English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

12:13 AM

@tchrist I believe the English infinitive is the result of some sort of fusion of active and passive infinitive.

Someone told me this once, when I noticed this phaenomenon.

So the modern English infinitive can be used as an active infinitive, but also as a passive infinitive.

Robusto

@Cerberus: The Latin letters weren't all reversed at one time, were they?

And if they were, why did they change?

This chart seems very strange to me.

Cerberus

@Robusto In archaic Greek, I believe letters could be written either way, depending on whether you were writing left to right, right to left, or boustrophedon.

I have a T-shirt in Etruscan on which the text is written right to left and with mirrored letters.

Robusto

"Boustrophedon"? Turning like a cow's tooth?

Cerberus

The Romans took their alphabet from the Etruscans, I believe.

Robusto

That's definitely weird.

Cerberus

12:23 AM

@Robusto "As the cow turns" (from strephein "turn").

When you plough a field, how would you do it?

Robusto

I got parts of it. Thought the don meant something all by itself.

@Cerberus Yes, I see. That's interesting.

Cerberus

@Robusto Maybe it does, or maybe it's some minor suffix.

Robusto

Wow, I never knew about that.

Cerberus

It's old.

Robusto

Very interesting. Apparently the letters always must point in the direction of the flow, more or less.

Cerberus

12:26 AM

I doubt whether it was still in use during the classical age.

Yes.

Robusto

And why not? It was their invention.

Cerberus

Perhaps it was convenient when you were chiselling an inscription on a ladder...

Or what would you use to inscribe a stone?

Robusto

It might also come in handy if the stone had irregular margins, so that it would be clear that something hadn't been chipped off, I suppose.

Cerberus

Hmm how so?

Robusto

It would be more obvious that the letters followed one another. They didn't go back to the carriage-return side.

Cerberus

12:31 AM

As a form of alignment / justification?

Robusto

Sort of.

Cerberus

Ah, OK.

Robusto

But maybe it was just easier for them to read that way, since you didn't have to do a visual carriage return.

Cerberus

Older print often put the last word or words of the previous page in the upper left corner of the new page.

@Robusto That may be it.

Robusto

That makes a kind of sense.

@Cerberus Especially with long lines.

Cerberus

12:33 AM

But I think it was used concurrently with the other styles.

@Robusto True.

Robusto

This is all very new to me. I'm surprised I haven't happened on this before.

Cerberus

It's unusual and archaic.

And I don't know whether the Latins ever did it.

I'm pretty sure the Egyptians did.

Robusto

I wish I could hear what these ancient languages sounded like.

Cerberus

Yeah.

People have made attempts.

RegDwigнt

1:51 AM

0

Q: Something like P.S. but before the text?

I wrote a letter (electronic) to someone yesterday but could not send it and fell asleep. Now if I want to send it today it will make less sense as it was written in context of yesterday. So I have added something like - "I wanted to send it last night but things got delayed and I eventually feel...

letter-writing

What a weird question.

Certainly if I send someone a bunch of nonsense prefixed with "BTW the following is a bunch of nonsense because I fell asleep", that will make it only more nonsensical and not less.

Especially if I replace "fell" with "feel".

What am I missing.

Terran Swett

2:57 AM

It occurred to me today that English could use the ь and ъ signs from the Cyrillic alphabet.

We can finally settle the question of whether gif is pronounced gьif or gъif… or, at least, we can make it easier to argue about it.

The hard sign could prevent us from panicъing while typing messages about soccъer on our Macъintosh computers.

Meanwhile, we would no longer have to make a judgьment call on whether or not to include that pesky "e."

Gьerry Rafferty wouldn't have to worry about people pronouncing his name as "Gary" any more.

Anyway, I actually had a question to ask.

Is there a word that means a person whom a demon or spirit possesses?

Cerberus

3:19 AM

@TerranSwett The possessed?

A vessel?

> 6. rare a person regarded as an agent or vehicle for some purpose or quality: she was the vessel of the Lord

I have it used in this sense often enough.

