English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

RegDwight Ѭſ道

8:00 PM

And nöone wants the Germans to disagree violently.

user19161

I wonder if anyone would say "The case is rested by me".

Cerberus

user19161

I only watched The Ugly Duckling.

FumbleFingers

@Cerberus i don't think newt apologised, but i bet he would if he thot it'd get him the presidency!

Robusto

@Cerberus Them's the most dangerous kind.

Cerberus

8:04 PM

@FumbleFingers Yeah...but that doesn't explain how his voters forgave him, then.

@Robusto But less fun.

Well, actually I haven't seen it.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@Cerberus You don't have to forgive if there's nothing to forgive.

Robusto

"Forgive and forget." And remember, the sequence is important. You can't do it backwards.

FumbleFingers

@Cerberus well it's not really up to me to have an opinion on the sexual mores of american politicians. but i do think clinton was a complete prat, not to say lying bastard, for claiming that "he did not have sex..."

Robusto

@FumbleFingers But he was so good at it. He was, like, the best liar ever. You have to give him credit for that.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

The best liar was OJ.

Robusto

8:07 PM

He raised the bar for liars all over the world with two simple sentences.

FumbleFingers

@Robusto of course you can. if you know you're going to do something you might regret, get good and drunk first so you forget it in advance!

Robusto

@RegDwightѬſ道 OJ was a pedestrian liar. Clinton was an artist.

Timothy Mueller-Harder

Completely new topic of discussion posed by someone who is completely new to the chat:

The word "set" is famous for having the most definitions depending on context. I've noticed that "pass" (up, over, away, through…) and "put" (up, away, down…) also have a lot. What are some others that you all have noticed?

FumbleFingers

@RegDwightѬſ道 nah - that was "the most credulous audience was the US judicial system"

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@Robusto it depends on what the meaning of the word "was" is.

Robusto

8:09 PM

@RegDwightѬſ道 It might have changed since then. I'll check.

FumbleFingers

@RegDwightѬſ道 or what the meaning of "is" was

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@Robusto Don't check, we have a site, post it there.

Cerberus

@FumbleFingers Of course. But the typical Democrat voter doesn't care about sexual mores so much as the Republican voters.

Timothy Mueller-Harder

@FumbleFingers What was the meaning of "is", anyway?

Cerberus

@Vitaly: Remember the Dennis–dentist paper?

FumbleFingers

8:10 PM

@TimothyMuellerHarder lost, in the mists of time

Cerberus

Turns out it was bogus, as I was saying all along.

And for the reason I predicted.

There was some unknown factor that explained it, which has nothing at all to do with what the paper was about.

user19161

@TimothyMuellerHarder I have not noticed any. I don't notice such things, sorry. Also, welcome to chat!

Cerberus

That's what always happens when psychologists, sociologists, and other "scientists" research a phenomenon that they cannot explain very well in details. Especially when common sense tells us it cannot be true.

user19161

@TimothyMuellerHarder The notion of "set" is also the foundation of all mathematics.

Cerberus

I will explain the real cause of their (selective) wrong statistics if you like.

FumbleFingers

8:13 PM

@Cerberus i never heard of dennis the dentist, but "red car syndrome" is real

aedia λ

@Cerberus Hiya! What about the dennis now? I haven't been to the dennis since the winner... I've really gotta make my next a point mint.

user19161

@TimothyMuellerHarder Also check a good dictionary of your choice first before posting a question in future. Or you risk getting downvoted.

FumbleFingers

aka - I see one stupid question on ELU, and suddenly I notice them all over the place!

user19161

@FumbleFingers I only know Dennis the Menace, the cartoon.

FumbleFingers

@WillHunting it was apparently claimed that people gravitate to professions appropriate to their names. sounds like total tosh to me

RegDwight Ѭſ道

8:16 PM

What if your name is Bieber?

That's German for beaver.

I am yet to see that boy eat trees in Germany.

FumbleFingers

@WillHunting I bet loads of other dennis's didn't go on to become either dentists or menaces!

din-dins 4 me! byeeee!

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Bye.

Cerberus

@FumbleFingers Which syndrome is that?

@aediaλ The reason why more dentists are called Dennis is that Dennis became more popular over the past two decades.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@Cerberus if you buy a red car, you will start noticing that everyone and his dog's cars are red as well.

Cerberus

That is why the average American has a greater chance of being called Dennis than the average dentist, who will be older than 20.

