a colloquial expression.

Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of using italics for words that are supposedly well known or widely used.

tchrist

01:46

The Ainulindalë, the Valaquenta, and Quenta Silmarillion together are generally thought of the Silmarillion, although of course the first two parts aren’t really part of that tale. Plus then follows in the printed book the Akallabêth, the Downfall of Númenor, and some stuff about the Third Age.

Cerberus

Words that should not be considered to have been borrowed by English, but that are still entirely foreign.

Yeah I liked the Akallabêth.

tchrist

Will, the thing is, in Tolkien Scholarship, one uses Silmarillion without italics to refer to the collection of tales, and Silmarillion with italics to refer to the published volume.

Cerberus

What does Quenta mean again?

tchrist

The same as it does in Spanish: a tale or accounting.

Cerberus

@tchrist That's...confusing.

@tchrist Just as I thought...but why is it the same as in Spanish?

tchrist

01:48

“Happy accident”.

Cerberus

I immediately thought of Spanish quenta, but then I thought, naaah.

tchrist

Actually, modern Spanish has cuento and cuenta there, without a q.

It makes internal sense. Remember the the Quendi, the Elves’ name for themselves in Quenya, means “the speakers”.

Generally Spanish uses cuentos for tales and cuenta for the accounting, the bill.

Cerberus

It is odd that Tolkien should have chosen a morpheme so close to the Spanish.

tchrist

Gosh, now you’re going to make me look up those links I gave you the other day again.

That’s like how MOR means black.

Some were hardly accidents. None, perhaps.

The Quendë (Q, pron. [ˈkʷende]), plural Quendi (pron. [ˈkʷendi]), was the name given by the Elves to their own kind while they still dwelt at Cuiviénen. Quendë means "speaker; who speak with voices", for upon arising they met no other living thing that spoke or sang.[1] However, Ilúvatar also called them Quendi before any of them awoke.[2]

The plural form was much more popular as a word.

The word is a direct derivative of the Primitive Quendian word Kwende from Root KWENE.[3]

Quendë is an exceptional case where the PQ short final -e was retained in Quenya instead of disappearing.

Cerberus

Does mor mean black in Spanish?

tchrist

01:54

No.

Not really.

But morado can be purple.

Cerberus

mr- means "death" in Proto-Indo-European...

tchrist

Yes, that’s why MOR is black.

He wasn’t afraid of using PIE roots.

Cerberus

I always thought Tolkien had based some of his stuff on existing languages.

But I could never be sure...

tchrist

Sometimes he did.

A little.

For example, Gondor, Gondolin are all from an ancient PIE term OND meaning stone. Or maybe just OE.

Cerberus

Ah!

Hmm I can't think of any cognates.

tchrist

02:07

> MOR- *mori black: Q more black (N † môr); mordo shadow, obscurity, stain; mуre blackness, dark, night; morna gloomy, sombre; morilinde nightingale (Ilk. murulind, myrilind). N *maur gloom; moru black. Ilk. môr night. Meglivorn: see LIS, MAT. Morgoth Black Foe [KOT] = Melko. Morimando = Mandos [see MBAD]. Moriqendi Dark Elves = Morimor, N Duveledh or Dúrion [DOȜ].

> [This entry is extremely confused through changes and afterthought additions, and I have tried to arrange the material more sequentially. It is not clear, however, that all the forms given were intended to stand.]

Where N = what we now call Sindarin.

OND means rock in early Celtic.

Cerberus

That's funny, they're trying to make a Tolkien etymological entry look just like one from a real etymological dictionary.

@tchrist Is that all?

And what is "Ilk."?

tchrist

That is not a "they".

Cerberus

He, then.

tchrist

That is Tolkien père himself who wrote that. Tolkien fils is in the square brackets, I believe.

Cerberus

Ah!

tchrist

02:10

Ilkorin.

We would today call it the language of the Moriquendi, the elves of the darkness who never saw the Light of the Trees.

Ilkorin

Ilkorin (plural Ilkorindi) is a Quenya word, literally meaning "not of Kôr". The Ilkorindi were a group of Elves from J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional universe. They first appear in The Book of Lost Tales. It was then a name with a broad meaning for all the Elves who "never saw the light of Kôr" and also for their many tongues. Kôr was the Quenya name for a hill and the city built on it, near the shores of the Bay of Faery. Later, in the late 1920s, Tolkien applied the word only to those Elves (later called Sindar) who lived in Beleriand and were ruled by King Thingol: "In the course of ages...

