English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

crl

00:05

1

I was playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES when I stopped to ponder; when in a place full of sewage, am I in the sewer or am I in the sewers? Mayhaps both? Also on further use of the root word, if a sewer contains and, by mixture, creates sewage then would a person covered in that se...

I tried translating it to French because I don't get it, but that didn't help

tchrist

Heh.

Well, he is a very confused young boy.

He is confusing, or playing with, the idea that the word sewer (where the toilet flushes to) might have something to with the verb sew (like with needle and thread; Spanish coser) or the verb sue (like with litigating against someone).

I’m glad he didn’t throw in the verb sow, sown too.

Or sawyers to go cut down the lawyers.

And I don’t care to incorrige him. :)

There is also another word sewer which we get from (Old) French asseoir, not the one from Old French sewiere.

tchrist

00:30

Also, garbage might be rubbish and it might be costuming “garb-age”.

He’s definitely been reading too much something.

> A Stork of a very simple and trusting nature had been asked by a gay party of Cranes to visit a field that had been newly planted.

Never trust a Crane.

Robusto

@tchrist Cranes were traditionally a symbol of good fortune in Japan.

tchrist

13

A: Is there English proverb or saying equivalent to Chinese / Japanese common proverb 李下に冠を正さず- Don’t touch (redress) your coronet under the plum tree?

With regard to the conclusion that one should stay away from situations that may mark one as a rule breaker even if one is innocent, I am reminded not of any particular English proverb, but of Aesop's fable of the farmer and the stork. The book Aesop for Children, which my parents used to read to...

crl

yesterday, by crl

tchrist

What sort of crane is that?

crl

Is it a stork at least?

tchrist

00:45

No, it’s a crane.

Robusto

瑞鳥

tchrist

Please don’t ask why. :)

There are 15 crane species worldwide.

crl

Supermode - Tell Me Why (OFFICIAL VIDEO)

►

tchrist

Your picture looks like a Grus genus crane.

@crl Because storks are um beefier?

See what I mean?

crl

> Storks are heavy, with wide wingspans: the marabou stork, with a wingspan of 3.2 metres (10.5 feet) and weight up to 8 kg (18 lbs), joins the Andean condor in having the widest wingspan of all living land birds.

tchrist

00:50

Beefy. :)

Robusto

Hacer is one of those squishy words.

tchrist

How so?

Robusto

It inflects all over the place and is seen in multiple contexts.

tchrist

Well, it is a strong verb.

crl

Ayer hizo la fiesta

tchrist

00:52

And a super-common one, since it does the duty of both make and do.

crl

faire (one word like in French)

Robusto

The common words are usually the squishiest.

tchrist

Yes.

And yes. :)

@crl All Romance has just one word there from facere.

Robusto

hago, haces, hace, hacemos, hacéis, hacen, hice, hiciste, hizo, hicimos, hicisteis, hicieron, haré, harás, hará, haremos, haréis, harán . . .

tchrist

hecho

Robusto

00:54

Hes, and hecha.

tchrist

But hey, haciendo is regular!

I guess nearly all the stems are irregular, if you want to call them that.

crl

el hijo hizo un lazo

Robusto

OH, I forgot hiciera, hiciese, hicieras, hicieses, hiciéramos, hiciésemos, hicerais, hiciesis, hicieran, hiciesen, haga, hagas, hagamos, hagáis . . .

tchrist

Well.

crl

hagamos, subjontivo, I remember this one

tchrist

00:56

Hago provides the present subjunctive stem and hicieron provides the stem for both imperfect subjunctives and the archaic future subjunctive.

Robusto

And let´s not forget haz!

crl

I love how 3rd group verbs become 1st group in subjontive and vice-versa

tchrist

You always use the first-person singular present for the stem for the present subjunctive, and you always use the third-person plural preterite for the other three subjunctives.

@Robusto That is not really irregular, you know.

You have to spell it that way when you take the start of hacer and make it a one-syllable word.

Oh, but it isn’t hace. Yeah.

crl

hace calor/frio

tchrist

The common verbs have one-syllable tú imperatives.

Robusto

00:58

Los emparedados fueron hechos hoy.

tchrist

@crl Man, you gotta tell the American Spanish speakers that one. They drive me crazy when they, native speakers, say está frío instead of hace frío.

crl

@Robusto es lo que dicen, pero mas probable 4/5 dias antes

Robusto

Speaking of such things, it's funny that they say Ella tiene once años.

tchrist

And the stem for the future and the conditional is har-, not plain hacer-. Like the tú imperatives of common verbs, the future and conditional stem of common verbs is often shorter than it “should” be.

crl

@tchrist Hehe, it's just easy for me because it's the same in French

tchrist

01:00

They get worn down by time, I figure.

