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02:00 - 05:0005:00 - 00:00

02:38
> She was tired, and went home.
Do you see the comma necessary?
Fowler recommends against it.
Because the sentence is elliptical; it's not two independent clauses.
exhales in relief
I do think a comma is OK between elliptical clauses if they are longer.
I know, I know.
Swan says it's necessary.
I'm glad it's not unanimous.
You don't know Michael Swan, do you?
I don't know who Swan is.
But I don't think anyone could surpass Fowler's sense and erudition!
02:47
I see. Thanks.
@Cerberus Can't it be seen as She was tired, and [she] went home.?
That is ellipsis, isn't it?
But the clauses are independent.
You're supplying a word from the first clause into the second.
They are independent in that they are both main clauses, but not in that they could stand apart as full sentences each with its own subject and predicate.
broods
I'm having a bad connection. Sorry.
@Cerberus You mean they couldn't stand apart?
... but not (independent) in that they couldn't stand apart as full sentences each with its own subject and predicate.
@Færd They are not independent in [the sense that] they could stand apart, but only independent in the other sense.
02:56
Ah.
My in... phrase was supposed to modify only independent, not not independent.
Both readings are possible.
I understand now.
But I don't understand why the answer should hinge on the dependence of the clauses.
If the clauses can't stand apart without supplying words from one clause into the other, then you shouldn't write a comma, because you want to emphasise how closely the two clauses are conexed.
The comma introduces a pause and some distance.
> I like this and you that.
> I like this, and you that.
I prefer the second one.
Same issue.
Except that the ellipsis is more complex here.
03:00
@Cerberus I know. I presented it as a counterexample.
Standard ellipsis leaves out words starting at the beginning of the sentence.
Here words are omitted from the middle of the clause.
broods...
If you feel that the reader might have trouble parsing it as two clauses, then you could add a comma.
I wish there could be definite rules about punctuation.
I don't think it's necessary in this case, though.
There are very few definite stylistic rules about anything.
Or even any kind of linguistic rules.
03:02
@Cerberus It does say that there's a pause, which there is, naturally.
A comma may or may not coincide with a pause.
True.
Just as it may or may not coincide with a syntactic break.
Punctuation has the least accurate of stylistic rules.
We've gone from mainly the former into the direction of the latter over the past couple of centuries, in formal language, at least. Now we're somewhere in between.
Less than what other types of stylistic rules?
03:05
@Cerberus That did give me some useful insight. Good point.
@Cerberus Just nagging. Never mind.
OK.
The up-side is that you have considerable freedom!
Which I exercise inconsistently.
Don't we all!
It will be a mess for a long time until I reach sound personal taste.
If there could be one.
Are you sure you have not acquired such already?
Surely you have opinions on various punctuational issues?
03:11
Hi @Cerberus
I do, but I fluctuate between them.
Ave!
Fluctuation is wholesome, I should think?
@tchrist: La "s" implosiva en casi todo el país, posición contraria al resto de Centroamérica donde muchas veces estas se omite, en Costa Rica más bien se hace un énfasis en las mismas a la hora de pronunciarlas. Are they talking about "plosive" /s/? I looked up implosiva everywhere I could and get no result.
I don't like it anyway!
I'm sure Robusto will agree that opinions and tastes can vary and change in wise men.
03:12
D'accord !
Yeah, sure. But not by the second.
@Færd "There are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio."
@Færd If you have a nimble mind, like Hamlet's, why not?
Una consonante implosiva es un tipo de oclusiva (marginalmente puede ser una africada) con un mecanismo mixto de corriente, glotálico ingresivo y pulmonar egresivo. Es decir, la corriente de aire se controla por movimientos arriba y abajo de la glotis combinado con un flujo saliente de los pulmones. Por tanto, a diferencia de las consonantes eyectivas cuyo mecanismo el glotálico puro, las implosivas pueden ser modificadas mediante fonación. Las implosivas casi de manera universal presentan fonación sonora. Las consonantes implosivas se encuentran en aproximadamente el 13% de las lenguas del mundo...
Interesting.
@Robusto Because the things on heaven and earth don't all fluctuate in sync with my mind.
Apparently, this kind of sound is not used in languages that I know well.
