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8:02 PM
Project Gutenberg has Liaisons on it.
Interesting, they had already stopped using imperfect subjunctive here: "Adieu, ma chère Sophie; je t'aime comme si j'étais encore au Couvent."
 
So does Library Genesis: libgen.org/…
 
I was reading here.
 
@tchrist He also uses the imperfect subjunctive, mixes things up.
Just like the use of ne.
Plus grand que je ne le suis etc.
 
Those extra ne's are weird.
Yes, you have to for superlatives.
 
Mm they sound quite logical once you get used to them. And they sometimes occur in many other languages too, including English, right?
@tchrist I don't believe you have to in modern French.
 
8:05 PM
That’s the weirdest thing I’ve never seen.
 
See?
I'm sure that was possible in some English.
 
Should be "ever".
 
It ain't not wrong.
 
Today.
 
I wasn't talking about modern standard English.
Just pointing out the partial universality of the phaenomenon.
 
> En effet, je gagerais que, malgré les soixante mille livres de rente de la petite Volanges, il n'aurait jamais fait ce mariage, si elle eût été brune, ou si elle n'eût pas été au Couvent.
ew :)
 
crl
un langage très distingué, n'est-ce pas?
 
See?
Bien sûr!
 
@crl Mais oui.
 
Distinguissime!
 
crl
8:07 PM
hehe
 
I was trying to proto the superlative.
 
I was wondering whether you got to do that in French.
I didn’t think French had the -issimus, -errimus versions, but I actually do not know.
@crl What’s the story there?
 
crl
ʲᵘˢᵗ ʰᵉʰᵉ
 
No, I meant with reference to the -issimus, -errimus absolute superlatives. Famosísimo, paupérrimo and such. Did French ever once have those kinds?
 
crl
yes, un grandissime vin
 
8:13 PM
Ah, so it still does.
Thanks.
 
crl
it's a bit rare though
on dirait plus un vin grandiose for example
 
Ouch, that would easily translate wrong with the English false friend. :)
It’s marked "rare". Hm.
 
crl
Hm, this one too is 'peu usité=rare' isn't marked rare cnrtl.fr/definition/bellissime
 
Larousse seems to think so. :)
It is a pretty word, though.
 
crl
brillantissime, excellentissime, éminentissime, généralissime, rarissime, révérendissime, richissime, sérénissime,
those one are current actually, sorry I didn't have them in head
 
8:18 PM
Oh that last one is mandatory for certain forms of address, I forget which. Something ecclesiastical I think.
 
But are they inherited, or loan words from Latin/Italian?
 
Most of those look ecclesiastic.
 
Or artificial, modern creations?
@crl All of those look to be vocatives, so borrowed from Latin.
 
Only généralissime and rarissime don’t smell "churchy" to me.
@Cerberus Naw.
 
That would be my first guess.
 
8:20 PM
I recognize the -us > -e vocative notion, but that isn’t how French evolved those words. I would bet anything.
 
Why not?
 
Because French has so many -ime words.
 
Seeing that list...
Does it?
 
I don’t have a French word list to grep for ime$, but I think so.
 
Or did it, would be the right question.
 
8:21 PM
Centime.
 
They always sounded a bit foreign to me in French. I could be wrong.
That is completely different, no superlative.
Just a stem that happened to end on -im-.
Right?
 
But -us words from Latin became -e words in French without requiring a vocative explication.
 
At any rate, no superlative.
 
Well, it’s centessimal or something.
Which is a different thing.
 
@tchrist Yes, in general. But superlatives, did they survive at all, or were the ones we are seeing now borrowed later? That is the question.
 
8:23 PM
Like sexagesimal.
@crl Where did you get your list of those?
 
What are you talking about?
None of those are superlatives.
 
crl
@tchrist google.fr/search?q=mot+finissant+par+issime (kind of Scrabble sites)
 
Right. :)
Hm, célébrissime is weird.
 
@tchrist Most of those look like adjectives of address or numbers.
 
It was a 3rd declension adjective with an -errimus superlative. One uses celebérrimo in Spanish and Portuguese, although it does sound a bit learnèd.
 
8:26 PM
@tchrist Yes, but this may have been used in M. Latin.
It wouldn't surprise me, that is.
 
They re-derived it in French from célèbre +‎ -issime.
== French == === Etymology === From Latin -issimus via Italian -issimo. === Pronunciation === IPA(key): /i.sim/ === Suffix === -issime suffix used to form superlative forms of adjectives La République de Venise était connue sous le nom de La Sérénissime. Ce film est un navet au scénario ridiculissime, à la réalisation à la fois molle et hystérique, avec des acteurs hallucinants de niaiserie, le prix d’interprétation revenant à la vache qui vole. ==== Synonyms ==== totalement très == Interlingua == === Suffix === -issime Appended to an adjective, this suffix is an intensifier wh...
Ick.
But still.
Ick to the formatting, not to the words.
 
