English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2016-07-19 (page 1 of 2)

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12:06 AM

@Mitch More my fault, I think. I didn't think it should be closed originally, but I didn't do anything about it until I saw a comment from Kit. Then I posted on Meta and it got reopened. Unfortunately, nobody seems to be capable of answering it.

12:37 AM

so is there a reason this question isn't being given more attention: http://english.stackexchange.com/q/334271/180089

The OP clearly saw my posts because the last time he was here was a few hours after I left my comments. And yet he still refuses to expound on if the phrase was ever used beyond his grandmother.

Is this sentence correct? "That's a "prestige argument" between my friend and I."

12:57 AM

@V0ight Well, you can't force him.

He may not have any more evidence.

Or no time.

I understand your frustration, but I'd just let it be if I were you.

4 hours later…

4:51 AM

@Shafizadeh "between my friend and me" is better. I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "prestige argument." Is it an argument where whoever wins gains prestige?

2 hours later…

7:01 AM

@Arrowfar perfect

7 hours later…

1:40 PM

[ SmokeDetector ] Link at end of answer: Mayoral Pronoun; it or he/she by E. Howard on english.stackexchange.com …

@sumelic Re: fault, I was just funning with Kit as though there were something to be blamed for.

Re: the question itself, the subject is interesting, but the original sentence is a mess. You can shoe horn a meaning/intonation onto it where it has a legitimate parsing with a lot of work, but in the end it just doesn't sound grammatical.

@Mitch Hwat!?

You'd rather I really cast blame in your direction?

you'll notice that the comments continue, like cut back weeds continuing to grow.

user208178

Good day all

Hey!

1:52 PM

[ SmokeDetector ] Manually reported answer: Mayoral Pronoun; it or he/she by E. Howard on english.stackexchange.com …

That's spam. Kill it with fire. And spam flags.

@tchrist What's spam?

winks

@Mitch Really? Twice I've purged that.

user208178

What do you think about the “pronunciations” on Youtube by a mechanical voice that we get in the first searches on Google when we search for a word that is not commonly found in the free online dictionaries. To me those pronunciations suck and are not helpful at all.

@KitZ.Fox Third time’s the charm.

user208178

2:01 PM

Here is what I’m taking about: youtube.com/watch?v=Dc9FRZZkPeE

user208178

Bad right?

Matt E. Эллен

user image

done

user208178

lol

in Tavern on the Meta on Meta Stack Exchange Chat, 18 hours ago, by tchrist

x = x ^ y;
y = x ^ y;
x = x ^ y; /* presto exchange-o! */

Matt E. Эллен

:-o

1=2

2:08 PM

x = 4, y = 2.5

Or x = 5, y = 4.

Problem with riddles is that there are many answers.

$x = 102_345;
$y = 370_884;
print "x is $x, y is $y\n";

$x = $x ^ $y;
$y = $x ^ $y;
$x = $x ^ $y;

print "x is $x, y is $y\n";

x is 102345, y is 370884
x is 370884, y is 102345

C does the same thing, but it would have taken me longer to write main(). :)

Matt E. Эллен

@KitZ.Fox they found that with the "extend this pattern" part of IQ tests.

next in the sequence

Right.

If y and y is eight, then y is o because when you add one o to the top of the other o you get 8.

So x and x is triangle means x = 7?

2:14 PM

@Arrowfar Yes, very bad.

Someone's trying to make money through automatically created Youtube videos, it seems.

Because 2 twos makes a fish? That's a dumb riddle.

user208178

@Cerberus yeah true, heh.

My 2s have curly loops.

@tchrist Could be 3 though.

Mirrored digits.

But then it's not really =, because there is a transformation function implied in that process.

Matt E. Эллен

well, then y would be 3

slow jinx

$x = "Cerberus";
$y = "Kit J. Fox";
print "x is $x, y is $y\n";
$x = $x ^ $y;
$y = $x ^ $y;
$x = $x ^ $y;
print "x is $x, y is $y\n";
($x, $y) = ($y, $x);
print "x is $x, y is $y\n";

x is Cerberus, y is Kit J. Fox
x is Kit J. Fox, y is Cerberus
x is Cerberus, y is Kit J. Fox

2:18 PM

Whence J?

