English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

00:44

Hi.

Robusto

01:11

@Cerberus Hi yourself.

> hello , i have just finished html5,css .javascript ajax ,planning to study a library either yui or jquery , can you pls tell me which one is more required in the job market ? regards

This comment was on a completely unrelated blog post.

Cerberus

Haha.

My answer would be: English.

Robusto

Good answer.

Sometimes we forget about the downside of rubbing virtual shoulders with 7 billion people. But they don't let us forget for long.

Cerberus

Saw this painting today.

A cut-out.

Robusto

European Late Gothic?

Cerberus

An even smaller cut-out.

Looks like 17th century.

I was amazed at the details in the paintings in the painting.

Robusto

01:19

I would have thought earlier.

Cerberus

That last cut-out is a typical Dutch still life from the 17th century.

Robusto

OK.

Cerberus

Notice also the shells above the door posts.

Robusto

I would bet the master didn't paint all those miniatures.

Cerberus

But anyway, late Gothic, is that Renaissance?

Robusto

01:22

That's what a studio has staff for.

Cerberus

It is possible that he didn't!

Yeah, alas...

In Holland, the Renaissance came very late, 16th century, we usually say.

Robusto

The Late Gothic style persisted in 16th-century German and Dutch art up until the Reformation. German sculptors favored expressive, realistic figures with lively, angular, unnaturalistic drapery, reflecting the contrasting moods of medieval spirituality. Dutch artists focused on the representation of narrative.

SO, yeah, your pic is later.

The Internet is in a lot of ways worse than it was 20 years ago. I remember going to the Louvre's web site in 1994 or 1995 and seeing actual images of all the art. Took forever to load in the browser, but damn!

Cerberus

But would you use Gothic for paintings?

Hmm they don't have that any more? Not on some other page?

The Rijksmuseum put tons of paintings on their website fairly recently.

I associate Gothic mainly with architecture and sculpture.

Robusto

The Louvre now shows tiny thumbnails in Flash, so you can't copy and resize.

louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/…

Anyway, the Renaissance came later to Northern Europe.

Late Gothic was contemporary with the Italian Renaissance, but stylistically different.

Cerberus

Right, they're small. But not exactly thumbnails.

You can download large images from the Rijksmuseum, presumably they have images of 400,000 works. You do need a free account to do so. rijksmuseum.nl/nl/…

And you can view them full size in your browser without an account.

Ah, and the Mauritshuis have most of their stuff online without an account. But the resolution is a lot better at the Rijksmuseum. Sadly, there is only one of each painting, so the Rijksmuseum doesn't have the one I posted that picture of: mauritshuis.nl/nl-nl/verdiep/de-collectie/kunstwerken/…

All the paintings in that painting are real paintings, it says.

It depicts Apelles, the legendary painter of Antiquity, painting a portrait of Campaspe, Alexander's lover, for her. When Alexander saw the painting, he was so enamoured with it that he gave the girl to Apelles in return for the painting.

Stack Exchange

07:25

Limerick Machine: A man who was from Milton Keynes Had got mud all over his jeans Washing it off In a water...

posted on August 31, 2014 by sgdi

A man who was from Milton Keynes Had got mud all over his jeans Washing it off In a water trough Cause his jeans to constrict his beans

Freddy

08:49

Hello every one

Can anyone help me I need to give written application to teacher informing him that I have breathing problem or something like that. [I don't have any disease it is just due my less attendance in class.]

RutvikSutaria

lol, you haven't filled up form yet?

Freddy

I have filled it up on saturday, but class teacher want written application from parents!

I have already given medical certificate for 20 days according to which i had back pain!!!

but they are telling aren't absent for 20 days in a row then how can you be under doctor's observation.

They just wanted to make it issue and want to harass me as i am not going according their fuking useless system.

RutvikSutaria

09:06

that might be problem because in my school or in my town they don't do that. (Even though we have common organization conducting exam.)\

Freddy

Problem is not with GSEB organization, problem is with school. But they can't do anything because my maths teacher told me that it is record of our school that in past 20 years they are not able to complete syllabus for once.

so I can also complain about that.

