English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2011-02-02 (page 1 of 3)

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3:49 AM

Are there any problems with the site?

I keep trying to add an answer, but the server returns a 504 error message: "the gate didn't reply in time".

It is now all good.

I guess it has been a temporary problem, which happened right in the moment I was going to post an answer. :-)

4 hours later…

8:03 AM

Should not this question be considered a duplicate of a question about I and me?

0

Q: 'Them' or 'they'?

Could you explain me when we use them and they?

grammar pronouns personal-pronouns

1

Q: Expressing opinions in questions

On some SE site my question was edited to remove emotions Orginal was I just started playing with VS again and without Resharper its a really horrible IDE to I just started playing with Visual Studio again and without Jetbrains' ReSharper it's a tougher to use IDE First, I th...

american-english british-english sentence writing-style

This question seems more a "support request" about why questions that express also personal opinions about a product/project are down-voted.

Now, "Expressing opinions in questions" is really becoming a peeve.

1 hour later…

9:28 AM

@kiamlaluno: I think "them vs they" is fine as a separate question.

In fact, before I opened it, I thought it would be about that particular usage of "them" as nominative. "Them were fine." I think it should be mentioned somewhere in the answers that that usage exists.

For the sake of completeness, I mean.

@RegDwight: I only think that once you understand when to use I or me, you understand also when to use them instead of they. There would be at least one question for each pronoun.

Yeah, sure, but my point is that the bit about explaining "them are nice people" wouldn't fit into a question about me vs. I.

9:54 AM

That would be like explaining the use of me as subject. The answers it can get are similar to the ones given for I; just replace one pronoun with the other one.

In fact, the first reply states "them is to they as him is to he".

Uhmmm… I thought to have created a feature request on meta, but I don't find it.

@RegDwight: What do you think of this feature request?

0

Q: Allow to add a text under the field used for the question title in the form used to ask a question

To resolve the problem with the stop words, and to implement other features, it would be good if it would be possible to add a custom text under the field used for the title; for example, the text could be a list of links to pages tagged with specifics tags, e.g. pronouns.

feature-request

I should make a short introduction; I am used to Drupal, where there is a module that implement project issues, and that allow to use a custom text that is show on the top of the form used to create an issue report.

I thought that a similar feature would help in at least a case.

Umm. I have to apologize, but I still don't quite understand what you have in mind...

Do you have a use case?

I mean, let's say I post a question, I enter the title, body, and tags, and then -- what would I use your proposed field for?

10:11 AM

It's not a field; it's a text the software would show under the title field, or before it.

Ah, okay. So the software would put some stuff there automatically? What stuff exactly, and based on what criteria?

What happens on Drupal.org is that when I create a report I see a text that tells me that, e.g., it's not the right place to request a support for my own website. The shown text is what entered in the module preferences, in the case of Drupal.org.

So the text here on EL&U would say, for example, "your question seems to be off-topic", or "a similar question appears to have been asked in the past"? We kind of have both already.

In the case of SE, the text could be something the diamond users can decide, or the text taken from a particular page. SE has a similar feature with the pages that describe tags.

It's different. What I am proposing is a custom text administrator users would enter; it would not be something already decided.

I'm not sure you'll get the powers that be behind this. They probably won't change the engine just for this site. Besides, remember that "users don't read".

10:18 AM

If they don't read, then even removing some stop words would serve to a purpose. ;-)

It's amazing how sometimes Italian is more flexible than English. :-)

Heh. Then again, I'm sure there are situations where it's the other way round.

Languages are like that.

Is semiproduct an English word?

I'm actually reading that very question right now. Never heard of semiproduct, but there is such a word in Russian.

Полуфабрикат.

I found a word starting from "semilavorato". The difference is that the English word would not be a noun, but an adjective.

I didn't know Russian is a Slavic language, until some months ago.

I knew some Slavic languages use the same alphabet used by Russian, but I would have never suspected Russian was in the same language family.

