English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2014-08-11 (page 4 of 4)

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Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

7:00 PM

my alarm clock incessantly beeps

Every morning my alarm is behind me and i am behind sleep, too much fun!

user116848

Hi! guys. How art thou? :D

Chillin', how are you?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Arrowfar psst: thou is singular

user116848

I am good, thanks

user116848

7:07 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 So is it wrong? I saw it on some webpage

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Arrowfar well, it's fine if you mean to only ask one person how they are.

and you're from the 1600s

user116848

Oh, I see. :)

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

it's a little jarring, after "hi guys"

user116848

Yeah that's why I never try to be funny :)

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

just keep practicing, it's okay

7:18 PM

ye old English is hard :)

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

English articles

The articles in English are the definite article the and the indefinite articles a and an (and sometimes some). Use of the definite article implies that the speaker assumes the listener knows the identity of the noun's referent (because it is obvious, because it is common knowledge, or because it was mentioned in the same sentence or an earlier sentence). Use of an indefinite article implies that the speaker assumes the listener does not have to know the identity of the referent. In some noun phrases no article is used. Articles are a special case of determiners in English; for information about...

> In Middle English, the (þe) was frequently abbreviated as a þ with a small e above it, similar to the abbreviation for that, which was a þ with a small t above it. During the latter Middle English and Early Modern English periods, the letter thorn (þ) in its common script, or cursive, form came to resemble a y shape.

so ye = the

Sub umbra alarum clock tuarum, Jehova.

"Ye Olde" is a pseudo-Early Modern English stock prefix, used anachronistically, suggestive of a Merry England, Deep England or "Old, as in Mediaeval old" feel. A typical example would be Ye Olde English Pubbe or similar names of theme pubs. == History == The anachronistic use of "Ye Olde" dates at least to the early 20th century, as seen in the image at below right (image 1908). The use of the term "ye" to mean "the" is based in Early Modern English, in which the could be written as þe, employing the Old English letter thorn, þ. During the Tudor period, the scribal abbreviation for þe was (or...

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I was just about to post that

:D

7:23 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 so yes = thes.

I have too many thellow Technic parts.

yellow = thellow

Skullpatrol = slow.

thick skull

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@RegDwigнt thou can send some to me. I have too few.

:)

7:25 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 just buy one random Technic set, and you'll have too many.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@RegDwigнt lol. My stack of lego boxes is reaching the ceiling and my wife STILL hasn't divorced me, but I am probably pushing my luck if I get into technic.

I am at the point where I have to disassemble the sopwith camel in order to make room for more boxes.

Not quite sure how it will help if I push your luck instead.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Well, if someone sends me FREE LEGO she can't complain

Hah. That'd be the first wife ever.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

It's possible that somewhere, out there, exists a husband and wife who are BOTH into lego.

7:27 PM

In other news, I just got a book.

amazon.com/LEGO-Minifigure-Year-Visual-History/dp/1465414118

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

But then she'd complain that the free lego didn't go to her, I suppose.

When did normal people start using lego as a mass noun?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@RegDwigнt nice. I wonder if I could use that to help reconstitute my minifigs, which are currently in a state of near 100% disassembly

When I was a kid, that was only for the serious lego-heads. The rest of us used it as a count noun.

I couldn't care less about minifigs, except perhaps for the three boring minifigs included with the book, but alas, it was reduced to just 13 Euro.

And it's a way to get more LEGO without using up more space. It's just a book, right? Will be stored with the books. Problem solved.

@DanBron you must be from the US, plain and simple.

Which is where people started using it as a count noun, not the other way round.

7:30 PM

I'm from the US, but it's harsh to call me simple.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@DanBron I think that's still true? I have nearly 250 lego sets and thousands of parts overall

So I'm hardly a "normal person" when it comes to lego

@DanBron I have to be harsh if you can't even count your toys correctly.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Oh yeah, I came in here.

Can't remember why.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 to talk about lego

it's so weird to say "let's see, I've got 1 green one, 2 blue ones, and a red one, so I'm holding four lego"

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

7:31 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Sounds good.

I guess you just punt and say four bricks?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@DanBron No, that's not how people use it

@DanBron that's a red herring, since you can't count uncountable things.

so what's the usage?

bricks?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

"4 legoes" or "4 legos" if you use the brand name to refer to the elements (count noun usage), or "4 pieces/parts/elements/bricks" if you are using the officially approved guidelines

7:33 PM

You can't say "I'm holding four milk", either. Does that mean that you have to pluralize it?

woo! I can say "four legos" and be a rebel at the same time.

