@Robusto I rather like how the page header chosen for that site is one whose top-of-page headword is searu-cræft. Surely this can be no coincidence. :)

And still people wonder why we analyse were as past subjunctive in English hypotheticals! (@Cerberus please note)

It always was such, and as the most commonly used verb, it retained its special inflection where all others lost it.

There can be no other answer viewed diachronically.

And the synchronic people are just makin’ stuff up.

And by stuff, I mean the other word.

@tchrist Japanese does it all the time, if you consider noun/subject to be the most important word.

@tchrist Heh, yeah. And now it makes me wonder about Tolkien's use of Saruman for his evil wizard.

It’s like how I don’t view strong verbs as “irregulars”. They just follow a different pattern. English sing / sang / sung and drink / drank / drunk / drunken, or Spanish conducir : present conduzco not conduzo* / conduces / conduce (whence conduzcas etc in pr. subj.), pret **conduje not *conducí (whence condujese in imp subj) are only irregular verbs if you admit only one regular pattern, to verbal conjugation and disregard all notion of strong verbs from PIE on down.

@JohanLarsson I'd just look for blogs on the subject. The point is, I think, domain-driven modeling should start at the database, not the application layer.

@Robusto There was no question. He did it explicitly, and said it simply meant searu-man from OE.

I failed ^

@tchrist I did not know that. But I ought to have suspected it.

Orthanc, too, although he backfitted it.

Linguists could study TLotR as much as they do Finnegans Wake—and probably have.

@Robusto ok, I'll read the dragon book instead

> According to Tolkien, its name is both Sindarin for "Mount Fang", and Rohirric for "Cunning Mind". The latter is more likely to be its real meaning, as the word Orthanc is a real Old English word (Old English being the linguistic basis for Rohirric); the Sindarin name being no more than a poetic coincidence. In Old English, Orþanc means "cunning device", but Tolkien has said this is merely a coincidence.

will probably finish the ddd book in a Lutheran sense of duty

How Minnesotan of you!

Minnesota is where many Swedes immigrated to right?

Yes, although from your perspective, I might say that they emigrated to Minnesota whereas from mine, that they immigrated there.

And Wisconsin.

yep you are correct :)

Take and bring.

Teach and learn.

Come and go.

Comprise and compose.

yes

People always befuddle the polarities.

I like that even in Christian times, people were naming their daughters after pagan magica; Ælfgifu ("elf gift"), for example.

Also Ælfflæd ("elf fleece" [hair?])

@tchrist "But the sustenance of the wilderness / does not sustain us in the metropoles."

You really ought to get into Wallace Stevens, if you haven't already. I think the music of his poetry would appeal to you.

                 The centuries of excellence to be
Rose out of promise and became the sooth
Of trombones floating in the trees

See also Peter Quince at the Clavier, etc.

That was the 35th answer I ever gave on EL&U.

@tchrist Yes, the problem is that some linguists refuse to consider diachronic connections.

@tchrist The linguists here frown on rhetoric as a proper subject for EL&U, but I disagree with them. What is rhetoric but a form of usage meant to persuade?

The same applies to connections with other languages. They want isolate English, for some reason.

@Robusto They already have Linguistics.

@Cerberus Having promoted themselves as descriptivists about language, they then proceed to be descriptivist about everything else.

@Cerberus Apparently that's not enough for them.

When all you have is a grammar, everything looks like a nail.

You mean they proceed to prescribe how we are to use our terminology and the extent to which stylistic advice is allowed.

@Cerberus Something like that.

Hah.

I see what you did there.

I thought it wasn't bad.

But I'm not RegDwight, so it won't get called out for special attention.

Shit, earlier I meant to say: "Having promoted themselves as descriptivists about language, they then proceed to be prescriptivist about everything else.

facepalm

Typing is hard.

Ah!

I thought you were being rather tame.

I actually expected you to say prescriptivist there, but it didn't come.

So I had to supply it.

