English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

12:00 AM

Players earning half a billion a year between them, wearing full-body armor, playing a dumbed-down version for the masses, and forgetting to score but never forgetting to be pricks. Reminds me of certain other "sports" I stopped watching a while ago.

@Cerberus cinema. I would say cinema, and I can't imagine anyone saying anything else.

Cerberus

@RegDwigнt How about, "we were sitting in ... number 2, at the top floor"?

I would call the entire building the cinema, but not the room?

I Dutch, I would say zaal.

What would you say in German?

RegDwigнt

Yes, same in German.

Cerberus

OK.

RegDwigнt

Anyway, in the US they call them "multi-theaters", so I suppose you could get away with calling the individual rooms theaters.

That actually reminds me of a Seinfeld episode.

> Elaine: I don't wanna go to a... miniplex multi-theater!
George: It's the same movie! What's the difference?
Elaine: It's not a theater, it's like a room where they bring in POWs to show them propaganda films.

Cerberus

@RegDwigнt Yeah I was afraid someone would say that...

But I just don't like calling something a theatre that really isn't.

RegDwigнt

12:11 AM

There's another episode still, which is even more fitting.

The Pool Guy

"The Pool Guy" is the 118th episode of NBC sitcom Seinfeld. This was the eighth episode of the seventh season. It aired on November 16, 1995. The end credit states "In Memory of our Friend Rick Bolden"; Rick Bolden was one of the musicians who worked on the show's theme song. Plot Elaine befriends Susan. Jerry meets his pool guy outside a movie, and then he can't get rid of him. George is worried by Elaine wanting to get to know Susan ("The two worlds collide!"). Kramer's new phone number (555-FILK) is similar to a film information line (555-FILM). When Kramer keeps receiving wrong number...

> Susan, Elaine and Jerry then go to a movie, and George arrives to look for them, using Kramer's information. He hung up the phone before Kramer tells him that the movie is playing at two theaters, so he shows up at the wrong theater and starts yelling for them.

The theater in question being one of the many "rooms" in the same facility. A zaal.

So there you have it.

Straight from Wikipedia.

Cerberus

Right.

I've heard it being called that.

But...

RegDwigнt

> KRAMER: (picks up paper) Chunnel, is playing at the Paragon 84th Street
cinema in the main theater at 9:30 PM.
GEORGE: Yeah, now I gotcha! (hangs up the phone and rushes out the
door)
KRAMER: It's also playing in theater number two at 9:00.

@Cerberus it's "movie theatre" in Russian, too. Probably a calque, but that's beside the point.

Though the deal with the movie theatres in Russia, or at least with movie theatres in the USSR, was that they could in point of fact be used as theatres. They had a scene, and the canvas was hanging above it.

Cerberus

Better.

RegDwigнt

But it still wasn't a proper theatre apart from that. I mean, you didn't have all the backstage apparatus, all the rooms and the dresses and the makeup. It was just a building with a scene you could use to hail Stalin on.

Cerberus

Hehe.

That is important.

Robusto

12:20 AM

@RegDwigнt Yeah, in the old days even the goalies didn't wear masks.

RegDwigнt

So yeah, on 9th of May you'd probably have some kind of concert on that scene, and an occasional amateur play perhaps, but that's about it. Still, not just a room with a canvas for one wall.

Robusto

Don't get me started on pampered athletes, though. Been there, done that.

RegDwigнt

@Robusto never mind masks, I was worried about their teeth. It doesn't take a sport or an opponent or really anything at all to lose some teeth on ice. It just takes the ice.

And of course the gentlemen didn't look like they had ever heard of suspensories, or wouldn't be appalled at the idea of wearing one if they had heard of them.

Whatchacall them, jockstraps?

They wouldn't wear anything that's called a jock strap.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt Yes.

That's where we get the term jocks, BTW. Metonymy in action!

Mitch

@RegDwigнt In the US you would call the individual room a 'theater', but you would never call the building 'multi-theater'. You'd call the building either 'theater' or 'theaters' or if it is at a suburban mall, it might be referred to as the 'multiplex'

RegDwigнt

12:26 AM

@Mitch Seinfeld was written in, for, and by the US.

If "multi-theater" is okay for Seinfeld, it is okay for me.

Anyway. My original point was that when saying "I was sitting in the cinema in the back" or whatever, I would say just that, cinema.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt You'd say Kino. Admit it.

RegDwigнt

Then Cerberus came up with the scenario where you had to specifically distinguish between two different salles, by calling them things.

Mitch

@RegDwigнt it is very infelicitous. I would not ever use such a term. It sounds like an intentional 'awkwardness', a word choice that people make mistakenly when trying to compose a sentence on the fly.

RegDwigнt

@Robusto Actually I wouldn't say anything at all. I stopped going to Kino after Django Unchained, and never looked back.

Robusto

You didn't miss much.

Movies have started to suck ass lately.

RegDwigнt

12:30 AM

@Mitch are you suggesting that awkward sentences mistakenly composed on the fly is not what Cerberus is after?

Why would anyone suggest such a thing?

Robusto

But TV, on the other hand, is getting better and better. The new season of House of Cards on Netflix is even better than the first one was. And I didn't think it could get better.

RegDwigнt

@Robusto I am about to finally start watching HoC.

They actually started airing it here, in English. But I missed that boat, so will have to watch online.

Robusto

My wife and I enjoy it very much. We have to keep ourselves from binge-watching.

Mitch

"miniplex multi-theater": she's saying words that don't go together normally to show how weird words like multiplex are and the concept of having many theaters in one .

RegDwigнt

I am a bit busy these days binge-watching Sochi, so everything else has to wait.

Mitch

12:33 AM

@RegDwigнt Um... yes?

RegDwigнt

I actually took the last few days off, and yet I had been getting much more sleep when I was working.

Mitch

@RegDwigнt I am actually about to not watch that.

RegDwigнt

@Mitch you are a rebel, no news to us.

Mitch

Woo hoo! Party! Say no to authority!

RegDwigнt

Anyway. I only really came online to grab my Cuusoo stats for the day.

I should be sleeping, as Sochi will be on again in less than six hours.

Toddles pip, as them Brits say.

Robusto

12:40 AM

@RegDwigнt BTW, I caught an episode of The Colbert Report which featured members of Pussy Riot. I thought they were great. Before I just reflexively supported them, but now I think they're awesome.