@DanBron not in the US no you can't.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

"I have lots of lego" <- mass noun, "I have lots of legos" <- count noun

Basically you can either be a rebel in Europe or not a rebel in the US.

but if you consider "lego" a mass noun, what's the proper way to say you have "a lot of them"?

7:34 PM

Like always in life.

@DanBron a lot of water. A lof ot milk. A lot of LEGO.

I am really not seeing your problem.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@DanBron A lot of Lego. A lot of Lego sets. A lot of Lego parts.

@RegDwigнt: my problems will become quite apparently shortly; be patient

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

you can say "parts" or "bricks" (but that really refers to certain kinds of parts) or "elements" (but that has too many syllables)

It's too bad that nohat happens to be an American, so his authoritative answer on this very site is sadly not authoritative at all.

@DanBron my problems will become apparent faster, and completely overshadow and overshine yours.

s/apparently/apparent/

(fingers-faster-than-brain is definitely one of my problems)

7:36 PM

Look, you just can't say "too many/much" and "LEGO" in the same sentence, so this whole discussion is completely pointless.

ha.

wait, you keep capitalizing LEGO: don't tell me, it's an acronym too?

It sort of is, actually. Leg godt. Play well.

But that's not the reason I capitalize it, of course.

Have you seen how it's spelled in the logo?

The LEGO logo.

On an unrelated note: I never seem to bump into @Mr.Shiny on Brickset. Does he never comment? Or does he use the handle Mr.Shady over there?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@RegDwigнt I only use Brickset to store a set list and to look up stuff.

Actually I almost never publicly comment on lego anywhere but here. A little on G+.

Oh right. I'm on G+ as well. I wonder what happened to that. Or how to use it.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I wish brickset, rebrickable, and peeron could all get together and synchronize set lists across accounts.

@RegDwigнt If you go there, you might see pics of my moc.

7:42 PM

I gave up on peeron as soon as rebrickable went up.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@RegDwigнt yeah. it's not as nice. But there are still some things that are easier to do there than on rb.

Well, I had all but given up on it years before. But that's when I gave up to the point of never having ever visited again.

It was just soooooo slooooooooooooooooooooo

And never had the sets I owned.

Like literally, years after they had come out.

And had been retired.

Oh and Brickset does use Rebrickable now, haven't you noticed?

George Pompidou

ooh

That's where they pull the parts lists from.

George Pompidou

functions and shortcuts have the same amount of letters.

this makes my task of changing all of my functions in a module to shortcuts to another function easier to keep aesthetically pleasing.

7:45 PM

In fact in a recent post Huw even mentioned how few things he stored locally. Everything is pulled from elsewhere. The parts from Rebrickable or the LEGO Customer Service, the images from 1000steine, and so on and so forth. The actual site is extremely lightweight.

@GeorgePompidou just switch to Chinese. Everything is one-letter long.

user116848

The plural of 'thou' is 'ye', right?

I don't think so.

user116848

ecclesia.org/truth/thou.html

it's thou : thouse :: you :: youse

@Arrowfar Right. Thou : ye :: thee : you. (Just to be difficult; the endings reverse)

7:54 PM

or may th'all

user116848

@AndrewLeach Thanks!

23

A: Coca Cola's Secret Recipe

It's no secret, here it is! Complete with the cocaine that was removed from Coke's production in 1903: Picture and text from This American Life The idea that the formula is ever-so-secret is a marketing gimmick. Sure, the actual formula for production has changed over the years, they've cut...

Cooking wins over Skeptics!

The Skeptics just played semantics and declared that anything that's a trade secret is also a secret. Duh.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@AndrewLeach um. you're confusing things.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Really? Thou, 2s nom = ye, 2p nom; thee, 2s acc = you, 2p acc.

George Pompidou

Skeptics are people with multiple personalities right?

8:02 PM

There's alcohol flavor in Coca Cola?

Whoa.

George Pompidou

or is that Spectacles?

Mind = blown.

George Pompidou

sneakily plays with Reg's plastic bricks

Reg = Blown mind

@GeorgePompidou you'd have to be very sneaky indeed. They are all right here. No spillover to other rooms or facitilites.

Well, except you're at my office right now. But that one's harder to get into.

8:04 PM

he is sneaky

George Pompidou

I wish I had an office.

@skullpatrol I'm afraid you need to read up on hippos.

George Pompidou

if I fart in my cubicle it is too easy for someone to notice and judge me.

