English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Mahnax

05:48

Wow, skiing was amazing.

simchona

08:21

-1

Q: History behind "Diary"?

my mentor discussed the etymology behind "diary"? He told that this is an abbreviation of "Darling I Always Remember you" ? But i wasn't satisfied. I also search it in google but couldn't get back any appropriate result. Is there is an history behind that?

etymology

Ugh. This guy is back. Gen ref.

Vitaly

> please tell me either the abbreviation is correct or not?

Sweet Jesus on a stick …

simchona

08:38

He's annoying. And I don't know why he didn't use an effing dictionary.

David Wallace

09:36

Interesting that the response to my question came from the user "Kris". It doesn't seem possible that these two are the same person, as Kris's posts on a variety of topics seem very coherent.

Cerberus

10:11

Morning!

@DavidWallace No, definitely not the same person.

Unless he created this tacky Indian persona for fun.

David Wallace

Well, that crossed my mind!

RegDwight Ѭſ道

I have no idea who is the same person and who isn't, but I read peculiar comments by one Kris every single day.

Cerberus

Yes, but peculiar in a different way.

David Wallace

But I can't see why Kris answered the question that I directed to Krishna on that "diary" question.

Cerberus

@DavidWallace Hmm yes, I see what you mean.

But he could just be saying, "hey, if I were the OP, this would not answer my question".

Oh, by the way, i have a penchant for being placed in Oracle INC.

David Wallace

10:15

Which would be bizarre, because the answer clearly does answer the question.

Cerberus

That's the Internets for you.

David Wallace

And I suspect he owns a thesaurus.

Cerberus

The OP or the other guy?

David Wallace

The guy with the "penchant for being placed in Oracle INC". WTF dat mean?

And when will he finish "perusing" his degree?

Cerberus

I think he would like to work at Oracle (for some reason).

@DavidWallace Perhaps both sides are marked "PTO"?

Vitaly

10:25

@Reg what are your thoughts wrt the merge? (Chatzy)

David Wallace

Oh so "penchant" here means "desire"! I get it. Maybe he doesn't own a thesaurus after all.

Cerberus

Yeah that was the only thing I could think of.

If you're absolutely clueless, you might find "penchant" in a dictionary for some Indian word.

David Wallace

Maybe he has a very cheap dictionary, that doesn't translate words accurately.

Cerberus

Hehe.

Do those exist?

Copying a list of words from the public domain would seem less work than making up a huge list of weird words.

David Wallace

10:41

Umm, I have a very unreliable one-way dictionary from English to Bosnian.

And don't get me started on English textbooks for Bosnian schoolkids.

Cerberus

Hmm OK, if the language is very obscure...

David Wallace

Or spoken in a country full of people prepared to do things cheaply.

Cerberus

Heh.

David Wallace

The dictionary in my hand has "halloo", but not "hallo" nor "hello".

RegDwight Ѭſ道

11:00

2

Q: Vast amount of vocabulary in English books

English is not my native language, but I use it on a daily basis. I started reading English literature about two years ago. Mostly I read science fiction and fantasy, but also read other books. Once in a while (several times per chapter) I come across words I need to check in a dictionary. That's...

meaning vocabulary dictionaries reading

So why is this still open?

David Wallace

I take it you've voted to close it, then?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

I am looking for that other question.

David Wallace

It seems like an interesting enough question. Is it really true that most native speakers have a vocabulary of 26000 or less? And is that the active vocabulary or the understood vocabulary?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

But look at the answers.

David Wallace

I'm sure that I understand more words than 26000, but I don't know how I'd go about counting them.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

11:04

This is like a forum or a Reddit post.

And most of them just repeat what was in the original question.

Cerberus

@DavidWallace Haha what?

David Wallace

So the answers all seem a bit lame. That doesn't mean that someone like Barrie England isn't going to come along and provide his usual genius insight.

@Cerberus I shit thee not.

Cerberus

Hehehe.

Vitaly

@DavidWallace take a large enougn random sample (say, 500 words) from a large enough list of legit English words (say, American Heritage? Webster's Unabridged? surely not Oxford English Dictionary), find out what percentage of those 500 words you know and you'll get a good enough approximation, I believe

David Wallace

Apparently, it's an interjection, a noun and a verb (both transitive and intransitive). The Bosnian words given for the verb seem (to me) to mean "call out to someone" or "do something (that I don't understand) to dogs".

Vitaly

11:08

in War Metal Tyrant, Aug 17 '11 at 20:24, by Vitaly

@KitΘδς http://testyourvocab.com/

^ That test purports to do just that, but their vocabulary is limited to, what, 40,000 words?

