English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

1:59 AM

@Monad It's normally a bad idea, for the reason you mentioned.

But you'd have to provide specific examples.

tchrist

@Robusto youtube.com/watch?v=yKNMYhbnbdU

It's like all those little kiddy gadgets advertised on the backs of old comics.

He's been going to Japan, obviously, and finds the gadget culture there hilarious.

Robusto

3:40 AM

@tchrist ¡Qué maravilla!

tchrist

He's encantado by the whole thing. I see he has another video about it.

Robusto

And further proof that Japan is weirder than you can imagine.

tchrist

I've been there a couple times. It's still weird to me, more so because of that perhaps.

Robusto

I guess the balloon thing was a form of Jenga.

tchrist

Essentially.

The beer things were curious.

First, a can-pourer that allows you to adjust the foam.

Then, instant fake beer for kiddos.

Robusto

3:44 AM

Yeah, I thought the pourer was kind of ingenious ... if that's what you want.

tchrist

I'm not above drinking beer from a can, but in practice nearly never do.

And that doesn't mean I pour it in a glass.

I mean that I seldom bother with that sort of beer.

You know, I cannot for the life of me remember when last I had a beer. It may have been last January.

Robusto

I always drink beer from a glass. It's meant to be poured.

tchrist

I detested beer in high school. I outgrew that in college. But it's not something I often seek out.

We have plenty of local microbreweries if I want something tasty, and with body.

Robusto

Yeah, the country has finally discovered good beer.

We have some excellent microbreweries down here.

tchrist

A long time ago, back before microbreweries became legal, I used to say I'd only drink beer imported from the British Isles or Belgium.

It was the only beer that wasn't like an old lady screws.

Robusto

3:52 AM

Mass-market beer is swill.

tchrist

The Rockies have good microbreweries, from Laramie on down at least.

Looked like Casper has theirs too when I was up for the eclipse.

Robusto

Ah, how was it? I tried to get lodgings for that back in February. Turns out I should have tried a year ago or more.

tchrist

Show me an example of mass-anything that isn't crap. Maybe it can happen, I dunno.

Robusto

Some guys from my bike club booked a year in advance and they made it.

Luckily I've already seen one. Back in Boston in 1991.

tchrist

It was the only hyped experience over the past few decades that not only didn't disappoint, it outperformed the hype.

Robusto

3:56 AM

It's kind of alarming, actually, as I recall. I put me strongly in touch with something not only outside myself, but outside of all humanity.

tchrist

I drove up to Casper the day before (4h) and parked the station-wagon in the Walmart parking lot, then went up on the top of Casper Mountain facing west very early. It was incredible. I can't imagine all the poor folks stuck in town to watch it.

Aug 22 at 21:37, by tchrist

You may hear about the star-studded black bowl with a 360° sunset or even see pictures, but nothing in the world prepares you for the wrath-of-God–sized wall of darkness that comes rushing at you from out of the west at more than twice the speed of sound as if it were some silent shockwave from a dinosaur-extinction event, followed by an impossibly black sun that you can look at with your bare eye like some hole torn from space itself which leads to uttermost annihilation.

Robusto

What I did was I didn't look directly at the eclipse, or if so only a little, but I watched the entire sky around it. Which was magnificent.

tchrist

I had binoculars.

Robusto

@tchrist Yeah, that's a pretty fair description.

tchrist

For before totality.

Robusto

3:59 AM

I was at someone's house and most of the people were chit-chatting away until suddenly it came over all of us and shut everyone up.

tchrist

The folks hoodwinked into thinking that 90% or 97% is good enough have no idea. It’s just a "oh was that a thing?". Totality is OMFG IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD!!!

Robusto

It had a terrible beauty.

tchrist

It was interesting to be out in the wild. A bat passed before my eyes right after totality began.

