English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

01:03

@MετάEd Stasis.

That's unread mail.

In my secondary e-mail.

Why do these spammers keep spamming me?

Stack Exchange

01:48

Limerick Machine: A woman once started to faint After sniffing a bucket of paint The scent was a doozy The fumes ma…

posted on February 14, 2014 by sgdi

A woman once started to faint After sniffing a bucket of paint The scent was a doozy The fumes made her woozy She wished that she’d had some restraint

Robusto

Discussion Headers

@Cerberus Haven't you heard of spam filters? I use Gmail and it does a great job of learning who's a spammer and who's not.

Cerberus

@Robusto Yeah I didn't mean "spam" spam.

But just too many messages.

Robusto

Outlook sucks.

Cerberus

Yeah?

Robusto

Yeah. I use it for work.

Cerberus

02:00

The program, or the website, formerly Hotmail?

Robusto

The application.

Cerberus

Right.

I never use it.

I hate having to use it occasionally.

RegDwigнt

09:33

0

A: B is 4, A is 10 times more, is A 44?

Times means "times". Multiplication. Times does not mean "multiplication and then addition". The more, better and so on are red herrings. They do not mean addition, either. Their role is to specify which way the multiplication goes. To see that, remind yourself that: Their opposites, less and...

Strangest question ever.

Back to Sochi.

Cerberus

14:13

Hello!

How are you all this fine Saturday?

Johan Larsson

yes, working

fun stuff

Cerberus

Working, even?

And yet it's fun?

Johan Larsson

tbh work is the most fun many days

can mean sucky life or fun work :D

Cerberus

That sounds pretty good.

It's fun and you're being paid.

Johan Larsson

yeah I think so too

the downside might be regrets when getting old idk

how is your day?

Cerberus

14:46

@JohanLarsson Hah probably not.

My day is OK, not much going on.

I'm supposed to move a website to a new hosting provider.

Is there anything in particular I should pay attention to?

I basically have the entire website, so I can just upload it.

Only the database needs to be uploaded separately, supposedly.

tchrist

Does its IP change?

That is, does the ip address to which its presumed DNS name translate to change?

Or just the route needed to get there?

@Mitch C’est justement ici où on trouve la grande différence entre les fruits de mer et celles de la forêt, n’est-ce pas?

Cerberus

@tchrist Yes.

We're going to get a new domain, to keep things simple.

tchrist

So new domainname and new IP address both?

Cerberus

The website depends on another website, so we can make the latter click through to any domain.

tchrist

Well.

Oh, okay.

Cerberus

15:01

I assume a new host will mean a new IP, right?

tchrist

A new box/host/machine/computer does not perforce require a new hostname.

Unless the old one continues to exist.

Cerberus

What's a host name?

tchrist

Like with ships.

Cerberus

I just mean the new company that's going to store our data and make them available to the web.

tchrist

A hostname is the portion of the domainname before the dot.

Basically.

Cerberus

15:02

Ah OK.

tchrist

alpha.somewhere.com vs beta.elsewhere.edu

Cerberus

Well, that won't be a problem: we can just change the links.

tchrist

Those are fully qualified hostnames.

You can put a dot at the end of them and nothing changes.

Cerberus

As long as the site functions as it used to, it doesn't matter what its IP is or what its domain name is.

tchrist

When you are within the somewhere.com domain, you can just mention alpha and it will probably assume the somewhere.com at the end.

But for external visibility, always use the full thing.

It’s like with pathnames.

Cerberus

15:04

Right.

I won't be touching that, I'm copying the entire website.

tchrist

Except pathnames are big-endian and hostnames are little-endian — just like your own name.

Cerberus

It is a fairly small wordpress site with a database (SQL?).

tchrist

I don’t know what sort of database backend that Wordpress uses.

The site you are copying has internal links.

It is possible that those may need mucking with. Hopefully not, though.

Cerberus

Neither do I, but presumably it's all fairly standard, and a normal hosting company will have a database function where you just upload the database.

tchrist

Depends how they were set up.

Cerberus

15:06

Presumably, they won't need any mucking with.

So the guy tells me who used to manage the site.

tchrist

I’m afraid these commonplace things are too far removed from my backend lowlevel experience for me to be of much practical use.

