@ktm5124 I vaguely doubt that will happen. People are reluctant to cast votes down because nays come with a cost. Even if it does, nays are ridiculously undervalued. One yea represents a gain sufficient to to counteract the loss of five nays.

@Tonepoet True. Fortunately, I have accumulated enough up votes in the past few hours that the chances of me falling beneath 1k are slim.

@ktm5124 Excellent!

@Tonepoet Now, when a question gets put on hold, and my answer to that question gets accepted, what happens to my gain of reputation if the question gets closed? Would I lose all the points I gained?

@ktm5124 The only thing that can happen to a question that would affect your points on an answer is deletion.

@Tonepoet Oh, that's good to know. Thanks.

I must sound a little vain, I admit. But getting 1k on this site was hard! It's kind of like getting soup from the soup nazi.

Hmm, well most of the questions are kinda hard. I'm a little more intimidated by E.L.L. though, mostly because the questions use more technical language than many of the ones posed here and I'm pretty sure the E.S.L. students have more explicit knowledge on the subject of English than the common native speakers who visit here.

Worst of all, I'm not the very scholarly sort, so it would be easy for me to slip in a piece of misinformation that would wreak havoc on an E.S.L. beginner's perception of the language...

It is interesting how English language learners often know more about English (especially its technical details) than native speakers. I suppose that everyone is a little spoiled by their native language.

Hmm, I was just about to ask if it wasn't the same way for most languages before your edit. I think the issue at hand is that most of us learn to subconsciously mimic others through exposure and practice.

We learn the gestures but not the reasons.

But those who learn a foreign language must learn the reasons as well.

It's especially fun when those "reasons" reflect back on your native language. Like how learning purpose clauses in Latin can help you recognize one in English.

Hmm. I feel as if I am in the minority in this room when I say I only know English as of yet, so I can't really say I know how that feels unfortunately.

I suppose reading some of the rules in these antiquated grammar textbooks may be similar though.

I wish I had read textbooks on the English language. I think that's a great way to know your native language better.

I wonder if there are any good free e-books on the English language, for native speakers who want to become learners.

(Or maybe just for anyone interested in learning English.)

Alas, I know not my own language.

Perhaps the paradox of not knowing our own language is a metaphor for not knowing ourselves?

Hmm, I'm not sure. I mean like reading the public domain textbooks, but I am not sure if they would enlighten you further than you already are now.

I remember glancing at ELL and finding a lot of questions that I had to research before I knew the answer to them. I learned all kinds of new things during that research.

I really do think the trickiest thing may just be learning the difference between shall and will these days. I usually just try to cheat my way past it with contractions, if able. The Kings English by The Fowler Brothers gives much information about it, but I fear their allegation that it may be futile for anybody who hadn't learned it natively to even try is possibly correct.

Thankfully, I suppose, the two words are contracted in the same way, so it is often possible to cheat your way past it. =P

@Tonepoet I need to learn that difference myself.

I know that "shall" can be a standalone verb, as in, "I shall" or "we shall". In this case it can only be used in the first person, correct?

But also, I think that it can be a helper verb, as in, "He shall go". In which case, it can be used in any person, I believe.

But I am not sure about this! I expect myself to be wrong somewhere.

@ktm5124 I'm not sure. The extent of my understanding so far relates to some aspects regarding how the meaning of the two words change based upon which person they are used in.

@Tonepoet Ah, I see.

(I'm from the Midwest.)

@ktm5124 I won't say. Jasper's actually somewhat annoyed by that. =P

Haha, sure.

It does not annoy me.

Do you play/listen to music often? The "tone" in your handle makes me think of music.

I am not especially inclined to music, or poetry for that matter.

Hm! You prefer to keep an air of mystery.

I am hand-washing dishes while listening to the Game of Thrones soundtrack on my iPhone. Odd mix of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Does this mean that Michael had to leave the field? : "Michael Owen had to be substituted after 20 minutes on the field."

Ah, I solved my question myself. Never mind.

@Tonepoet Huh? Why does it annoy him?

@englishstudent Some people think it's unfriendly to be so secretive, I think. He's far from the only one.

