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00:00 - 15:0015:00 - 23:00

00:01
no unrelated to anything
just thought it and liked it and spammed it
must sleep now, night my friend.
ah
Night.
I awoke when you did today. I too must soon retire.
 
3 hours later…
02:43
@tchrist: Estoy viendo una pelicula que tiene lugar en Sevilla. En comparación, los Argentinos son claras.
Heh, claros. Didn't notice the typo till too late.
crl
crl
03:01
Estoy veyendo rather no? oh no you're correct, I suck, chupo
@tchrist I have to agree with this comment. Your second sentence is somewhat condescending and add little.
The question is solid, and explanation complicated.
*adds
*an
Dammit, I cannot type these days.
03:39
[ SmokeDetector ] Blacklisted website: "Country" is to "compatriot" as "species" is to what? by Lurrey on english.stackexchange.com
04:05
@Robusto mirando
04:29
@Robusto A cool compound word is tentempiés.
 
3 hours later…
07:14
[ SmokeDetector ] Offensive body detected: A word to describe a person who lives to perform by NoodleFolk on english.stackexchange.com
07:31
[ SmokeDetector ] Offensive body detected: A word to describe a person who loves to perform by NoodleFolk on english.stackexchange.com
 
3 hours later…
10:17
@tchrist ¿A quién no gustaría tentempiés?
@Robusto How is your Spanish?
Estoy mejorando constantemente.
How many per cent of text can you read now?
Seems that Smoke Detector has OCD.
Hey, do you think there are any differences between English spoken face-to-face and through phones? I sometimes cannot understand what people say when they speak to me through phones or voice chat (during Dota 2 match).
If there are some distinctions between those two categories, how can I improve my ability to understand during conversation over machines (phones, mic and voice-chat)?
10:52
@EnglishMaster I can't think of any differences. However, comprehension is harder over the phone or internet (or with a hearing aid or in a noisy room) as many consonants that are easy to distinguish in a quiet room face to face, sound similar elsewhere. For example, m and n, b and p. But there are many more.
I am a native speaker, and often misunderstand on the phone: normal listening skills, especially reflecting back what you think you heard, in your own words, seems to help
11:53
@MattE.Эллен I think the question is about speech, not written English. Though I agree: it is easy for someone illiterate in a language to text nonsense. Autocompletion seems to make entertaining nonsense of everything I type on a tablet these days.
sorry, I was posting an article, not getting involved in the conversation :D
Guys, I just changed my email address. Check your inboxes.
This is final. It is a promise. If I change again, I will never get well. I swear.
@tchrist: I wonder, do Spanish-speaking peoples speak at a higher syllable-per-second rate? If so, that may be why I perceive a difference between dubbed Spanish and original Spanish in films. Certainly the accent is more neutral and clearer in the dubbed versions, but maybe we just talk slower, and they have more time to enunciate. In musical terms, I hear the dubbed as being andante to allegro, and the original to be allegro to presto.
12:00
@Robusto Are you comparing Spanish dubbed to South American original perhaps?
@terdon I am comparing natural-language films that were filmed in Spanish with American movies that are dubbed into Spanish.
9 hours ago, by Robusto
@tchrist: Estoy viendo una pelicula que tiene lugar en Sevilla. En comparación, los Argentinos son claras.
claros
@Robusto Understood. I'm wondering whether the differences you observe could be due to the dubbed fims being dubbed by Spaniards while the originals are sudakas.
I don't know.
But the one filmed in Seville, I heard about four out of ten syllables, whereas I can usually get the entire framework of a sentence from the dubbed versions, even if I don't understand everything.
I've seen about a dozen films so far in Spanish, so it may not be enough of a sample yet. Time will tell.
My impression is that English tends to leave pauses between words while Spanish words flow into one another. Don't really have any data to back that up though.
If I'm right, the difference is not syllables per second but how the separate words are linked together.
Hi guys, I've a doubt, consider the following 2 sentences, "Student at University of XXX" and "Student at the University of XXX", which one is correct?
12:13
Normally use the University because you are specifying one in particular. But they are fragments, not sentences -- for a CV perhaps -- so it's moot.
I was a student at the university of Plymouth for five years.
yes, I'm considering them for a short summary in the CV
Thanks for the help, bye
@MattE.Эллен I am deleting my current SE accounts now. Going to create a new one soon and have a brand new start. But not any on Eng, hehe.
right oh! see you then, I guess.
Yes, I will still go to our new favourite chat in writers, lol. Won't come here anymore.
12:23
understood
Give me some time to earn 20 rep on math, lol.
