BTW, I put that proposition to her just now and she said "Yes, I do. I do absolutely adore West Side Story." So there.

@Mitch I still want to believe that Island Girl and Grey Seal are friends.

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[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, bad pattern in url body, pattern-matching product name in body, potentially bad keyword in body, +2 more (557): How To Boost Your Penis Size In 4 Ways? by Shanu Sweet on english.SE

@Robusto Or they pretty, or witty, or ... ¿portorriqueño?

@Robusto When I was in primary school, I also had a friend who adored the Westside Story.

I remember having to listen to songs.

Which admittedly were catchy.

@RegDwigнt By the way, have you watched this Tsar series yet, on Netflix?

They say it's pretty bad.

Bottles with misspelled vodka.

@tchrist She says she pities any girl who isn't her tonight. ¿Es suficiente?

@Cerberus Cool. But it's just West Side Story, you see, not "the Westside Story." I believe this is the first time I've caught you in a pineappleism.

@Robusto All right.

But it is also a matter of style.

I'm not entirely happy with the way articles are used in titles.

I generally feel that a title should fit in with the rest of the sentence.

So I sometimes say the Game of Thrones.

Because I feel that I watched Game of Thrones is not a proper sentence.

Correction: I don't think I ever say the Game of Thrones, but I write it sometimes.

chat.stackexchange.com/…

As you see, I vacillate.

What I don't like either is writing, I read that in The Times.

I would usually write I read that in the Times.

Because I don't feel titles need to be 100% literally the same everywhere; I do not subscribe to that relatively recent mannerism.

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 But in another world, Tiny Dancer is running off with Benny on the same plane as Daniel.

something something crocodiles.

@Mitch Holy Moses!

Though it's not a good SE fit, it's fun to think about. Basically how to catch spies.

But you yourself don't have to know enough about baseball to know that no one knows those kinds of facts about baseball except for SPIES!

Every NNS probably makes their own idiosyncratic or native-language-specific "mistakes", but I think it can get virtually indeterminable for well-rounded proficient speakers.

I know I'm forever bound to let slip giveaways and gaffes of all sizes.

@Færd Oh sure, there's all sorts of sensitivity/specificity problems. I find it hard to imagine that there's a single question that can definitively separate native from non-native.

@Færd Aha! No native speaker would ever be so naturally articulate!

Except for native speakers writing that way on purpose.

@Mitch Certainly not a single question. One way could be to pin them down to a specific dialect (where did you grow up? where are your parents from? etc) and then go "Oh yeah I'm from there too" but then you get someone speaking that dialect to pick it up from there for you and interrogate the hell out of that person. The hard part is to find the agent.

But then again, they can get their own agent to deal with your agent.

@Mitch Fooled you!

The art director rendered it in all caps, but it is three separate words.

That's all I'm saying.

@Robusto WEsT SIDE STORY is a famous movie often described as a modernized Romeo and Juliet. =P

Ya gotta steal from someone, I guess.

@Mitch 51 comments? Seriously? That has to be some kind of record.

I see the two Russians who frequent this chat have starred @Reg's all-Russian lament about where is his Cyrillic alphabet soup.

@Robusto that is a very good question. I wish I knew. The name I first heard, like, maybe 25 years ago. The actual music, I don't know. Five years? Make it four, just so you can't call me a liar.

@Robusto well I should give it its third star, then. I only know of only one other Russian. Who's the third?

@Cerberus I am not a moron. As a direct consequence, I do not have Netflix and never will.

Fuck Netflix. You heard it here first.

@Robusto good for her.

It literally is good for her.

Most people don't know what's good for them, though.

Hence Netflix.

@Cerberus see. That is how he knows. I said West Side Story. You said something that doesn't even exist. That is how they know.