@Lawrence here you go:

@terdon Thanks.

that seems a good reference

(not the huge one which is crazy... the short one)

thx

I'll read through it

@user8469759 the main book is Highly Unorthodoxly Great El libro but it has a nice second chapter which can be a book in itself and I've never checked the lighter one

But yeah I was thinking you should.

@tchrist @terdon Ah, found the one I was looking for. It was in the help pages, after all - down at the bottom of ["What topics can I ask about here?"] Thanks again @terdon for the other page you found.

@terdon Anyone in Europe who goes through a doctoral program has to have fluency in at least two foreign languages (English almost one of the required ones).

@Lawrence Yes I was looking at that this morning. That's not the most intuitive place for it, but it is a page which moderators can edit.

@Mitch Whatever gave you that idea?

That's absolutely not true. I had many classmates when doing my PhD in Spain who could read and understand English but no other foreign language, and those who weren't doing a PhD in the physical sciences wouldn't even need English.

Well, at some phase of getting a doctorate here, it's required that you get a TOEFL certificate.

Saying that's equal to being able to communicate in English is a stretch

@M.A.R. Really? No matter what subject you're studying, you also need to learn English?

Sounds like a good idea, really.

@terdon I don't know the specifics, but it's probably not every field

@terdon ah... overgeneralizing... all of those that I've met were like that (maybe not necessarily with the 2nd language, but that was usualy the case)

I do know quite a few French people with PhD degrees who can't speak English. They understand it and can read it but they sure as hell can't speak it.

But such a thing does exist

@terdon OK. so not fluent or comfortable. But they have to give theire (prepared and practiced) talks in English.

A second language is required for a math PhD in the US

@Mitch Well yes. OK, most highly educated Europeans speak at least some English. But it isn't a requirement in ay PhD course I know of. But my point wasn't about the top percentile, your average person on the street in most European countries can communicate in basic English.

@AndrewLeach Haha. Perhaps they should give the page a different title (perhaps EL&U FAQ). The first two Help Center links (what can I ask; what should I avoid asking) don't really contain opposite material in any case.

Not so in Spain, France or Italy.

@Justwinbaby the second one being numbers?

@Justwinbaby for some programs. in many university programs in the US that used to have language requirements, they are slowly being removed.

Parse this: 63728846 681a 64738f573

@Mitch Only if they go to conferences. Not during their studies, not necessarily. Certainly not in France. I had to fight to convince them it was essential to their students' careers to give talks in English and most of them ignored me.

They are accepting some programming languages now too.

In Engineering, there is ample (but questionable) justification because, the students say, they 1) already are native speakers of a 2nd language because they come from outside the US, or 2) they will never need anything else because everything is written in English.

Until China takes over.

China would totally take over if they only converted to pinyin.

@Justwinbaby evil and wrong

I know, I agree.

@M.A.R. haha. math is a common language that is universally not understood

@terdon hm... they are dumb. Literally! In English!

They can't read that, so you're safe

Exactly!

Genau!

Exactamundo!

That reminds me of Poirot

That was unexpected

Which apparently no one except me has watched on this planet

And that's another reason to destroy Earth

@Mitch the Poirot thing?

@M.A.R. Yes. How could any of this possibly remind you of Poirot? Are you talking about the David Sachet TV show or about the books?

The TV show

And the fact that you were saying "exactly" in languages I can't name

@M.A.R. 1 - all foreign languages are forbidden here, so de facto those are all English.

I've actually watched most of it after it was dubbed by Iranian voices

But they did a great job, and I enjoyed it

2 - I think it's pretty obvious we can all be misunderstood just as badly in English as in any other non-English language (I don't know what those could possibly be since language is English, I'm just saying that academically speaking 'if' there were these foreign thingies)

3 - I'm pretty sure Google translate will translate gibberish in another of these no-languages equally to gibberish in English, the one true language, which needs no justification as being one or true since there are no others to compare to. Like comparing apples to ... things that are not apples.

The guy that said Suchet said what I assume was the French equivalent of "exactly", instead of the Persian version, to maintain the western Gentlemanliness feeling

@M.A.R. I want to hire some thugs to hold down Poirot and shave off his mustache.

There. I said it.

@Mitch Those are called grapefruits.

Stereotypes. Hurtful.

@M.A.R. He also says Precisely or quasi frenchily Précisement.

@Mitch :O

because it is funny for British people to have a French person among them

Because they're French.

OMG Captain Hastings is an idiot.

What was he captain of? A bathtub?

Haha I can agree with that

And Jap always catches the wrong guy

He's also an idiot.

But a self-confident idiot

Just like Lestrade in all the Sherlock Holmes movies

he's not a total idiot

Poirot is Belgian, not French!

Hastings... gah! why does he even open his mouth!

