English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

1:00 AM

@Mitch I prefer a shower to a bath. Saves the water.

1 hour later…

Cerberus

2:04 AM

@RegDwigнt Ah, that does sound bad.

Imitation without understanding is a common sign of bad writing.

1 hour later…

3:11 AM

@RegDwigнt Yes and no. Ebert seems to be suggesting that Japan took the already enlarged eyes of western animation and exaggerated them even further. I am not entirely sure as to the truth of that, because Looney Tunes characters have eyes that seem just as large as, if not larger than anime eyes, at least in terms of height. However his point of reference is early Disney films. If we were to compare like characters from those films to Anime equivalents, I believe this would generally hold true.

Pinnochio has large eyes, but Astro Boy's are even larger for instance.

These characters I consider to be comparable because are both of a similarly boyish stature, and artificially constructed to act as surrogate sons for their creators.

gunnuu1993

3:43 AM

@KannE @Mitch @Cerberus Ty very much guys for the research. My account was suspended that's why I couldn't reply you earlier. Now it's more clear to me. Again I very appreciate it. :)

lol I forgot to mention the topic that we were discussing about.. it was all about reduction of relative clause.

And I have an ielts test tmr, now I'm doing the practice test again. Maybe I would give some more topics in case if I was stuck. Ty

1 hour later…

5:00 AM

By the way, I finally found the right words online to explain my *future hypothetical theory* about the present tense. I guess it's just another one of those things native speakers know without realizing it. Notice the last lines.

The present tense (e.g. I am, she works, we swim, they believe) is also called the present simple or simple present. It's mainly used in the following ways:

to describe things that are currently happening or that are currently or always the case (I love chocolate ice cream; my parents are in New York this week; he has fair hair and blue eyes; some birds eat worm…

5:53 AM

I had no idea I'd find this in a dictionary; it's the last place I looked.
Anyhow, that's why "the girl who wins the match" (a future situation, so to speak) can't be reduced by using a present participle (an ongoing action, so to speak) to this: "the girl winning the match" (a girl in the process of winning, i.e. engaged in an ongoing action).

6:05 AM

It seems obvious now, but I couldn't put it into words before. My apologies. Good luck on your test.

6:21 AM

Oh, here's the link to the info above: en.oxforddictionaries.com/grammar/verb-tenses.

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3 hours later…

Gigili

9:43 AM

@Cerberus Could you please send me an email? I'd like to ask a few questions, not sure if this chat is the right place to do so, they actually are private to some extent.

4 hours later…

1:23 PM

Yo. So, the video game The Witcher is named for an invented word, "witcher", which is intended to be a masculine form of the word "witch".

(This mirrors the original Polish name, Wiedźmin.)

The construction is analogous to "widower".

Are there any other English words where there's a feminine form with no suffix and a masculine form with a suffix?

RegDwigнt

1:46 PM

Funnily enough, English-speaking men seem to grok gender equality. They are perfectly comfortable with just using female job names for themselves with no changes. A male nurse, midwife, or model is just a nurse, midwife, or model. Not a nurser, midwifer, modeler.

@RegDwigнt Funny enough, I am talking about how to address a person of unknown sex in a letter in the IPS SE room now...

1 hour later…

3:19 PM

@WillHunting Dear Manager if you want something done...but that is probably old skool.

@KannE Yeah that is what we sort of agreed on.

3:44 PM

@TannerSwett widow? (male widower)

@TannerSwett but could be an entertaining ELU question

4:38 PM

@Mitch That's exactly the example I just mentioned...

@TannerSwett Oh.

I gotta wok on reading comprehension. also just reading

'witcher' sounds awful though. very ... non-native

@WillHunting Yeah, I don't understand movies where people are taking baths. Who has the time to do that?

@Mitch Anyway I don't have a bathtub at home so I can only take a shower. I only get to use a bathtub when I stay in a hotel.

5:35 PM

@Mitch do be do be do

5:58 PM

@MetaEd Sounds like Scooby Dooby Doo, the dog cartoon.