RutvikSutaria

But you have filled up form now they can't do anything.

Freddy

I hope so.

But i don't know how to write this type of application. Means i have written normally leave application but how to write these type of stuff.

RutvikSutaria

Seems all other are sleeping.

Freddy

Yes chat room is kind of dead now a days!

tchrist

13:31

Four downvotes within 14 seconds. Somebody was quick. Well, we’ll see whether the unrevenger script catches it.

In other personal non-news, I see that I have passed up Rob and even Barrie in Necro badges, but in the meantime, Hugo has nearly double my count of the same.

skullpatrol

13:43

►

truely amazing

tchrist

Hippocampus = Horse Pasture

SEDE query for sorting users by the number of Necromancer Badges they possess.

Here’s our lowest-voted Accepted answer:

-25

A: 'Enjoy the rest of your day'. What is the name for such expressions?

I would never say "enjoy the rest of your day" (ETROYD) to anyone. If a sales assistant says this to me (it always is a sales assistant; their manager obliges them to do it), I think: -- how impertinent of you to suppose that the enjoyableness of the rest of my day depends on your wishes -- h...

RegDwigнt

@tchrist you should be so lucky. I get a downvote on like every single answer these days, but they are spaced out.

Like literally, four of my five latest answers got a downvote.

At the same time, they have 28 upvotes between them, so obviously it's not just because I've started posting shit as of late.

tchrist

Were they at the same time of day each day?

RegDwigнt

I don't know, I have a life.

tchrist

Well, sure.

And today is Sunday.

RegDwigнt

13:52

Oh, you mean I should not look at the main site.

Thanks for the headsup.

tchrist

I know what you mean though about mysterious downvotes.

I think part of it is that some of us accumulate certain folk who always see anything we post as bullshit, and therefore downvote it.

skullpatrol

1210

Q: Why does Windows think that my wireless keyboard is a toaster?

I've inherited an old PC from my girlfriend's dad and when setting up the printer I got a bit of a surprise: Two questions spring to mind here: Why does Windows think my wireless keyboard is a toaster? Why does Windows even have an icon for a toaster in the devices menu?

tchrist

It isn’t really targeting in the traditional sense, just that they do not like us and so nothing we can say will ever please them.

@skullpatrol sigh

Think of vote totals as things that accelerate. Imagine a steep hill with 0 on the flat top. 0 is the neutral place, but once you get farther and farther away from that flat point, then no matter the sign, the vote totals tend to magnify in whatever direction they were going.

Which is poor way of saying that heavily upvoted stuff by its sheer existence gathers more upvotes and heavily downvoted stuff gathers more downvotes.

skullpatrol

law of inertia

RegDwigнt

The rich are getting richer.

tchrist

13:59

Perhaps, although I suspect acceleration is involved here, not just constant velocity.

skullpatrol

it takes money to make money

RegDwigнt

What's way worse, though, is that the rep cap completely failed in this case.

He got all his 2400 reps from that one question.

tchrist

The ball doesn’t just keep rolling in whichever way that somebody started it off rolling in, it rolls faster and faster. Hence my hill metaphor.

Maybe the ball is a snowball.

RegDwigнt

He only has two posts in total. And the other one is sitting at +3.

tchrist

Oh gosh.

All sins are forgiven at 00:00:00 each day.

RegDwigнt

14:02

Yeah, so he got 20 privileges, all the way up to creating tag synonyms, and also 20 badges, including THREE GOLD ones, from just one post.

tchrist

That probably isn’t the way the way the system was intended to work.

RegDwigнt

Absolutely not. That's why the rep cap exists.

skullpatrol

and people whine about one or two down votes

tchrist

And by the time all this has happened, it’s too late to CW or lock it to halt the ball a rollin’.

Perhaps remission of sins should occur only at 23:59:60 instead.

Being as it is a rather rare time. :)

RegDwigнt

@tchrist quite the opposite, actually. Since he got the 2500 reps on 12 separate days, there was plenty of time to lock it.

tchrist

14:04

Well, then that becomes a moderator-awareness issue.

skullpatrol

23:59:60 = 00:00:00
as
0.999... = 1

tchrist

@skullpatrol No sir.

