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8:16 PM
@GraceNote Mine was English, followed by Norwegian and then Swedish.
 
@Robusto Interesting.
 
@GraceNote I suspect that the Norwegian and Swedish correlations are rather flimsy. Either that, or Norwegians and Swedes have the best English of the groups tested. Or that they are over-represented in the sample.
@JohanLarsson: ^ Any opinion?
 
It's possible. I'm not entirely sure how they make those checks, given my own results as well. I don't even know what Swedish is even like to know how it comes out in English.
 
!!define flimsy
 
@JohanLarsson flimsy Likely to bend or break under pressure; weak, shaky, flexible, or fragile.
 
8:23 PM
Every Swede I've met, though, has spoken relatively, well, the same dialect of noreastern English that I use. Usually better than the Finns.
 
Norwegian and Swedish are very similar languages and counties over all. Don't remember the date but Norway was part of Sweden for a while.
 
@GraceNote It could be that English comes out for me at 98.8%, Norwegian at .8% and Swedish at .4%. Or something like that.
 
Plausible. Though I must've tripped something for it to prioritize Swedish and Dutch on me over English, so I'm thinking it might be far closer than that on your end.
 
@JohanLarsson That was a long time ago, though. And everything was pretty much split between Denmark and Sweden, with Norway being less a country than a confederation of areas like Trondheim.
 
you know your stuff man, or wiki
 
8:25 PM
I was fairly liberal in what I would allow as grammatical.
@JohanLarsson I had to learn this stuff to write my historical saga. ^_^
 
@Robusto what were the groups? One explanation can be the we have subtitles and not dubbing on movies.
Think the dutch do the same
 
user116848
Hi guys. Can you tell me if I will lose the points if I reopen my certain question that was not answered as a duplicate of some question?
 
Can you clarify what you mean?
 
@JohanLarsson See how you fare: gameswithwords.org/WhichEnglish
 
later, watching a game
 
8:29 PM
World Cup?
 
user116848
@GraceNote I mean will I lose my 'points' on the main site if I reopen my question here english.stackexchange.com/questions/177688/…
 
@JohanLarsson Hope you didn't have Spain in the pool.
 
No
But you can't just reopen it. It has to be voted to be reopened.
 
user116848
okay
 
8:31 PM
The only privileges which consume reputation to use are downvoting when applied to answers, and placing a bounty on something. No other privilege consumes reputation.
 
user116848
So can you guys vote for it here english.stackexchange.com/questions/177688/…
 
user116848
If you want that is
 
@Robusto nope, they are diving & boring ime
 
At the moment the question as a whole comes off a bit confusing. I don't understand the correlation twixt the text and the title. The rest of it, it took a while to parse but I think i can make out what you're asking.
 
user116848
8:34 PM
@GraceNote So should I edit it? Its a old question of mine
 
@Arrowfar I don't see why the duplicate doesn't answer it, I'm afraid.
 
When I do parse it out I have to agree with the closers, I'm not sure what differentiates that question from yours.
 
user116848
@AndrewLeach Because there are always two opinions on this subject. Some say to use "them/their/they" and some to go for "he or she". That's why I can't figure it out from the duplicates.
 
Oh right. Some people are ok with they. Some aren't, and would rather use he or she; or even just he as an all-inclusive form.
It can be quite polarised.
There isn't a universally-accepted answer.
 
user116848
So there is always a choice you mean?
 
user116848
8:41 PM
Since I have also googled this and I always find these two views
 
Yes. The "he is all-inclusive" position is rather old-fashioned. He or she can be clunky. They annoys those who would preserve grammatical number.
You can't please all the people all the time.
 
user116848
Yes exactly! that's why I asked the question on the main site so I can get a "one perfect response" if there is any regarding this
 
The one perfect response is probably nohat's.
156
A: Is there a correct gender-neutral, singular pronoun ("his" versus "her" versus "their")?

nohatSingular they enjoys a long history of usage in English and can be used here: "Each student should save their questions until the end." However, “singular they” also enjoys a long history of criticism. If you are anxious about being criticized (for what is in fact a perfectly grammatical constru...

 
user116848
I see
 
Although he doesn't mention the "inclusive he" position I was taught at school.
I guess the world has moved on.
 
user116848
8:47 PM
Nod
 
user116848
It sure has :D
 
user116848
So he says that basically we just 'avoid' it
 
I honestly don't remember being taught any grammar at school.
English grammar, anyway
maybe I was at primary school.
 