I would pay considerable amounts to see a hippopotamus sneakily play with LEGO. And I am saying that as a LEGO hippopotamus, mind you.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@AndrewLeach holy crap I've been wrong for so long.

George Pompidou

8:05 PM

if I had an office I could make people knock before coming in and then shout at them that I'm busy masturbating so that they do not come in and notice that I farted.

The hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius), or hippo, is a large, mostly herbivorous mammal in sub-Saharan Africa, and one of only two extant species in the family Hippopotamidae (the other is the pygmy hippopotamus). The name comes from the ancient Greek for "river horse" (ἱπποπόταμος). After the elephant and rhinoceros, the hippopotamus is the third-largest type of land mammal and the heaviest extant artiodactyl. Despite their physical resemblance to pigs and other terrestrial even-toed ungulates, their closest living relatives are cetaceans (whales, porpoises, etc.) from which they diverged about...

George Pompidou

you know, @Reg, I just this moment noticed that you are a lego hippo.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 It's all in KJV. "Oh ye of little faith" "My peace I give unto you"

@GeorgePompidou That is just so ... wrong.

@GeorgePompidou yeah because we never previously discussed that seven times over.

@AndrewLeach "Jesus laughed"

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

8:07 PM

@AndrewLeach Yeah, I guess it is, but I could have sworn the rule went the other way. I guess this is what happens when you try to learn rules that you never, ever use.

@GeorgePompidou obviously you're not working with Simon Pegg.

@Mitch Hm. The shortest verse in the Bible does have two words, and one of them is "Jesus", but the other isn't "laughed".

George Pompidou

@AndrewLeach how do you suggest preventing the embarrassment of people knowing you've farted in an office environment?

Dec 19 '13 at 23:31, by RegDwigнt

George Pompidou

hey, I know that guy

he is frequently around a fat guy.

but I cannot watch this because I am too lazy to take out my headphones. another reason I need an office.

8:09 PM

@GeorgePompidou Not too uncommon in some countries.

@GeorgePompidou your loss. No really, a loss it is.

@GeorgePompidou Don't have an office. Or, work in a cube. I don't think I'd advocate announcing in a loud voice that you're masturbating. People already think those with their own office are wankers: you don't need to give them more ammunition.

Okay so Andrew is working with Simon Pegg.

George Pompidou

@AndrewLeach I do work in a cube. that's what I'm complaining about; it's too easy for people to notice that I have farted. which is why I need an office.

so that I could keep people out until the smell goes away.

Just ease up on the beans.

George Pompidou

and what better way to keep people out than to make them think I'm masturbating?

8:11 PM

But in an office there's only you to blame it on. In a cube it could be your next-door neighbour.

I dunno, farting is a very efficient way to keep people out.

George Pompidou

but also embarrassing.

Everybody poops.

Ask Jasper.

George Pompidou

Jasper is a silly name

it's for piggies!

Jasper is a jewel of a name.

8:12 PM

I don't know anyone with that name except for Jasper.

It's as dumb a name as any.

George Pompidou

my girlfriend named her piggy Jasper.

that's the only (other) Jasper I know.

So just because she didn't call it George, that's what you base your notion of the world on?

calls a piggy George

George Pompidou

no, but I do know that Jasper is a piggy name.

Any name is a piggy name. There is literally no name that's not a piggy name.

All the pigs I know are named George.

George Pompidou

8:14 PM

that's preposterous! you've named a piggy a people name.

you lunatic!

@RegDwigнt Alicia. Alicia is not a piggy name.

names a pig Alicia

I know someone called Alicia. And she's...

@GeorgePompidou no, your parents called you Greek for "farmer". Who's preposterous now.

George Pompidou

my parents called me Natanel

That is even worse.

8:15 PM

Some people call their whole family 'pig climber'. On purpose.

That's English for Satan and misspelled.

George Pompidou

I believe this means gift from god in hebrew or something.

Evil and stupid

Nathaniel.

@GeorgePompidou It means "has given". It is not a noun, much less a proper one.

George Pompidou

8:16 PM

@AndrewLeach would be an English variant of Natanel.

but my name at birth was Natan.

without an h.

@GeorgePompidou All it was was a gift certificate to Red Lobster. <sarcasm>Thanks...God.</sarcasm>

@GeorgePompidou Ah. So the -el bit is God.

See, it would have made more sense to rename your mother Natan, because she had given birth to you.

But you had given nothing.

Natanmom.

Except I think the "has given" has an implied masculine pronoun.

George Pompidou

8:17 PM

Natan is short for Natanel. which does contain -el

Which is not even a word unless you start drinking tequila heavily.

