@tchrist I forgot to mention August Strindberg, June Allyson, the March Hare, and July Johnson (from Lonesome Dove). In fact, there are more naming months than there are non-naming ones.
Wikipedia on Sieges has this gem: “Disease was another effective siege weapon, although the attackers were often as vulnerable as the defenders. In some instances, catapults or similar weapons were used to fling diseased animals over city walls in an early example of biological warfare.”
@Lawrence I think the end of the nominating period ends the time when you can enter answers to questions—another 15 hours or so. Brief is better than nothing!
@Lawrence Please do edit and complete your nomination if you can! Less-active users that don't know who's who (i.e. the majority of voters) are surely less likely to vote for someone without a proper pitch and questionnaire answers. I'm rooting for you (I think; still need to check everyone's questionnaire answers and re-check your 2016 answers) and don't want you to lose because of that.
@Cerberus The amount of time spent drafting that nomination twice tells me that moderators need to be careful to only moderate in moderation. Immoderate moderation might feel like smotheration.
A plane crashed in China:( Planes (and trains too) scare me the most even when it is considered safest mode. I have not travel experience in planes as of now.
I don't get what associations you're supposed to make. Do they change from puzzle to puzzle? Or is there an overarching relationship that applies to all puzzles?
@RobustosupportsUkraine it's not a logic puzzle where everything as a discrete path. Instead they distances are all calculated using a set (but unknown to us) data set.
But not all non-natives will be confused by the same thing. If you can speak English well, just use what is appropriate. If they don't understand, then they should ask for explanation. If they don't, then they choose to remain confused.
Many English speakers understand it. But so what? It's an exotic way of saying good-bye, that's all. It's not as common as "See ya" or "Bye" or many others.
Apparently, "orange" comes from French, "catchup/catsup" comes from Chinese, "dad" comes from Welsh, etc. Sometimes it almost seems like there isn't much English that came from English.
@Vikas That's true. I suppose it comes from being a trade language. After awhile, if something is hard to say in English - or if something is known by a local term - it's easy for foreign words to become assimilated into the trade language.
At any stage of a language's development it has taken things from other languages, and will take things from other languages in the future. It is a growing thing, always.
It will also shed words that are no longer useful.
And it will change words to mean different things.
You can't think of English as a finished product. It has never been that, and never will be.
@RobustosupportsUkraine Some cultures seem to adopt foreign words more readily than others. Japanese and Chinese have some similarities, even to the extent that there is some overlap in their pictorial scripts. But foreign words are routinely transliterated into Japanese sounds (phonemes?), whereas Chinese tend to co-opt the meaning but use Chinese words. Take "online" for example. Japanese has オンライン, which sounds like "online", whereas Chinese has 在线, which sounds nothing like "online" but means "on string".
@Vikas More like 20 these days. "Upload", "googling", etc are all new. Even "hash tag" now refers to the "#" sign instead of meaning a "tag" that starts with a "hash".
Yup. Whenever there's a new thing, it tends to attract new words.
There are usually some connections to old words, though. For example, "web" as in "world wide web" probably comes from the concept of "net" as in "internet", which in turn came from "inter-network[ing]" - connected networks of computers. Even "computer" during the world wars meant a person who computed things. These days, we're more likely to call the people "number crunchers" and reserve "computer" for machines.
There's obviously a lot of new vocab from technology but grammar and phonology are going to be pretty conservative from now on because of mass media
There's a scifi show called 'the expanse' and the thousands of people populating the asteroids and space stations have developed their own variety of English (~300 yrs from now?)
And the more I think about it... It's just not going to happen like that because every individual on the internet is going to populate their mother tongue... Local small languages will fall away but the big ones will ossify (in my prediction)
Anyway we'll all be dead then so we won't have much to say
I mean I will, but you all won't
1) I'm -from- the future (I'm just taking a vacation in the past. Necause
I'm not active enough on ELU, I think. Not super familiar with the community here.
My main qualification would be the 6 years of mod experience on other sites, which is a fine qualification for modding a small beta site (I almost ran in the Arts & Crafts election last week) but not really enough to take on a big site with its own history and particular issues like ELU.
I do pop in to do the review queues every so often.