David Wallace

@Vitaly - I could actually do that. I have the full OED (rather an old edition) on a bookshelf at home.

I'd need to find a good way of ensuring randomness of the sample.

Cerberus

@Vitaly Yeah, and their other problem is that they ask only a few words. Even knowing one extra word should net you a thousand vocab words in your results.

Vitaly

Yeah, and that.

Cerberus

@Vitaly The larger your dictionary, the lower your score will be.

So choosing one dictionary over another makes a huge difference.

Vitaly

> surely not Oxford English Dictionary

Cerberus

11:11

Which dictionary represents the "objective" middle ground?

Vitaly

The OED features way too many archaic and dialectal words.

Cerberus

"Too many", so say you.

But then what is the right number of such words?

There is a fundamental problem here.

A tiny dictionary will always give you 100 %.

Gigili

I installed anki the other day, but it was for learning Chinese/Japanese/Korean - not English. (at Vitaly)

'Ello.

Cerberus

You can use @someone to ping him.

Anywhere in your line.

David Wallace

That site that Vitaly gave the link of estimates my vocabulary to be 32900. I feel cheated.

Vitaly

11:14

@Gigili Well, first, there are other Anki sets you can browse and search from within Anki itself. Second, you are supposed to create your own deck of Anki cards with the words you want to learn. (Because that way, spaced repetition is most effective.)

Cerberus

@DavidWallace Aww....

RegDwight Ѭſ道

No wonder I couldn't find the question. It got migrated.

Cerberus

@Vit: Don't you think there is a fundamental problem?

David Wallace

@Cerberus The lower your percentage, but the higher the number that this equates to.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

english.stackexchange.com/questions/36274/…

Cerberus

11:15

@DavidWallace But what is the number? How do you calculate it?

Gigili

@Vitaly Right, didn't know that. I just installed it and it asked to download something. Then it was English to Chinese/Japanese/Korean.

Vitaly

@Cerberus Most dictionaries say how many headwords they've got

Cerberus

Yes, but that's not enough.

Vitaly

Feb 2 '11 at 19:14, by Vitaly

this reminds me, I once tried to combine words from several major dictionaries into a single plain text list

Feb 2 '11 at 19:14, by Vitaly

including the OED. :)

Feb 2 '11 at 19:15, by Vitaly

it has 513899 lines.

Cerberus

Let's take four dictionaries: A. 1,000 words (100 %), B. 20,000 (90 %), C. 50,000 (80 %), D. 100,000 (50 %).

How do you establish my vocabulary based on dictionary B, for example?

You could do "0.9 * 20,000", but that is not right.

Gigili

11:19

100 percent what?

Cerberus

I know 100 % of the words in that dictionary.

David Wallace

@Cerberus I would be very surprised if you really got such results.

Cerberus

@DavidWallace These weren't supposed to be realistic numbers: I just made something up.

David Wallace

If you know 50% of the words in a 100k word dictionary, then you know at least 50k words; so it would be surprising that a 20k word dictionary managed to include 2k that you didn't know.

Cerberus

Then how many would you expect the latter to include?

You would have to know more about respective distributions.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

11:21

Statistician vs. philosopher. Hold on, I need popcorn.

2

David Wallace

You might see a pattern more like B - 98%, C - 70%, D - 37%.

Cerberus

Okay, but don't you agree that you would need to know more about the exact percentages that are typical for a person who knows x words, etc.?

David Wallace

@Vitaly Yes, Oxford English Dictionary.

Cerberus

Because the percentages don't scale up.

David Wallace

They will approximately scale up - and more closely than your first example indicated.

Cerberus

11:24

But your B and C don't scale up at all.

David Wallace

You want the limit as n -> infinity of n x %age known.

@Cerberus WHich is why your dictionary has to be sufficiently large.

A dictionary that you know 98% of the words in is NOT sufficiently large.

Cerberus

Okay, so you're saying the larger, the better?

David Wallace

Yes. In fact, I think you'll find Vitaly said that already.

Cerberus

He seemed to argue against using the OED?

Okay, so let's say the OED would be the best choice. Then how reliable would a dictionary half the size of the OED be?

David Wallace

He did. Because it has archaic and dialectal words. The former is fair enough; I wonder whether, by the latter, he just means non-American.

So testing yourself against OED would be a different test from testing yourself against one of the other major dictionaries.

To be statistically valid, you should probably test yourself against a number of dictionaries of all different sizes, so that you can see ( n x your %age) levelling off.

Cerberus

11:31

Why would that give a better result than just the OED?

David Wallace

But omit dictionaries that include words that you don't consider should be part of your vocabulary. For example, I would not test myself against an American dictionary, because I don't consider American English to be my native language.