Cerberus

Ah.

tchrist

> One thing was important to Tolkien. Languages should be beautiful. Their sound should be pleasing. Tolkien tasted languages, and his taste was finely tuned. Latin, Spanish and Gothic were pleasing. Greek was great. Italian was wonderful. But French, often hailed as a beautiful language, gave him little pleasure.

Cerberus

Faery??

I hope he scratched that name?

He didn't like French? The fool...

tchrist

> He also tells us how GON(O), GOND(O) got to be the Elvish root for "rock, stone" (as in Gondor "stone-land", Gondolin "Stone-song"): When he was eight years old, Tolkien read a book stating that nothing was known of the language of the pre-Celtic and pre-Roman tribes, except possibly ond "stone".

> Young John Ronald Reuel thought this word "fitted the meaning", so he remembered it and used it in his home-made languages many years later: Sindarin gond or gonn, Quenya ondo. (Letters:410).

> The book that provided Tolkien with the word ond was finally identified in Vinyar Tengwar #30: Celtic Britain by Professor John Rhys, that according to Carl F. Hostetter and Patrick Wynne "consists of over 300 densely-set pages and eschews neither etymological discussion, untranslated Latin passages, nor untransliterated Greek words". This was Tolkien's preferred reading at the age of eight.

@Cerberus You don’t understand. It’s its phonoaesthetics that bugged him. He much preferred Latin, Spanish, Italian, and Greek in that regard.

The citations above are from here.

You can see his Greek training in places that most readers today would not recognize.

Quenya has a ú- negatory prefix, for example.

And some of the Quenya inflections remind one of Greek ones.

Cerberus

Why is u- Greek?

What inflexions?

tchrist

02:17

In what topos is Utopia placed?

Cerberus

(Inflexion and connexion are etymologically better.)

tchrist

I’d have to look them up.

Cerberus

@tchrist Oh...okay, I see. Well, I don't believe the Greeks actually used ou- as a prefix.

It would always be a(n)-, the nasal prefix.

Now I wonder about the etymology of ou...

I remember looking it up a while ago.

tchrist

Isn’t there a genitive plural –ων?

Cerberus

Yes.

tchrist

02:21

Like -orum?

Cerberus

It's the only one. Yes, no doubt related.

tchrist

I think of that when I see Silmarillion meaning “of the Silmarils”

Cerberus

Yes, so do I. Like the Satyricon.

The popular title is really short for something like Libri Satyricon, "Books of Satyr-like things", which meant decadent, orgiastic.

tchrist

You mean the Satyricon isn’t the convention for horny old men? :)

Cerberus

Umm it is the convention for us all.

tchrist

02:24

A “con” is slang for a convention.

Comicon.

Cerberus

Ahh.

That was far from my mind.

Where I would keep it.

English does like to use con as an abbreviation for a lot of different things!

Many Latin con- words have been reduced to con in English... dictionary.reference.com/browse/con

But this one I con not:

> verb (used with object), conned, con·ning.
1. to learn; study; peruse or examine carefully.
2. to commit to memory.
Origin: before 1000; Middle English cunnen, Old English cunnan variant of can1 in sense “become acquainted with, learn to know”

And by con I meant Dutch ken there, "know".

tchrist

However, it should be emphasized that Finnish was an inspiration only; Quenya is in no way a garbled version of Finnish, and only a few words of its vocabulary display any semblance to the corresponding Finnish words. Tolkien also mentioned Greek and Latin as inspirations; we can evidently add Spanish to the list as well.

Oh.

What do you mean, “Dutch” ken?

As opposed to French con?

Ken is current Scots English.

Ken ye the rhyme to porringer?
Ken ye the rhyme to porringer?
King James the Seventh had ae dochter,
And he gave her to an Oranger.

That would be yours.

Cerberus

Well, you can't use English con the way I used, it, con you? I used it the way I would use Dutch ken. I did know that ken was also used in some way in some English dialect, but not exactly how.

tchrist

Scots.

Cerberus

What's porringer?

tchrist

02:32

A bowl to hold porridge in.

Cerberus

Ahh.

tchrist

Where porridge is like hot oatmeal, I guess, usually, or some other grain.

But you can make porridge of peas(e), as in the rhyme.

Cerberus

What else could it be?

