English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

terdon

16:00

@Cerberus Basically, I meant that the whole thing was Greek. Χημικός and químico are pronounced almost identically. It's the chemist that has deviated.

Cerberus

@terdon As in, Spanish borrowed that form whole and directly from Greek? It is possible.

terdon

@Cerberus Certainly sounds like it.

Cerberus

I know!

But, if Spanish normally never borrows words from Greek that way (most other languages don't), then that would be surprising.

terdon

There are many such examples: biólogo, físico, histórico, psicólogo...

I don't know if they came directly from the Greek or is that's what Spanish does to Latin though.

Cerberus

I would expect the latter.

terdon

16:08

Sounds likelier, yes.

Cerberus

Especially since those words are old.

At least physicus and historicus have been used for millennia.

The other two may be modern words, but still based on Ancient Greek, not Mediaeval or later Greek.

terdon

@Cerberus I'm guessing that φυσικός is different since it means Physicist or natural, not doctor (ιατρός)

Cerberus

Why would it mean doctor?

It means natural, as you say.

Oh, you meant in modern English?

That's such a silly language.

Pauômen legein.

terdon

@Cerberus I assumed that physicus meant physician. Does it not?

Cerberus

> of or belonging to natural philosophy or physics, natural, physical: "quiddam physicum", something relating to physics, ...

It's probably a fairly technical or philosophical word in Latin.

Johan Larsson

16:20

@RegDwigнt what is your vcs of choice?

tchrist

16:48

@terdon Which pair?

@RegDwigнt RCS antedates CVS, and SCCS was earlier still.

@JohanLarsson Anything that doesn’t encourage people to write TLAs.

terdon

4 hours ago, by Robusto

I'm still trying to figure out how Spanish managed to twist "the chemist" into el químico.

tchrist

ah

lema.rae.es/drae/?val=qu%C3%ADmico

> From Latin chimicus, alternative form of chēmicus (“chemical”), from chēmia (“chemistry”), Ancient Greek χυμεία (khumeía, “art of alloying metals”), from χύμα (khúma, “fluid”).

> 16th c. chimist, a. Fr. chimiste, ad. mod.L. chimista, chymista, used instead of the earlier alchimista, after the latter began to be analysed, and the Arabic al- separated from the rest of the word. Commonly written chemist since c 1790 (see chemic), though, in sense 4, ‘chymist’ is still occasionally seen.

Spanish derives from Latin, not from Modern Latin.

@Rob ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

terdon

17:10

So it's English and French that are weird then.

Mitch

Well, weird in that particular way. Everybody else just borrows from English or French.

terdon

@Mitch English is weird in more ways than you can shake a stick at.

's what you get when you let a language evolve with no central governing body to decide what's Right©

tchrist

17:48

@terdon You'll get little argument to that one.

Johan Larsson

18:06

Apple Engineer Talks about the New 2015 Macbook

►

@Cerberus probably old news

crl

18:37

Risitas se convierte en marzo de 2015 en un fenómeno viral de Internet en Estados Unidos. Sobre el original en español se subtitula en inglés a un supuesto ingeniero de Apple diseñador del 2015 Macbook.
"25 años. Mucho que ver contigo", con motivo de los 25 años de emisiones de Canal Sur Televisión, recuerda el buen humor de "Risitas", habitual en los programas de Jesús Quintero, con historias como las paelleras de la playa.

"Juan Joya, "Risitas". Lo más característico de él es su risa, una risa torrencial y contagiosa que de pronto se detiene en seco o se remata con un chirriante "cuñaaao". (youtube.com/watch?v=2kAleXmxbq4)

tchrist

0

A: Isn't this sentence a case of double negative?

English has no rule against double negatives. You are thinking of the admonition against negative concord in standard English, which is something else altogether. From the Yale Grammatical Diversity Project: Negative concord refers to the phenomenon in which more than one negative element o...

@crl No tengo nada que decir a nadie nunca. :)

The OQ has changed a fair bit over its history.

crl

18:52

No tengo ninguna idea de lo que dicieras :)

tchrist

s/ninguna/puta/ :)

Dicieras? Dijeras/dijeses?

crl

Ah TIL puta is the "fuck" of Spanish

tchrist

Yup.

They have lots of them though.

No veo un coño.

= I don’t see a fuckin’ thing.

> Joder macho, no tengo puta idea, coño.

crl

> De verdad, cabron

tchrist

I think @RegDwigнt once reported that Russian has 58 words for fuck.

Matt E. Эллен

18:57

whereas English has 58 ways to use fuck

tchrist

So very true!

Mitch

fuck

That's one

tchrist

Is that a determiner or a preposition?

Robusto

Why the Gold Apple Watch Costs $10,000

►

Mitch

@terdon I can't shake a stick at all.

