English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

1:52 AM

This just in:

@Cerberus take note ^

I would rather say Ilias means Trojan [poem].

I suspect this is a reference to the cartoon Toy Story?

4 hours later…

6:09 AM

hunger is still around and has to be solved before doing other things.

@Malavika I think preparing for TOEFL doesn't require to go to cram school. If it is needed, I wouldn't take it because I don't want to go to cram school for such a test. But I don't need to take it now.

I also wouldn't go to cram school for GRE. I can't get a high school after taking it three times and don't want to apply for USA schools.

applying for USA universities take too much, application fees, recommendation letters, GRE fee, GRE subject fee, TOEFL fee, mail fees for GRE, GRE subject, and TOEFL administrator to send grades to the schools you apply for. If you fail to get admitted to any university, you will lose a lot of money in vain.

but all the above are not my current problems because I have long given up USA.

I don't really feel USA is that good. USA visa fee is also very expensive.

when I just graduated, I almost didn't have money, so I can't apply for USA at all.

to apply for USA, you need to have extra money first.

to apply for other countries, you only need to have money for food and housing.

so after graduation, I first tied to look for a paid position, only after which did I start to prepare for USA applications.

but finally I decide to give it up.

applying for Europe is really easier.

yea

actually I have finished.

I have a place to go now.

I didn't target on a particular university; I applied for a lot of places.

I probably applied for over 20 places.

actually I applied for positions, rather than universities.

for PhD in Europe, it's often application from a professor, an institute, rather than the university.

a university may have more than one PhD position to be apply for.

for example, I have applied for two positions in Uppsala University earlier this year.

if you applied for USA, you can't apply for many universities unless you have sufficient money because each university requires application fee and the grade mailing fees you need to pay to TOEFL and GRE.

Well. TOEFL or GRE would only mail your grade to 5 universities without charging extra fee. If you apply for more than 5 universities, you need to pay extra fee each university for the grade to be mailed.

well, the USA universities don't accept self-mailing the grade, they require the test administrator to mail them the grade directly.

so the test administrator can take this change to charge you a lot of money.

2 hours later…

SmokeDetector

8:37 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected, toxic answer detected (158): Do we use "early" or "late" to refer to the end of a decade in BCE? by Alfred Bigwood on english.SE

1 hour later…

9:46 AM

sigh

@Malavika research oriented studies can also be theory based.

research in theoretical physics or pure math

1 hour later…

11:00 AM

@Malavika well, I mean theory based research can be research in theoretical physics or pure math.

as for other fields, like social science, I don't have the idea.

6 hours later…

Terran Swett

4:58 PM

Hey, how come questions starting with "how come" don't get inverted? 🤔

I just noticed that for the first time today.

I guess some question words just don't call for inversion.

"How come" produces neither inversion nor do-support—

We say "How come he eats fish," not "How come does he eat fish," "How come he does eat fish," or "How come eats he fish?"

Educ

5:32 PM

2 hours later…

7:10 PM

@TerranSwett I believe how come is elliptical.

If we look at the original construction, it will probably all make sense.

Terran Swett

Yeah, I wonder what the origin of that is.

Wiktionary cites what was presumably an older version of the phrase: "How comes it to pass that ...?"

That would make sense.

The loss of the -s deserves its own description.

KannE

@Cerberus - Hello, I was just thinking of you... Who could best explain the Monica situation to me in as few words as possible? It's like I summoned you; I may be magical. Anyhow, I've read all the essays...I probably missed something. Did someone misinterpret what she said re: the pronouns. Is that basically it?

Hello.

@KannE I would say that's probably it.

Or they demodded her because they hold rather extreme views, even more severe than their official rules.

She said she felt that singular they was ungrammatical, and she was asking questions about how she could abide by the new rules without using it.

She was even willing to use neo-pronouns, like xe or whatever.

She normally always writes around pronouns, she said.

Some rather extreme people were upset because she said said she really disliked singular they for a known, specific person.

RegDwigнt

@Cerberus I took it as a pun on true story.

Didn't even think of your reading.

Interesting.

A: Which came first in English, capitalization of first word in sentence, or period?