Cerberus

We're calculating the size in number or words, not percentage.

@DavidWallace I don't think that should make any difference for your end result?

David Wallace

Yes. But if I know 60% of the words in a 100k word dictionary, that could mean that my vocabulary is 60k, or it could mean that it's (maybe) 70k, and the dictionary isn't large enough to give me an accurate figure.

Cerberus

You could add a million words that nobody knows and still get the same size.

David Wallace

However, if I know 60% of the words in a 100k dictionary and 30% of the words in a 200k dictionary, then I figure that 60k is about the right number.

Cerberus

11:33

@DavidWallace Okay, but don't you consider the OED to be large enough?

Vitaly

@DavidWallace by the latter, I mean words like cise (limited to the DC area) or kecks (parts of Northern England and Wales)

David Wallace

Well, isn't the OED the largest English dictionary in existence?

Cerberus

@DavidWallace Yes, because then the 100k extra words in the larger dictionary are all unknown to you.

@DavidWallace Yes.

David Wallace

So did I answer your question about why testing against different sizes of dictionary would be better than testing against just one dictionary?

Cerberus

Actually, no.

Sorry.

Except when your largest dictionary is still of a limited size: then finding the limit where your % scales exactly with the size of the dictionary used is a good indicator.

David Wallace

11:36

Suppose I know 30% of the words in the OED, and 55% of the words in a dictionary half the size of the OED. That tells me that these dictionaries aren't large enough to test me accurately.

If I know 30% of the words in the OED and 60% of the words in a dictionary half the size of the OED, then I have an accurate count.

Cerberus

@DavidWallace It only tells you that the smaller dictionary is too small: it doesn't say anything about the OED.

@DavidWallace Yes, I got that.

David Wallace

No, in the second case, I know that the OED is big enough. In the first case, I'm not sure.

Like maybe if there was a dictionary twice the size of the OED, I'd know 17% of its words, and hence 34% of the number of words in the OED.

Cerberus

@DavidWallace Agreed. But earlier you said that the OED wasn't large enough either.

David Wallace

Are you sure I said that?

Cerberus

> That tells me that these dictionaries aren't large enough to test me accurately.

David Wallace

11:39

I think I said that using dictionaries of different sizes was better than using one really big dictionary.

Cerberus

You mean, "I can't be sure that they are large enough".

David Wallace

In the hypothetical situation that I test myself against OED and find myself knowing 30% of its words, and 55% of the words in a smaller dictionary.

The reality is, I do NOT know 30% of the words in the OED.

Cerberus

@DavidWallace What I'm saying is that you don't need different dictionaries any more if your dictionary is extremely large.

David Wallace

But once it gets extremely large, you get the opposite problem.

Cerberus

Well, anyway, I understand and agree with your point, it was just a minor thing about the exact wording.

David Wallace

11:42

Suppose I know 1% of the words in a sample taken from a million-word dictionary. Does that really mean I know 10000 words, or did I just pick a bad sample.

Cerberus

Are you assuming the dictionary is based on corpus frequency?

David Wallace

Anyway, my original question - is it really true that most native speakers of English know 26000 words - has been well and truly answered for me.

Cerberus

If yes, then the test would seem large enough to exclude the possibility of a bad sample.

@DavidWallace Oh, has it?

I kind of lost track of that.

David Wallace

By taking that online test that Vitaly linked to, and scoring a meagre 32900, I can now well believe that the average native speaker has 26000 words.

Or fewer, even.

Cerberus

How so?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

11:45

Indescriptive title of the day:

David Wallace

Well, I was incredulous when I saw the number. I thought that the average native speaker of English would have at least 50k words. But I consider myself better educated and more eloquent than most native speakers; so if I only have 32900, then it's highly unlikely that the average native speaker has 50k.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

0

Q: Reported speech question

What would be the indirect speech form of the following sentence? John told Sean, "Let me help you" (It's not a homework question, I'm preparing for my exam tomorrow. I just stumbled upon this question in a book.)

grammar

Seriously, grammar is the new question.

Cerberus

@DavidWallace Oh, OK. I once read something around 20k average, I think, and 40k for the Royal Academy of Sciences, or something.

David Wallace

Damn, so I failed to get into the Academy. Oh well, there's always next lifetime.

Meanwhile, over on Stack Overflow, God himself (aka Jon Skeet) has just admitted to answering a question about a technology he has never used. Isn't there supposed to be a rule against that?

3

Q: any(MyClass.class) that actually matches only classes of the type of the passed class?

