English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Færd

03:59

@AndrewLeach Oh. I based that on the Ngram chart. Maybe not reliable.

Maybe it's just gaining attention and refusal for now.

cpx

09:42

Hi. Suppose if the month starts with Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, is it the first week of month or the first week will start from when there is Sunday/Monday?

Andrew Leach

Depends on the counting system. Some say it's the week with the first Monday (the first full week); some say it's the week with the first Thursday in it (so that a "week" of four days counts as the first week); some say the week with the first day in it is the first week.

SmokeDetector

11:18

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Email in answer: Vindictive vs. Vindicative by robert bickley on english.stackexchange.com

ANeves

12:48

@AndrewLeach Even further: in some cultures the week starts on Sunday and not on Monday.

Andrew Leach

Indeed. The UK is rather ambivalent on that point. The weekend tends to be at the end of the week, and everything starts up again on Monday. But Sunday is "the first day of the week" for many.

terdon

@snailplane No, but that's because runnings can never be a verb. However, in I saw a running man, runnning is acting like an adjective but, I would argue, is still also a verb. Like read in a read newspaper.

ANeves

I admit: I don't know in which day the week starts, here in Portugal.
But it's probably Sunday, because Monday is "second market", Tuesday "third market", and so on until Friday which is "sixth market".

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Anonymous

13:48

@terdon Of course runnings can never be a verb. That's why it's a good example of running not being a verb.

Anonymous

Runnings is a form of running.

Anonymous

The noun derived from the verb form running.

Anonymous

It proves that we have a noun running, because otherwise you wouldn't be able to stick a plural suffix on it.

terdon

@snailplane Ah, OK. Hmm.

Anonymous

In many cases running is still a verb, but not all.

terdon

13:49

I'll grant you that one :)

My main question is whether or not a verb can be an adjective and a verb at the same time.

tchrist

Nope.

Anonymous

No.

Anonymous

That's nonsense.

terdon

Explain, please.

tchrist

It can have the spelling of a verb, but not the function.

terdon

13:50

@tchrist No, not the function. Of course not.

tchrist

A word does only one job.

terdon

However, I would argue that the word read is a verb irrespective of whether it is currently acting as a verb or not.

Which is why it has that little "v" next to it in dictionaries.

tchrist

That's not one of the better read books.

terdon

This doesn't mean it can't be an adjective if used as one. I would just consider it a verb that is acting as an adjective. So it's an adjective in that sentence but a verb in general.

tchrist

If you say "read" there like the past tense so "red", then it is an adjective.

If you say "read" there like the present tense so "reed", then it is a verb.

Anonymous

13:52

I distinguish category from function.

terdon

@tchrist Yes, precisely. I would say that the verb read is an adjective in that sentence. or, I guess, part of a compound adjective or whatever jargon you people use.

@snailplane Ah. Perhaps I should too, then. Could you explain the distinction you're making?

tchrist

Adjectives are different from verbs.

If you have running water, then the water is running and so it is an adjective.

But when you are talking about running drugs, then it is a verb not an adjective.

And when you have running shoes, the shoes are not running and so now it is a noun.

Anonymous

Each category (what a word is) has a range of functions (what a word does). The categories aren't 100% homogeneous, so individual words in a category don't necessarily behave exactly the same way, but broadly you can divide words into groups based on how they behave, which functions they can have (along with other grammatical properties). If you take this approach, it doesn't make sense to say something "acts as an adjective" because "adjective" is a category.

tchrist

Verbs do verb things, like take object complements and get modified by adverbs.

terdon

Sure. But I would consider certain things intrinsic to the word itself. You're saying that a word only is as a word happens to be doing at the moment and running, out of context and alone, cannot be called verb, adjective or noun or, conversely, must be called all three. Is that right?

tchrist

13:55

Verbs do not take adjectives or articles.