Actually, I thought Croatian was written in Cyrillic because the influence from Russia.

By the way, is it true season names are not written in capital case? :-)

(If I should write a word in Cyrillic, I would take 3 hours just to write the shortest word.)

10:34 AM

In Russian? Season names are common nouns.

Speaking of Cyrillic, also a constructed language was written in Cyrillic.

I am sorry; I meant in English.

I am known to confuse people, when I speak.

The question about the seasons was for English.

The Slavic family is huge, there are West Slavic languages (e.g. Polish), South Slavic (e.g. Bulgarian), and East Slavic (Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian).

In English, seasons are common nouns, too, unless you capitalize them for poetic effect or something.

I must rewrite my concept of common nouns, then. :-)

There are several constructed languages written in Cyrillic.

I know of Volapuk only.

Actually, I know that because in Esperanto, Volapuk is used for a word that means "non-sense".

10:41 AM

Well, for starters, there's Slovio and Slovianski.

And a dozen more.

steen.free.fr/slovianski

Slovianski is actually amazing, I can understand everything without ever learning a single word. I know a few Bulgarians who say the same thing.

Which is not true of Esperanto or Ido.

Well, I can understand many Esperanto sentences, even without knowing what an Esperanto word means. :-)

Slovianski reminds me of Esperanto, in some aspects.

It must be because Doktoro Esperanto was Poland. :-)

Yeah, I can understand many Esperanto sentences just fine, but not everything, and it doesn't feel anywhere as natural to me as Slovianski, although I wouldn't say that I am more closely familiar with Slavic languages than with Romanic and Germanic ones.

That could be the explanation. :-)

Read carefully (^_^), I said "I would not say" that.

That's what I get for contracting "would *not*" into "wouldn't". (^_^)

Oh. :-)

10:54 AM

Yeah ))))

At least you are familiar with Slavic languages; I am zero, on that side.

I'm still struggling with Japanese.

And I would love to learn Arabic or Farsi.

Geez, there are so many cool languages out there.

Reading how Croatia is written in Croatian makes my teeth stride.

I can't think of a single uncool one.

I would like to learn Greek, but I decided to not learn languages written with scripts I cannot write.

10:56 AM

Hrvatska?

Isn't there an extra a? :-)

But the Greek script is actually quite easy, since it's omnipresent (maths, physics). You probably know most letters already.

Um, let me check on Wikipedia.

Croatia ( ; ), officially the Republic of Croatia (Croatian: Republika Hrvatska ), is a country in Central Europe{{cite web|url=http://141.74.33.52/stagn/JordanEuropaRegional/tabid/71/Default.aspx |title=map of European regions according to the UN

I was joking, about the a. :-)

A!

I don't think Croatian beats Polish in terms of consonant density ))))

;-)

i am sure they are there.

Hebrew would be probably the winner.

11:00 AM

Tried that, my life is too short for it.

You are more advanced than me. :-)

This is another question that is off-topic.

-1

Q: What's the best world-wide accepted American English certification for professional purpose?

I'm not a native English speaker and I want to improve my CV with an American English certification. What's the best world-wide accepted English certification for professional purpose? For those interested, I'm in the IT market, but I'd like the answers to be profession agnostic.

american-english

How did you get the average passive reputation, the other day?

I tend to agree, and have close-voted.

Quite frankly, I just added up all the numbers. In retrospect, I should have written a Perl script.

You're actually number 10 by passive rep.

And I don't know enough SQL to write a query that would do that all by itself.

Do you mean it was actually the sum of the passive reputation for each question?

Yes.

Out of the top 2000 posts by passive rep, 60 are yours, and they add up to 4.936 passive rep per day, on average.

That explains why it was so high. :-)

11:12 AM

Well, it's accurate.

That's less than one upvote on a question per day, and less than one upvote on an answer every second day.

And remember that the dump is almost one month old. The figures must have changed since then. I'm eagerly awaiting an update.

