English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

CowperKettle

00:16

Up to 2 Mb per disk, in 1962

Cerberus

00:30

That is a lot.

Must have been expensive.

CowperKettle

01:36

It says "Low Cost", so must have been about $100 per diskette

CowperKettle

02:02

Cerberus

Useful advice.

What's with the r at the bottom?

CowperKettle

@Cerberus It's from a Wang tutorial from 1983

I don't know about the "r". Maybe "repeat"?

tchrist

02:22

@Mitch You missed out on the best wood: Ongan þa word sprecan wudu selesta.

@Mitch You also missed out on the best queen: Þy seofoþan dæg þæt acenned wearð cwena selost, drihtnes modor.

@Mitch This is the best part: Maria geces þæne selestan dæl se hyre ne byð afyrred. That's of course Luke 10:42, so runs Maria optimam partem elegit, quæ non auferetur ab ea in the common tongue.

optimam partem = best part = selestan dæl

Good has a different suppletive comparative and superlative in Old English beyond the better, best pair, one formed from a completely different original.

Of course these are all inflected by case in the examples I've provided. I still have to check the common tongue to see which is which.

Would you like some comparatives to go with those?

@Mitch First here's one that's a lot more modern, from Laȝamon: He ferde awæi ouer sæ Þat him þuhte selest. So that one's Middle English, not Old.

They were getting really laȝy about their inflections by then.

@Mitch This is a comparative sella when Beowulf's eorls would better die than live a live ashamed in Deað bið sella eorla gehwylcum þonne edwitlif!

@Mitch It's written selran for the comparative in Ge synt selran þonne manega spearuan, which is of course Matthew 10:31 which thus runs in the common tongue: Nolite ergo timere multis passeribus meliores estis vos which is like therefore chill y'all are better than a multitude of sparrows.

@Mitch See bosworthtoller.com/27361 while here witnessing how our aforementioned Middle Modern man Laȝamon has seen better nights in Ne isæh næuere na man selere cniht nenne. Bosworth explains that the positive was not seen, that only the comparative and superlatives were, where it was another suppletive form for good. But our lad Laȝ may have back-derived the positive.

> Þa he mihte bihalden; þa bihalues stoden. 10560
þene uæireste cniht; þe verde scolde leden. 10561
ne isæh næuere na man; selere cniht nenne. 10562
þene him wes Arður; aðelest cunnes. 10563
Þa cleopede Arður; ludere stæfne. 10564
Lou war her biforen us; heðene hundes; 10565
þe sloȝen ure alderen; mid luðere heore craften. 10566
and heo us beoð on londe; læðest alre þinge. 10567

CowperKettle

02:49

OIL RESERVES by Country

►

tchrist

@Mitch Here's the OED on the comparative version:

> Forms: Old English sælra (rare), Old English sella, Old English sellra, Old English selra, Old English sylla, Old English sylra (rare), early Middle English sælre, early Middle English selere, early Middle English selre. (Show Less)
Origin: A word inherited from Germanic.
Etymology: < the same Germanic base as Old English sēl (adverb) better ( < an ablaut variant (lengthened o -grade) of the Germanic base of sele n.) + the Germanic base of -er suffix3. Compare selest adj.

Functioning as a (suppletive) comparative form of good adj. (see discussion at that entry). Compare also the inferre…

@Mitch And here on the superlative:

> Forms: early Old English soelest, Old English selast, Old English selust, Old English (rare)–early Middle English sælest, Old English (rare)–early Middle English sælost, Old English–early Middle English selest, Old English–early Middle English selost, late Old English seolest, early Middle English selysþe. (Show Less)
Origin: A word inherited from Germanic.
Etymology: < the same Germanic base as Old English sēl , adverb (see seler adj.) + the Germanic base of -est suffix. Compare seler adj.

Bosword on selóst: bosworthtoller.com/27416

Mitch

03:11

@tchrist great find. Do you have any idea what 'sel-' is cognate with if anything?

tchrist

@Mitch Yes, maybe.

> Etymology: Apparently an inferred positive of the comparative and superlative forms seler adj., selest adj., in sense 1 influenced semantically by seely adj. (although compare usell adj. and Old Icelandic sæll happy: see sele n.).

It was back-derived in Middle English.

> Forms: early Middle English sæl, early Middle English sæle, early Middle English seale, early Middle English sel, early Middle English sela (plural, perhaps transmission error), early Middle English selen, early Middle English seolne (accusative), Middle English sele, Middle English selle. (Show Less)
Origin: Apparently a variant or alteration of another lexical item. Etymons: seler adj.; selest adj.
Etymology: Apparently an inferred positive of the comparative and superlative forms seler adj., selest adj., in sense 1 influenced semantically by seely adj. (although compare usell adj. and…

But the comparative and superlative forms are ancient.

Beowulf: Deað bið sella eorla gehwylcum þonne edwitlif!

@Mitch Your interlocutor is deranged. I recommend ignoring the dolt.

But what's this about adverbs not having superlatives? That's a new one on me.

CowperKettle

05:07

> Insulin (Lantus) costs around the world:

USA 🇺🇸: $13.75
Syria 🇸🇾: $6.07
Brazil 🇧🇷: $6.00
Canada 🇨🇦: $5.87
Rwanda 🇷🇼: $3.00
New Zealand 🇳🇿: $0.22
Dominican Republic 🇩🇴: $0.03
Argentina 🇦🇷: $0.00
Italy 🇮🇹: $0.00
Kuwait 🇰🇼: $0.00
Lithuania 🇱🇹: $0.00
Romania 🇷🇴: $0.00

KannE

06:00

@CowperKettle But that's assuming that infants will be born with enough brain mass to regulate their own body temperature, or will be able to swallow saliva, or will not have a chromosome abnormality much rarer than Down syndrome. The hope their parents have is heartbreaking; it truly is. And these children become case studies, to hopefully help others, because they will not survive long. Not everyone is up for that; e.g., constantly clearing their child's airway for the rest of their lives.

gparyani

06:58

1

Q: All title typography conversions were removed from all sites today. Were they useful on some sites, or should they stay removed everywhere?

