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02:03
@Mitch I dunno about that. I can't help but imagine P.I.E. was a constructed language. Constructed out of a need to make a recipie list for making crusts and creamy filling.
 
6 hours later…
08:28
morning all
user288256
08:56
@Tonepoet By "P.I.E." you mean a baked dish made of a pastry dough casing or the linguistic reconstruction of the common ancestor of the Indo-European languages?
user288256
@Mitch Here is the list and the tests: examenglish.com/CEFR/cefr.php
user288256
I don't know how to grade my spoken English for free there though.
user288256
Other sections of the exams can be done online though.
10:36
Is there a single word for the process of drying clothes in a washing machine by spinning it very fast?
And I don't mean something like spin cycle, as it would be understood only in terms of a washing machine
tumble drying
centrifugal water displacement?
but a spin cycle doesn't really dry the clothes does it?
it just removes water
centrifugal water displacement -> yeah that's closer to what I am looking for
but a single word
is there a word like that?
Not that I've come across
at least I can't think of one at the moment
if you don't have a washing machine, you can twist your wet clothes to remove water from them
what's the word for this process?
10:40
thanks
do you think this would be appropriate to describe the centrifugal water displacement in a washing machine?
I don't think so as it's a different process. that less about spinning and more about squeezing
but maybe
thanks
There is a quote of Jean-Paul Sartre like this:
In the alone time
We seek a friend
Once we find him
We start looking for his flaws
At the time we lose him
We search for his memories
In the alone time
Does anybody know what's the exact of that?
exact what?
what I've paste is just my own translation
10:56
ok, but exact is an adjective. what is it you want to be exact?
I want the exact of this:
> In the alone time / We seek a friend / Once we find him / We start looking for his flaws / At the time we lose him /We search for his memories / In the alone time
I accidentally the whole bottle.
@Shafizadeh That looks like a poem, not a quote and we can't help you if you don't give us the original. "The exact" doesn't mean anything. If you mean "the exact translation", then again that doesn't mean anything since there are many ways to translate something. Especially poetry.
If you want a good translation of a poem, look for its title.
@Shafizadeh The exact what? The exact time it was written?
Accidentally the exact.
What's not to understand? Learn English, Matt.
11:00
maybe one day I will. It's one of my favourite languages.
@terdon Well I want the original (I meant of "exact" was "original") cc @MattE.Эллен
See. He wants to original. To have the exact.
At this point I have to wonder, if you have your own translation of the original, then certainly you also have the original, no?
user288256
Instead of telling someone to "calm down" can we use "cool it" or "cool off"? I'm guessing we can?
user288256
Not sure
11:03
Yes we can
user288256
okay.
Hey yo, welcome to ELU, Barack.
Barrack*
Barack Hussein Obama II (US: bə-RAHK hoo-SAYN oh-BAH-mə; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th President of the United States from 2009 to 2017. He is the first African American to have served as president. He previously served in the U.S. Senate representing Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and in the Illinois State Senate from 1997 to 2004. Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, two years after the territory was admitted to the Union as the 50th state. Raised largely in Hawaii, Obama also spent one year of his childhood in Washington State and four years in Indonesia....
Don't teach grandma to suck eggs. My speling is unpeckable.
user288256
I didn't know Obama visited these chats.
11:06
@RegDwigнt I have my own translation of a Persian context. Now I want to see the original quote in English
Well. If it's by Sartre, the original quote isn't in English.
Anyway, I can't find anything by Sartre mentioning friends or times or flaws or memories.
I think if Google is to be believed Sartre never actually said anything at all. Hm.
it might not be by Sartre
It might be by Sarrtrre.
Anyway, deleting Sartre from the search string accomplishes nothing.
It might be one of those quotes that are not quotes at all. Like most quotes.
@RegDwigнt Maybe .. since I don't find anything similar in the google
I just tried searching in a few other languages, still nothing.
Frankly it's not an original sentiment by any means to begin with.
We can probably find any number of actual quotes basically saying the same thing.
11:12
for instance?
"Don't know what you got till it's gone" — Cinderella.