@RegDwightѬſ道 Oh, right.

Yes, well, that's not really controversial. It's common sense.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

8:19 PM

Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.

aedia λ

Dennis actually became more popular? Wow.

Cerberus

@aediaλ And Denise too, apparently.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

13

Q: Word meaning coincidence of reference to the unusual

Most of us have had the experience of stumbling over a new fact or bit of knowledge and then finding several more references to it in the near future. For example, you see a strange word which you're forced to look-up and then the next day the same word appears in the headline of your local pape...

Cerberus

Or perhaps the names they compared them against became less popular: that's possible too.

user19161

I had a friend Dennis who used to bite chess pieces as we were playing.

Cerberus

8:20 PM

@RegDwightѬſ道 Yes, I know BM.

user19161

@Cerberus I know SM.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@Cerberus the English Wikipedia no longer does.

aedia λ

Yeah, that thing where you notice the things. Hey wait what? Wiki deleted it?

user19161

@RegDwightѬſ道 Make a complaint to Jimmy.

aedia λ

What is the world coming to!? And where are my interrobangs when I need 'em?!

RegDwight Ѭſ道

8:22 PM

Interrobang

The interrobang, interabang (), (often represented by ), is a nonstandard punctuation mark used in various written languages and intended to combine the functions of the question mark (also called the “interrogative point”) and the exclamation mark or exclamation point (known in printers’ jargon as the “bang”). The glyph is a superimposition of these two marks. It is present in Unicode as . Application A sentence ending with an interrobang asks a question in an excited manner, expresses excitement or disbelief in the form of a question, or asks a rhetorical question. For example: * ...

Wiki stealed them.

user19161

@aediaλ It is ending this year.

aedia λ

Those jerks!

RegDwight Ѭſ道

See, they won't even inline them here!

Cerberus

There's also the phenomenon of wanting to buy a blue car but buying a red one instead because the blue ones are sold out: people will then later say they "really liked red better anyway, after all".

RegDwight Ѭſ道

> The interrobang, interabang (), (often represented by ), is...

Go wiki yourself, you wiki!

Cerberus

8:22 PM

Some kind of cognitive dissonance is involved.

user19161

@Cerberus It's simply called consoling oneself. QED.

Cerberus

Yes, in a way, but people half believe themselves.

user19161

You know what these psychologists do? They take simple phenomena and give them deep names, but they really don't understand things much more than the lay person.

aedia λ

@Cerberus Rationalization. We all do it. Go ask second and third head how they feel about having to shush while you're talking. I bet they "really didn't have anything to say at this moment," huh?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@aediaλ Actually they are prolly having a way more interesting conversation themselves.

Cerberus

8:25 PM

@WillHunting That is often true.

user19161

@RegDwightѬſ道 Is there a banginterro for !?

Cerberus

@aediaλ Exactly.

If they think they have something to say, I'll prove them wrong.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@WillHunting go write an article on Wikipedia about it. If it stays up, then it exists!

user19161

@RegDwightѬſ道 QED.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Will, don't be wasteful with the QEDs like that, we'll need them later.

Have some dried beans instead.

user19161

8:28 PM

@tim Nice blog you have!

aedia λ

8:57 PM

yawns Why am I always sleepy in the afternoons?

KitFox

9:16 PM

On mobile at the dentist's.

I hate having my teeth examined.

I'm kinda hoping they are going to do all the work for free, because my mouth is just that interesting.

But it will be a good excuse to get a super-awesome toothbrushing robot.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

I have never paid at the dentist's, so my commiserations.

KitFox

Designed just for me. That transforms into a moped.

Really? Owls have free dental work? Must be because you've no teeth.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@KitFox That would only attract Shia LaBoeuf.

KitFox

Hmm.

Maybe it could just play daily affirmations while I brush.

user19161

@RegDwightѬſ道 I like Shia, so does jsb.

user19161

9:24 PM

@aediaλ It is called the lunch effect.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@KitFox in the Soviet Union, dentists were paid by the state. In contemporary Europe, they are paid by health insurances. And paid well.

Dentists never had to suffer in any state system I've witnessed.

KitFox

But, then, how do they do their jobs properly?

user19161

@RegDwightѬſ道 They only suffer when they have to pull their own teeth.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@KitFox You mean we should pay them less to ensure that they work better?