Robusto

@crl laughs in Spanish

tchrist

@Robusto Well, how else would you say it? They don’t have the postfix old idea. All Romance works that way.

Robusto

I am only lately come to Romance.

tchrist

These things are just odd to you because Spanish is your first Romance.

Robusto

Jinx.

tchrist

01:02

They recur all over the place.

crl

Tiene once años pero hace como quince

Robusto

@crl No pedo in chat.

tchrist

¿Y como salió eso — hadas? :)

crl

:))

tchrist

You know what las hadas are, right?

As in Cuentos de ...

crl

01:04

fairies says my translator

hadas looks like helados

tchrist

Right: cuentos de hadas = contes de fées.

I dunno.

Can’t spell.

Dunno what the other word that came out of my fingers was. Which is it in French?

crl

compte/conte/comte (count/tale/earl) 3 different spelling

tchrist

Ah.

My brain said compte so I typed that, but looking at the net the other was more common.

Hadas and fées are cognates of course.

Comptes de Fées appears to be a shop in France.

crl

Hehe a pun I guess

like a comptoir

tchrist

> Il faut noter que le terme de « conte » est utilisé parfois pour désigner l'activité de conter, quel que soit le type d'histoires (épopée, légende, histoire de vie, nouvelle…).

Conte

Le mot conte désigne à la fois un récit de faits ou d'aventures imaginaires et le genre littéraire (avant tout oral) qui relate les dits récits. Le conte, en tant qu'histoire, peut être court ou long. Qu'il vise à distraire ou à édifier, il porte en lui une force émotionnelle ou philosophique puissante. Depuis la Renaissance, les contes font l'objet de réécritures, donnant naissance au fil des siècles à un genre écrit à part entière. Cependant, il est distinct du roman, de la nouvelle et du récit d'aventures par l'acceptation de l'invraisemblance. Il y a deux pratiques du genre littéraire qu'est...

German calls them Märchen.

The Spanish page is huge and starred.

Cuento de hadas

Un cuento de hadas es una historia ficticia que puede contener personajes folclóricos —tales como hadas, duendes, elfos, brujas, sirenas, troles, gigantes, gnomos y animales parlantes— e incluir encantamientos, normalmente representados como una secuencia inverosímil de eventos. En el lenguaje contemporáneo, así como fuera del contexto literario, el término es utilizado para describir algo que está vinculado con princesas. Por ello, existen expresiones tales como «un final de cuento de hadas» —un final feliz— o «un romance de cuento de hadas», aunque no todas las narraciones de esta clase terminan...

@Robusto Hechos is a handy word.

De hecho. :)

crl

01:14

Cual son los hechos de la semana?

tchrist

Fechas?

Hechizo is another interesting word.

It’s like witchcraft. Hechos can be facts or deeds.

Hechizar is to cast some black magic on someone.

> hecho, cha.
(Del part. irreg. de hacer; lat. factus).
1. adj. Acabado, maduro. Hombre, árbol, vino hecho.
2. adj. semejante (‖ que semeja). Hecho UN león, UN basilisco. Hecha UNA fiera.
3. adj. Dicho de una persona: constituida (‖ compuesta). Hombre BIEN hecho. Personas MAL hechas.
4. m. Acción u obra.
5. m. Cosa que sucede.
6. m. Asunto o materia de que se trata.

And many compounds and phrases.

Hechos de los Apóstoles = Acts of the Apostles

Hazaña is a curious word. It means heroic deed. But it came to Spanish via Arabic, and was confused with words coming from facere, fazer, hacer.

> hazaña.
(Del ár. hisp. ḥasána, y este del ár. clás. ḥasanah, buena acción, infl. por el ant. fazer, hacer).
1. f. Acción o hecho, y especialmente hecho ilustre, señalado y heroico.

Hassah! :)

To see a flock of cranes is remarkable.

I have watched them eating corn in the fields at close range.

And Mom has pictures of them at virtually point-blank range.

They are very beautiful creatures.

crl

I wonder how they make that weight (8 kg!) fly

well it's a matter of wingspan, gliders are heavier and can fly

tchrist

Pelicans and swans are very heavy.

crl

01:30

Why can't humans fly?

