English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

3:35 PM

He has six billion people to take care of and all he does is goofing off with one nun.

Not cool.

@RegDwigнt And I thought it's a custom around here to quote (self-made) when we write a sample sentence ourselves.

That is why people love God and hate the Church.

@RegDwigнt Yeah, the other nuns will get jealous.

@DamkerngT. and why would you think so? It is in precisely zero questions apart from this user's.

@DamkerngT. Morning.

3:35 PM

So I've mistaken the usage?

There is no such usage.

Not here, not anywhere.

@Cerberus Good evening.

@RegDwigнt Make that five nuns.

@RegDwigнt Ah, I'm glad to know that. Thank you.

> En una conversación que duró unos 15 minutos y que pudieron escuchar las cinco monjas -tres de nacionalidad argentina, una venezolana y una española- a través del manos libres del teléfono, el Papa Francisco se interesó por conocer cómo estaban y les trasladó un mensaje de ánimo y esperanza.

3:36 PM

Round parentheses mean it's still part of the quote.

@DamkerngT. That, too!

If you are adding something of your own, you should use square brackets. Or, you know, not add it to the quote in the first place.

The rest of his question is not inside the quote, either.

Now we know how to call a speakerphone in Spanish: el manos libres. Weird.

@tchrist unos 15 minutos = 15 minutes in total?

Hands free.

3:37 PM

@RegDwigнt Well, that's not entirely true.

@Cerberus “some 15 minutes” so ~15m

@Cerberus some, approximately.

Jinx.

Editorial notes can also be written in round brackets.

Yes, I imagine it’s the total. 3 minutes per monja.

@tchrist Ah, I see.

3:38 PM

@Cerberus if you sign them off with Ed.

The Spanish indefinite article can occur in the plural, and often does.

Come on, don't teach me, teach those other folks.

@RegDwigнt Yeah.

But also informally.

All I'm saying is we specifically told this specific user before, and he specifically ignores our advice.

I hadn't noticed that it was only his (until you said so). :-)

3:39 PM

That doesn't make me hope for him listening to our answers, either, does it?

Why is she a prioress and not a mother superior?

Is that the same thing?

Who cares. All are equal before God.

Amen.

She can call herself Filthy Whore if she so chooses.

You Protestant, you.

3:40 PM

@RegDwigнt Sure, sure.

@tchrist Not sure.

@tchrist the only Righteous Believer here, mon frère.

Priores, moeder-overste...

@RegDwigнt Oh, year? Which sect?

Why do you always bring sex into things?

@Cerberus the Orthodox Christians. The best sect of them all.

Russian or Greek or Georgian or Armenian or Assyrian...

Sparkling wine

Sparkling wine is a wine with significant levels of carbon dioxide in it making it fizzy. The carbon dioxide may result from natural fermentation, either in a bottle, as with the méthode champenoise, in a large tank designed to withstand the pressures involved (as in the Charmat process), or as a result of carbon dioxide injection. Sparkling wine is usually white or rosé but there are many examples of red sparkling wines such as Italian Brachetto and Australian sparkling Shiraz. The sweetness of sparkling wine can range from very dry "brut" styles to sweeter "doux" varieties. The clas...

3:42 PM

Americans have their stupid flag waving, we have our cross waving. So much better. So much cooler.

Flag waving?

Is that a ritual?

And when does the cross waving occur?

!!urban flagwaving

KitSox

@RegDwigнt flag waving a bunch of crazy high school girls trade in there pom poms for rifles and swords and flags and instead of cheering for male attention they wave flag, flips guns, and stab males with the swords, similarly any male participant is marked as eather french or gay or a video game god..it is rude to boo or for that matter lose in color guard...its essentially the same as ecstasy

@Cerberus When they stab you through the heart with it.

Hm.

That is not what I expected.

3:43 PM

Umm.

UD delivers again.

memidex.com/flag-waving+patriotic

> demonstrating exaggerated patriotism

Ah.

I once listed some research groups in a Wikipedia article, and some bozo rolled my edit back because of my "European flagwaving". Dumb bozo was dumb, but that's where I first heard the word.

Not my fault if the Americans are so preoccupied with flagwaving themselves that they had no time to throw research groups of their own into the mix.

I didn’t know that Europe had a flag, but if it did, a Russian would be amongst the last to wave it.

