English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2019-03-24

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8:57 AM

@Robusto It's like with your mnemonics. Now you have to keep in your head and work your way through not one but two different depictions of the same thing. Which are scattered on the page arbitrarily far apart from one another.

Did I say two, make that three. There's also the whole Jackson Bollocks affair.

@Robusto it's a design problem. Users are not designers. This person does not think like a designer or a typographer or a teacher. They don't even think like a user of their own creation. They only think like a user of the tool they are using. They are trying to help, but are oblivious to the fact that an idea can only be as helpful as its implementation.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

@Færd تولدت مبارک

Or whatever it is. I can't read what I just wrote.

9:46 AM

Well, I was just searching for a word and found the answer to all my problems (or most of them, if you can consider certain people as problems). I don't give a dang if my question is closed as unclear now; I'm crystal. In fact, some people overly concerned with words should close it before the problem people discover I've figured them out. That would be helpful. Hahaha...I feel enlightened all of a sudden. I should go become a prophet or something now.

3 hours later…

Captain Bohemian

12:45 PM

so hungry

how nice if there is a real chat room where people can chat while eating together.

Captain Bohemian

1:02 PM

I think talking with the aim of solving intellectual issues is the most substantial.

Mundane issues are usually meaningful only when practical operation can be done.

1:47 PM

Any idea what does "stand" mean in this?

> Have You Ever Had A 1 Night Stand?

2 hours later…

3:31 PM

@Shafizadeh A sexual encounter.

3 hours later…

6:27 PM

@RegDwigнt Awww thanks so much!

This year I received an unprecedented number of congratulations.

Which is the fault of the person who first divulged my birth date this morning. :))

6:50 PM

Y'all get off on the wrong day. It's unfair how deserted this place looks on Sundays.

@Færd bleep

@Cerberus A 'stand' is a sexual encounter? Certainly 'a one-night stand' is, but standing along 'a stand' is not one as far as I know. Even if totally in context one says 'Those two are having stands all the time' the response would be 'What? Where are they standing? Is it for a picture?'

@KannE The prophet thing is a pretty nice skill to have.

7:53 PM

Ouch. reddit.com/r/stackexchange/comments/b2flix/…

1 hour later…

8:54 PM

@Mitch Obviously you never watched The Last Stand with Arnie.

Neither did I, but that is irrelevant to my point.

Actually my point is that I was going to comment what you commented. Quit stealing my stuff.

@Lordology recency illusion. I remember reading that exact same tirade verbatim nine years ago.

Same for tirades from the opposite end. How all the good questions have long been asked, and all the new questions are utter crap.

@Mitch blurp

.

Is there a word analogous to guffaw but for crying?

Sob? Maybe, but they're not completely analogous.

Guffaw seems to be of imitative origin. Maybe with the help of the context guffaw in tears could be understandable.

9:15 PM

Who revived nohat?

Nohat means grammarians in Arabic.

OMG rly now

Haha unless you read it as no-hat.

It only took us seven years and one Færd to get behind the mystery.

None of our Arabic-speaking linguists ever spilled the beans. Nor nohat himself.

If only I had been around in the old days to unveil his secret.

9:17 PM

This is incredible. Incredible things are happening.

Oh he speaks Arabic?

All linguists speak Arabic to the extent you'd need to for that kind of wordplay.

Okay then I'm the first linguist here after nohat.

The first one to give away the secret handshake, anyway.

Now we need to quickly talk about a whole bunch of rubbish so this scrolls out of view and nobody ever reads it and I'm the only one in the know.

Feel free to rub it off!

But we can come up with all sorts of Arabic code names!

Wow it sounds so exotic, even to me.

9:20 PM

I could post a bunch of cat images. But those tend to attract attention rather than lose it.

I know a whole bunch of Arabic code names. I call them "numbers".

7 is one.

Well technically 7 is seven.

But shhh don't tell anyone.

You've said enough.

There's a worthwhile occupation for you.

Reel off nonsense to push things out of view.