From the strong headwind.

haha

I'm gaining, @MattE.Эллен.

But I have my semi-annual review in a few minutes.

Do you have weekly one-on-ones?

baiz

@tchrist Yes.

Matt E. Эллен

@KitZ.Fox you're getting there

2:22 PM

Which might even be better than Being There.

2:39 PM

[ SmokeDetector ] Bad keyword with email in body: BUY ORIGINAL,TOEFL,IELTS,TOEIC,PASSPORT,ID CARDS,VISA,DRIVING LICENSE by Velázquez Gutiérrez on english.stackexchange.com …

@tchrist let [x, y] = [42, 77]; [x, y] = [y, x]

JS beauty

@caub See the canine example that followed the original. They stole it. :)

3:09 PM

@KitZ.Fox I bet it was. :-)

@tchrist Which I like to watch.

1 hour later…

4:32 PM

@Arrowfar Are you talking about the German word or the rest of the English commentary? The English is fairly good (it just sounds a little mechanical, but it has the phonemes right and fairly good at the intonation for a robot). The German is terrible because, well, how do you expect the thing to pronounce German when it thinks the text is all English?

4:44 PM

@MattE.Эллен What? What's that? I couldn't hear you from underneath my fluffy tail.

Matt E. Эллен

@KitZ.Fox and we're below 100 :D

Yay!

user208178

@Mitch oh I mean the whole channel kinda. There are lots of such pronunciations sites on Youtube that we get in Google's top searches. So if you search even English words there on that channel they will all sound bad.

user208178

I'm still improving my English so I tend to avoid such pronunciation sites on Youtube but sometimes we have no choice for example, Google gives a pronunciation of a word and we have to take a quick look at its pronunciation and the video is right there in the top searches so we click it. It’s a good click bait but bad for learners I believe.

user208178

But sometimes still better than nothing, right?

4:50 PM

Well, that channel looks dubious. Looks like it is devoted to making fun at others' expense.

user208178

ah, I don't know. I came across it at random.

@Arrowfar It's better to use Howjsay for English.

And Forvo if you can't find the word on a reliable site.

user208178

Ah yes I remember those two sites. They are good, you are right.

Matt E. Эллен

5:20 PM

'What happens to the data your sex robot stores?' @drkatedevlin on the potential and dangers of future #sextech, at #humanmeetcomputer event

Tweeted by nesta_uk on July 19, 2016 at 5:19 PM

Perhaps more importantly, how do you safely debug the pleasure routines?

Matt E. Эллен

with lots of lubricant?

yes @tc, saw it, JS stole 'use strict' also:), and also there are a few more things I'd like on JS

5:41 PM

@Arrowfar haha... sort of. can't you look at 'forvo.com' Those pronunciations aren't automated so much more natural.

@MattE.Эллен lugubriously?

you know, for the shame afterwards

Matt E. Эллен

user image

user208178

@Mitch yes thanks. I'll keep that site in mind.

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch ludicrously, because who wouldn't use a sex robot anonymously

5:58 PM

I know, that would be crazy

user208178

so I was too embarassed to ask what "debug the pleasure routines" meant. but I got the joke now, after like forty minutes. damn.

user208178

I'm slow.

That's why chat is asynchronous. BBL = scouring internet for references to explain bad pun. or get lunch

user208178

I think a sex robot can never turn me on. The only type of robot that can turn be on is something like the beautiful female robots that we have in the Terminator movies.

user208178

I think I should stop typing now lol.

Matt E. Эллен

6:06 PM

lol

ha ha. nervously

How about that weather? Sure is hot.

Matt E. Эллен

very hot

almost as hot as Greece

wipes brow

Is there something going on there?

I'm really news-shy for the past two weeks. Shootings, failed coups, Pokemon Go. I can't take it any more.