Robusto

Speaking of bats, a friend once took me at dusk out to a hillside in South Dakota where he cast a fake lure (no hooks) into a cloud of swirling bats to see if they'd "hit" it. Their echo location is so good that they'd start to make for the lure and then veer off because they could tell it wasn't a real insect.

tchrist

Go ahead, ask me what phone I have. :)

Robusto

4:03 AM

I'm guessing a Nikon SLR phone.

tchrist

Aye.

810

300mm

Robusto

Mm-hmm. Makes sense.

tchrist

Just a snapshot. Was too busy observing the world.

Robusto

That's my problem with photography in a nutshell.

I can either be in the moment or behind a viewfinder. Not both.

tchrist

Yeah, it takes you out of being there.

Robusto

4:05 AM

Can you even imagine how many pointless selfies have been taken? Trillions, I'm sure.

"And here's me outside a McDonald's in Fort Wayne ..."

tchrist

Pointless selfie is a tautology.

Robusto

True.

tchrist

Surely my non-me photos outnumber my me photos by more than five orders of magnitude.

Robusto

When my kids were born I toyed with the idea of videotaping the event, but decided I wanted to be there for it. It was a good choice. I can truly say it was the most stunning event of my life. I'd have missed it from behind a viewfinder.

tchrist

Never been so self-absorbed.

And yes, I was struggling with the declension on those.

Too many C-sections lately in my family. Not a pretty picture.

Robusto

4:09 AM

Well ... yeah.

There's nothing really "pretty" about birth. It's actually pretty awful. Yet it's utterly amazing.

It's a force of nature, like an eclipse, just on a more personal scale.

tchrist

Terrifying.

Robusto

Hmm, what would you use for "doorstep" in Spanish? Umbral or escalón de entrada?

tchrist

You know, I had no idea what you meant till I read the Spanish. :)

Robusto

As in "Dos pajaritos se estaban sentando en mi escalón de entrada."

You haven't heard doorstep before?

tchrist

It would depend on whether I had a ramada. :)

I'd do the other but I guess I'd wait to see what local preference is.

Well, I first read doorstop till I hit the Spanish. That's why I didn't know what you meant.

I had read it too fast and gotten the wrong word.

You don't need a ramada to shade your umbral. It just sounds nicer that way. :)

These are the kinds of words that vary pretty wildly in usage-preference across the Spanish-speaking world.

I only used escalón in Spain.

Perhaps in some places they only use umbral. I imagine anybody would know either word.

Robusto

4:20 AM

@tchrist Ah.

Funny thing, I typed "doorstop" and corrected it.

tchrist

> 4. m. Constr. Pieza que se atraviesa en lo alto de un vano para sostener el muro que hay encima.

Robusto

@tchrist So it wouldn't be like "Oh, nobody calls it 'umbral' ..."

tchrist

Nobody within ten yards of me.

I could ask the HOA gardener what he'd use. He's a monolingual Mexican. Wife and kids have some English, but he really doesn't.

Robusto

What is vano, like a lintel?

tchrist

> En una estructura de construcción, distancia libre entre dos soportes y, en un puente, espacio libre entre dos pilas o entre dos estribos consecutivos.

Robusto

4:23 AM

So ... a lintel.

tchrist

I wonder if it's just the space or the support-beam.

Robusto

Hmm, good question.

tchrist

"espacio libre"

Robusto

Sí.

Yet free space may be a design element, but it's not a structural element.

tchrist

That 4th definition for umbral seems almost more like a lintel.

oh haha

> Pieza horizontal superior de puertas, ventanas y otros huecos, apoyada en sus extremos sobre las jambas y destinada a soportar cargas.

That’s a dintel.

With a d- not an l-.

Robusto

4:27 AM

I'm not getting the joke.

tchrist

It's derived from lintel.

> Lindel o dintel de puertas y ventanas.

Robusto

Oh!

tchrist

It's funny because I had thought it the same word, and it's usually the other one.

Ours is from French, which like the Spanish is from the Vulgar Latin, *limitellus.

It's masculine.