Yes I could talk about how rubbish I am at the violin.

Okay go ahead. Good plan.

Then I'm going to reassure you about how good you are.

Had that concert today. On stage for the first time in like my entire life.

Yohooo

9:23 PM

Except for that one time in third grade when I sang a song in duet with a girl I fancied at the time.

Which went better?

I only had A grades in everything and she was the worst pupil in the class. But I fancied her big time I can tell you.

And wouldn't you know, she nailed every note and I fucked up my part.

Third grade. Quite virile.

So I went on hiatus for 33 years.

And what happened today?

9:24 PM

@Færd I would say the one today was a more awesome experience if only for the fact that it was everything but awesome.

@Færd Executive summary: way worse than I hoped, but way better than expected. Which probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense except to @Robusto.

You don't sound disappointed!

That's actually very good for a first performance of a beginner at violin!

Well I don't. Neither was the audience. I was easily the most disappointed person in the room.

Awesome, I dare say.

Yeah I guess it was.

@RegDwigнt Actually that's impossible. It was posted 6 days ago. But it is sad. Most things asked these days are pieces of lazy shit (pardon my French)

9:27 PM

Congrats.

So if we have achieved the goal of obscuring my nohat=grammarians message I'd like to take my leave and go sleep.

Thank you.

@Færd No thanks for that, you cheeky person you!

Oops

@Lordology I don't think you got my point. I am not talking about the time stamp on the Reddit post. I am talking about everything else in that Reddit post except the time stamp.

Or maybe I'm missing yours, wouldn't be a first.

@RegDwigнt Me personally?

No, I just like missing things in general. Like notes in a concert, say.

9:31 PM

@RegDwigнt So you've seen this drivel before?

Well yes. As I said, pretty much verbatim, too. Expletives and all.

It's a tag of war. Has always been, will always remain.

To think it has an upvote.

I believe that's the default one you get.

@RegDwigнt I must admit I am not signed up to Reddit. So you get an auto-upvote? Questionable.

Every post starts at 1 I believe, yes.

It's not questionable if it's the same for everyone. It's just a number. Like 0.

9:34 PM

But why?

There's no point to it!

I dunno.

Maybe to make you feel good. Just a psychological thing.

Damn enter-is-send.

Yeah. Hence the two-minute window for editing. Press the up arrow.

No need to delete, just append.

I know. Couldn't be bothered ;) . FWIW The user's Reddit profile is filled with expletives and the like. Wouldn't surprise me, calling a hard-working mod a "blocking cock." Seriously.

That's what I kinda figured but didn't want to say as it's kinda calling them out publicly without knowing the exact situation.

But yeah that's how it reads to me. People don't like me any place I go. Damn all those places.

9:38 PM

@RegDwigнt Kinda. ;)

I feel his pain not wanting to upgrade though.

@RegDwigнt WDYM?

I'm typing this on a 10-year-old 32-bit PC.

If your software doesn't run on my machine, I don't rush out to buy a new machine. I just don't use your software.

@RegDwigнt Wise.

For techies: I'm typing this on a 2-year old Chromebook.

32-bit.

Well I dunno, in a couple years I might be the only person left on the planet using 32-bit. Including every embedded system. Every washing machine will have octocore.

It will be a nightmare for predictability, analysis, certification. But the push is too strong.

9:42 PM

I'm already onto a brontobyte solid state drive.

I've pre-ordered Apple's 4D iPhone ∞ .

I've not even heard of that one.

Lost count after iPhone 2.

@RegDwigнt I hope you're joking, but I can never be sure.

I am not, no.

Well I was.

There is no iPhone ∞ :

OIC.

Well that's how you can tell.

9:45 PM

crqp i just szitched to french keyboqrd:

those qrent ,istqkes:

Voulez-vous paar Gruweschuh ? Non, merci, mir reiche die.

try and catch me out, will you?

I'll just press Alt+Shift and type in Russian.

