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tchrist
tchrist
00:00
@Cerberus Well, it's the same ultimate root in incanous as in canescent < canescens < canesco, but I don't know whether that's the same morpheme as we find in candidus. I think so.
@Cerberus You may be thinking of molt as an apocopation of Italian molto for much/very? Apparently there were two spellings in Latin: multa, mulcta with the -c-.
Cerberus
Cerberus
@tchrist Infinitives are a single category. However! Infinitives can be used actively and passively in English, which is rather interesting. In a discussion, which took place a while ago, we found out that the passive use is a remnant of the English passive infinitive!
@tchrist Et qu'est-ce qu'il disait?
tchrist
tchrist
multa as a noun and multar as the corresponding verb are both everyday words in both Spanish and Portuguese. The French has the -c- version, and gave that to us.
Cerberus
Cerberus
@tchrist I think so too.
@tchrist Hmm then perhaps I saw the -ct- spelling in Latin, it is possible.
tchrist
tchrist
@Cerberus Let me find it in the scroll-back. He taught me something I hadn't known.
Dec 24 at 20:53, by Stéphane Gimenez
Good try but it's tricky, it has to be an intrinsic property of the book. It would work if it meant "a book made to be sewn/written"
For the à + infinitif use.
I wonder whether The Lady’s Not For Burning was ever translated into French. :)
Valentin Drozdov
Valentin Drozdov
@tchrist , @trentcl said:
Phonemically, /aɪ/ and /ɑ/ both exist but *are essentially unrelated sounds*
You leave this without a comment for some reason.
tchrist
tchrist
00:07
@Cerberus John Lawler recently taught me something interesting about infinitives use as noun phrases. Let me find that.
@ValentinDrozdov Those are not sounds that people say. Those are phonemes that people hear, and it's meaningless is what I'm telling you. Go spend time reading and listening the Sound Comparisons site. You will quickly realize that pretending that one way of saying anything is THE way is a dirty lie.
Valentin Drozdov
Valentin Drozdov
@tchrist, trentcl also said phonemically
he didn't mean "square brackets"
tchrist
tchrist
> The for is only necessary at the beginning of a sentence, with an infinitive subject clause:

For him to leave soon would be a good idea.
*Him to leave soon would be a good idea.
@ValentinDrozdov Just plain wrong. Oh well.
Valentin Drozdov
Valentin Drozdov
@tchrist me or him?
tchrist
tchrist
Go listen to people actually talking.
Stop obsessing over something just because Russian doesn't have it.
There is no English dialect that supports both /a/ and /ɑ/
Valentin Drozdov
Valentin Drozdov
@tchrist I suppose he meant /a/ writing /ɑ/
Mitch
Mitch
00:12
I don't know.
Cerberus
Cerberus
@tchrist Hmm that sounds appropriate.
Mitch
Mitch
It's all a charade
tchrist
tchrist
What you're doing right now is whinging about how you heard this one person say /r/ with [r] and another said /r/ as [ɾ] and another as [ɹ] and another as [ɻ] and another as [ɻʷ].
And I'm really tired of it.
Cerberus
Cerberus
Now, now.
tchrist
tchrist
So I will no longer hear further inquiries about it. If you can troll others into useless hours of debating meaningless angels dancing on the heads of pins, go for it. But I'm out.
And then you have people not saying it has anything.
Forget it.
You're completely missed the point.
Mitch
Mitch
00:15
Was it ever pinned down so to speak what the rough ranges of number of angels?
Oh on the head of a pin!
Cerberus
Cerberus
You can just stop participating in the discussion without being so accusatory about it.
Mitch
Mitch
I was thinking a needle
Valentin Drozdov
Valentin Drozdov
@tchrist sad you think it's trolling. I don't know why you take this close to heart when I'm even writing less text that you.
Mitch
Mitch
That's just crazy
At least one on a pin
Cerberus
Cerberus
A thousand?
Mitch
Mitch
00:15
Tiny feet
Valentin Drozdov
Valentin Drozdov
@tchrist I just try to go close to the questions, but you just want me to agree with your point.
Mitch
Mitch
A thousand sounds like a lot
In for a penny in for a thousand pairs of tiny feet
Wait does that mean angels and carries are related?
If so then who are related to leprechauns?
Cherubs?
'Cherubs' sounds like a good name for a chocolate thing.
I'd eat it
Maybe one
Two if they're small
 