Oh.

I would assume porridge to be of some kind of cereal by default.

tchrist

Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold,
Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old;
Some like it hot, some like it cold,
Some like it in the pot, nine days old.

Cerberus

Do you have Brinta in Indianland?

I have heard of pease porridge.

tchrist

02:34

Is that a marque?

Cerberus

Oui.

tchrist

Can’t place it beyond that.

Cerberus

tchrist

Coffee? Breakfast food?

Right.

Cerberus

tchrist

02:35

Yes, that’s porridgy.

Cerberus

You will find it either delicious or disgusting.

Do people still eat porridge in your land?

tchrist

I rather like cream of rice over cream of wheat.

Cerberus

Is that's what it's called?

tchrist

I just mentioned two porridges.

Oats being the third.

Cerberus

I see.

We call them all -pap.

tchrist

02:36

I don’t know why they call them "cream of".

Cerberus

Because there's cream in it, as in milk?

Many things are called cream, like...cream of tartar?

Which has no cream.

tchrist

You add a bit of milk and perhaps brown sugar in serving.

Maybe raisins.

Cerberus

Rijstepap.

I like it with something like...a compôte of apricots.

tchrist

Cerberus

Farina? They use that word in English?

@tchrist That could be Brinta...

tchrist

02:39

Apparently.

These are all classed as “hot cereals”.

I have determined something curious.

Cerberus

Sold dry, I presume, where you have to add milk?

@tchrist Is it Mithrandir?

tchrist

I am allergic to Lorin, who is a long-haired kitten, but not to Randy, who is a short-haired kitten like the late Sam was.

Yes.

Cerberus

Huh.

That's weird.

How bad is the allergy?

tchrist

I was long deathly allergic to cats one and all.

20 years companionship with Sam made me think I was no longer sensitive.

Cerberus

You pushed through it.

tchrist

02:44

And to Randy I am not, I can fall asleep with my face in his fur and wake up fine.

But Lorin in my lap even gets to me.

Cerberus

Is it really bad?

tchrist

Not bad enough to quit.

But I’m taking drugs for it.

Lorin also is the one always wanting to be picked up and loved, and to "give you kisses": rub the scent glands next to his nose on either side against your face to mark you as his.

It’s not a wet thing, but it is bothersome because he can be quite insistent.

Cerberus

Aww.

tchrist

I have Rx allergy/asthma stuff, plus OTC stuff, that gets me through. And it seems to be getting better. But I haven’t been as snugglepussing with Lorin lately.

Till a few hours ago when I accidentally stepped on his little paw and I felt so bad I cuddled him and gave him a can of real tuna, and he is in my lap now.

And now my chest is tight.

Mitch

@Cerberus russian ethnic to russian orthodox vs jewish ethnic to jewish religion might work but russian state to russian ethnic does not compare well to israeli state to jewish ethnic.

Cerberus

02:48

Aww.

@Mitch Why not?

tchrist

The problem was that I was still wearing shoes having just come in the house.

Normally I don’t wear shoes indoors (and with this snow, oughn’t) so I didn’t feel his foot under my own.

Cerberus

It will teach him to be more careful getting in your way...

tchrist

Maybe.

He is a purr-monster.

And chatty as all get-out.

Cerberus

I've never heard of a cat whose foot was permanently damaged by a human foot.

tchrist

He wasn’t, but I felt bad for him.

So he and his foster brother got a special Sunday dinner of a can of albacore tuna for human consumption, which they dined upon with relish and wild abandon.

Um, I don’t mean pickle relish.

Cerberus

02:51

Stupid irregular pronouns.

tchrist

It is regular, in a way.

Cerberus

How?

tchrist

No genitive pronoun takes an apostrophe.

Cerberus

Nor does it take -se, except whose.

tchrist

Yeah.

Mitch

02:53

@Cerberus why do you think it does?

tchrist

Funny how mine and thine oppose ours and theirs.

Probably OE vestiges.

Whether to use -n or -s for the genitive.

Cerberus

@Mitch In both cases, educated people in a comfortable situation would not blame one for what the other does.

tchrist

By person.

Cerberus

Does the n really come from a genitive suffix?

tchrist

You think it is an insert for next-word-with-vowel thing?

Cerberus

02:55

No...

