English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2019-09-16

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2:45 AM

If anybody has any images left on a tinypic account they better act fast: The service is shutting down.

3:00 AM

@Deep English Language & Usage handles single-word-requests, conditionally. Read the tag data for more information.

3 hours later…

Captain Bohemian

5:47 AM

user image

hunger is such a frequent occurrence that it is almost cosmopolitan.

it's not that you can cook a meal to solve for long if you really have access to cooking facility. It will reoccur soon after that meal.

if you cook every several hours if you can really tolerate the boredom and hassle of it, still you wouldn't have sufficient time to do other things which are really interesting.

of course to access a cooking facility, you have to afford a house having a cooking facility first unless you dwell wilderness. Most areas in a metropolis are forbidden to barbecue.

I think hunger is really an illness, a special illness which is particularly troublesome to cure---it requires regular cooked food to cure.

Captain Bohemian

6:23 AM

It's really not as you said that every human can cook so that there can't be world hunger. A lot of people are engaged in various things so they seldom cook. There aren't as many kitchens or cooking facilities as humans in this world, either.

Captain Bohemian

6:45 AM

if everyone needs to cook to eat, our civilization wouldn't progress much like animals.

2 hours later…

Jasper van Looij

8:56 AM

@Tonepoet Did you know that the AHD usage panel was discontinued in Feb last year?

@JaspervanLooij Oh, no, I didn't. That's actually quite disheartening. It was at the core of what made the A.H.D. so great.

Which isn't even to mention that the A.H.D. is basically the last unabridged dictionary still circulated in print.

Jasper van Looij

@Tonepoet I haven't talked to you for about a year.

@Tonepoet You can read this article if you like: washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/…

@JaspervanLooij Ehehe, I'm not entirely sure if that's true. I think we may've met in here a couple of times momentarily, but yeah, its been too long.

How've you been @JaspervanLooij

@Tonepoet well, SE features a very helpful and accurate indicator of when exactly I stopped caring.

user image

Could be a fun game if everyone in here posted a screenshot of theirs.

@Robusto's probably says +9001k since he stopped caring.

10:09 AM

@RegDwigнt I always check up on the reputation tab, so mine would probably just read zero.

But I never asked questions on the main website in the first place...

Jasper van Looij

10:49 AM

@Tonepoet The AHD blog last post is Feb 2018, the month the panel was disbanded. I wonder if HMH intends to print a sixth edition. The latest edition is a 2018 printing of the fifth edition for the 50th anniversary of the first edition.

11:02 AM

@JaspervanLooij The fifth edition has multiple other printings from 2011 (the original), 2013 and 2016, so I'd expect the next printing to be in 2020, or 2021, and I would expect it to be a sixth edition since it'd be for a whole new decade.

Then again, a whole new edition might also take longer than a minor revision, assuming they haven't been concurrently working on both.

2 hours later…

1:20 PM

@RegDwigнt Every now and then I get tricked into clicking on that. Though I still don't care a button or a fig.

BTW, is it just me or is the ending to Miller's Crossing an homage to the ending of Welles's The Third Man? Discuss.

2 hours later…

Keep these mind

3:27 PM

If I would normally write 'a two-week break', how should I write a two (or three) week break? Any hyphens needed anywhere?

4:21 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in answer, no whitespace in answer (183): Origin of "wannabe" and its precursors by dom on english.SE

3 hours later…

6:55 PM

@Robusto I never watched the movie and I started reading the book on three separate occasions but never got past the first ten pages. So there. In your face. Now sioux me.

I am not educated in the least. I only pretend, and only very poorly.

But for the Internet that's usually more than enough.

@Tonepoet I don't even know where the reputation tab is.

I think I have like four tabs in my profile, and none of them reads "reputation".

user image

Whoa. Fuck my life. We actually run ads for Grammarly on ELU.

Enough is enough.

I am actually going and clicking on that one.

Let those fuckers pay up. Even if it's just a fraction of a millionth of a cent.

And sure enough, right on their landing page they show examples of how it corrects perfectly fine English into something even a non-native speaker would be ashamed of saying.

"Improve grammar" it says. The very first two words they say put all their incompetence on display.

You cannot improve grammar. Grammar cannot be better or worse. It is either there, or it is not.

@RegDwigнt Why you not like improve grammar.

7:11 PM

@M.A.R. See, that sentence is not 72% ungrammatical. It is 100% ungrammatical. It cannot be made more grammatical or less grammatical. It can only be made grammatical, period.

Either it is English, or it is not. There is no in-between.

7:25 PM

@RegDwigнt See, you tried reading the book first. That's a rookie move.

@Robusto well yes, what other moves am I supposed to make as a rookie?

