English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2018-01-21

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12:16 AM

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Q: Word to describe someone who doesn't do mainstream things because they are too mainstream

The word could be "Hipster" or "Snob", but I'm looking for something more precise. A good example would be somebody that doesn't wear Nike shoes simply because everyone does it, and wears instead Adidas.

single-word-requests terminology slang

0

Q: Single word for the animal action of bending down

I'm looking for a single word to describe the bending-down motion that animals such as camels or elephants do to allow riders/passengers to more easily mount them.

single-word-requests animal

1 hour later…

1:36 AM

@Educ Dude!

@M.A.R. you monster

3 hours later…

4:18 AM

0

Q: Can somebody help me to find the appropriate word for a course that thorough, fast and useful?

all I have a problem to find the good word for describing a course that is thorough, fast (in short time) like seminar and fruitful. Is it possible for me to use words 'a straightaway course'? Thank you in advance!

single-word-requests

7 hours later…

11:20 AM

0

Q: What's another word for ensuring something is correct?

I'm looking for a single word that communicates the same message as "ensure correct". Which is different than "make correct," which implies that something is being done, while "ensure correct" implies that something is being done only if the thing that must be correct is incorrect. My usage is f...

single-word-requests computing

3 hours later…

2:31 PM

Does "bounce rate" mean either "the number of users that visit a website" or "the total time of users that come in the website and stay in"?

3:18 PM

Hi everyone

Please some examples to see the usage of the following expression : "I never been to it "

what is the tense of that expression

3:31 PM

@Educ It is not grammatical in standard English. It occurs in various dialects and pidgins, but it is strongly condemned.

what does it mean

?

any example or situation

They've deleted the word "have".

to see how its used

ah i see

"I've never been to it" is also a way to say "I've never gone to it" or "I never went".

is the question to have such expression will be : have you ever visited paris

?

3:35 PM

Should be: "Have you ever visited Paris?"

> As-tu jamais visité à Paris?

and for "I've never gone to it "

In French?

> Je ne suis jamais allé à Paris.

I think.

In spoken French without a passé simple it's a bit difficult to distinguish the perfect construction from the other.

I believe that English has uses of the perfect that don't make sense in spoken French, so what I've written may not be quite right.

The French above would also be how you might translate "I didn't go to Paris".

But "didn't go" and "haven't gone" are very slightly different in English.

I can see without french explanation

Ok.

English has some idiomatic uses of the perfect and of the continuous/progressive that either seldom or never occur in almost any other European language.

Could you illustrate that with some examples please

3:44 PM

With be or with go?

Have you ever gone to Paris?

with go

and went ?

It turns out that in modern English, you can't really use the simple past went in interrogatives. This is a bit strange, honestly.

So we use an auxiliary instead, either did go or have gone.

Did you ever go / Have you ever gone

"Have you ever gone" sounds funny.

Have you ever visited/been to Paris?

Did you go to Paris?

That one is more concrete.

It reflects a particular event.

So for example, if someone knew you went to France last year on holiday; they might ask "And did you make it to Paris while you were there?"

That's the sort of occasion that would elicit "Did you go to Paris?"

It's a concrete preterite.

"did" is the preterite auxiliary.

On the other hand, "Have you ever visited Paris?" does not mark a specific occasion.

I'm so grateful, this is very interesting! Thank you

On my three-month summer break last year, I went to Spain, Portugal, and France.

Oh, did you make to Italy, too?

Do, I didn't go to Italy; there wasn't enough time.

Had you ever gone to France before that trip?

No, this was my first time, but I had been to Spain before this: I went there five years ago for a two-week holiday.

Little passages of dialogue exchanged between two people like this are very useful for illustrating idiomatic uses of various verb constructions.

0

Q: Word for the movement of one fluid within another

I'm looking for a word (doesn't matter how obscure) that describes the turbulence / twisting of one substance in another. The example I'm trying to describe is colored ink being dropped into — and flowing through — water. I.e. "The ink [XXX] through the water." Visually: Source: Shutterstock

single-word-requests

3:56 PM

I'm sorry that I know nothing about how Arabic works. I believe its verbs do change their forms in ways similar to how Indo-European verbs work, such as for person and number and tense and voice.

My understanding is that it is very complicated.

But at least you have the advantage of coming from a language that inflects its verbs.