I have been keeping an eye on my passive rep, and it matches what the report was "predicting".

As a matter of fact, my name doesn't appear in the result of the query. I get my passive reputation is very low, compared to the others.

Xblast yet again! Brb.

I would not actually call it "passive".

Your top post is at .317, then .222, then .182, etc

You must change the "select top 200" to "select top 2000"

I got it; thank you.

Well, it's always less than what Ex-User got, and he didn't visit the site since September.

11:30 AM

Ex-user is no. 6, with 7.467 passive rep/day.

Go figure! :-)

But of course it always helps to stay active. The top 5 users are all active.

Many of your posts are questions, so you get less points for upvotes by definition.

It surely does. Still, I get less passive reputation than somebody that changed his nick to Ex-User, and who visited the site less than I did.

I wonder where new, extremely active users such as Robusto will end up in the new dump. He's no. 21 right now.

I have 95 questions, and 176 answers.

11:36 AM

Well, popularity is like that. One day there's an excellent answer that doesn't get upvoted much, and the next day there's a sub-par question that gets upvoted like there's no tomorrow.

You can't control everything.

These are nice numbers and all, but ultimately they are just fun to play with and nothing more.

11:49 AM

That's surely true.

What I was saying is that my passive reputation is not the highest, nor one of the most relevant.

It's time to eat. :-)

2 hours later…

1:33 PM

When I select "summary" and "today" in my user page, which votes do I see? It doesn't seem I see all the day votes.

Yeah, you see them grouped by questions, and you only see the top five such groups.

Oh.

For a complete overview, check your rep report at /reputation

Well, after all it's a summary. :-)

I don't know why I was expecting it to show all the details.

Here's a direct link for your convenience: english.stackexchange.com/reputation

1:35 PM

*it should show all the details.

"expecting it to show all the details" is perfectly grammatical (^_^)

The rep report will also give you a nice breakdown of your passive rep. )))

During the time you were completely absent.

Wow; that's amazing. It seems that eating pasta helps me to write better English. :-)

Mmmmh... Pasta...

That was the URL I was looking for when I needed to see how much times I reached the cap limit.

You know; living in Northern Italy, we eat pasta and "polenta". :-)

Yeah, you can also request a rep recalc there.

1:39 PM

Reg and Kiam - I dare say you are regulars here, no?

Mmmmmhh... Polenta!...

@mplungja: I hope so.

So is Kosmonaut. Hi @Kosmonaut!

@reg You hope so because you are the king of ese?

Yeah, and kosmonaut too ;)

Marketese? Legalese? Bolognese?

@Reg: easy: Bolog

Hi, yes, just stopping in for about 30 seconds

1:41 PM

It can be very addictive

You're a busy man lately.

@RegDwight: Do you know polenta? That's amazing.

I know the Spanish one.

I know polenta too. Don't like it

Is it done with corn meal?

1:42 PM

Let me just say that I like food.

The one I do not like is made with corn meal

This has been a week of visiting extended family, and not over yet.

Si @kiamlaluno.

La polenta es un alimento, cereal, gacha o puche originario del norte de Italia, muy difundido en Argentina, Austria, Chile, Suiza, Bosnia, Croacia, Eslovenia, Portugal (principalmente en la isla de Madeira) y Uruguay, también es muy consumido en Córcega, Saboya y Niza al sur de Francia, así como en los estados de Río Grande del Sur, Santa Catarina, Paraná y São Paulo al sur del Brasil; siendo también consumida —especialmente en temporadas frescas— en Paraguay, México e incluso Venezuela (donde se le da el nombre de funche). Etimología e historia La etimología deriva de la palabra lati...

That's news for me; I thought polenta was just Italian.

Bye again!

1:43 PM

Bye-bye!

Poka Kosmonaut

Oh! Russian?

You can edit your posts here for a grace period of a minute or so, BTW.

I guess, or he would be Astronaut, no?