I admit your path has few branches.

It's easier that way. Keeps things manageable.

At any point you can always either go straight, or go gay. And I know I don't want to go gay. So hey presto. I don't even have to think.

And the book's only 120 pages, like. So it's only at my level of skill that you can proudly proclaim, "meh, I've abandoned books one tenth that length".

The movie's only 100 minutes or so.

Like, I don't even know what happened to The Very Hungry Cat. Stopped reading right there. Don't care.

7:33 PM

Plus it has zither music.

The Third Man - Anton Karas

@Robusto but it's black and white. And there was zero Optimus Prime in the first three minutes. I'm not watching that garbage.

But ... zither music!

I can listen to that.

Actually I have.

It's good music. A++ would listen again.

Even though IGN in their review of zither said "7/10. Too many strings."

@RegDwigнt "Too picky."

That's too good for IGN.

I made the mistake of watching Rashomon once. The longest 78 minutes of my life.

Ran was like three hours and they went by faster.

7:39 PM

Should have started with Throne of Blood.

Ran (乱, transl. "chaos" or "turmoil") is a 1985 epic period drama film directed, edited and co-written by Akira Kurosawa. The plot derives from William Shakespeare's King Lear and includes segments based on legends of the daimyō Mōri Motonari. The film stars Tatsuya Nakadai as Hidetora Ichimonji, an aging Sengoku-period warlord who decides to abdicate as ruler in favor of his three sons. The film is a Japanese-French venture produced by Herald Ace, Nippon Herald Films and Greenwich Film Productions. Production planning went through a long period of preparation. Kurosawa conceived the idea of Ran...

Good movie. Great movie. Everyone go watch movie. Movie good.

@RegDwigнt Actually, "chaos" or "turmoil" is not precise enough a translation. 乱 suggests a revolt against authority, an attempt to upend established order.

Why am I looking at still images of Ran with The Third Man zither music playing.

It's weirding me out.

Whistles It's the Seven Samurai director

And now Glenn Miller starts playing. Dafuq.

I'm in no mood for Glenn Miller.

Glenn Miller - In The Mood [HQ]

7:43 PM

Hmm. Maybe I clicked on a playlist instead of a solo video for the zither piece.

@M.A.R. you will find that it's the director of many more movies than just that.

He directed The Idiot for starters.

Though he didn't call it that I don't think.

@RegDwigнt I googled him a while ago, yeah, everything he's directed is apparently awesome.

Well, gotta add it to the backlog of things to watch.

My next movie is going to be Prisoners.

Kids these days. You don't google Kurosawa. You watch Kurosawa.

@RegDwigнt Also, that's not Glenn Miller. It's Jimmy Stewart portraying Glenn Miller. I'm pretty sure the trombone playing was dubbed.

@RegDwigнt u prefred i go on site an ask dum question

sir

7:46 PM

Oh, please do. We could use a little entertainment around here.

@Robusto that's not Jimmy Stewart. That's Kevin Spacey playing Jimmy Stewart.

Meh. Busy rambling in Google Docs.

@Robusto that'd be Scott Joplin.

Which might be Solace enough, though I dunno ...

Funny you should say that. I watched Solaris yesterday.

And by watched I mean "tried watching it for the seventh time".

7:48 PM

Scott Joplin - Solace (Mexican Serenade) HQ

It's like watching paint dry. Except there is no paint and you are blind.

You can get Alexa to watch paint dry for you.

Another rookie move.

@Robusto yeah yeah saw that one. Daniel Craig was in it.

One of my favorite rags.

It really palled the room together.

My fav is Bethena, a Concert Waltz.

Awesome piece.

And as Joplin as can be.

7:52 PM

Oh, btw, there's a word like "polunya" or something, Russian word meaning a "lake" in the ice where it's possible to breach a submarine. Riding buddy told me about it today. He used to be a submarine captain for the Navy (U.S.).

Polynya.

Means "lake"? Or does it have that specific meaning only?

No just any fishing hole in the ice.

Ah. Cool.

Полынья́ — пространство чистой (открытой) воды в ледяном покрове реки или в плавающих ледяных полях моря и озера (незамёрзшее или растаявшее место на поверхности реки или другого водоёма). Полыньи можно наблюдать в местах быстрого течения воды (на реках, ниже водосбросов плотин), в связи с выходом на поверхность относительно тёплой воды (водосбросы промышленных предприятий, выходы подземных вод, истоки рек из озёр), а также при раздвижении льда (например, под воздействием ветра на море). Полынья является очагом образования внутриводного льда и шуги, которые могут привести к образованию зажора...