1 hour later…
user325499
01:35
So what did I miss?
user325499
Ooh a drama without Ivan?
user325499
Now, that's not right.
user325499
Is it just me or is the user Cerberus a very good arbitrator in writing?
user325499
Whatever.
user325499
Girlfriend left me so I am bored... Don't blame me.
user325499
01:39
But good riddance... just trying to be positive.
tchrist
tchrist
Can't you just look in a mirror?
@Ivan You're a girl with a boy's name, right? :)
user325499
Of course I can. Why do you say that?
user325499
Oh
user325499
Um
user325499
No?
tchrist
tchrist
01:45
Your picture looks chicky.
user325499
Thanks.
user325499
Well, I may or may not be a chick.
user325499
I'd rather not tell.
tchrist
tchrist
Your picture is so cute everybody must be nice to you.
user325499
The whole anime genre is cute.
Feeds
Feeds
01:51
0
Q: Would you call this a plaque, or would you use another word?

ktm5124This sculpture has a plate accompanying it giving a description of the subject. The title is "Statue of Pan", and then it goes on to describe a woodland deity. What would you call this plate? Would you call it a plaque? That's my first guess, but I think it might be wrong, as the writing is not e...

single-word-requests word-usage
tchrist
tchrist
Big-eyed neoteny.
Whiskers on kittens.
Cerberus
Cerberus
@Ivan Oh, huh?
@Ivan doesn't blame you
That sucks. Oh, girlffriends—who needs 'em!
Diego Well
Diego Well
02:43
Como aprender Inglês?
Valentin Drozdov
Valentin Drozdov
02:57
We have a joke book cover in Russian Internets from a Russian hacker Kris Kaspersky
"How to drink everyday, smoke, have sex with whoever, stop worrying and appeal to people"
(http://mk-com.ru/kanficekcn/image850160)
tchrist
tchrist
03:23
@DiegoWell E como aprender português? :)
Cerberus
Cerberus
03:55
@ValentinDrozdov Very appropriate.
 
2 hours later…
SmokeDetector
SmokeDetector
06:09
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword with email in body: what do i call my 2nd SO? by 22tango2 on english.SE
Feeds
Feeds
06:23
1
Q: What is the term for both sided thinking?

Tammy TI see both sides in everything. What would one call this type of thinking?

single-word-requests word-usage
Flonne Lightberry
Flonne Lightberry
06:37
Merry Christmas everybody! and don't forget later New Year celebration! ;)
The phonemes chart looks interesting, .. is now digesting it while sometimes getting hiccup and spasm due to its sheer difficulty...
Feeds
Feeds
0
Q: What's the Germanic word for 'notification'?

E.GroegDutch, German and many other Germanic languages have their own native word for 'notification'. Only English uses the Latinate variant. I noticed that it doesn't have a Germanic synonym (or it does?).

single-word-requests
 
2 hours later…
Educ
Educ
08:32
Good morning
 
4 hours later…
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
12:09
Should one use a comma after 211 in the address "211 Prospekt Lenina, Tomsk"?
 
1 hour later…
Davo
Davo
13:21
@CowperKettle No.
Gary
Gary
"Most authorities, including The Associated Press Stylebook and The Chicago Manual of Style, recommend a comma after the first digit of a four-digit number. The exceptions include years, page numbers, and street addresses." thepunctuationguide.com/comma.html - so no comma as Davo said
actually that's completely irrelevant on second reading, but yes anyway no comma after a door number.
Feeds
Feeds
13:36
0
Q: What do you call "something" used to carry out a transaction?

Rakesha ShastriFor further reference, i'll explain my scenario. People with exposure to programming would find it easier to help. I am using an object(read "something") which takes a payload and posts a request(read "transaction"). So i need to name this object appropriately to describe what it is doing.

single-word-requests
 
2 hours later…
Feeds
Feeds
15:19
0
Q: What is the opposite of a standfirst?

James FenwickA standfirst is: an introductory paragraph in an article, printed in larger or bolder type or in capitals, which summarizes the article Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition. Retrieved December 28, 2017 from Dictionary.com website http://www.dictionary.com/browse/s...

single-word-requests nouns terminology antonyms
Feeds
Feeds
16:18
0
Q: What does board mean here?

shenkwen Everything at Apple can be best understood through the lens of designing. Whether it’s designing the look and feel of the user experience, or the industrial design, or the system design, and even things like how the boards were laid out. I was reading this quote and don't understand wh...

