English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Robusto

03:23

@GeorgePompidou snort

Robusto

09:59

4

Q: What's the masculine form of boudoir?

What's the word for a man's bedroom or private room -- as opposed to boudoir, which is a woman's bedroom or private room? If one doesn't exist in common English usage, what would be a French loanword? Or possibly a loanword from another language?

This is an example of the down side of ELU. A stupid question gets asked, and a stupid (and wrong) answer becomes wildly popular.

-1

A: "let's see what his english skills are" or "let's see how his english skills are"

It's bad form to end a sentence with a preposistion such as "are," but you could say "Let's see what his English skills are like" or "Let's see: how are his English skills?" if you wanted a better construction. The first one is more natural for written communication, although you'd definitely hea...

Worst answer ever? You be the judge.

Robusto

11:55

@Amphiteóth: Since when was the point of writing to make a stupid piece of software happy? The best way to stop Word's grammar checker from complaining is to shut the damn thing off. — Robusto 47 secs ago

terdon

12:12

@Robusto "I'm a degree-educated natural English speaker." umm...

tchrist

Um yeah.

I didn’t know they gave out degrees in middle school.

terdon

Well, at least he has no added preservatives. Though, if I were feeling unkind, I might make a case about how sus padres quizás deberían haber pensado usar algunos.

tchrist

Don’t stop there. Go for the bisabuelos.

terdon

12:27

I hate that word. I remember remarking to a friend that la salsa no tiene preservativos. He was most amused.

tchrist

We’ve all been there. Trust me.

Robusto

@terdon It's bad form to end a sentence with a preservative.

room topic changed to English Language & Usage: It's bad form to end a sentence with a preservative [full-disclosure]

terdon

:)

Robusto

@terdon Well, but it was a true statement, no? For the record, I have never had salsa with condoms.

terdon

Ah, you don't know what you're missing. Adds a certain je ne sais tang.

tchrist

12:33

Por si te queme.

For whatever reason, I had syntax-coloring turned off. After adding around 1600 lines of code, I thought I’d check and see if it would compile. It did. So much for these kids who say they can't edit in black and white.

Robusto

@tchrist Stupid millennials. They should try editing on paper with a pencil and an eraser. And have to type the whole page over if they fucked it up somehow.

tchrist

Yes please.

Robusto

♪ i'm a juvenile product of the working class / whose best friend floats in the bottom of a glass ♫

That answer is delete-votable now.

tchrist

Which?

Robusto

I wonder when the delete link appears, what triggers it.

@tchrist The one by the degree-educated natural speaker.

tchrist

12:43

Ah.

Robusto

@terdon: One more does the trick.

George Pompidou

14:17

cork

Robusto

14:57

@tchrist Me gustaría tu escritura si las letras eran de colores rojo y azul.

George Pompidou

17:25

hey, so, can one of you 12th century payment method enthusiasts please give me an idea as to what I can do with the bucket of 1 and 2 cent coins I've accumulated from occasionally being forced to pay with a 12th century payment method?

I'm sure they altogether add up to almost… an… euro. but I'm unwilling to hold up a line of impatient Germans while I count them to pay for something.

good lord, cash sucks so much. it's total crap, it really is. it's heavy, dirty, and jingles in pockets, and sensitive to pretty much any bad event.

I bet a homeless person has probably touched these 1 and 2 cent bits of crap at some point. I'm touching the same thing that a homeless person once touched. this is gruesome.

George Pompidou

17:58

okay maybe I could've phrased all that in fewer, less annoying words.

fine. yes. I suck and am the worst person.

tchrist

@Robusto Um, fueran?

Crazy Ninja

18:48

Good evening everyone !

@tchrist

proper way to say, 'I use my likes at the right places when a post it really good' ?

Andrew Leach

19:21

@GeorgePompidou Bag them into whole-euro amounts and take them to a bank.

Wear gloves.

George Pompidou

a bank? a physical bank?

facepalms

Andrew Leach

Well, at some supermarkets in the UK, there are machines into which you can pour small change and out of which are dispensed larger coins.

But if you want to get rid of coins entirely, pay them into a bank.

Into your account, probably, though I expect any will do.

George Pompidou

just the right thing to complement the Christian fundamentalist living next door. I actually went on a Lufthansa time machine to get here. I'm paying for goods with round bits of metal and have to physically walk to a bank.

groans and moans while pouring coins from a shelf into a bag

Andrew Leach

No, no, not all into the same bag. Count them into bags of the right amount each.

George Pompidou

well why can't the bank do that for me?

they're the fucking bank!

they oughta know how to count money

Andrew Leach

19:25

You will hold up the queue behind you. You might start a riot.

George Pompidou

gah

what's stopping me from saying there's 100 euros when there's really only 74?

Andrew Leach

Or, pour them all into the same bag so you can pour it all into one of those supermarket machines.

@GeorgePompidou For that, they weigh them.

George Pompidou

then why can't they weight them in the first place and tell me how much there is?!

what if I show up with fake coins weighing exactly 100 euro?

Andrew Leach

Because it only works if the coins are sorted into denominations.

