English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

00:02

@AlanMunn Oh, absolutely.

Tonepoet

03:26

@Ghalib It has nothing to do with that. I was trying to think of usage examples which might justify your initial confusion. I really just aim to converse, rather than debate. And no, you hadn't bothered me.

Tonepoet

04:10

@tchrist I am sorry for the late reply. I was looking at my inbox and I just noticed this response. However, that does not really work so well:

tchrist

Fake underlining is a joke. Stars are not.

*Like

Tonepoet

@tchrist Oh, so it wasn't a serious recommendation. I failed to understand that.

Or rather, I assumed the wrong context actually.

tchrist

It was a serious recommendation, but about starring stuff for hypotheticals.

Tonepoet

04:26

I'm sorry. I was just so utterly confused because you had included instructions to make so many unicode symbols, that I thought you were making a recommendation regarding how to underline things if I really wanted to do it because we were discussing that subject earlier. However, it seems to me that what you were really recommending in the commend I responded to just now is that I could use unicode symbols in chat instead of hypertext markup language's escape characters.

I suppose that does work, but I can never really memorize how to do that. I know a small number of escape characters though, such as § for the subsection symbol, — for em dashes, © for the copyright symbol

I suppose that does work, but I can never really memorize how to do that. I know a small number of escape characters though, such as § for the subsection symbol, — for em dashes and © for the copyright symbol

Færd

10:29

@Mitch Not COCA: corpus.byu.edu/coca/help/texts.asp.

And you can exclusively research in the spoken category.

> See notes on the naturalness and authenticity of the language from these transcripts.

tchrist

14:20

@Cerberus The stress (well, "stress"; length) doesn't change between the Ancient Greek singular and plural in the nominative for αἴνιγμᾰ, αἰνίγμᾰτᾰ, right? I presume that was "stressed" like Latin aenigma which should have been aeˈnigma because of the "double" consonant right before the end. But what about the genitive pattern for αἰνίγμᾰτος, αἰνιγμᾰ́των? Is the acute marking stress/length there?

(And people still are surprised that the Silmarillion should have been "about the Silmarilli". :)

Cerberus

16:06

@tchrist It is said that the Greek accent is tonal, not based on stress. And length is not directly related to accent.

The accent is indicated by the three marks of accentuation: acutus, gravis, or circumflexus.

If a word begins with a vowel, the latter is always marked by a a spiritus. The spiritus is written on the second letter if it is a diphthong.

A spiritus lenis, like a comma, indicates a glottal stop at the beginning; its vertical mirror image, like a tiny c, indicates /h/ and is called asper.

I see the words in your example are also sometimes marked by vowel length, which is not normally done.

Note also that iota has no dot: any diacritic on it must be something other than a dot.

So you should only be looking at the three kinds of accent marks.

The basic accent is on the first syllable in this word, αἴνιγμᾰ (an acutus). (The spiritus lenis, on the same iota, makes it look messy.) However, Greek has restrictions: the accent must always fall on the ultima, paenultima, or antepaenultima.

So the accent is moved to the right when you add syllables at the end, as in declined forms αἰνίγμᾰτᾰ, αἰνίγμᾰτος.

Another rule is that the accent can only fall on the antepaenultima if the ultima is short, for which reason the accent is moved even farther to the right in αἰνιγμᾰ́των.

domisum

16:34

Hello chat, wanting to ask a simple question: what is the adverb for the word "civilized"?

Cerberus

Hello!

I would probably say, in a civil or civilised manner.

Depending on context.

Civilly is also possible, in the sense of "polite".

Civilisedly is probably uncommon.

domisum

This is the context: I was talking to cleverbot and wrote this: "I was close to writing 'fuck you', but instead I want to carry on this conversation more <insert adverb>"

Cerberus

Haha.

Then I think any of my suggestions will work.

domisum

Ok, thank you :)

Cerberus

Good luck with the robot.

tchrist

16:48

@Cerberus Ahah! Thanks!

Cerberus

What led you to this topic?

tchrist

17:10

Looking at stress patterns.

The reason I scare-quoted stress is that it's pretty accepted that Ancient Greek was tonal, and perhaps also Ancient Latin for sufficiently ancient values of Ancient.

And you're right that I was being squishy with swapping around stress and length and tone as though they could be considered one thing.

It's far from clear whether any stress patterns from Latin persist into English. One would think not. But there are patterns in Latin imports that suggest it somewhat may have.

The colocation spume of lies is an odd one in English. I get the idea that folks are conflating spume with spew and so thinking it a fount of lies rather than a foam of them.