Greetings sire :D
remind me StrongHold Crusader game
12:58
@terdon What's a sudaka?
@Mitch A disparaging term for someone from South America.
Don't use it unless you're a good friend of the person you're referring to.
It is nowhere near as offensive as say nigger but it isn't nice either.
Closer to frog or kraut, I guess, but probably a bit more offensive. Somewhere between frog and chink perhaps.
I'm very used to calling my South American friends sudakas and they won't take offense if it is clearly used in jest.
So you used it to refer to all the people who act in South American films?! I didn't realise you were friends with so many people!
@MattE.Эллен Well, yes. I'm gregarious :)
there is nothing between "frog" and "chink"
Hey, they call me gringo or giri, I call'em sudakas. Fair's fair.
@terdon Is it a word that comes from Spain (is it used disparagingly by Spaniards) or does it come from S Am and used disparagingly about themselves? Or both?
@infinitesimal I feel that chink is considerably more offensive than frog.
Also, does it include Mexicans and Central Am and the Carribean?
13:08
@Mitch Only in Spain I think. SAms living in Spain do use it though.
@Mitch It would in Spain, yes.
@terdon 'Frog' for the French just sounds silly (but I'm not French).
@Mitch Exactly, while chink is more offensive. I think of frog as just a step above Brits. Not quite neutral but not really offensive either.
@terdon Now that I've hear it I have this anxiety about using it. Like a big "Do not push this button" sign.
@Mitch Heh. Avoid it unless you're face to face with someone and can accompany it with a smile.
I used to go out with a Colombian girl for a few years and I had a lot of South American friends and I used it liberally with them. However, they were very much aware that I had absolutely nothing against South Americans so they knew that no offense was meant.
I would not use race nationality period.
13:11
@terdon Sorta like al the profanity I heard (which is all I could pick up because it was repeated so often) from "Amores Perros".
@infinitesimal It's not a race thing, it's a nationality thing.
@Mitch Yes. Spanish, like Greek, is a language where profanity is used often and freely.
Profanity in another language just doesn't sting at all and is sorta fun. Until you see the expression on a native speaker's face.
@Mitch Heh, yeah.
@infinitesimal My race period has been on repeat forever.
13:13
@terdon You can do that in English too. In hip hop.
French is the worst for profanity. The worst they got makes you feel like "Oh, well that's fair"
They call us roast beef, because we eat roast beef.
@Mitch Ugh, yes. Nothing that rolls off the tongue. They're pretty good at insults, mind you. You have to string a few descriptive terms together.
@MattE.Эллен And you call them frogs because. . .?
they eat frogs
@MattE.Эллен Exactly! "I think I'll have some now, thanks for reminding me"
13:16
Spanish and Greek are the best languages to swear in. Of those I speak anyway.
Nice polysyllabic, staccato utterances.
but there's also "cheese eating surrender monkeys", not that I'd ever stoop so low
Reg would claim Russian
Russian is probably very good too. So's German I guess. They don't need to use swearwords, just good morning will do.
@MattE.Эллен That doesn't hurt particularly. I mean they don't really look like monkeys, do they? And cheese is great. And .. wait WWI they didn't surrender, did they?
English is better than French but quite limited.
13:18
English is OK. quite aggressive, but not too inventive
unless you're Shakespeare
Chinese I think is worst of all. It's so bad, it's the words that you don't say that sting the most.
Oh, you can get nice insults in English. Just not many nice swearwords.
fuck shit cunt bastard bollocks wanker twat ... yeah I'm out pretty much, unless you include bloody, god, jesus, hell, damn, and even then that's not many
I remember when I was six years old and I was mad at my siblings for something and went off into the woods to swear and all I could come up with was 'stupid' and 'idiot'. I wonder if they've recovered yet.
@MattE.Эллен Of all of those, bastard and, to a lesser extent, wanker are the only ones you can pronounce with any kind of gusto. Swearwords should be long enough to allow inflection and emphasis.
@Mitch The trees?
13:22
@terdon my siblings. They surely are still reeling from the venom they never heard.
@terdon Spanish definitely has English running scared.
@MattE.Эллен bastard and wanker... really not that bad
Insert articles at will.
Will wouldn't care for that.
He’s very liberal in these affairs.
13:25
Is whore a swearword?
@Mitch You need a British accent to say wanker though. The American open a just sounds silly.
oh, yeah! bitch and piss, too
@terdon lol
Motherfucker is pretty good. Rolls off the tongue.
@terdon Don't forget tmesis can be useful.
tmesis?
13:32
t fucking mesis
Ummm...
confused
Ah!
Right, tmesis. Had to look it up.
Nice, thanks @Andrew, I didn't know there was a word for that. Fan freaking tastic!