For a very long time (since at least 2010, perhaps 2008), the system would make modifications to post titles so that they'd better conform to English style guides: When "straight quotes" were being used in post titles, those would be automatically converted into “smart quotes” (different curly c...

S.M.T

07:14

@CowperKettle 0 dollar ? Is the cost like in cents or free ?

CowperKettle

07:28

@S.M.T Probably the state budget covers the cost for all patients in those countries, like in Russia.

I receive my insulin free of charge in an outpatient clinic.

S.M.T

@CowperKettle Ok. It must be from the tax you pay I think.

@CowperKettle Great.

M.A.R.

07:49

@CowperKettle six dollars in Syria is actually tragic :(

Andrew Leach

08:41

0

A: All title typography conversions were removed from all sites today. Were they useful on some sites, or should they stay removed everywhere?

Yes, this should only have been applied to technical sites, where -- might have a specific meaning, and where typographers' quotes could cause problems. On non-technical sites, particularly language sites and/or those with a site-specific font stack, this change is unnecessary, potentially counte...

It also appears that chat feeds have changed and have lost the site icon. What is going on? (That's definitely counterproductive where a feed includes posts from more than one site).

Andrew Leach

09:08

At least that's been rectified...

CowperKettle

09:43

> The stakes were so high that in 19th century Denmark, girls and women aged between 13 and 20 could take out “anti-celibacy insurance” that paid out if they hadn’t married by the age of 40. Anti-celibacy insurance was still available in the 1930s.

inews.co.uk/opinion/…

Bullshit or not..

Mitch

13:12

@tchrist Oh. That was a minor stroke I must have had. The word 'greenliest' popped in my head and I thought that that meant that the whole idea was crazy.

@tchrist Despite or because of my stroke, I couldn't make sense of that comment. So no energy lost there.

@tchrist and plain old 'sel' is a backformation? There are surely numerous philological masters theses on cross-linguistic comparison of comparatives of 'good' since they all seem to be irregular. Sort of like 'right' and 'left' - 'right' has regular forms derived diachronically, but 'left' seems to be picked up new in every language.

CowperKettle

17:13

> Study: HPV vaccination will reduce throat and mouth cancers, but overall impact will take 25-plus years to see medicalxpress.com/news/…

raf

17:26

in TeX, LaTeX and Friends, 1 hour ago, by raf

Microsoft Office is a word processor and LaTeX is a typesetting system. But, what can they be commonly called? Documentation systems? Or any specific name is used?

in TeX, LaTeX and Friends, 1 hour ago, by Faheem Mitha

@raf Good question. I don't know of a common name off-hand. Might be a suitable terminology question for English Language and Usage SE.

What common name can be used to classify LaTeX and MS Office together?

Cerberus

Most concepts don't have good names that fit into a single term.

You could call them "text programmes", or "software"?

CowperKettle

Text editors?

Cerberus

17:42

Yeah, why not? I'm not sure what Latex does.

Mitch

@Cerberus LaTeX is not an editor. You edit your text in any text editor but add in LaTeX commands so that when you run your document through LaTeX you get a PDF document whose text is laid out according to the LaTeX commands.

Cerberus

OK.

Text programmes, then?

Although MS Office is not really a 'word processor'.

Unless he really meant MS Word.

Mitch

MS Word is a wysiwig editor. You're actually editing the document as you expect it to appear on paper.

@Cerberus he really meant MSWord

So maybe the hypernym is 'text formatter'?

of course we're grasping at straws because there' just no term that people use for them both together.

despite then both having the same functional output.

Cerberus

18:39

Exactly.

@AndrewLeach +1 for your answer.

Unfortunately, people do not seem to care.

tchrist

21:45

@Cerberus No. It is not a programming language. It is a markup language.

Or, rather, perhaps a page layout description language.

Cerberus

Neither is MS Word!

tchrist

No gameboys, no joysticks, no click-if-you're-nimble. Just directions.

Textual directions.

> YOU ARE STANDING AT THE END OF A ROAD BEFORE A SMALL BRICK BUILDING.
AROUND YOU IS A FOREST. A SMALL STREAM FLOWS OUT OF THE BUILDING AND
DOWN A GULLY.

go south

YOU ARE IN A VALLEY IN THE FOREST BESIDE A STREAM TUMBLING ALONG A
ROCKY BED.

go west

YOU FELL INTO A PIT AND BROKE EVERY BONE IN YOUR BODY!

NOW YOU'VE REALLY DONE IT! I'M OUT OF ORANGE SMOKE! YOU DON'T EXPECT
ME TO DO A DECENT REINCARNATION WITHOUT ANY ORANGE SMOKE, DO YOU?

yes

OKAY, IF YOU'RE SO SMART, DO IT YOURSELF! I'M LEAVING!

It works a lot like that. :)

It's a lot more fun to play than troff, I promise you.

Cerberus

I remember playing Multi-Dimensional Thief.

A text adventure like that.

It was fun, though it felt rather aimless.

tchrist

I'm a bit fuzzy on the concept, but I think MathJax may use LaTeX notation for its equations.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…