At least they attribute the polenta to us. :-)

Ah! Noes, Kosmonaut is from the US.

Nice edit!

1:45 PM

But Russian?

Haha, no, that would be me.

(Now they will tell me Pokemon is Russian.)

As you can see, nicknames don't mean much.

Yeah, with the unpronounceable surname

And I am the Dane with the French first name

I dare you to tell from where I am basing on my nickname. :-)

1:46 PM

Italy

but Kiam?

The Moon!

I said from my nick. :-)

And I said "from the Moon"!

Kiam is Bulgarian?

@RegDwight: You could have kept that secret. ;-)

1:47 PM

Esperanto.

I can still delete it, I guess )))

Ahh. I only know one word in Esperanto: Flagstango

Hahaha. Another German one.

danish

Flagstang: flag pole

Oh. Fair enough. There's "Flagge" and "Stange" in German, too.

So where is @Kiam la Uno from?

1:50 PM

From the polenta country. ;-)

We discussed that just yesterday, I could dig up a link, but I think he himself will respond faster.

Argentina, Austria, Chile, Suiza, Bosnia, Croacia, Eslovenia, Portugal

and Italy

I am from Italy, indeed.

Nein, nein!

Ciao Chiam

La polenta es un alimento, cereal, gacha o puche originario del norte de Italia, muy difundido en Argentina, Austria, Chile, Suiza, Bosnia, Croacia, Eslovenia, Portugal (principalmente en la isla de Madeira) y Uruguay, también es muy consumido en Córcega, Saboya y Niza al sur de Francia, así como en los estados de Río Grande del Sur, Santa Catarina, Paraná y São Paulo al sur del Brasil; siendo también consumida —especialmente en temporadas frescas— en Paraguay, México e incluso Venezuela (donde se le da el nombre de funche). Etimología e historia La etimología deriva de la palabra lati...

1:51 PM

How did you include that in your chat?

Déjà vu (^_^)

"originario del norte de Italia".

Yes, I pasted the second line

If you post a link to wikipedia on its own line, it will get expanded automatically.

cool

Many things can be done and some cannot. Sometimes infuriating

1:52 PM

Anyway… ciao, mplungjan.

nein: mplungjan

This also works for questions.

32

Q: What is the origin of ZOMG?

I have looked in a number of places, with contradicting results. The Urban Dictionary provides a whopping 73 "explanations", of which I will quote just a few. (Original spelling and punctuation preserved.) ZOMG is a varient of the all-too-popular acronym "OMG", meaning "Oh My God". ZOMG...

etymology slang fun internet

Cool. and other places?

Sorry for shamelessly promoting one of mine, that's the first one I could think of.

experts-exchange.com/Programming/Languages/Scripting/JavaScript

nope

haha

1:53 PM

Yes, some other places, too. Let me see, hold on a sec.

2

A: onChange for dropdown and timeouts

The following versions are interchangeable: setTimeout('myFunction()',1750); setTimeout(myFunction,1750) setTimeout(function() { /* some anonymous function */ },1750) What you might want is <script> var tId = ""; // create a global var </script> and have onchange="clear...

Very nice

Can't find it on the blog. Harr. But I can link to the blog proper!

Stack Overflow Blog: Moderator Messages

Posted by Jeff Atwood on February 2nd, 2011

First, a quick update on the Stack Exchange moderator election schedule.

Ending today, so get those votes in!

Ending soon:

Just started:

Coming soon, in this order, at 3 per week:

(as always check out Yi Jiang’s awesome Stack Exchange Moderator Candidate Statistics page for insanely detailed election stats on any of the above.)

As you can see, we have a lot of community moderators! That’s why we’ve been working so hard lately on improving our moderator tooling, to make sure our new class of incoming moderators have as pleasant, polished, and smooth an experience as possible. …

@mplungjan: If you click on the help link to the bottom, you get a list of links that are boxed.

user image

right

thanks

chat.stackexchange.com/faq#formatting

1:56 PM

There's a help link at the bottom‽ (^_^) And I was painstakingly collecting all my knowledge elsewhere!

haha. Yeah, I know the feeling. Like when I wanted to format something in a comment.

