English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

There’s always the stethoscope for starter, or stealthoscope unless it’s cold. Then they move head down the endoscopy for deep exploration, and if you need your head examined, there’s always a cranioscopy. And modulo the autoscopy, in the end it all bottoms out with a colonoscopy.

Cerberus

@tchrist Tsk.

How you manage to turn an innocent word like scope into something...

TRiG

@Cerberus Nothing is innocent when a determined pervert gets hold of it.

Cerberus

@TRiG Yay!

tchrist

The company we keep!

Cerberus

Well, our date was pretty tame.

It's so odd when people come out of the closet at 28.

tchrist

1:05 AM

Well, yeah.

The weirder ones are the one who don’t even come out to themselves till then.

Unfathomably numb.

TRiG

@Cerberus I've heard of people coming out at 60.

Johan Larsson

Are you gay tchrist?

tchrist

Different eras.

Cerberus

@tchrist Well, it kind of depends on the environment you are in.

tchrist

@JohanLarsson I’m not looking for a date, thank you, but if I am, I’ll let you know.

Cerberus

1:07 AM

He was a pretty involved frat boy.

Which is different from fraternities in your country, I think?

@TRiG Yeah that happens...I really wonder what that's like.

And whether it will still happen thirty years from now, at that age.

tchrist

@Cerberus I don’t know.

Cerberus

It is a really close-knit community, almost.

tchrist

They have those in Germany, too.

I forget what they’re called.

Cerberus

You live with a couple of guys in the same house for ages, even after your studies (which take longer here, generally).

I Germany, I think Bruderschaften?

TRiG

in Eschewmenical Blog Room, Apr 3 '12 at 22:27, by TRiG

(But what would I know? My main exposure to US fraternities is in the context of gay erotic fiction.)

tchrist

1:09 AM

@Cerberus Yes.

Cerberus

@TRiG Haha, that's a nice description.

@tchrist In Germany, they even have the Cut... shivers

tchrist

huh?

@TRiG Such an roundabout phrase for porn.

Johan Larsson

@tchrist is that a yes?

tchrist

@JohanLarsson I’m not very picky.

Except that I’m so picky, I never pick anyone. I consider myself retired.

TRiG

@tchrist Yes, but I did want to specify that I was thinking specifically of written porn, which is not most people's first idea when they see the word.

Cerberus

1:15 AM

@tchrist In certain German corpora, you have you accept a cut in your cheek, as a scar.

tchrist

I try not to let a person’s sex get in the way of how I treat them. I’m not always successful, but I try.

Cerberus

If you want to be a member.

tchrist

@Cerberus Oh, THOSE ones!

Cerberus

Yeah.

This does not exist in Holland.

Germans never get when a game is no longer a game.

tchrist

It probably started in Austria.

Cerberus

1:16 AM

Austria is Germany.

tchrist

ok

Cerberus

Just some recent subdivision.

tchrist

So is part of Belgium then.

Cerberus

The division between the Lower-German lands and Germany Proper is older, but we're still also kind of German—just don't tell people!

@tchrist Eupen and Malmedy?

tchrist

I don’t know them personally. :)

Cerberus

1:18 AM

They're small.

tchrist

So I hear.

Cerberus

Didn't they almost vote to make German the language of the United States?

I, for one, am glad that English won!

tchrist

“Forbidden to unite with Austria”?

What ever happened to self-determination?

Cerberus

Given over to France and England.

With good reason.

Austria was one of the world's most powerful states...

At least, it seemed very powerful then.

tchrist

Austro-Hungarian “Empire”.

Cerberus

1:22 AM

Yeah.

tchrist

Where everyone spoke Austro-Hungarian.

Cerberus

Before 1866, the same territory was just "Austria".

But Sissi liked the Hungarians, or something.

tchrist

I’ve got these Americans who can’t pronounce Prussia to save their lives. It’s driving me crazy.

Cerberus

Hmm.

It's like Russia, but with a P.

tchrist

Duh.

I keep telling them that.

It doesn’t stick.

There’s a town in Pennsylvania called King of Prussia that has been a recent topic of discussion.

And the execs keep calling it prooseeah.

Very annoying.

Cerberus

1:24 AM

Huh??

That's actually the name of a town?

tchrist

Believe you me, no one was more stunned than me at how they said it.

Cerberus

Oh, well.

than

tchrist

King of Prussia, Pennsylvania

King of Prussia is a census-designated place in Upper Merion Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States. As of the 2010 census, its population was 19,936. The community took its name in the 18th century from a local tavern named the King of Prussia Inn, which was named after Frederick II, King of Prussia. Like the rest of Montgomery County, King of Prussia continues to experience rapid development. The largest shopping mall in the United States in terms of space and size, the King of Prussia Mall, is located here. Also located here is the headquarters of the Nuclear Regulat...