Matt E. Эллен

in Greece? Well they're very tense as they're on the border with Turkey, but otherwise I think it's no worse than when it started the debt crisis

Ooh, which gives me a good idea for an episode of the Twilight Zone. And these aliens come and they seem bad, but something something and they're called 'Calgon' and something something and the last line of the show is 'Calgon, take me away'

That's all I got.

But I want fifty% of profits

and 'story by' to come up in the credits before Brad Pitt who plays the main character (who is obviously me)

Matt E. Эллен

6:12 PM

Calgon is interesting. I believe it's a diet pill or supplement in the USA. In the UK Calgon is used to prevent limescale build up in washing machines

@MattE.Эллен Well, if Greece is tense, think of how tense it must be within Turkey.

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch yes, much worse

user208178

See you guys later.

user208178

Peace and luck to all.

Matt E. Эллен

CU

oh, perhaps it's water softener in the USA, too

6:15 PM

@MattE.Эллен That may well be what it is in the US (I've never heard of it like that). It was advertised in the US during the 70's as a bathtub soap for women. And women after a hectic day could relax in a bathtup full of good smelling soap suds and they'd say 'Calgon, take me away' referring to being transported from profane concerns to mental relaxation. Using this wonder product called 'bath soap'. In sudsy water.

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch I see that now. I don't know why I thought it was a diet pill.

@MattE.Эллен and then think of how much worse it is on the other border, in Syria

and then think of what it's like within ISIS controlled areas.

and then think of how bad it is in the bad parts of town in the ISIS area

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch it's a rolling riot.

and then think of the bad parts of town, in an ISIS area, and a gas-station bathroom there.

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch and then think how good it is in the nice parts of the bad parts of town in the Daesh area, where crime lords have a stronghold, and want to keep things nice for their families.

6:17 PM

And no toilet paper

@MattE.Эллен I'm sure one would lose a lot of weight if one tried to use it as a diet pill.

@MattE.Эллен Yeah. Maybe it's not so bad in those spots

Matt E. Эллен

I'm not going to test it, to find out

looks up on Lonely Planet

They don't have much. Maybe you just need to know the right people.

Wasmachines leven langer met Calgon!

That's sexist!

Against which sex?

I typoed there.

6:21 PM

I meant sexist in a good way.

You can probably guess what it means.

Matt E. Эллен

all of them

Oh, good.

Matt E. Эллен

it's the same slogan in the UK

Yay.

6:22 PM

so yay for everyone around washing machines

Matt E. Эллен

washing machines live longer with Calgon!

Haha.

How original.

pretty unequivocal.

to the point

That it is.

bettern 'Calgon take me away'

that could be ambiguous

like really badly ambiguous

Matt E. Эллен

6:23 PM

was the woman made of lime scale?

Latin had many words meaning "take away" → "kill".

Calgon is a model of black taxi used by the homeland security police

Matt E. Эллен

:-o

@MattE.Эллен She was hot

white hot

I thought it was a Spanish mobster.

El Calgón.

Matt E. Эллен

6:24 PM

like Marylin Monroe?

We just say 'El'. you get the point pretty quickly.

Matt E. Эллен

Isn't it a pizza that's been rolled up?

@MattE.Эллен she was white.

but scales and limes? maybe a gin and tonic with lime

@MattE.Эллен El Calzón

Matt E. Эллен

scales and lime -> time

That dude could take you away on his black stallion

after hurdling the bombarded stone wall and slicing up your captors with a saber.

Matt E. Эллен

6:26 PM

woah!

El, hey, El!

My name is Ellie!

and thinly spread on a cracker with scallion cream cheese.

Al, hey, Al!

My name is Al Catraz!

Al Fredo is mine

Freddy or Freddo?

6:27 PM

I've heard that Italians wonder who that guy is that you're pairing with linguine

Bondage?

Fredo is the american version

No, Freddy.

@Cerberus no but you'll get a good tongue lashing

Ah.

You and your linguistic jokes.

Matt E. Эллен

6:29 PM

user image

Yay!

Just to see what everybody is raving about, I'm looking at 'Poke Radar' which is google maps overlaid with all the pokemon go thingies.

except after 3 seconds it blanks out and says 'servers overloaded.

Predictable.

