English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Robusto

01:17

0

After reading the definitions of both, I can't see how these words differ, however, given their prefixes, I assume they must. Could someone explain to me the difference between 'consume' and 'subsume', either in definition or their typical usage? In particular, I'm referring to their usage in r...

Seriously?

How is this question not closed as "Look it the fuck up in the dictionary"? Which the accepted answer did, by the way.

Feeds

02:17

0

Q: Is there a word (or shorter/clearer phrase) for "incorrect implication/suggestion"?

Example sentences: I don't drink bleach very often. Why does one plus one equal three? The first sentence seems to suggest that I do drink bleach occasionally, even though from a strictly logically perspective, "never" drinking bleach meets the criteria of "not very often" too. The second se...

single-word-requests terminology vocabulary logic

Feeds

05:33

0

Q: Is there another one word substitue for officialese?

I wanted to use a one-word expression for a written communication (short or long) which is a response to a question. It is deliberately worded to evade answering the question, using very distinctively official language. In short, it leaves the reader confused whether the question was answered at ...

single-word-requests word-choice

Feeds

06:03

0

Q: Thanks Use in submit application

I am developing an application where people will submit a filled forms. I would like to give a success message after submit. So I compiled three sentences which is more appropriate, need your guidance Thanks for your application. Thanking you for your application. Thanking You for showing trus...

single-word-requests

Feeds

06:48

0

Q: What do you call people who answer to the point? (irritatingly, annoyingly)

What do you call people who answer to the point? (irritatingly, annoyingly) Example Mr. Hermez is the boss and has an office and his secretary sits in same location with his workstation just outside mr. Hermez's office door. AMN on phone: Is Mr. Hermez there in the office? Mr. Hermez's secret...

single-word-requests phrase-requests

SmokeDetector

07:11

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Url in title, bad keyword in body, blacklisted website in body, blacklisted website in title, pattern-matching product name in body, +5 more: www.supplentforhealthylifestyle.org/premium-pure-keto/ by piygrotr on english.SE

Feeds

2

Q: Word or phrase for fake appearance or posturing

I'm looking for a noun (it has to be an object) that expresses the concept of fake appearances. In Spanish, we can express that with the word "facade" understood as the front of a wall (but part of a building) because a beautiful facade can hide horrible things inside of the building (things t...

single-word-requests phrase-requests nouns expression-requests concept

RegDwigнt

09:07

@Robusto and I wonder if you read "On Poetry" by Glyn Maxwell.

Gigili

09:53

@RegDwigнt Is this the one?

PS4 - Fallout 4 Gameplay

►

Matt E. Эллен

10:45

TIL forty-five is an anagram of over fifty

Feeds

11:19

0

Q: A word/phrase for what one says about her internal feelings such as love?

Is there any word/phrase for that kind of utterances by which people talk about their internal feelings rather than external objects? Compare for example: 1) there was an accident in that street. 2) I love you. The first utterance is about an external object, but the second one consist in ta...

single-word-requests phrase-requests

Robusto

11:50

@RegDwigнt That sounds like a non-answer.

@MattE.Эллен And thirty-seven is an anagram of "never shitty" ...

But no, I've never read Glyn Maxwell's "On Poetry" ...

user1732

only the brits would have a show like that :P

quite interesting, actually

what's up with the algebra equations in the background?

@MattE.Эллен shouldn't that be "antigram"?

Matt E. Эллен

12:20

@user1732 it could be, but it doesn't have to be

user1732

true, just being pedantic :-)

Matt E. Эллен

@Robusto I'm 37, so that's good news!

user1732

i like the clip on double negatives

tchrist

@Mitch Once you get your distinción pronunciation of /θ/ for C/Z figured out, you can start on the retroflex /s/, which also contributes to American misunderstanding of the phonology.