Confession: I had to look up the relevant question to find the word.
@Robusto Don’t ask me why, but you need to double the dative there: ¿A quién no le gustarían los tentempiés?
@terdon Disbelieve. Is like Greek.
A mí me gusta el pipiribipipi.
@Robusto I doubt it but there are probably metrics out there on it.
13:39
@AndrewLeach Thanks, I feel less ignorant now :)
@tchrist Must be quite changed. There are no words starting with tm in Greek.
On the other hand, I would have claimed the same is true of English five minutes ago so take that with a grain of salt.
@MattE.Эллен don t fucking mesis with me.
@RegDwigнt oh alright, since you ask so nicely
A rather popular name for a mafia boss during the Prohibition.
@MattE.Эллен I saw that edit! Come on, wear your dialect with pride!
13:42
@terdon ἄτομος = ἀ- + τέμνω
@tchrist There's an ε there.
@terdon nicel? that's not part of my dialect! I must have got distracted :D
It's okay if you occasionally switch from your Bastard French to Proper English.
@MattE.Эллен Oh, sorry, I thought it was nice
:D I see
I talk proper nice, innit?
13:43
@MattE.Эллен Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto vi superum saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram; multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem, inferretque deos Latio, genus unde Latinum, Albanique patres, atque altae moenia Romae. Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso...
There you go!
You don't even have to touch that dial ect. Cause I'm everywhere. And Jesus, he knows me.
@tchrist as I was saying...
@RegDwigнt does he know your right?
I think it starts with some mad dog biting his arm.
@MattE.Эллен I've been sharing with Jesus all my wife.
So in the biblical sense, he knows my right alright.
13:45
@RegDwigнt ¡Vaya tío afortunado, ese Jesús tuyo!
@tchrist I think you misspelled Jesús Tuyota.
But I'm not fluent in Korean, so I'm not sure.
@terdon Tmemata also there are.
Tme or not tme, that's the question.
Tme, tyou, what's the difference?
13:47
Seven.
Easy question, next question.
I don't have a sis, so I guess it'll have to be tme
You be tme to it.
Matt by day, Ellen by night.
DeGeneres in general.
13:49
More Roman royalty.
@tchrist I was at a restaurant and they called us to our reservation. The waiter said "you don't look like an Ellen". He must not understand that one gives one's surname.
Si vienes hablando del rey de Roma que toca la guitarra.
@MattE.Эллен Or in this case, one’s maamname.
13:50
Surnames are hard. Let's go shopping.
@RegDwigнt That's one from Asterix and Cleopatra, I think.
@RegDwigнt We could all be Icelandic.
"Cleopatra" is German for "plumber".
And Russian for "fuck buddy".
Latin, too.
13:52
Russian no has word for "buddy". All word in Russian only "fuck".
There was some fellow here this past weekend who could really have used 7 seconds of your mind.
That would've cost him a fortune.
Well, time travel is hard.
I won't even wake up for under a million.
@tchrist time travel is easy thanks to chat transcript.
But your instructions are not very clear, and I'm not reading it all.
Mar 14 at 22:59, by tchrist
@mikeonly Alas no, you will have to ask @RegDwigнt, one of our moderators. I have no Russian.
Y adelante.
Más un poco atrás.
He had a tense problem translating Russian to English.
13:54
Бы, eh?
Если бы да кабы на носу росли грибы.
NFI
Nasturians.
Well you asked him for his sentence and he told you he had none?
That's peculiar.
I wish he had posted the Russian.
Is what I'm saying.
For little good it would have done me.
13:56
I can only help with things. I can't help with absence of things.
So, another job well not done.
What have we else.
Not true: you could help with my perennial paucity of closevotes. :)
Although I'm not out today.
Then again, I haven't looked much.
@mikeonly just post the Russian sentence. Please.
I never know the time limit on immoderate chat pings.
Forevah?
Cuz that's not a ping. That's a reply.
I must have drunk too much last night.
13:59
You must not. But you did nonetheless.
48h marathon hacking plus having my lethal 43yo furnace replaced. Was skating too close to the ice, and it melted.
I finally put myself down with three fingers of the Macallan 18.
Riding on the storyline, furnace burning overtime. But this train don't stop there anymore.
Because my judgement was impaired.
Burning Chrome + Mona Lisa Overdrive => Furnace Burning Overtime.
Mona Lisa Overdrive?
@Cerberus That’s for you! ^^^^^^^^^^^^
14:02
Did you just out yourself as a secret fan of Matrix: Reloaded?
No closet too small for that job.
counts to zero
Mona Lisa Overdrive is a cyberpunk novel by William Gibson published in 1988 and the final novel of the Sprawl trilogy, following Neuromancer and Count Zero. It takes place eight years after the events of Count Zero and is set, as were its predecessors, in The Sprawl. The novel was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel, the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 1989. == Plot summary == Taking place eight years after the events of Count Zero and fifteen years after Neuromancer, the story is formed from several interconnecting plot threads, and also...
