I hate this user. Always asking GRE questions on math and eng.

I am feeling wicked, so I would like to say I hope he fails the exam.

Good night.

later pal

@Cerberus Hey! My mother-in-law is the sweetest little old lady you could imagine!

@Robusto I know, I know.

This is only about proverbial mothers-in-law, who are unlike real ones.

@snailboat The way he writes them makes them pretty bad.

Weekends are wonderful, chores done, take time to rest, then make what is left, pure fun and forget the English language.

@Cerberus Besides, since when does a German mother-in-law remain silent?

@Robus AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH ...

It's a legitimate question.

@Robusto There was a meeting of the international association of German mothers-in-law last month. They had a vote and they now allow members to be silent for more than 12 minutes at a time.

@terdon Sehr ehrgeizig.

@Robusto Heh, that was the response of then president of France Mitterrand whren somebody shouted "Death to fools!"

But not in German, I expect.

Ah, actually, it was de Gaulle who said it and it was "Vaste programme !"

Heh. *de Gaulle?

Even I knew that one, and I don't speak French.

@Robusto Ouch, indeed.

[ SmokeDetector ] Phone number detected: +91-9950211818 Love problems specialist in mumbai on english.stackexchange.com

does happy dance

@Robusto Schwiegermutters are rarely Schweigermutters!

@Undo Flagged!

@Cerberus I made it vanish!

Yay!

Hey, 2 minutes from posting to nuking. Not bad at all.

We rock!

Well, I'm sure a few Taverners got in on that too ;)

Some moderators see all flags from all sites?

@Cerberus No, it just posts in the Tavern too:

Oh, okay.

Tavern == Room Full of Hungry Moderation Sharks

@Cerberus And I am The Rock, lol.

All right, lol.

And spammer account destroyed too. I'm glad it all works :)

How does that work, is the account of a question deleted as spam also deleted?

@Cerberus A mod has to manually delete/destroy it. But yeah, accounts that post spam are nuked.

Ah OK, makes sense.

Bienvenu.

This needs to be some ELU FAQ:

I don't think you can use après comme ça!

And how do you write macra, like ī?

@Cerberus If that’s the only naughtiness you’ve caught me at in that comment, then I have some lovely beach-front property for you in sunny Aridzona.

Hey, one has to start somewhere.

At the top.

@Cerberus Either with Opt-A i or else via the supercited murine method.

macbook# perl -le 'print "How do you write macra, like i\N{COMBINING MACRON}?"'
How do you write macra, like ī?

You can, however, only use the prefix Opt-A technique with those letters that have a ‘pre-combined’ form, in which case something like Opt-A i works and generates only a single codepoint. However, for applying the macron to arbitrary characters, you post use the postfix Shift-Opt-A technique instead, which generate two separate codepoints, since now you have an actual combining character as I effected in the Perl example.

Right.

So the precombined macaronic letters, which would cover anything you want, produce a single code point, but the graphemes produced by adding a combining mark after a base character (or other combining mark) produce one code point for the base plus one for each combining mark applied.

Ī

But I can type macra on capitals too, with Autohotkey.

I don't think they are multiple code points?

macbook# perl -le 'print "How do you write complexly diacriticked graphemes like o\N{COMBINING MACRON}\N{COMBINING CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT}\N{COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT}\N{COMBINING CEDILLA}?"'
How do you write complexly diacriticked graphemes like ō̧̂́?

@Cerberus It is difficult to say, actually.

That one up there looks like U+012A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER I WITH MACRON, so a single codepoint. But it could have gone through a normalization step somewhere that merged them.

I bet that looks better for my fancy one than it did in your web client.

@tchrist those are OSX shortcuts, not OSX/Linux ones. Some of them work if you happen to have a keyboard with a Fn key, but others don't and none will I think without a special function key.

BTW, there is a short 4-codepoint NFC version of the 5-codepoint one I did above.

@terdon On Linux, you can select the Mac keyboard.

Ah, so the Win key acts like the Option one?

I dunno.

What’s a Win?

Opt is AKA Alt.

Maybe the command key is win. I dunno.

> [2009-05-09]: Recent versions of Linux/X11 can emulate the Mac keyboard setup. In Gnome, go to Preferences → Keyboard → Layouts, then Add the USA/Macintosh layout, Remove the USA layout. Then go to Layout Options and set both Windows keys to be “third level choosers”. The Windows key will then act like the Option key on the Mac.

It’s called the “Happy Hacking Keyboard Professional 2”.

fooninja.net/2010/07/30/happy-hacking-keyboard-professional-2

I like the bottom one because its footprint is reasonable, it is a delight to type upon, and the markings on the top of the keys can never wear off.

It also keeps other people from trying to use your keyboard, because they don’t know what you’ve put where. :)

You can get the version with the glyphs on the keys. The one directly to the left of the “1” key is the ESC key as God and Dennis intended.

I like their stylish HH monogram.

elitekeyboards.com/…

@terdon I sympathize with this guy, especially since I’m doing (nearly) the same thing right now, but he’s still come to the wrong place.

@Cerberus grrrosss!

