English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

In heaven, the cooks are French, the engineers are German, and the police are English. In hell, the cooks are English, the engineers are French, and the police are German.

kiamlaluno

4:07 PM

It seems so.

RegDwight

Think like engineers, sing like whoever, make love like cooks, and write like constables.

Robusto

That's hardly a repetition.

It's in a similar vein, but not a restatement or even a rephrasing.

RegDwight

Okay, but how about this:

Feb 4 at 15:17, by Robusto

That's why we go over these usage notes.

Robusto

But I will admit that they are identical in the way that a mountain and a giraffe are identical.

RegDwight

3 mins ago, by Robusto

That's why we go over this stuff.

kiamlaluno

4:09 PM

It's a kind of restatement, in some way.

Robusto

I'm just being thematic.

Think of it as a leitmotif.

RegDwight

I will think of it as tenor, if I may.

Robusto

And don't make me start searching for repetitions in your own chat messages.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

RegDwight

I have never used that phrase.

Robusto

Didn't say you had.

kiamlaluno

4:11 PM

Or think of it like the summer hit parade song you keep to listen everywhere.

RegDwight

Didn't say you said I had.

Robusto

Lies!

RegDwight

Have at you with a bottle! Have at you with another!

2

A: Where did the expression "have at it" come from?

Straitdope's forum suggests The phrase "have at avail" means to have at an advantage and the earliest citation is to Malory (Le Morte D'Arthur) in the phrase* "Him thought no worship to have a knight at such avail, . . ." Apparently "have at you" (or similar) appears in several Shakespeare ...

Robusto

Don't make me go all Cyrano de Bergerac on your ass!

Because I will.

RegDwight

You once have.

Robusto

4:14 PM

"I'm a mushroom-cloud layin' motherfucker, motherfucker!"

RegDwight

3

Q: Repeating the consonant in many words in a sentence or phrase

In the movie 'V for Vendetta' you have for example (bold part): Evey: Who are you? V. : Who? Who is but the form following the function of what and what I am is a man in a mask. Evey: Well I can see that. V. : Of course you can, I’m not questioning your powers of observatio...

kiamlaluno

That reminds me of a Italian joke. It doesn't sound good in English, though; in Italian "menta" could mean "lie!" or "mint".

Robusto

@RegDwight: I fear that I must speak by the card, or equivocation will be the death of me.

RegDwight

A common fear.

Robusto

Ah me, gotta go. TTYL.

RegDwight

4:17 PM

Schade.

Bis dann!

@Kosmonaut: once again, "how to improve my English".

kiamlaluno

I am not sure I understand the analogy between a person's head and a belfry.

0

A: The origin of 'bats' to mean mad

It comes from "bats in the belfry", a figure of speech drawing an analogy between a person's head and a church belfry, and between bats inhabiting a belfry and mental disturbance.

RegDwight

0

Q: How to use correct sentence and vocabulary while speaking and writing?

English is my second language, and i don't know much, when to put what word and how to use polite words and not to put big vocabulary. Today in conversation with one of my american client i told a sentence like this "you refused that time what i told you", which he felt very ugly and harsh. So in...

american-english

kiamlaluno

I was forgetting about that. Thank you, @RegDwight.

I read it when I was looking for something else, and forgot to vote it.

RegDwight

@kiamlaluno: I take it that belfry can be seen as the "head" of a tower or fortress.

kiamlaluno

I wonder what I said wrong in this answer.

-1

A: Smileys in text with parentheses

There should not be any spaces after the smiley, in the same way there is no space between a word and a closing parenthesis. In some messages sent through IM applications, a space is added after the smiley and before a parenthesis, as in some of these applications the textual smilies are replace...

I thought it was the part of a church.

RegDwight

4:24 PM

Sure.

It can also refer to a siege tower.

Siege tower

A siege tower (or in the Middle Ages a belfry) is a specialized siege engine, constructed to protect assailants and ladders while approaching the defensive walls of a fortification. The tower was often rectangular with four wheels with its height roughly equal to that of the wall or sometimes higher to allow archers to stand on top of the tower and shoot into the fortification. Because the towers were wooden and thus flammable, they had to have some non-flammable covering of iron or fresh animal skins. The siege tower was mainly made from wood but sometimes had metal parts. Used since th...

Link posted twice yet again.

kiamlaluno

I think the analogy would be perfect if "bats in a beltry" would mean something bad about the tower/church.

For example, if the church would be "demoniac".

RegDwight

Re: smileys, it appears that someone just disagreed with you. Which is not really surprising seeing that other answers that say the opposite thing seem to get many upvotes. I must say that I have not voted on any of the answers to that question yet. I just don't know who's right or wrong.

kiamlaluno

In the old times, didn't they think a mad person was possessed from the devil?

I guess they up voted what they like to hear, not what it's right.

RegDwight

Could well be.

But again, I'm not sure there's a right or wrong here.

I mean, smileys are not really part of any standard on punctuation yet.

For all I know.

kiamlaluno

That is true. Also "euro" was not an Italian word, before the euro become the national currency. That didn't anybody to make the plural of that word, though.

I lied; I sometimes read what I wrote. ;-)

That is also the reason the authoritative academy decided that the plural of "euro" is "euro".

We say "un euro", "quattro euro".