"It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." — Tennyson
"Hell is other people" — Sartre
"Please move to your left" — me
What's a word to describe something you were super jaded to?
user288256
11:27
"Annoyance"? "Irritant"?
what does being jaded to mean?
completely misses the mark, Ghalib
annoyed with it?
doesn't it mean be bored?
word for something that you became bored with?
pretty much
I think trite, hackneyed, or corny might work
how about boring
11:32
@nz_21 trite seems like the best fit of the three.
Or unoriginal.
user288256
You might like "bore (one that causes boredom)" "bother", "nuisance", "trouble", "pain"
Commonplace, bland etc.
jaded means commonplace?
can some one explain me about this line in simple language (bad english speaker)
"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."
@user17915 No, jaded is what you are after being exposed to something too many times. For example: "I used to be very excited when I got to fly in an airplane, but I've done it so many times, I have become jaded."
@ɹɐqʞɐzoɹǝɟ People try to design things so that even a fool can use them correctly. However, people are often even more stupid than they thought, so what they believed was foolproof, was not.
By the way, you might all be interested in this site:
11:44
@terdon sublime!
may be overused
@Ghalib nice thanks. I had seen those levels before (Wikipedia) but not with those better descriptions
They sound almost tests/levels of cognitive ability rather than linguistic.
I can barely do C1 in English
It takes a lot of work to get to A1 for any language. There should be stages below A1 to test progress.
Duolingo claims A1 if you get through a tree but that seems wishful thinking
If the previous president had been a soldier he'd have lived in a ...
Barack's barracks
And if this was on a big ship it would be ....
user288256
@Mitch Huh, how come? I would have thought you could even do C2 very easily.
Barack's barque's barracks
and fishing for barracudas
11:57
@Ghalib I exaggerate
I hope
user288256
Yeah, I figured. Heh.
user288256
I mean if even people like you (experts) you can't do C2 then what's the point of such tests?
But to deal with an argument? That seems like a subtlety that is nonlingyistic, more personality
user288256
Ah yes.
@Mitch And if he hung his clothes on the second clothes rack, it would be Barack's barque's B-rack.
11:59
@Ghalib I think the explanations are ... not the best
user288256
I see.
Should be in terms of hours of instruction, vocabulary size, etc quantitative things
@ter
@terdon thanks
@terdon if the ships are short, and they have a means of stopping they'd be...
I got C2 in the grammar vocabulary
in this online level test
how does this compare to IELTS and TOEFL
?
12:04
Barack's brusque barque's barracks brakes
@Mitch And if the last president were as rude as this one, they'd be:
Brusque Barack's brusque barque's barracks brakes
and if you wash these really hard...
user288256
reminds me of the film Burlesque.
@Mitch Brusquely bristle brushed brusque Barack's brusque barque's barracks brakes!
12:34
@terdon I was going for 'scrubs' but that works too.
@user17915 If you go to the link @Ghalib gave, for each of the A1...C2 test pages, the give links to appropriate IELTS vocab and grammar. I see some links for TOEFL too.
13:10
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophonic, homographic, metonymic, or figurative language. A pun differs from a malapropism in that a malapropism is an incorrect variation on a correct expression, while a pun involves expressions with multiple correct interpretations. Puns may be regarded as in-jokes or idiomatic constructions, as their usage and meaning are specific to a particular language and...
user288256
Yes. I figured you were joking.
user288256
Pun it was.
Now I'm wondering if it really qualifies as a pun. I don't know if people pronounce the P.I.E. abbreviation like the word pie, and while the letters are the same there are visible orthographic differences. XP
user288256
Yes, that abbreviation was kinda confusing.
user288256
Looks like "Pie".
user288256
13:23
But why are you using periods between the letters in PIE?
user288256
I mean you could of course, but isn't that cumbersome to type?
Because it's a series of initials, and as such needs to have periods inserted after each letter. The recent tendency to omit the periods is as annoying to me as seeing contractions without apostrophes, and to be honest now that we have internet SHOUTING, it's even more necessary now than it was in the past.
user288256
Well, if someone is shouting it is pretty apparent.
user288256
Because there is context and there is some heat.
13:33
@Ghalib Relying on context more than necessary is asking for an ambiguous case to be confusing. Regardless, I try to fashion my writing after older and more mindful habits when I can, which is a preference predicated on the tenet that it is better.