> Almost uniquely in the Spanish-speaking world, Castilian /s/ is retroflex, in the sense that it is articulated with the tip of the tongue bent slightly backwards and reaching its point of closest proximity to the roof of the mouth just behind the alveolar ridge. The term ‘retroflex’ in fact covers a range of articulation types, within which the Castilian /s/ can be subclassified as apical alveolar. Many commentators use the ad hoc symbol [s̺] for the Castilian /s/, reserving the bespoke IPA symbol [ʂ] for the subapical category of retroflex sibilant, in which the tongue is retracted even …

user1732

@tchrist how many "speech variables" are there?

tchrist

12:35

There it means difference in accent between the Andalusian one and the Castilian one.

user1732

sounds complicated

tchrist

They're just saying that switching to a distinción mode is the thing that takes immigrants from Andalucía who move north longest to adjust to.

user1732

hmm

tchrist

I can't think of anything equivalent in English.

It's because it's easier to merge than to split.

It's much easier for a splitter to learn to merge than a merger to learn to split.

Oh, maybe that's the key.

user1732

makes sense

tchrist

12:39

Think of people who have some familiar merger in English.

user1732

y'all

tchrist

I have the lot–cloth split. When I lived in the UK, I easily merged those both into CLOTH so people would stop twitching. :)

But it’s nearly impossible to get people who have the cot–caught merger to split those again.

Because splitters can perceive both versions; mergers cannot.

user1732

that's how the brain works

(for some)

I'm guessing, of course :)

tchrist

I know a woman from Vancouver, a PhD linguist, who married a UK gent and emigrated thither. It’s taken her many years to instinctively split cot–caught as everyone there does.

user1732

wow!

tchrist

12:44

Then again, she had the fused lot–cloth and cot–caught merger so distressingly common :) on the West Coast in which everything has the FATHER vowel.

So she had further to go.

user1732

age plays a role, i think

brain plasticity and all that

tchrist

Newt Rixie, meet Cherold Dahg.

user1732

lol

Robusto

@MattE.Эллен Also "even thirsty" ...

Tom once knew a gal from Vancouver
A linguisticist shaker and mover
She was caught on a cot
When she certainly ought
To have rhymed somewhat better with Hoover.

@tchrist ^

tchrist

Vancuuver

Pronounced Hoover.

Vank Hoover

Feeds

13:04

0

Q: What's the word for something that uses more of something else relative to other things

Is there a word that describes something that uses more of something(energy,power, food, etc) in relation to other things? Ex: Brandon's phone would last through the day as long as he didn't use a _______ app that would drain it fast.

single-word-requests

Mitch

@tchrist Then how do splits ever occur?

(also did you notice ukemi's recent answer on Ibiza )

tchrist

@Mitch Recent edit, not recent answer.

Mitch

Oh

What about the bath-trap split (which I think of as the primary AmE-BrE diff (along with rhoticity))?

tchrist

Two sounds that are close in articulation are prone to instability.

But that can go either way.

Mitch

That's a split that Americans seem to be able to do (sure badly but it's a start)

tchrist

13:14

They can assimilate into one, or dissimilate into a pair that are farther apart than the original were.

Without looking it up, I believe the trap–bath split was a North–South one.

Mitch

So the 100,000th question I gave didn't work out. People didn't want to play.

Any comments about that?

tchrist

Not without coffee.

Robusto

@Mitch Yes. Tell people you're saving yourself for the millionth question.

Mitch

@tchrist North-South UK?

tchrist

@Mitch O’Corse

Mitch

13:17

@Robusto So many suitors I'm missing out on.

@tchrist Just checking. The rhoticity map is all over, like a checkerboard, on the GB map

tchrist

Rhoda

Rhoda is an American sitcom starring Valerie Harper which aired a total of 109 half-hour episodes and one hour-long episode over five seasons from September 9, 1974 to December 9, 1978. The series was a spin-off of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, in which Harper between the years 1970 and 1974 had played the role of Rhoda Morgenstern, a spunky, weight-conscious, flamboyantly fashioned Jewish neighbor and native New Yorker in the role of Mary Richards' best friend. After four seasons, Rhoda left Minneapolis and returned to her original hometown of New York City. The series was the winner of two Golden...

Robusto

@Mitch Kind of a veritable rhotisserie, with all those insistent turnings.

Excuse me, tuhnings.

tchrist

One Tin Soldier rides a long ways from the Diné that birthed him.

Mitch

interesting but currently irrelevant

still looking

tchrist

Gorn

Robusto

13:24

@Mitch That picture doesn't show up. If I weren't able to look at the message history I would not have seen it.

tchrist

For me it's the other way around.