It says nothing about inherited versus borrowed.
 
crl
géantissime, pauvrissime, there can be others
 
Sérénissime for La Serenissima looks borrowed whole.
 
Pauvrissime can’t be borrowed, because again Latin had pauperrimus for that one.
 
crl
8:30 PM
infinitésimal, "-ésimal" is a bit a cousin of those suffix
 
> Étymol. et Hist. 1544 (M. Scève, Délie, 424, éd. E. Parturier, p. 288). Empr. à l'ital.rarissimo « très rare » (dep. fin xiiies.-déb. xives., Tolomei ds Tomm.-Bell), superl. de raro « rare » (v. ce mot). Fréq. abs. littér.: 49.
There you go.
@tchrist See my comment on célébrissime.
 
Regular people say pobrísimo, but scholarly people say paupérrimo.
 
crl
'paupérité, paupérisation' is used as well in French, formal or economic context
 
Generalissimo is also a well-known Italian word, so French probably borrowed généralissime from there too.
 
Tell that to Franco.
 
8:34 PM
> Dér. de riche*; suff. -issime*. L'ex. du déb. du xives. est prob. empr. à l'ital., le texte étant franco-ital.
 
So they didn’t inherit it, but borrowed it.
 
Yeah.
 
Generalísimo es el término que denota a un rango militar superior al Mariscal de Campo y al Gran Almirante. Dicho rango era otorgado en tiempos históricos a comandantes de un ejército o de las fuerzas armadas. En su uso presente, el término Generalísimo se aplica habitualmente a un oficial militar que toma el poder a través de un golpe de Estado, o que ha suspendido los mecanismos constitucionales previamente instituidos, convirtiéndose en jefe de la rama ejecutiva del Estado, y que se basa en su cargo como jefe supremo de las fuerzas armadas para obtener legitimidad política. == Uso por países... ==
 
Although they do mention a suffix -issime for richissime; but the suffix itself may have been borrowed before that time.
 
Supreme Commander does sound a bit golpy.
Coupy?
> En España el cargo fue concedido por vez primera1 por Carlos IV a Manuel Godoy con motivo de la guerra de las naranjas de 1801, en un intento por evitar que el mando de las tropas franco-españolas fuera asumido por el general francés Saint-Cyr.2 Posteriormente fue utilizado por el dictador Francisco Franco durante y después de la guerra civil española.
En México el grado de generalísimo fue otorgado por los insurgentes a los máximos líderes de la Independencia. Este grado militar lo tuvieron Miguel Hidalgo, José María Morelos y Agustín de Iturbide. Durante el Primer Imperio Mexicano, el C
 
8:36 PM
> Suff. tiré du lat. -issimus ou de l'ital. -issimo, servant à former des adj. à valeur superlative, gén. avec une nuance iron. ou plaisante.
...
Rem. Grandissime et rarissime sont des empr. à l'ital., ainsi que des termes d'étiquettes tels que éminentissime, excellentissime, illustrissime, révérendissime, sérénissime.
 
So yes.
And probably churchy I bet.
 
Tiré sounds like borrowed. The fact that they mention Latin alongside Italian also implies that it was borrowed later, not inherited from Latin.
> A. − [La base est un adj.] V. richissime et aussi :
élégantissime. Un général anglais, dont je n'ai pas retenu le nom, un général élégantissime, d'un chic supérieur (Goncourt, Journal,1885, p. 512).
énormissime. Monsieur, voici, dit un facteur des Messageries en posant dans l'antichambre deux énormissimes bourriches (Balzac, Muse départ.,1844, p. 185).
faiblissime. Guicciardi était l'homme à donner pour directeur à ce faiblissime Eugène (Stendhal, Corresp.,1805, p. 66).
longuissime. Écrivez-moi une longuissime lettre pour me prouver que vous me pardonnez ma négligence (Flaub., Corresp.,18
I apologize for the formatting.
 
crl
And Spanish borrowed -issimo from French who borrowed it from Italian?
 
Hmm I don't know about Spanish.
Spanish has probably inherited it?
 
crl
-issimo is very current in Spanish
 
8:41 PM
Yes, -ísimo is fully productive in Spanish.
However, it forms absolutely superlatives, not substantives. Generalísimo has been taken for a substantive.
 
@tchrist Then it is probably inherited in Spanish, isn't it?
 
Not sure I follow.
 
Fully productive suggests inherited in this case.
 
Yes, inherited from Latin.
Not borrowed from Italian.
 
Of course, whence else could it have been inherited?
 
8:44 PM
I was fuzzied by inhered.
For inherited.
 
Oh oops!
 
DRAE doesn’t do much good here, but it rarely does.
> generalísimo.
(Del sup. de general).
1. m. Jefe que manda el estado militar en paz y en guerra, con autoridad sobre todos los generales del Ejército.
 
Does it have -isimo?
 