Terran Swett

Yeah, vessel works.

Cerberus

OK.

@TerranSwett We could also use it for th, to distinguish between Anthony, thong, and those.

Terran Swett

I'm doing a sort of roleplay-like thing in a chat room where I'm writing from the perspective of a spirit-like being who's possessing me.

Cerberus

I'm sure that role suits you.

Terran Swett

I used to use the phrase "my human companion," but I decided that that sounded a bit too alien.

Cerberus

3:24 AM

I'm not sure demons see they victims as companions.

Assuming God is a demon.

Terran Swett

Mine does. planeshrug

CowperKettle

4:14 AM

CowperKettle

5:08 AM

> Some individual wandering albatrosses are known to circumnavigate the Southern Ocean three times, covering more than 120,000 km (75,000 mi), in one year.

CowperKettle

7:32 AM

> Following stay-at-home orders in California, sparrows in the Bay Area produced higher-quality songs compared with previous years. Anthropogenic noise levels dropped to those of the mid-1950s, spurring a rebound in song quality

CowperKettle

1:16 PM

Word of the day: chevelure (a head of hair)

I thought this borrowing from French only existed in Russian

Matt E. Эллен

It also exists in French

-1

Q: I have a script that runs from a tigger

I have a script that runs from a tigger and it is setup to run daily and between their start and end times. The time has past now and it hasn't run. It has run always before on-time. Also, there isn't any information about it failing, either. This question is very specific to this script/trigg...

javascript triggers dashboard

Why would you run from a Tigger? Tiggers are wonderful things.

CowperKettle

1:37 PM

I don't like this poem. But it took so long to compose.

CowperKettle

2:03 PM

> Едет поезд из Тамбова, буфера белеются
Девки едут без билетов - на пизду надеются
>Train is speeding from Tambov
> Tailgate lights are on and off,
> Girls aboard would - what the heck! -
> Fuck their way through ticket check

(A Russian chastushka - a short verse, often obscene; translated more or less well, not by me; I found it on Facebook)

Robusto

2:20 PM

@CowperKettle Counterpart of the English limerick, perhaps.

@MattE.Эллен Oh, Pooh! It ain't true.

Mitch

2:39 PM

@MattE.Эллен This is really tiggering me.

RegDwigнt

3:11 PM

> If I revise a score on MuseScore.com which has already been sent to YouTube, and then click Send to YouTube again, will the revised score replace the old one on YouTube?

It's 2020, and some people have never used YouTube before.

Amazing.

How many videos can you name where the content spontaneously changes every time you visit.

More to the point, why would you think that a good idea.

Amazing.

Matt E. Эллен

so youtube is source control for musescore

RegDwigнt

No, MuseScore is the retainment camp for all the people who are not savvy enough to use YouTube.

It's a thankless task.

"Source control" haha. You know how many people on MuseScore know what that is?

One. That's how many. And that person is me.

Matt E. Эллен

:D

RegDwigнt

Most folks don't even know what a "backup" is.

Every single day there will be someone on the forums complaining how they lost this or that score of theirs HELP!!!!!

Matt E. Эллен

@RegDwigнt that's that thing where you've annoyed someone

some kind of cat based metaphor

RegDwigнt

3:16 PM

No, the thing where I annoy someone is when I post in reply "Oh, just restore it from your backup. Easy."

Which I do every single time.

Matt E. Эллен

lol

RegDwigнt

2 mins ago, by RegDwigнt

It's a thankless task.

Some of the time you have to be diplomatic. Some of those people are literally 90 years old. For them it's an epic adventure to turn on their monitor. Or not get the mouse and the keyboard confused.

But most people are more like 19, and a sizeable portion are 9. Cuz fuck the EULA and fuck the DMCA and fuck actual law.

At which point you can troll them freely by saying "oh, it's really easy, just use a vcs of your liking, like git or maybe svn or even cvs if you're crazy". And to them it sounds like Chinese.