7:21 PM

Those upset people may have influenced Sara Chips (we think she made the decision) to demod Monica.

@RegDwigнt I have no idea!

@CaptainBohemian So are we talking about substantial amounts of money here? That's fairly shocking.

RegDwigнt

@Robusto the guy who is sick of Emily Blunt's shit is John Krasinski, and I'm totally fine with that.

Emily, please return my calls.

And yeah you told me that exact story before. Indeed it was one of the first stories you ever told me. Easily eight years ago now.

And of course it's impossible to find now. What have they done to the search. It used to work fine.

tchrist

Old English had full-stop punctuation in some manuscripts, but did not have regular sentence-beginning capitalization. According to Introduction to Manuscript Studies, by Raymond Clemens & Timothy Graham (Cornell UP, 2007), the punctus, the forerunner of modern periods and commas, would have be...

KannE

7:52 PM

@Cerberus Well, I didn't even get the they reference the first time I watched The Kominsky Method (on Netflix). Some older people are afraid of the singular they...countless letter-grades off for using it...if not for a 10-point grading scale...but I digress. Thanks for 'splaning, as always, whoever you are. So, you think Sara is a she? This gets complicated...(who we think made the decision)...there you go, all better.

@KannE The issue is not just about any singular they, but also about using it to refer to a specific, known person.

8:09 PM

@Malavika I just finished reading this article. I have no idea how he succeeds, either. I feel how to succeed in university application has no definite answer. I don't know why a lot of my applications fail, either; the recruiters have never told me why they don't choose me but others.

KannE

8:36 PM

@Cerberus - Right, I got that...it's hard to tell what I got sometimes, my bad. I'll call anybody whatever they prefer... My best friend in the late 70s--"Charlie" ("And they call it...Charlie"). And in the early 80s--"Blondie" ("Call Me!")--same person...very prone to suggestion, I just realized. youtube.com/watch?v=t1WX9znN7CE

marcellothearcane

8:55 PM

@Cerberus Yes, and the theme tune 'you've got a friend in me'

marcellothearcane

9:08 PM

@tchrist what is the similarity between Modern and Old English?

Is the syntax still structurally the same?

I'm referring to the fact that if an uncultured swine such as myself tries to read it it looks like gibberish

Here's some particularly suggestive stuff for reference: Staþol min is steapheah stonde ic on bedde neoðan ruh nathwær.

9:44 PM

@RegDwigнt Nope, not eight years.

Apr 19 at 13:22, by Robusto

As a friend once said, "There is no woman in the world so beautiful that some man isn't entirely sick of her shit." Applies to languages, I suppose.

Not even eight months.

You're getting old, time is telescoping on you.

@marcellothearcane Basically, they are almost completely different languages.

in the same way as man evolved from apes :P

More or less.

No. Less or more.

You might have some hope of understanding a passage in Middle English, but without study you would never get anything from OE.

even some of the stuff from the early 1900s is tough for me :(

9:50 PM

lol

Boot Hill

good one

Are you talking the 49ers tonight over Seattle?

Yeah, but not feeling good about it.

Me too.

Tough weekend

9:54 PM

I totally sucked in the pool this week. My worst outing of the year.

And only two weeks ago I cashed. And I'm ahead of my brother for the first time ever. And then this.

Atlanta beat the spread by 30 points.

No shit.

Actually, I need SF to lose or my brother picks up another 7 points on me. He has them for 12, I have them for 5.

Come on, 30 points? Then the Dolphins winning put me six feet under.

The dogs were definitely out.

yup, foaming at the mouth

9:59 PM

Of course I had Dallas too. At home.

Me too.

I gotta run. Good luck in your pool. Cya.

cya

marcellothearcane

10:16 PM

@Robusto Damn. Why's it called English then?

As opposed to Celtic, or Saxonian or whatever the hell it is

RegDwigнt

10:41 PM

@Robusto that's not it. Look for the one eight years ago.

That one you quoted I wasn't even around to take notice of.

I took note of the one eight years ago.

Mitch didn't even know of the chat's existence back then. The site was nascent. You and I were chatting and pretty much nobody else.

These are the things I remember.

As a rule, I do not misremember things.