@Tonepoet That's understandable. Maybe you are a celebrity in real life that's why you are so secretive. Who knows.

Or maybe you are afraid of stalkers. ;-)

Or maybe you are the religious type. :)

@englishstudent In general, for myself, if I hear 'sir' or 'ma'am', it sticks out like a sore thumb, and I figure the speaker must be southern, or just out of the military, or if Indian, not long speaking in the US. The first usage sounds overly deferential (sycophantic), but the second sounds like they're just from somewhere else. That is, I don't think it is special to Indians that they sound too deferential if they use it, non-Indians also sound different when they use it.

@englishstudent have you heard people complain about it? It is polite and does show respect, but in the US it is not that common any more so it is perceived as too polite.

People are internally polite/mean/curious/sex-crazed/gossipy/money-hungry/ashamed everywhere. It's just that the language habits may have them explicitly or not.

@Mitch Yes I have‌​.

Maybe it has something to do with North/South. I don't know.

@englishstudent Thanks. I remember back when I first found out that ELU existed. I immediately had like 5 questions about English that I wanted answered. And then a couple new things just popped in my head (the '[sic]' question) fortuitously. I think they tended to be open-ended, speculative questions about English in general, rather than about one given sentence.

@englishstudent North and south India or US?

@Mitch US of course. :)

I mean people say it is common is the south of (US).

@englishstudent oh. yes, I suppose. Just using it once is surprising to me, and even in the US South, you don't really use it so easily in a request. In the South in the US, if some one older requests something of you, you might respond 'Yes, sir' or 'Yes, ma'am'. Or to get their attention you'd say 'Excuse me sir/maam'.

But you just wouldn't drop a 'sir' in the middle of a request like that.

To @tchrist's point (which I was trying to address in my third comment above) is that language is not inherently good/bad/polite/shameful/etc/etc, but different communities may have different language habits that sound extreme to the other communities.

to people who use sir a lot, it may sound like Americans are a bunch of disrespectful jerks. They may very well be so, but the language habit is not the thing that is showing it.

@Mitch I see your point but deferential and sycophantic are different things, just by the meaning of the words at least.

In the South, from a young age, you are always reminded to use 'sir' or 'ma'am'. If you live in the South and everybody around you is using sir or ma'am, and you have decided not to do so, yes, at that point you are a total disrespectful jerk.

Websters say "deferential" means:

> showing or expressing respect and high regard due a superior or an elder

@englishstudent sycophantic is extreme deference

so they're mostly the same thing

just a difference of degree

oh, okay.

Thanks for explaining.

@englishstudent of course there very well may be sociological things that encourage particular language habits (general social conservatism in the South compared to the rest of the country).

Hello, hello.

For example in Persian, there are a number of French loan words that are very basic: merci for thank you, maman for mom. But French was never a colonial power in Iran or a strong political influence (like say between Russia and France). But those words filtered in simply because of the general social prestige of French things.

Hello.

Turkish has courant d'air.

So my friend from Istanbul told me.

@Cerberus That sounds like a fancy euphemism for farting

A draft.

which I will now use

and blame on the Turks

The Turks have been misbehaving of late.

A great courant d'air is blowing from the east...

Last night's diplomatic incident was significant.

They secretly sent one of their ministers to Rotterdam to campaign in favour of dictatorial powers for Erdogan.

@Cerberus ugh. news. the phrase they're using in English is 'will pay the price'

@englishstudent Yes and no... It's really just the adjectival form of deference and deference is somewhat submissive in nature.

Who was forced to return home by the Dutch police, inciting riots in Rotterdam and threats of economic sanctions from Erdogan.

which is not a thinly veiled threat.

@Cerberus He seemed OK when he started off, but for the past few years, gah what a dick.

@Mitch Well, I don't think they will be paying anything.

@Mitch Yes, although my secular Turkish friends warned me against him from the beginning: he is a wolf in sheep's clothes, don't trust him, he will grab power as soon as he can, he is a still a religious fundamentalist.

I tended not to believe them.