The old one blew up.

The edit worked.

Robusto

But all of that begs the question of how these various people pronounce gone ...

At Starbucks, scone rhymes with cone.

I've heard it pronounced to rhyme with gun in the north of England. But it's impossible to say if that's how they were actually pronouncing it; the roulette ball of my hearing simply dropped into that slot for me.

tchrist

No, that's not it.

It has the CLOTH vowel there, pretty sure.

Like gone presumably does.

Robusto

I wonder if work has been done on audio-mapping, by which I mean the filter that one's ears put up based on one's dialect or idiolect. In other words, it's the way we hear something that determines how we understand it, and that is based ultimately on how we ourselves speak.

Mitch

stupid vowels

tchrist

13:32

@Mitch Laxatives help.

Robusto

Laxatives only produce vowel movements in extreme cases.

tchrist

Take away the loan words in Japanese and you'll still have pure Japanese. If you take away all the loan words in English you'll have almost nothing. — Sylomun Weah 16 mins ago

Mitch

Some people need kaopectate for the mouth

@tchrist That guy.

Robusto

@Mitch His name anagrams to Lousy Hewman.

tchrist

@Mitch I think he's worried about English welshing on its cymryc debts.

@Robusto Deft dodge of Godwin.

Mitch

13:46

OK here we go..no checkerboard at all:

And easily describable in words: Scotland and Ireland are rhotic. That's it.

Robusto

@Mitch You should have included Boston.

Mitch

Except for some old dudes in Cornwall who sound like pirates.

@Robusto No. Boston should be excluded. Entirely. From all conversations. They are dead to me.

But I did find some rhoticity maps for the US. which had the Mass/Maine coast as non-rhotic

Robusto

@Mitch Well, dead people can't pronounce the r in arm either.

Mitch

also piedmont VA/NC/SC a little, and a very separate swath of Miss/Ala/Lou

Feeds

0

Q: Please help and correct me

am i correct if i send calendar invite with the history of the communication to plan a meeting and say" Please find hereby the dialing details for the call".?

single-word-requests meaning grammar word-usage grammaticality

Mitch

13:49

@Robusto I can't comment on where I was when the murder happened.

If in fact it was a murder

Robusto

I'd bet the murder occurred in EL&U chat.

Mitch

@Robusto looks for clues

tchrist

@Mitch This is why Andrew Scott can sound American if he wants to; or Aidan Gillen, for that matter.

Mitch

All clues point to everyone. Everyone did it. Together. In collusion. And Kenneth Branagh's moustache wins the Oscar!!

Tonepoet

@Robusto It is now but since you asked, if it were me I'd have left it open to be honest. First of all, dictionaries aren't designed to compare words. They're designed to give you the gist of what a single word means. I think we could stand to close a lot less of the word comparison questions, because there is some value in explaining how the verbiage of the definitions correspond.

Mitch

13:56

@tchrist It seems unfair that all the British and Australian actors are all so good at mimicking the American accents, but the Americans are so terribly awful at theirs.

Tonepoet

More importantly though, dictionary definitions are allegedly being quoted. The fault that this question has is probably just a failure to properly cite the dictionary, which should first be fixed with an edit and a comment regarding how to attribute things. Maybe it should be closed as unclear, or migrated to E.L.L., but not exactly closed for a lack of research in my opinion.

Mitch

WhyTF isn't our government doing something to stop this?

Matt E. Эллен

put import tariffs on American accents

Mitch

Tariffs on American accents!! Hell yeah!

tchrist

@Mitch Neither Scott nor Gillen is British. Both were born in Dublin.

Mitch

13:58

Take that, you britishers. You can stuff your scones and tea cakes and macarons and anything else that are really muffins..they're muffins people. just call them muffins.

AND ENGLISH MUFFINS ARE NEITHER

curls up into ball

like a wet spider

tchrist

Mitch

More to the point:

tchrist

Thems be biss quits.

Robusto

They ain't cookies.

Tonepoet

Slight corection, I thought it was closed...