Matt E. Эллен

CVS? like the shop? oh dear no, they don't want my music.

RegDwigнt

Nono, you're thinking Blockbuster. I'm talking Macy's here.

Matt E. Эллен

thankless giving's day parade for you

RegDwigнt

3:30 PM

~~Thank~~ you.

CowperKettle

> The Mariko Aoki phenomenon (青木まりこ現象, Aoki Mariko genshō) is a Japanese expression referring to an urge to defecate that is suddenly felt after entering bookstores.

KannE

I've never meta'd on purpose, only by accident. It's for people who control things and spectators. If I'm in the top ten %, then 90% don't care, I'm guessing.

RegDwigнt

4:48 PM

0

Q: When to use proper nouns for ideas that are given a name

I realize more and more despite being a native english speaker that I am never all that clear on when to capitalize something and treat it as a proper noun and when not to. Part of me thinks the Germans have it right and just capitalizing all nouns makes more sense. But I speak english, so I need...

nouns capitalization proper-nouns concept thought

Hm.

Personally, I wouldn't worry when to capitalize "Jeff" if I weren't even worried about when to capitalize "english".

M.A.R.

jEff

Effective NMR coupling constant

RegDwigнt

@MattE.Эллен in other news (quite literally), I'm reading Ronnie O'Sullivan got his balls (quite literally) kicked by some 18-yo Irish lad.

Is that actually true.

Also, since when does Ed Sheeran play snooker.

Terran Swett

5:46 PM

You know, I wonder if it's sort of an accident of history that computers handle "e" and "E" as different characters, but "e" and "e" as the same character with different formatting applied.

Slightly better example: "a", "A", and "a".

In my browser, that last one renders as an oblique roman "a" instead of an italic "a," but oh well. You know what I'm trying to say.

Theoretically, aren't a, A and a just three different ways of writing the exact same character?

I suspect that the main reason minuscule glyphs were added to character sets is that there was a lot of demand for computers to output text that looks like this, AS OPPOSED TO THE ORIGINAL DESIGNS, IN WHICH COMPUTER OUTPUT ALL LOOKED LIKE THIS.

And it was much easier to simply add additional characters than it would have been to implement logic for designating characters as majuscule or minuscule.

Presumably, the demand for italic glyphs was much smaller. There's no such thing as a Tyrannosaurus rex, only a Tyrannosaurus rex, and yet "Tyrannosaurus rex" looks a lot less wrong than TEXT SET ENTIRELY IN MAJUSCULE does.

Cerberus

6:03 PM

@TerranSwett Agreed.

Characters like é, however, which were probably added later than italics, were mostly added as different characters.

CowperKettle

Terran Swett

On an unrelated note, what the heck is music?

The "most musical" kind of music contains tones which bear harmonic relationships to each other and which sound in a rhythmic fashion.

However, I think it's inarguable that music doesn't need to contain tones; you can have songs consisting entirely of unpitched percussion.

I don't think it needs to be rhythmic either. You can have music which consists of tones which bear harmonic relationships to each other, but whose timing doesn't seem to have any beat or identifiable rhythm at all.

But I kind of feel like music needs to have at least one or the other. Either "tones" or a rhythmic beat.

Matt E. Эллен

6:20 PM

@RegDwigнt Ronnie is known for being lairy (first time I've spelt that word so it could be wrong) so it seems plausible

Terran Swett

If you produce a recording of unpitched sounds without any rhythmic beat, I feel like that falls short of being music. It's more like... "artistic sound."

Matt E. Эллен

Oh, wait, you mean snooker balls

Cerberus

6:36 PM

@TerranSwett One could exclude that from music.

@TerranSwett One could also exclude that.

It is a matter of definition.

SmokeDetector

7:04 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in answer (87): Two-weeks' notice ✏️ by LPH on english.SE

RegDwigнt

7:30 PM

@Cerberus and @TerranSwett if your name is "April" you won't be happy if I spell it "april". It might be a different way of writing the exact same character on some theoretical level, but to you it might as well be two completely different characters altogether for all the difference that it makes.