I wonder if the guy doing the translation is not a native speaker in the target language.

That is almost always a bad idea.

Professionals excepted.

Ugh, UIs in any language other than English are almost always horrible. There simply isn't an easy way to translate 40 odd years of user experience.

@tchrist Why do you think he might not be?

@terdon Meh, in most cases programmes like Windows have decent translations.

@Cerberus I disagree. I've used French, Spanish and Greek and they're all horrible.

The newer the programme, the uglier the interface names, usually.

Google is pretty bad at translating into Dutch.

@terdon Well, I couldn't say for those languages.

@Cerberus Because if he were a native French speaker, he would know the French words for those things.

And he would not be asking English speakers how to translate something into his native language.

@tchrist Why would he?

I don't know how to translate most of those between my two native languages. They're very specific to IT.

@tchrist That is strange, to be sure, but it doesn't mean that his French is bad.

@terdon Exactly.

@terdon Right now I’m being frustrated by how English NOUN-NOUN compounds expand to huge things in Spanish or French. It really screws your UI.

@tchrist Bingo. That's the kind of thing I mean. Non-English interfaces tend to have twice the width. Also, how would you translate hover to Spanish? Flotar?

Suspender?

We have contests for the best translation of an English computer word into Dutch, because it is exceedingly difficult. Often no satisfying translation is found and we have to make do with something meh. But we forget how computer words in English are also often extremely meh; we're just so used to them that we no longer notice.

^^

@terdon Sure, just pick one. What's the problem?

Is flotar any worse that hover?

Both sound very strange in the context of hovering over a link.

And hovering does not sound strange?

@Cerberus Not any more, that's the point. I'm sure it did at first.

There you go.

I'm not saying there is anything intrinsic to English that makes it better suited as a UI language (except, perhaps, that it often has shorter words than the non-English equivalents) just that through repetition, we are very used to the English ones and the others sound weird.

Ah okay.

Then we are agreed.

@terdon Well, you sure don’t leave it as hover. :) Me imagino que te refieres a esas descripciones emergentes que aparecen al poner el cursor sobre los elementos gráficos, ¿verdad?

Sip

So, hover => poner el cursor sobre

Not very succinct.

Y el cursor del ratón, además, si te da la gana. :)

I’ve had to kill the nowrap on all the UI elements.

They kept truncating the Spanish.

You know what else is driving me mad?

The use of thing1/thing2 in English.

Like the name/code must be valid or blank.

That one is ok, because nombre and código are both masculine.

@terdon That is what we often say in Dutch.

We can say zweven, though.

Which is like floating.

That's the thing. Hover has come to mean place the thingie that moves when you move your mouse over an element shown on your screen.

But think about what happens if you wanted person/business. You can’t use una persona/negocio válido. You have to use una persona válida o vacía o un negocio válido o vacío. Look at that!

Because your article and adjectives have to match the gender of both pieces of the stupid this/that bit.

In this case, we can swap in empresa for negocio to solve the problem.

But that’s just luck.

And nothing fits anymore.

@tchrist Or entidad which should cover either.

damn spell check

For hover, I would run msgunfmt on each bloody file in /usr/share/locale/es*/LC_MESSAGES/*.mo | grep -i -A1 hover

And find out what somebody thought to use.

msgstr "Al pasar el cursor por encima:"

There you go.

Yep.

Svelte.

msgstr "Esto ocultará el lanzador hasta que pase el cursor por encima."

What was that one’s msgid?

Until you hover?

Well, at the end.

msgid "This will hide the dock until you hover over it with the mouse."

I do believe the English is longer.

Shouldn't that be cursór? Is it pronounced cúrsor in Spanish?

It is pronounced cursor, not cúrsor.

Exactly, so shouldn't it have an accent?

I never remember the rules for accents.

Comes from never studying the damn language and picking it up from osmosis.

@tchrist In Latin, you can just make the adjective agree with the last noun.

Rule is: stress is on the penult if it ends in a vowel, n, or s, and on the last syllable otherwise.

Anything that breaks that rule needs a written accent.

So just like decir takes no accent, neither does cursor.

It is a very simple system.

And completely predictable.

I know. Nevertheless, I always forget. I have very few opportunities to write in Spanish.

@Cerberus Hm.

@Cerberus is it true that there are no prepositions in Latin?

No.

There are many prepositions in Latin.

However, you can often get away without them by using the case system.

Just depends.

Qui gladio ferit gladio perit needs no cum for its swords.

Or whatever preposition you might like there.

Spanish and French got their original prepositions from Latin’s.

Thanks, I was arguing with my Italian girlfriend about it. She claimed that the presence of declensions meant there were no prepositions.

Understand that some of those are rare and some common.

Holy shit, they just oneboxed Wiktionary!

@terdon That . . . overstates matters.

Apparently so. Cool :)

There are a zillion places where you have to add a preposition when translating Latin to a modern caseless language.

But that doesn’t mean that they didn’t ever use them. They were common enough.

Think about something simple with a genitive, like casus belli or modus operandi.

Those need prepositions in English.

Although maybe you could use an apostrophe-s for the first one. Maybe.