Cerberus

(And might I suggest than I?)

tchrist

I didn’t want to finish the clause.

Cerberus

1:26 AM

Some people just can't pronounce stuff. It happens.

tchrist

Thing is, there is no longer a king of Prussia.

For that matter, there isn’t even a Prussia.

They should have chosen a more lasting name.

Like Queen of England.

TRiG

@tchrist When the tsar of Russia and the king of Prussia landed in the Phoenix in a big balloon ...

Cerberus

Is there no more Prussia?

Is it all Brandenburg, these days?

tchrist

No.

Prussia

Prussia (; Latin: Borussia, Prutenia; ; ; ; Old Prussian: Prūsa; ; ) was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg and centered on the region of Prussia. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organised and effective army. Prussia shaped the history of Germany, with its capital in Berlin after 1451. In 1871, German states united in creating the German Empire under Prussian leadership. In November 1918, the monarchies were abolished and the no...

Cerberus

> As part of their war aims the Western allies sought the abolition of Prussia. Stalin was initially content to retain the name, Russia having a different historical view of its neighbour and sometime former ally. In Law No. 46 of 25 February 1947 the Allied Control Council formally proclaimed the dissolution of Prussia.

Interesting.

tchrist

1:31 AM

Königsberg > Kaliningrad

Johan Larsson

Just walked the dogs, four deer were in our path, the old dog felt their scent from 100 m and pointed. He knows what's up so he came when I called him. Good thing puppy was busy with other things.

Cerberus

@tchrist I know.

@JohanLarsson Cool.

How's the snow in Sweden?

I read that Central Europe is buried in it...

Johan Larsson

not much, 10 cm

tchrist

Here the snow is relentless.

Cerberus

Ah OK.

It was 7 degrees here...

4 now.

tchrist

1:33 AM

Ten inches since yesterday. Had six inches earlier in the week.

Cerberus

This winter has been especially mild to us.

tchrist

How quaint. We have 13.

Cerberus

We had some -2 earlier this week.

@tchrist Which scale? F?

Johan Larsson

+1 here

Cerberus

Must be, if the snow is not melting...

tchrist

1:33 AM

Of course.

Cerberus

That's fairly cold. About the same as what we had on Wodan's day.

@JohanLarsson Now, or in the afternoon?

tchrist

It is fairly cold.

During the day it got up to 20.

And Lorin would spend just HOURS lurking under the giant rock beneath the birdfeeder.

I kept going out to make sure he was ok.

He just glared at me for giving away his hiding place.

Cerberus

I'm sure he was.

Haha.

tchrist

Randy comes in quite quickly, spending no more than 5 minutes in the snowstorm.

But Lorin can stay out in the snow for hours.

Cerberus

Oh, there is s storm?

tchrist

1:35 AM

I guess if he got too cold, he would come in.

Ten inches of snow do not just grow from the ground up.

Except that they do.

But if it snows, it is called a snow storm is it not?

At least when you get a foot in a day and a night or whatever it’s been. And cold.

It’s been snowing off and on, today more on than off, since Thursday afternoon.

It does not diminish Lorin’s caterwauling to go outside.

I finally taught him about the cat door.

Got tired of him tearing up the house like a female in heat, howling and crazy.

He just wanted to get at the birds who had come for food in the snow.

Cerberus

@tchrist I would expect lots of wind. No wind, no storm.

tchrist

I think my kittens are gay.

@Cerberus Couldn’t see a hundred yards sometimes, though.

Cerberus

@tchrist Haha cute!

@tchrist Still, if it drops straight down...

tchrist

They sleep in each other’s arms still, they rough-house like randy tomboys, and they groom each other constantly.

Cerberus

I do believe we share the same intuitive sense of the meaning of this ur-German word...

tchrist

1:40 AM

On both ends.

Cerberus

That's normal.

tchrist

I’ve never had cats that were close like this.

Cerberus

My date tonight told me he French-kissed some of his straight friends.

tchrist

But these ones were itty bitty when they met, and have been together ever since. It is as though they were littermates.

@Cerberus Hm.

Cerberus

It was normal. Had he refused to do so, it would have been suspicious, even!

tchrist

1:41 AM

Disbelieve.

Johan Larsson

@Cerberus now 02:40

tchrist

Or disunderstand.

Cerberus

No, I have heard this story before.

It is like...exploring boundaries.

Being "man enough" to do weird things.