03:16
Phew! It's not in English!
@Cerberus Yeah. I get what they article is saying in Spanish, but I still can't hear it in my head.
Nor I.
Just look at the phonetic symbols.
They're not used in English.
Yeah, I'm not really too good with those. I went to the English version of the article, which has a table of recordings, but the only ones with /s/ are ejectives.
I still don't know what an implosive /s/ would sound like.
Perhaps like Chernobyl?
tsk tsk
03:20
Or I suppose that was more like an explosion.
Dunno.
Haha. I'll pass on the chicken Kiev, tyvm.
Meanwhile, there are two common Portuguese expressions that I can't find information about.
Ask Tom. He's a mod on Portuguese SE, no?
One sounds like téja and seems to mean something "see you in a moment".
The other sounds like tèlo and seems to mean "goodbye".
Yeah, I should.
Or...should I ask on Portuguese.SE?
Most SE sites are not very welcoming to laymen, but small sites can be.
I've been researching Costa Rica as a possible refuge in case things get really bad under Trump.
03:22
Hah.
I'm not kidding.
What kind of disaster would you expect to have to flee from?
Police state.
Oh, I wouldn't expect things to change so fast and so completely.
Besides, one the average person can live in a police state for a few years.
                  Can such things be,
And overcome us like a summer’s cloud,
Without our special wonder?
@Cerberus I guess I just don't want to be around when the U.S. turns completely to shit.
This is a man who praised the decision to lock up all the Japanese-Americans during WWII. A man devoid of nuance, compassion, self-awareness, shame, remorse ... the list goes on.
And he will be oh so easy to influence. All his henchmen will have to do is 1. appeal to his ego and 2. plant fears that this or that enemy is making fun of him.
03:28
I'm not sure we know him that well already. He's shown some signs of change.
A loose canon still, granted.
Can't watch it right now. Soon.
I'm not a fan of Ron Paul, and I don't agree with him on practically anything else, but he's right about this.
Under Obama this was not a problem. But it is now.
@Robusto Yes, but he is no Emperor.
Well, it is more probable, only because no accurate forecast can be made on what he'll do.
03:32
@Cerberus The President of the United States has more power than any emperor in history.
@Robusto I remember that law; it is indeed terrible.
Can it be struck down by the courts?
@Robusto Yes, but not relatively to those forces that could temper him.
@Færd Better a loose canon than a loose cannon!
Oops!
@Cerberus He has succeeded in spite of every prediction to the contrary. It strains credulity to imagine that he will exercise any restraint at this point.
He's just one man.
Other men have to do what he asks, or he is nothing.
And he's gathering around him those who will grease the wheels for him.
03:37
And he wants to be popular, like almost all politicians.
Even though he was no politician.
Didn't people feel the same way about Reagan?
For one thing, if the freedom of speech were to be shot down in the US, who would the resisting forces be? Maybe too big for one administration to overcome in 4 or 8 years?
And if it's not going to be shot down, people still can reach and vote for other parties in the future?
I would think so.
@Cerberus Well, if you were plotting a trend line, going from Reagan to W. to Trump, would the direction it's pointing cheer you up if you were living in America?
@Færd Parliament? The courts? And, in case of a catastrophe, the army?
@Robusto That remains to be seen.
@Cerberus I think you aren’t lexing them right. There’s até ja for see ya soon in Portuguese, like hasta pronto in Spanish. And até logo is till the next time, so an exact cognate to hasta luego in Spanish.
Trump is I believe a bigger jerk.
But otherwise perhaps the difference is not so enormous as the media would have us believe.
03:42
You seem not to be hearing the unstressed, reduced syllables.
This is normal, especially in Portugal.
@Cerberus I haven't been sleeping well since the election. I'm very worried about this country now, in a way I haven't been my entire life. And I lived through Nixon, mind you.
@tchrist Ah, that makes sense, provided that one is allowed to very consistently drop syllables left and right. The a at the beginning is never pronounced in the series I have watched, of that I am sure.
The same for go.
Except perhaps a nigh-inaudible, reduced g that I never noticed.
That’s how it seems. I promise you they think of them.
@Robusto Of course it is easy for me to say, but I think the panic in America may be a little bit of an exaggeration.