Best to look before you leap.

Leap second

A leap second is a one-second adjustment that is occasionally applied to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) in order to keep its time of day close to the mean solar time. Without such a correction, time reckoned by Earth rotation drifts away from atomic time because of irregularities in the Earth's rate of rotation. Since this system of correction was implemented in 1972, 25 such leap seconds have been inserted. The most recent one happened on June 30, 2012 at 23:59:60 UTC. The UTC time standard, which is widely used for international timekeeping and as the reference for civil time in most countries...

skullpatrol

you made no assertion of reality sir

nor do i

0.999... = 1

tchrist

I don’t care to debate something so obviously provable as that. I was merely looking for interstitial moments falling betwixt one day and the next from which to draw off pennies to my secret Swiss bank account.

I have again failed at user-education.

skullpatrol

fair enough

tchrist

14:09

Why do I keep taking that damned class?

skullpatrol

you like it?

tchrist

Okay, I renege. I succeeded. It took a longer view to see it, though.

skullpatrol

nah, i'm a bit dense...

tchrist

Wasn’t you.

skullpatrol

thick skulled, as they say

tchrist

14:12

Something else. Trying to get people to include more than a link in their newly posted answers.

skullpatrol

the vid is interesting, no?

all that info from one brain

they didn't even get that much data from Einstein's brain

tchrist

Einstein was dead.

skullpatrol

yes, i know

they mapped H's brain down to the neurons

after he died

Robusto

room topic changed to English Language & Usage: What color are dreams in your language? (no tags)

tchrist

I think I’m feeling squeamish this morning.

Robusto

14:24

What exactly is a squeam that you should feel -ish about it?

Apparently the trail of evidence peters out at Anglo-French escoymous.

Hmm, now I wonder if -ous and -ish are related.

Seems likely.

RegDwigнt

Better to feel squeamish than amish. My two cents.

Robusto

If your name is Hamish you're probably not Amish.

RegDwigнt

If your name begins in Ham, it might end in And Eggs.

skullpatrol

►

Robusto

@RegDwigнt If your name ends in Ham it might begin in Green Eggs and.

tchrist

14:29

Hainish Cycle

The Hainish Cycle consists of a number of science fiction novels and stories by Ursula K. Le Guin. It is set in a alternate history/future history in which civilizations of human beings on a number of nearby stars, including Terra (Earth), are contacting each other for the first time and establishing diplomatic relations, setting up a confederacy under the guidance of the oldest of the human worlds, peaceful Hain. In this history, human beings did not evolve on Earth but were the result of interstellar colonies planted by Hain long ago, which was followed by a long period when interstellar travel...

Robusto

We're all still waiting for @Reg to tell us How To Mend a Broken Heart.

RegDwigнt

Aug 8 at 18:39, by RegDwigнt

Ham is Russian for "rude, insulting person".

tchrist

Fumblefont strikes again.

RegDwigнt

@Robusto quickly and thoroughly.

Robusto

@tchrist You think I didn't know about that?

tchrist

14:30

@Robusto I was refreshing a scenic rural route in your cognitive map.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt So it's Russian for "a person"?

RegDwigнt

@Robusto no, only American and French. And these days also Ukrainians.

Robusto

@tchrist Fully illuminated and refreshed now, thank you.

@RegDwigнt Coincidentally, in my SF novel a certain group uses "ham" as a racial insult.

RegDwigнt

Coincidentally? I think not.

tchrist

Curse of Ham

The Curse of Ham is a misnomer for the curse upon Canaan that was imposed by the biblical patriarch Noah. The relevant narrative occurs in the Book of Genesis and concerns Noah's drunkenness and the accompanying shameful act perpetrated by his son Ham the father of Canaan (Gen. 9:20–27). The controversies raised by this story regarding the nature of Ham's transgression, and the question of why Noah cursed Canaan when Ham had sinned, have been debated for over two thousand years. The story's original objective was to justify the subjection of the Canaanites to the Israelites, but in later centuries...