KitFox

Yes. Because it enhances their natural sadism.

user19161

9:26 PM

Let me tell you a true dentist story.

user19161

There was once a boy who had to pull his tooth.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@KitFox well you be my guest. Start by not paying your dentist today.

KitFox

I wasn't planning to pay today.

user19161

He went to the dentist. Before the dentist could pull out his tooth, he got scared and ran away.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@KitFox Off to a great start. Now up the ante by asking them to pay you.

user19161

9:27 PM

He went back the next day, and this time his tooth got pulled out.

user19161

End of story.

KitFox

I don't know why they would pay me, though. Because I'm awesome?

user19161

What do you guys think of the story?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@KitFox You forget our motivation for this. We want to pump their sadism to new levels. Well, you do.

user19161

I missed the three flags!

user19161

9:32 PM

Well, looks like that was a boring story, nvm.

aedia λ

I think it's some sort of Evil Knievel rocket toothbrush (obviously not a moped) but maybe it'll do

user19161

9:51 PM

I wonder if Kit has fainted from the dentist working on her teeth.

igor milla

Hi guys! I'm translating one my short texts from russian to english. And was interesting is it on topic to look here for the help in cases like this.. I don't asking about translating me the text.. i will do it on my own.. I was just interested if it appropriate to ask here questions about correct wording and gramma fixing, or it's more for writers SE. Oh, and it's not home work) from my SO profile you can see that i'm far from school age

user19161

@igormilla You can post a question on the main site if it is very specific and if you have at least checked the dictionary, thesaurus, etc. But translation itself or overly broad questions are not on-topic.

igor milla

@WillHunting .. yes..i'm with dictionary here.. sad about translation questions.. but fair enough. Will some back to the main page, when translate the text and will have some real questions. thanks

aedia λ

@igormilla If you come across issues that you don't think are appropriate for a question on the main site, but you still are hoping for someone's opinion, you may also just want to ask here in chat.

user19161

@igormilla Also, I hope you are not translating the text on your own. As I see from your writing here, your command of the language is not too good. It would be good to work with someone else beside you in your translation work.

aedia λ

10:01 PM

@igormilla You can see on our info page the times when we are most likely to have a bunch of people in here, some of whom are native speakers.

user19161

@aediaλ Wow, you used whom and not who!

aedia λ

I did? Huh, I guess so.

user19161

@aediaλ That means you are a pedant!

aedia λ

Happens to the best of us :P

user19161

How come no questions for the past two hours?

igor milla

10:05 PM

yes, my English is terrible.. but it's only two paragraphs there.. and that translation is only for me.. to try convert my thoughts from one language to another

aedia λ

@WillHunting Hey now! I'm not dangly at all!

user19161

@igormilla So it is just an interesting exercise for yourself? Then it is fine. :-)

user19161

I thought you want to publish your book to the English speaking world.

user19161

@aediaλ By the way I heard about Justin-Bieber-singing toothbrushes!

user19161

I am not sure what they are, maybe a toothbrush with music as you use it.

igor milla

10:09 PM

@WillHunting )oh.. i'm far from that.. I'm writing in Russian, and Ukrainian.. but English it's only something I use in my job as programmer. I cannot really think in English the same way I think in Ukrainian.

Robusto

@igormilla You too?

igor milla

@Robusto what?) I think I missed something.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

10:25 PM

@Will, rather than editing millenia-old closed questions, vote to delete them.

May 5 '11 at 21:54, by RegDwight

@MrHen Careful, U2 translates to instant kick in this room.

Vitaly

@RegDwight So what's the strategy for Clockwords?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@Vitaly get yourself some expensive letters. Then think up a bunch of good words you can type real fast. Like, sequoia, xenophobia, etc.

Actually I haven't played the game for a year or so, so I can't remember my words now! Funny.

Anyhoo, you just think up twenty-odd words, and these are the ones you use over and over again.

You are not allowed to repeat yourself right away, but twenty words later it's okay.

Vitaly

Ah I see, thanks. I thought there was a way that made more sense.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Well obviously I started by actually making up the words on the fly.

But then it just becomes too fast.

user19161

Too fast too furious.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

10:31 PM

You absolutely have to resort to a bunch of standard words as your minimum active vocabulary. You can then still intersperse them with something original when the letters come out right.

user19161

So when I said "In Soviet Russia ..." in the other room they accused me of trolling, sad.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

But at later levels you just must be typing, typing, typing, all the time.