RegDwight

4:38 PM

Oh man, still no data dump... I'm starving!

kiamlaluno

When should they update the data?

RegDwight

I dunno, I would have expected that to happen yesterday.

The last dump is from January 9th.

I mean, I'm not waiting for the actual CC-wiki-dump, just the DataExplorer to be updated.

kiamlaluno

Do they do it following a schedule, or is it a rather I-do-it-when-I-have-time activity?

RegDwight

So far, it has always been on the 9th or the 10th.

The CC-wiki-dump is now on a bi-monthly schedule, but not DataExplorer.

kiamlaluno

The DataExplorer is more useful, IMO. At least you can update me about my passive reputation. ;-)

RegDwight

4:42 PM

At least that's what they promised on the blog. Let me see if I can find it.

Stack Overflow Blog: Creative Commons Data Dump Jan ’11

Posted by Jeff Atwood on January 15th, 2011

IMPORTANT: This torrent was originally uploaded incomplete. Our apologies. If you downloaded it before ~ 8 pm Pacific on January 16th, 2011, you should re-download it now. The correct size is > 3 GB; anything smaller is incorrect.

The latest version of the Stack Exchange Creative Commons Data Dump is now available. This reflects all public data in …

… up to Jan 2011.

This month’s Stack Exchange data dump, as always, is hosted at ClearBits! You can subscribe via RSS to be notified every time a new dump is available. …

"Because the dumps are quite a bit of work for us, we’re moving to a bi-monthly schedule instead of monthly. Meaning, you can expect dumps every two months instead of every month. If you have an urgent need for more timely data than this, contact us directly, or use the Stack Exchange Data Explorer, which will continue to be updated monthly."

kiamlaluno

I guess they are going to update it every two months.

It would be a shame, if they do so.

Is there a way to refer to each "entry" in a dictionary? For example, what should I say instead of "the NOAD has an entry for spelling checker, but it reports it is another way to say spell checker."?

Gee! How much nice things I miss, by not watching the television too much. :-)

@RegDwight: You forget to write what it means. :-)

I am hungry.

What I would like to eat is something my friend prepares; one of her Calabrian dishes would be good to have, right now.

RegDwight

5:07 PM

I have to go! But I have added the meaning. (^_^)

CU.

kiamlaluno

Se you, @RegDwight.

Oh… and thank you for your answer. :-)

Robusto

5:47 PM

@kiamlaluno: Can you give me an example of a Calabrian dish? Not familiar with that culinary genre.

@RegDwight: What's the big deal with the data dump? What do you use it for?

kiamlaluno

6:01 PM

@Robusto: Right now, I can think only of grispeddi, cudurieddi, struffoli.

Robusto

cookaround.com/cook/italia/calabria

Do those look familiar?

kiamlaluno

6:16 PM

Looking at the names, I know few of them.

I know that "eggplant meatballs" is a Calabrian dish, but I don't find it there.

I actually know old dishes from Falerna, close to Catanzaro.

Ehmmm… I mean, in the province of Catanzaro.

deepfryer.bgfeed.com/deepfryer/deep-fryer-pot.html

Grispedde is probably the correct name for grispeddi, or it's another way to call the dish.

I forgot to close here; I was doing something else to notice the messages.

It's time to go to eat. See you. :-)

RegDwight

7:09 PM

@Robusto: I just like numbers. I like looking at them, playing with them, and then looking at them again.

Also, this:

Feb 1 at 12:00, by RegDwight

It's amazing how everyone on this site leads by one criterion or another.

Feb 1 at 12:02, by RegDwight

ShreevatsaR leads by average answer score; Robusto leads by average rep per day; Dusty is the least downvoted; mmyers needs the least keystrokes per rep point; nohat is leading by passive rep; etc.

Rhodri

I'm sorely tempted to download the dump to see what I lead by. I hope it's not "example" :-)

Robusto

I lead by average rep per day? I wouldn't even know where to look for that. (And don't say "the data".) =P

That also begs the question what's the big deal with that, but the answer appears to be your numero-fixation. I can respect that. We all have our fetishes.

RegDwight

data.stackexchange.com/english/st/84/…

Robusto

@RegDwight: And I expect you don't just "look" at the numbers. You like to touch them, massage them, and probably do other unmentionable things to them.

RegDwight

Fetish is too mild a word.

Robusto

7:21 PM

Who was it said "If you torture numbers long enough they'll confess to anything?"

RegDwight

I am obsessed, batshit insane.

79% of statistics are made up on the spot.

Robusto

Waiting ...

...

Ah, better.

Rhodri

Time to go home, I fear. Have a good evening (local time), folks.

RegDwight

CU.

And now I'm out, too!

nohat

8:40 PM

Hmm, I just got an e-mail from the asker of this question regarding my closing of the question:

0

Q: Is a split infinitive still considered bad practice?

Possible Duplicate: Are split infinitives grammatically incorrect, or are they valid constructs? Is a split infinitive still considered bad practice? It seems to degrade the sentence in my mind to unsplit it: This requires a two-pass approach, one pass to find collisions, and a se...

grammar split

He wrote: “For closed questions as duplicates, it would be helpful to include a link to the question that is duplicated. Could you please add this to: english.stackexchange.com/questions/12112/…”