I guess that's sort of what that question above is all about.

Different characters carry different meanings. For as long as "May" and "may" don't mean the same things, you lose meaning if you spell them the same.

Of course if you take that to the extreme, like Unicode does, you get twenty different umbrellas and seven unicorns, but only one envelope and not a single LEGO brick.

M.A.R.

🦄

RegDwigнt

But that in itself is quite insightful. What things actually really matter to people, and which don't.

M.A.R.

My umbrella is more equal than yours.

RegDwigнt

@M.A.R. see, on my screen that's an empty square. And I'm perfectly happy with that. But you probably aren't. Because you've lost some important information.

M.A.R.

Very

RegDwigнt

7:36 PM

That's why Unicode distinguishes between а and a, c and c, о and o.

M.A.R.

RegDwigнt

Looks like an elephant wearing a comically small top hat.

Well. A perfectly normal top hat really. It's just that it's an elephant wearing it.

Robusto

@TerranSwett You can make music with a rock and a stick. And people have. There is no more "musical" kind of music, one more than another. It's all a matter of taste.

RegDwigнt

Petition to add more elephants with different hats to the Unicode standard. Also with different skin colors. #NoToRacism #ElephantGate

Robusto

@Cerberus No, it's a matter of taste, not definition. Your taste may afford you a definition, but you must realize there are many more kinds of doggy in the world than you.

RegDwigнt

7:44 PM

On that note, why are all dogs called dogs.

They look so different.

#DogGate

Robusto

#GoingToTheDogs

M.A.R.

#Dogmatism

RegDwigнt

Oh that's a round of applause from me.

Why is there astigmatism but no adogmatism.

Robusto

Why is it always a round of applause? Why does no one ever have a square of applause?

RegDwigнt

#UnitedAgainstSquares

adogmatism

== română == === Etimologie === Din franceză adogmatisme. === Pronunție === AFI: /a.dog.ma'tism/ === Substantiv === (fil.) sistem de gândire care este împotriva dogmelor. (rel.) sistem religios care nu admite dogmele. ==== Antonime ==== dogmatism ==== Cuvinte apropiate ==== adogmatic, adogmatică ==== Traduceri ==== === Referințe === DEX '98 via DEX online...

M.A.R.

7:47 PM

They menacingly surround the applauded and clap rhythmically

RegDwigнt

What kind of dog Latin is that?

> sistem religios care nu admite dogmele

What kind of melée?

M.A.R.

It is what it is.

RegDwigнt

@Robusto knowyourmeme.com/photos/997347-emoji

Robusto

Memes don't count.

I'm sick to fucking death of memes.

RegDwigнt

No, please don't fuck death of memes.

He ain't got it easy as is.

@Robusto also, Dude, "ABBA" is not the correct nomenclature. "Some stupid crackers from a shitty musical, probably Rent", please.

Robusto

7:59 PM

I used ABBA because I couldn't think of a worse rhyme scheme.

RegDwigнt

Slacker.

How about CGA. It doesn't even rhyme.

NWA, on the other hand...

Anyway. Now that you mention. Isn't it peculiar that ABBA's musicals cover no songs other than their own.

How's that for institutional raceism.

Robusto

Mar 2 '11 at 13:47, by Robusto

I will say this about ABBA, though. They are the best band out of Sweden whose name is a palindrome.

RegDwigнt

Fight the Swedish man, man.

Robusto

I stand by that opinion, btw.

RegDwigнt

I'd rather lean on a lamppost.

Robusto

8:04 PM

You and Peter Noone.

RegDwigнt

It's always warmer in a bush.

Did James Acaster spend a night in a bush? - Would I Lie to You?

►

Robusto

Leaning on a Lamp Post HERMAN'S HERMITS US single

►

Geezis, how did anybody ever listen to Herman's Hermits?

RegDwigнt

Drugs.