Yeah. The way the sentence is constructed, people would probably read it as prescriptivist anyway. But it galls me that I missed that.

But seriously, so many questions are asked about the grammatical correctness of word order (and other things) which could be definitively answered by reference to rhetorical devices, and are not about grammar at all. Do we even have a style tag? I must check.

We have exactly 229 questions in the writing-style tag and 107 in style.

I think the tags could be applied to at least an order of magnitude more questions.

Yes.

Although "style" can be interpreted narrowly or broadly.

So can many things. The point is, "grammar" is being applied too broadly as it is.

I am so farting tired of all the lazy and desperate NNSes coming here with their homework problems or their résumé and asking “Is this grammatically correct?”—basically no research, no effort, nothing more than trying to yank the ear of a native speaker to proofread their garble for them—that in my ire I woud see them all burninated forever. ELL is too good for these lazy assholes. There are literally billions of them waiting to drown us in miserable crap. And by literally, I do mean literally.

.

(Mithrandir was here.)

The numeric keypad has a “.” right next to “enter”, and the kittenpad and the keypad collide in random gibberish.

There he did it again.

No hope for it I fear.

@tchrist Well, "literally" if you use billion in the AmE sense (which I naturally assume you do). But Brits might take issue.

@Robusto Only dead ones.

The Economist still refers to "thousand million" IIRC. At least in the UK versions.

Really?

I am virtually certain they do not rewrite their articles for the locals.

The same English goes out everywhere.

I'll have to look again. I have this week's on the breakfast table downstairs. But I seem to recall Americanized spellings when I would have expected British ones.

Use m for million, but spell out billion, except in charts, where bn is permissible but not obligatory. Thus: 8m, £8m, 8 billion, €8 billion. A billion is a thousand million, a trillion a thousand billion, a quadrillion a thousand trillion.

Mine didn’t show up yesterday. I don’t know why.

But they surely do not use American spellings.

Ever.

@tchrist But some people enjoy answering those questions.

@tchrist Such a modest autograph!

Pretty sure that if you find one where you think they have, then you have mistaken a normal British variant for a strictly American one.

@tchrist I have a paperclip in my mind about that, so I'm sure I must have seen it and thought it remarkable.

Do please show me if you dig it up.

I find counterexamples all the time.

I wish mine had come yesterday. It gives me something to read in bed Saturday night or laze around Sunday morning.

I think milliard is exceedingly rare now in Britain.

Anyway, I know I've seen them explain "thousand million" when saying billion.

In the quote from their style guide above, they do precisely that.

In Dutch, it is thousand, million, milliard, billion.

Yes, but Dutch you said is dying.

Not quite.

By the milliard.

Perhaps if you skippèd it, it might last longer.

Maybe in a couple of centuries, but no sooner.

I'm already skippìng Dutch in this room.

Anyway, counting by * 1000 for million, billion, trillion is simply an easier nomenclature. It gives names to numerical milestones that actual humans can experience. Once you get above quadrillions, it's probably best to use scientific notation anyway.

The Economist 2011-11-30: “Who wants to be a milliardaire?”

Ah, I didn't know Britain went over as early as 1974.

Obviously they did it while I wasn't looking.

Heh.

Yes, milliard has sadly been abandoned by most Britons a while ago.

macbook# units megabyte gigabyte
	* 0.0009765625
	/ 1024
macbook# units gigabyte terabyte
	* 0.0009765625
	/ 1024
macbook# units terabyte petabyte
	* 0.0009765625
	/ 1024
macbook# units petabyte exabyte
	* 0.0009765625
	/ 1024

@Robusto Yes, I have thought about this. At least from billion up, it makes sense.

A petabyte is also the hate-mail email you get from those animal-rights people.

Hah.

A milliard mallards. That's a lotta duck typing.

@tchrist That's a yotta hate mail.

