English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

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Jez

21:00

but yeah at the start of the game, i could kick Aragon's ass with Castille

but probably not vice versa... not without some gamey tactics, anyway

tchrist

The Bonapartes grabbing everything they could.

The Portuguese Inversion.

A brief Spanish constitution.

We think of the War of 1812 as being something between England and Canada and the United States, but there was so very much more than that going on all across Europe at the same time.

Jez

well, the US does

;-)

not that they're self-centred or anything

tchrist

You burned down the White House.

We tend to remember things like that.

Janus Bahs Jacquet

Yeah, and you bombed and burned us, too (five years earlier).

Jez

canada could be good and stay loyal, why couldnt you? ;-)

Janus Bahs Jacquet

21:03

Damn Brits.

Jez

you did do a good job of pushing Spanish out of north america though, at least down to mexico

spanish used to be most of western US

tchrist

My Danish grandfather once told me the following joke: “The Danes are just Germans pretending to be English.”

@Jez Er, “used to”?

I think not.

Jez

well, moreso than now

tchrist

There are still people living in Colorado whose property goes back to the Spanish land grants from the King of Spain.

They didn’t move here.

Jez

tchrist

21:05

We moved the border.

skullpatrol

@tchrist Then what does that make the English?

tchrist

Yes, the malvado tratado de Guadalupe.

@skullpatrol Yeah, I know.

One pretends that the old vice royalty no longer spoke Spanish.

This is simply not true.

And in fact, the supercited treaty guaranteed that they could.

Janus Bahs Jacquet

@tchrist I still can’t figure out if that makes no sense whatsoever, or is extremely astute.

tchrist

@JanusBahsJacquet Embrace the paradox.

Jez

imagine if the US had picked German as its national language; they could've been on the Axis side of WW2

game over, rest of world

tchrist

21:08

Janus Bahs Jacquet

@tchrist Nah. They always try to cop a feel when you do that.

tchrist

@JanusBahsJacquet It’s your job to lie between the two.

skullpatrol

Paradoxes don't lie.

tchrist

Janus Bahs Jacquet

@tchrist That would basically make me that scrawny, geeky kid who ill-advisedly jumps between two fighting thugs in a bar brawl, trying to break them up.

Jez

21:11

@tchrist does that thing have English speakers? :-)

tchrist

Janus Bahs Jacquet

Hm, didn’t realise there were so many Scandos in Alaska!

tchrist

@JanusBahsJacquet That, or Lucky Pierre.

Jez

@JanusBahsJacquet the top of that graph scale is 2.8%

Janus Bahs Jacquet

@tchrist insert obligatory joke about pulling quicker than own shadow

tchrist

21:13

@Jez Yes, they do. Take a negative of this:

Janus Bahs Jacquet

@Jez Still. I would have expected Alaska to be basically all white, like some of the mid-eastern states.

tchrist

Look at that strip of Alaska scoring >50% NNS.

What do you make of that?

Not Russian.

Janus Bahs Jacquet

tchrist

Answer:

It all the Navajos up there.

Janus Bahs Jacquet

Aleut in the southwest, Yup’ik and various other Inuit languages elsewhere, I presume?

tchrist

21:17

Jez

@tchrist that has "scandinavian" like it's a single language

tchrist

Na-Dene languages

Na-Dene (; also Nadene, Na-Dené, Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit, Tlina–Dene) is a Native American language family which includes at least the Athabaskan languages, Eyak, and Tlingit languages. An old inclusion of Haida is controversial. In February 2008 a proposal connecting Na-Dene (excluding Haida) to the Yeniseian languages of central Siberia into a Dené–Yeniseian family was published and well received by a number of linguists. The name Edward Sapir originally constructed the term Na-Dene to refer to a combined family of Athabaskan, Tlingit, and Haida (the existence of Eyak was not know...

Janus Bahs Jacquet

@Jez Many (like myself) would argue that it is.

tchrist

heh

There goes the old Sapir again.