I had listed only some from Europe, Singapore, and Australia because that's all there is.

@tchrist yeah that was the adding-insult-to-injury part.

3:47 PM

@RegDwigнt Inferiority complex...

Hey I saw that ninja starring.

People we have ninjas among us.

@tchrist Oddly, the European flag is on most government buildings in the EU, although it is rarely used for anything else (outside Ukraine).

@RegDwigнt Ninja starring, misclick...whatever you want to call it.

@Cerberus Yeah it's ubitquitous here. And we are one tiny town in a tiny state in the middle of nowhere.

EnglishMaster

I wonder what you can buy with 62.17 Ruppee (which is equivalent to $1 dollar) in India.

Ten goats.

3:49 PM

Podunk, eh?

Yeah.

EnglishMaster

OMG! TEN GOATS?

No, it's actually quite nice. I don't want to talk it down at all.

Been living here for almost two decades, and it's probably one of the best places in the whole country.

@RegDwigнt I once read that it was more prevalent in certain countries, and why. I bet it is less frequent in England...

But it's still the middle of nowhere. And it's still no 10-million megapolis.

3:50 PM

Why one of the best places?

Because it's a melting pot of cultures and languages and even climates.

French and German?

@EnglishMaster You can have a personal servant for a week for about $10, from what I understand.

EnglishMaster

OMG

A typical European town hall: some local flags, EU, Belgium, Flanders, some other local flags.

3:52 PM

You can have anything here, and you can have it quick. You can go to a shopping mall, or you can go to a conservatory, or you can go to a meadow, or you can go to a forest. You can't pull that off in a major city, nor in a tiny village.

(That is Flanders, isn't it?)

@RegDwigнt That's nice.

Except the mall.

I'm sure you also have normal shopping streets?

But that's the thing. Some people like malls. But they only have meadows.

@Cerberus just the right amount. And in just the right distance from pretty much anywhere in the town.

Haha, OK, OK.

You could go to a LEGO brand store, and then you could feed Nile-River geese or watch some herons hunt in the wild. A three-minute walk.

And there are like 30 LEGO stores in all of Europe combined.

This place really is special.

And now I will make use of that and go get me some groceries. We have that here, too!

BBL

Bai.

3:59 PM

If I flew anything other than the American or Texas flag here I fear it would be defaced.

Well, @Cerberus, are you ready for all the WWI centennial shit that's coming your way this year?

@RegDwigнt Where the hell are the Lego stores in Holland? Where?? angry faces

@MετάEd Not if you're in Austin, probably.

@Cerberus You can get a day trip to Denmark, can't you?

@MετάEd What would people actyally do?

@Robusto We were neutral, so it's not big here. In France, on the other hand...

I'd love to fly something more universal like the UN or the UFP.

4:00 PM

@Robusto Or London, which is about 30 minutes by plane.

@Cerberus But you share a border with Belgium, so how can you avoid it.

By letting the Germans march through Belgium?

They didn't "let" the Germans march through Belgium, exactly. In fact, they resisted. To their peril.

We didn't!

@Cerberus True about Austin.

4:01 PM

We just didn't care, apparently.

We probably sold weapons to both sides, I wouldn't be surprised.

That should be the Dutch motto: "Invade us. We just don't care."

@Robusto. This mobile edition is brain damaged.

@MετάEd Que?

No, we were not invaded, as I said.

I misattributed. The mobile chat page does not support reply.

4:04 PM

Mais invalides, peut-etre? (Fuck the circumflex.)

@MετάEd Ah.

Yeah, the mobile version of chat leaves a lot of stuff out that I would consider essential.

But then, I understand the reasoning behind leaving it out.

You can use Team Viewer to chat on your home computer through your phone, works fairly well.

@Cerberus But if he was at home he could just use his home computer.

But when you are not at home, you can still use your home computer, on your phone.

Through TV.

Works well enough for me on 3G.

@Robusto I'll try the full suite. Unfortunately it scales very poorly.

Make the window smaller in Team Viewer.

4:07 PM

@MετάEd Yeah. The right rail invades the main content, so it kinda sucks.

But now I must leave you to your struggles.

Adieu!

Aug 2 '12 at 18:55, by Robusto

This is much adieu about nothing! Get going already.

Perhaps I shall visit you from Team Viewer on the train...