Right, fountain of lies isn't unheard of. The rest basically are.

> No matter what additional spume of lies the Trump team pours into the news cycle...

> All their accusations — spume of lies — he hears [1900]

> Doubt, hate, rage, shame, set with a spume of lies. [1883]

> Keep thy spirit calm and pure, How fierce soe'er the storm may rise ; Stand thou in the truth secure 'Mid surge of hate and spume of lies. The darker night, the brighter day ! [1861]

Yes, they're using it like surge. That isn't right. :/

No froth was found from this geyser.

> A great white spume of water, much heavier than he had seen before, was pouring over the dam, creating its dancing mist of spray.

There, that one's right.

> The body of the aircraft hit the water with an enormous splash and at once a white spume of spray rose out of it, hung for a second and cascaded back on to it, settling itself into a white circle about the remains of the Junkers 88, which still ...

Hm, I would have said spray of spume not spume of spray, but maybe.

> Rivers of warm currents move in channels beneath the surface of the sea, and soft winds gather up the spume of the sea.

Sure.

Oh my, they called salt the "spume of Typhon"!

> Lying beside the road with outstretched neck and a spume of white froth on nose and muzzle are the horses of the 2nd Mounted Brigade; with bodies swollen by the decomposition that sets in so rapidly in this sun, and smelling to high heaven, ...

Well, at least all uses aren't catachrestic.

> For the purity of his blood was turned into another mode, so that, instead of purity, he now ejects the spume of semen.

Probably not.

Stress in chrysalides?

Antepenult or penult?

Or other?

Category:English irregular plurals ending in "-des"

This category contains English irregular plurals formed by changing a final “-s” into “-des”. This category does not contain English plurals ending in an "-des" that are formed by merely placing a final "-s" at the end of a word ending in "-de", or by merely placing a final "-es" at the end of a word ending in a "-d". For example, trades is formed by adding an "-s" to trade, while leudes is formed by adding an "-es" to leud, so neither is included in this category....

Cerberus

17:51

@tchrist It is what made me.

@tchrist I don't know, but I would believe it!

Spew/spit is spuug in Dutch.

And spout is spuit.

So perhaps people misconstrued the u in spume to be related.

Spoom

Spoom is a type of frothy sorbet made with a lighter sugar syrup than that required for a true sorbet. As it begins to set, it is mixed with half its volume of Italian meringue. Like sorbet, it is made from fruit juice, wine, sherry or port and served in a tall glass (with a few tablespoons of champagne spooned over it). The name comes from the Italian spuma (foam). In Italy, spumone is a light frothy ice cream made with egg whites, a flavouring and whipped cream. == References == == Further reading == Jourdan, Andrea (November 2011). Spoom! Desserts envoûtants (in French). ISBN 978-2-89472-589...

Is this some sort of phonetic borrowing from Italian?

tchrist

Eh?

No.

I hope not.

Cerberus

Oh.

tchrist

Maybe. I dunno.

Queer spelling.

Cerberus

Oh, I hadn't even read the article.

But it does suggest what I said.

> The name comes from the Italian spuma (foam). In Italy, spumone is a light frothy ice cream made with egg whites, a flavouring and whipped cream.[2]

tchrist

Spume and brume are words known only to the educated in English.

Cerberus

17:59

I wouldn't know.

That is, I wouldn't know those words as English: I would just assume they were borrowings and understand them in context.

tchrist

Ask them about simiae in the brume sometime.

They're just spuma and bruma.

Via French I would imagine, not directly nor via Italian or Spanish.

In which languages they are perfectly common words.

Cerberus

> for brevima, breuma = brevissima: "dicta bruma quod brevissimus tunc dies est", Varr. L. L. 6, 8 Müll.

I never knew this!

tchrist

Me neither.

Cerberus

So it is primarily the shortest day of the year.

Then winter, and then wintry weather.

tchrist

I don't think of mists as yuletime phenomena.

Cerberus

18:05

I have to say I associate it mostly with bad weather, I think.

tchrist

> bruma
Del lat. bruma 'solsticio de invierno'.
1. f. Niebla, y especialmente la que se forma sobre el mar.
2. f. desus. invierno (‖ estación del año).

Niebla is fog.

Cerberus

That part was clear enough.

But desus.?

tchrist

desusado

Cerberus

And is estación season?

tchrist

yes

Cerberus

18:07

Ah, OK.

I should have guessed.

tchrist

stagione

Cerberus

Si.

Don't look at the diacritic.

I actually never quite knew that stagione and stage (I now presume) came from statio.