Janus Bahs Jacquet

Well, until someone comes up with a universally accepted, definitive definition (as opposed to a non-definitive definition?) of what a language is, I don’t see why Scandinavian shouldn’t just be considered one language. I’d probably not include Faeroese and Icelandic, though.

tchrist

21:21

Icelandic is much closer to Old Norse than is New Norse, oddly enough.

skullpatrol

Define define.

tchrist

> Typologically, Navajo is an agglutinating, polysynthetic head-marking language, but many of its affixes combine into contractions more like fusional languages. The canonical word order of Navajo is SOV. Athabaskan words are modified primarily by prefixes, which is unusual for an SOV language (suffixes are expected).

Gee, that’s a whole lotta “persons”.

Janus Bahs Jacquet

Hm. A space number. Used especially when talking about astronauts, one must assume.

tchrist

Or astral projections.

Our Arabic speaker does not understand that letters do not map to sounds.

Not in the way he is expecting, at least.

Lawler would read him the riot act, per usual.

Janus Bahs Jacquet

Who? Ahmed?

tchrist

21:35

Yes.

We should just throw him into the Chaos and see if he survives.

skullpatrol

I never liked the idea of "immersion."

It was too much like being thrown into the deep end of a swimming pool and expected to "learn" to swim.

tchrist

> Clergymen, called Drowned Men, are drowned a second time in earnest and brought back to life with a crude form of cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Not all men are successfully revived, however. Drowned Men wear roughspun robes of mottled green, grey, and blue, the colours of the Drowned God. They carry driftwood cudgels to show their devotion in battle, as well as skins of saltwater to perform ritual anointment[1][2] and occasionally drink from to strengthen their faith.

skullpatrol

22:22

@MattЭллен Hi pal :-)

skullpatrol

22:44

@Cerberus what does "Эллен" mean?

Cerberus

@skullpatrol Hi!

It is the Cyrillic translitteration of Ellen.

Russian letters.

> silo
zn. ‘pakhuis voor graan enz.’
Nnl. silo ‘afgedekte kuil als bewaarplaats voor granen en ander veldgoed’ in Koorn silos. Zoo noemt men in Hongarije eene eenvoudige bewaarplaats van koorn [1835; WNT watervrij], beetwortelen ... bewaard ... in lange kuilen, silo's genoemd, die met aarde gedekt worden [1881; WNT], silo ‘kokervormig graanpakhuis’ [1895; WNT], overdrachtelijk ‘woon- of kantoorgebouw met veel verdiepingen’ [1974; Koenen], ‘opslag- en lanceerplaats voor raketten’ [1976; Van Dale].

skullpatrol

@Cerberus Thanks pal :-)

Cerberus

Yeah we're not super complicated in this room!

skullpatrol

23:00

make things as simple as possible and not simpler :D

Cerberus

Easier said than done...

skullpatrol

Ya, most of his quotes are that way...

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Hiyo.

skullpatrol

Hi pal :-)

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

skullpatrol

23:07

Wazzup?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

shrug

skullpatrol

@Cerberus In my humble opinion, stating the obvious is the best place to start.

Cerberus

@skullpatrol It depends...

skullpatrol

We argue in the math room about what is "truth" and how does it relate to "mathematical truth;" but this just comes down to someone's opinion of the word "define."

Define: define.

@Cerberus So, I think, stating first what two people agree on as "obvious" is the best way to start.

Cerberus

Umm I'm not sure I understand the context here.

skullpatrol

23:20

That is the whole point, the obvious needs the least amount of context, right?

Cerberus

Uhh I don't know.

skullpatrol

You could say nothing is context-free.

Cerberus

Indeed, nothing is.

> It is often maintained that transpire should not be used to mean happen or occur, as in the event transpired late in the evening , and that the word is properly used to mean become known, as in it transpired later that the thief had been caught . The word is, however, widely used in the former sense, esp in spoken English

It's funny when you read something that you have always know to be so subconsciously, but never articulated.

skullpatrol

You find it funny because you've always thought of it as "obvious."

Cerberus

Not exactly obvious...

I had to think about it, from time to time.

And I was aware of the fact that there was some confusion, of sorts.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

23:48

@Robusto I found The Return of the Spectacular Spinning Songbook and Momofuku at the library today. Already ripped 'em. Also a Buckinghams disc.

And . . . and I found a copy of Gaucho at Half Price Books.