RegDwigнt

14:34

When I grow up, I will invent Misnomerical Linear Algebra.

skullpatrol

►

Robusto

@skullpatrol That's your answer to everything.

@RegDwigнt You know you can't do both.

RegDwigнt

So I will just misname "can't" as "can".

You have to be creative, dude.

Jasper Loy

@RegDwigнt After all they sound similar in AmE, lol.

Robusto

If you were going to grow up you'd have done it by now.

RegDwigнt

14:37

"When" does not imply "that".

Robusto

@JasperLoy Where do you get your information?

Certainly not from exposure to facts.

Jasper Loy

@Robusto Similar, not identical. I knew that was coming.

RegDwigнt

Yeah, in AmE they sound identical, not similar.

Robusto

They don't even sound as similar as pan and pant.

RegDwigнt

11

A: How can I distinguish "can" & "can't" from pronunciation?

The strongest cue for distinguishing these two words is the length of the vowel (in American English at least). The word can has a lengthened vowel can't has a much shorter vowel On the telephone, where the auditory signal is compressed, exaggerating the length of the vowels ("did you say ca-...

Robusto

14:39

For one thing, there's a t sound at the end. Surprise!

tchrist

When the sons of Ham shall do battle with the sons of Muspell, the Rainbow Bridge shall be broken and the gods themselves perish.

Jasper Loy

Life is full of surprises!

RegDwigнt

@Robusto Now you're just inventing things. No American will ever understand you, you pineapple.

Jasper Loy

Talking about pineapples, I have not eaten one for a very long time.

Robusto

Also, in most unemphatic versions of can it sounds more like kin. Can't never does.

tchrist

14:42

It’s tough on your buccal membranes to consume an entire pineapple. They get singed.

RegDwigнt

@JasperLoy At last you said bye to the life of cannibalism.

Robusto

@tchrist And yet we should make the effort.

RegDwigнt

@Robusto yes yes, we get it, you lack empathy.

skullpatrol

and sympathy

Robusto

@RegDwigнt You can't tell that just from my apparent indifference to your plight.

RegDwigнt

14:43

And Cathy Bates.

7 mins ago, by RegDwigнt

So I will just misname "can't" as "can".

Robusto

Perhaps I remisunderestimated you.

skullpatrol

and debates

RegDwigнt

@Robusto I will not accept a remis.

Robusto

How about Harold Ramis?

RegDwigнt

RIP

I'd accept him, but it's too late.

Robusto

14:45

How about Rip Torn?

tchrist

Caint hearya, gottan infarktion in mear.

Robusto

Eukaryotic miscreant.

skullpatrol

Rip van Winkle?

over use of ear plugs

RegDwigнt

Better than overuse of ear slugs.

skullpatrol

snails?

RegDwigнt

14:47

No, slugs.

skullpatrol

boat or plane

RegDwigнt

See, that's exactly what happens when you overuse ear slugs.

skullpatrol

you start calling them snails

Jasper Loy

My mum likes to watch 900-episode Taiwanese dramas, so boring.

skullpatrol

drama mama

RegDwigнt

14:49

I wonder how many of those people would still start watching if you told them there were going to be 900 episodes.

skullpatrol

over 9000

Jasper Loy

Better than "The Days of Our Lives", lol.

RegDwigнt

(I suspect the answer could be a full 100%, but I'd like to know for sure.)

Jasper Loy

Today I had a McDonalds strawberry milkshake. Haven't had one for a year or so.

RegDwigнt

9 mins ago, by RegDwigнt

@JasperLoy At last you said bye to the life of cannibalism.

skullpatrol

14:51

@JasperLoy those are good

did you see the hippocampus vid @JasperLoy

Jasper Loy

@skullpatrol Nope.

skullpatrol

1 hour ago, by skullpatrol

►

so little is known about the brain

Jasper Loy

I think we only use ten per cent of the brain or something like that.

skullpatrol

that is a myth

Ten percent of brain myth

The 10% of brain myth is the widely perpetuated urban legend that most or all humans only make use of 10% (or some other small percentage) of their brains. It has been misattributed to many people, including Albert Einstein. By association, it is suggested that a person may harness this unused potential and increase intelligence. Though factors of intelligence can increase with training, the popular notion that large parts of the brain remain unused, and could subsequently be "activated", rests more in popular folklore than scientific theory. Though mysteries regarding brain function remain—e.g...