Heaviest flying birds

tchrist

I did not realize we had the same swans and pelicans.

Or perhaps we do not.

Robusto

@tchrist De hecho, in fact.

crl

pterosaurs were nice beasts too

tchrist

A male swan is a cob, a female swan a pen.

I think I knew the former but not the latter.

crl

A bevy of swans

tchrist

01:41

Don’t fuck with swans, or they’ll fuck with you.

They’re mean birds.

There are a lot of swans around the Chicago area. People generally know to stay clear of them.

crl

I guess an ostrich could be mean too, but on the ground it's less dangerous

tchrist

Ostriches scare the shit out of me.

In a 1918 article in The Atlantic magazine, former President Theodore Roosevelt wrote, "If, when assailed by the ostrich, the man stands erect, he is in great danger. But by the simple expedient of lying down, he escapes all danger."

A nine-foot tall, 350-pound predator with razor talons for feet that can outrun a horse scares the shit out of me.

crl

So to escape an ostrich, you need to do like them, bury your head

tchrist

If you really want a fright, try reading the passage in Dan Simmons’s Ilium with the Odysseus and raptors.

@crl Isn’t that funny!

> Odysseus did indeed know how to fly the sonie. They lifted off the tower top, circled the high saddle with its ruins throwing complicated shadows in the low sunlight, and swooped down a valley at high speed.

"I thought you meant you'd be hunting below the bridge," said Harman over the wind hiss.

Odysseus shook his head. Ada noticed that the man's silver hair fell down his neck like a curly mane. "Nothing there except jaguars and chipmunks and ghosts," said Odysseus. "We have to get out on the plains to find game. And there's one prey in particular that I have in mind."

@Robusto ^^^^^^^^ Read that.

“It’s only a bird.”

crl

How do you have the power to paste lenghty text? :) I'm limited to several lines

tchrist

01:52

I dunno.

Line breaks, I think.

crl

Oh it worked, nvm

tchrist

That was the excerpt that the author released before the book was published.

tchrist

10:55

So many wrong “He is risen” answers, with still more to come, I reckon.

Robusto

11:39

@tchrist Yes. And my prophecy is being borne out.

Robusto

12:39

@HotLicks: Yes, but it would be surprising if mathematics problems were concerned about what apples had been "up to" in the sense of what they had been doing in their lives. Math is notoriously indifferent to the emotional context of apples. — Robusto 18 secs ago

Johan Larsson

How do you start if you do a website from scratch Rob?

Mockup in photoshop?

Robusto

@JohanLarsson Nah, it's easier for me just to code it by hand.

Johan Larsson

you ~draw it with html?

Computer Color is Broken

►

Robusto

14:15

@JohanLarsson HTML and CSS. It's the quickest way for me. It also eliminates a step.

tchrist

I feel a stirring in the Force.

@JanusBahsJacquet: That's why it's a comment, not an answer. It's meant to encourage discussion. Not flaming. Pathetic. — Lightning Racis in Obrit 4 mins ago

@tchrist: What is it with the arrogance and ego on this site? Jesus. You can't find a way to make your point without it? — Lightning Racis in Obrit 22 mins ago

Tell me that’s not in bad taste on Easter Sunday.

Or on any day, for that matter.

I wonder whether the whole question needs locking today if this is what it is going to draw. But maybe it is just that one user. I don’t know.

Robusto

14:31

@tchrist He protegida esa pregunta.

tchrist

I know, I know.

Robusto

Which reminds me: is there an "un-" construction in Spanish?

A verb negater?

Or adjective negater?

tchrist

You’re only supposed to make the participle agree with tener not with haber, and it isn’t used to make perfects. En cuanto a esa preguntas, ya las tengo entendidas.

You need the des- prefix.

The verb is negar.

The adjective is negativo.

Robusto

There's one in Japanese: -na adjectives may be negated by the prefix fu-. So benri (convenient) can be fuben (inconvenient, difficult).

tchrist

Deshonra is dishonor.

Robusto

14:34

So can you "unprotect" in Spanish?

tchrist

Desproteger. It doesn’t sound very good.

But it would be used here.

Desbloquear.

Robusto

Would it occasion confusion or merriment among native speakers?

tchrist

Not confusion.

Its meaning is obvious.