If worse comes to worse and I can not figure out what the appropriate initial set is for some reason, I will usually spell it out in full, e.g. Hypertext Markup Language. It's usually abbreviated as H.T.M.L. but hypertext is a single word.
@Ghalib Cumbersome, hard to read, convention breaking (in some cases) and not very pretty. But he insists :)
@terdon 'Tis not fair to call something convention breaking when it adheres to a convention.
And it's even less fair when the conventions have changed, which means they have already been broken.
13:56
@Tonepoet It adheres to one (largely discarded) convention and breaks another.
@Tonepoet That's what they do.
pie P.I.E. pie
But writing HTML as H.T.M.L. is silly. Do you also write laser as L.A.S.E.R.?
H.T.M.L.
a dot after each letter.
Whoops
:D
I made the same mistake!
13:58
Muphry's law :)
@terdon I have no need to write out L.A.S.E.R. Laser is an acronym, which is a word derived from the extremities of other words according to the earliest Webster's dictionary I can find on the subject, which I believe is the fifth collegiate edition if I recall correctly (1947). Because it is a word, it does not necessarily conform to the rules of an abbreviation, nor does it even necessarily mean the same thing as the abbreviation since it is its own word.
@Tonepoet And why is HTML different?
H.T.M.L. is not a word. You pronounce the letters individually, rather than as a unit, and it has a fixed meaning.
@Tonepoet That doesn't mean it isn't a word. It is in the dictionary as a noun, after all.
14:04
@terdon Just because it is in the dictionary does not mean it is a word.
@Tonepoet How else would you define words then?
Fine by me, by that definition also it is a word.
And do you also write (assuming you were to write it) ASAP as A.S.A.P? Or TLC as T.L.C.?
@terdon That's true, but I think there is something that is a little more important. A word has to be a continuous sound, otherwise nothing stops a sentence from being a word.
@Tonepoet There are many syncopated words. I don't see why ASAP (ayessaypee) is any different.
Or HTML
Many abbreviations become words and insisting on writing them as though they were still simple abbreviations is not following convention, it is breaking it. When everyone writes something in a certain way, then that is the convention.
I would show you an NGram demonstrating how H.T.M.L doesn't even exist in print but it turns out it actually doesn't exist.
14:12
ngrams treats punctuation oddly.
Yes. I am not at all sure that is in any way conclusive.
It might be indicative though.
Common abbreviations often become normalized into words and lose their periods. This is normal and healthy.
@terdon I'm pretty sure I already made that point.
@Tonepoet I'm pretty sure you didn't. You may have tried to, but not convincingly :P
Sorry, but I just don't understand this hangup you have with periods in all the things. I find it makes it hard to read and is often confusing. For example, if I were to read H.T.M.L, I would immediately assume you are referring to something other than HTML.
I do feel the dots (not periods) look nicer.
What does "go over" mean? Is the same as "start over" (repeating something from the beginning)?
14:19
@stack Review.
@Cerberus Ah, so @Tonepoet is not alone. Do you feel they look better even in abbreviations that are commonly (exclusively even) written without them?
I also feel they look better for most abbreviations. Just not for those that have entered the language as words.
@Tonepoet ah ok thx
@terdon I think the fact that you don't find it convincing is because you're arguing against me. People have the strange tendency to forget that you don't necessarily have to disagree with the entirety of your opponent's position. How else did you parse my mention of acronyms?
@terdon Yes.
@Tonepoet Hmm. Must have gotten our cables crossed there. I meant that I've never been convinced by your insistance to use the dots in all abbreviations. What was I supposed to have parsed?
@Cerberus You too, huh? I find they break the flow too much.
14:24
But it's like wearing a jacket and a tie: it looks nice, and in a way I mourn the lack of aesthetics of the modern age; but it's too much of a hassle even for me.
@terdon What were you doing during the 1990s anyway?
@Tonepoet School.
You?
So I encourage others to do this, but I don't do it myself.
Except in personal names.
@Cerberus In any case, HTML is really a special case. The name of the language is HTML. It is not H.T.M.L. and that's that. It isn't really an abbreviation, as such, it is the name of the language.
Why is it not an abbreviation?