@JohanLarsson Ah, OK.

tchrist

Kids are weird these days.

Cerberus

Yeah.

tchrist

1:43 AM

Sounds like some youtube frat thing.

Cerberus

Umm.

Johan Larsson

I thought gay-dating was very ~effective~

dunno why

Cerberus

Haha.

What is that supposed to mean...

Many guys are just as reserved as girls.

Gay and straight.

tchrist

Not sure that’s completely true.

Especially about the girls. :)

Cerberus

Heh.

tchrist

1:50 AM

@JohanLarsson Well, there’s dating and there’s hooking up at some bar/pub/club/whatever. And not always a clear difference.

Cerberus

Yeah.

People can be reserved on any occasion, but especially on an actual date.

tchrist

Exactly.

Johan Larsson

I guess it was only I who was effective

don't miss dating though

Cerberus

@JohanLarsson Ahh were you so effective?

I do not doubt it, of course.

Johan Larsson

pretty good book

Cerberus

1:57 AM

Although effectiveness depends on one's goals.

My goal is often not to score.

If I may express it so vulgarly.

Johan Larsson

you may, time to sleep now though

nite sirs

Cerberus

Heh.

Nite!

tchrist

Back so soon?

TRiG

> I often use Shakespeare's quote in my talks: 'To thine own self be true so to no man can thoust ever be false again'.

Quote?

tchrist

What’s thoust?

TRiG

2:02 AM

@tchrist Blessed if I know.

Cerberus

Odd.

There can be no reason for the -st.

Some weird kind of hypercorrect archaism?

tchrist

I know what Mithrandir would say about that “ ‘quote’ ”: Perilous to us all are the devices of an art deeper than we possess ourselves.

3

Cerberus

Haha.

Quite so.

I wish to say this to all those who use big words where they shouldn't.

tchrist

I work for somebody who’s constantly mangling expressions and words.

Cerberus

How unfortunate.

tchrist

2:07 AM

A couple of us have a running snigger about it. We need to keep notes, and publish them. They are just hilarious sometimes.

Sometimes his usage spreads, and it bugs me.

TRiG

@Cerberus Well, there is an -st elsewhere in that quote. Conor Cusack is simply attaching it to the wrong word.

tchrist

Like saying associated to instead of associated with.

Well, it should be canst thou.

Cerberus

@TRiG Oh, "simply".

tchrist

The -st seems to have been a bit late getting out.

TRiG

@Cerberus Well, if you have no idea what the grammar actually means, and are relying on an imperfect memory, I suppose it's an easy mistake to make.

tchrist

2:10 AM

Who would say something they had no idea what actually means?

Speak Ænglisc, damn it!

Robusto

@Cerberus You are indefatigable in your fight against sesquipedalianism.

tchrist

He’s been on a reducing diet.

And surely you can do better than fight!

Robusto

I know.

I forgot that noun.

Anyway, too late to stick in counterinsurgency or something like it.

tchrist

Crusade oder Blitzkreig: your choice.

Cerberus

@TRiG I don't know...you also have to lack an ear for language, I would say...

tchrist

2:14 AM

I believe crusade would be nice.

Cerberus

@Robusto At all times.

I like monosyllables.

Oops!

tchrist

It is not that hard to say each thing you say with just one group of sounds per word.

Bit it will make you sound like a dunce.

Cerberus

Quite.

Robusto

@Cerberus I like short words and I can't not lie.

tchrist

There are times, though, when you will find that you have to go a bit out of your way to find just the mot just that will still fit in the bounds you have set.

Robusto

2:18 AM

The mot juste?

tchrist

au jus

I was afraid you would accuse me of two syllables. :)

Robusto

@JohanLarsson "To be fair, there are some good insights, but they are buried in lots of `water' and structure less presentation. The points that author wants to emphasize appear in bold. Instead of bolding important things out, how about refactoring this book from 500+ pages to 200?"

tchrist

Wah.

Robusto

@tchrist I would never accuse you of hypersyllabification.

tchrist

It would have been bi not poly, but still.

Cerberus

2:20 AM

@Robusto I know. Shorty.

tchrist

Shore tea

Robusto

shore tea => eat horse => sore heat => hate rose

etc.

tchrist

It has all the good letters, and none of the bad ones.

Robusto

Yes.

Well, not all the good letters. i and l and n are good ones.

tchrist

When winter first begins to bite
     and stones crack in the frosty night,
when pools are black and trees are bare,
     ’tis evil in the Wild to fare.

I think a speaker of Ænglisc a millennium past could have sussed out the meaning of that verse.

It has scant to no Latinate embellishments.