дшлу ершы

Mais non, je sais ce que je fais

Sans aucune doute.

9:46 PM

Je ne parle pas allemand

Je ne parle que l'anglais et le français.

Evidemment.

Manifestement.

Je déteste passer au clavier français

Just for a cedilla c.

Avez-vous parlez Francais?

Don't you have like nohotkeys on or whatever the equivalent is for your system.

Where you just type a tick followed by a c and you get a cedille.

Coz chromeOS is crap.

Ah.

9:50 PM

Il est merde.

@Lordology If not for this hill next to my house, I'd be looking at France right now.

Really!

?

Half the street signs here are in two langages. One of them French.

Dans quel pays habites-tu?

habites-vous, even!

Allemagne.

It's tu alright.

I'm pretty much next door to where Patricia Kaas was born. Actually her dad still lives in the house I believe.

Unless he passed away in the mean time which I do not hope.

9:52 PM

Ah, j'habite a Londres.

I think you got Brexit backwards :-P

Yeh. Don't get me f**ing started... :( :( :( :(

I know.

BRB

K.

The current Brexit situation in 5 letters: wtf x ∞

@RegDwigнt Ooh dear, a bit rusty I am.

I think I understand. You have a dedicated key for the infinity sign where the ç would be.

I'd have to google and copypaste that thingie if I had to use it.

9:59 PM

No, I am indeed copyandpasting the lemniscate from the Interwebz.

Actually that ties in nicely in our point from before. My highest-upvoted answer on SO to this day is how to type ∞ in HTML.

And that was like nine years ago. So yeah. It wasn't all rocket science back then either. Very mundane stuff.

319

A: Infinity symbol with HTML

Use the HTML entity ∞ or ∞.

Look at them reps, ma.

I am a somewhat lemniscatophile.

@RegDwigнt So much upvotes, for such a googlable thing... (JK great answer)

Holy moly, that really was nine years ago.

Fruit flies like a banana.

@RegDwigнt And bananas fly like fruit...?

@Lordology well just where do you think I got my answer from.

10:02 PM

@RegDwigнt Well Google, OBVS. Like any other reputable member.

Ayup.

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana

"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana" is a humorous saying that is used in linguistics as an example of a garden path sentence or syntactic ambiguity, and in word play as an example of punning, double entendre, and antanaclasis. == Analysis of the basic ambiguities == "Time flies like an arrow" is an English phrase often used to illustrate syntactic ambiguity. In this connection the sentence is often seen as part of the elaboration: "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana". Modern English speakers understand the sentence to unambiguously mean "As a generalisation,...

Also, please don't call it the ____ sign. i find it improper. ;)

It's a lemniscate, and a lemniscate only!

like it's not a 'divide sign', it's an Obelus!

All of the above is officially JK.

But I like things to have technical names.

Yes. I got a great book about Obelus right here. It's called "Le tour de France d'Asterix".

Actually no, Le tour de Gaule of course.

Been 25 years since I last read it, alas.

If there was a middle finger html code, it would suffocate your inbox.

My inbox got suffocated twelve years ago to the point where I stopped checking it.

For all I know it has all been middle fingers ever since.

And now I'm standing here contemplating if I should re-read La cantatrice chauve or En attendant Godot.

But I think it's safe to say I'll just go with Le petit prince, as always.

Actually no. I'll go read the tour de Gaule again. How's that for a brilliant idea.

Can't wait to see what Obelus is up to this time.

Talk to y'all tomorrow.

10:12 PM

@RegDwigнt Bye!

11:01 PM

1

A: What is the grammatical term for “‑ed” words like these?

The -ed in all of your examples is a past-participle suffix. A past participle is not a derived form: rather, it is an inflected form of a verb (assuming you accept the distinction between derivation and inflection as grammatical processes in English). Most past participles end in -ed, but some e...

Go give that lad the points he's due.

@Mitch In context, it means a sexual encounter. I don't know why you're ignoring context.

Presumably, performed standing in an alley or something...

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