Robusto

Human languages can be so different, yet the similarities can be remarkable. Imagine the language of an alien species, how utterly foreign it would be. I recall a short story by Ursula LeGuin about ants that wrote poetry in chemical markers. Obviously she had that same thought.

Færd

@tchrist there's something life-affirming about having fascinating experiences.

tchrist

4:30 AM

I presume that was originally a diminutive suffix in Latin.

Robusto

Here's the story.

tchrist

Thanks!

Robusto

OK, maybe not poetry. But language.

Færd

I wonder how easier Spanish is going to be for me after having mastered French

Robusto

@Færd It's been amazingly easy for me. It all just kind of makes sense somehow. Not sure why.

Færd

4:33 AM

Or learnt some French.

Robusto

Of course, I have only German and Japanese to compare it to, which are much harder.

Færd

@Robusto which Roman languages did you know before starting to learn Spanish?

@Færd None.

@Færd Pretty easy.

4:34 AM

Well, I was an altar boy who had to serve the Latin mass, if that counts.

tchrist

The map is the smoke plume. It's going west not east. Odd.

Well, north.

Robusto

What are the green dots supposed to be?

tchrist

I guess it can't get over the mountains.

airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=topics.smoke_wildfires

Færd

I fret mostly about the grammar the tenses articles etc

Robusto

It will take some rain to get rid of it, likely.

tchrist

4:36 AM

@Færd It's essentially the same grammar. Spanish still uses tenses in everyday speech that in French are now only "literary".

Robusto

@Færd See, the thing is, I have a rather large vocabulary in English, so when I come across a Spanish word I don't know it's even odds I can deduce its meaning from the Latin root.

Færd

@tchrist thank goodness

@Robusto yes that's a huge advantage you have

tchrist

Some of the irregulars have the same in the future and conditional.

Robusto

@Færd What is your native tongue?

Færd

Farsi

tchrist

4:38 AM

And the "stem-changing verbs" do that in Spanish, too, so viene and tiene.

French and Spanish both have the e > ie thing that Italian doesn't.

Neither does Portuguese.

Robusto

@Færd Is that related to any Indo-European languages?

tchrist

Yes.

It is one.

Robusto

I mean what are some others that are close?

tchrist

In theory, this makes it easier for him that if he were Chinese. In practice, it's been a long time.

Færd

I guess I somewhat jumped the vocabulary hurdle with English

tchrist

4:39 AM

Tocharian. :)

Færd

@Robusto oh it hasn't helped much with learning Roman languages or English or anything but Arabic really

Ironically

tchrist

Robusto

@tchrist When I was learning Japanese it was fairly easy, yet there was no help from any other language I was acquainted with. Compared with it, German might as well have been English.

@Færd Ah, so it's kind of "neighborly" with Arabic?

tchrist

No.

Færd

Not linguistically

tchrist

4:41 AM

Arabic is a Semitic tongue.

Robusto

BTW, @tchrist, I don't know if you saw this. I was rather proud of it:

Dec 8 at 2:46, by Robusto

Word of the day: sargasm n The emotional and physical release that comes with having made a particularly fine display of mordant wit.

tchrist

But just as English is Germanic with a whole lot of Latin/Romance imports, and Rumanian is Romance with a whole lot of Slavic imports, I gather that Persian is Indo-European with a whole lot of Arabic imports. I know nothing.

Færd

@Robusto But we have a lot of Arabic words. And I was raised in a pretty religious family with a lot of exposure to Arabic so

tchrist

Persian is on the Indic branch, low.

Not the European branch.

Færd

@tchrist that's quite true

Robusto

4:43 AM

One could wish that diagram to be a little higher resolution.

tchrist

Oh let me find one.

There.

Click twice.

Robusto

Mucho mejor.

Færd

You certainly come off as an illiterate using the speech detection facility in a chat like this

Robusto

@Færd What speech detection facility?