Cerberus

Gewd mewning.

Stupid people R stupid.

Jasper Loy

15:01

@skullpatrol Oh I see. I still have not watched Lucy.

tchrist

@skullpatrol Rereading “Thou Shalt Not Report Odds Ratios”, I feel like I have let no few of these gross innumeracies slither by me undetected.

Cerberus

There's a gerund complementizer construction in English that's distinguishable syntactically from other -ing constructions. I don't think CGEL is the final word -- or even close; it seems overcomplicated and a bit too fond of its own terminology, which is its right, granted. But it'll be a generation or two before the dust settles. I would say chickens in The catching of the chickens was hard work is just a noun, not a gerund, whence the article; but in Catching chickens was hard work, it's the verb in a gerund complement construction. — John Lawler Feb 15 '12 at 15:43

I agree with Lawler, who knew it was possible?

Jasper Loy

I think the person staying below me is mad. He usually does hammering at night. Luckily it is not too much.

tchrist

@Cerberus Well, of course chickens is a noun there; it doesn’t become a verb until someone chickens out.

@Cerberus I wonder whether that of changes anything, or should.

►

Cerberus

> I don't think CGEL is the final word -- or even close; it seems overcomplicated and a bit too fond of its own terminology,

I meant this, specifically.

tchrist

15:10

@skullpatrol And an unclever one at that. Evolution would not put the very race at risk through death-in-childbirth if the goal were something whose use-level were no higher than 10%. Makes no sense.

Cerberus

(I actually think that was a typo: he probably meant "I would say catching in...")

skullpatrol

►

tchrist

He does point out that it is only to be expected that any coiner of new terminology should have a somewhat tawdry affair with their own neologicology.

@skullpatrol I have similar mistrust in our understanding of our own genome. Something like only a percent and a half is used for encoding proteins, and barely more than that for functional RNA. However, there seems something fishy here, since very simple organisms have zillions of genes. The endogenous viral and retroviral components also add up.

skullpatrol

Biology is a descriptive science, they just name things.

They can't explain why anything works.

tchrist

@Cerberus Remember how I once suggested that despite your own intuitions in this, the Sudentenlander situation would only get worse instead of better under the current Czar? I realize you later recanted when reality intervened in Pollyanna’s pleasant postulations, but I ask you now, O Canute, when and how will the Red Tide be turned, and at what cost?

@skullpatrol That’s not entirely true, is it, at least at the molecular level? Do you mean that biology offers little to nothing in the way of predictive models? I’m not entirely sure of that one, either. For example, consider the prime-number periodicity of Magicicada.

Although perhaps those predictions are merely mathematical observations regarding how seldom the primes will line up compared with composites.

skullpatrol

15:28

living things are too complex to explain

tchrist

Both living thing and explain are themselves rife with areas for tacit misunderstanding. I’ll grant you living thing, at least for the nonce, but explain does not seem a word one can apply there. Once explains some mechanism or procedure. One does not “explain” a man, let alone Man.

GnomeSlice

Today's Listening | Dubstep / Drumstep / Breaks (Mixsets day 31)

skullpatrol

12 mins ago, by skullpatrol

They can't explain why anything works.

"explain" in this^ sense

tchrist

Can the physicist “explain” why abstract mathematics can “magically” apply to situations in the real world?

skullpatrol

there is no "magic" between math and physics

tchrist

15:40

Modulo aleatoric gods.

Now I wonder where King has gone.

skullpatrol

the biochemist looks to the chemist for explanations

tchrist

Once upon a time, my library was at least sorted into topically dedicated bookcases. This is alas no longer the case, albeit by no doing of my own, and so I have little chance of laying hand upon The Art of Mathematics when whim should beckon, as it now does.