It also contains 'at'

George Pompidou

נְתַנְאֵל

Gesundheit.

George Pompidou

Gehundheit

dogness.

8:20 PM

@GeorgePompidou that one says "God has given". Or, according to Google Translate "Ntnal".

If the dog's nose is cold he's healthy

George Pompidou

hey! it's 4:20.

that's pot time.

I don't quite know which is worse.

At least my name is "ruling with power". Now that is a name.

George Pompidou

I saw you at Wrigley Field in Chicago once.

with Billy Joel

I didn't see you, though. Sorry.

George Pompidou

8:22 PM

jerk.

You'd jerk too if Billy Joel were around.

Go watch that video. No really do it now.

You can't do that in your office.

Or maybe you can. It's always been frowned upon by my employers.

George Pompidou

maybe your employers are too conservative.

puritans.

They're American.

Puritans is just Romanian for whores.

George Pompidou

8:24 PM

what are they doing in the land of sillynannies?

With some letters mixed up.

Hey now silly nanny is my word. You must not use it.

hi @Robusto

hullo

I watched that Family Guy episode before you did.

@GeorgePompidou Suffering our employment laws.

George Pompidou

8:25 PM

Romanian for whores is curve

which is what mountain roads have in English.

@GeorgePompidou oh sorry I forgot you stole from the Russians rather than going with Italian which was the one job you had.

George Pompidou

Romanian is closer to Latin than Italian is to Latin, mind you.

Puttana della madonna.

Is Putanista a word? If not, it should be.

George Pompidou

there's also prostitute which means prostitutes

which is funny because prost means dumb and in German cheers

8:27 PM

constitute is the opposite of prostitute.

Italians even name their food after whores. Meanwhile Romanians name their food after whatever Russians named their food. Which I guess is ultimately after whores as well, but gosh ain't it a detour.

@Robusto spaghetti putinista

@RegDwigнt Russians have food? makes notes

@Robusto JSB likes to pretend they do.

But we'll never know if he was actually abducted to Romania or some Lalaland of his dreams.

Putin is doing his best to nip that one in the bud.

8:29 PM

See, the Russians even name their president after Italian whores, and the Romanians can't even name their whores that.

Srsly.

Well, for one thing, whores who are named Ivan the Terrible instead of Amber or Trixie tend not to get a lot of business.

4

What, no accordions?

Listen again. On a second thought, please don't.

I listened as long as I could stand it.

8:32 PM

My condolences.

@Robusto when you're named Ivan the Terrible you don't need to get business, you just need to mean it.

Nothing funnier than other countries trying to imitate the excesses of America.

@RegDwigнt I don't want to be loved, I just want to be paid.

@Robusto I don't think that's a good example of that. In fact, it's a prime example of the opposite.

George Pompidou

please stop comparing my people to communist lunatic mentalists.

I mean, to this day not a single studio in Eastern Europe can produce anything remotely resembling the actual sound of an electric guitar.

@RegDwigнt I would need a hazmat suit to make that kind of determination.

George Pompidou

8:34 PM

Russians are not humans.

It's quite pathetic, really. Even Avril Lavigne can pull off more than all of the GUS.

@RegDwigнt Yeah, wtf is up with that?

I do not know.

But they keep copypasting it over and over. Imitating America my ass.

A poor imitation is still an imitation.

That is still way too much credit.

8:36 PM

I defer to your judgment in this matter.

What's the English term for the GUS anyway, I forget.

I don't even know what any term for the GUS is.

Oh, CIS.

Commonwealth of Independent States

The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS; Russian: Содружество Независимых Государств, СНГ, tr. Sodruzhestvo Nezavisimykh Gosudarstv, SNG) (also called the Russian Commonwealth)[6] is a regional organisation whose participating countries are former Soviet Republics, formed during the breakup of the Soviet Union. The CIS is a loose association of states. Although the CIS has few supranational powers, it is aimed at being more than a purely symbolic organisation, nominally possessing coordinating powers in the realm of trade, finance, lawmaking, and security. It has also promoted cooperation on...

I guess everything in your language is a three-letter acronym starting with CI.

George Pompidou

I went to a primary school called CIS

How do you get GUS from СНГ?

You have a lot of CISalpine gall.

8:37 PM

@Robusto well, you should be able to guess...

