English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

00:24

Interesting, will watch.

tchrist

01:14

@CowperKettle Putin would never let a mere national border get in his way. So if he can't arrest the guy domestically, he'll just have him poisoned abroad instead.

For the umpteenth time.

Cerberus

Well, hasn't he only poisoned certain very specific people?

tchrist

And?

This is a specific person.

Cerberus

02:27

@tchrist I mean people he specifically sees as an important threat.

tchrist

ok

Cerberus

What would make this man stand out?

@CowperKettle Pretty cool.

Vikas

Putin won't use poison again and again. He already knows people have figured out his secret 🤣

Cerberus

@CowperKettle Has the Ukrainian government been caught in a real lie or forgery yet?

I have only seen some exaggerations thus far.

@Vikas I'm not sure whether figuring it out protects you...

Vikas

Do you also feel Russia's plans have changed now? Recently they said their "phase 1" is over which I guess means they want to show off that they haven't failed and yet want to end this invasion now.

@Cerberus Protects you from poison at least lol

Cerberus

02:42

@Vikas That is what they say, but it was on Russian television, so it was aiming at the Russian citizenry.

It could be a diversion while Russia makes new plans to take Kiev.

So I have no idea.

Maybe.

@Vikas How?

Vikas

I vaguely remember when I was in college I would organize some quiz on Facebook pages. I had huge plans before I would start it.

But those days mobile was small, no PC, no good Internet so often the quiz would interrupt causing embarrassment to me as fans would comment you can't even complete a quiz.

So when it would interrupt, I would post a status on page like "Phase 1 of quiz over, Phase 2 will start soon". So that it will reduce embarrassment.

@Cerberus Like I said, if another well known person is poisoned in Russia (by Putin), people will link it to Putin instantly. Which Putin doesn't want. So he would try other methods but not poison this time.

Cerberus

@Vikas Haha smart, exactly like Russia.

@Vikas But everyone knows Russia does this.

Vikas

Yes, and I feel this is what Russia is doing xD

Cerberus

There is not the slightest doubt that Russia poisoned Yuchenko, Navalny, the ex-spy in Britain, the female reporter, etc.

@Vikas She very well may be. Or...she wants us to think that she is.

Vikas

Why Russia is called she?

Is it for Russian govt.?

Cerberus

02:48

Because she ends on -a.

Vikas

You mean Russia is like a female name?

Unlike Japan?

Cerberus

Yes.

I mean, this is not how most people would say it.

It is a bit sentimental, but we may refer to feminine country names by she, e.g. France.

Vikas

Oh. I didn't know it. India is also feminine country name?

Cerberus

Could be!

Does Hindi have genders?

Vikas

@Cerberus Oh yes. I think more than English.

E.g. electricity is feminine.

Cerberus

03:03

Exactly.

So then you can refer to India by she.

Vikas

Okay

Cerberus

What kind of pronoun would you use in Hindi?

(By the way, few people will use feminine pronouns for countries in English. So it is by no means necessary to do so. Maybe some would even find it a bit funny or pretentious. But what do they know.)

Vikas

@Cerberus I think pronoun is same for both male and female but the way sentence ends differentiate if it's male or female.

Cerberus

Ah, OK.

Vikas

@Cerberus Which I did.

Cerberus

03:05

shrugs

To each her own.

Vikas

This may give you some idea.

Note the starting of sentence is same. What tells about gender is basically "-ing". It sounds different.

Cerberus

Makes sense.

M.A.R.

@Vikas That's the point though. You want everyone to know it was you but not something concrete or falsifiable

@Cerberus Is there a language where nouns don't have genders but verb inflections do?

Cerberus

@M.A.R. By verb inflections you mean participles, then?

Vikas

@Cerberus So in English, we know this right at the start of sentence, but in Hindi, usually you know it when the sentence is ending.

Cerberus

03:14

I understand.

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle very expressive face. He's disgusted and crying and trying to hold his laughter at the same time

tchrist

@Cerberus No, remarkably enough.