I prefer Altromancer over Neuromancer any day.
Not to mention Urromancer!
The romancerest of them all.
Infernomancer
Try The Peripheral.
Me inferno manca 'o sole 'e Palermo.
14:05
It’s crunchy and tastes good in milk.
Also, zero is not a count. Not even a duche.
Everything its beginning has.
..., also end has?
I think you're mixing this up with Star Wars.
The Matrix prophet was not Yoda.
And now it begins.
@RegDwigнt No, Yoda could actually act.
14:07
Begins and now it does.
Which is more than I can say about most people who appeared in the Matrix.
People?
Appeared?
Nah, come on, that's two harsh. The Prophet was like the one out of two people in the entire series that could act.
Actors are people, too
Ghosts in the Machine.
14:07
The other one being the Merrowigian or whatever he's spolen.
There Can Be Only One.
@RegDwigнt Oh, was that the Oracle? Yes, she was OK.
Right. You're right. Oracle it is. Not prophet.
What to the e to the ver.
De veras.
Pues sea cruz o no.
Every cruz hath its santa, who died for our toys.
Chícharos con arroz.
14:10
Note that you can’t say that in American or you lose the tailliteration.
There is a whole lot you can't say in American.
If you don't want to end up spending the rest of your life in Russia, that is.
If you do, it's fine.
Everything goes better with rice, especially pumpernickel.
Everything goes better with cheese. Hence the saying, "cheese and rice".
@tchrist Even Penelope?
@RegDwigнt I think you meant rise and cheer.
I think you meant rise and repeat.
14:21
@RegDwigнt, hi. Thanks for your readiness to help. I'll send you the sentence in Russian later.
@RegDwigнt, is Russian your first language?
That's a tough question.
I think my first language is galliard.
canard
Canard assis.
Crème de
brouhaha?
14:24
No, really. What is your mother tongue?
That is highly sensitive information that I will only disclose if you're with the NSA.
@mikeonly He can swear as well as you can, and possibly moreso.
Which should be enough.
Ok. Yes or no question. Have you learnt Russian after you were 15?
Start reading here.
@mikeonly No.
14:28
@mikeonly I have learnt all languages but one after I was 15.
Defining learnt somewhat loosely.
The threshold is 25, thankfully.
That's when your brain stops working.
@RegDwigнt Thus spake the Mathematician.
After 15 is still okay, as long as it's before 25.
Is that what happened to my German? Hit me at 23–24, and just didn’t stick half so well as the others.
14:29
Yup.
Welcome to the club of everyone.
Spanish was before puberty, French when I was 18. The first is so engrained in me I can no longer know why I know what I know. The second is fairly ok, but never been in a French-speaking country more than a week or two at a time. But our French CTO was surprised as how non-awful my accent is "for an American".
Très très.
I suspect that with you, at least Russian, German, and English fall into that category of not knowing why you know what you know.
Oh but that's why linguistics esiste.
You totally can know why you know.
@tchrist Note that the French are very easily impressed.
14:33
Also, with English I arguably only started learning at around 25. That's when the Internet happened.
With others' linguistic prowess anyway.
Prowess tip: use a baguette.
@terdon Actually, they are very picky. It’s just that they have highly negative expectations of Americans. Not unrealistically.
Feb 18 '11 at 20:19, by RegDwight
@Robusto Never mind blancmange, I remember being criticized for pronouncing eau incorrectly! I was like "o", and he was like "no-no-no, not o, o!"
Feb 18 '11 at 20:19, by RegDwight
That went on for hours.
Seriously, those Frenches are like WTF.
They don't care for pronouncing an H, even though they do it all the time in their own stupid language, but then they will tell you that when you say "eau", they can't understand that you mean "eau".
Seriously.
Like, seriously.
@MattE.Эллен abso-tmesis-lutely
14:38
@Mitch ummmm.... ok
@tchrist yeah, what with fries being free now, and finest French wine ending up in NY gutters just because fuck those brown people Dick Cheney needs cash.
@RegDwigнt This week’s special focus section is on those brown people in The Economist.
Spanix.
The Economist is written by 23-year olds.
And?
And: when I want to read 23-year olds, I turn on Xbox Live chat.
I don't need no Economist.
14:43
@RegDwigнt What would you know what it’s like to be a 23yo?
To be a 23yo is like to work in a copy shop, sell Play Stations, and study maths and linguistics.
When I was 23 I was married, working as a software developer, finished school, and coming out of the dark ages.
At that age I didn't even know Dark Ages existed.
@tchrist He hasn't read it!
@RegDwigнt Eww.
@Cerberus I did say "when".
14:51
So no "if".
Yes. When is German for if.
I'm sure you have "known" many of them.
Two birds, with one stoned.
I didn't know German used English spelling.
Good thing you came to this place, then.
14:51
Is that Bavarian?
0
Q: Which version is grammatically correct?