1) what if the bad guys (you know who I'm talking about) are able to repurpose this to their own nefarious purposes, or worse this is their own nefarious purposes and we just think it is benign summer exercise fun?

and 2) I don't know, it just sounds better to say you have two things to say. I was hoping it would come to me but ain you can fill in your own blanks.

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch like in Brave New World? We're distracted by the fun we're having so don't see the problems inherent in the system?

6:33 PM

@Cerberus ooh a linguistic joke: So Chomsky and Piaget walk into a bar, and Chomsky says to the bartender "Do you serve alligators here?" and

@MattE.Эллен Brave New World had problems? No that one guy who ran away had problems.

bread and circuses? Oh my god. Have you seen the prices for Cirque du Soleil?

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch so we should play Pokémon Go?

@Mitch Hah!

@Mitch That's not very descriptive.

@Cerberus Oops, forgot the punchline.

also I screwed up the joke. But no worries it's salvagable

@sumelic correct

Chomsky asks the bartender "do you serve Catholics here?" (the bar is obviously a pub in Belfast)

Of and Chomsky also has an alligator on a leash. The alligator's name is Piaget. You know local color and all

The bartender hesitantly says yes (because somethety something IRA somethity political something).

So Chomsky says "Great. I'll have a pint, and bring one here for my alligator"

6:46 PM

Haha.

I have a Jesus joke too.

No good dirty jokes.

And Chimpy was dragged in because it's a linguistic pun?

Uh.. yeah. Sure.

What?

I couldn't actually think of a joke that was about linguistics.

present continuous passive perfect just ain't that funny

6:48 PM

dies laughing

@KitZ.Fox replace the primary affiliation with arbitrary whatever.

oh now i get it

what?

The only good dirty joke I have isn't that dirty and was told to me by an older woman of very long distant kinship relation.

The setup is 'A husband brings home flowers' and the punchline is 'What? Don't you have a vase?'

Let's say the husband is also Noam Chomsky.

Umm.

A rubber vahz?

user image

Can you read this?

haha. with googles help.

oh the UK is the bride.

Funneh!

6:56 PM

Yup.

I didn't know "UK" was a race too.

What isn't, these days?

From the perspective of my inner snarky 25 year old, that's exactly how the EU should feel.

It does.

But it will kick civilly.

@Cerberus Only little England. and only those who really belong there.

Oh, I see.

So no Normal invaders?

No Anglo-Saxon invaders?

Well, I'm just speaking like I know things, when I have no idea.

6:58 PM

And who lived there before the Indo-European invaders came?

Pictish invaders.

They're Indo-European.

I mean, they had to come from somewhere.

Aren't they?

Celtic.

oh. I don't know about Picts.

I thought they were nonCeltic.

but again, I wasn't there

The Celts were the great European civili... hunter-gatherers and covered most of northern Europe. Then the Germans and Romans ruined everything.

7:00 PM

Hunter-gatherers?

Or at least that's what our Pokemon capturing overlords have led us to believe.

Then when did they began to till crops?

@Cerberus small nomadic groups who follow herds but don't really grow crops in an organized fashion

I know what the term means.

@Cerberus Ya know, I'm not sure about all this. The Celts made pots I'm pretty sure, but I don't know how mobile they were.

7:02 PM

They weren't terribly nomadic.

But did they maintain crops from year to year?

But first I am in favour of hunters-gatherers. And secondly I think of Celts as an agricultural civilisation.

Oh (re agricultural)

> The Picts are thought by some to have been ethnolinguistically Celtic. ... spoke the now-extinct Pictish language, which is thought to have been related to the Brittonic language spoken by the Britons who lived to the south of them.

Was Iceland a desolate rock before the Vikings came?

7:03 PM

I think so?

Matt E. Эллен

EL&U was a deslolate rock until we came

I couls ask Noam Chomsky but he's busy feeding his alligator

@MattE.Эллен True!

I remember when chat was barren.

Matt E. Эллен

interrupt

@MattE.Эллен Every technology I encountered when I was a kid I thought was created right in that time span.

Like the technology that produced milky way candy bars. I thought they had just been invented then.