Cerberus

Haha.

I understand.

It's also far removed from my experience.

But I think we'll probably be all right.

tchrist

Without actually seeing the exact URLs involved, I cannot make more than general statements without sacrificing honesty.

It’s more than that, though. I’d have to see the HTML and possibly javascript, cgi, etc.

Which is rather a bit of work.

Cerberus

I am trusting the guy who used to manage the website.

He said we could just upload it, upload the database, connect them through whatever method the hosting company provided, and we'd be fine.

tchrist

Good luck.

Cerberus

15:09

Thanks!!

tchrist

I hope you won’t need it.

Cerberus

Heh.

tchrist

Mentioning French fruits to @Mitch of course brought Paul Eluard to mind again.

Il y a des mots qui font vivre
 Et ce sont des mots innocents
 Le mot chaleur le mot confiance
 Amour justice et le mot liberté
 Le mot enfant et le mot gentillesse
 Et certains noms de fleurs et
 certains noms de fruits
 Le mot courage et le mot découvrir
 Et le mot frère et le mot camarade
 Et certains noms de pays de villages
 Et certains noms de femmes et d’amis.

Cerberus

Bien sûr.

tchrist

Even if he was thinking of cabbages.

Per their wont.

Cerberus

15:16

Mais pourquoi?

tchrist

Je ne sais pas, mon petit chou.

C’est qqch qu’on dit.

Mayhap the French have wants as outré as their wonts.

Or should that be the other way around? :)

Perhaps for the French, their choux fall more under de fleurs than they do under de fruits.

They kind of are, actually.

Hmm. . . « Faire ses choux gras (de quelque chose) »

Portia

what langauge?

tchrist

Lequel?

What language what question?

What question what language?

I was just musing on the French love of cabbage as a term of endearment.

Cerberus

@tchrist Certainly not fruits...

Légumes?

tchrist

Probably.

Cerberus

15:27

I think we have some similar expression with cabbage in Dutch.

tchrist

> À une lointaine époque, dans le bas peuple, chez les pauvres, lorsque les légumes étaient les ingrédients principaux des repas (la viande était réservée aux riches, les pâtes et le riz n'étaient pas encore connus ou répandus), le chou en était un des plus courants : résistant, facilement cultivé, peu cher, il était autrement plus souvent présenté à table que de nos jours.

Cerberus

Right.

And I happen to like it.

Does that make me bas?

tchrist

The phrase or the item?

That bas thing is weird.

Cerberus

Le chou.

What's weird about it?

tchrist

I thought the ancien régime had fallen.

Cerberus

15:28

The lower classes.

There will always be classes, regardless of the régime.

tchrist

I suppose in the epoch of which the speak, it had not yet done so.

I had to go back and correct my spelling. I first wrote epoque. :)

Cerberus

This could be about the 19th century.

Époque.

tchrist

> De là le premier sens de l'expression au XVe siècle : on se régalait de ce bon plat qu'était le chou gras. C'est surtout à partir du XVIIe siècle qu'elle a pris le sens de "en retirer profit". Pourquoi ? Parce que le chou était 'engraissé' comme l'est, au figuré, le portefeuille de celui qui retire du profit de ses bonnes affaires. Mais aujourd'hui, l'expression a souvent un sens péjoratif, le profit ou l'avantage étant supposé comme acquis au détriment de quelqu'un ou quelque chose.

Cerberus

The expression is "chou gras"?

tchrist

@Cerberus Yes, but I at first wrote epoque in English, not French. Of course it takes an acute.

Cerberus

15:31

We don't have that in Dutch.

tchrist

No, nor we in English.

Cerberus

If you wanted to ban all French from English, what would you have left?

I think you could write the above sentence, except possibly ban.

tchrist

English.

You could forbid it.

On that page, a Spaniard suggests squeezing the juice out of somebody as an equivalent.

Cerberus

> f. root ba-, cogn. w. Gr. ua-, L. fa-, speak.

Interesting.

So it's purely Germanic.

tchrist

Oh.

Cerberus

15:33

I was misled by French bannir, I think it is.

tchrist

I eyed it askance as well.