What is a word? :)

Anonymous

So we could identify a function, for example "post-determiner pre-head modifier in a noun phrase", and identify the kinds of words that can have that function. Nouns, for example: chicken in chicken soup. Adjectives too: hot in hot soup. Then we would say chicken is an attributive noun, not a noun acting like an adjective.

terdon

@snailplane So you see it as a set of overlapping classes? Running would be at the intersection of the verb, adjective and noun classes?

@tchrist A messy can of worms. That much I know :)

tchrist

"Running" is three different words.

And then some, I imagine.

terdon

@tchrist Yeah, that one I have a bit of trouble with.

Anonymous

This is theoretically cleaning than saying X functions like Y, because when you get right down to it, almost every part of speech has a bunch of different functions, so it's really unclear to say that something acts like an adjective.

Anonymous

13:58

Adjectives can be attributive: hot soup or predicative: The soup is hot or they can have predeterminer function: I have never before read so beautiful a poem or they can be postpositive: every star visible to the naked eye

Anonymous

Adjectives do lots of stuff. We can come up with functions (the exact set depends on your grammatical theory) and list them, but those are probably the four main ones, although they aren't entirely limited to that list of functions.

Anonymous

Besides that, they inflect. Most adjectives are gradable. They take adverbial modification, but not adjectival; they don't take determiners; and so on. They have a set of grammatical traits which distinguish them from other word classes.

Anonymous

When a word genuinely moves from one class to another, it generally displays the traits of the resulting class.

tchrist

@snailplane Which is why the Romans didn't have but nomen, verbum, participium, pronomen, praepositio, adverbium, conjunctio and interjectio. :)

Anonymous

When the noun running is derived from the verb form running, we can look at it and say, "Well, does it take a determiner? Can it inflect for the plural with -(e)s? Does it take adjectival or adverbial modification?"

Anonymous

14:01

> He was expelled for wantonly killing the birds.

tchrist

They just bifurcated their nomina.

Anonymous

Here killing is a verb form. It takes a direct object, adverbial modification, no determiner, and can't inflect for number.

tchrist

Into the substantival and adjectival ones.

Anonymous

> He was expelled for the wanton killing of the birds.

Anonymous

And now it's a noun form, derived from the verb form. It takes an of-PP complement rather than a direct object, does take a determiner, can now inflect for number, and takes adjectival rather than adverbial modification.

Anonymous

14:02

It's clearly jumped from one category to the other.

Anonymous

Note, though, that the constituent headed by killing in both examples has the same function.

tchrist

Murder, she wrote.

Anonymous

To meaningfully say something belongs to a category, we have to come up with criteria like these, a series of tests, and see if the words pass. Not every word is a completely typical member of a category; not all adjectives are gradable, and not all have the four main functions, for example. But if you want to call something a noun, it has to mean something, and it doesn't mean "it has (n) next to it in a dictionary". It has to tell us something about how the word is used.

tchrist

Brava.

terdon

@snailplane thank you, that was very helpful.

tchrist

14:06

The place I'm fuzzy on is why whiz-deletion is required to explain right-branching cases.

Anonymous

Well, you don't have to believe in whiz-deletion. It's just one way of arriving at the evidence.

tchrist

I'm looking for someone interested in killing birds.
I saw a person killing birds yesterday.
People killing birds bothers me.

terdon

All this is to say, then, that the category a word belongs to cannot, for words that can belong to more than one, be determined out of context. So it is not intrinsic to the collection of letters, but instead entirely dependent on the way it is being used. Which is why homographs like the verb and noun form of falling are considered separate words.

tchrist

@terdon “Is the word braves (A) a noun or (B) a verb?” can have no correct A/B answer devoid of context.

terdon

Which is why I would have said "both". I am now leaning towards "it's two words, not one, stupid!" instead.

tchrist

14:09

It becomes even more confusing without the -s. :)

Anonymous

Biber et al. 1999 gives examples like "a matter concerning the public interest" and "a society consisting of educated people" and notes that "these verbs rarely, if ever, occur as full progressive verbs, and thus a full relative clause containing a finite progressive form is not truly an option" (p.631–2)

tchrist

@snailplane Isn't that the argument that leads to prepositioning them?