@tchrist yes

crl

19:03

How can you type on an Apple watch?

Robusto

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Because Apple.

Robusto

@crl If you have to ask, you can't afford it.

crl

:))

Mitch

@terdon you can't even get non-weirdness when there are central governing bodies and it's a programming language.

tchrist

19:08

@Robusto How many jewels?

Robusto

@terdon So nice that the Académie française got involved to keep French verbs regular and the orthography simple and straightforward.

@tchrist None. Just gold. You speak gold, don't you?

tchrist

How do you make a watch without jewels? Chippy?

Mechanical watch

A mechanical watch is a watch that uses a mechanical mechanism to measure the passage of time, as opposed to modern quartz watches which function electronically. It is driven by a spring (called a mainspring) which must be wound periodically. Its force is transmitted through a series of gears to power the balance wheel, a weighted wheel which oscillates back and forth at a constant rate. A device called an escapement releases the watch's wheels to move forward a small amount with each swing of the balance wheel, moving the watch's hands forward at a constant rate. This makes the 'ticking' sound...

> Jewel bearings were invented and introduced in watches by Nicolas Fatio (or Facio) de Duillier and Pierre and Jacob Debaufre around 1702[10][11] to reduce friction. They did not become widely used until the mid 19th century. Until the 20th century they were ground from tiny pieces of natural gems. Watches often had garnet, quartz, or even glass jewels; only top quality watches used sapphire, ruby, or diamond.[10]

Johan Larsson

@Robusto Is the translation accurate?

Robusto

Translation?

Johan Larsson

the subs for the guy talking about the laptop

Robusto

19:18

@JohanLarsson Oh, in your video. I don't know, they're laughing too hard.

Johan Larsson

how much spanish can you read now?

terdon

@Robusto Exactly, see? All rational!

Johan Larsson

And what do you want to learn in Finnish today?

tchrist

@RegDwigнt Maybe when you took Spanish 101 they did more than when I did. Then again, I was twelve. But we in that first class didn’t get the full range of all tenses like Rob has gotten.

Johan Larsson

rolling down the street smoking indo:
Rolling kadulla tupakointi indo

used google translate

tchrist

19:27

What is indo?

Johan Larsson

I think it is a kind of weed

From a snoop dog song, Gin & Juice iirc

confirmed

& confirmed

Robusto

@JohanLarsson Maybe cannabis indica?

Gives you a mellower high.

I don't know the current slang, though. Could be wrong.

tchrist

There are so many different strains with so many different properties that I’m not sure one can make that broad of a statement.

Robusto

> Cannabis indica has a higher ratio of CBD:THC compared to Cannabis sativa.
Cannabis strains with relatively high CBD:THC ratios are less likely to induce anxiety than vice versa. This may be due to CBD's antagonistic effects at the cannabinoid receptors, compared to THC's partial agonist effect. CBD is also a 5-HT1A receptor (serotonin) agonist, which may also contribute to an anxiolytic-content effect.[13] This likely means the high concentrations of CBD found in Cannabis indica mitigate the anxiogenic effect of THC significantly.

tchrist

Yes, CBD is what they’re looking at for Parkinsons.

Johan Larsson

19:39

@Robusto makes sense

Robusto

Makes me want to go get high now.

Johan Larsson

what do you want to learn now?

Tom you like git right?

liveleak.com/view?i=b2f_1426183629

tchrist

20:00

@JohanLarsson I think git is better than RCS, CVS, or SVN, but it is damned complicated to use at times.

I hate downvotes from people who are just too stupid to understand what’s being said.

@MattE.Эллен Come hither.

Matt E. Эллен

hi!

What's up?

tchrist

What did you mean about double negatives?

Matt E. Эллен

what did I mean?

tchrist

> I didn’t say that you shouldn’t answer.

Is that what you are calling a double negative?

Matt E. Эллен

"doesn't mean you can't" is a double negative. The first not negates the second. — Matt E. Эллен ♦ 1 hour ago

@tchrist yes

tchrist

20:07

Yes, that.

The problem is that people are going to be confused.

Matt E. Эллен

how so?

tchrist

They’ll be confused because they were taught that English forbids double negatives.

They might be confused by logic, too.

Ask a parent: I didn’t say you can’t != I did say you can. :)

Matt E. Эллен

true

but it does mean the neutral

tchrist

yeah

I wish we were more careful about letting zombie rules spread.

Not distinguishing double negatives from negative concord is a problem, but it is probably too late by now.

Matt E. Эллен

hmmm

I guess I just use the terms more freely

tchrist

20:11

> I can’t get no satisfaction.

Matt E. Эллен

"negative concord" isn't something I'd heard of

tchrist

Jagger’s is the version that isn’t “allowed” in “Standard” English.