Cerberus

Unsurprisingly, they took that from a Germanic root.

But English might have adopted the French word. But OED says no. Or at least it says nothing.

tchrist

It’s easier to concoct sentences consisting solely of monosyllabic words than it is to craft them without French.

Cerberus

Quite.

Is quite French/Latin?

I think so.

Related to quitte and quit, no doubt.

tchrist

Yes.

quitter

Cerberus

15:36

Dutch kwijt.

tchrist

I am quit of this.

Cerberus

Which means something like "lost", oddly.

Mitch

@tchrist I agree. It is suffering to eat lobster. It's like eating a spider. Yuck.

Cerberus

But kwijtschelden = "to annul someone's debt", which sounds like it's similar to quitte.

Schuld = debt, related to shall.

tchrist

Quitclaim, quitguilt

Mitch

15:37

@tchrist Ha ha... only some women.

Cerberus

Right! I've never even seen those words, but they make sense.

Mitch

@Cerberus What? No way!

Cerberus

@Mitch Way.

Mitch

shall = soll, right?

Cerberus

Yes.

Dutch zul/zal.

Mitch

15:38

Oh...it's more that guilt is something you should take care of, not that 'should' came from guilt.

tchrist

schuldig?

Cerberus

Hmm the word guilt may or may not be related, but the original sense of schuld/shall/should/soll/etc. is something like "obligation", I believe.

@tchrist Exactly.

Mitch

@Cerberus Only Mike Meyers and other Canadaians say 'way'. Regular people say 'yeah, way'.

Cerberus

Schuldig = "guilty; indebted".

@Mitch Noted.

But maybe I could be Canadian?

Mitch

Maybe you should be.

tchrist

15:40

@Mitch Crustaceaphobia. Arachnophobia. Arthropodophobia.

I can’t figure out whether to use -o- or -a- in some of those.

Mitch

Arachnophagiaphobia

what ever sounds best.

Cerberus

> guilt: From the fact that OE. gylt renders L. debitum in the Lord's Prayer and in Matt. xviii. 27, and that is gyltiŠ renders debet in Matt. xxiii. 18, it has been inferred that the n. had a primary sense ‘debt’, of which there seems to be no real evidence, though OE. scyld, G. schuld, have developed the sense of ‘guilt’ from that of ‘debt’.]

Mitch

None sound best cuz they're all nasty.

tchrist

Gambaphobia?

Cerberus

So it seems guilt may be related to should.

tchrist

15:42

I can see how that could have come about.

Mitch

guilt and geld may be related but etymonline doesn't go there.

Cerberus

@tchrist There always needs to be an o if it's a Greek compound; you can delete a final vowel if it gets in the way.

tchrist

@Mitch weregeld?

Mitch

@tchrist fear of ... exposed legs?

tchrist

@Mitch Yes. :)

Mitch

15:43

@tchrist ha ha, money that changes hands during the full moon.

tchrist

Or shrimp.

Cerberus

> guilt (beginning): No equivalent forms are known in the other Teut. langs. The connection commonly assumed with the OTeut. root *geld-, gald-, guld-, to pay, yield, is inadmissible phonologically, and its apparent plausibility with regard to sense disappears on examination.

Mitch

Oh. that's always confusing on italian menus...

like voglione for clams/oysters

tchrist

@Mitch I believe we are all due a plenilune evening tonight, or yestereve.

Mitch

@Cerberus once again I misread. BUt anyway, it's so obvious.

Cerberus

15:45

@tchrist So, were I to compose a hybrid compound, I should say crustaceophobia.

Mitch

@tchrist I think it was yesterday (Or even the day before)

Cerberus

@Mitch What is obvious?

Mitch

@Cerberus It's so obvious that guilt and geld are related whatever the OED's official phoneticians think.

tchrist

@Mitch They have very strange mussels in Italy. Difficult to discern on the ménu.

Cerberus

@Mitch How dare you!!

Iconoclast.

Mitch

15:46

@tchrist remind me not to try them then.

Cerberus

@tchrist Why are they strange?

tchrist

@Cerberus Because I can’t figure out why they call them that.

Mitch

@Cerberus How? By doing it. I dared. Like the cat in the adage.