@tchrist Any ideas about the pronunciation of "s" implosiva?
03:45
The Republicans felt the same panic when Obama was reëlected, no doubt.
@tchrist I believe it.
@Cerberus Yeah, and things steadily improved. Nobody's guns were taken away, as was the big fear. But I firmly believe that what they really feared was a black man in the White House. For a lot of people, that was like some black janitor pissing into the baptismal font at their church.
There's a name for those people, btw.
Awful is the new normal now.
The country is terribly polarised.
@Cerberus If you are very lucky, you might hear all of [əˈt̺ɛ ˈlɔɰʉ] but I doubt you are trained to hear the last two sounds at all. [ɰ] is the approximate corresponding to the fricative [ɣ] from the stop [g]. The last one is very often swallowed.
Either side sees the other as Beëlzebub.
The Lord of the Flies.
Costa Rica.
Ah good.
El español de Costa Rica es la forma del idioma español que se habla en Costa Rica. Costa Rica nunca fue una colonia americana que despertara un profundo afán de poblamiento o que presentara grandes probabilidades de rápido enriquecimiento como sus vecinos Guatemala, México o Panamá, los cuales poseían prósperos asentamientos mucho antes de que se iniciara el proceso conquistador y colonizador de la última de las provincias de la Audiencia de Guatemala, en 1561. Durante la Colonia Costa Rica era el territorio más austral de la Nueva España y una de las que recibió menos influencia de la Corona...
From this article.
> En subdialectos de Andalucía, Canarias, como en el español caribeño este proceso llega a otros contextos, donde la aspiración de /s/ se da también entre vocales; nosotros [no̞ˈho̞tɾɔʰ].
Oh I'll look.
I don't know what they mean by that. My friend in Los Alamos learned her Spanish in Costa Rica, and she doesn’t swallow her s's the way most people in that region do.
That might be it.
But that's a weird way to talk about it.
03:55
@tchrist I'm just trying to get an idea what it sounds like, what to look for.
@Cerberus Yes, actually, because I know it should be there. These are vowels unlike anything you're used to from Italian, eh? :) Consonants, too.
What in the world am I watching??
Oh, never mind that.
I just had to find an example from some video that I could remember I watched recently.
They also often don't pronoune the -o at the end of words.
Quite.
Like perfeit (or however it's spelled).
It's going to seem like a solid stream of consonants because most of the vowels are too reduced for them to "click" for you.
Once you actually know which words they're saying, you start to hear them ghosting, very faintly.
03:59
I know what words they're saying.
They just leave out ending and beginning vowels sometimes.
More than sometimes.
Also, anything not stressed.
Feels like you're woken up in Russia without realizing it. :)
I'm feeling a lot like that lately.
I remember it sounded almost Slavic to me when I had rarely heard the language before.
Hah!
Very very much so.
Cf enamorada.
I've even seen it spelled namorada.
04:02
namra
And the -a or -o is also often dropped entirely.
Anything not stressed either isn't there at all or usually seems like it. :)
They aren't doing a great job at translating.
It varies.
Probably.
Não t'preoccup', for example, is what I hear almost exclusively.
04:04
I wonder if his /s/ is like the implosiva.
I wouldn't even know what the vowel at the end should be.
@Robusto I'm not sure i I dare listen to that now. :)
An -e? An -a?
hahaha ...
@Cerberus That's não te preocupes, identical to Spanish.
04:05
Where Argentines and others reduce pre-consonantal /s/, he seems to ultra-sibilantize it.
But it ends with oopsh, no vowel.
@Robusto Ok, I'll try now.
@Robusto He sure does hiss a lot.
@tchrist Right, and the -s might even be more audible than the -e-.
@tchrist Of course, he might only be trying to emphasize all the consonants for foreign ears.
The Spanish video sounds so much clearer than Portuguese!
@Cerberus Ever and always.
At least you'll know what word was said, even if you don't know what it means.
As with Italian.
Very different way of speaking.
04:08
Indeed.
French is the worst, though, I'd say.
Now, street Spanish can be very rough and run together, but there are still fundamental difference in enunciating the two languages even when the words are the same on paper, as so often they are.