Have molecular biology and biochemistry always meant separate things, and have those separate things always been the same separate things? I ask not Socratically but honestly, as I simply do not know the answer to my question, and would like to.

Let me burn an offering at our modern Delphi, and see what its oracle might say about this physics magic.

skullpatrol

They are intertwined.

tchrist

> Mathematics requires rules of inference. Yet, there are no rules which allow you to infer that the mathematical truths carry over the real-world phenomena. This step requires magic and the true belief that it will work. E. P. Wagner calls it an “article of faith.”

op. cit. page 104, here.

The oracle has produced in a trice what my own hopelessly disorganized stacks can hardly hope to produce in a day, let alone a moment.

It’s of course from the chapter on Applied Mathematics.

There is some leap of faith in the application of mathworld to phys(ical)world.

skullpatrol

15:55

Physics teachers will always preach that the language of Physics is math

No need to leap there.

:-)

tchrist

Unless I misremember, Jerry King taught calculus not physics.

pretends those are different things

skullpatrol

Newton was the second greatest Physicist and Mathematician.

tchrist

We need calculus for most non-trivial physics problems, but the calculus exists on its plane.

sniffs at bait, wanders onward

I suppose I oughtn’t so casually definite-article calculus, as that is a markèd in-group usage that snobs off the Ausländer.

skullpatrol

the more I learn the less I know

tchrist

Which is precisely why the archetypical sophomore is always a nineteen-year-old.

skullpatrol

16:10

Indeed.

tchrist

16:27

“It take a hamlet to make an omelette: The fable of Stone Soup revisited in light of factory farming”

I guess that would make Stone Soup more of a parable than a fable.

Jasper Loy

@GnomeSlice So tomorrow you will start from Day 1 again since it is a new month?

@skullpatrol Who is the greatest?

skullpatrol

@JasperLoy Einstein and Gauss

Cerberus

16:46

@tchrist Yes, I remember it.

And, as I said, you were more right than I.

@tchrist I read that so-called "junk DNA" is in fact not at all useless or unused.

tchrist

@Cerberus I just can’t see any likely path forward right now for that problem.

Cerberus

@tchrist All we can do is damage control.

And stabilise the situation before winter cometh.

tchrist

I’m thinking that before might well take the subjunctive, as in ere come the winter. The 3s subjunctive doesn’t take an -eth/-s ending.

Cerberus

It depends.

At least in Latin.

If it is more than a mere indication of temporality, Latin usually takes the subjunctive after such conjunctions.

The army arrive in Rome before winter → indicative.

tchrist

17:04

I can see how before could logically take both senses.

Cerberus

The army must arrive before Hannibal breaks the siege → subjunctive, I think.

tchrist

Some conjunctions can go both ways, and there can be mandatory triggers that occur in one language that do not occur in closely neighboring ones, let alone in those more distantly related on the Indo-European tree.

Cerberus

Absolutely.

Mitch

@skullpatrol What about both at the same time? Oh that would have been Gauss then too right but not Einstein.

Cerberus

Greek has a very different use of the modi than Latin.

> Caesar ad oppidum contendit, priusquam hostes se ex terrore reciperent.

tchrist

17:09

Spanish has some mandatory triggers that don’t seem logical when translated into English. Although your example above is not one that seems odd.

Like before and after I believe are mandatory triggers. “She gave me her gift after he had given me his.”

Cerberus

Actually, in English, I might add a shall or should.

tchrist

It doesn’t seem to make sense to us in English that that should require a subjunctive after after there.

I cannot come up with a conjunctive use of before in Spanish that would not require the subjunctive.

Jasper Loy

Where did George vanish to?

tchrist

That doesn’t mean there isn’t one, just that I cannot think of one.

As soon as and once also require subjunctives.

Even when the action is completed already.

He stopped thinking about the problem as soon as / once he went home for the day.

Cerberus

@tchrist Yes, sure. Just as in Latin, arbitrary conjunctions can require the subjunctive. Like ut in Latin.

tchrist

17:18

You just have to learn which conjunctions those are; you can’t always reason it out.

Cerberus

Yeah.