Is the scaling problem browser specific?

Possibly. Or possibly just device-specific, as in "works on tablets not on phones."

4:22 PM

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@tchrist We should get a pool going on what the poster's native tongue is.

I would go for Chinese, not sure why.

And in comes Our Man in Skane.

Here is sir's triple decaf mocha.

Enter The Fox, too.

@KitFox Took your sweet time about it. sips Hey, worth the wait!

And, yes, I didn't ever expect you to get the order right. Luckily I love surprises.

Damn. I was hoping that would add to the realism.

I should have spilled it in Sir's lap.

That would have been a deliberate affront, since you'd have to reach across the counter to do so.

4:35 PM

Nah, I'd bring it to sir's table.

Fucking autocorrect! Do you know how hard it is to edit on mobile?

I thought I'd stop in and say hey before I take my eldest to basketball and then a movie. I am feeling very irritable. I think it is cabin fever.

What the duck are you talking about?

seems like everyone I live with is up in my grill today.

grill or grll?

@Robusto your Russian colleague.

Now you're duck-typing @Reg?

4:39 PM

Uh...what?

i thought you were the one that had the story about how you knew when your Russian colleague was on mobile.

Maybe that was Reg.

@KitFox Nothing. Just riffing.

Or Kosmo.

Not sure if you missed what I meant by "duck" in the first place.

It's what my phone chooses to say when I type fuck.

Which is relevant to your comment.

About phones.

And autocomplete.

Yes. Thank you for treating me like an idiot.

Well, you asked for it. Next time just make a cleverer remark so I'll know you got it.

4:43 PM

@robust Well, Firefox beta is no better than Chrome.

I don't know what duck typing is. Is that like drunk dialing?

@MετάEd I know. That's why I don't add extra browsers to my phone.

!!wiki duck typing

KitSox

Duck typing

In computer programming with object-oriented programming languages, duck typing is a style of typing in which an object's methods and properties determine the valid semantics, rather than its inheritance from a particular class or implementation of a specific interface. The name of the concept refers to the duck test, attributed to James Whitcomb Riley (see history below), which may be phrased as follows: :When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck. In duck typing, one is concerned with just those aspects of an object th...

Oh. Huh. TIL.

Hey @Kitfox.

4:44 PM

Hiya!

I have to start the round up process. It's my eldest's first time going to the movies.

Turns out he's got a knack for shooting baskets, too.

Catch you later, homes.

Man, the friendlies on Raku Island sure are shitty drivers.

When an American says someone is an undatable guy, what exactly does she mean?

A guy who she would avoid dating with?

@DamkerngT. Pretty much. Not a good prospect for a relationship.

@Robusto Thank you.

5:19 PM

I feel like going through the last 40 questions today and adding a “hie thee to ELL” comment. They’re all just looking for a native speaker to proofread their NNS mutilized phrases.

+1 for mutilized. Nice portmanteau coinage.

@Robusto Why the Puck do people let their devices change what they’ve themselves typed??? I have never, never understood that. Might as well use a 300-baud modem with heavy line-noise.

I type what I mean and I mean what I type, and anything else smells worse than your tripe.

The new kittens do not approve of my piano-playing.

They retreat to the dungeons below whenever I play anything.

Which means I’ve finally figured out how to get them off my back when they won’t stop clambering all over me insisting on yet another can of wet food.

@tchrist Perhaps they're connoisseurs.

Q: Is 'she-woman' an acceptable counterpart of 'he-man'?

Today I opened the front door. The bold hunter immediate rushed out — and stopped on a dime, first confused by and then loudly complaining about the sudden winter wonderland outside after yesterday’s sunny upper 60s.

And if they don’t stop stepping on my return key before I’m done editing my line, I’ll be as bad the nimrods on the cell phones with auto-screwup enabled.

This isn’t going to go anywhere useful:

0

If this is, as it is, a real English example, I wanted to know what role his women played in persuading him that he was this incredible he-man. can this I wanted to know what role her men played in persuading hers that she was this incredible she-woman. be proper, too? If she-woman i...

word-usage

I still want NARQ back.

5:36 PM

@tchrist Obviously the answer is "She-Ra" is the opposite of "He-Man" . . .

Q: Which are the most reliable pronunciation guidelines?