I might have guessed, but I don't remember ever realising it consciously.

But the Spanish makes it clear.

tchrist

étage

Cerberus

Indeed!

I know French éC- is usually from sC- or exC-.

tchrist

Yes.

Cerberus

18:10

Perhaps it can also be from eC-.

I don't know.

tchrist

Because you can't have liquid "s" west of Italian.

So sp-, st- gained a leading e.

Cerberus

Well, not at a certain time, then.

They do have words like spécial now, don't they?

tchrist

French? Yes.

Spanish and Portuguese and Catalan and all those ones, no.

Cerberus

Or is French not west but north?

tchrist

checks Caesar

épice

Cerberus

18:13

What's interesting, though, is that Italian needs lo before sp- — or doesn't it?

tchrist

una especia

@Cerberus does

Too many consonants otherwise.

Cerberus

I know French can turn sp- into ép-, but I don't know whether that is mandatory.

tchrist

Can't say il sp-

Cerberus

So then the s- isn't vowelish at all.

tchrist

French has sp > esp > ép

Cerberus

18:14

But not always.

Quel spectacle!

tchrist

étrangère

Cerberus

Yes, so it's very strenho.

That's probably not how you spell it.

But surely Portuguese doesn't have ñ?

tchrist

Sure it does.

It spells it "nh".

espanhol

Cerberus

I meant the spelling.

tchrist

¡Qué espectáculo!

Cerberus

18:16

But it appears to be estranho in Portuguese.

Even though my ears picked it up as strenho.

tchrist

What's the question?

Ok yes. That's normal in Portugal.

Cerberus

Right.

tchrist

They delete it.

Cerberus

So they're sort of reversing the change.

tchrist

Sure.

Cerberus

18:18

They feel that the e they once absolutely needed is now worthless.

tchrist

Well....

They do think about it.

Cerberus

They couldn't possibly pronounce it without an extra e.

tchrist

Not in their minds, no.

Cerberus

And now they can't be bothered to pronounce the e.

Mitch

@Færd nice find. (sure it's just clicking links, but sometimes that's all it takes). I was very sceptical at first but radio through it looks like that whatever short cuts they had to take, it's still a good set of unscripted speech. But I'll have to remember to restrict to that sometimes.

tchrist

18:20

The deletion of unstressed vowels in Portugal readily renders up dissonant consonant strings in any neighboring Romance or even Germanic language.

Cerberus

O populus, quam leves estis!

tchrist

So like desprestigiar is pronounced [dʃpɾʃtiˈʒjaɾ] with a flurry of six consonant sounds in a row at the front and nary a proper vowel to be heard among them.

Cerberus

Quam mutabiles, vagi, varii, ventosique!

@tchrist Yeah, that's kind of what many sentences sound like to me.

tchrist

If they ever stop writing the vowels they don't say, all hope is lost.

Cerberus

Dropping so many vowels, and adding so many ʃ, that it turns into Slavic.

tchrist

18:23

/s/ always palatalizes in the coda, and sometimes also voices.

Mitch

@Cerberus the fact that some words are 'ép-' and some 'sp-' just means it was mandatory at one time and that 'sp-' words were introduced new into the language after that diachronic rule was no longer in force.

Cerberus

13 mins ago, by Cerberus

Well, not at a certain time, then.

That's what I suspected.

tchrist

Oh just estof please!

Cerberus

F?

What's that F?

Press F12?

Mitch

presses F12

Cerberus

18:26

F. 100,-.

tchrist

STOP > /es'tof/ or /es'toθ/ etc

Mitch

I escoff at your insinuation

tchrist

Escocés, arya?

Scottish > /esko'θes/

Insinuation is what Chinese spies do.

Mitch

Scone > econe > ecrevisse > crawfish

I saw a crawfish once.

It was weird looking

I killed it.

Cerberus

The Portguese change stops into fricatives?

tchrist

18:31

crayfish and écrevisse rhyme on both ends

@Cerberus Spanish

Mitch

Why isn't there more word front rhyming?

tchrist

But it's a general Western Romance thing. I'd have to check the progressions from LAtin.

Cerberus

@Mitch I hope you made that up!!?

Mitch

We should start a rap team to promote fron-rhyming

Cerberus

@tchrist How odd.

Mitch

18:32

@Cerberus Yes.

Or did I?

Cerberus

Why can't people just accept letters for what they are and be content with existing pronunciation??

Mitch

I know!

people just don't know how to do things

Cerberus

@Mitch How mesmerising!

Mitch

wait...what are people doing wrong?

Cerberus

Changing the pronunciation of a letter!!