And sometimes there is little change in meaning if you use a subjunctive. Cum, for example, can mean "when" with indicative or subjunctive.

tchrist

“Give it to him when he gets here” would trigger the subjunctive, but the historical / repetitious past does not, or need not: “She would always serve him supper immediately when he got home from work”.

Although random Google searches turn up both subjunctive and indicative for such things, so there is some nuance to be turned upon.

Like “We’ll leave as soon as your mother is ready” really has to be subjunctive, but there are other situations less alwaysy.

Cerberus

@tchrist The latter would be a subjunctive in Greek, but not in Latin.

tchrist

One oddity is that modern French has fewer adverbial conjunctions that trigger the subjunctive than neighboring languages (ES, IT, PT) have for the cognate equivalent, which is really annoying to keep straight.

Cerberus

Yeah French is a bit less like Latin.

tchrist

17:28

I seem to recall having looked into this issue, and older written French still used subjunctive there, just as older written English once did. But no longer.

Même si is the one that catches me most frequently.

I’m pretty sure that that construction takes indicative in French, but subjunctive in the other common Romance tongues. But I have no idea why.

Whereas the synonymous bien que takes subjunctive. These things make no sense; they just are.

When you have two conjunctions that mean the same thing yet where only the one takes the indicative and the other the subjunctive, it puzzles me greatly how natives think of these.

@JasperLoy Who can say?

Some explication of bien que versus même si here, monolingual French.

> On doit éviter d’employer de façon interchangeable les locutions bien que et même si. La locution conjonctive bien que introduit une concession qui vise une situation passée ou présente, tandis que même si sert à introduire une hypothèse ou une éventualité. « Bien que l’avocat ait déposé cette pièce dans les délais impartis, le juge n’a pas pu en tenir compte. » « Même si l’avocat déposait cette pièce dans les délais impartis, le juge ne pourrait pas en tenir compte. »

That doit is pretty strong.

It shows where my brain was led astray, thinking them synonymous conjunctions.

Interesting that “good authors” sometimes stray from that rule.

> De bons auteurs affirment que bien que peut s’employer avec l’indicatif (pour insister sur la réalité du fait exprimé) ou le conditionnel (pour marquer la condition ou l’éventualité) quand l’idée de réalité l’emporte sur l’idée d’incertitude, de supposition, exprimée par le subjonctif.

But prudence advises erring never on that side of the fence.

> Par mesure de prudence, la règle de l’emploi du subjonctif devrait toujours être suivie puisque, dans tous les cas, la notion de concession et d’opposition véhiculée par la locution conjonctive implique que l’on écarte du plan de la réalité le fait qui est dans un premier temps envisagé dans la réalité; c’est la raison d’être même de l’emploi du subjonctif. « Bien qu’il eût raison en droit, le demandeur n’a pas obtenu gain de cause. »

Oh good, it isn’t just me whom this befuddles:

> Hola, a veces tengo dudas con el uso de "même si + indicatif" y "bien que + subjonctif". Mi profesora me ha dicho que cuando en castellano usamos "aunque + subjuntivo" debemos traducirlo al francés por "même si + indicatif"; y que cuando usamos "aunque + indicativo" hemos de traducirlo por "bien que + subjonctif". ¿Es esto cierto?

To which the answer was yes.

So Spanish intentionally distinguishes indicative and subjunctive following the same conjunction meaning “although”, while French instead requires using two completely different conjunctions for the two scenarios.

You can’t just switch mood to switch meaning; for French, you also have to swap out the conjunction itself.

Cerberus

17:46

@tchrist Generally, it is even though v. even if.

But Englishmen also use even if to mean even though. Dutchmen do not.

Well, actually, it depends on the conjunction.

Mitch

3 hours ago, by Cerberus

Stupid people R stupid.

Cerberus

Hoewel is only bien que (how = hoe; well = wel).

Ook al can be both bien que and même si. But mainly bien que. And ook als is only même si!

Zelfs al(s) is only même si; it is literally the same words.

@Mitch No comment.

Al is mainly bien que, but also sometimes même si, mainly in older Dutch I think.