That's a very Agent-Smithesque photo.

To the right of where I write my messages I see three links: help, faq, and legal.

Yes, yes, I can see them now.

too late to edit the text on my picture :(

1:59 PM

You have to be fast, that's for sure.

Anyway. Talk another time. Thanks ... Mr. Anderson... you disappoint me.

;)

0

Q: Variations of the word Schadenfreude

Schadenfreude is pleasure derived from the misfortune of others. Is there a word which means to take pleasure in the misfortune of another when previously that misfortune was inflicted on you by that other person? I won't describe here (in public) the particular circumstances in which I find my...

Hehe. See you later!

пока

Gxis la revido!

If I would remember how to use the correct g, I would do it. :-)

2:02 PM

Ĝis la revido?

Yes, that.

google translate: We are not yet able to translate from Esperanto into English

It's a shame my Mac doesn't know that ^ can be used together g.

My secret algorithm is: Google, then copy-paste. Psssh, don't tell anyone @kiamlaluno.

It means bye; letterally it means until I see you.

It will be out secret.

2:04 PM

До свиданья, Мплунгъя!

I could guess the meaning, but wanted to see what ^gis was

Uhmmm… actually, there is not an English word for revido.

gxis is until.

Re-view

Hehe. German has Wiedersehen, French revoir.

Spasibo Reg - the name is Michel :)

2:05 PM

Круто, Мишель!

En sa èt.

En sa what?

(Finally, I could write something in my dialect.)

èt.

It's to see in Eastern Lombard. :-)

Google only returns "en sa èt dumà che isè, ciao nèh". Not sure if that's offensive or anything...

That seems Western Lombard.

2:08 PM

And "to stè 'mbanda ala me cà en sa èt mai.... fatti vivo". That's a cool language.

'mbanda sounds pretty African, to me )))

:-)

Literally it's "to the side".

The first sentence you wrote means "we will see here tomorrow".

I figured as much, from "duma" -> "demain" in French

Nèh is just an expression that doesn't mean anything.

It is not used in my dialect. We use more pota, which once had a different meaning.

It was a sexual reference, but most of the people would not recognize that meaning.

Italian must be really crazy. I know we talked about that yesterday, but still.

I actually do recognize that reference, from the little of what I know of Calabrian.

I love Calabrian.

In Calabrian would be sticchio.

U sticchio 'e mammata.

2:14 PM

Someone who lives in Moscow would have no problem understanding someone from Wladiwostok, but Calabrians have trouble understanding Sicilians, and rightfully so.

(Thank you, Imani, for teaching me Calabrian.)

Those are not just dialects, they are so vastly different, it's breathtaking.

Italian dialects can vary from zone to zone.

I can understand the dialect spoken in my city, but I could not understand the dialect spoken in some zones of the province.

My point exactly.

And it's a tiny country when compared to Russia or the US or Canada.

When I listened a friend of mine speaking to his father, I could only understand "no", "sì". For the rest, it was a Middle-East language. :-)

2:17 PM

Haha.

Good it was from the province of Brescia.

My Calabrian friend has trouble understanding what's written in his passport, in "proper" Italian.

My mother doesn't speak correct Italian either. :-)

She speaks dialect most of the time.

Buongiorno Italia, buongiorno Maria, con gli occhi pieni di malinconia...

Toto Cotugno!

2:20 PM

Have I mentioned that I am the greatest Toto Cutugno fan on this planet, like, evar?!!!1!

Did he go to live in another country (I hope ;-))?

My father had a few LPs.

You didn't mention it, but I was ready to bet on that. :-)

I dunno, actually. And before there's any misunderstanding, I'm actually only familiar with his older songs.