Gemeinschaft Unabhängiger Staaten

Die Gemeinschaft Unabhängiger Staaten (kurz GUS; russisch Содружество Независимых Государств (СНГ)/ Sodruschestwo Nesawissimych Gossudarstw (SNG), im russischen Sprachgebrauch Sodruschestwo) ist eine regionale internationale Organisation, in der sich verschiedene Nachfolgestaaten der Sowjetunion zusammengeschlossen haben. Die Gründung erfolgte am 8. Dezember 1991 durch die Staatsoberhäupter Russlands, Weißrusslands und der Ukraine. Sitz der GUS ist die weißrussische Hauptstadt Minsk, die Versammlung tagt im Taurischen Palais in St. Petersburg. In der Europapolitik spricht man auch von Neue Unabhängige…

Whatever happened to that, by the way?

Oh right, the ~~dark horse~~ dunkelpferd language.

At some point I just stopped following the news, and somehow everyone silently stopped talking about it.

Some even loudly stopped talking.

There was no longer any need. It became irrelevant.

I just wonder if it still exists on some paper somewhere.

I guess I could read the wiki, but that'd mean there is an extent to which I don't not care.

George Pompidou

here's what obnoxiously liberal American high school girls with nothing important to think about think cis means

Cisgender and cissexual (often abbreviated to simply cis) describe related types of gender identity where individuals' experiences of their own gender match the sex they were assigned at birth. Sociologists Kristen Schilt and Laurel Westbrook define cisgender as a label for "individuals who have a match between the gender they were assigned at birth, their bodies, and their personal identity" as a complement to transgender. There are a number of derivatives of the terms in use, including cis male for "male assigned male at birth", cis female for "female assigned female at birth", analogically cis...

8:40 PM

Instead I'll go visit the fridge.

Cis-Dur ist eine Tonart des Tongeschlechts Dur, die auf dem Grundton cis aufbaut. Die Tonart Cis-Dur wird in der Notenschrift mit sieben Kreuzen geschrieben (fis, cis, gis, dis, ais, eis, his). Auch die entsprechende Tonleiter und der Grundakkord dieser Tonart (die Tonika cis-eis-gis), werden mit dem Begriff Cis-Dur bezeichnet. Cis-Dur wird häufig als zart, licht und hell beschrieben, siehe hierzu allerdings den Artikel Tonartencharakter. == Werke == Werke in Cis-Dur sind in der Literatur vergleichsweise selten. Häufiger wird das enharmonisch identische Des-Dur verwendet, da es (im Gegensatz…

Food sounds interesting.

Not to be confused with Barad-Dur.

@Robusto Ah, yes, that is cool. If I ever knew that, I have forgotten.

I do think "the Russian Commonwealth" is pushing it.

Haha.

8:48 PM

I guess you could argue it's Russian alright, but clearly it's neither common nor wealth.

Who says that?

Then again you do call the Federal Reserve the Federal Reserve...

English really is easy at first and hard later.

We do say gemenebest for Russia.

And also for England.

@Cerberus you also say kindeeerspeeeeeelplaats for beer. You don't count.

Nope, we only say that for kindeeerspeeeeeelplaats.

Beer is just bier!

8:49 PM

See. More nonsense.

@Cerberus You forgot that food sounds interesting?

English always chokes on its many e's.

We say our e's with ease.

George Pompidou

I love refactoring because when I am dicking around at work and my boss says hey what have you been doing George I say that I have been refactoring.

@Robusto No, the thing-which-is-too-far-bar-to-link-to.

8:50 PM

@Robusto Who is ease and what do you do when he's not around for the occasion?

Eric Lynn Wright (September 7, 1963 – March 26, 1995), better known by his stage name Eazy-E, was an American rapper who performed solo and in the hip hop group N.W.A. Wright is affectionately called "The Godfather of Gangsta Rap". He was born to Richard and Kathie Wright in Compton, California. After dropping out of high school in the tenth grade, he supported himself primarily by selling drugs before investing in Ruthless Records and becoming a rapper. When Ruthless artist Ice Cube wrote "Boyz-n-the-Hood", Dr. Dre, Cube, and Eazy formed N.W.A. After DJ Yella, MC Ren, and Arabian Prince joined...

That guy or what?

@GeorgePompidou Because he doesn't know what it is?

George Pompidou

no that guy's a buster.

user image

George Pompidou

@Cerberus no because it takes up time and has no immediately visible result.

Ah I see.

George Pompidou

9:15 PM

user image

here is me hiding in a lagoon.

2 hours later…

11:34 PM

Smooth.

11:52 PM

Robin Williams appears to have taken his own life at 63.

I am stunned.

And sickened. And saddened.

And inspired.

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