> Al draagt een aap een gouden ring, het is en blijft een lelijk ding.

Translate that, and figure out what the expression signifies!

A modern, even funnier variation I heard recently:

> Al draagt een aap een zegelring, het is en blijft van lage kring.

Johan Larsson

18:04

@RegDwigнt Yes, I liked it a lot.

Back from the long hike, puppy is so skinny I don't dare to post a pic.

They ate 15 kg of 34% fat in five days. It was not enough.

Cerberus

Hi!

Perhaps he needs a more balanced diet, more proteins and carbohydrates?

Johan Larsson

18:19

Can also be that he has been running >100km per day :)

Cerberus

That might just be it!!

I didn't know dogs could run that long in a single day.

I thought humans were the best long-distance walkers/runners of all land animals.

Or among the very best.

But can we travel 100km a day for several days in a row, is that possible?

I don't think so.

More like 60?

Johan Larsson

18:36

@Cerberus I can check the GPS logs but they usually run ~5x the distance I walk

GnomeSlice

18:51

@JasperLoy Tomorrow I'm going to stop numbering them and go back to regular stuff. For august I posted only mixsets.

Which are long compilations of a bunch of tracks

Cerberus

19:38

@JohanLarsson Oh, that will be interesting!

So they have GPS boxes? Aren't those bulky?

Johan Larsson

@Cerberus One I remember from last year: I walked 36 km, Beast ran 143 km.

Cerberus

Wow!

Beastly.

In a single day?

Johan Larsson

yes

Think he averaged 16 km/h but it was good conditions, temperature, topology & vegetation.

Robusto

20:01

@JohanLarsson Sled dogs?

Johan Larsson

@Robusto Three pointers & one Irish Setter (not my dogs in the pics)

They consist of lungs & legs. Some might have a brain but I don't think they use it much :)

Cerberus

Hah.

Impressive.

Robusto

20:20

I know some other dogs who don't use their brain as much as they might.

Johan Larsson

ad canis is ugly no matter who is doing it

Sad thing is that I'm still fat after this week.

tchrist

This just in from ELU’s Leave It to Peever! department:

0

A: Is there any difference between “like” and “as”?

Peeves versus Rules There is no such rule of English grammar. There is only a peeve. It is not wrong to say that he speaks like his father does. There is no grammatical barrier to saying that, and native speakers have always done so. The like-versus-as shibboleth is of the same class as fict...

And yes, Ward, I realize I’ve been a little hard on the Peever.

Johan Larsson

Tom, do you know why glacier water is so blue?

tchrist

Yes.

It is because of the density of the ice.

Johan Larsson

hmm, not getting it

tchrist

20:30

Which is such that it absorbs all but the highest-energy visible light.

Johan Larsson

The rapid/lake is molten ice.

tchrist

> Glacial ice is a different color from regular ice. It is so blue because the dense ice of the glacier absorbs every other color of the spectrum except blue.

> Sometimes the glacial ice appears almost turquoise. Its crystalline structure strongly scatters blue light. The ice on a glacier has been there for a really long time and has been compacted down so that its structure is pretty different from the ice you normally see. Glacial ice is a lot different from the frozen water you get out of the freezer.

Blue ice (glacial)

Blue ice occurs when snow falls on a glacier, is compressed, and becomes part of a glacier that winds its way toward a body of water. During its travels, air bubbles that are trapped in the ice are squeezed out, and the size of the ice crystals increases, making it clear. In some areas, earthquakes have raised the blue ice above the ground and created formations much like large frozen waves. The blue color is sometimes wrongly attributed to Rayleigh scattering. Rather, ice is blue for the same reason water is blue: it is a result of an overtone of an oxygen-hydrogen (O-H) bond stretch in water...

Well.

It is not Raleigh scattering after all.

It is because of the O–H bond.

Johan Larsson

google.se/maps/place/vuoggatjalme,+930+90+Arjeplog/…

We camped by that lake, notice the difference in color between the big and the small lake

tchrist

That is probably something else.

Johan Larsson

I have seen it in many places. Not that easy to see the colour in the pic.

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