@Cerberus It's not literal. The inference is more like "We're going to make you feel bad for your actions'. What kids say to each other on the playground before a fight.

I know.

@Cerberus right

But he will not experience any negative consequences from our side.

@Tonepoet Ah okay. Thanks.

I wonder what the incident and the riots will do for next week's elections.

I haven't been following news lately. Anything interesting in the world as of late?

We have a new mostly-Turkish party that is projected to win 1 seat.

@Mitch I know that...

and then the riposte is, you're can't sue me you're just a kid, and they reply I'm gonna get my dad to sue you and your dad.

@Cerberus Ah that. Yeah.

@englishstudent haha. we're soon to be living in interesting times

:)

The mostly Turkish party is Denk.

Will this make them go up or down?

@Cerberus except adults are using this childish language, and they have actual power to do things.

Meanwhile, it's funny how the largest party will have only 16% of the votes.

@Mitch Yes. But the Dutch government didn't use those words, nor would they have any measures available to follow up on them.

@Cerberus in general, without understanding the meaning, having a good broad representation of minorities is a good thing.

I wonder how many countries there are where the largest party only has 16% of the seats in parliament.

@Mitch Absoutely. But the president of parliament is already a Turkish woman.

And the mayor of Rotterdam, who repelled the Turkish minister, is Moroccan.

@Cerberus right. it makes the other government look childish (to me). but I've had a hard time following who did what when and what the implications are of each move in the context of the previous one.

So thank goodness we had the right people in the right places to avoid even the slightest appearance of ethnic discrimination in this matter.

@Mitch Right, it's complicated.

@Cerberus right. headlines are at best misleading

The Turkish government automatically bestows Turkish nationality (and voting rights) on everyone of Turkish descent, which is why we have lots of Turkish voters in Holland, of whom 65% favour Erdogan, sadly. Erdogan wants those people to go out and vote in the Turkish referendum granting him huge powers.

But the Dutch government and the EU are of the opinion that it will put all powers in the hands of the president and turn Turkey in a de facto dictatorship, which it already is to some degree.

So we didn't want their ministers campaigning in Holland, also because it would result in unrest here.

Perhaps we should have let them campaign and ignore them, I don't know.

So the government forbade Turkish ministers from flying here.

The minister of "family affairs" secretly came by land last night.

Speaking of deference, I could defer to the opinion of @Cerberus regarding whether or not I should post this answer to this question on the basis that a websearch for "besides the point" doesn't directly return a meaningful result, which seems against the point of the research required policy.

@Tonepoet You can be sure that people will close the question soon.

It's up to you whether you want to post an answer.

I suppose I can, but a second opinion never hurts.

@Tonepoet You give many links in your answers which is cool and all but isn't that too much work?

A literal answer to the question would be a simple dictionary definition.

Oh, on the main site it is easy I guess. Here we have to use square brackets then round ones to post a link with wordings.

An explanation of how the expression came to be would be interesting and useful; although it isn't strictly necessary to answer the question, that's often how we used to deal with simple questions on ELU. But you know what people are like these days, only 5 out of 10,000 are needed to close a question...

@englishstudent Yes, it is, but it's also necessary for us to corroborate our answers.

@Tonepoet Heh. True. It is funny you answered me with a link. :)

I would also like to note that corraboration doesn't have to come in the form of the link. It's just one of the better ways of doing it...

@Cerberus What is the graph saying? I'm bad with the short forms, sorry.

@englishstudent Those are all political parties.

The percentages are projected seats in parliament after next week's elections.

@Cerberus You know, I'd actually bring the voting down to three, just so long as it's mutually shared on the reopen vote side.

I don't understand.

Questions would get closed before the answers closure seeks to prevent can be made, and then once fixed they can be reopened faster for the wanted answers to come in.

@Cerberus that seemed like a weird response. because the Dutch government doesn't like it, they would suppress democratic participation to get what they'd prefer.

> before the answers closure seeks to prevent can be made

I'm afraid I can't parse that.

@Mitch Well, the government is legally allowed to declare any foreign person a persona non grata if he or she is expected to disrupt "public order", i.e. cause unrest.