Mitch

18:34

@Cerberus Oh. Right.... Bastards.

tchrist

@Mitch Fair is foul and fouls is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.

Cerberus

Besides, why did English ever decide that ch should be /tʃ/ instead of /x/ or /kʰ/?

Mitch

I mean vowels are understandable. so fluid. but consonants are forever.

or should be

Cerberus

Vowels aren't understandable either!!

You...you English speaker!

tchrist

@Cerberus chocolate, chaval

Mitch

18:35

@tchrist Yeah. I realized that afterwards. But alliteration is as poetic as puns

tchrist

The Macbeth device is alliterative assonance.

Mitch

@Cerberus No I meant...

argh

Cerberus

@tchrist Yes, /ʃ/ is weird too. But at least those came from c alone.

Tonepoet

@Cerberus Oh my! Get ahold of yourself Cerb! I mean, that's such an awful thing to call somebody 'round these parts! =P

Mitch

it is understandable that vowels could change

Cerberus

18:36

@Tonepoet I know, but I couldn't hold back any longer!!

@Mitch No, it's not!!

It not understandable that anything should change.

Mitch

@tchrist oh, hip hop lyrics in Nahuatl should be our trademark

Cerberus

Even Dutch vowels are better.

Mitch

coyote

that's all I got

Cerberus

I think our main flaws are the French short e and u (schwa) and diphthong ij (unpronounceable to you).

All the others are fine.

Mitch

@Cerberus OK. I'm OK with that. I just thought a little more leeway with vowels.

Cerberus

18:38

Okay, maybe u is weird too (French u).

@Mitch Please, no!

Mitch

but if you want to go all Language Stasi on me, I'll be right there with you with my baton and pepper spray

tchrist

Macbeth has life/leaf, fear/fair, blade/blood. Many others.

Tonepoet

Ideally, I don't think anything should change, but many of the vowels sound so similar to one another that it's easy to confuse one sound for another...

Cerberus

@Mitch Let's hold a nice razzia.

Mitch

also barricades, but frankly those are really hard to set up, and once a molotov cocktail gets in there, they burn for hours.

tchrist

18:39

IF you would this candle kindle....

Cerberus

@Tonepoet But English is the only language I know that messed up so badly.

Mitch

@Cerberus I've never been able to get a straight answer about that one.

Cerberus

Almost all vowels are wrong.

tchrist

@Cerberus "messed up"?

Mitch

@Cerberus If that's like a BBQ then I'm in.

I think you should do the cooking though.

Cerberus

18:40

A is mostly wrong. E is mostly wrong. I is partly extremely wrong. O is still OK, except oo. U is as messy as in other languages.

Mitch

I'm a lot better at the eating part

tchrist

a is e and e is i and i is ai and o is o and u is yu

Cerberus

@tchrist Shifted up, down, and all around.

@Mitch I suppose fire could be used.

Mitch

@Cerberus That's because we ossified writing in 1600's and the language moved on.

tchrist

@Cerberus I don't know that u is messy in other languages.

Not all humanos say hyuman.

Cerberus

18:42

@Mitch But French doesn't have the vowel problem, even though they use the same spelling for most vowels.

It's mainly the vowel shifts in English.

Mitch

all you other languages with your spelling purity and oh we're better than you phonetic spelling were just running around drawing words in sand while the English had newspapers and shit

Cerberus

@tchrist In French and Dutch, it is.

tchrist

@Cerberus I dare you to spell all the ways the French spell /e/.

Cerberus

@Mitch Look at the same word in Latin, French, English, Dutch, German. Cattus, chat, cat, kat, Katze.

tchrist

Do be it known that the e > i and o > u is fairly widespread.

Cerberus

18:43

All of those have an a sound, except English, which has e.

Mitch

@Cerberus You're kidding. Their vowels went through a hay bailer and then through a sausage machine. they either all sound the same or each vowel sounds in 10 different ways.

tchrist

"Do be" is /dubi/ not /dobe/.

What are we supposed to do, change the spellings? Inconceivable!

Cerberus

@Mitch Not nearly as badly as in English!

Tonepoet

@Mitch That's not quite true Mitch. I think we might still have variable spellings if it wasn't for Webster, Dilworth and Lowth. Shakespeare almost wrote his name in a dozen different ways.

Mitch

@tchrist Exactamundo. French. Pfft.

Cerberus

18:45

@tchrist I know the former happens in Iberia.

But just look at the cattus example above.

tchrist

@Cerberus Except in Castilian, yes.