I have the following code: verify(javaCompiler, times(1)).writeJavaAndCompile(any(ContractCompilationUnit.class), eq(outputDirectory)); verify(javaCompiler, times(1)).writeJavaAndCompile(any(ParamCompilationUnit.class), eq(outputDirectory)); and my code is the following: javaCompiler.w...

java unit-testing testing mocking mockito

Vitaly

> We even excluded "kitchen" because foreign learners of English often confuse it with "chicken."

Seriously?

I can see why they would say the room where you cook food in Globish.

Cerberus

11:55

@Vitaly What is this about?

Vitaly

@Cerberus testyourvocab.com/details.php

Cerberus

Haha, I see.

ef.nl/epi/ef-epi-ranking

David Wallace

@Vitaly Yes, my sister in law did that once.

Cerberus

Spain and Italy almost as bad as China!?

What's up with that.

And India at the same level as China!?

I can't believe that.

Vitaly

India as bad as Russia?

Jinx.

Cerberus

12:01

At least Russia is European.

David Wallace

What is this map showing? Proficiency in being Scandinavian?

Cerberus

Proficiency in herding sheep.

Vitaly

Hahahaha.

Cerberus

2 mins ago, by Cerberus

http://www.ef.nl/epi/ef-epi-ranking/

But Turkey sounds about right, it's really bad.

I met some opera singers there who literally couldn't speak a word of English.

I mean, how can you sing Dido and Aeneas if you have absolutely no clue?

And that was in Istanbul.

David Wallace

Oh crap, it's 1am already. Good night everyone.

Cerberus

12:04

Night!

Vitaly

Night.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@Cerberus Obviously those people have never been to Germany. And don't get me started on France.

I call bullshit.

Cerberus

Hey, it is comparative.

Many a Dutchman's English sucks too.

Not to mention Americans...

RegDwight Ѭſ道

0

Q: Does "due to" tend to have negative connotation?

Looks like "due to" usually has negative connotation - a plane crashed due to fog, unemployment increases due to automation, etc. Suppose I want to say "Thanks to this very cool technology everyone wins" - can I use "due to" in place of "thanks to" or does "due to" always mean some negative attr...

word-usage

Answered here:

6

Q: Difference between "due to" and "thanks to"

When should "due to" be preferred over "thanks to", and vice versa? When can they be used interchangeably?

idioms differences

Cerberus

Aww you actually asked a question!

RegDwight Ѭſ道

12:19

@Cerberus Well according to the map, the whole of America is about as proficient in English as the whole of Africa.

And Australia is on par with Greenland.

Cerberus

Perhaps grey indicates proficiency in life.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

0

A: If not 'unvalidated', then what alternative

You can use invalid or invalidated. But unvalidated is completely wrong. There doesn't exist a word called "Unvalidate" or "Unvalidated".

I like it when people put every second word in bold.

Reminds me of JB.

Cerberus

JB?

Was that Joe Blow or something?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Joe Blow.

Something would've been ST.

Cerberus

Yeah apparently that name came up, but I don't remember what he was about.

ST?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

12:22

He was about putting stuff in bold.

Cerberus

Abbreviations are like hash values.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@Cerberus Yeah. ST. Which part you no understand, the S or the T?

Cerberus

^

Both parts, and the fact that there are parts.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Well I was answering your question.

Cerberus

It doesn't stand for anything?

That we know?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

12:24

You asked whether JB referred to Joe Blow or to something. I answered that Joe Blow = JB, while something = ST.

Get some coffee dude.

Cerberus

Ahhh...

sipping tea

RegDwight Ѭſ道

You need more coffee in your tea.

Cerberus

An owl's wisdom is like a mad genius.

And, yes, that is hypallage.

Robusto

13:15

@RegDwightѬſ道 I wouldn't have thought JB meant Joe Blow.

@Cerberus No. It is merely a redundancy. All genius is mad.

JSBᾶngs

@Robusto JB is my initials, if you leave out my middle name

Robusto

@JSBᾶngs You should have thought of that when you made your username.

JSBᾶngs

@Robusto you'll have to appeal to my parents, sorry

Robusto

@Reg: I'm on regen for sniping, but JJ are catching up.

Cerberus

13:45

@Robusto That, too.

Robusto

@Cerberus I think it would be more of a hypallage, and more interesting, to say "An owl's genius is mad wisdom."

RegDwight Ѭſ道

0

Q: Its it correct to use the preposition by interchangabley with "near"?

Its it correct to use the preposition by interchangabley with "near"? I went to the store near me. I went to the store nearby me. I went to the store by me. Are the above sentences all correct? Are they all correct in both American English and British English?

prepositions

I think the answer is seven.