@englishstudent I prefer the in line square bracket markdown thing better than clicking on icons

@Cerberus My opinion on the matter is that closure prevents premature answers to poorly posed questions that might not be so helpful, so that the question can be posed in a manner that elicits a useful answer instead.

Someone's freedom can be restricted if he is about to use that freedom to unjustly restrict the freedom of others.

@Tonepoet OK.

@Cerberus proportional representation has its benefits, but then there's that 1 nazi who gets in.

Several people were wounded in last night's riots.

@Mitch Right, but, as long as the law says the Nazi can do what he does, then the government must let him do so.

@Cerberus OK. that makes sense.

However, if the government has a legal means to stop the Nazi, it's often a good idea to use that means, if the law regarding that matter is sound.

but still maybe subtlety lost on the injured parties (the Turkish ministers who were kicked out)

No doubt.

But even within the EU, foreign politicians have on occasion been barred access to other EU countries where they were trying to campaign.

@Cerberus I kinda feel like that for the expat Turks who should be let to vote (even though we disagree with their expected vote)

Such as our own Wilders, who was barred from entering England.

@Mitch We can't stop them from voting at the moment, and we won't.

and hopefully DT from visiting EU places. but that's me being childish

DT?

the one who must not be named

Oh, the child-man.

the cheeto encrusted shit-gibbon

Haha.

@Mitch Yes, but with icons we can easily put a link afterwards. We just have to hover the mouse over the wordings and copy paste the link. Making brackets like we do in chats just seems like a hassle.

which I'm sure the NSA is not using as a search synonym

Or perhaps they are...

@englishstudent I'm intimating at the GUI/CLI (graphical user interface vs command line interface) controversy.

@Mitch Oh. I see.

At least Trump can be bereft of the privilege of official receptions in European and Asian countries.

I'm also intimating that intimating is a legitimate word for use in informal contexts.

Which I think is happening now?

@Cerberus he's bereft of a lot of things.

like a conscience

Although not in England, which now stands too weak to oppose him.

@Mitch Hah!

I meant consciousness. so easy to misspell

hello @sumelic you changed your picture I see.

like misspell

or pastime

Indeed.

Silly language.

wow, you guys type fast.

Do you use voice recognition by any chance? Although I know you are typing now.

@Cerberus so many childish things to say emotionally about all this. the adult rational things are just not even discussed.

@englishstudent using speech typing on my phone.

Hmm such as?

haha no. I'm not doing that

but maybe I should

fewer typos?

It's probably not very accurate...

i agree.

Unless your conversation is simple.

@Mitch So you are typing all this on your phone? I thought you were on a mechanical keyboard.

too many mistaken words spelled correctly. but mistaken.

Well I am.

did I mention they are often mistaken

and miss question marks?

@englishstudent at the moment I'm on a keyboard. I sometimes use my phone when I am on a bus or being driven, or I am in the grocery store line.

That makes sense. Yeah.

the one i go to is huge and has a huge number of cashiers but is very crowded so lines are long

yay america

Hmm.

with the three aisles of snack foods

one for sugar dricks

Don't you have those self-scanning cash registers?

one for unsugared but flavored waters

Flavoured without sugar? How is that possible?

wait, there are different isles for sugared drinks but in different parts of the store.

so confusing

@Mitch Can you text while driving there? I know it is usually not allowed but some people still manage it somehow lel.

Well some are quite expert in multitasking.

We have these.

and salsa and tomato sauce with slightly different brands are in three separate sections (different aisles)

People can scan and pay for their own groceries without assistance.

@Cerberus Nice. I'm moving there in the future.

@englishstudent Yay!

@englishstudent I think it is impossible. I can't imagine typing on a phone and watching the road. just no way.

however.

:)

it is possible to do using siri as long as you don't expect to be able to correct it.

We commonly text and cycle.

But only on straight cycle lanes with no crossings.

And even then you have to look up every two seconds just to be sure.

@Cerberus oh. self checkout. yes, some places have those. hm

Extremely convenient.

not grocery store here yet.

Hmm they will come.

but yes at hardware stores or walmart/Target