So in Dutch I think it is duizend, miljoen, miljard, biljoen, biljard.

macbook# units petabyte yottabyte
	* 9.3132257e-10
	/ 1.0737418e+09

So it is the same as in American/English, but each bi/tri/quadri- step has a -jard step in between.

@Cerberus That sounds like an English euphemism for something terrible.

@Cerberus In the jardin?

Haha.

macbook# grep milliard /usr/share/misc/units.lib
Exit 1

If you are a mathematician, perhaps large numbers are like a garden to you.

Like cutting in line. Or putting a just nearly empty milk carton back in the fridge.

Units knows no milliards, you knows.

@Mitch The accent was not mine!

@Cerberus No. they are like weeds.

Oh, yeah?

The physicists are the ones who deal in actual numbers.

Then what are the flowers?

@Cerberus Even with -sexuals? :)

You really shouldn’t do that stuff in the yard, you know.

@Robusto The first version makes you think more. So subtle!

So really 'billiards' is a number not a game?

"For those who want some proof that physicists are human, the proof is in the idiocy of all the different units which they use for measuring energy."—Richard Feynman

@Mitch All games are basically numbers, aren't they?

Dutch: monosexual, monosexujard, bisexual, bisexujard, trisexual, trisexujard, quadrisexual, quadrisexujard, . . .

@Robusto The only English spelling I've ever seen in the Economist is 'ageing'. no 'ou' ever.

Wait, did I Greek the first one?

@Robusto Touche.

Tsk.

Hmm, I wonder if jardin and "yard" are etymologically related.

Unisexual, unisexujard.

@Robusto Must be.

From the old gard, so to speak. :)

@tchrist Oh. That's a euphemism for filling out the crossword puzzle in the dentist's waiting room copy of the newspaper.

Yeah. Etymonline lists yard: "ground around a house," Old English geard "enclosure, garden, court, house, yard,"

Oh my word.

@tchrist We'd need more sexes first. Increase M, if you know your economics.

Brace yourselves.

> OE. ᵹeard str. masc. fence, dwelling, house, region = OS. gard enclosure, field, dwelling, MDutch, Dutch gaard garden, OHG. gart circle, ring, ONor. garðr garth, (Sw. gaård yard, Da. gard yard, farm), Goth. gards house, with corresp. wk. forms OFris. garda garden, OS. gardo, OHG. garto (MHG. garte, G. garten) garden, Goth. garda enclosure, stall. (OE. ᵹeard is the second element of middanᵹeard middenerd, ortᵹeard orchard, wínᵹeard winyard.)

@tchrist That would be sexueel.

Erdgurdel

But we really need a French etymology for jardin now.

> The ulterior relations of these words are uncertain. Close affinity of sense is exhibited by the words derived from the Teut. root gerd-: gard-: gurd-, represented by gird v. (OE. gyrdan, OHG. gurten, ONor. gyrða) and girth sb. (ONor. gjo̧rð, Goth. gairda), and those derived from an Indo-European root ghort-, viz. Gr. χόρτος farm-yard, feeding-place, food, fodder, L. hortus garden, co-hors enclosure, yard, pen for cattle and poultry, . . .

> . . . cohort, court, OIr. gort cornfield; but there are phonological difficulties in the way of equating both groups of words. (OSl. gradŭ enclosure, town, Russ. grad, gorod town, as in Petrograd, Novgorod, Lith. gàrdas hurdle, fold, are prob. borrowed from Teutonic.)

@Robusto They are, I believe.

> ES jardín: Del fr. jardin, dim. del fr. ant. jart, huerto, y este del franco *gard, cercado; cf. a. al. ant. gart, corro, ingl. yard, patio).

> [a. ONF. gardin (Central F. jardin):—pop. L. *gardWn-um, f. *gard-um (OF. gard, gart, jart, garden) a. Teut. *gardo-z (Goth. gard-s, OHG. gart, OS. gard, OE. ¼eard, ON. garð-r, enclosure: see garth and yard). The Teut. langs. have also a wk. form, with the special sense ‘garden’: OFris. garda, OS. gardo (Du. gaarde), OHG. garto (MHG. garte, mod.G. garten). Cf. Pr. gardi, jardi, jerzi, and jardina fem. (also Sp. jardin, Pg. jardim, It. giardino, which appear to be adoptions from Fr. or Pr.).]