I doubt that Xavier’s latest incarnation will last much longer than his previous ones. The same pattern obtains. He asks dumb questions that get downvoted and closed, and he ineffably bloviates in his comments.

Cha., I think that piece have been perfectly arranged to flummox the brain of people, like you, who received and read it, though. If any, respond with an expostulation. — Elberich Schneider 51 mins ago

What we need here is not expostulation but expustulation: excising the pustule.

I don't understand, but if Sam recognized that the person was a woman, why do you doubt that 'She' is incorrect? After all, 'He' and 'She' are the last barricade between males and females in the English language. — Elberich Schneider 5 hours ago

Sigh.

0

I know there are no completely consistent pronunciation rules in English, anyway as English language learner, I would like to have a set of guideline to use as fall-back when I am unsure on some words' pronunciation. Among all, the two most complete guidelines I found on the web are PronRules.pd...

pronunciation rules common-pronunciation received-pronunciation spelling-pronunciations

I suppose that suggesting the Youtube of Alexander Graham Bell’s first recording would be out of line.

He even names himself an ELL, so why didn’t he post that there? Still, we don’t do resource requests and recommendations. Too contentious and listy.

I only have two close votes left.

Then what shall I do, be productive or something?

@tchrist Whoa, take a deep breath and think about that for a minute before you do anything rash.

Q: Why do these verbs take bare infinitives?

I still have plenty of unspent delete votes. Does that count as productive?

@Cerb Today I learned a cool Greek synonym for Latin subterranean: catachthonian. Sure it makes sense when you think about it.

catachthonian [kætəkˈθəʊnɪan], a.

Etymology: f. Gr. καταχθόνιος subterranean, f. κατά down, under + χθόνιος of the ground, f. χθών ground + -ian.

 Subterranean.

1888 Rhys Hibbert Lect. 131 - Pluto..was always..a chthonian or catachthonian Zeus.

So catachˈthonic a.

1884 Athenæum 8 Mar. 314/3 - In the Takashima coal-mine..an underground, or, as he prefers to call it, a catachthonic observatory.

A “catachthonic observatory”: that’s what birders call those blinds they set up when trying to add Cerberi to their life-lists.

Should I (again!!) convert Lawler’s comments to this question into a CW answer? She’s unlikely to get a better response.

2

[a] It makes the tree grow. [b] I never heard him speak. I’m wondering why causative and sense verbs (make, hear) license bare infinitives for their complement, instead of taking to infinitives? What semantic difference is there between bare and to infinitives? I glimpse a clue that this ad...

infinitive bare-infinitive complement

@DamkerngT. I cannot read your username without thinking of some magical king fighting in the Nordics’ Twilight of the Gods. (dam ~ dweomer > dwimmer, demer (illusion, magic); kerng ~ könig / cyning / king)

6:17 PM

@tchrist Most of my German friends pronounce my name almost like the word Danke. :-)

I imagine! The stuff past the k probably all gets kinda lost.

So true! :)

The OED attests no word that ends in -rng.

So we don’t know what to do with it.

Reminds me of kerning, and yet not.

That [kerng] part sounds pretty much like [bert] in Robert, but as [k-er-ng] instead.

@tchrist The kern in kerning is close enough, just change n sound to ng sound (as in ring).

I understand the notion, but the position of the tongue for the r is hard to reconcile with the ng following.

6:22 PM

I understand. The /r/ sound is actually absent in my name, kinda like BrE.

Oh.

I was thinking it were [ˈdæɱkɚŋ].

So no [ɹ] at all?

@tchrist Nope. :)

What’s the vowel, a neutral schwa?

In Thai, we have a vowel that's really close to schwa, but a very bright one.

That's the vowel for the second syllable of my name.

There are higher “shwas”.

6:25 PM

It's this one: ɤ

Like the one in the second syllable of roses, for those who make a distinction between that word and Rosa’s.

[ɨ]

Close-mid back unrounded vowel

The close-mid back unrounded vowel, or high-mid back unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. Its symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is , called "ram's horns". It is distinct from the symbol for the voiced velar fricative, , which has a descender. The IPA prefers terms "close" and "open" for vowels, and the name of the article follows this. However, a large number of linguists, perhaps a majority, prefer the terms "high" and "low". Before the 1989 IPA Convention, the symbol for the close-mid back unrounded vowel was , sometimes called "baby ga...