Mitch

14:00

Those are deep fried wonderfulness. But not scones or muffins

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch MAYbe scones, but macarons? They're nothing like muffins. tut tut

tchrist

Robusto

@Tonepoet The point is, those words mean different things. If we allow that question, why would we not be obliged to permit comparisons of lamp and lamprey?

tchrist

As you see, scones and biss quits are the same.

The first is standard American biscuits; the second scones well clotted.

Matt E. Эллен

they look the same, but I would say their textures are quite different

Robusto

14:02

I've had high tea at the Savoy and I can't recall a single thing I ate.

Can't really recall the tea, either.

tchrist

@MattE.Эллен Oh you might be right there.

Mitch

OK. Maps are dumb

tchrist

@Mitch What's that, Chowderian heresies?

Mitch

Nobody in the south is non-rhotic anymore, except for people making fun of Gone with the Wind, again ALL EFFING BRITISH ACTORS STEALING OUR PURE BLOODED AMERICAN TALKING JOBS

tchrist

@Robusto Lamprey is the comparative degree of lamp, lamprist the superlative.

Mitch

14:04

@tchrist places in the US that are non-rhotic

Robusto

In any case, I haven't been to London in this millennium. I'm aching to go back, mainly for the theater, but I'm waiting for the Brexit dust to settle, and for people to stop driving cars into Parliament, and for Parliament to really be full of owls, and a few other things.

@tchrist Can you state that as a question, please?

Mitch

@Robusto Um... don't bother waiting.

go whenever. AirBnB though, because hotel prices are insane

tchrist

@Robusto I think some sort of sneaky i-mutation filled Parliament not with owls but with eels.

Mitch

actually go to portugal instead. better whether, much cheaper. They're English accent is a lot harder to understand though

tchrist

@Mitch That's actually far less true than you appear to imagine.

The Portuguese speak English well.

Robusto

14:07

@Mitch Don't I know it. When I used to go there on business in the '80s the Meridien hotel in Picadilly was £300 a night. I can only imagine what it is now.

Mitch

@MattE.Эллен are scones fried in a pan with oil as the primary cooking step?

@tchrist Oh. That's one barrier down for Rob. How about musicals? Are their musicals any good?

tchrist

@Mitch The Fado, he calls you.

Robusto

@Mitch That's being generous. The oil is actually ~~pork fat~~ lard.

When I ate a proper English breakfast for a week I started getting pimples.

Mitch

@Robusto Ugh. That's abhorrent. In a former life of mine I remember only 150 a night but at a time when I felt like I had to order tap water to drink to make the (academic) travel budget.

and get a receipt for the water.

@Robusto mmm

Robusto

I guess AirBnB is the new BnB. My brother-in-law visited his daughter in London where she's training to be a veterinarian, and he said the price for that was quite reasonable. (I'm the one who advised him to try it, btw.)

Mitch

14:12

I consider myself far northern Southern, because my mom, when she made fried chicken, she made it healthy, by having no skin, and pan frying instead of deep.

And ... ew ... whole wheat biscuits.

Tonepoet

@Robusto That's a very good question and I'll have to think about it some more, but I'm leaning towards giving a questioner that may be having genuine difficulty benefit of the doubt. We don't have a too localized closure reason anymore, so helping just one person is permissible. More importantly though I'm not sure if that's a realistic comparison. The con- and sub- prefixes have very similar literal meaning, and the meaning of the two words, while distinct does have a slight resemblance:

Engulf is usually considered a synonym for both just to demonstrate that point.

Mitch

Patriotism is what you ate as a child... there are some things I can't be patriotic about.

Robusto

@Tonepoet Those are edge cases. I'm sure we could find thousands of those, given the elasticity of word definitions in English.

tchrist

consubstantialem

Robusto

Consubstantiation is where the eucharist remains unleavened bread. With jam.

Tonepoet

14:16

@Robusto Maybe, but my point here is that an edge case is better than something that is seemingly inexplicable like confusing an animal for an inanimate object.

tchrist

Scones?

Mitch

Constabularitism - eat the goddam wafer or you'll get this truncheon across the back of your head.

Tonepoet

Also...

^ Lamprey on a lamp.

Mitch

Elasticarianism - these scones for eucharist wafers are a bit chewy, dontcha think?