The Head of English at my secondary school was a pedantic stickler for prescriptive exactitude.
But he did do Chaucer well. I like Chaucer.
 
hmm. We didn't do Chaucer, either
 
8:49 PM
@MattЭллен No! stamps feet
 
maybe if I'd done English A-Level
 
@skullpatrol maybe the town should named after the county
 
Mind you, all I can remember is "I wish I had thy coillons in my hand! I'd cut 'em off!"
 
looks up 'coillons'
 
8:51 PM
@Mitch doesn't letting out that aggression feel good?
 
@Mitch Nun's Priest's tale. It's likely that a nun's priest didn't have any.
 
@Mitch which came first?
 
Wait...would you cut off your hands or les coullions?
@MattЭллен gnashes teeth You're taunting me! stamps feet some more
 
The coillons. I think it was Mine Host who said that, knowing full well that there weren't any to cut off.
 
@Mitch That's right, let it out! Let the better feelings in.
 
8:52 PM
@MattЭллен Which came first the town name or the county name?
In general...
 
I don't know
 
@skullpatrol The dinosaur came first...then little by little it become a chicken. Then the egg popped out. Dinosaur omelettes for brunch!
 
probably the town name, as it would have been run by someone of that name
some knight or duke or somesuch
 
@AndrewLeach I would hope the priest would still have his.
 
8:54 PM
oh, well actually, ignore that
definitely the town name
 
@skullpatrol In what, something like County Durham? Town name, definitely. The land belonged to the bishop.
 
because the towns existed before the counties
right
 
yes that^
 
@Mitch That's rather the point.
 
@MattЭллен What if it were a vast wilderness bequeathed to the knight be some benefactor, after which it was then named, and then forcefully settled by slaves from a neighboring shire, and then a village set up in the middle of the vast wasteland? How about then?
 
8:55 PM
@Mitch I take back my assertion that county towns are named after people as a general rule
 
user116848
"She said she is being late" this sentence grammatical? Or should I use "...was being".
 
@AndrewLeach But you said "It's likely that a nun's priest didn't have any"
 
no being just was
 
@Mitch Yes. So although you might hope that he still had his...
 
@MattЭллен OK now that you've accepted defeat, I'll change things. What if both the county and village were established at exactly the same time? You know, like Moon Base Alpha, in the Alpha quadrant.
 
8:57 PM
Nowadays, Canon Law requires it. Back then, things were rather more pragmatic.
 
@Mitch then they'd be named at the same time.
 
user116848
@MattЭллен So 'is' is not right here?
 
@Arrowfar "She said that she was going to be late"
 
@Mitch And of course, he could have had had them, just in a little cloth bag in his pocket, which would satisfy Canon Law.
 
@Arrowfar it seems odd to say someone is late in the present tense, unless you're talking about menstrual cycles
 
8:59 PM
@AndrewLeach I'm trying to imagine how pragmatism fits in. Were so many candidates for the priesthood missing some out of sheer negligence?
 
or if they're dead
I suppose
 
user116848
@MattЭллен lol
 
@MattЭллен You're late.
 
@Mitch I think it was to remove temptation in a convent.
 
@MattЭллен I will be late.
 
8:59 PM
@Mitch we'll all be late some day
 
@Mitch As the class was only aged 15 at the time, the teacher didn't go into the gory details.
 
Mitch said he will be late
 
@MattЭллен la la la til there was you la la
 
Mitch said he is late
no
Mitch said he was late
yes
that sounds better
 
@MattЭллен I beg to differ, I did say exactly that.
Or no, actually I didn't.
 
9:01 PM
:D
 
anyway yes always sounds better.
 
Reported speech should have matching tenses, shouldn't it?
 
matching to what? what was said or how it was reported?
 
There's a question about it somewhere...
 