Fake coins can't be found by weighing.

It's how there are so many counterfeit £1 coins in circulation.

George Pompidou

so then I should just sort them and not worry about counting them, right?

Andrew Leach

19:28

No, sort them and count them into the right amounts to be weighed.

Probably €1 for small denominations.

George Pompidou

I don't understand what you're saying Andrew. they have the ability to count how much of a single denomination I have, and yet I should do it for them, yet they will do it anyway to verify.

is this not redundant?

Andrew Leach

They don't count. They weigh. Only if the bag is not the right weight do they count it.

George Pompidou

but from the weight they know the amount

because otherwise there wouldn't be a "right" weight

Andrew Leach

No, it's a balance. They have a €1 weight, and compare your bag of cash.

Well, anyway, that's how UK banks do it. I seriously doubt continental banks will have other technology as it's all a global business.

George Pompidou

actually, I fully expect the UK to have at least a few more 12th century practices than the rest of civilization.

based on all of the 12th century practices you have.

Andrew Leach

19:32

Do tell.

George Pompidou

like wearing wigs in a courtroom. and being called Sir and Dame.

and having Dukes.

Andrew Leach

They're all older than 12th-century.

William I was Duke of Normandy, so that's a French thing, anyway.

George Pompidou

I was using 12th century to make a point; I do not concern myself with the exact centuries during which silly things happened.

gah, I have to play a stupid non-electronic game with my Mitbewohner

Andrew Leach

Welcome to the Real World. Housemates and coins.

2

Gridley Quayle

20:36

Other than 'true' (or synonyms) are there any 'linguistically transparent' (in lieu of a better phrase) words?

tchrist

@AndrewLeach Those are very common here.

Mitch

21:34

@GeorgePompidou I had a Duke once. Well, it was steak really, beef wellington, and he was what the Duke of York? or 'sir'. Anyway, where I come from it is called chicken-fried steak, which is nothing like chicken at all. More like wienerschnitzel. But no wieners. at least none that I know.

@GridleyQuayle what do you mean by 'linguistically transparent'? You should really expand upon what you're looking for.

Do you mean things like 'antonyms', 'hypernym' 'toponym', etc, or do you mean words that have transparent meaning because of their etymology?

crl

22:07

Transparency (linguistic)

Linguistic transparency is a phrase which is used in multiple, overlapping subjects in the fields of linguistics and the philosophy of language. It has both normative and descriptive senses. == Normative == Normatively, the phrase can be used to describe the effort to suit one's rhetoric to the widest possible audience, without losing relevant information in the process. Advocates of normative linguistic transparency often argue that linguistic opacity is dangerous to a democracy. These critics point out that jargon is deliberately employed in government and business. It encrypts morally suspect...

semantic transparency: The degree to which the meaning of a compound word or an idiom can be inferred from its parts (or morphemes).

Andrew Leach

@Mitch Wellington was the Duke of Wellington. The Duke of York of nursery rhyme fame failed to invade Holland.

Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland

The Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland (or Anglo-Russian expedition to Holland, or Helder Expedition) refers to the campaign of 27 August to 19 November 1799 during the War of the Second Coalition, in which an expeditionary force of British and Russian troops invaded the North Holland peninsula in the Batavian Republic. The campaign had two strategic objectives: to neutralize the Batavian fleet and to promote an uprising by followers of the former stadtholder William V against the Batavian government. The invasion was opposed by a combined Franco-Batavian army of approximately equal strength...

Gridley Quayle

22:33

@Mitch
By transparency I mean that the word doesn't add anything.
Consider the two statements:
'There is a pen on the table'
And 'It is true that there is a pen on the table'.
In the second example 'true' doesn't really add anything tangible to the sentence. I'm fact we can add 'it is true' ad absurdum and it won't really change anything
'It is true, that it is true that, it is true that...there is a pen on the table'

In this sense 'true' is rather transparent because it doesn't fundamentally change the structure or the implications of the statement. (Of course when truth is more subjectiv…

crl

23:35

indeed

Mitch

23:47

@GridleyQuayle OK. I think I see what you mean. You're looking for additional single words that don't add anything (I know you've said exactly that but it somehow seems different, repeating it). So you're looking for tautological words? How about phrases (i.e. not just 'true' but 'it is true'?

Anonymous

@Robusto Interestingly, that has an upvote

Mitch

How about tautological statements or words (not necessarily tautological always but in context. A pleonasm is a redundant word or phrase: "the funny comic". (so the 'funny' isn't always pleonastic, just around 'comic').

How about any copula? Like: 'a rose is a rose'. (this is the tautology idea).

Anonymous

It is true that emphasizes the truth value of the proposition

Anonymous

Similar to stressing is in speech to emphasize the affirmative polarity: There is a pen on the table

Anonymous

The basic proposition being expressed stays the same

Mitch

23:52

which goes for pleonasms too, they're not always removable because they add emphasis.

crl

Is he looking for 'neutral' words, words that add no positive or negative value?

an average city

Anonymous

Average adds meaning

George Pompidou

I'm struggling

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…