Robusto

2:25 AM

I'm not so sure. Maybe a really smart one.

tchrist

Well, the GVS would have screwed him over listening to it. But the words, the words are old words. Words of flint.

Robusto

Hwílum hára scóc forst of feaxe

tchrist

And the first part would not have rhymed for him.

What’s the last word?

He didn’t used to shake out the foxes from the forest.

What’s the last word?

Robusto

bosworth.ff.cuni.cz/finder/3/feaxe

tchrist

Hm. I can think of nothing that’s come of that.

Robusto

2:30 AM

Also, I can't recall y being used in an ending. They'd have used ig and pronounced it the same.

@tchrist Sometimes shook the hoar-frost from his hair. Or something like that.

tchrist

He would have used fyrstiᵹ.

Whilom formally meant at whiles then?

Rather than just erstwhile?

Robusto

Close. The meaning has changed, obviously.

Of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, how come we never read much about the Jutes unless we're calling them Danes?

tchrist

Didn’t the Jutes give us the Danelaw?

Or was that a later invasion?

Robusto

The Jutes were assimilated, sometimes exterminated.

They gave us the word gavelkind though, I am told.

tchrist

> By the 5th century the Romano-Celts had broke up into separate kingdoms but a single leader called the Superbus tyrannus had emerged. At that time and possibly earlier they were hiring Germanic peoples as mercenaries. According to tradition the Superbus tyrannus brought Jutes to protect his realm from Scots (from Northern Ireland) and Picts (from Scotland).

The Danes were later, apparently.

It’s still weird to think of my ancestry as being about half Dane and half English.

Like those are all that different.

No Celtic part of Britain, mine.

Robusto

2:40 AM

I presume Tom is the English part?

tchrist

Sure.

First ancestor, Thomas Halsey.

On these hither shores.

1600 and wee.

1641? Something like that.

From Hertfordshire.

We traced my mother’s father’s ancestry, and could not find a single non-English ancestor. Strange.

Robusto

And I, believe it or not, come in part from one of the remote tendrils of the Hohenzollern family.

tchrist

Whereas my father’s father was the first of his family born here. His older sisters were born in Denmark.

Old blood, new blood.

Robusto

My great-great grandfather, family lore has it, was forced to emigrate because of his morganatic marriage. But contrary lore has it that he did not want to be involved in the Franco-Prussian war. Either way, he came to America.

Me, I kinda like the draft-dodging version.

tchrist

Sounds saner.

On the distaff side there is a bit of French through my mother’s mother and a bit of German through my father’s.

Robusto

2:46 AM

Mine's German, Austrian, Hungarian, and a country to be named later (but probably Poland or Bohemia).

tchrist

You’re further east than me.

I think I work out to bit over half English.

Robusto

Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria

The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria was a crownland of the Habsburg Monarchy, the Austrian Empire, and Austria–Hungary from 1772 to 1918 (see Cisleithania). This historical region in Eastern Europe is divided today between Poland and Ukraine. The nucleus of historic Galicia consists of the modern Lviv, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk regions of western Ukraine. Name *; *; *; *, transliterated: Korolivstvo Halychyny i Lodomeriï z velykym knyazivstvom Krakivskym i knyazivstvamy Osventsyma i Zatoru * History In 1772, Galicia was the largest part of the area annexed by the Austrian Emp...

I guess that's it.

tchrist

Funny when country names repeat.

Well, or city names, but we know why every country has its own Alexandria.

Robusto

Pretty much.

Sekundar was a title of respect in Afghanistan. Maybe still is.

tchrist

I believe so.

Mothers still name their sons Alex.

Robusto

2:49 AM

Don't tell @Reg that.

tchrist

Time to sleep.

Heh. :)

Robusto

Sleep? Before 8:00 p.m.? It ain't sivellized.

tchrist

I just wish they would stop naming their daughters Alix instead of Alice.

I get up way early, 4 or 5.

Just do.

It’s how I was made.

I wouldn’t fucking choose to be this way, believe me.

Robusto

@tchrist I like Alicia. I think Alicia Keyes is a very good name for a musician.

@tchrist Hú hefig geoc he beslépte on ealle (Pun on slǽpan there, as you no doubt will catch.)

tchrist

All I know is that my eyelids keep slipping down to halfmast.

I refuse to fall asleep in my chair.

Robusto

2:56 AM

Laters then.

@Cerberus "The real problem in speech is not precise language. The problem is clear language." —Richard Feynman

Cerberus

@Robusto Now I'm going to ask, what's the difference?

"Clear" is more oriented towards a goal.

Namely, comprehension.