Mitch is saying he is late
 
9:01 PM
@AndrewLeach depends. what did they say and were quotes used?
 
user116848
@MattЭллен But here?: "She said she is going to the tailors" here 'is' is okay?
 
yes
it's a continuous action
 
@MattЭллен I'm not saying that at all. I said ... ha ha you got me. The test said I'm not pregnant. whew
 
@Arrowfar That's because is there is referring to the future; so it moves "back" a notch and becomes present, is.
"Back a notch" because "she said" is past tense.
 
user116848
@AndrewLeach But here 'is' was not alright? :- "She said that she 'is' going to be late"
 
9:04 PM
That might well be ok, in the same way. It all depends on context.
 
@AndrewLeach ah why didn't you say so to begin with: coillons = temptation
 
@Mitch No, coillons = seat of temptation.
 
@AndrewLeach It's gotta sit sometime
 
Or somewhere :-)
 
> Up the audience's expectations, the critics built.
nice Yoda
 
9:13 PM
My mate wears the same jacket when he's impersonating either Matt Damon or Hugh Jackman. Maybe he's Bourne with it, maybe it's Wolverine.
 
@JohanLarsson That's one of the language options.
 
@Robusto ^
 
@JohanLarsson Me too!
 
@JohanLarsson Where does that come from?
 
> Is there anything else about your dialect of English you'd like to tell us? - See more at: gameswithwords.org/WhichEnglish/#sthash.jQ98alkt.dpuf
> It sounds like crap when I try to speak it!
49 mins ago, by Robusto
@JohanLarsson See how you fare: http://www.gameswithwords.org/WhichEnglish/
 
9:18 PM
I shall give it a go!
 
are you british?
 
Sound of footsteps retreating hurriedly...
@JohanLarsson (from a distance) Yes.
 
sry about the game
@Cerberus what was your ~score~?
 
That doesn't seem too bad.
 
#solid
 
9:37 PM
would you say fuck in "Are they fuck?" is an adjective or an adverb or something else?
 
@MattЭллен Emphatic interjection.
 
ah, yes. that makes sense
good night!
 
fuck is a verb
 
I suck at words
 
@Shahar And a noun with at least two meanings, and an exclamation, and an emphatic interjection. Along with its present participle, it's one of the most versatile words in English.
 
9:44 PM
What test is that
 
I've been living in the U.S. for the past 9 years, let's see how I do
 
@What was your score on the vocab?
 
this quiz is hard
as good as 50%. Darn
 
9:54 PM
wow
 
Andrew wtf
 
Wow Andrew! Good job
 
:-O
 
half of these words aren't even real words
 
@AndrewLeach How many did you guess on?
 
9:57 PM
One. I got that wrong.
 
lol
I got the first 20 right
Then none of the last 12
 
Rob will never take the test now, you killed it :)
 
probably because I just gave up and didn't care
 
@JohanLarsson He has a target.
 
I tried & failed. 0 luck with the guesses.
I wan't another vocab quiz now
@AndrewLeach rematch in Swedish?
 
10:01 PM
I know only a few words of Swedish.
I'm doing the Understanding test.
Asperger's will make that interesting...
 
which one is that?
 
@AndrewLeach I hate all the “for your age and education” provisos. How come I can’t just be judged on me, not my 17 years of education? :)
 
Tom, what is your vocab score? I expect a huge number
 
@tchrist Lie about your education.
Although I don't suppose that will do their stats-gathering a lot of good.
 
10:03 PM
@JohanLarsson Didn’t take that particular test yet. The other one I took had me rather high. But this is not surprising. Still, I always did better on math than verbal SAT/GRE/FMH tests.
 
take it now, only four minutes of clicking
 
10:20 PM
I took the urine test. I stayed up all night studying
 
Demo than even the lamest of vexing NARQs can, given ample creativity, background, and leisure time, produce multipurposible responses:
4
A: A formal word for 'disemvowel'

Janus Bahs JacquetThere isn’t one. If you are going to write about this in a formal context (for example an academic article on how communication works in various forms of ‘limited’ media, such as texting), you would do one of two things: Use an explanatory phrasing throughout, like “abbreviate words by removin...

 
I just had my first ELU related nightmare. Ugh.
@Mari-LouA - Hi!
 