I don't know enough about Latin (know nothing, really) so I couldn't really argue one way or the other. It just seemed strange 'cause there are prepositions in Greek, despite having declensions.

*’cause

Cheers.

Unless you mean declension case. :)

Ummm, yes, that's what I meant. looks around, shifty-eyed :)

Thing is, they switch the case even if you can’t “see” it.

If something is done sub rosa, than it is actually done sub rosā because just plain rosa would be nominative.

The Romans didn’t write the macron, because they knew what needed long vowels even due to inflections.

So long vs short vowels could indicate declension?

Interesting.

Yes.

So that is for inter alia.

However, the higher declensions were a little overloaded. Cornū as a 4th neuter is invariant in the singular but for the genitive.

Whereas manus a 4th fem gets a long vowel for the genitive but no other change.

People are always thinking all -us nouns in Latin are 2nd decl masculines, and they aren’t.

BTW, that’s why it is la mano.

Huh?

Manus?

Yep.

But manus illa.

Huh, cool. Nice to find a kernel of logic there.

Not manus *ille.

I was wondering about the short and long vowels in English the other day. It's the only language I know of where a vowel can either sound like its name or something else. Is there any connection to Latin or would that be a germanic trait?

No, this is different.

OE and Latin both had phonemic vowel length.

So Latin had 5+5 vowels and OE 7+7.

But since Spanish uses phonemic stress not phonemic length, it has only 5.

Not the same 5 in a lot of places, but still only 5.

OE had Latin’s 5 plus æ and y. So 7. But 7+7.

The OE y is the Greek one.

Er, like in French tu.

Greek had that?

Not Spanish tu?

Right: OE y is IPA /y/ so French tu not Spanish tu (nor tú :).

Huh, modern Greek doesn't have that.

I called it the Greek one in some brainfart involving i griega: the written grapheme was Greek, and like z appeared in Latin only in Greek loanwords.

Ah, OK :)

But about those vowels, I had to look up a few things and stumbled upon allophonic vowel length but that does not seem to describe the difference between the a in mate and mad.

What is that called?

Um, two different vowels? :)

But they aren't! That's what I'm wondering about. How come a can sound like its name and also like an a.

It just struck me as strange that in English a vowel can have a name that sounds so different.

As though the two were derived from different sources. There's not much in common between the sounds of I and the i in Sid. Yet, they're written using the same letter. How did that come about?

@terdon Absolutely not. They work the same way as in French and Greek.

@Cerberus Thanks, tchrist explained.

In OE, they were not “so” different.

They differed only in length.

Good.

@tchrist Ah, so the sounds changed in modern English?

@terdon Greek lost /y/ in late Antiquity, I believe.

@terdon Great Vowel Shift.

@Cerberus Oh, OK.

@tchrist Ah, yes, I've seen that mentioned. Time to read up I guess.

@terdon The second vowel shift only affected some vowels in certain situations. Apparently, the a's in made and mad were influenced differently because of the surrounding consonants or something.

@Cerberus And that always confused me in the various languages that call it so, since it's pronounced i as in Sid in Greek. Damn, I really need to learn the IPA.

@Cerberus Yes, I'm reading through its Wiki page.

@terdon Yeah, it's very confusing. Vowels changed in different ways in different languages...

In Dutch, we say /i grek/ for the name of the letter y, after French. But the letter itself is pronounced in various ways in Dutch.

So when were the names of the letters standardized in English? Was that also Johnson? Why were the long forms chosen. I'm thinking this might be worth a question.

I don’t even understand the question.

The names have always been the same.

When you talked about a letter in exclusion, it was the long variant.

That has never changed.

@terdon Yes!

But what we call long today has nothing to with what it really is.

Johnson didn’t pick them.

@tchrist If so, that is a good answer.

Interestingly, French uses the shortest form for e, /ə/, while Dutch uses the longest form, /eɪ/, so neither language uses the third (also very common) form, /ɛ/. All three sounds are commonly used for the letter in both languages, depending on surrounding letters etc.

The chart is upside down.

@tchrist Well, I just skimmed through the wikipedia article on the great vowel shift so that represents the sum total of my knowledge on the subject. However, it claims that :

> Middle English About this sound [aː] (help·info) fronted to About this sound [æː] (help·info) and then raised to About this sound [ɛː] (help·info), About this sound [eː] (help·info) and in many dialects diphthongized in Modern English to About this sound [eɪ] (help·info) (as in make).

And very queerly arranged.

Which I understand to mean that the sound I know of as a as in make came after the shift and yet that is the name of the letter and no a as in mad.

Ah, yes, that is a nice chart.

In OE æsc is its own letter and says its own name.

So, at some point, presumably, the letter was called something else.

glares

I take it I said something stupid?

It should be arranged with the 7 vowels of OE.

@terdon Somehow, the name of the letter aligned with made and not with mad. I am not sure why, but I think it always picked the long forms in Tchrist's chart, right?

The sound /æ/ is the sound of its letter, which was the letter æ written æsc and homophonous with modern ash.

And when sounds merged or diverged, what happened?