Greek is sounds as bad as Portugese to me.
@Cerberus It would be, yes.
Portuguese from Brazil is already clearer than from Lisbon.
Incredibly so.
04:10
That video was Lisbon.
Nota-se.
It makes itself known?
It is noted.
Middle voice. Se nota.
As in, "clearly"?
Right.
04:12
Yes, I understood.
Just to confirm.
Meanwhile, my computer had told me to go to bed and has shut down.
Good idea.
Ok, I need to stop watching this silly stuff.
¡Pura vida!
@Robusto I really don't think that will happen, but I didn't think any of this would. We've pierced the singularity’s event horizon now, so it is impossible to see what’s ahead, nor even use the natural laws from the old universe to predict that future.
@tchrist Well, I sure hope you're right.
I have no doubt it will get worse before better.
04:19
Yeah.
This is not the thirties.
Sleep well, gents!
@Cerberus Night!
Worry less.
Can't help it.
The shock will wear off.
I feel like we've just entered Mordor.
04:21
Naaah.
Keep your head down.
It's more like the Ithils.
Or how do you spell that?
Minas Ithil is the tower of the moon.
But the area?
I only remember the Dutch name.
Ithiliën.
Eryn Muir.
Oh that.
Yes.
04:23
That's not the same thing.
That's a green and pleasant land.
What is its English name?
Oh I don't know.
It’s Ithilien in Sindarin.
I mean, its name as used in the book.
Moonlandia?
04:24
Oh!
I thought that was the Dutch -en.
Plural.
Yes, but Minas Tirith has fallen now.
Ithilien is all it is called. It becomes a principate when Faramir gets princed.
In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth, Ithilien is a region and fiefdom of the kingdom of Gondor. Ithilien, or "Moon-land," is the easternmost province of Gondor, the only part of Gondor across the Great River Anduin. It lay between the river and Mordor's Mountains of Shadow (Ephel Dúath), and was subdivided by the stream of Morgulduin into North and South Ithilien. == History == Ithilien was a fair and prosperous land during the Second Age and the first part of the Third Age, filled with many woods and gardens, when Gondor was strong and Mordor deserted. Of old its chief city was Minas...
Nah, it's just a somewhat more corrupt stadholder than the last.
@Cerberus No.
Ok noted.
04:26
You'll see.
I'm so sorry.
I wish you were right.
But calling this unprintable atrocity somewhat more corrupt than Obama is an insult to reason.
2
Well, of course we don't know yet what he'll do.
@Cerberus I hate playing Cassandra to your Priam, but ... them Greeks is out there building a horse ...
Even the wise cannot see all ends.
But, again, he's no king.
The most likely scenario is that he will do as he has always done.
04:28
@Robusto Sail across the sea and found a Rome.
At last, that's the starting point. Remember what absolute power does.
When you start out already rotten with corruption, whither then when absolute power is granted?
Not absolute.
He has absolute power only in a few tiny areas, namely life and death.
He can push the button and there is nothing that anyone can do within the law to forestall him.
@Cerberus Ask Dido how that turned out for her.
He can grant full clemency to those condemned to die, and no one can stop that either.
Those powers are both absolute.
04:31
He'd be impeached soon enough if he did something truly crazy in the eyes of the republicans.
@Cerberus It would be too late.
A wan hope.
The Republicans are afraid of him. They think it's going to be business as usual for them now, but they are going to tread very lightly.
@Robusto I won't set myself on fire if you sail on!
This man who lost the popular vote thinks he has a mandate now! Can you credit your senses?
04:32
They're just too eager to rule, to crush. They want to ride his wave.
I don't credit that he thinks at all, actually.
Vulgarity is his principal skill.
He has appointed many people that another republican president might also have appointed.
I will not live to see the end of this. Neither will Rob.
Oh, I think you will.
It's just four years.
HAHAHAH
No.
It's twenty to thirty years until the Supreme Court is healed.
04:34
And he has already listened to his more reasonable advisors on some accounts.
Maybe more.
He nominated Jeff Sessions for Attorney General. The one-man crusader against marijuana. Wait till the SWAT teams show up all over Colorado to shut down legal businesses.
@tchrist If even then.