Hello
Just lurking
hardly...
 
You're getting braver... lurk away.
 
And the results are in. A spectacuarly low score in one element...
 
10:30 PM
lurk...lurk...lurk....hmmm.... curious beings ELuers
 
This is in case JBJ shows up looking for to reëmvowel hz txt:
 
@AndrewLeach :)
 
#!/usr/bin/env perl
# unvowel - convert English to teenager txtspk
# by Tom Christiansen <tchrist@perl.com>
use v5.14;
use strict;
use warnings;
use open qw(:std :utf8);
use re "/xi";
my $C = "bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxyz";
my $V = "aeiou";  # no y
my $L = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz";
if (@ARGV == 0 && -t STDIN && -t STDERR) {
    print STDERR "$0: reading from tty, best type something...\n";
}
while (<>) {
    s/ \b easy \b               /ez/g;
    s/ \b easier \b             /ezr/g;
    s/ \b easily \b             /ezly/g;
Trying to get rid of the blank lines in the paste.
@tchrist Oh god, please stop it, you’re frazzling my brain! (Also, is introducing odd typos part of the script?) — Janus Bahs Jacquet 15 mins ago
The general unvowelling is just at the very end of the block.
    s/ [$L] [$C] \K e \b        //g;
    s/ (?<=[$C]) [$V]+ (?=[$C])  //g;
    s/ [$V] \K e \b             //g;
With two lines for whatever reason commented out.
 
Good grief my Perl is rusty.
 
10:40 PM
Really? What part is funny looking?
The extended regex stuff the lookarounds?
I bet that's it.
 
Well, perhaps it's just the regex bits. I can manage continue and the like.
 
With the regex bits, you have to keep these 4 declarations in mind from the top:
use re "/xi";
my $C = "bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxyz";
my $V = "aeiou";  # no y
my $L = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz";
The first one adds /xi to all regexes within that lexical scope.
 
user116848
So "How did you know it is/was me?" Both are possible right?
 
That way I can use spacing without it counting, to make it easier to read.
Also there are things there that Perl didn’t get till v5.10, like the \K keep thingy on the RHS of the match.
So s/ [$L] [$C] \K e \b //g; deletes only a trailing e if it follows a letter and a consonant from every word.
 
Looks like I need to buy another of your books.
 
10:44 PM
Because I defined letters and consonants in $L and $C, vowels in $V. There is a Unicode property for letters \pL, \p{Letter}, that one “should” use, but I just am dealing with a-z here.
@AndrewLeach Do you have the 4th edition of programming Perl? It gets into this kind of thing.
IM!HO, getting it just for the back-to-back regex and unicode chapters alone is worth it.
@AndrewLeach I have boxes and boxes of extra copies. I wish it were easy for me to send you one!
The whole ultramarine postal bit makes it a bit of a bother.
 
I doubt it's the fourth edition. Some books are boxed at the moment. The Perl Cookbook is on a shelf.
 
The \K is awfully useful, because it allows for a variable-width lookbehind, not normally permitted.
PCB 2nd ed is perl v5.8, while PP 4th ed is perl v5.14.
But apart from \K, I don’t think there should be much there you aren’t already familiar with.
 
Hm. I have a real original First Edition copy of PCB.
 
Ahah.
Blue spine or white?
 
Blue. It has been some time. Mostly these days it's PHP.
 
10:50 PM
Did you get the English translation?
 
?? It's an O'Reilly...
 
Heh.
It’s an inside joke.
 
I'm never on the inside with inside jokes :-(
 
People have said they never expected to have to keep an English dictionary on hand when reading a programming book written in English.
And have requested a translation into “Simple English” limited to 1,000 citation forms.
I have a list of hapax and bis legomena around here somewhere for it.
 
I refer my honourable friend to my Vocabulary score posted earlier...
 
10:53 PM
Heh again.
You will find it surprisingly easy on the eyes then.
 
#challenge ^
 
For I managed to get my way on spellings.
And I write programmed, levelled, signalled, marshalled, analysed, much to my editors’ frustration.
 
You just keep sending the proofs back till the editor gives up!
 
user116848
@AndrewLeach So "How did you know it is/was me?" Both are possible right?
 