single-word-requests word-usage
 
2 hours later…
tchrist
tchrist
17:51
> Lithe was sometimes 3 months long, because the intercalary lunar month was inserted between them, and also called Lithe. These 90 day Lithetides seem to have been the pinnacle of the Anglo-saxon festival year.
Leap months? They had leap months?
The months of Lithe and Yule were both normally 60 days.
Germanic calendar
The Germanic calendars were the regional calendars used amongst the early Germanic peoples, prior to the adoption of the Julian calendar in the Early Middle Ages. The Germanic peoples had names for the months which varied by region and dialect, which were later replaced with local adaptations of the Roman month names. Records of Old English and Old High German month names date to the 8th and 9th centuries, respectively. Old Norse month names are attested from the 13th century. Like most pre-modern calendars, the reckoning used in early Germanic culture was likely lunisolar. As an example, the Runic...
The Germanic peoples existed outside history for so long.
We have only a few glimmers of them from two thousand years ago, all written by Roman outsiders.
They were in the most literal possible sense, prehistoric peoples.
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
18:08
So, what's a generic term for objects that do what an umbrella does? Shading? Covering? Neither sound right.
tchrist
tchrist
18:22
hm
Throw shade? :)
just kidding
I'm not being inspired here.
Mitch
Mitch
19:04
@tchrist lost tribes of israel
why didn't you remark on festival years? I want to party with those guys! It goes all year!
@tchrist they were like the native americans
@tchrist I always find 'prehistoric' to be the wrong word. they surely had lots of history, just not written down. Is 'preliterate' so bad?
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
I've wondered where the Germans came from. One gets the impression they just "appeared". They certainly weren't very visible during Roman times, or before.
Perhaps covered by the general contemptuous term "barbarian".
In any case, it's not clear why they ended up building one of the world's most advanced civilizations as Europe emerged from the Dark Ages.
tchrist
tchrist
@FaheemMitha They did? :)
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@tchrist I think so. I realise opinions differ.
Certain parts of the West seem particularly (and unreasonably) obsessed with one particular 12 year period.
tchrist
tchrist
19:20
Muslim (well, Moorish) Iberia was pretty advanced at the time compared with say the Holy Roman Empire or Scandinavia, whether in Moorish Córdoba or in Christian Toledo. Thomas Cahill argues that the Celtic monks in How The Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe contributed a great deal of recovery of classical civilization.
And those weren't very German, although the Christian monarchs of Iberia were descended from the Visigoths.
Maybe we can call them Germanic, but not many folks do. There's some linguistic remnants in places nobody thinks of. French guerre and Spanish guerra for English war have the same Germanic origin.
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@tchrist I don't really know who the Germans were. Some tribes from somewhere, apparently.
Though it seems they pre-dated Rome. At least Classical Rome.
tchrist
tchrist
19:47
britannica.com/topic/Germanic-peoples
> The origins of the Germanic peoples are obscure. During the late Bronze Age, they are believed to have inhabited southern Sweden, the Danish peninsula, and northern Germany between the Ems River on the west, the Oder River on the east, and the Harz Mountains on the south.
Also en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_peoples#Origins
So it seems that we're all really Swedes.
More importantly, the group spread south from Scandinavia into Germania, not the other way around.
I did not know that.
How the Irish Saved Civilization
How The Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe is a non-fiction historical book written by Thomas Cahill. Cahill argues a case for the Irish people's critical role in preserving Western Civilization from utter destruction by the Huns and the Germanic tribes (Visigoths, Franks, Angles, Saxons, Ostrogoths, etc.). The book retells the story from the collapse of the Roman Empire and the pivotal role played by members of the clergy at the time. A particular focus is placed upon Saint Patrick and retells his early struggles...
So much lost to prehistory all because nobody wrote stuff down.
Huns
The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia between the 4th century AD and the 6th century AD. According to European tradition, they were first reported living east of the Volga River, in an area that was part of Scythia at the time; the Huns' arrival is associated with the migration westward of a Scythian people, the Alans. By 370 AD, the Huns had arrived on the Volga, and by 430 the Huns had established a vast, if short-lived, dominion in Europe. In the 18th century, the French scholar Joseph de Guignes became the first to propose a link between...
Who were the Huns? Where did they come from?
Who were the Germanic tribes? Where did they come from?
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@tchrist Yes, that's what I was wondering.
tchrist
tchrist
I suppose you can ask the same of the Mongols, but I believe in that case the Chinese may well have written something down about them.
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
It's a shame they didn't all emulate Adrian Mole.
Dear Diary, today I think we'll go South and harass Rome.
@tchrist We?
tchrist
tchrist
> The Donghu are mentioned by Sima Qian as already existing in Inner Mongolia north of Yan in 699–632 BCE along with the Shanrong. Mentions in the Yi Zhou Shu ("Lost Book of Zhou") and the Classic of Mountains and Seas indicate the Donghu were also active during the Shang dynasty (1600–1046 BCE).
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@tchrist Props to the Chinese.
tchrist
tchrist
19:55
@FaheemMitha Rutabagas? :)
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@tchrist Rutabagas?
You're a cabbage?
tchrist
tchrist
Rutabaga
The rutabaga (from an old Swedish dialectal word), swede (from Swedish turnip), or neep (Brassica napobrassica, or Brassica napus var. napobrassica, or Brassica napus subsp. rapifera) is a root vegetable that originated as a cross between the cabbage and the turnip. The roots are prepared for human consumption in a variety of ways, and the leaves can be eaten as a leaf vegetable. The roots and tops are also used as winter feed for livestock, when they may be fed directly, or by allowing the animals to forage the plants in the field. Various European countries have a tradition of carving them into...
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@tchrist Are you trying to say you're Swedish?
tchrist
tchrist
@FaheemMitha Hardly. :)
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@tchrist Well, color me confused, then.
tchrist
tchrist
19:57
But the English are descended from a mix of Celtic, Roman, Viking, Jute-Frisian-Anglo-Saxon stock.
And the second groupings are both Germanic.
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@tchrist Yes, they're all mongrels.
tchrist
tchrist
I thought we were done talking about the mongols. :)
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@tchrist Heh
Still not understanding the Rutabaga reference.
tchrist
tchrist
Oh.
@FaheemMitha The Brits often use swedes as the name of the vegetable that Americans always call rutabagas only.
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@tchrist Ah
Though you aren't actually British, right?
Feeds
Feeds
20:17
0
Q: term/short explanation to convey internet search conundrum?