Cerberus

@Robusto More interesting, yes; hypallage, how?

Gigili

7.1

Robusto

@Cerberus Well, ascribing genius to an owl, and madness to wisdom.

Cerberus

13:53

I don't see the hypallage.

But NM.

Robusto

@Cerberus Then how do you see the hypallage in your own remark?

user19161

@RegDwightѬſ道 Popcorn makes me puke, it's true. I have an aversion to the smell.

Cerberus

@Robusto I'd rather not analyse my remark since it was stupid and ugly, which I tried to camouflage by slamming a fancy label on the ugliness. But the hypallage was comparing wisdom with a genius where the latter was supposed to be a person. In short, let's forget about it.

user19161

@RegDwightѬſ道 Nope, JB=Justin Bieber, something=sth. Kthxbai.

user19161

Thank you for starring my trigonometric sentence to five, but no need to take pity on me.

user19161

14:15

0

Q: The meaning of the phrase 'anything can happen'

It's not the first time I've heard this phrase. I've used it in some of the statements I've made. But something struck me about the meaning lately. In most cases where the phrase is used, it usually means 'expect the unexpected'. It could also be interpreted in sense to mean a warning to prepare ...

meaning

user19161

General reference.

user19161

-3

Q: I want to know what the phrase 'Anything can happen?' really means

It's not the first time I've heard this phrase. I've used it in some of the statements I've made. But something struck me about the meaning lately. In most cases where the phrase is used, it usually means 'expect the unexpected'. I could also say it means a warning to prepare for the worst. Seein...

meaning

user19161

Wait, why did he post twice?

user19161

Oh both are closed now.

user19161

"Anything can happen" literally means anything can happen, but maybe I'm wrong.

2

simchona

14:28

@reg thanks for super voting to close the diary question

For teh lulz:

-17

Q: It’s time Google blocked StackOverflow from it search Results

I wrote a post about 20 minutes ago, and it was shut down in about 5 minutes for being not constructive, but not before collecting five downvotes. This is one reason why StackOverflow should be removed. Here is my shot down post. Don’t get me wrong, I love StackOverflow but more often than not...

discussion

Anonymous

15:40

hello

Mahnax

16:21

Hello @Jasper.

user19161

@mahnax Boo! How is the skiing?

Mahnax

@JasperLoy Done! I'm home now.

user19161

@Mahnax I am a wuss. Even if I get to a skiing place in future, I will also not try it.

Mahnax

@JasperLoy Aww, come on. There are very easy runs for beginners, where everyone is moving very slowly.

user19161

@Mahnax It's not dangerous?

Mahnax

16:23

@JasperLoy Not those parts of the mountain/hill.

user19161

@Mahnax Are you back in school now?

Mahnax

@JasperLoy No, today is a holiday.

user19161

@Mahnax Your IB is starting later this year right?

Mahnax

@JasperLoy No, some of it has already started.

But the main part will start in grade 11.

user19161

@Mahnax So how is it so far?

Mahnax

16:28

@JasperLoy Difficult, but I like it.

I am sitting at 90% in Bio 20 right now.

user19161

@Mahnax What is difficult?

Mahnax

@JasperLoy There is a lot of content to memorize, and the content is much more complicated.

As well, students are expected to always achieve excellence.

Actually, there is one exception to that.

user19161

@Mahnax Well, how I remember things is rewrite it in a way that is easy to remember. For example, shortening points and then regrouping them.

Mahnax

@JasperLoy I like reading through my notes and organizing, rewriting, and reading them.

My teacher told us that for our first IB lab, we would most likely fail with a 30%.

user19161

@Mahnax Oh, I don't think too much about grades. They don't mean too much, just like SE rep.

user19161

16:33

Nonetheless they are still important when it comes to applying for things.

Mahnax

@JasperLoy She said that it would get better, and your IB mark is calculated using your IB test scores, and your two best labs.

We will end up doing around 80 hours of lab work in Biology alone.

user19161

There is also a reason why smart people would do badly in an elementary class. Sometimes things are oversimplified in these classes to the point where they don't really make sense anymore to these people.

Mahnax

I never really bought that, but okay.

user19161

A good teacher will simplify things without making wrong statements. Sometimes in the process of simplification, statements become wrong.

Mahnax

I suppose.

Actually, that does make sense, in some ways.

user19161

16:47

@Mahnax Anyway don't spend too much time on SE but focus on your schoolwork. Oh I just noticed our blues are the same!

Mahnax

@JasperLoy The blue in our Gravatars?

user19161

@Mahnax Yes!

Mahnax

@JasperLoy It does look similar.

They are different, though.

Cerberus

17:57

Hi.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…