You wouldn’t believe how I had to fight for singular they. Their contractor-proofreader was told to alternate between genders for unknown antecedents, and I nearly killed them.
 
10:56 PM
I'm not sure I would stop at nearly. But I'd probably stick to he.
 
> “If someone calls your method with the wrong arguments, give him a fatal error, or at least some indication that she did something wrong.”
Do you see why I wanted to kill them?
Every other pronoun swapped genders.
 
@Arrowfar Depends on context. Most times was, I think.
@tchrist Yep. Yuk.
 
I also won the battle to use “logical-quoting”, not “American-quoting.”
 
user116848
okay
 
Because I proved that illogical quoting broke code.
 
10:58 PM
Which might be unsurprising, I suppose.
 
To me and my co-authors, yes. To the editor, well.
 
in Lounge<C++> on Stack Overflow Chat, 56 mins ago, by sehe
…so they asked for my address and phone number, and I reflexively lied…anyway, long story short: pizza delivery’s not coming, because OPSEC.
 
Also, it turns out that Larry and Brian and I are all towards people, not toward people.
And the damned proofreader kept switching them.
I think we might have given up on that one. Only so many silver bullets.
 
I'm sure my pedantic prescriptivist English master had something to say about that.
 
@JohanLarsson That's funny. So I'm told I could be Swedish as a third choice, but no Dutch; and you Dutch, but no Swedish.
 
11:01 PM
If only I could remember what it was.
 
@Cerberus were is your pic?
 
What pic?
 
and your vocab
@Cerberus screnie of the result
 
Oh, I have none.
 
Oh well. Didn't happen :-)
 
11:02 PM
did you take the vocab one?
 
@AndrewLeach The problem is that people actually take as Gospel this US-vs-UK thing that “modern” computerized word-processors like to impose depending on the style set, when in fact that sort of mutually exclusive set of spellings with an ocean between them simply isn’t true.
 
It's certainly true that I wouldn't have expected programmed. I guess I never noticed when reading the book.
 
5 hours ago, by Cerberus
13 mins ago, by Cerberus
@Shog9 By the way, I felt that your personal attack on Jez was unnecessary and out of line. Far more flaggable than what he said in chat.
@tchrist This was what it was about.
But I don't care. Someone had to tell Shog he was out of line, and nobody else did.
Or I didn't see it.
 
I never thought he was.
I think there may be some backstory here you are unaware of.
 
I don't need to discuss it.
 
11:06 PM
@AndrewLeach How else could you spell it? :(
@Cerberus I understand.
 
I would spell it exactly that way. But not in an American book.
Unless I've misunderstood the vagaries of what Webster did.
 
And his reaction was typical: instead of even referring to the situation between Jez and him, he started to attack me.
But w'evs.
I ain't bovered!
 
@AndrewLeach I think you’ll find that all programmers spelled it programmed. Only programers spell it programed, and thereby give the lie to their own title.
 
Ah. Perhaps signalled then. I know I've seen that spelled rather oddly with one L.
 
Hi
which of the following are more accepted:
From our results, it can be observed an improvement in the system performance when the opportunistic technique has been considered, while the ….

From our results, an improvement in the system performance can be observed when the opportunistic technique has been considered, while the ….
 
11:11 PM
the latter imo
 
@AndrewLeach It’s because of our age. Americans older than 40 or so still spell those with doubled L’s. Lawler does. My old linguistics/compsci PhD prof boss (an American, and student of Arnold Zwicky) does. I do. Etc. It’s only the kids who thought they had to do whatever tyranny that word processors written by lesser mortals that get it screwy. Similarly stuff like mitre, sceptre, meagre.
 
@barznjy Definitively the latter, as Johan says.
 
Thanks a lot
 
But I never trust a program written by people less educated than me about these things to tell me how to do things right, when I know damned well they were coded by unschooled idiots who just have rules not reason.
 
Exactly.
 
11:12 PM
Yes. I always turn off the green wiggly line.
 
Yeah never seen it.
 
The red wiggly line can be useful. Most spellcheckers get "British" spellings right.
 
Yes, red is fine.
 