Cerberus

@tchrist Pourquoi cet accent-là?

Mitch

Wait...that cat dared not. Sorry, not like that cat.

tchrist

15:48

The zoo name is mitilo, which a zoo guy would know, but the food name is cozza or something.

Mitch

@Cerberus A cause de l'accent?

Cerberus

@tchrist You mean vongole? They're not mussels, are they? Just small clams.

@Mitch Mm quoi?

Mitch

Eating mussels at the zoo - mitilo, at the cafe next door - cozza

tchrist

@Cerberus Because I meant it in the French not the English sense: not la carte quotidienne but rather le ménu or special of the day when written in chalk on the board.

Mitch

@Cerberus ha..that was my mistake. I can't remember because it always looks weird. YOu know how a word looks like what it is.

Cerberus

15:50

@tchrist And they write an accent on that word?

tchrist

@Cerberus Don’t they?

Mitch

@tchrist I'll have le prix fixe.

tchrist

I don’t know.

Mitch

the one with cake at the end.

Cerberus

@Mitch I only knew how to pronounce it in this case, I had to pronounce it in my mind in order to write it down...but, yeah, that happens with other words.

tchrist

15:51

I know the word as a loan-word in Spanish, where it is perforce written menú.

Mitch

Do they still make cakes by stacking up donuts?

Cerberus

Menu (restauration)

Le menu est la liste des divers mets qui composent le repas. Dans un restaurant ou à la cantine, c'est l'ensemble des mets qui peuvent être servis pour un prix déterminé. Par métonymie, le menu est le feuillet, le carton, le tableau, l'affichette, l’objet ou la brochure qui liste : * les mets servis lors d'un repas : manuscrit ou imprimé, illustré ou non, il présente au convive la liste des mets et boissons qui vont lui être servis lors d'un repas ou lors d'un banquet. Cette pratique, qui remonte au et qui tend à se perdre (sauf dans les réceptions officielles), participe à l'art de la...

Mitch

@tchrist ha ha...they misspelled it when they borrowed it.

tchrist

There are “no” (super-rare) native words ending in a stressed /i/ or /u/ in Spanish. I think there are like 5 total.

Mitch

fait accom pli

tchrist

15:52

@Mitch No, Spanish always respells loan-words to fit their own orthographic conventions.

espíritu

Mitch

that doesn't have the accent on the end

tchrist

They don’t (long) borrow words unrespelt.

Mitch

oh it's a loan, fromitalian?

Cerberus

Perhaps you were thinking of Menü...

tchrist

@Mitch To the Spanish ear, it does.

Because a phrasal prosody in French.

Cerberus

15:53

@Mitch Nah, menu is French.

Mitch

or Haagen-Dasz?

tchrist

Stress not being phonemic in French, only in Spanish (or English, etc).

Mitch

@Cerberus I was talking about 'espiritu'

Cerberus

@tchrist What do you mean by that? No minimal pairs distinguished by stress alone?

@Mitch Ah OK.

tchrist

@Cerberus Yes.

Cerberus

15:54

OK.

tchrist

The phrase intonation controls the stress pattern in French.

Mitch

Yeah...all words in french have no stress (or stress on the last syllable, or the last syllable of the sentence)

or is the last one the only one without stress?

tchrist

People whose native tongues use phonemic stress always think this makes it sound like something it is not.

A French word itself has no stress.

Only the phrase does.

Mitch

so complicated.

anyway the Eluard poem actual sounded meaningful. I thought he was supposed to be one of the weirdos.

Cerberus

@tchrist Umm.

That sounds odd.

Surely words have word stress in French.

Mitch

15:57

It does sound odd when you're expecting stress.

Cerberus

And word stress can always be weakened by sentential/phrasal stress, in any language?

Mitch

@Cerberus there are no pairs of words that have different meaning when everything else is the same except for stress (exactly what you asked)

Cerberus

Right.

Mitch

french only has sentence stress...that's all.

Cerberus

But that doesn't mean French has no word stress.

Why would you say that?

Mitch

15:59

Oh. True. But it also doesn't have word stress.

Cerberus

?

It has word stress to me?

Like any other language?

Mitch

every syllable has the same 'weight' (except maybe the last one)

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