Anonymous

@terdon Yes, I agree with that.

terdon

Relevant:

5

Q: Are homonyms considered single words?

There are many homonyms in the English language, words that are spelled the same and pronounced the same but have different meanings. A few examples: A grizzly bear can bear great weight. I stake out the house while perched on a stake. I took a bow after shooting my bow. Take your pick of any p...

Apparently, I wasn't quite as convinced by that answer as the tickmark would imply. Here I am again, wondering about the same thing.

Although those are more clearly different.

tchrist

During was once a verb.

terdon

14:12

@tchrist Before he became king, you mean?

Anonymous

@tchrist There are a lot of deverbal prepositions, but one of the keys to distinguishing them is usually whether they have a predicand, as verbs predicate and prepositions do not.

terdon

But I guess it must have been, given the -ing. Huh. Same in French and even Spanish, now that I think of it. Pendent and mientras both have verb suffixes.

Although I doubt that mientras qualifies. *Yo mientro?

Mick

0

Q: grouch and mud - sesame street

Watching a parody on Sesame Street, episode 'True Mud (A True Blood Parody)', I got confused. Bill comes in a cafe and says that he wants mud. Other customers think he is a grouch, because he loves mud. Why do they think so? Why must a grouch love MUD? A grouch is an ill-tempered person. I can'...

meaning idioms

Anonymous

I'm not entirely sure what to do with consisting.

Mick

sigh

terdon

14:17

@snailplane When is it not a verb?

Anonymous

@terdon The example from LGSWE above is difficult to explain as a verb form by whiz-deletion: in a society consisting of educated people it's stative in meaning, so *a society which is consisting of educated people is ungrammatical.

Anonymous

So one suggestion was, could we think of it as a deverbal preposition instead?

Anonymous

English has lots of those. There are five of them counting the driver.

terdon

Argh.

Can't you get away with just calling them verbs and leaving it at that?

Anonymous

For a variety of reasons, no.

Anonymous

14:22

Sometimes the verb no longer exists.

Anonymous

Sometimes the verb and derived preposition differ in complementation or meaning.

Anonymous

And generally, prepositions don't have predicands.

Anonymous

You can have adjectives derived from -ing forms, nouns derived from -ing forms, or prepositions derived from -ing forms.

tchrist

@terdon Spanish mientras is not from any verb. It comes from mientra and that from demientra, which came from Latin dum intĕrim. So it is no more a verb in origin than Zaragoza is, even if we were to hope that “Zara goza de algo”, since that toponym’s ultimate origin Caesar Augustus verbum non erat. :)

terdon

@tchrist Oh well. Looked like one though :)

@snailplane So what is bar in "everyone bar the driver"? A preposition?

Anonymous

14:25

According is a preposition phrase in according to terdon, but we don't use the verb accord the same way.

tchrist

Well, this is the Japanese thing. When you only have so many possible syllables, especially at word’s end, things look like each other.

Anonymous

@terdon Yep :-)

Anonymous

Assuming bar means 'barring', which is the word that would go there in my idiolect.

terdon

@tchrist So what was the verb od during? Dure? Which, presumably, also gave us endure?

tchrist

Plus since prepositions are closed sets, we’re especially chary of creating new ones, modulo the stray Latin import.

terdon

14:26

@snailplane Yeah, just had to bend it a little so it could fit there :P

Anonymous

We still have endure, but not dure.

tchrist

Durance vile.

terdon

So dure went the way of hap.

I wonder if it is related to hardness as are its counterparts in Latin langauges (duro, dure etc)

guess it must be

Anonymous

We don't notwithstand stuff either.

tchrist

Abandon all home ye who are to be held in durance vile.

> late 14c., durand, present participle of obsolete verb duren "to last, endure" (mid-13c.), from Old French durer, from Latin durare "endure" (see endure). During the day really is "while the day endures," and the usage is a transference into English of a Latin ablative absolute (compare durante bello "during (literally 'enduring') the war").