@MetaEd I must admit that they do have the largest eye to body ratio east or west, but I had more qualifications than that for fairness's sake, and it's probably why this happened:

It's Powerpuff Girls Z, chibified.

@Tonepoet But I think you'll agree they were created as surrogate children. They totally fit the profile you're looking for.

“To be is to do”—Socrates.
“To do is to be”—Jean-Paul Sartre.
“Do be do be do”—Frank Sinatra.
“Scooby do!”—a dog.

@MetaEd Only if you consider sex unimportant in how animators depict the size of somebody's eyes. I did say boyish. It's probably worth noting that in-universe, they were mixed together from ingredients and just came out that way too, rather than being deliberately crafted and that might have a role in it too. If I recall correctly, other Powerpuff Girl characters have smaller eyes.

@Tonepoet Probably they were made from balloons.

@MetaEd That makes too much sense.

6:12 PM

@Tonepoet That's because they were made by their pop.

@MetaEd I was thinking more along the lines of sugar, spice and everything nice. Weren't balloons one of the ingredients bubbles selected when they made Bunny in the original series, 'cause they're nice?

@Mitch I'll be sure to let CD Projekt Spółka Akcyjna know that their translation of the made-up Polish word wiedźmin sounds weird. :D

That's pretty much how I do a pre-flight check of a Schweizer 2-33 glider.

You need to grab all the control surfaces and wiggle them back and forth. It's also commonly recommended to grab each wing and shake it.

6:37 PM

So, who else deleted a kazillion comments before bookmarking all the references repeatedly used (i.e. to help people whom some other people can't help because they're too busy bashing people, specifically for helping people who probably can't find aforementioned references because they don't know, for example, what their topic of concern is called, gramatically speaking)...only to realize that it is probably better to be kind and somewhat helpful to strangers than it is to be scared off by well-known...wannabe thugs.

RegDwigнt

6:47 PM

@MetaEd whoa, Power Puff Girls!

Puff being German for brothel.

@MetaEd no MLP in this chat, tho. Kthxbai.

7:25 PM

kthxbai lol

RegDwigнt

@Robusto instagram.com/p/BqPTQtjgKqI is what I'm having in mind. Just your run-of-the-mill thingie, staccato, little to none pedal, basically like anyone and their grandma would play it just by seeing the notes. Only a computer really needs any of those stupid markings. A human player understands things intuitively.

8:09 PM

I have a question about English usage: is the expression "a potential opportunity" a redundancy since "opportunity" already contains the meaning "possibility" and "potential" means "possible", too?

@CaptainBohemian It does sound a little redundant. a potential opportunity is an opportunity that is one that you don't actually have yet.

"A potential opportunity of being president is free beer"

when people are talking about opportunities, they are real ones rather than potential. You most likely want to drop 'potential'. (such a redundancy is called a 'pleonasm')

@KannE Augh...1) link please 2) separate your statements. How will you know which item we're responding to? What misguided soul told you to use soft returns?

Oh.

It was @Cerberus.

@Mitch then how do I say about the employment opportunity which may or may not be realized if I want to ask the person who may or may not offer the employment?

8:25 PM

@CaptainBohemian It's kinda hard for me to write a sentence for you when I don't know everything. Better to give the full sentence you're thinking of and then I can proofread/modify as needed.

@Mitch I want to say "I have contacted prof. xxx for the potential PhD opportunity"

I want to write that to the head of institute the professor xxx is affiliated.

because the professor xxx said I should ask the head.

Yeah, just opportunity is enough here.

"I have contacted Prof. xxx about the PhD opportunity"

or if there is an existing slot (as advertised), then instead of 'opportunity', use 'position'

"I have contacted Prof. xxx about the PhD position"

8:41 PM

@Mitch "about" here is more appropriate than "for"?

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9:39 PM

@CaptainBohemian very very loosely the nuance is that 'about' implies you've tried to get general information, 'for' implies you've asked Prof. xxx to give you an application for the PhD (or something more specific that Prof xxx is essentially involved in. These are extremely vague nuances and either is actually fine.

2 hours later…