Robusto

I got stopped by a traffic cop this morning on my way to the blood lab. I was fasting and hadn't had my coffee, so I didn't even know I was roaring past a motorcycle cop at 15 mph over the limit.

This is shit they should have taught in driver's ed.

RegDwigнt

Teaching things that matter is against the very idea of any school.

Robusto

8:06 PM

But he let me off with a warning because I was so obsequious. Actually I was still mostly asleep.

@RegDwigнt No. Herman's Hermits were an anti-drug. They bring you down to a level where you can function again in straight society.

RegDwigнt

Not by using this song they won't.

Anyway. Makes me wonder, does the same apply to bikes? Could you win the Tour de France in your sleep?

Robusto

Not if my life depended on it.

I would be dropped the first day. Maybe the first 15 minutes.

RegDwigнt

I'm still a bit skeptical. Let me sign up for the next one.

Robusto

No, make that definitely the first 15 minutes.

RegDwigнt

Nah, the cruising speed is just 30-33 km/h. That's completely doable, especially in a peloton.

Robusto

8:10 PM

SO here's the thing. If I'm doing 23 mph on a flat route I feel like I'm going fast. I can sprint and get up to 28, 29. The TdF riders can do 40 mph on the same terrain, and they can average over 30.

RegDwigнt

It's when you have to get it up to 45 km/h while driving up a fucking mountain with a 15% incline, that's when it gets somewhat challenging.

Robusto

No. It's challenging all the way around. What part of "they are world-class athletes" aren't you willing to acknowledge?

RegDwigнt

It's amazing how noticeable even a 6% incline is when you're on a bike.

Robusto

Tell me about it.

RegDwigнt

6 mins ago, by RegDwigнt

Drugs.

You don't get up them mountains on spaghetti with meatballs. You just don't. Trust me I tried. In a professional team, no less.

God that was so long ago. How old am I? What time is it?

Robusto

8:13 PM

There's this climb I do often that is 9 miles long and has 6% sections that last for over a mile, with excursions to 7-8%. I get my heart rate up to 160 on those.

RegDwigнt

Yeah.

Robusto

If I'm in a hurry I can get it up to 170.

So I try not to be in a hurry.

RegDwigнt

Oh I've been over 180 for prolonged periods. You can get away with it if you're still sixteen.

Robusto

And there is no way in hell I could do that climb after 70 miles of balls-to-the-wall riding.

@RegDwigнt Which I ain't.

RegDwigнt

Pro tip: start on the mountain and roll down.

Robusto

8:15 PM

I'm a downhill racer, baby. That's how I roll.

RegDwigнt

Haha.

Robusto

The only reason I do these climbs is so I can go downhill fast with no effort.

RegDwigнt

I like those streets that somehow magically go downhill either way. And the tailwind somehow goes both ways. They should build more of those.

Instead they build all those hills that are uphill all the way from either side.

Robusto

Now here's the thing. The pros do 40 mph on the flats. I sometimes will get up to 40 mph on a steep downhill.

RegDwigнt

I did very little sprinting. Both street and track. So I could get to maybe 65 km/h on the flat, all by myself. And not for prolonged periods. But I could totally see how you could do more, especially with help from colleagues.

Robusto

8:19 PM

My top speed going down a hill is 46.5 mph (~80 kph, give or take). Faster than that I would have to work hard to achieve, and it would be too damn scary. Too many bad things can happen.

RegDwigнt

But yeah I very much preferred to go 30 for 120 kilometers than to go 60 for just one.

Robusto

So anyway, I hope you understand how I am in no way TdF material. Also I can't write songs.

RegDwigнt

@Robusto yeah I always wanted to get to the magical 100, but only ever managed 92. On a fucking serpentine street with traffic. Again, sixteen. That's the key.

Robusto

At 16 you're too dumb to be cautious. You think you're bulletproof.

RegDwigнt

That hill had serpentines that were only a hundred feet long. Sometimes several in a row.

At that speed, a hundred feet is one second. Is all you have.