14:25
Hmm, I'd rather not say expressly. I have read books regarding the subject of computers from the 1990s and I do recollect seeing H.T.M.L., G.I.F. and J.P.E.G. in print.
By the way, I absolutely hate the current abundance of abbreviations.
@Cerberus Because that's what the language is called. It isn't called hypertext markup language, at least you will find no books calling it that or programmers referring to it thusly as far as I know.
Why is that relevant?
Let me just make sure I'm not talking crap
I don't really care often often the abbreviation is used, and how often the full phrase.
14:27
Hmm, I might be. Or partly, anyway. The official HTML specification does use a fuller name once:
> This specification defines the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the publishing language of the World Wide Web.
I don't see the relevance in that with respect to whether or not it is an abbreviation.
Of course, that would mean that if you want to use the dots, it would have to be H.M.L. since hypertext is one word.
You can treat it as Hyper-Text.
Abbreviations don't necessarily respect word boundaries only.
@Cerberus Well, some of them are no longer abbreviations. Things like HTML, USB, ASAP, TLC and the like have entered the language as words.
You say they aren't; I say they are; then...what are they?
14:30
@Cerberus Well, as usual, I defer to dictionaries. If they are listed as nouns and without the dots, I'll call them words.
What is an abbreviation if not a word?
It's an abbreviation :P
I don't understand your argument here.
But OK, fair point.
I mean something that is written without internal punctuation.
@Cerberus "argument" means "fight" ?
14:31
"It is written without internal punctuation, and therefore it shouldn't be."
@terdon What dictionary are you using anyway?
In philosophy and logic, an argument is a series of statements typically used to persuade someone of something or to present reasons for accepting a conclusion. The general form of an argument in a natural language is that of premises (typically in the form of propositions, statements or sentences) in support of a claim: the conclusion. The structure of some arguments can also be set out in a formal language, and formally defined "arguments" can be made independently of natural language arguments, as in math, logic, and computer science. In a typical deductive argument, the premises guarantee the...
This is the primary meaning of argument.
> b : a coherent series of reasons, statements, or facts intended to support or establish a point of view a defense attorney's closing argument
@Tonepoet Online ones at the moment. The online M-W in this case.
14:32
aha ok
I wouldn't use argument to mean a fight.
No, not unless you're in England.
Not even in England.
a bit of argie-bargie
Hello.
@MattE.Эллен Is that a common term?
So it's not that Merriam-Webster treats all abbreviations as nouns. U.S.A. is still listed as an abbreviation.
@terdon eehhhhh maybe in the baby boomer age group
Heh
14:33
Perhaps what Terdon is saying is that he doesn't punctuate an abbreviation once it is in common use.
But I don't really understand why.
@Cerberus Well, not quite. I don't punctuate it when it is so common that standard usage is to write it without punctuation.
How is that different?
A criterion of frequency is applied?
And you still punctuate infrequent abbreviations?
@Cerberus Yes. As in all other discussions of language. Unless you want to go prescriptivist on me.
@Cerberus Yes. In formal writing, anyway.
I am always a prescriptivist.
@Cerberus A criterion of frequency regarding how often it is abbreviated with or without the periods.
14:36
But that isn't the point here.
@Cerberus dot
the difference between when an abrv. is in common use and between when removing the dots for that abrv. is in common use
@terdon Why not skip the dots in all abbreviations?
@terdon Punctus!
@Cerberus Because in most cases they serve a useful function viz. indicating that this is an abbreviation.
The capitals already indicate that.
I think I normally only use dots when I use spaces.
14:37
In other cases, however, they have become household terms and a convention has arisen which states that they be written bereft of punctuation.
So I'm talking to M. E.
@Cerberus Because he's a popularist, and will do whatever the majority does. If they start using the periods again for some reason, I'm sure he'll conform. He just thinks it's strange because other people stopped doing it within the last couple of decades.
@terdon Oh, when you use those words, you convince me!
So, writing P. D. F, instead of pdf or PDF is just odd because it isn't what people normally write and will end up confusing your reader.
14:38
@Tonepoet Haha.
Pork Derivative Futures
@Tonepoet Not at all. I am not making a general point about abbreviations. Only a specific one about those that are usually written pointless.