(OED)

OK, works for me.

Where ES huerto < L. hortus.

Once you are familiar with PIE, all the European words mean pretty much the same thing anyway, just different pronunciations.

@tchrist So I don't know where you got this, but what it must means "the ulterior etymology beyond Teutonic *gardo-z".

So Old French jart was a garden/hortus.

There's only one word in proto-World. All vocabulary comes from pronouncing it funny.

@tchrist So hortatory refers to encouraging one's garden? ^)^

And they got it from Frankish *gard.

Horatatory is from hortor, "to encourage, coerce".

Which it in turn was once a gart, an enclosure or corral, or “patio” in English. Say what?

@Cerberus OED yard etymological note.

I think the word hortor is related to hortus, as in to drive cattle into an enclosed garden. Not entirely sure.

@Cerberus Yes. But you can't force plants to grow. You can only encourage them.

@Cerberus How very pecunious of you!

@Robusto What about forced narcissus for Easter?

Ah, but I imagine older gardens to be about animals, not plants. One uses fields for edible plants.

@Cerberus Acker.

@Cerberus And for abstract algebra.

@tchrist Wanna trade a woman for a sheep?

@Robusto Exactly! The old IE word.

@Cerberus Depends on the woman. And the sheep.

@Cerberus Which way?

Ager in Latin.

Whence we get agriculture.

agricola

@tchrist I'll take the sheep, it should fetch a higher price at the market.

Agricola: the agreeable cola.

Agricola is a cough drop for farmers.

Indeed.

Colo = "to cultivate".

As opposed to cola, tail, ass.

So your colon cultivates your feces?

And -a (masc.) is an interesting suffix.

Or culo.

@Cerberus Always Greek.

Not sure that's related, colon sounds Greek.

@tchrist Is it?

Does -cola come from Greek, despite Latin colo? And sacrilega? Parricida?

Or does fecal matter colonize your colon?

@Cerberus Assuming you mean nom masc sg not nom neut pl.

I think so.

I think it is an actual old Latin suffix, but I'd have to look it up.

Hm.

> parrĭcīda (pārĭcīda; old collat. form of the nom. sing. PARICIDAS, Fragm. XII. Tab. ap. Fest. s. v. parrici, p. 221 Müll.), ae, comm.

Note though that ES cola < VL coda < L cauda. It is not a weirdness on colere/colo.

Then the question is, where does -as come from? It is again formally and functionally identical to a Greek suffix...

@Cerberus Hm. Maybe.

@tchrist Cola sounds like a diminutive?

(I can't find sacrilega, by the way. I thought a word like that existed.)

@tchrist Mmmmm... Coca Cola

@Cerberus No, just a normal caudal outgrowth.

But etymologically, I mean.

Colita is the diminutive.

Just like distil and stellar.

Or culito. :)

The character Trinculo from The Tempest must have had three buttocks, yes?

@tchrist Yes, in modern Spanish.

@Robusto Duh.

A colita is a short queue or tail or line, whereas a culito is a cute little tush.

That's why he was part of the comic relief.

(Note also old Roman male names like Catilina.)

Thrice the ass.

@Cerberus Hm, hm, hm. Damn it.

Probably also from -as.

I was thinking of all the normal ones, I guess.

Sure, the likes of poeta and planeta are from Greek.

@Cerberus Lucius Sergius Catilina? A reckless accusation, sir!

Yes, those ones. The things that give confusion in FR/PT/ES/CA/IT.

Then why did you conspire to overthrow the senate of Rome, Sir?

@tchrist /LA

@Cerberus What else was there to do in 63 B.C.E.?

Tending to one's own fields?