You don't have time to think. At all.

user19161

There should be a feature to sort questions by views.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Isn't there?

user19161

@RegDwightѬſ道 I clicked on questions but there is no view tab.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

10:32 PM

Hm. Indeed there isn't.

I suppose there will be a SEDE query for that.

user19161

@RegDwightѬſ道 That always requires me to solve a captcha, sad.

user19161

Unless I create a new account there.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@WillHunting just log in. Once.

user19161

I still have no account on MSO, yay!

user19161

I don't want to have accounts all over the internet.

user19161

10:34 PM

I deleted my friendster account years ago. It has turned into a gaming site.

aedia λ

Friendster is still alive?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Well, so is Geocities.

user19161

@aediaλ Yes but completely different now. I wonder what they did to the original profiles.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

I am told AltaVista is busy as well.

user19161

I think FB and TT might be gone in 10 years.

user19161

10:36 PM

But Debian should remain for another 50.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

You should be a prophet or something.

user19161

I already am. I tell people to sleep and be faithful to their spouse.

user19161

I also tell them to take their vitamins and not game too much.

user19161

With all my furious delete votes I predict many people will lose hundreds of rep including myself.

Vitaly

> Congratulations! You just won the Sesquipedalian Badge and 15 points!

RegDwight Ѭſ道

10:40 PM

@Vitaly oh and one more things. Well, two more things. First, obviously, have a few expensive letters, but an assload of cheap ones (vowels). So you can always type something, anything. Secondly, use plurals and related words. E.g. I would use saxophone, saxophones, and saxophonist if the X came up too often.

Vitaly

Yeah, I am using -ing words whenever I can.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

I remember how it would accept the weirdest words, but sometimes wouldn't accept something as simple as "kitty".

Damn, I should play the game again some time.

aedia λ

@KitFox ^

user19161

@aediaλ That sounds creepy.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

I stealed that from Vitaly.

Was it Vitaly?

I think it was him.

user19161

10:44 PM

@RegDwightѬſ道 I wonder why their handwriting is always so illegible.

user19161

It might be associated to some gene.

user19161

People who like to study medicine also write illegibly.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@WillHunting so they can write, "give this simpleton that floss I never use myself" and you won't get up in arms about it.

user19161

I am not sure how many 10k users actually use the 10k tools and cast delete votes.

user19161

There is quite a lot of stats in those tools but much of it is pretty useless.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

10:47 PM

Okay, I'm firing up Clockwords...

Which level are you at, @Vitaly?

user19161

I entered the gaming room again.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Wow there's also Clockwords: Act I now!

I kept wondering about the Prelude part...

Vitaly

@RegDwightѬſ道 I have just started the game on Kong (after wasting time at clockwords.us), so just 7.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Turns out I'm at level 76.

FFFFFUUUU

I won't stand a snowflake's chance in hell.

Vitaly

Hahaha.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

10:50 PM

Especially now that I don't remember a single word from my list.

Well I lost.

But I was better than I thought.

I instantly remembered many of the words I had been using.

Gingerbreads.

Sexualities.

And so on.

I have a good letter mix that provides me with pointers.

I unlocked six new chambers in a row.

I want to win this one now.

Bah. Lost again. But I'm getting better. Killed 50% more bugs and almost doubled the points for my best word.

Vitaly

@Reg should I try to transmute low-level irons into something more high-level?

I have 2 brasses and 2 jades

I mean, should I go for high-level letters or for a large number of letters in my boiler?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Let me see what I have in mine.

I don't remember anything about the boiler.

Okay so this is what I have.

scratches head

Now what does this all mean?

Vitaly

11:06 PM

:/

RegDwight Ѭſ道

From the Qs it would seem that I prefer jade over gold.

Anyways. The one thing I do remember is that I would always merge letters as often as possible, after every level.

It takes quite some time to get yourself a level-5 letter.

Then I would figure out which letters I need most often.

The mix I have right there works amazingly well.

user19161

@RegDwightѬſ道 "prefer to" is standard I believe.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Then, obviously, I would replace regular letters with gold ones as soon as I could.

11

Q: Which is correct: "prefer X to Y" or "prefer X over Y"?

Many say that "prefer X to Y" has a more formal ring to it than "prefer X over Y". Are there any dialects where you wouldn't use "prefer X to Y" in colloquial speech at all? Conversely, are there any manuals of style that discourage using "prefer X over Y" in formal writing?

word-choice colloquialisms formality

user19161

@RegDwightѬſ道 Yes I even protected it.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Haha. Then don't ask.

user19161

11:17 PM

I have quite a lot of spam from different sites.

user19161

I just got one from tagged.com.