7:05 PM

I remember when Matt Ellen came to chat and I thought he was Californian.

Matt E. Эллен

:D

back when my avatar was tan

And blond.

Matt E. Эллен

indeed!

@Mitch By the way, not especially northern Europa.

Matt E. Эллен

it still is in some places

7:06 PM

It was a shock (and of course a sign of my becoming a mature adult) when I realized that the Milky Way candy bar was created and marketed a couple of years before I found out about it.

They lived in most of Europe.

Now for commutes. Ciao.

Matt E. Эллен

CU

@Cerberus cisalpine gaul? how about the lower part of the italian boot?

@KitZ.Fox slán!

user image

The Hallstatt culture was, I believe, the oldest Celtic culture known in Europe, the yellow area.

7:09 PM

oh... the galatians. In turkey. and the Ibero-celts. The data for that seems so...how to put this politely... made up?

> The Hallstatt culture was based on farming, but metal-working was considerably advanced, and by the end of the period long-range trade within the area and with Mediterranean cultures was economically significant.

@Mitch Made up? Why do you think so?

Maybe it was the stories of the Roman conquest of (yet-to-be) France and Germany which gave the impression that all those Celtic and Germanc tribes were just roaming around aimlessly.

@Cerberus The Halstatt evidence comes from a handful of archeological sites. Those are point data, but the map aspirationally interpolates to having them cover areas.

The Celtiberians were Celtic-speaking people of the Iberian Peninsula in the final centuries BC. These tribes spoke the Celtiberian language. Extant tribal names include the Arevaci, Belli, Titti, Lusones, and Berones. Cassius Dio appears to imply that the Ebro river forms a demarcation between Celtiberians and other tribes. Archaeologically, the Celtiberians participated in the Hallstatt culture in what is now north-central Spain. The term Celtiberi appears in accounts by Diodorus Siculus, Appian and Martial who recognized intermarriage between Celts and Iberians after a period of continuous warfare...

@Mitch Sure, there is always a lots of guesswork.

But I didn't think it was disputed that the Celts habitually tilled the land and herded cattle?

and the data for that map comes from two very diffent sources. 1) archeological (for establishing the Halstatt area and 2) obviously modern (20th) ethnographic charting. So I call shenanigans

@Cerberus Oh, I am uneducated on that. I need to read up.

Matt E. Эллен

Shenanigans here, how can I help?

is herding related to hoarding?

7:15 PM

There are drinks in the corner and the buffet is already laid out. Can you put the flowers as centerpiece on each table?

@Mitch No Greek written sources?

@MattE.Эллен Depends on how you classify sausage making.

Matt E. Эллен

secretly puts bees in each centerpiece

@Mitch a slimy pasttime

@Cerberus they may have written about all these people but their maps weren't the best.

Sure.

But we work with what we have.

And I think most archaeologists are convinced that there were Celtic farmers/herdsmen somewhere near the northern Alps.

7:17 PM

@MattE.Эллен An idea for a master's biology project. Selectively breed bees that buzz at distinct pitches. Sell for centerpiece musical accompaniment (just harmony, I'm not crazy!)

Matt E. Эллен

(lol)

@Cerberus I'm not doubting that there are a number of such sites in that area.

and maybe more farflung sites with similar pottery decorations and carbon dating and teeth worn down by similar diets.

It's the interpolation that I doubt.

It's like the ISIS maps, that cover large areas when really it's just a few towns in the desert and along the highways, but further out villages that no one cares about.

Okay, but then what does that lead to?

I'm bothered by maps of ancient history that have sharp borders. no one was patrolling and enforcing borders back then. and linguistic borders up until 19thc nationalism was very porous too.

Of course.

But that's the easiest way of giving an impression of the situation.

You're not expected to think that there was a Roman soldier on every hill in Illyria.

7:30 PM

@MattE.Эллен I had the idea years ago of, you know how some highways have grooved pavement in order to be less slippery when wet?, because the machines that lay the concrete for the highways (doesn't work on asphalt) have the groove machines (where KC and the sushine band got their lyrics from) that make the grooves. And your car tires on those groooves mke a certain pitch?