Pity the Asian learners of English for whom this is an alien concept.

no problem just explain me things in english and I will understand :)

One of the odder little quirks of English is that when you say "This is the first time..." is that you have to use have + past participle. Other European languages use a simple past there not a compound one like we do.

This is the first time I have ever seen such thing.

That was the first time I had ever seen such a thing.

However, you can sometimes use the simple past with never.

I never said that.

Yes I see

Has it ever snowed heavily where you live? No, it has never snowed heavily here, just a few light dustings every five or ten years.

So the compound tense can be triggered by ever and sometimes by never.

I have never seen such a crazy thing as snow up to my knees!

Not *"I never saw".

very interesting!

present perfect not simple past

4:04 PM

You can use "I never saw" for other occasions but not for this one. It has to be concrete, like "I never saw the burglar who stole my silverware while I was asleep."

That was a concrete event.

It means "I didn't see".

yes

we made lot of mistake in grammar exercise in last semster when it's comes to these example

Ever/never are very hard in English.

use present perfect / simple past

Because they are "negative polarity items".

especialy for Foriegn language learners

4:06 PM

I also think that English has a more complicated setup for knowing when to use the compound past instead of the simple one than many other languages have. Or possibly just a different one that doesn't translate exactly even to other languages with both a simple and a compound past.

show me some examples to see more

please

I need more coffee. I've only had one small cup this morning and need more to think.

take your time

I have big cup of coffee now

:)

hope you make one for yourself

user image

user image

user image

user image

This is all for you

enjoy it :)

4:46 PM

0

Q: St. can be used like Mr?

One of charactors in my reading book is called St. Quentin. And his job is author. If that's the case why use St instead of Mr. If that's not the case, what is the St's meaning?

single-word-requests word-usage

I don't get the joke: Sometimes people ask me, “ What would you do if you had a million dollars?” My answer is always the same three words: All-Pistachio Diet.

Halp! Halp!

It posits that pistachios are super costly.

Oh...

:)

@tchrist Is it correct to say : " Please if someone knows any active group whatsapp of Grammar/vocabulary "

5:01 PM

@Educ Please what? There seems no verb.

could you correct me

Please if someone knows any active group whatsapp of Grammar/vocabulary add me please or let me know "

@tchrist Knows is a verb. <_< It's just not the verb that would make it into a complete sentence.

Put the please near the verb that's doing the requesting.

Could anyone who knows any active group for whatsapp please add me or let me know?

@Educ I don't really know the fancy syntactical terminology, so I can only really spell it out for you: You want to say something along the lines of this: Please [tell me] if someone knows [of] any active group [for] grammar/vocabulary. Except without the editorial brackets I've inserted to delimit the changes.

Keep these mind

5:17 PM

Has anybody ever heard of medal or podium being used as a verb?

@tchrist you said " I have never saw " but the past participal if see is seen

If I said "I have never saw" then I should have edited it. :)

@Keepthesemind Medal, as a transitive verb, is listed in the Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia. The quotation it uses to exemplify it is dated back to at least 1860. Dictionaries like the A.H.D. 5th ed. still list it.

Keep these mind

@Tonepoet Thanks

theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/21/…

5:32 PM

@tchrist Thanks

@Tonepoet Thank you

@tchrist Got it

@Educ and @Keepthesemind You're both welcome.

Keep these mind

@Tonepoet Seems like the writer of above article assumes that 'medal' is also used as 'receiving a medal'.

@Tonepoet As one of your links shows...

@Tonepoet Sorry about that

Could anyone who knows any active group for whatsapp about grammar/vocabulary "please add me or let me know?"

Could anyone who knows any active group for whatsapp about grammar/vocabulary please add me or let me know?

Is it correct now

@Keepthesemind That seems like a fairly recent usage, and slangy. Note that Random House (2010) doesn't list that definition, but the A.H.D. (2016) does. It probably comes from ellipsis of "I hope I [get/receive a] medal …".

That's especially so since it's in the context of sports.

5:57 PM

0

Q: Complete this sentence

How would you complete this sentence? The gap has to be filled with only one word. He takes ___ to decide what to do next. I've thought about these: responsibility on But couldn't came up with other words.

single-word-requests

0

Q: Word meaning not reacting with anger because you know it was deserved

Is there a word for that almost indifferent reaction to retaliation?

single-word-requests

-2

Q: Is the etymology of the word romance a practical joke?