Egad.

Anonymous

14:28

And we pretty much don't pend.

tchrist

Pent-up demand.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive title detected: Where does the exclamation "Fucking Hell" originate? by Weckar E. on english.stackexchange.com

Mick

Oh, dear! Grammar! hides

terdon

@Mick Yes, I know. That's why I used it so :)

tchrist

That’s fromA Practical Grammar of the English Language, by Noble Butler.

terdon

14:35

The discussion was about how one can know what function a word has.

Cerberus

Function, as in substantive, adjective, verb, adverb?

Mitch

@terdon Katy bar the door!

Cerberus

Tell by its form?

tchrist

Outside a sentence, a word has no function. Inside a sentence it’s too busy for you to get it to help you.

Mitch

Inside of a dog it's too hard to read

tchrist

14:38

Lawler said something good about this yesterday, hidden in a comment somewhere.

Cerberus

@tchrist It often does have a highly likely function.

tchrist

Oh, maybe not yesterday.

Cerberus

For example, cernas can only be a verb.

Just as ik can only be a pronoun.

Assuming their respective languages—or else we would not be justified in calling those sequences words.

tchrist

@Cerberus Looks like a first declension accusative singular to me.:)

Cerberus

Umm.

In what language?

tchrist

14:41

Cernando as it is. :)

Teasing.

Cerberus

I don't know of any language that has a singular accusative on -as...

ANeves

@tchrist If it ends with s, it must be a plural!

tchrist

Oh right.

I meant plural.

ANeves

"sorry, typo" :)

tchrist

For some reason, I got no red line typing that typo.

This is why all our plurals came from that Latin accusatives not the nominatives.

Because that's where the -s happens.

I need more coffee.

ANeves

14:44

Really? That's a really interesting insight.

tchrist

It's not my own.

It's a pretty well-documented and well-accepted theory, although I believe a few people remain to be convinced.

I have only the paper copy, so it is laborious to type in lengthy passages.

I trust you follow the nox/noctem reasoning.

In Sardinian, the most morphologically conservative of Latin’s daughters, “the majority of nouns are derived from Latin accusative forms by deletion of -m.”

Mitch

@terdon "I took a bow after shooting my bow at the tree bow from the ship bow, tied up with a bow."

tchrist

p 329, apart from my poetic flourish. :)

Mitch

"I can't stand that it stands to reason that I stand in the stand of trees, taking a stand against hot dog stands"

@tchrist doesn't the french -s in plural (and no -s in singular) come from the accusative 2nd declension?

manus (N.S.)/manum(A.S.)//mano(N.P.)/manis(A.P.) -> main/mains ?

probably better and more correct examples.

Nominative Singular...Accusative Plural (that may actually be dative plural)

tchrist

@Mitch That's the theory. The point is that the stem proves that even the singular came from the accusative not the nominative.

@Mitch Remember that manus is not second declension but fourth.

Mitch

14:58

which is weird because, really, accusative?

@tchrist haha...no I don't remember that. all I remember is 'cornus' is 4th

tchrist

People like accusatives.

Mitch

people are jerks

tchrist

Really, who does?

Us.

In Spanish and Portuguese you put a nominative there (yo, eu), but in English an accusative (me) and in French a tonic propositional object (moi).

Mitch

I think all those Latin declensions were mostly made up by scholars.

the ancient roman scholars that is

like Plautus and Virgil. no one in their right mind talked like that.

Who in their right mind could distinguish all those declensions and cases and endings?

@tchrist We do.

tchrist

Anybody whose writing we've preserved outside the bathroom walls in Pompei? :)

Mitch

15:02

or rather, don't

@tchrist exactly. nobody does any real talking outside of a bathroom

also, I'm upset you didn't add 'violin bow' to my list

tchrist

Who is it? Sou eu, soy yo, it’s me, c’est moi.

Mitch

L'etat, chez nous, c'est nous. La oui royale.

tchrist

French suffers from a paucity of morphologic distinction in its inflectional system. :)

Noun nous avons rendu compte de cela.