:38754585

@Mitch to ask a question everybody watching the show already answered

Also did you just happen to finish watching an episode right now?

@M.A.R. "Look at this red substance oozing from the back of this dead persons head? I wonder if that could be melted cherry sorbet."

But I guess they don't speak Belgian in Belgium?

Europe is weird.

No, they speak French and Flemish (Dutch).

@M.A.R. no. not too terribly long ago. last year?

@M.A.R. +1

@Mitch there was also that episode where that Jap-looking guy tried to prove he's a better detective than Poirot, and if he succeeded, Poirot had to shave his moustache

@M.A.R. Oh right! and Poirot lost and ... but somehow he got out of it, and the other guy gave Poirot his pistol or something?

I think it was the closest a pair of scissors could get to DA mustache or moustache

@M.A.R. You might want to avoid using Jap. It can be taken as a racial slur.

Well, OK, it is a racial slur, but I know you didn't intent it to be.

@terdon What if it is a name of a character?

In a TV show?

Oh, sorry, it's apparently "Japp"

@Mitch "Jap-looking guy" is a name?

@ter inspector Japp is one of the characters

@terdon No it is a way to refer to a guy who looks like a guy named 'Jap'

And he was absent in that episode, kinda replaced by another Japp

@Mitch ooooh

Japp works in London, Japp-looking is some local inspector

Gotcha.

I thought you meant he looked Japanese.

Well, it's Japp, not Jap, so my fault

@terdon context. see where he introduced 'Jap' as the name of a character in Poirot above

Stupid English spelling. Someone flip a table

tries to flip table

table way to heavy

flips pad of paper

ahhh.... satisfaction

@Mitch Lestrade is both annoying and an idiot

@M.A.R. An ignoranus, perhaps?

I mean, people at least respect each other in Poirot

@M.A.R. But they're British. They're thinking terrible terrible things about each other while tea is being poured.

But in Sherlock, you just expect some form of authority, some nobody working for GSOWJD, coming and ruining the investigation with some bureaucratic blockage

It's weird that all those letters I typed appear in the middle of a keyboard

@Mitch Fair point

How dare you. GSOWJD you. And your whole family.

Just a followup...what does GSOWJD mean?

something something Would Jesus Do?

You read too much into random key presses

Is it another episode of Lord of the Star Wars Transformers?

God Save Our Would-be Jesus Drier

@M.A.R. Are you implying that Jesus is not already dry?

@Mitch oh, that reminds me. I was expecting TF5 to be well-made, which means getting at least some critical acclaim, so I'd watch it

The director, Bay, just directed a movie that people say was finally good

I mean, after so many lame action flicks, this one was genuinely good

Ouija 2 or however it's spelled/t

I found all those movies hard to watch because they hurt my eyes. I'm talking about all the movement on the screen all the millions of metal parts scrambling all over the place. Just fatiguing my eyes.

@Mitch how would I know? Do I look like the guy that made the acronym? Oh wait

@Mitch yeah. "Watching transformers 3, hey, sounds like a good movie" but after 30 minutes in, you can't take it anymore

@tchrist @Lawrence The only editable page in the help center is the on-topic page, and yes, the recommendation is there for some reason. I remember reading that recommendation with some amount of disdain in the past because as far as I am concerned, placing an asterisk next to a word should be reserved for indicating a single footnote. It also doesn't make much sense here on Stack Exchange because of markdown's method of italicization.

@Tonepoet But the asterisk here goes before the term in question. It may also be possible to use something like ∗ if user agents support it.

Not sure if it works in chat though. Let's see: ∗

Nope.

Nah, hypertext markup language does not work in chat, sadly enough.

@AndrewLeach Also, that convention might make enough sense in print, but online it is likely to be mistaken for a typographical error.

@Tonepoet ...which is why it's listed on the help page. But ∗ and ☆ or the filled star ★ are definitely symbols which aren't an ordinary asterisk.

Hmm, the stars seem more likely to be used as flourish though, and I think the low asterisk also has a purpose that might actually be involved with placing it in front of something. I vaguely remember seeing that typographical symbol before, perhaps in a legal text? Regardless, I do suppose either of those would probably be better since they're assuredly less common in any case.

The hollow star in particular seems like it'd indicate the opposite, you know like awarding a gold star to a kindergartner for doing an especially good job. =P

What's the question about the asterisk?

@MetaEd Two legs both the same.

Is that what you're looking for?

I have one for you. Why a duck?

@Mitch A: Radio radio radio.

The answer is: The question about the asterisk is where on ELU does it say that an asterisk marks a 'wrong' grammatical construction.

Little Riley wearing skates / upon the ice did frisk. / Wasn't that a silly child / its little *.

@Mitch ISTR it's in the common abbreviations page.

@MetaEd probably there too.

It's on the on-topic page, and that in turn links to the abbreviations page where it's given again.