Mitch

@Cerberus OK that was a prank that went wrong. you got us there

Cerberus

gets you

tchrist

Which chat?

Mitch

@Tonepoet ???

Cerberus

18:46

Christus, Christ, Christ, Christus, Christus (same languages as above).

All of those i's are fine, except the English one.

Mitch

@Cerberus Cats don't count. Leave them out of this.

Færd

Tu vas means you go, right? What then is t'en in Tu t'en vas?

tchrist

@Færd reflexive means leaving

Cerberus

T' = te = reflexive pronoun.

Mitch

@Cerberus is it criminy or cryminy?

tchrist

18:47

"s'en aller" is to leave.

Færd

Thanks!

Mitch

@Færd get out of here

tchrist

Yo me voy, tu te vas.

Cerberus

En =~ de quelque chose/part = therefrom/herefrom = away.

tchrist

Lárgate de aquí

Færd

18:48

Who exactly does the pronoun refer to?

tchrist

Which one?

The "se" or the "en"?

Færd

te

tchrist

That's the me/te/se

Cerberus

Any reflexive pronoun refers to the subject by definition.

It 'flexes back' to the subject.

tchrist

mine, thine, sein

Cerberus

18:48

Hence its name.

Færd

OK so I understand as you yourself go away.

tchrist

Be off with yourself.

Cerberus

Go yourself from here.

Færd

Ah.

Mitch

yeah bit translation is hardly ever word for word

they just say it that way

tchrist

18:49

It's an object not an emphatic, but yes.

Færd

Thanks everyone!

Cerberus

@Mitch Wot wot?

tchrist

"Il même s'en va" is the emphatic.

Mitch

Je m'en vais = I'm outta here

tchrist

Nope.

Lui

Cerberus

18:50

@tchrist Is that possible?

Mitch

or J'y vais

tchrist

@Cerberus nope

lui même, il s'en va

Tonepoet

@Mitch What has you so confuſed?

Cerberus

Do we have a similar expression in English?

tchrist

moi même, je m'en vais

Me I'm outta here.

Cerberus

18:51

I suppose.

Dutch has ik ga ervandoor.

Word by word, I go therefrom through.

Which means exactly je m'en vais.

Mitch

@Cerberus We used to say that all the time as kids

tchrist

I go elsewhither.

Mitch

A passel of rapscallions

Færd

@tchrist Even me?

Cerberus

@Mitch You must have been fascinating kids.

Mitch

18:52

@Cerberus bunch of lying kids is what

tchrist

@Færd No, that's the même that means "self".

Færd

Ah.

Cerberus

@tchrist Do you really think they would use même comme ça?

tchrist

Même si it doesn't seem like it. :)

Færd

:)

tchrist

18:53

@Cerberus pour moi même

Mitch

@Cerberus Ben oui!

Cerberus

I would say, moi, je m'en vais.

Not même.

@tchrist That I would say.

Mitch

it's extra more emphasis

Cerberus

@Mitch Or Canadian beyng.

tchrist

> Je suis venu moi-même livrer la pièce montée.

Mitch

18:53

like repetitive pleonasms

Cerberus

@tchrist I would say that, too.

Mitch

@Cerberus genau.

tchrist

> Moi-même je descendrai avec toi en Egypte, et moi-même je t'en ferai remonter; et Joseph te fermera les yeux.

I forgot the hyphen.

Cerberus

But I wouldn't use même in the topical, introductory-emphatic sense.

tchrist

Maybe not?

Cerberus

18:55

Hmm I have to admit it looks better with the hyphen...

Mitch

@tchrist Joseph should keep his eyes ouvrés if you know what I mean

Cerberus

So it is a good example.

tchrist

> ¿Te trajeron la tele a casa? No, yo mismo la traje de la tienda.

Cerberus

@Mitch Ouverts?

Mitch

@Cerberus if you prefer

Færd

18:56

Je m'en vais. Au revoir.

Mitch

l8r dude

tchrist

Note that traje is from trahō lest it be not obvious.

Mitch

it was not obvious

tchrist

By way of trāxī in the perfect.

Hence traje.

Mitch

language is a lava lamp

tchrist

18:57

Which is phonemic /x/

Tonepoet

Oh, @Mitch, I remember you mentioned Bronte the other day and I figured you might be amused by this. XP

Mitch

maybe just phonology

because semantically, no one is saying anything new

tchrist

Did they deliver the TV to your place? No, I myself brought it from the store.

"yo mismo" is ok.

Mitch

take and bring are the same trahere?

tchrist

Well, yes.

Sorry.

Maybe did they bring it to your house.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…