Mitch

French just suffers

tchrist

Look, Nuno is hiding in France!

Try answering Who is it? with I’m it and see what it gets you.

Mitch

15:07

Ecurie, d'écurie d'Oc. De mousserain, oup!, de cloques

@tchrist When you play tag that works.

tchrist

@Mitch Intonation.

Who IS it? It’s me. Who is IT? Who’s IT? I’m it.

Mitch

"Who IS it?" "It is I, a telemarketer calling from Montana to offer you a once-in-a-lifetime vacation in Orlando!"

I can see that the call doesn't have a name attached but I keep thinking "I should answer because maybe it's a long lost friend or someone calling from a new phone"

And the telemarketer is just doing their job, a little too well I might say.

terdon

@Mitch Heh, nice, but you're cheating on bough.

Mitch

A perfect startup opportunity to make scripted uninterruptable robo-calls made by actual robots, but then, and here's the game-changer, you have robo-answerers

Genius right? The cash should start rolling in in a few moments.

@terdon I could spell it bow

ANeves

Hmm hmm, yes.
Interesting!

terdon

15:16

@Mitch You could spell it grp as well, but it would still be cheating.

Mitch

@terdon there's cheating and then there's 'little white cheating'

Anonymous

@terdon I always felt like ghoti was cheating.

Mitch

which is like white lies but made so that you don't upset your grandmother

@snailplane I had ghoti for dinner last night. It was pretty good until I tried to pronounce it and I almost choked on the bownz

@snailplane I know. Who in their right mind would pronounce that like fish.

Well, the Irish, for one.

But there you go.

terdon

@snailplane Which one? The fish or the completely silent one?

Mitch

?? which completely silent one?

terdon

15:21

It's been knocking around for about 150 years as a a constructed word used to illustrate irregularities in English spelling, so I expect quite a lot of people would now be able to read ghoti as a "variant" spelling of fish. The smartasses might even say it spells a "silent" word - gh as in though (/ðoʊ/); o as in people (/'piːpl/); t as in ballet (/'bæleɪ/); i as in business (/'bɪznəs/). — FumbleFingers Jun 2 '13 at 17:21

tchrist

It’s /bæ'leɪ/ here.

Mitch

What ballet rot!

tchrist

How many phonemic diphthongs does English possess?

Note: This is a trick question. :)

The answer is three: the one in boy, the one in buy, and the one in the bow that rhymes with cow.

The others are not phonemic.

Arrhotics have their own crosses to bear, though. I shan't be going there today.

So in fact, ['bæleɪ] doesn’t really have a phonemic diphthong there at the end because there is no minimal pair for /le/ and /leɪ/. The offglide at the end of [eʲ] is just a phonological effect, an allophone.

It’s a true diphthong, mind you: just not a phonemic one, only a phonetic one.

Mitch

"the Tsar's bazaars' bizarre beaux-arts."

tchrist

But tsars’ bazaars’ bizarre beaux-arts are just nested dolls.

Mitch

15:35

@tchrist wait, there's a difference between /ej/ and /eɪ/?

@tchrist a pile of pale pails pleas, please

tchrist

@Mitch /jej/, /waw/

I’m not sure these are different sounds. But we perceive their instances in rising diphthongs differently than we do in the falling ones. You can tell this because people can change out the first one and still rhyme, but not the second one.

Ween /win/ rhymes with seen /sin/. And yute /jut/ rhymes not just with cute /kyut/* but probably for most speakers also with toot /tut/.

How /haw/ rhymes with now /naw/ not with fa /fa/.

So it may make sense to use the vowel forms in falling diphthongs and the consonant ones in rising diphthongs. In English, at least.

ANeves

@tchrist /fa/? but that doesn't have the same ending as /haw/... does English use the tonic syllables to rhyme, like Portuguese does?

tchrist

So way is /wei/ but yow is /jau/.