Robusto

8:24 PM

Yep.

RegDwigнt

I wouldn't do that today unless someone else were in the driving seat, and the car were on rails.

Robusto

You can't see a pothole in time to evade it.

RegDwigнt

You can barely see a tree in time.

Robusto

Also, once you've face-planted at 23 mph you think twice about risking the same thing at twice the speed.

RegDwigнt

And if you have some strong side wind, sometimes it takes a single gust and just like that you're suddenly cycling just as straight ahead as before, just a couple yards to one side of where you thought you were cycling. Maybe on the opposite lane, maybe in the gutter.

Fun!

Robusto

8:30 PM

@RegDwigнt Yes, there is that.

“Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.”—Bertrand Russell

RegDwigнt

I now remember that when I still had my cycling diary, over time I developed a rather sophisticated notation system just for the wind alone. I started by just writing down how strong the wind was, but in the end I would also write down how gusty it was, and also how strong the wind felt subjectively compared to how much wind there actually objectively was.

Ah, the memories.

This was even before Larry and Sergey rented their garage.

I still used pen and paper.

Robusto

I just ride and let Strava log it.

RegDwigнt

People still wrote letters.

@Robusto yeah but Strave won't log how it feels. You could be half dead from all the wind, and it will tell you nah it was fine actually, you mimsy.

Robusto

Hey, don't tell me about letter writing. I still remember when that was the only way to communicate without getting on a long-distance call.

@RegDwigнt I annotate that stuff.

RegDwigнt

Remember when ballpoint pens were from space?

Or how amazing even the most basic ink set looked.

Or you would write something on the chalkboard in school and the school director would come in and marvel at your calligraphy and ask the class, "who wrote that".

Robusto

8:38 PM

I never won any calligraphy praise. At all.

RegDwigнt

And you'd be huh wha, that's what my teacher taught us.

@Robusto a couple days ago YouTube suggested to me a video of some kanji that took like a hundred strokes.

It was quite boring tbh. Very basic strokes, just all repeated a dozen times.

世界で最も難しい漢字を書いてみた

►

That's not "hard" to write. That's just tedious.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt Yeah, and the Japanese write in 行草, which is cursive to the max. They don't take that kind of time.

RegDwigнt

Yeah. It's actually quite neat. Sometimes you can catch it in some of those videos where they ask people in the street to write something.

Robusto

That's why stroke order is so important when learning kanji. Because when you know that you can see what's blurring into what. Without that, you have no idea. (Handwritten only.)

RegDwigнt

Well it's because of the way the ink would flow, or the sand. Again, we lost that.

Robusto

8:45 PM

Yeah, and you see that the blob is where the brush begins the stroke, etc.

Terran Swett

@RegDwigнt There's also a big difference between a mole and a mole. :shrug:

Robusto

All I know is that moles make good sauce:

Mole sauce

Mole (, IPA: [ˈmole] (listen); from Nahuatl mōlli, "sauce") is a traditional marinade and sauce originally used in Mexican cuisine. In contemporary Mexico the term is used for a number of sauces, some quite dissimilar, including black, red / Colorado, yellow, green, almendrado, de olla, huaxmole, guacamole, and pipián. Outside of Mexico, it typically refers to mole poblano. Generally, a mole sauce contains a fruit, chili pepper, nut, and such spices as black pepper, cinnamon, or cumin. A type of green mole known as mole verde is made with pumpkin seeds and green chile. == History == Two states...

RegDwigнt

@Robusto yeah and now we're left with trying to tell apart 午 and 牛. Where even just 木 and 水 look identical to someone that sees them for the first time.

They don't look identical at all if you used a brush and ink.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt You can't tell a cow from a horse?

@RegDwigнt See, the problem with the first two is that the stroke order is the same. So it really can be hard to tell them apart.

Tree and water have different strokes and different orders, so they are relatively easy to tell apart.

RegDwigнt

@Robusto I can barely tell a horse from a tiger.