Færd

Siri Etc

I've put my phone on speaker phone

tchrist

4:47 AM

hahahahahahahaha

Færd

Anyway I'm looking forward to embarking on Spanish someday

Robusto

@Færd My current class has an Iranian woman in it, name of Simin.

She's actually pretty good at it.

Her pronunciation is better than most of the Americans'.

Færd

I guess I could be too then

@Robusto good point

I guess for Farsi speaker Spanish pronunciation is much easier than French or English

Robusto

I really don't understand why people have to make a foreign language conform to their own phonemic system.

Færd

It's not an intentional propensity you can't help

It

tchrist

4:51 AM

theguardian.com/education/gallery/2015/jan/23/…

Robusto

For me pronunciation has always been the easy part. Languages have their own music, if you know what I mean.

Once you can hear the music, the rest is straightforward.

tchrist

It's impossible for English monoglots to understand how two people speaking different languages could ever understand each other much, like Danish and Swedish, or Spanish and Italian.

Robusto

@tchrist Danish, I understand, is one of the hardest European languages to learn.

tchrist

Because the English monoglot can listen to no other language and make as much out of it as pairs like those.

Færd

@Robusto Of course

tchrist

4:54 AM

Supposedly Danes can understand spoken Norwegian but not so much the other way around. It's often that way with Portuguese and Spanish, kinda.

Færd

They say that linguistic ability doesn't depend on musical perception but I think learning good pronunciation does

Robusto

@tchrist I am Strava buddies with a Brazilian woman who lives in Manhattan. I can sometimes fathom her Portuguese comments by running them through my Spanish filter, but just as often I don't get them at all.

Færd

Another factor is that you can preserve your identity bye perpetuating your original accent into the new language you're learning

Robusto

Luckily she always has the English there.

Færd

So it could be a psychological thing two

Robusto

4:59 AM

tchrist

@Færd Oh? How come?

@Robusto You can't read the Portuguese?

Færd

@tchrist it just feels that way

Robusto

@tchrist Sometimes I can. Sometimes I don't get it.

Færd

For starters the Spanish are is the same as ours

R. R. You stupid machine

Robusto

You can up-arrow to edit. See, like that! And again!

tchrist

5:00 AM

> Sensación térmica. Mis intentos de pedalear en el hielo y en la nieva.

Færd

Yeah but the whole point of this facility is not to switch between the keyboard and the microphone

Otherwise it's useless

Robusto

Yeah, "Mis intentos de pedalear en el hielo y en la nieva." is obvious.

tchrist

"As minhas" is really "las mías" but you don't say it that way in Spanish any longer.

Robusto

But it's not always that easy. I just pulled the first one up.

Færd

How does Spanish compare with English regarding the number and nature of vowels

tchrist

5:02 AM

hahahhaahhha

Spanish has 5 vowels.

Next question? :)

Færd

see

tchrist

There are just five vocalic phonemes, and they don't reduce.

Robusto

So that is one thing I find odd, is that Spanish and Portuguese have to say "in the ice and in the snow" instead of "in the ice and snow" ... no yoking them together.

Færd

That's another reason why I felt Spanish pronunciation would be easier for us

tchrist

@Robusto The article would be the wrong gender.

But it happens.

You just use the first one.

Robusto

5:04 AM

@tchrist They reduce if you get, say, two of the same ones together, like la araña ...

tchrist

Mi hijo.

That's not reduction.

It's the same vowel.

It merely fuses.

Reduction makes it a different vowel.

Robusto

OK, wrong word choice.

tchrist

La acción

All those have just one spoken vowel where two are written.

Robusto

Speaking of reduction, that is one of my favorite cooking processes. ^_^

Færd

You have the chemists taste

tchrist

5:06 AM

@Færd How many vowels does Farsi have?

Færd

@tchrist should I count diphthongs to

tchrist

Spanish vowels also don’t become diphthongs at the ends of words.

Robusto

Anyone ever made bordelaise sauce? It's one of my all-time favorites.