@terdon Sure. But I don't write P.D.F. nor P. D. F. Besides, people will get over that confusion and appreciate the care with which the text is apparently written.
@MattE.Эллен For example. That's exactly my point though, seeing a usually pointless abbreviation written pointedly is confusing and makes you search for other interpretations.
@terdon So tell me Terdon, does the World Wide Web Consortium have older standards published, or just the most recent one?
14:39
@Tonepoet Than?
Here's the 1998 HTML specification: w3.org/TR/1998/REC-html40-19980424
Hi
As you have asked in this request to add a new field ...
is this correct ?
or As you have asked in this request is to add a new field ...
1995 HTML 2.0 specs: tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1866
Let's say you wrote an article about a new railroad in Africa, the Trans-African Railroad. And let's say for some reason you decided to abbreviate it in your article not as "the Railroad" (which is in fact much better!!), but as an initialism. How would you do it?
I'd be stumped, actually. Normally I would use T.A.F., yes.
14:43
Why not the TAR?
@MattE.Эллен !
However, in academic writing, one very often defines an acronym or even a short name for something and then uses it with no dots.
It's not an academic article.
It's a local newspaper.
Or a web log.
So, for example, I wrote a paper on "extreme multifunctional proteins" and I called them EMFs for short. Not E. M. F.s, of course since it isn't actually an abbreviation as such.
@terdon I would only do that in case confusion is possible, or in a legal text.
@Cerberus I would probably use T. A. F. or at least accept an editorial suggestion to do so.
14:45
Why not the TAF?
@Cerberus Yeah well, you haven't written many things that use big words and have a strict character limit then.
@terdon No, I meant the explicit defining.
@Cerberus Because, dammit, abbreviations are expected to have dots apart from the ones that have become common enough to waive the requirement. Such is, as @Tonepoet correctly claims, the current convention. As much as I dislike it, I'd have to follow the thing.
No need to get personal.
@Cerberus ?
14:47
I felt it was unnecessary to comment on my writing history...but it doesn't matter.
@terdon Okay, so it's all about how common it is.
That's just not something that I ever thought about.
@terdon Spaces usually aren't used in initials, even if we go back hundreds of years.
Although, I just read that the Chicago Manual of Style doesn't recommend dots at all as far as I can tell:
With respect to abbreviations.
For me, it's just laziness.
Which, if I can confirm it, will be all the excuse I need to stop using the silly things!
But, again, my advice is to avoid abbreviations if at all possible!
That would be the ideal.
14:50
chat. stackexchange. com <- only the thing that is abbreviation doesn't get a dot!
And I think it's possible 90% of the time, except perhaps when your physical space is constrained.
@MattE.Эллен Scandalous!
@terdon I must admit that they've been considered optional. I do recollect that in my 1990s Random House College Dictionary that it says USSR can be written with or without the periods, and that's as a general example in the style guide in the back.
People from other S. E. chat rooms will love it when they hear that we have hour-long discussions about dots here.
Yes, it does appear that way. Which means I can finally be rid of them!
Also, this is a nice example:
hi ! what expression or grammar would we use to indicate the number of times we do sth until we get what we want?
some thing like : I did it so much that...
or : I do it as much to get what i want
14:52
> initials written in capital letters, usually with no full stops. Here are a few familiar examples:

BBC
British Broadcasting Corporation
ICI
Imperial Chemical Industries
FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
RSPCA
Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
NATO
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
TUC
Trades Union Congress
EL&U
SO
SE
UK
GB
USA
PRC
USSR
EU
English (chat).
The Exchange.
> (Note that a few of these were formerly written with full stops, such as R.S.P.C.A., but this tiresome and unnecessary practice is now obsolete.)
Britain.
America.
Russia or the Soviet Union.
Ha! Sweet! I can finally stop using those damned dots!
14:55
Europe or the Union.
I don't need any dots either.
@MattE.Эллен I remember Kit Z. Fox removed the periods from one of my posts once. I decided to expand it out from an abbreviation into the full words in a subsequent edit (which was not made for that sole purpose).
That's weird.
@parvin do you mean "nagging"?
@Tonepoet fair enough.

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