@ANeves No, English rhymes differently than Portuguese. English rhymes by matching the tonic syllable’s vowel plus everything that comes after it, including consonants. Portuguese rhymes by matching the tonic’s vowel and not caring about the rest.

Cerberus

@tchrist So you're saying our -s is not Germanic?

tchrist

15:50

@Cerberus I am. It’s from the Normans.

Oct 28 '16 at 21:39, by tchrist

Córdoba. Lejana y sola.         (O a)
Jaca negra, luna grande,        (A e)
y aceitunas en mi alforja.      (O a)
Aunque sepa los caminos,        (A o)
yo nunca llegaré a Córdoba.     (O a a)
Por el llano, por el viento,    (E o)
jaca negra, luna roja.          (O a)
La muerte me está mirando       (A o)
desde las torres de Córdoba.    (O o a)
¡Ay que camino tan largo!       (A o)
¡Ay mi jaca valerosa!           (O a)
¡Ay que la muerte me espera,    (E a)
antes de llegar a Córdoba!      (O o a)

@ANeves I discussed this phenomenon with Robusto earlier, around this message:

Cerberus

And where did the other Germanic languages get their s's from?

tchrist

PIE

terdon

Have the AmE speakers among you seen this?

nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/20/sunday-review/…

tchrist

But English uses only -s.

German uses a bunch of things.

Dutch you'll have to speak to.

Cerberus

So you're saying inherited -s had died out in English by 1000?

But not in Dutch and German?

ANeves

15:53

@tchrist The more you know... :)

tchrist

@Cerberus That depended on the declension.

Cerberus

I mean died out altogether.

tchrist

@ANeves I'm not sure I know of any English poetry with assonant rhyme like Portuguese or Spanish. It probably exists.

@Cerberus No.

Cerberus

That is, if English still had some s's, then those did not come from Romance.

Mitch

16:30

@terdon 1-I remember seeing that a couple years go

Helmar

@tchrist We've got sixteen ways to decline the definite article, of course we use all sorts of plural endings :D

Mitch

2-holy crap was it accurate...as much as it could.

@Helmar madness!

The russians don't bother with articles

they have all those verbs to worry about.

@Cerberus Isn't it possible the -s plural came from Norman French?

Helmar

Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften

Noun: Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften

plural of Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaft

Mitch

(given that before 1066 OE had the usual Germanic multiplicity of plural endings, and ME afterwards had lost most and had most commonly -s?)

Cerberus

@Mitch Well, it depends on whether English still had some -s plurals in 1066. If so, then it would seem odd to say that those came from a foreign language.

Saying that English got more -s endings when the Normans came is another thing than saying that the -s came from Norman without qualification.

Mitch

16:35

@Cerberus hm...I don't think it is unreasonable to have an hypothesis that, even though there were a few -s plurals before, that the preponderance of new -s plurals came from directly or were inspired by the invading language.

Cerberus

I really wouldn't know: I know nothing about the history of English.

Mitch

@Cerberus It's fuzzy, but you could still have more than one influence (the OE substrate and the Norman new stuff)

@Cerberus probably just as much as me.

Cerberus

But your hypothesis is a different one than "English plural -s came from Norman", because the latter implies than there was no -s in English at the time.

@Mitch Absolutely.

Mitch

oh...ok I'm not strictly holding to 'came from = absolutely no other source'

Cerberus

This seems to be very explicit and unqualified even upon further enquiry.

Helmar

16:39

I made that quiz and I think I confused it. The only thing it is sure off, that I have no connection to Texas :D

Mitch

@terdon but there were a few questions where I was waffling/not sure/could easily have gone another direction. like 'rotary'. WTH is that? It sounds like dangerous assembly line machinery for spindling and shredding. What do you call it in the UK? traffic circle? They don't exist at all in the US except in maybe a couple places in New England.