It may very well be an adjectival suffix.

tchrist

Cerberus

Dutch has mij/mijn me/my, hij/zijn he/his (how did that happen?), du/dijn (archaic) thou/thine.

tchrist

Cerberus

Ah, zijn is probably because the h in he/etc. is from Proto-Indo-European s-.

tchrist

Cerberus

02:57

S- often becomes h- in Indo-European languages.

Yes, she is probably a similar...residue.

Mitch

@Cerberus hmmm...OK. But there's really nothing that corresponds with anti-semitism. Anti-slavism?

Cerberus

Dutch zij/haar "she/her", zij/hun "they/their".

tchrist

She is because they needed a new pronoun for Middle English once hē (“he”) and hēo (“she”) turned homophonous.

So they invented it.

Cerberus

@Mitch Why not? Every minority that is foreign or perceived as such has haters at some point.

tchrist

But notice the -n genitive use in 1s and 2s.

Cerberus

03:00

@tchrist They invented it, but based on what?

tchrist

No clue.

Cerberus

@tchrist My guess would be that the genitive is really based on a possessive adjective, as in Latin.

Mei/tui.

tchrist

For the love of Mike, the OED has a novel for the etymology of she.

Cerberus

Nice.

tchrist

> Etymology: Of difficult etymology; but prob. an altered form of the OE. fem. dem. pron. sío, séo, síe: see the dem. pron.

Cerberus

03:02

Ah! I knew it.

tchrist

It would appear that in some dialects of late OE. the diphthong in this word underwent a change of stress, the older pronunciations [siːo] and [siːe] being replaced by [sjoː] and [sjeː]. The latter of these variants is represented by the spelling sȝe of the 13th c.; and the phonetic development so far is exactly parallel to that of the OE. fem. pers. pron. hío, héo, híe (see heo), which in the 13th c. was pronounced in some dialects [hjoː], [hjeː], as is shown by the written forms ȝho, ȝhe. As the combination [sj] is acoustically close to [ʃ], and more difficult (according to English habits…

Mitch

@Cerberus Now it's my turn to say that's ridiculous. That's a false comparison.

tchrist

> It is also noteworthy that in OS. and OHG. the fem. pers. pron. nom. sing. was siu (mod.G. sie, Dutch zij), corresponding to OE. sío (the oblique cases, and the masc. and neut. in the sing., being f. the stems hi-, i-); and in OFris. se ‘she’ occurs beside hiu.

See, I said they had a novel.

Cerberus

In Dutch, for example, hun is the possessive adjective "their", but you can also use it in an old fashioned way substantively, as in het leven hunner, "the life of theirs", even though in modern Dutch hun leven is enough, "their life". That is probably also related to English of theirs instead of of them.

@Mitch Why?

@tchrist That's just...too long.

I am not Tolkien!

Mitch

Why do you think it is a good comparison?

Cerberus

03:06

The comparison of what to what, again?

tchrist

’Tisn’t it, though!

Cerberus

@Mitch When people dislike what the Israeli government is doing, that doesn't mean they will dislike their Jewish friends and neighbours, who live next to them instead of thousands of km away, and who are in almost every way indistinguishable from them. My Jewish friend is no different from my friend who has, say, a Polish grandfather. Heck, my grandfather was born in Indonesia.

Again, Jews here are also mostly opposed to what the Israeli government is doing.

Robusto

Today's practice Beef Wellington was a failure, but an absolutely delicious one. Too much kosher salt on the crust in a few spots, the potatoes were done too early, the green beans not sauteed enough, and the shallot-and-red-wine sauce was made too early and needed a more thorough reduction. All in all, though, I'm confident Thanksgiving will go well. The new oven is awesome, and the meat was done to a turn.

Cerberus

Haha.

As long as the meat was good, who cares?

The boot is just a fancy excuse to eat a teak.

Mitch

Sure. But if you're Jewish, sometimes hearing bad things about Israel sounds a lot like saying bad things about Jews.

Cerberus

03:11

Why?

Robusto

Thin skin.

Mitch

Because they've been connected by some people in the past.

Cerberus

Besides, even if that were so, that does not mean those saying the bad things dislike Jews.

Mitch

No it's not a totally logical connection.

but it's not unreasonable either.

Cerberus

@Mitch Well, about 1/3 of the (lesser educated) people here also comment on how much they hate the EU. Does that mean they hate all Europeans, including themselves?

Robusto

03:13

@Mitch The Israelis have a chip on their shoulder. Anytime someone criticizes anything Israel does, some people call it anti-Semitism. But it's not.