Yes, ok, the court is a problem.
"Good people do not smoke marijuana." —Sessions
yeah ...
And what do you do with bad people, Jeff? Why, lock 'em up! Problem solved!
04:35
He has announced that he will keep parts of Obamacare intact.
@Cerberus No, he hasn't announced anything.
He has announced that he won't drop NATO.
And what about citing WW2 internment camps as a legal precedent for what's to be done with Moslems?
He has mumbled a few things, which could change by the beginning of his next sentence.
Doesn't that seem like a problem?
04:36
Okay, well, at any rate, that is better than one might have expected based on his campaign, no?
@Robusto Yes, that's all. You cannot trust anything.
1 hour ago, by Robusto
This is a man who praised the decision to lock up all the Japanese-Americans during WWII. A man devoid of nuance, compassion, self-awareness, shame, remorse ... the list goes on.
Of course it's bad.
He is quite willing to sacrifice American democracy on the altar of his colossal ego.
But we don't know yet that it will be the apocalypse.
04:38
@Cerberus I'm not sure that's a great consolation.
George Takei.
He's not keeping silent.
All I'm saying is, as an outsider, that the American reaction, while understandable, seems a bit too dramatic.
My mother-in-law was in the Tule Lake camp.
When she was a little girl ... in prison ...
That's bad, but I'm sure he wouldn't do that.
She is the sweetest old lady now that you could possibly imagine. The only time I have ever heard bitterness in her voice is when she talks about that time.
@Cerberus I'm sure of nothing. I'm trying to imagine nothing, either, though.
04:41
That's good.
Dark have been my dreams of late.
Hah.
But enough republicans are like that, aren't they? Like in Bush's cabinet?
I think he may set you back ten years, but that's...ten years.
user227867
I am now typing from Microsoft Edge in Windows 10.
Or maybe less: usually there is a backlash after an extreme government.
04:43
@Cerberus How many more decades do you think I have left?
I can't afford to go lose a decade here and there.
I was thinking exactly the same thing.
@JasperLoy Congratulations! I have heard good things about those devices.
Might as well just shoot me now.
But what he will do will most likely not affect your daily lives.
user227867
@Cerberus It's taking quite long to update the system, probably because it is one year of updates as Windows 10 is one year old and I just turned it on today.
04:44
There can't always be progress. It goes up and down.
@Cerberus If they take away Medicare it sure will.
user227867
@Cerberus My millionaire friend told me that Trump will indirectly cause property prices in Antarctica to drop.
Oh, you couldn't pay for healthcare otherwise?
user227867
@Robusto I know you don't believe this, but there is always the next life with many more decades after this life. =P
But he said he would keep most of Obamacare, didn't he?
04:46
@Cerberus Are you kidding?
@Cerberus He lies.
@Cerberus We've been over this.
I don't remember all of it, but in my memory you were fairly rich?
About his retreat from his extreme positions, I think the main intention is to calm the public.
@Robusto He doesn't understand what that means here.
04:47
11 mins ago, by Robusto
He has mumbled a few things, which could change by the beginning of his next sentence.
He changes his mind from the start of a sentence to the end.
There is no cap on how much they can charge you, for anything.
So they do.
user227867
@Robusto I wonder if he does business that way too.
The only thing he sticks to is his lawsuits against people who mock or disparage him.
Hah.
@Robusto He doesn't normally finish his sentences. He keeps interrupting himself.
user227867
04:49
So after downloading updates, instead of installing them, Windows 10 is now preparing to install them. =P
Well, you have sympathy.
He is inexperienced, so let's hope he bogs down in real politics.
But it is bed time.
user227867
Not talking about Trump, but sometimes, people without experience can see things more clearly than those with it. Sometimes.
Take care!
@Cerberus Meh, I could hope he turns out to be Mohandis K. Ghandi, but that's not where I want to place a bet.
Good night. Or morning, whichever applies for you.
@JasperLoy Yes, sometimes, but certainly not he.
user227867
04:51
@Cerberus See you in your dreams!
Adeus!
When can't you use that instead of when (the conjunction)? When, of course, when is not preceded by a comma?
That sounds perfectly natural to me after day, year, holiday, period of time, etc.
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