Matt E. Эллен

I think so

So just alter those machines so that you can change the width of the grooves for a certain length of road, and you can change them according to a pattern that is continuously changed, so that as you drive a long the road it plays a tune.

So that the highway M4 from London to Heathrow could have recorded in the concrete 'Stairway to Heaven'

Sounds nice!

So are your highways normally concrete, not asphalt?

I think so.

Unless they're not.

highways here seem to be concrete.

I have seen concrete highways here, but that must be very rare.

7:34 PM

But local streets usually asphalt but sometimes concrete

Matt E. Эллен

and I'm climbing the stairway to heaven!

My impressoin is that the change in pitch would have to be very slow to be comprehensible. Going 90KPH, say you'd need a minimum of 10m to get a good impression of the frequency.

I Googled "snelweg wegdek" for images, and all I see is asphalt.

@Mitch That would be 2,5s per note.

If not is the right word.

There might be safety issues, like with people wanting to keep the song on pitch but traffic getting in the way and causing your Beethoven's Ninth autobahn to go flat.

The pitch will depend on your speed, no?

7:39 PM

@Cerberus I didn't do the math I was guessing at the length of a slab. 2.5 seconds seems much longer than it would have to be.

@Cerberus yes. but if you go one speed it'll stay the same.

@Mitch Yes.

90.000m/10m=9000m/h.

and surely you couldn't brake and accelerate fast enough to upset the continuity. It'd sound weird like scratching with a record player but it'd stil sound like a melody.

9000m/3600s=2,5m/s.

@Mitch Will it sound good if the pitch of every note goes up?

@Cerberus it'll sound weird. but drive at one speed and it won't be so bad. really, very few people actually have perfect pitch so we can't pander to them.

Good.

Apart from the distraction it would cause, great idea.

7:43 PM

Yes, that is a potential safety problem.

but so are billboards

and it would be a deterrent to speeding, making people want to go at just the right speed to get the right pitch.

Heh.

Also one difficulty is the actual mechanism to change the groove spacing. That might be much more expensive to manufacture than fixed groove widths.

Maybe you could create a Shazam-like app that pays out money to drivers if they get the pitch right.

But we'll have the engineers worry about that

@Cerberus Nice monetization model.

It would have to be paid out by the government.

Because there is no profit to be made.

7:47 PM

we could privatize the toll system and charge drivers automatically through bluetooth transponders going through highway tollbooths

Ah, that has been tried, but drivers don't like it.

Privacy.

Well, not privatisation.

not if they choose to sign up for it

But automated paying based on radio emitters.

haha I'm joking about privitization. that works for some things, but not all.

But what if other cars drive through the booth too?

How will you make them pay the fine?

7:49 PM

@Cerberus auto-photo of their license and (higher) bill sent to their home.

Ah, but then you don't need the whole bluetooth thing.

You can just do it all by licence.

and if payment late then a pokemon will come to their doorstep and never leave

Oh, dear.

@Cerberus I haven't thought through the whole transponder vs photo of he license plate thing.

@Cerberus that sentence can work well in almost any conversational context whatever.

@Mitch Hmm.

7:51 PM

almost

Oh.

well, a few

Let's change the subject.

now you have me doubting myself

I think this ^ one works always.

7:51 PM

hah

@Mitch That one almost always.

1 min ago, by Mitch

now you have me doubting myself

yep, that worked

That one too.

Matt E. Эллен

always is a long way off

It's closer than you think

7:53 PM

Matt is a greeny face.

almost always even closer

Matt E. Эллен

you always say that

Why do you say that?

Matt E. Эллен

I'm always the last to know

This room is fun.

8:14 PM

@Cerberus almost always

You seem to be replying to my line specifically.

8:34 PM

@Cerberus You're very perceptive. Your 'seem' is an understatement of absolute certainty.

almost

Actually, there is no question: meta.english.stackexchange.com/questions/8157/… >_>

More seriously though, hi everybody.

9:33 PM

How could I say that correctly: "<something> which I start knowing from all angles" (I mean which I start being really familiar with)

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