@MattE.Эллен Oh!

microsyntax.sites.yale.edu/negative-concord

The reason to distinguish the terms is so that we can isolate "I cannot not hear you" from "I can’t get no satisfaction."

The first is normal; the second is “non-standard”.

Matt E. Эллен

which is a double negative?

tchrist

Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? :)

If we use the same term for something that is allowed in standard English as we use for something which is forbidden in it, this seems like it has a lot of potential for confusion. That very question was provoked by someone who didn’t understand the difference, but thought there was a rule against it.

I do recognize that it is a very picky distinction that is seldom made outside formal linguistics.

Mitch

@MattE.Эллен Are you uptalking a question?

Matt E. Эллен

20:17

@Mitch lol. no

tchrist

In standard English, we have a separate set of negative-polarity items that can only occur in negative sentences, yet which are themselves not perceived as negatives. It’s how we do negative concord in modern, standard English.

Matt E. Эллен

@tchrist so is double negative defined in linguistics?

tchrist

scholar.google.com/… ~100k results for "negative concord"

scholar.google.com/… ~4M results for "double negative"

Mitch

@tchrist "I don't never have no problems." - I ain't never ever never heard that before. It sounds totally wrong! Like someone who doesn't know how to speak that variety made it up.

tchrist

@Mitch Yankee!

A lot of the Google Scholar results for "double negative" seem not to be about linguistics at all.

Mitch

20:20

@tchrist ha ha. no! It's the 'don't that sounds wrong. I would think normal "I ain't ..." instead of "I don't..."

tchrist

All those for "negative concord", however, do seem to be.

Mitch

and even then people would say "I ain't never had ..."

tchrist

My point is simply that there are things one is not "supposed" to say, and things which are just fine, and that learners are confused when those are called the same thing.

Matt E. Эллен

ah

yes, I see

tchrist

But the pervasiveness of the boogieman-term "double negative" in primary education is a very hard thing to work around.

Matt E. Эллен

20:24

I was never taught the rule luckily :D

tchrist

The Yale page fails to mention Britain or Ireland, unfortunately, let alone the rest of the anglosphere. It’s hardly something limited to the Deep South of the United States.

@MattE.Эллен What, really?! I wonder how you escaped it. :)

It’s something drilled into little kids in primary school here, to try to get them to stop “talkin’ like a farmer”.

Or whatever the urban equivalent is.

> I ain’t never seen nothin’ like that before.

That used to be fine in standard English, but no longer is considered permissible. But it’s way commonly said. Hence the rapping of wrists by matronly schoolmarms.

That’s not to say it isn’t a good idea, mind you.

So "Is this a double negative?" is really asking "Is this that thing I’m not supposed to do?"

See my antepenultimate sentence.

So this is the best I’ve come up with wording the answer:

3

A: Isn’t this sentence a case of double negative?

English has no rule against ‘double negatives’ per se. No, that is not a case of the forbidden kind “double negatives”, since your negatives are in two different clauses. That is not a strange thing at all. Does not mean is in one clause and you cannot be happy is in another. That’s perfectly ...

Wait, I didn’t write that. What?

> No, that is not a case of the forbidden kind of “double negatives”, since your negatives are in two different clauses. That is not a strange thing at all. Does not mean is in one clause and you cannot be happy is in another. That’s perfectly sensible.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

21:15

Johan Larsson

40% of OpenBSD installs lead to shark attacks. It's their only standing security issue.

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 your cat?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@JohanLarsson internet cat

Johan Larsson

looks shopped

tchrist

I don’t want to CV this because I copyedited it and so it might look bad. However, I sincerely question the viability of the question; I don’t believe it is answerable except with POBWAGs. Unfortunately, the OQ’s language betrays a strong chip on his shoulder against things he is strangely calling counter-cultures and hippie cultures and hipster cultures, which is frankly just whacked. I’ve tried to tone down the hot-spots, but there is only so much you can do with these sorts of postings.

1

Q: What is the history of “partner” being used to refer to boyfriend–girlfriend relationships?

In North America (especially Canada and the United States), the word partner is more and more commonly used to describe someone who would otherwise traditionally have been called a boyfriend or a girlfriend. Why is this, and what is the history behind it? In trying to answer this question, I ca...

tchrist

22:12

Forgive me:

0

A: Word meaning before the Biblical Fall?

The word most like antediluvian but meaning not Before the Flood but Before the Fall would necessarily be antepeccant, which has the advantage of being somewhat adapted for English. However, the word most like antebellum would be antepeccatum. Both mean “before sin”. Some might prefer to put...

Johan Larsson

so how many questions did you ask?

tchrist

One.

> But quite honestly, how many of those sorts are you likely to encounter?

I almost think that anyone whose mind does not immediately leap to the obvious answer should not be using it. :)

And perhaps not even those folks, eh @Cerb? :)

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…