What?
Oh.
Yes.
> -ísimo, ma.
(Del lat. -issimus).
1. suf. U. para formar el grado superlativo de adjetivos y de algunos adverbios. Malísimo, blanquísimo, lejísimos, cerquísima. Combinado con -ble toma la forma -bilísimo. Amabilísimo, notabilísima.
There are irregulars like acérrimo and — I’m sure you’ll love this one — ubérrimo.
There aren’t many of those, though.
And I don’t consider -érrimo productive.
> -érrimo -ma. Terminación presente en varios superlativos cultos que proceden directamente del latín:
acérrimo (del lat. acerrimus, superl. de acer ‘acre’ y ‘ardiente o violento’), aspérrimo (del lat. asperrimus, superl. de asper ‘áspero’), celebérrimo (del lat. celeberrimus, superl. de celeber ‘célebre’), integérrimo (del lat. integerrimus, superl. de integer ‘íntegro’), libérrimo (del lat. liberrimus, superl. de liber ‘libre’), misérrimo (del lat. miserrimus, superl. de miser ‘mísero’), nigérrimo (del lat. nigerrimus, superl. de niger ‘negro’), paupérrimo (del lat. pauperrimus, superl. d
They’re cultas, those ones.
Portuguese has all those plus some in -ílimo.
agílimo, dificílimo, dissimílimo, docílimo, ductílimo, facílimo, fragílimo, gentílimo, gracílimo, humílimo, indocílimo, inverossimílimo, mílimo, pugílimo, simílimo, verisimílimo, verissimílimo, verosimílimo, verossimílimo.
Spanish doesn’t have those.
Only a few of those are in common usage.
Although facílimo and dificílimo are common enough in Portuguese. But Spanish has used -ísimo for those ones.
difícil → dificilísimo, fácil → facilísimo
Those are stronger than just using muy/muito on the regular adjective.
They’re as whatever as it gets.
Like really really blah, not just very blah.
So antigüísimo is older than muy antiguo.
Or at least, the speaker is emphasizing its ancientness more.
 
9:18 PM
-2
Q: Difference between “persona”, "personality" and “character”?

GamalWhat would be the difference between persona, personality and character? _ I love him so much as he has a great ( persona - personality - character )

-2
Q: Difference between “sports” and “sporting”

GamalWhat would be the difference between sports and sporting ?

Those are the last two of his six questions that are still open.
I doubt he’ll be posting any more questions. :)
 
10:00 PM
Sven Yargs on February 20, 2015

A question on EL&U “On the origin of ‘blizzard’” asked about the origin of the word blizzard. The history of usage of the word during the period between when it first appears in print in the United Sates (1834) and when it is first used in the sense of “a fierce snowstorm” is fascinating (to me)—but even a less than exhaustive account of that history of usage too long to serve as an appropriate EL&U answer. Consequently, I’m putting it here.

One weakness in some modern analyses of blizzard involves a failure to acknowledge the wide (and widening …

Timely: I am in a complete blizzard with heavy snow and high winds.
 
10:24 PM
Hello everybody!
I wanted to ask a question in English Exchange, but was afraid that I wouldn't be able to express it very well.
 
crl
That's a sane feeling, make a try on pastie.org (for example) and show us
 
user image
2
 
crl
Cats are heat detectors
 
crl
11:08 PM
I can't understand how people manage to work with bit operations, for games, bitboards etc.. this is so hard to reason with their stuff
I barely understand what >>1 and <<1 do
603
Q: Absolute Beginner's Guide to Bit Shifting

John RudyI've been attempting to learn C in my spare time, and other languages (C#, Java, etc.) have the same concept (and often the same operators) ... What I'm wondering is, at a core level, what does bit-shifting (<<, >>, >>>) do, what problems can it help solve, and what gotchas lurk around the bend...

 
@tchrist I like!
Luckily, cats still have keyboards...
 
11:33 PM
@crl Depends what you mean by “do”.
 
crl
What "do" they do, to numbers, but I'm reading, don't worry for now
 
Well, they halve or double them.
If you have 0b0000_1110 and shift it right by one bit, you now have 0b0000_0111. Just shove it all right by one position.
 
crl
oh right, that's what I now remember to have learned, and do a floor too -105>>1 = -53 and not -52.5
but of course there's no such 'flooring', it's automatically done I mean at low level, since the bit encoding 0.5 disappear on the right
 
Bit shifting negatives is a bit weird. It's best to think of these as unsigned.
 
crl
105>>1 = 52 if you want
 
11:43 PM
$ perl -e 'printf "%4d %#010b\n", ($_)x2 for 105, 105>>1, 105>>2, 105<<1'
 105 0b01101001
  52 0b00110100
  26 0b00011010
 210 0b11010010
 
crl
0b... is for bit in base 2 like 0x... is for hexadecimal, right? I wonder why there's a 0 as prefix
 
Yes, 0b is binary like 0x is hex.
 

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