> Desproteger, proteger o descartar cambios en archivos de una biblioteca de sitio
Si desea realizar cambios en un archivo que reside en una biblioteca de sitio, la forma más segura de hacerlo es desprotegiendo el archivo. De esa forma, puede asegurarse de que ningún otro usuario pueda modificar el archivo mientras trabaja en él. Cuando tiene el archivo desprotegido, tiene la oportunidad de editarlo con o sin conexión y guardarlo, varias veces si es necesario.

Al completar sus ediciones y volver a proteger el archivo en su biblioteca de sitio, otras personas pueden ver los cambios y pasa a…

Archivo is American for fichero.

That seems weird.

Are they using proteger for guardar?

Robusto

I don't know. My powers of discernment are still young.

tchrist

I think that’s still really just protect and unprotect.

support.office.com/es-ar/article/…

Oh I see, it’s in argentino.

Por lo cual se explica todo. :)

Robusto

14:39

That explains everything?

tchrist

Aye. :)

By which are all things explained.

Robusto

Heh. Poor Argentinos. That is the one place I now desire to visit, but am daunted by their pronunciation peccadilloes.

tchrist

peccadizhoes.

Their language is just as old as Spain’s, just like ours is just as old as England’s.

But it is its own thing.

Much more different than is our English from England’s.

They have their own grammar.

Although between voseo and zheísmo, most of the weirdness apart from vocabulary is covered.

Robusto

From the films I've been seeing recently, it seems quite a magical place. I am captivated by their penchant for bursting into music and dance at the slightest provocation.

tchrist

Well, that is a cultura latina thing.

Still, you probably watch too many musicals. :)

Robusto

14:44

Es una cosa bonita.

@tchrist Nope, haven't watched any. The films just happen to feature street music rather casually.

Like if I walk down the street in my town most days of the year there is no street music. Even if I go to Cambridge there is precious little.

tchrist

Or Oxford.

Although there are nice music halls.

Just not so much on the street.

You will find music on the streets in many festive places.

Robusto

No. I've only ever been to Oxford in the spring and summer.

tchrist

I’ve been there for the May Balls.

Robusto

But the Cambridge I'm referring to is in New England, not Old England.

tchrist

Sevilla has music.

Río.

Robusto

14:47

Too bad Mexico is circling the drain. I used to go whenever I felt like it. Now I wouldn't go there on a bet.

tchrist

DON'T CRY FOR ME ARGENTINA MADONNA

►

No, I won’t go any longer either.

Robusto

Andrew Lloyd Weber is no Argentino.

tchrist

No, he’s English.

You would like Flamenco. And Fado.

Cante jondo has Mozarabic and Sephardi influences as well.

Or is sefardí supposed to be Sephardic in English? I forget.

Robusto

Dunno.

tchrist

Flamenco scale.

Robusto

14:53

Hmm, gotta go ice my knee. Getting pains from riding this morning.

tchrist

kbye

cante jondo almeria pirri fandangos

►

La Marelu y Paco Cepero - Tangos

►

She’s nice. Which is a lame word. Sorry.

I wish you had been in Sevilla this past week.

This is special:

Federico García Lorca -Poema del cante jondo- (1921)

►

tchrist

15:12

There, that shouldn’t seem like Spanish is spoken any faster than English. Also, being able to read the reverse at the same time should help you with getting an ear for separating out the words. After a while, this happens by itself, but perhaps it will help here. The accent is an educated Andalusian one, and extremely understandable.

Then again, he wants you to hear his words, his canto.

Johan Larsson

@Robusto ok maybe I'll try. Be prepared for dumb questions, I barely know how to click links. What editor do you use btw?

tchrist

emacs

> La Carmen está bailando por las calles de Sevilla.

Yes, Sevilla has music.

I had no idea we had recordings of Lorca reading his own verse.

Anonymous

15:38

@Robusto Japanese has hi-, fu-, bu-, mu-, and mi-

Anonymous

The "He is risen" question attracted some unfortunate comments...

tchrist

In poor taste on Easter Sunday.

@snailboat Are those all negations?

@snailboat Those are just the ones you can see. Others have been deleted.

Anonymous

Of various sorts. Samuel Martin's glosses are:
1. hi- 'not being; non-'
2. fu- 'not; not doing; not being; un-, in; lacking; -less; bad; mis-'
3. bu-1 (= fu-)
4. bu-2 (= mu-)
5. mu- 'lacking, un-'
6. mi- 'not yet ...-en'

Anonymous

He also gives examples of the modern noo- borrowed from English no

Anonymous

That one has progressed a bit since he published

tchrist

15:46

The first one is strange.