“schwi” :)

I . . . see.

Very tricky when we have to write this vowel in English. :)

Well, you can’t.

6:27 PM

Most of us uses [er] for it.

I would not have had any idea.

But the IPA helps.

So with your help, here is my name in IPA: daɱkɤŋ

What’s the stressed vowel? Does it have any hint of nasalization, like in damp or especially dank?

Ah.

I use this IPA keyboard on occasion.

That makes more sense.

Is that the same a as in “Khan”?

Oh, this might be closer, because the second syllable is a long vowel: damkɤ:ŋ

@tchrist Yes

I know that my name is not quite easy to pronounce.

We’ll just call you Dom King.

King of the Doms.

6:32 PM

When my German friends said "thank you" (Danke) to each other, I turned my head to make sure if they called me every time. :)

heh

At least dom king is an improvement over damned king or dank king. :)

@tchrist I like that.

@tchrist Oh, not those ones.

I assume you I meant nothing improper.

But to my Hong Kong friends, they just call me Dennis.

I was thinking dominos not dominatrix.

6:33 PM

Hong Kong people usually have a English nick name.

That’s true.

I at first was bothered by this, and then after fighting my way through the impossibility of fitting so non-English a word as one encounters in the tonal languages into a normal English sentence, I relented and agreed.

And I'm sure you wouldn't want to try pronouncing my surname. :-)

Dennis is definitely easier on the tongue.

Are you in Hong Kong now?

You can call me Dennis too if you like.

No, I'm in Bangkok.

I see.

6:36 PM

But I used to work with many of them.

All names out of exotic old tales, those.

If you are interested in linguistics, my name has its root from Khmer.

Meaning: developed, growth, civilized, or noble

Bangkok and Marrakesh, Baghdad and Samarkand, Shangri-La and Tir-na Nog’th and Brigadoon.

:)

Exotic fabled cities of romance and mystery and magic.

6:41 PM

It sounds like you've been abroad.

Only on dress-up day. :)

But sure.

Mostly in Europe, with some Australia and South America. But in Asia, only to Korea and Japan.

Oh, I hope to visit Korea and Japan some day.

Never been there. Just Hong Kong and China.

Hong Kong has always seemed interesting. I have a bunch of friends who made a point of visiting there right before the handover/back.

Somehow I like Beijing more than Hong Kong.

But that was long time ago.

Because of the Internet, I don't have to travel much anymore. :)

Not to talk to people, that is true.

Why is your English so good?

I mean no offence. Sorry.

To the contrary.

6:46 PM

Oh, I think there is room to improve.

Always.

But I did an experiment with myself about a year and a half ago.

And it turned out to be way too good than I expected.

It enabled me to listen to movies and music without having to rely on subtitles.

So my English improved.

“Have you been abroad?” ~ “Have you ever been a broad?” as in a female person. :)

But, of course, there's always still room for improvement.

How did you do that?

6:48 PM

I tortured myself. Hehe.

Better thee than me. :)

For example, by trying to imitate Tom Cruise saying something weird such as I sleep up-side down suspended in a special bat-like harness

Maybe several hundred times. :-)

Harness. Hardness would be something else :)

Sorry, a typo.

By the way, please feel free to correct my English any time.

I want to improve myself.

Well, ok.

I try to go easy on most not-native speakers, with obvious exceptions.

6:51 PM

I think it depends.

It's different from one person to another.

Oh, I just see your profile!

Haha, I think I've read your books.

Sorry, sometimes I don't have a clue.

@DamkerngT. Thanks.

I'm not a good reader, because I just skim around most of the time.

I actually need to go off and hack on some code now.

But as far as I can remember, you books are good.

OK. See you soon.

One criticism in particular of Programming Perl is that some readers need access to an English dictionary to read through it. :)

6:57 PM

Not for me.

I think it's well written.

Did you read it in translation?

Nope.

I'm subscribed to Safari Online.

Oh good. Many of the translations are less well-done than I wish they were.

Oh wait, you’re Thai.

Yes.

That means you need good Unicode support.

The 4th edition has a whole chapter on it, although there’s always more to say.

6:58 PM

I think it's supported well enough, nowadays.

In Perl, yes.

In other languages, it depends.

Ah, yes, you're right.