Those are really classic. :-)

2:22 PM

I also like all the old Celentano stuff.

Obviously.

Who ever doesn't?

Even the punctuation marks were correct; if that doesn't mean to be his fan, I don't know what else could mean it. :-)

Adriano Celentano.

The punctuation is rather straightforward, I would say.

It means you remember well the song, or you would write the lyrics without punctuation mark. :-)

Oh, and how could I forget about Paolo Conte?

If you want to choose another classic, then you should choose Battisti.

Lucio Dalla!

Right now, I don't remember Paolo Conte. :-)

2:25 PM

And then there's Andrea Bocelli.

That is more recent.

I think he even sang a song written by Dalla...

Wow...

Oh yes.

Domenico Modugno!

Volare...

2:28 PM

VOOOLAAAREEE

beat me to it

Renato Carosone.

That is the song somebody sung me. :-)

Pardon?

"Tu vuoi fare l'americano".

I mean, somebody sang it to you recently or what?

Yep.

2:33 PM

There was a recent remix that topped the charts throughout Europe.

I didn't like it anywhere as much as the original.

It must be because in the last 10 years I went to USA almost 2 times per year. :-)

Ah, now I see.

The original is still the original. Carosone is inimitable.

It must be his Napoletan accent.

If just I would remember how to write "napoletano".

(Another greeting to Imani, in the case she reads this log.)

Mmmmh, now I'm hungry again.

Ragù napoletano

Il ragù napoletano (O rraù in napoletano) è probabilmente il piatto italiano per eccellenza ed il più conosciuto al mondo. E' un piatto tipicamente festivo, anche a causa della quantità di tempo necessaria alla sua preparazione, e consiste in diversi tipi di carne, bovina e suina, cotti in una salsa di pomodoro a fuoco molto lento. La leggenda del ragù La leggenda legata al famoso ragù napoletano, decantato anche dal grande de Filippo in una sua poesia dal titolo appunto 'o rrau' A Napoli alla fine del 1300 esisteva la Compagnia dei Bianchi di giustizia che percorreva la citta' a pi...

@RegDwight Damn you

2:37 PM

Wut? @badp

Clearer now?

You talking 'bout the ragout?

Yeah, although the tagliatelle do their part too. :)

Well, it is a fine meal! Mmmmmmeal.

so suddenly this place is full of Italians, I might have to leave! :P

2:39 PM

It's just that so many people damn me, I don't always keep track.

I'm not Italian. I'm hungry!

How many Italians are there, here?

67% apparently, out of the three of us.

There was a DataExplorer query, can't find it right now...

I thought I occupied the full room. ;-)

Nah, move over ))

2:47 PM

Do the chat automatically star questions?

No.

We haven't arrived at that level of AI just yet.

Well, on Drupal.org, there is a module that reports the projects related to the one you are watching. I thought it was something similar.

Has everybody cast their votes in the SO mod elections? (Gentle reminder.)

I did.

Our very own elections will start February 14.

2:51 PM

Is there a list of requirements?

You mean to run for office?

For all I know, no. People just throw their hats into the ring and hope that they are voted for.

That is not the hope I would have. :-)

I didn't get voted to me diamond user pro-tempore; I don't think I would get voted now.

That's okay, nobody forces you to volunteer, and besides, as I argued to Kosmonaut just the other day, we don't need more mods, we need more 10k users.

So that off-topic questions and dupes don't slip through the cracks.

The difference is that you don't automatically get 10k users.

Frankly, if all you get when you reach 10k is that silly menu extra, then to reach 10K is not a goal it seems worth the time took to reach it.

You don't automatically get mods, either. People have to qualify. It might actually take more time to earn respect than 10k points.

I don't think the menu extra is silly. You can see what questions are being close-voted and can throw in your vote, too.

If you don't have access to the 10k tools, you're just left hoping that you'll run into all these questions by accident, or else your vote will be missing and they could end up being left open and forgotten about.

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