The others are labials with a close vowel.

Anonymous

It was pi- in Old Japanese

tchrist

Ahah!

So it still fits!

Robusto

16:23

@snailboat Of course. Fu was just an example.

@JohanLarsson NetBeans mostly, but make sure you get the front end plugins.

Johan Larsson

17:30

watching css tutorials, breaking the best programming advice: "Start writing code"

Anonymous

18:03

Sure, I wasn't trying to correct anyone. I just wanted to add to the discussion :-)

Robusto

19:16

@JohanLarsson In many ways, CSS runs counter to everything you've learned about coding.

tchrist

@Robusto How so?

Not disagreeing. Just curious.

Robusto

It is not linear or functional. It is not concise or economical. A lot of the time it is inelegant, the way a programmer understands elegance.

Johan Larsson

One thing that looks good and bad is the multiple inheritance

how can I tell if a page is html5?

Robusto

Regular code is like magic bullets that do wonderful things. Point, shoot, and magic. CSS styles are like switches that turn on unless something else presses the switch a little harder.

@JohanLarsson the doctype will be HTML with no modifiers.

Johan Larsson

like this: <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">

Robusto

19:30

No.

Johan Larsson

oh doctype

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

ok so not even a namespace

Robusto

I'm on the tablet right now so writing tech stuff is hard.

Johan Larsson

ok np I'll harass you later :)

Robusto

@JohanLarsson <!DOCTYPE html>

Johan Larsson

gonna write something tomorrow keep the flamethrower fueled

Robusto

19:33

The tablet keeps wanting to switch doctype to "doctor" . . .

I came upstairs to the computer so I could respond without interference.

→ 1 message moved to Trash

Johan Larsson

I feel a little sick thinking about writing in new languages

so painful to be stuck constantly

Robusto

Meh, it's good for you.

Besides, if you learn front-end programming well you can probably make a lot more money than you can writing C++. ^_^

Johan Larsson

watching a tutorial where they use an editor called brackets, have you tried it?

It has a live preview in chrome feature that looks useful

useful for a begnner at least

is it css that is interpreted differently in different browsers?

Robusto

Never used it.

@JohanLarsson Used to be. There are some small variations these days, but mostly standard are followed.

Johan Larsson

good

older browsers will not be supported

crl

21:21

I'd like to do frontend dev, if there weren't angular.js

angular is some messy incomprehensible shit, that change completely between versions

@JohanLarsson for example <em> is used for emphasizing some text, but browsers can choose to italize it, bold it, or any other way

Johan Larsson

ew

@crl what if you style it explicitly?

crl

21:43

@JohanLarsson then you override it

Johan Larsson

how many elementtypes are there in html?

crl

How many tags?

Johan Larsson

yeah I guess, don't know the lingo

until now I have only clicked links :)

crl

Oh you're right we can also say element: developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element

Johan Larsson

oh, a couple of screens, looks like ~100

prolly an 80-20 going on there though

crl

21:51

elements vs tags

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Are affecter and affectee valid words?

I'm looking for names who applied an effect and who has the effect.

I guess I could go with Source/Target.

Robusto

@crl Well said. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, there are two ways of disliking front end development. The first is simply to dislike it. The second is to use Angular.

I find that the people who want to enforce Angular the most are back-end devs who have no affinity for the front end at all.

Johan Larsson

I Angular a Google ~product?

Robusto

They want to take something beautiful and free and chain it to the wheel of misfortune.

Johan Larsson

Should the logo be styled text or a .png?

Robusto

21:59

@JohanLarsson Google doesn't know everything.

@JohanLarsson It depends whether you can get the fonts and kerning right with text.

Johan Larsson

what is the advantage then? Faster loads? Resizing?

Robusto

Off text?

Johan Larsson

yea .png vs styled text

Robusto

Text is faster but small to medium graphics cause no problems. There are issues of alignment when mixing text with replaced elements, but those can be overcome.

Keep in mind that you won't learn everything about front-end dev in a week. It'll take years to get really good at it, most likely.

Johan Larsson

I'm watching 'Your first day with HTML'

Robusto

22:47

@JohanLarsson You need to find better things to do with your Sunday nights.

crl

Also, photoshop is always mentionned in frontend jobs, gotta try it

goal of the next weeks: learn photoshop :)

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…