A polynya is an area of open water surrounded by sea ice. It is now used as geographical term for an area of unfrozen sea within the ice pack. It is a loanword from Russian: полынья (polynya) Russian pronunciation: [pəɫɨˈnʲja], which refers to a natural ice hole, and was adopted in the 19th century by polar explorers to describe navigable portions of the sea.There are two main types of polynyas; coastal polynyas that are found year round near the coast of Antarctic and Arctic and are mainly created by strong winds pushing the ice away from the coast. The other type is mid-sea or open-ocean polynyas...

Dafuq English actually stole it???

I'm calling Putin.

7:54 PM

English beats up other languages and steals their words. I thought you knew that.

English only beats up itself at the pub. Hence the bad teeth.

Other people's stuff it steals clandestinely like the last wimp that it is.

Either way, those other languages are slowly deflating due to vocabulary theft.

Not really no. Russian does the same. Which is why it has even more words than English.

German on the other hand, at this point it's just English with proper grammar.

French stole le weekend and stopped.

@RegDwigнt But they hate when restaurants serve "le hot dog" ...

I think they only hate it because of the low price.

Charge 100 Euros for it and you'll be fine.

7:58 PM

Also because it's trash food.

It doesn't matter if you charge 100 Euro for it.

There's that pizza with gold leafing. Costs $3000 I believe. Tastes like the Ganga River. People buy it.

Also because they can't actually say "hot dog" ... comes out "'ot dog" or some shit.

For the last couple days YouTube has been shoving a suggestion into my face, where some Russian is teaching English and the video title is about how you don't need to pronounce H in English, ever.

I'm not sure if I should click on that.

But it has like 300k views or something.

People are learning! Isn't that nice.

@Robusto anyway, my point exactly. In French "we hate it" becomes "we ate it". QED.

Word of the day: drupaceous

@RegDwigнt What the ell?

@CowperKettle That's not even a word of the minute. I learned that one in, like, 5th grade.

My interest in drupaceous has, er, dropped off since then.

8:06 PM

@Robusto see if I can find it for you.

H-Dropping: лайфхак для понимания быстрой речи. Произношение звука h в английском

There. Still not clicking on it. Just copying the URL.

I'm not watching that. You go watch that.

Nah. I don't speak russky.

Title: "H-dropping: life hack for understanding fast speech".

Thumbnail: "the sound H not needed?"

'scuse me, po-russky.

That would suggest you do indeed speak russky.

To a frankly alarmingly competent degree.

14 mins ago, by RegDwigнt

I'm calling Putin.

I wonder if they mean h as in the full throat-clearing h you hear in certain Slavic languages.

Compared to which English /h/ just can't hold a candle.

8:10 PM

The channel's name is "Virginia Bēowulf: English Studies".

Sounds legit to me.

Yes with the macron.

What business did the French president have in there?

@Robusto that's a good point. No Russian can actually pronounce the English /h/, they always use the Slavic /x/.

That said, "h dropping" sounds like an English term. Like them Cockneys actually dropping the H in hell as you did just now.

They should look behind the refrigerator and find that damned h.

@Robusto no, not that Macron. This Macron:

Mar 5 '12 at 22:03, by RegDwight Ѭſ道

There can be only one Macron! Macron One!

OIC

8:13 PM

Invented by Haim Saban, no less.

8:23 PM

Meaning 'Aim Saban, no doubt.

8:56 PM

I'm no Saban, mate!

AnArrayOfFunctions

What is a static weapon attached to ground, activated by camera or lasers called?

I remember it being called a turret

But that was from a game with towers

So it's probably not accurate

Like a mine but it shoot bullets

9:39 PM

Turret

10:09 PM

Activated by camera?

@Xanne he says "activated by camera or lasers", and it's the camera bit that you wonder about?

How the hell do you activate a turret by lasers, do you fire them lasers at the turret until it gets cross with you and fires back?

Anyway. I think Array really means motion sensors of some variety.

And the weapon is called whatever the weapon is called.

Maybe the motion sensors activate a turret. Maybe a Mosin–Nagant. Maybe a slingshot. Maybe a clown that throws cakes.

Turret is not a suitable hypernym for all these different weapons. It's only a turret if it's actually a turret. The only suitable hypernym for all them different weapons is, well, weapon.

@RegDwigнt Heh, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

They point a gun that's like a laser toy at a target, and then the dinosaur is programmed to get pissed off and attack.

@RegDwigнt Clowns are only weapons since Stephen King.

10:36 PM

A turret isn’t a weapon, it’s a location for a weapon—a cannon or whatever.

10:56 PM

user image

Cannon in turret. Plassenburg castle.

Better a laser to set it off than a camera.

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Sep '1916

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