@AndrewLeach See, there is no setting that will make it shut up about what I want it to do.
 
Of course it won't.
But does it need to?
It's just an instrument for you to use, not a spelling corrector.
 
11:18 PM
This are some of the half-interesting tris legomena for PPv4:
> abbot aggregates alas aliens arithmetical arity Arnfjörð artificial
asynchronous autovivifies Bactrian Bambam Bjarmason blinken Brandybuck
byteloader caches carol cavalier circumfix coercion collector comprising
concatenations contrived cooker corollary criterion cumbersome daemons
Dorian Drogo dweomer Eikinskjaldi elliptical Elvish epsilon ergo françois
Gabriel García haggling honeybadger innocuous inscrutable invariant jungle
justify kicking kiddie Knuth largish lawyers lexicographic Márquez mojibake
 
Ohhh Janus used Latin, he is thereby unfriendly to newcomers!
So stupid.
 
@Cerberus Where?
 
What does PPv4 mean?
It's very short and more or less "English", but still unlikely to be understood by most.
 
> Arnfjörð
?
 
7
A: A formal word for 'disemvowel'

Janus Bahs JacquetThere isn’t one. If you are going to write about this in a formal context (for example an academic article on how communication works in various forms of ‘limited’ media, such as texting), you would do one of two things: Use an explanatory phrasing throughout, like “abbreviate words by removin...

 
11:22 PM
@AndrewLeach One of our release managers and contributors.
macbook# tcgrep '\b\p{upper}var\b' < book.pod
=cell Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
X<Bjarmason, Ævar Arnfjörð>
=cell Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
C<o>’s.  And while you would find two C<o>’s in the decomposition of “C<Ævar
Arnfjörð Bjarmason>”,X<Bjarmason, Ævar Arnfjörð> you wouldn’t find any C<e>’s or C<d>’s, because S<LATIN
He is, of course, Icelandic.
 
@Cerberus I've used vel too, but I did explain it.
1
A: How do you use etc. with or?

Andrew LeachThe reason it's awkward is because etc. means “and other things”: et cetera. For your use, you need “or other things”, for which there is no Latin phrase in English (it would use vel, the Latin for or) and consequently no abbreviation. This is a pity, because we are reduced to spelling out the a...

 
I saw no reason to re- or misspell his name, and every reason not to. Plus it gave me a lot of fodder for regexes with Unicode. :)
 
Yes. I hadn't twigged it would be a person's name.
 
@Cerberus Yeah, that etc. marked him as the élitist he is.
 
@AndrewLeach Yay! You now have my vote!
@tchrist Haha, despicable!
 
11:30 PM
@Cerberus Thanks!
Anyway, early start tomorrow. Today. CU.
 
Good night!
 
And here are some of the bis legomena:
> Ævar albeit algorithmically anchovies Arneson ASCIIbetically astute
autovivifying avocados camelid cedilla Celsius clementine clobbering
cloister cloned clyde coffee cognizance concatenate côté crème ð
Democritus dilithium dollops dups dwimming dzur earthlings eerie
elegant emulations epistemology equivalences exasperatingly
expeditiously finalization finis gargantuan Georgian Glamdring glarb
globref goblin gods goners gotcha gripe grok guise Gygax hackathons
idiomatically idiosyncrasies illegible insidious intuit jolly jungles
 
@tchrist I think you mean dis legomena.
 
Yes.
 
You know I have to be strict with respect to your Latin and Greek.
 
11:41 PM
Or I will create monsters.
Larry studied Greek, me Latin. Sometimes monsters happen.
 
Larry?
 
Larry Wall.
 
I don't know him.
 
Larry Wall (; born September 27, 1954) is a computer programmer and author, most widely known as the creator of the Perl programming language and Camelia, the spunky spokesbug for Perl 6. Education Wall grew up in south Los Angeles and then Bremerton, Washington, before starting higher education at Seattle Pacific University in 1976, majoring in chemistry and music and later Pre-med with a hiatus of several years working in the university's computing center before being graduated with a self-styled bachelor's degree in Natural and Artificial Languages. While in graduate school at Univ...
 
Ah, you have worked with him?
I shouldn't be surprised.
 

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