Helmar

I did a similar one for German and I was pretty sure that there were actually very few really deciding questions that do localize one really precisely

Like when one has to say what to call a meatball and they offered 25 options, the same will be true for the firefly questions in this one

Mitch

@Cerberus Oh. OK. But I am not tchrist. I do not subscribe to his Viking absolutism. At least not in this very narrow circumstance. Now if it were whether to say 'sub' or 'hoagie', there I'd have to invade your country and physically force apostates's tongues to pronounce it 'sub' because otherwise it's just plain wrong.

@Helmar depends on the word. Doesn't metzgerei vs fleischerei (or whatever it is) say definitely north vs definitely south?

Helmar

@Mitch Well that's it there are some tendencies in that word, but the tons of ways to describe a meatball or the end of a loaf of bread are way more localized. With the butcher you'll meet strange views at most, but both words are easily understood, but the food variations are way more different and not necessarily understood.

Mitch

oh and I just read a piece recently about viertel sieben = Ossi and ... uh... sechs und dreiv viertel (oder was) = Wessi

@Helmar but the word choice can determine very accurately where you grew up? or are you saying that it's just a mess?

Matt E. Эллен

16:47

@Mitch roundabout

Helmar

Yeah, times are very indicative too

Although it doesn't exactly go Ossi/Wessi but Ossi+Southern Parts vs Wessi

Mitch

@MattE.Эллен Oh. duh. like in the song.

by Yes

Matt E. Эллен

maybe... I don't think I know it

Mitch

@MattE.Эллен you probably do.

Yes - Roundabout

►

Matt E. Эллен

although "roundabout" is also something you get in a kid's park

Mitch

16:52

merry-go-round?

Matt E. Эллен

Andrew Leach

@terdon Interesting results for a BrE speaker. Apparently my English is most like Hawaii.

Mitch

en Americain

Matt E. Эллен

ah!

Mitch

@MattE.Эллен good memories

of childhood injuries

Matt E. Эллен

16:53

our merry-go-rounds tend to be mechanical and have horses, I think

Andrew Leach

Doesn't a merry-go-round have horses?

Ha.

Mitch

@AndrewLeach Americans often refer to Hawaii as the England of the Pacific.

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch how many children did you injure?

Mitch

something that has never even before been said

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch doesn't ring a bell

Mitch

16:55

@MattE.Эллен haha. none. but pretty much every kid who cam to school with a big cast on their arm was some accident on the merry-go-round or monkey bars.

come on, can't you just hold on?

Cerberus

@Mitch Oh, I was merely responding to his statement.

Andrew Leach

Mitch

@MattE.Эллен really? You've never heard that before?

@AndrewLeach I think the model can be swayed by one or two particularly chosen words.

I'm surprised the cot/caught merger is so widespread.

also, I mistrust the map making and data sources. work in general for large areas, but...

wait... a drive through liqur store? that's entirely a state government allowed thing and so can be pinpointed to the state(s) that allow(s) them.

Andrew Leach

I didn't get asked about a drive-through off-licence.

Matt E. Эллен

It marks New York, Yonkers and Montgomery for me

Mitch

17:03

@MattE.Эллен Yonkers...pfft

You know what they're like.

probably say firebug. haha

in the UK what do you say for that bug?

Matt E. Эллен

We don't have them (afaik) so I guess whatever is most commonly used on American TV.

glow worms, maybe

or is that something else?

ah, maybe fireflies

Helmar

Firefly (TV series)

Firefly is an American space western drama television series created by writer and director Joss Whedon, under his Mutant Enemy Productions label. Whedon served as an executive producer, along with Tim Minear. The series is set in the year 2517, after the arrival of humans in a new star system and follows the adventures of the renegade crew of Serenity, a "Firefly-class" spaceship. The ensemble cast portrays the nine characters who live on Serenity. Whedon pitched the show as "nine people looking into the blackness of space and seeing nine different things". The show explores the lives of a group...

:D

Matt E. Эллен

:D

apparently we do have them in the UK, I've just never seen one

> There are day-flying fireflies that don't produce light.

I would argue these are just flies!