Mitch

I said it's not totally logical. It's much more reasonable a connection than your EU/European.

Cerberus

@Mitch I'm sorry, but I really don't like that attitude, accusing people of discrimination against an ethnic group because they don't like what a certain government is doing.

tchrist

Today I learned that my step-mother also acquired a new kitten to help with the healing. However, him she named after my father, which is somewhat unsettling.

Cerberus

@Mitch Why?

Robusto

Anyway, the U.S. is the biggest (some say only) supporter Israel has. Yet it is a one-way friendship.

Jonathan Pollard

Jonathan Jay Pollard (born August 7, 1954) is an American criminal convicted of passing classified information to Israel while working as a civilian intelligence analyst. He pleaded guilty and received a life sentence in 1987. Because his crime occurred prior to November 1, 1987, he is eligible for parole, and may be released on November 21, 2015. Israel granted Pollard citizenship in 1995, but denied until 1998 that it had bought classified information from him. Israeli activist groups, as well as high-profile Israeli politicians, have lobbied for his release. Israeli Prime Minister Be...

Mitch

03:15

@Robusto the immediate connection is unsettling, as you said a chip on their shoulder.

Robusto

USS Liberty (AGTR-5)

:This article deals with only the undisputed facts regarding USS Liberty. It does not attempt to describe the events of 8 June 1967, when it was attacked by the Israel Defense Forces. See the USS Liberty incident. {| |} USS Liberty (AGTR-5) was a Belmont-class technical research ship that was attacked by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during the 1967 Six-Day War. History A Victory Ship, her keel was laid down on 23 February 1945, as Simmons Victory, a Maritime Commission-type (VC2-S-AP3) hull, under a Maritime Commission contract at Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation of Portland, Oregon....

tchrist

A one-way friendship is a curious thing.

Robusto

Indeed.

tchrist

Perhaps we need a better word.

Robusto

Sponsorship?

Cerberus

03:16

@tchrist Hmm, well, some people deal with loss in unsettling ways. You know what my father did when our beloved family cat of 15 years died, of whom I still dream? He printed a photo of him, put it on cardboard, and placed a cut-out before the window. It's still there.

tchrist

Patronage.

Cerberus

@Robusto Naah it's not one way.

tchrist

@Cerberus I can’t look at pictures of the dead.

This is becoming a problem.

Mitch

@Cerberus Europeans didn't move to Europe and create a European government as a place to escape anti-europeanism.

Cerberus

@tchrist I have a hard time with it too, but after a while it becomes bearable.

Robusto

03:18

@Cerberus Tell me what the U.S. gets out of its relationship with Israel?

Cerberus

@Mitch So what?

tchrist

Intelligence reports?

Cerberus

@Robusto Well, not much, but they do love your government! By the way, I probably told you about how our government also loves Israel, somehow.

tchrist

Love is not the operative term here.

It is too flip.

Cerberus

It was meant to be...

tchrist

03:19

Carry on.

Mitch

@Cerberus That's the difference between your supposed Europe vs Israel analogy.

tchrist

Just FYI, my Old English pronomial declensions were from here.

And there’s your whose for ya.

It seems to have gained a terminal e.

Cerberus

@Mitch But that doesn't matter. Gays were also prosecuted in many places. Hitler killed lots. Are we then supposed to accuse people of homophobia who criticise e.g. a gay parade for being to tacky, or a gay organisation for being dictatorial? I consider such an accusation a witch hunt. It is completely unfair towards individuals, harmful to society, and intellectually faulty.

@tchrist For pronunciation, probably?

@Mitch By the way, I'm not saying you are personally accusing people of anti-Semitism that way. But you seem to be somewhat sympathetic towards it...?

Robusto

03:40

@Cerberus I agree. It is possible to dislike actions taken by a "protected" group without being a bigot.

Cerberus

Of course.

Besides, these aren't even actions taken by the group, but by a few people who happen to belong to that group.

It's intolerance battling intolerance...

Robusto

03:52

@tchrist Hwæt are you going on about now?

Cerberus

> Report: NSA-planted malware spans five continents, 50,000 computer networks
Danish media outlet NRC publishes yet another Snowden-leaked NSA slide.

First, that is old news; secondly, it's Dutch, not Danish.

And "media outlet" is a lazy phrase if what you should say is newspaper.

arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/11/…

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