Robusto

@Tonepoet All right, so you have applied a marginal difference to an imagined distinction. But the question did not identify engulf as the issue. It just asked for us to read the OP an elaborate good-night story about the differences so they could find some little bit of comfort of an evening.

Mitch

14:20

Insubstantialism - can I have another wafer? these are kinda small.

Robusto

@Tonepoet The sign says "We have draft beer" ... nothing about lampreys or lamps.

Mitch

@Robusto I feel better already just reading the story about a story that doesn't even exxist.

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch I don't think so. I think they're baked, but I've never actually made them

Mitch

@MattE.Эллен I think there was an entire Great British Bakeoff episode about them, but I only heard it from the other room, filled with comments about 'soggy bottoms'

Oh England.

The stories we tell about ourselves.

That are as close to a reality as a reality TV show is to reality.

Which is to say not close.

Robusto

@Mitch But reality TV is the new reality.

Tonepoet

14:28

@Robusto It's not the sign you should be looking at, but rather the lantern. XP

Robusto

My eye gravitates towards signs, sorry.

If there is something to read, I read it.

tchrist

Blocking out the scenery, breaking your mind.

Mitch

@Robusto That's how I know all about how many bowls of cereal I need to eat to get my Recommended Daily Allowance of Zinc and Selenium.

Tonepoet

@Robusto No need to be really.

Mitch

300 bowls of Frosted Flakes. Diabetic shock will make any concerns about trace metals irrelevant.

Robusto

14:32

@Tonepoet I'm not. That was just me being courteous. Doesn't happen often, so enjoy it while it lasts.

tchrist

@Mitch Seek ye first the Golden Prince's Plume.

Robusto

Is there a lot of selenium on the moon? Discuss.

Johan Larsson

no, they run desktop

year of linux desktop was 2003 on the moon

tchrist

Thanks, I hadn't known they'd brought a Linux desktop with them on the 2003 moon mission. Makes sense.

Tonepoet

14:54

@Robusto Only if you like to eat rabbits.

Robusto

@JohanLarsson How much is that in dog years?

@Tonepoet Lapin is mightier than the sword.

Mitch

@tchrist What? Is that one of those desert plants that seems edible and full of moisture but toxic because of too many heavy metals?

tchrist

@Mitch It treasures up selenium.

Cerberus

15:26

Selenium (software)

Selenium is a portable software-testing framework for web applications. Selenium provides a playback (formerly also recording) tool for authoring tests without the need to learn a test scripting language (Selenium IDE). It also provides a test domain-specific language (Selenese) to write tests in a number of popular programming languages, including C#, Groovy, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby and Scala. The tests can then run against most modern web browsers. Selenium deploys on Windows, Linux, and macOS platforms. It is open-source software, released under the Apache 2.0 license: web developers...

This I am aware of.

Tonepoet

15:47

@Tonepoet Gah, the con- prefix does not seem mean what I thought it did after-all. The dictionaries associate it with com- which means With. I might have just made a false association because of the word condescend. v_v I need to consider this further.

Cerberus

@Tonepoet Yes, sub means "under / (from under) upwards", whereas con- means "with, together".

Feeds

16:49

0

Q: Another word for 'mutual trust' but not 'reciprocal confidence'?

Is there another word for 'mutual trust' but not the phrase 'reciprocal confidence' ? Example sentence: It is the WORD HERE between Mrs Doe and organisation XYZ that enables to gain deeper and more profound insights into these phenomena.

single-word-requests

Feeds

17:20

1

Q: A sound of discharching water out of a bottle into glass

Today, I googled, and could find the terms, like dip. Is there any word when we pour water into the glass, and we hear sound produced within a bottle (not in a glass where the water is entering)?

single-word-requests phrase-requests idioms terminology

Gigili

17:31

I just saw the violence inherent in the system.

Feeds

17:50

0

Q: Is there a word that means "grandmotherly"?

Similar to how the word avuncular means "like an uncle" is there a similar word for "like a grandmother"? The Latin word for grandmother is "avus" so maybe avular?

single-word-requests

Mitch

23:55

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ, @Færd What was that song you posted recently? I can't figure out how search for the link. The Iranian song or songs from a couple years ago?

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…