@Robusto yes, is the point. When you can see the stroke order it is immediately obvious, even to a layman.

The next best thing we still have to that are those office whiteboards with them marker pens.

There you can still clearly see which line was there first and which came after.

For very similar reasons, mind. The ink flow.

Robusto

8:53 PM

As I've said before, I wish I'd had current software (and a smart phone to put it on) 35 years ago when I first started learning kanji.

RegDwigнt

But then you'd just be on Twitter all day, silly. You'd learn nothing.

And #metoo

Robusto

@RegDwigнt No, I'd have been getting a reading knowledge of Japanese quicker. See, I was studying instead of socializing even back then.

RegDwigнt

@TerranSwett you are talking to someone who fails to see any difference between тугенд and тугенд.

Fuck, why this chat no proper handle Russian cursive.

Robusto

Be happy it can handle Russian at all.

RegDwigнt

Thank you, Jack Nicholson.

Terran Swett

8:58 PM

Heh, oblique Russian looks ridiculous.

RegDwigнt

I specifically sat here trying to think of a word that would contain a bunch of letters at once that all completely change their visual appearance depending on cursive or straight, and this is what I get.

Why this chatski anti-educationski.

Terran Swett

т looks like T instead of like m.

RegDwigнt

There. That's more like it.

@TerranSwett you ain't seen Sütterlin yet.

Read that. Best of luck.

Starts with "Alluminium", I can read that. Ends in "nität". The bit in-between is anyone's guess.

Actually, the ending is "-immunität".

Well, I'll leave the rest as an exercise for the reader.

That's a letter in Sütterlin.

Keep in mind that's all current-day Latin script all the time. Just drawn all funky.

@Cerberus likes reading those because he's weird.

Then again he also reads Russian.

Communist dog.

Terran Swett

I saw a poem once that was written in modern English, but in a very unfamiliar script.

I don't remember much of the script or much of the poem. The only thing I really remember is that the letter "t" looked a lot like "c".

RegDwigнt

Sep 1 at 16:33, by RegDwigнt

Yo @tchrist, someone needs helps telling apart a T from an R.

19

Q: Deciphering two words from their Archaic spellings

I am translating the 1509, first English Translation of Sebastian Brant's The Shyp of foyls (The Ship of Fools), and came across two words which, for the life of me, I could not construe or make legible. The following are the two words, as they are spelled, in excruciatingly archaic fashion, in t...

etymology archaicisms early-modern-english middle-english research

"t" and "c" and "r" all looked very familiar.

But that's just Gothic. Germans have that, too. Half their houses are painted with verses in that. You can read that.

But Sütterlin they can't. There's like a couple thousand people still surviving who can.

Robusto

9:11 PM

@RegDwigнt Yeah, I had to learn Russian cursive. I was actually good at it.

RegDwigнt

Robusto

But English has those quirks as well. For example, the small r in cursive is way different in some methods, and so is f.

RegDwigнt

Yeah I sometimes write the r the old-fashioned way just to piss everyone off. Like the Russian ч.

Alas, the opportunities are getting rarer.

Robusto

Yeah. Whoever writes things by hand?

RegDwigнt

Bach did.

And that is why we are not Bach.

QED.

You can literally see how to play it from the changes in the direction of the swing of the flags alone.

> when I uploaded my score it changed the format of the piece so
I tried to edit my score using the instructions on the website but it didn't work. anyone know why?
p.s I am using a laptop

WTF does any of that even mean.

Robusto

9:19 PM

@RegDwigнt If I were writing music it would be in pencil, because the page would be bleeding ink otherwise.

RegDwigнt

Well it did for Bach.

I had to rummage through quite a few images to pick the two above.

Some are barely readable anymore.

But pencil is the other extreme. It vanishes over time. Just through the friction of neighboring sheets alone.

Robusto

But it's erasable.

RegDwigнt

That's just a $5 word for saying the same thing.

Robusto

I only paid $0.22 for it. Where do you get your words?