Italian PhilosopherGoogle (or other search engines) are pretty magical to find information, by inferring what you probably meant to ask. In some cases though, the very high popularity of one meaning of a particular search term kinda occults everything around it. A basic search for U2 will probably return tons of ...

single-word-requests phrase-requests
user325499
20:33
@Cerberus exactly! we don't need girlfriends. I'm going to go skiing in this beautiful weather!
user325499
eh, but as soon as I start skiing my life will again be downhill from there if yanno what I mean...
user325499
people don't know English, I was discussing coalesced yod with someone and no one around me knew what it was. I feel like I'm too well read of a person.
user325499
@Mitch oh, so you are alive. I was wondering where the joker of this chat went
user325499
and I only kid, don't take me seriously...
user325499
@Cerberus nothing, a doggo can't understand what I meant anyway.
user325499
20:40
time to get back to my nordic skiing friends
Trey
Trey
21:21
is "pronto" used in American english?
Robusto
Robusto
21:32
@Trey Yes. Do it pronto (meaning right now).
@tchrist When I was one of "those kids" we always just called it grass, except when using the modifier "killer" which combos with "killer weed." Never "killer grass" or "killer pot." Pot was understood but little used, avoided perhaps because outsiders referred to us as "potheads." Sometimes, aiming for a bit more refinement, someone would use the affectation herb. Still more pretension attached to the use of boo; I avoided that term and the people who used it.
Reefer was used as well as a mass noun: "Got any reefer?"
tchrist
tchrist
Yes.
Boo is alien to me; the rest, familiar.
@Ivan Few native speakers can hold a conversation on coalesced yod.
@FaheemMitha I'm about half English and half Danish.
Faheem Mitha
Faheem Mitha
@tchrist I see. But living in CO?
Færd
Færd
21:51
@Cerberus I suppose!
@Ivan Huh? Seriously?
user325499
@Færd Yes, seriously. We have Trump now, we didn't have him last year so yeah we win.
user325499
You can disagree all you want but he is awesome man.
user325499
Oh I have to go back to my..
user325499
Skiing buddies.
tchrist
tchrist
22:27
@FaheemMitha I think Americans use language like this differently.
It's about one's ancestry.
It doesn't say where you were born, or where your parents were born.
If your mom is 10th generation English and your dad is 341st generation Danish, you're still half of each here.
@Ivan Ivan, you’re Terrible!
tchrist
tchrist
23:02
If dogs that you like are doggies then why aren't cats you like called catties?
Tonepoet
Tonepoet
@tchrist Your premise is false from the start San-tchrist Claus. Bad doggy!

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