Robusto

@Cerberus "The desire is to have the idea clearly communicated to the other person. It is only necessary to be precise when there is some doubt as to the meaning of a phrase, and then the precision should be put in the place where the doubt exists. It is really quite impossible to say anything with absolute precision, unless that thing is so abstracted from the real world as to not represent any real thing."

Cerberus

Ah, yes.

I agree 100 %.

Not only does excessive precision sometimes cause information overload and hence confusion, but it is also a major cause of ugliness.

Sometimes.

Robusto

@Cerberus Often. The problem stems from the fact that languages are inherently imprecise and plagued by overloading and ambiguity.

So very often attempts to make language precise simply make it opaque.

Cerberus

That is paradoxically true.

Or, let us say, 50 % of the time it is as you say; the other 50 % of the time, it is the other way around.

I.e. some additional precision makes language clearer 50 % of the time.

Robusto

3:08 AM

But even in the act of dividing it into half wheat and half chaff, you are unconsciously guilty of not recognizing that we are not talking about binary states here. Statements can be varying degrees of true and untrue, and sometimes can be true and untrue at the same time.

Cerberus

I suppose...

But most of the time my main complaint tends to be that a text is not precise enough, rather than too precise. But both things, happen, yes, and sometimes at the same time.

Robusto

Take the statement "Christopher Columbus discovered America." It is as precise as one can make it, and it has an element of truth in it, but it is certainly not true in any absolute sense—the Vikings are known to have visited North America hundreds of years before him, and the Native American peoples thousands of years before that. Yet the statement is 100% accurate within the scope of the convention in which it is usually uttered.

Cerberus

4:14 AM

@Robusto I cannot find anything to disagree with in your line.

Johan Larsson

7:58 AM

@Robusto ok I have not finished it, adding fluff to books is pretty common. Have you read it?

@Cerberus I think I tried but it takes two.

Robusto

12:47 PM

@JohanLarsson No. I've thumbed through it and decided there wasn't enough there to make me want to read it.

Johan Larsson

looks like you are right

Johan Larsson

1:00 PM

you have any suggestions for good ones? Tech and non-tech.

tchrist

1:41 PM

I’ve just noticed that Barahir’s wife was known by the sobriquet of “the Manhearted”. At last so desperate was the case of Barahir that Emeldir the Manhearted his wife (whose mind was rather to fight beside her son and her husband than to flee) gathered together all the women and children that were left, and gave arms to those that would bear them; and she led them into the mountains that lay behind, and so by perilous paths, until they came at last with loss and misery to Brethil.

I think she must have been an Emma.

Will we ever escape the sexism of boys and girls, that we should have manhearted women or tomboy girls at all, let alone that this is automatically a good thing, while swapping all sexes around in such constructions leads to negative connotations?

Or is that an epithet not a sobriquet? Is there any difference? I’m thinking not only of Homeric epithets like the rosy-fingered dawn/Aurora or fleet-footed Achilles, but also of those of more recent vintage like William the Conqueror or Erik the Red or Peter the Great.

And when does it become a nickname? Once it’s lost the first part of the name, like when Barrie the Bruiser becomes simply Bruiser even in the vocative?

Questions I have for you channellers, but answers come not swiftly if at all.

Johan Larsson

too advanced for me :)

tchrist

1:58 PM

Notice how I rearranged SVO to OSV in the first clause to create a parallelism there between the two independent clauses that would not have otherwise existed.

Plus it puts the most important word at the front of the sentence, right where it belongs.

Do you ever have occasion to do that in Swedish?

Perhaps that is anastrophe or hyperbaton.

It’s his fault, I fear.

> ‘Helms too they chose’ is archaic. Some (wrongly) class it as an ‘inversion’, since normal order is ‘They also chose helmets’ or ‘they chose helmets too’. (Real mod. E. ‘They also picked out some helmets and round shields’.)

> But this is not normal order, and if mod. E. has lost the trick of putting a word desired to emphasize (for pictorial, emotional or logical reasons) into prominent first place, without addition of a lot of little ‘empty’ words (as the Chinese say), so much the worse for it.

It appears that apostrophe is our only -strophe tag, and I’m sure that one gets used for trivial matters of punctilious points of proper punctuation and not for rhetorical devices.

In contrast, while they do not exactly abound, nonetheless we do not lack for hyper- tags, having all of hyperbaton, hyperbole, hypercorrection, and hypernyms.

I guess that means that it must be hyperbaton not anastrophe. :)

Johan Larsson

2:18 PM

@tchrist not sure, I'll have to read it a couple of times :D

going down to work now, afk for 15'

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…