FumbleFingers

11:40 PM

just back briefly... here's a thought...

would google pay to develop an easy-access facility on ELU for us to notify them of suspect OCR readings in their books index?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Nah.

FumbleFingers

@RegDwightѬſ道 why not?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

They even get people to tag their images for them for free.

FumbleFingers

yes, but they have to develop the s/w for that

i'm not saying pay for the corrections, just pay SO to make the i/f

RegDwight Ѭſ道

It's cheaper for them to pay one developer whom they can trust that thousands of volunteers whom they can't.

@FumbleFingers Ah!

Oh well.

FumbleFingers

11:43 PM

that's silly - one dev can't read millions of books

RegDwight Ѭſ道

No. One dev can't tag millions of images, either. But he can develop an app that lets people do it.

They turned it into a game, and people willingly jumped in to play.

I probably tagged thousands of images myself.

FumbleFingers

they can't let anybody do it - wallies will fill up old texts with swearwords

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Are you familiar with how they set up the tagging of images?

They could do that with OCR corrections, too.

Let two randomly picked people correct at once.

FumbleFingers

no i don't know about photo tagging

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Ah. Then hold on a sec.

Google Image Labeler

Google Image Labeler was a feature, in the form of a game, of Google Image Search that allowed the user to label random images to help improve the quality of Google's image search results. It was online from 2006 to 2011. History Luis von Ahn developed the ESP Game, a game in which two people were simultaneously given an image, with no way to communicate, other than knowing the matching label for each picture or the pass signal. The ESP Game had been licensed by Google in the form of the Google Image Labeler and launched this service, as a beta on August 31, 2006. Players noticed va...

FumbleFingers

11:46 PM

gotcha

RegDwight Ѭſ道

I would play that a lot.

FumbleFingers

but errors there are less serious than errors on old books

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Of course. So you'd just set the threshold higher.

FumbleFingers

why did GIL not continue?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

No idea.

Then again, I haven't played myself in a long time. So perhaps everyone just got bored like me.

It was addictive, though.

I would play it again.

FumbleFingers

11:48 PM

it apparently ended up being spammed and abused

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Actually it was rather fun precisely if you are into linguistics.

You could tell if the other person was a pineapple.

FumbleFingers

anyway, most of their images are low value

RegDwight Ѭſ道

I am sure most of the images I helped tag aren't even in their index anymore.

FumbleFingers

their books will never repeat, and are potentially very valuable

i think the idea should be worth pursuing

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Well the first step is done. Digitalization.

I am pretty sure they won't stop there.

FumbleFingers

11:51 PM

yes - but the next step is probably to get free helpers to start improving the quality

RegDwight Ѭſ道

I am certain that if that occurs to us, it has long occured to someone inside Google as well.

FumbleFingers

no-one "owns" most of those "texts", so google would gain an asset

RegDwight Ѭſ道

For all I know, they are working on implementing it. Heck, for all I know they already have volunteers working on it, but they failed to inform us.

FumbleFingers

they wouldn't know off-hand that places like ELU are actually sitting around with a pre-existing filtering mechanism to supply willing helpers

come to that - how many others like elu are there? not many, i'd guess

RegDwight Ѭſ道

There are enough smart people out there. Build it, and they'll come.

Anyhow. I gotta go AFK again, and the way I understood you so do you.

FumbleFingers

11:55 PM

wot? just for the sake of reading old books? i doubt it

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@FumbleFingers well you are volunteering right here.

FumbleFingers

haha not too often

RegDwight Ѭſ道

What makes you think other people elsewhere wouldn't?

FumbleFingers

how would you gather them together?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

All those professors have nothing to do anyway.

FumbleFingers

11:56 PM

we already got all those profs here!

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Yeah. Profs of pineappleology.

We have like ten actual linguists here, tops.

FumbleFingers

i'd already heard of peter shor before i came here - was chuffed to "rub shoulders"

i know he's maths, not lingo, but hey!

shor was pivotal in kick-starting quantum computing after it was virtually abandonned

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Yeah we have a lot of folks coming over via SO and Maths. But not anywhere as many do we send over to them.

FumbleFingers

we have the most accessible speciality - all native speakers know english

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…