Got a couple of Steward badges, I think, and over 1000 helpful flags.
But I lack the in-depth knowledge to post Yargsish answers here (most of my answers probably could've been posted by any native speaker with a good grasp of grammatical rules), and I'm usually too scared to post questions here.
That issue, of the perceived unfriendliness of ELU to askers, is something I'll bear in mind when deciding how to vote. Not sure if there's anything in the questionnaire about it.
@Lawrence Japanese imports boatloads of foreign words (外来語) every day. The trouble is, the way they are transcribed and pronounced makes them nearly unintelligible speakers of the language they came from.
@Mitch I disagree. First of all, what is "mass media"? Is it TV and radio? Because those have faded. Is it the Internet? Because those have amped up the change. Memes alone are introducing vagaries of grammar that seem to be popular, and popularity is what causes words and spellings and even grammar to change.
In recent years it has become something of a trope to respond to a question with the stark reply "because noun". For example,
Q. Why can't we burn fossil fuels indefinitely?
A. Because science. [Short for something like "because science has shown this leads to catastrophic climate change.]
or
...
Linguistics Professor Lawler says this in a comment:
I think, in the end, it's the obvious uselessness of the of in the because ofNP construction. So many other prepositions don't need auxiliaries, why should because? And in fact, it becomes easier with practice, even when you're old like me. At any moment, "current fashionableness" can become Grammar. — John LawlerJan 28 at 20:18
And in his answer:
> Because seems to be in the process of changing from a requisite conjunction to an optional preposition. As usual, this involves different people trying out different constructions at different times and in different contexts to hear how they like it. Enough people now appear to be liking it that official notice has been taken. Because was the 2013 Word of the Year, as determined by the American Dialect Society and the Linguistic Society of America at their annual meeting.
The idea is that people's speech can no longer grow apart based on location, because we all read the same texts, to some degree. Much more so than in 1800. And that connectedness 'pulls' hasty changes in some groups back to the average eventually.
I understand the idea. I just think the engine for change will be the rapid churning of mass communications. Locality is not the issue anymore.
And there are "localities" on the internet as well. Not everyone is involved in every domain. In fact, it could be argued that there are even more localities now than there were in, say, England in the 14th century.
I think they're just as isolated as they were when broadcast communications prevailed.
Broadcast communications—radio, TV, newsprint, etc.—were a one-to-many paradigm. Now we have a many-to-many paradigm. That means there is a force multiplier at work here. I do think that means more change, not less.
When I was growing up, the "standard" American accent was promulgated by the evening news. One person reading the news, millions of viewers taking it in.
I solved Semantle #51 in 558 guesses. My first guess had a similarity of 5.23. My first word in the top 1000 was at guess #8. My penultimate guess had a similarity of 11.12. semantle.novalis.org
1) mass media is becoming (or really, already) the internet now rather than just Evening news/newspapers and Time magazine. 2) yes they've amped up the change but I believe only in vocab and really only in adding vocab (I don't think other vocab is falling away or being replaced) 3) All your points about specific grammar or whatever changes are all happening and important, but it is my semi-educated opinion that those changes will not be enough to alter te language significantly (I think they will act like temporary slang than new permanent changes)
@RobustosupportsUkraine Yes I considered that. There are certainly 'localities' (or rather somewhat closed groups) but they are more content based (eg ELU chat or FOX news comment threads) rather than linguistically closed communities. I don't think the neo-Nazi user groups will come up with different grammar than the recipes and cooking blogs (excpet for vocab as already noted)
@Mitch None of that addresses the many-to-many point I made. It looks like you're just reiterating what you said earlier.
@Mitch It's not just neo-Nazi user groups we're talking about. There are different subcultures that flock together., of all kinds. I have no idea what TikTok mores are like because I never go there.
In any case, the fact is, things are already changing. I've seen it in my life. If you live long enough, you'll see it in yours. The pace of change is increasing, in language and elsewhere.
In recent years it has become something of a trope to respond to a question with the stark reply "because noun". For example,
Q. Why can't we burn fossil fuels indefinitely?
A. Because science. [Short for something like "because science has shown this leads to catastrophic climate change.]
or
...
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…