arizonaRm"The answer to big problems is always small solutions." or "The answers to big problems are always small solutions." I believe these are both correct grammatically, but the singular ("is") sounds more concise and brevity is preferable. Can I get a language ruling on this?

Ja, in Bavaria, wo die Berge noch hoch sind!
Hocher als in Holland.
But Albrecht of Bavaria also ruled over Holland.
During the formative years of the Burgundian empire.
Which could have been so powerful!
If only you'd spoken English
Had not Maximilian acquired it, it might have blossomed into the most powerful empire in the world.
There would have been no more English: the Low Countries would eventually have invaded England and Dutchified it.
We have partly succeeded: English girls go loooow!
They match our own vulgarity.
14:55
@Cerberus Every possible empire could have been so powerful, if only they had been powerful enough to not be subjugated/acquired/conquered/etc.
Well, you don't need to be weak to be married off.
Mary of Burgundy married Maximilian of Austria.
> Whenever a plural world is encountered, we should be using "are" rather than "is"
Haha.
Cute in many ways.
ha! they'd have been fought back and modern English would be closer to OE
@Cerberus If she'd been stronger, she would have incorporated Austria into Burgundy.
14:57
@MattE.Эллен Now that would have been nice.
0
A: Which version is grammatically correct?

bill cyphersounds complicated heres something to get your mind of of things like that hahah derp

crl
crl
What's the technic to send an email to say 10 persons, and tat each one see only his address in recipients?
Okay, what the fuck.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 That wasn't possible for a woman...
14:57
Look at the two answers that question has generated.
Have we come that far?
We are officially worse than Yahoo Answers now.
And it's got an upvote.
@RegDwigнt I do like that picture.
But sounds like a spam account.
@Cerberus It would have been, if she'd been stronger. She could have been the empress.
@RegDwigнt I couldn't resist.
But delete it.
@Cerberus whoa really? My money was on Jasper.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 You simply cannot marry a man and rule.
14:59
@Cerberus Why not?
@RegDwigнt We are much alike.
00:00 - 15:0015:00 - 23:00

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