Mitch

(They're actually beetles)

Matt E. Эллен

Fireflies are not only in the UK but also Wales

what an odd way to note the distribution

Mitch

17:12

@MattE.Эллен They're supposedly dying off. I remember as a kid in summer evenings a yard could be full of them (well not full)

@MattE.Эллен somebody letting their anglocentrism showing through.

Matt E. Эллен

> North America, South America, United Kingdom, Wales.

Mitch

anyway...we would go outside with a large jar and capture like twenty of the lighting bugs and put the top on and poke holes in the lid so they could breathe.

Matt E. Эллен

two whole continents, a country, and a principality of the previous country.

@Mitch then what did you do?

Mitch

and they wouldn't exactly light up the room that you could read by, but enough to give off a constant glow (even though each one was going off and on)

Cerberus

@MattE.Эллен Perhaps they foresaw a referendum.

Mitch

17:15

@MattE.Эллен Oh my god... it was me. I was the one responsible for the firefly-o-cide.

@MattE.Эллен Wales is special?

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch you're a monster. you should be up in front of the UN council

Mitch

@MattE.Эллен you mean they're going to be executed too?

Matt E. Эллен

@Cerberus possibly so

@Mitch first against the wall

Mitch

So many insects ... dead. the horror.

Matt E. Эллен

@Cerberus I wonder how Wales would work as its own country...

Mitch

17:17

@MattE.Эллен No, no, please, you first, I wouldn't dream of it. Here, let me hold the door for you.

Cerberus

@MattE.Эллен No doubt very well. Just like Luxembourg.

Andrew Leach

Hmm. Luxembourg makes its money from banking, doesn't it?

Matt E. Эллен

@Cerberus maaaaaaaaaaaybe. they'd need a lot of EU money to rejuvenate themselves

@Mitch that's awfully kind of you, but I really must insist.

Mitch

Are they just not that ... um ... whatever it is that makes countrying easy?

@MattE.Эллен Together? Let's!

Cerberus

@MattE.Эллен Or they could just be poor, just like Scotland?

Mitch

17:20

Oh revolving door.

I've heard it's impolite to not go first through a revolving door.

going first is like opening the door (because it is so heavy)

I try not to go through revolving doors. The Godfather and all that.

tchrist

@Cerberus This is fine.

Cerberus

I stick with my earlier statements.

ANeves

18:01

> What do you call the area of grass between the sidewalk and the road?

What is this?!?

It's such a surprising concept for me...

This questionnaire is amazing for me, Each question flips the map from mostly dark orange to mostly dark blue... :)

Helmar

@ANeves I thought the same thing :D

Andrew Leach

@ANeves It's not uncommon. It's dark now, or I'd go and take a picture of such a verge.

Helmar

@NVZ welcome to IoT.SE :)

@AndrewLeach Interestingly I mainly know them between overland roads and the accompanying cycle ways

ANeves

"drive-through liquor store"

Such interesting concepts. Foreign cultures really are marvellous.

NVZ

18:28

@Helmar aha. Don't know how I got there. It's nice, though. :)

Helmar

@NVZ You don't know? That's interesting

MetaEd

@Helmar Say, speaking of that, has anybody proposed a goat husbandry site?

Helmar

@MetaEd Goat Husbandry?

MetaEd

@Helmar Exactly.

terdon

18:58

@AndrewLeach Heh. Mine was east coast, basically. Which makes sense since my Dad's from Philadelphia, but my idiolect is all over the place.

tchrist

21:08

> Dear ELU,

I read this simple paragraph about the amortized costs of vapor-compression cycles in non-evaporative coolers, but I didn't read closely enough to understand what it means. Because the paragraph is written in English instead of in my native Swamp Rat, I want you to do my thinking for me.

Love,
Swicky the Swamprat

Hint: the barrier to understanding is not English. It's a bulb shining dimly.

Almis

22:56

Hello guys/ girls, I trying to find a word in English, there is the word entity which can be whatever that not exists e.g.spirit and the word object which is the opposite (anything that can be touched). So entity and object both are subclass of something which is the word that I searching for.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…