RegDwigнt

When I write shit down I don't want it to be erased, I want it to be written down.

@Robusto Turkmen supermarket.

Stop your sanctions and you'll save me money.

Robusto

9:26 PM

@RegDwigнt See, that's your mistake right there. You can point to it.

RegDwigнt

Yes I can. Because it's not written in pencil.

Oh you mean the supermarket. Sorry that's the only one in all of Gobi.

Robusto

Look, if I write something down I know it will be erased many times until I get it right.

RegDwigнt

That's not writing down, then. That's wanking about.

Robusto

Wevs.

RegDwigнt

Before you write it down, you have to write it first.

That's why they made paper so expensive back in the day. To teach everyone a lesson.

Now pixels are a dime a dozen. At least in the Turkmen supermarket they are.

Robusto

9:29 PM

And now everybody has a podcast or a YouTube channel and they never correct anything.

RegDwigнt

Around your parts you probably only get them cheaper still.

@Robusto oh, they correct everyone else all the time. Just not themselves.

Like I did just now!

Robusto

So does it ever bother European software devs to have to use a period instead of a comma to express decimals?

Fuck, we're gonna have 20 mph winds here on Sunday.

RegDwigнt

@Robusto yes. It's so bad by now I just never know which one I should be using no matter what language I'm in right now.

I have to audiate it. I have to read the text aloud in my head "zero point three" or "Nullkommadrei".

Or virgule or whatever. And from that derive what punctuation to use.

And of course Russian just uses no word at all. Of course. It just goes "zero fulls three tenths".

How the fuck is that supposed to be helpful.

Robusto

Beats me.

RegDwigнt

What's "a full" anyway. You don't use that anywhere else. Is that bigger than a furlong.

Not that Russian uses furlongs to begin with.

It's all sazhens, vershoks, versts, and lokots.

With no comma or period.

Which, incidentally, is a saying in German. "Ohne Punkt und Komma".

> My score at
https://musescore.com/user/6105546/scores/6358579
has been being processed for well over a day now. Could you kindly fix it or delete it so I can upload it again?

Well, you can delete it. And then you can fix it.

More to the point, it's showing fine for me.

Robusto

9:43 PM

So here's a weird thing that happened when I worked for Commerzbank. Someone wanted me to write down some numbers, and gave them to me one at a time: "Vier zwei sieben acht neun sechs." I wrote down 427896. And she got irritated and said it should have been 427869. I guess because of neun-und-sechsig and all that. But I said if she wanted it that way she should have said neun-und-sechsig and not neun-sechs.

RegDwigнt

Every single German would have written it the way you did. Her convention is not a convention, and has never been.

If it has at the bank, sure goes a long way towards explaining its fate.

@Robusto that's a great point, but alas, it applies to fucking everything journalists ask these days.

Robusto

And I'm tired of it all. I just want it to be over and Trump to be removed.

RegDwigнt

Yeah but my point is the journalists won't.

And the people who voted for him will still be there.

Robusto

Don't remind me.

Anyway, gotta get to the supermarket because it's my turn to cook dinner.

RegDwigнt

Yeah I'm warming up a baguette.

Robusto

9:51 PM

So thanks for the dialogue, and I'll see you on the flip side, whenever that is.

RegDwigнt

Happy dinner to you.

Robusto

Latorz.

Cerberus

@RegDwigнt But you could say e and e mean different things as well?

RegDwigнt

@Robusto and btw that nonsense of hers can never work for just one simple reason. When you are getting dictated a number a digit at a time, you don't know when it ends. But in order to flip the last two digits, not only do you have to know if it's ended, you have to be able to magically guess that it will end two digits from now in the future. She was BSing you.

@Cerberus I wouldn't know how to say that, no.

Cerberus

@Robusto I still think it is a matter of definition.

RegDwigнt

9:59 PM

You always do. And then you supply a definition in Pig Greek or Ancient Latin.

Or, Heaven forbid, Dutch.

Cerberus

@RegDwigнt Yeah, I can read that.

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