Takes all morning to make, but it's worth the effort.

tchrist

@Færd Spanish has phonemic diphthongs, but I wasn't counting those. /w/ or /j/ can be to either side of any of the main vowels that isn't the one corresponding to the glide.

Færd

I never cook unless I have to but I admire the enthusiasm in those who love to do it

tchrist

5:08 AM

Yo is pronounced /jo/ but voy is pronounced /boj/, basically.

Robusto

@Færd It's very calming. And best of all, you wind up not eating very much.

tchrist

Je vais, j’irai. Yo voy, yo iré.

Robusto

@tchrist: Does the tilde over the vowel in Portuguese act like a dieresis? Is that its function.

Færd

Because you want to feed it to others?

tchrist

@Robusto No.

Robusto

5:08 AM

What then?

tchrist

It damn it you don't speak French.

It makes it a nasal vowel.

Robusto

Ah.

Færd

@tchrist off the top of my head I'm guessing 6 main vowels and some death songs

ha ha diphthongs

Robusto

I don't speak French, but I can understand a fair bit of written French.

tchrist

então is pronounced with a nasal in both syllables.

Robusto

5:11 AM

Same with natação I guess. What does the cedilla do? Same thing as French?

Færd

Persian phonology

The Persian language has six vowel phonemes and twenty-three consonant phonemes. It features contrastive stress and syllable-final consonant clusters. == Vowels == Word-final /o/ is rare except for تو‎ ту /to/ ('you' [singular]), loanwords (mostly of Arabic origin), and proper and common nouns of foreign origin, and word-final /æ/ is very rare in Iranian Persian, an exception being نه‎ на /næ/ ('no'). The word-final /æ/ in Early New Persian mostly shifted to /e/ in contemporary Iranian Persian (often romanized as ⟨eh⟩, meaning [e] is also an allophone of /æ/ in word-final position in contemporary...

tchrist

@Robusto Yes, the cedilla makes it /s/. It originated in Old Spanish.

With a nasal vowel, you have to move air up through your nose. If pinching off your nose doesn't stop the sound completely, you're doing it wrong.

Robusto

@Færd One advantage non-English speakers have is that there are some obvious languages to learn, like English itself. English speakers are unlikely to learn Farsi unless they work for the State Department or have Iranian relatives or what have you.

tchrist

ão sounds a bit like a whiny ouch without the ch.

The o becomes a u.

Robusto

So you close off the mouth and force the sound entirely through the nose?

Færd

5:16 AM

@Robusto true and lucky those who are put to learn those foreign languages from an early age

tchrist

@Robusto You don't exactly close off your mouth. But you raise the back of your tongue.

Robusto

Ah.

Yeah, I can stop the sound by pinching my nose.

Cool.

tchrist

Spanish vowels are slightly phonetically nasalized before a written nasal, but it is not phonemic like in Portuguese.

There are minimal pairs. lá (meaning allí, allá) versus lã (meaning laña).

Robusto

@tchrist My profesora nasalizes terminal /n/ all the time.

tchrist

You're "supposed" to.

Robusto

5:19 AM

I've been trying to remember to ape her.

tchrist

The "ng" sound is pretty common there.

Robusto

Japanese does it too, oddly enough.

tchrist

It happens in non-terminals too.

Robusto

It's the only syllable that doesn't "end" in a vowel.

tchrist

entonces has it twice.

You do this without noticing it.

Robusto

5:20 AM

Yeah. It's one of the few things in the language that I have to force.

tchrist

Well.

It's easier for me because I'm not a seseo speaker.

So the theta sound in entonces seems to have some regressive assimilation that helps nasalize the earlier /o/ a bit.

Færd

Does English have a nasal vowel? ŋ?

Not a vowel I guess.

tchrist

It has syllabic consonants, like in rhythm or botton.

Robusto

@Færd Sort of. The -ng digraph.

tchrist

Rhythm has two syllables.