Serious question. I guess my question, if traced back, is what is the meaning of the word originally. What I've found so far is that it simply means "good", or "novel", I also like the direct translation into French which means "fiction" (romans). Of course after that there's the town, nation, a...

this question should be downvoted, and then voted to be deleted.

6:37 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Mostly non-Latin answer: Choosing between "100%" and "cent percent" by Debojyoti Deb on english.SE

6:53 PM

@Mitch If no further action is taken it'll probably be deleted anyway when the community bot sees that it's negatively voted upon and has no answers.

I think the limited number of deletion votes can be used on something better than something which is going to happen in all likelihood anyway.

Who ever spends all their delete votes in a day?

@tchrist I don't know, but if you don't, maybe you folk should get more aggressive about deleting closed questions in the backlog so that people who have legitimate concerns can try asking again in a manner that's more compliant with policy without their question being closed as a duplicate of a closed question.

@Tonepoet Given that I cannot run out of delete votes, this should probably be addressed to @Mitch instead. :)

7:09 PM

@tchrist Well look at you with your posh diamond and your dapper blue pseudonym. XP More seriously it's more of a meta-concern really, and I suspect @Mitch is ignoring me anyway. I can't remember the last time he actually responded to anything I said, except maybe yesterday.

I've tried to raise it on meta. It just doesn't appear to be an arsible topic.

22

A: Can we get some more review queues - questions with delete votes, recently closed etc.?

Some high-rep users regularly go through the recently-close-voted and recently-delete-voted queues accessible from the 10k tools. You can tell this is happening because you often wind up putting the final delete vote on postings whose first two delete votes are from the same small set of delete-v...

0

Q: What is the best word to define someone who works shabbily so others will do his / her work?

Imagine someone who contributes work of such low quality that their peers cannot help but to do their work so it is done correctly. An individual who intentionally employs a strategy of sloppy work as a means of getting out of doing it. What's a good word or phrase for best describing this pers...

single-word-requests phrase-requests pejorative-language colloquialisms

8:03 PM

@tchrist Look at JL's answer. Is there some alignment/paragraph issue? english.stackexchange.com/a/129056/50044

@NVZ I did notice that. It's because he has carriage returns where he wants to start a new line but not a new paragraaph. You don't notice it on a wide window.

It interferes with normal formatting

8:55 PM

@tchrist I'm one of the delete voters on almost all the q's on the delete queue.

@Tonepoet I don't know if I can follow your logic, but I just like to get things done quickly than wait around. To that end I am one of the more aggressive deleters. I am not an aggressive closer, but if the community votes to close, I go the next step if I find the question out of step.

That one question is just off the deep end with nothing good to come out of any kind of editing.

@tchrist I do sometimes. But going thru the tools page is eh

@Mitch I remember being that guy.

9:38 PM

0

Q: What can be done to bring up site quality?

We are now at the point that most questions on ELU get closed. Our 90-day closure rate (25k only) is sitting at around two in every three. Some days it’s worse than that, some days it’s better, but in the long run we’re at around 65% closed. Other quality metrics are also telling, albeit perhaps...

discussion question-closure low-quality-posts site-cleanup

That's a bigger problem than the non-existent delete queue, in my ever so humble opinion.

Basically, most questions on ELU are now garbage.

It’s a problem. Has been for some time, even.

@tchrist: as mentioned by Jasen in the comments, "Is “2016-” still a viable alternative to “2016-Present”? doesn't seem to be a duplicate of the linked question "What does “2007 - date” mean?". I can't see "YYYY -" without anything after the dash mentioned anywhere on the linked page.

Hm, I could have sworn we had one of those not too long ago.

I guess if I can't find it I'll reopen.

If we were lucky, it would somewhere in date.

@sumelic Done.

2 hours later…

11:43 PM

@tchrist If I could press a button that would lower the number of votes needed to close or reopen a question from 5 to 3, I'd probably do it. I think that would better facilitate the close to reopen and improve cycle.

@Tonepoet Interesting.

^improve and reopen

@tchrist It's something I mentioned somewhere in chat before. Kinda got shot down the last time I mentioned it though, due to the prospect of closure wars. Still, I think it would help to reduce premature answers that detract from the need to edit, help to create an incentive to make the necessary edits (because it is more likely to work before all interest is lost in the question) and help reveal more of the applicable closure reasons that may apply to the post for independent rectification.

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Jan '1821

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…

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