The second one's syllabic nucleus is the /m/

Færd

5:24 AM

I've known the second one by the name of nasal flap.

tchrist

Trying to get people to say Spanish pan right it hard. Without a vowel following it, there isn't really much of an actual /n/ there because it's completely nasalized into the vowel.

Robusto

OK, I have to go now. Got a longish ride in the morning. 43 miles. Good night, all.

Færd

And more of a n sound really.

tchrist

Good night!

Færd

good night

skullpatrol

8:52 AM

Winter Bash 2017 countdown link.

Feeds

10:16 AM

0

Q: Word for future income that will no longer come

Let's say I rent a property for $1,000 a month. If it is now June, my expected income thru the end of the year is $6,000. But the contract will end prematurely at the end of September. Which means that three months of the rest of the year, which could have earned me $3,000, will not. What is t...

SmokeDetector

1:26 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer, few unique characters in answer: Is "irresoluteoscillating" a word? Strange result from Thesaurus.com by charlie on english.SE

Educ

3:12 PM

Hell, folks!

MetaEd

@Educ Hell to you too.

Educ

@MetaEd Can you do me a favor please?

MetaEd

@Educ What's that?

Educ

3:41 PM

please could you correct my sentence

"Since you are not my professor or exam to me therefore i can speak with any language i want"

MetaEd

@Educ What does it mean, "or exam to me"?

Educ

this person isn't exam for me

that's why i said to me

MetaEd

@Educ An exam is an examination, a test. I am sorry I do not understand how a person can be an exam.

Educ

i will give you the context

i talked with him in english and we are studying french class and he told me are we studying french studies ?

so i would like to reply him by

that he is not like exam or test that i should speak in french

or professor of french

so the two things where i should speak in french are : with professor and with paper of exam

i communicate with paper by writing in french

do you see my point

Mitch

4:04 PM

@Educ Can you give the original so that we can attempt to translate it? 'exam to me' makes no sense in English. Maybe you're thinking of a very different meaning for 'exam'.

MetaEd

@Educ Ok, I understand. Next question: what tone do you want? It seems to be a rebuke. Do you want it to be gentle, or blunt?

Educ

blunt

and aggressive

MetaEd

Gotcha. Instead of "or exam to me", I would write "and this is not an exam". Then to keep it blunt, I would go as short and direct as possible. My rewrite would be: "You are not my professor, and this is not an exam, so I can use any language I want."

Educ

@MetaEd Thanks so much

Gigili

@Mitch What's the very different meaning of exam?

Educ

4:18 PM

@MetaEd he told me he just kidding with me and i told him it's okay :)

MetaEd

@Educ I'm glad. I was feeling like an accomplice to a shaming.

Educ

@MetaEd Thank you again :)

Mitch

@Gigili I don't know, like maybe a false friend or sound alike. That's why I asked. But @MetaEd seemed to have figured out the right interpretation.

Tonepoet

5:26 PM

My Blackberry Is Not Working! - The One Ronnie, Preview - BBC One

►

Cerberus

5:36 PM

Nice.

Feeds

6:18 PM

1

Q: To make malice overly clear (in Hollywood)

This is something that has bothered me for a while and probably the answer is something really simple. Nevertheless. In their depiction of evil, mainstream Hollywood films often humanize their villains. They often offer the audience some explanation of why a person turned to his/her evil ways (so...

single-word-requests phrase-requests idiom-requests expression-requests

Feeds

9:32 PM

0

Q: Word that means willing to accept whatever is given, not being forthright to tell someone what to do, even if nothing is given

I am looking for a word that means "Word that means willing to accept whatever is given, not being forthright to tell someone what to do, aeven if nothing is given" It is an adjective. Example "I'm having trouble thinking of a new conversational topic today. We've spoken for hours. I should...

single-word-requests

skullpatrol

9:42 PM

You know it's cold when.

Cerberus

11:34 PM

Cute!

skullpatrol

11:54 PM

Less than a day before HATS!!!

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…