M.A.R.

@Cerberus thingies

tchrist

I mean, it doesn't have to be participles alone!!

M.A.R.

letters and stuff

Cerberus

03:15

Finite verbs normally do not have gender, at least not in Indo-European languages.

Nor infinitives.

There are exceptions.

So normally only the adjectival verbs have genders, i.e. participles.

M.A.R.

I think if there would be languages that used to have noun genders but now don't, such a thing would be possible?

Cerberus

And I cannot really imagine a language in which nouns do not have genders but adjectives do.

tchrist

> The Russian past tense is gender specific: –л for masculine singular subjects, –ла for feminine singular subjects, –ло for neuter singular subjects, and –ли for plural subjects. This gender specificity applies to all persons; thus, to say "I slept", a male speaker would say я спал, while a female speaker would say я спалá.

M.A.R.

I'm just groping for things in the dark and so far I've got the trunk.

Cerberus

@M.A.R. I would expect the genders of adjectives and participles to fade much earlier than those of nouns.

Vikas

03:17

@M.A.R. That is also a good point.

M.A.R.

@Vikas I'm full of good points on a sleepless morning

Cerberus

@tchrist Yeah but I think those have an origin in participles and/or adjectives, don't they?

Even so, I would not expect those to remain after nouns had lost their genders.

M.A.R.

I might try the fabled drink with caffeine in it

tchrist

> The past tense is made to agree in gender with the subject, for it is the participle in an originally periphrastic perfect formed (like the perfect passive tense in Latin) with the present tense of the verb "to be" быть [bɨtʲ], which is now omitted except for rare archaic effect, usually in set phrases (откуда есть пошла земля русская [ɐtˈkudə jesʲtʲ pɐˈʂla zʲɪˈmlʲa ˈruskəjə], "whence is come the Russian land", the opening of the Primary Chronicle in modern spelling).

The participle nature of past-tense forms is exposed also in that they often have an extra suffix vowel, which is absent …

Cerberus

Tea?

Vikas

03:18

@M.A.R. Noun genders? Example?

M.A.R.

@Cerberus The keyword is "fabled"

Vikas

@M.A.R. I woke up 2 hours earlier than my usual time today.

Cerberus

@tchrist Right, participles.

@M.A.R. What's not fabulous about tea?

M.A.R.

On that note, I have no idea how you folks apparently gulp a gallon of coffee in the morning and don't have a hole where your stomach is supposed to be.

@Cerberus Have you SEEN tea

tchrist

Semitic languages mark their verbs for gender, don't they?

M.A.R.

03:21

Don't look at me, I'm not semitic

tchrist

Didn't they Semite you though?

> Semitic verbs are conjugated; that is, they agree with the verb's subject in person, number, and gender. For example, if the subject of the imperfect of the passive of {sbr} is third person plural masculine ('they'), the form becomes the word ይስበሩ yǝsǝbbäru 'they are broken'.

M.A.R.

Arabic has so much stuff about gender someone's gotta come up with Simplified Arabic

Cerberus

@M.A.R. It is the best!

@tchrist I know little about non-Indo-European.

What is the origin of those verbal genders?

And do they have gendered nouns?

M.A.R.

@tchrist I'm too young to be in love

user2236

Arabic is supposedly the most systematic language ever developed by mankind.

tchrist

03:24

@Cerberus They do. They're big into gender.

@M.A.R. No self love?

Cerberus

@tchrist Right.

M.A.R.

@tchrist That's after the degrees, not before

Cerberus

I would not expect them to give up their gendered nouns sooner than their gendered verbs?

user2236

vs computer languages, I suppose

Cerberus

Nouns drive gender.

tchrist

03:25

Yes.

Cerberus

Adjectives and participles agree with nouns, not the other way around.

tchrist

Although I think there are languages were males and females are expected to use completely different lexicons.

user2236

Yup

M.A.R.

@user2236 I dunno if superlatives hold much meaning when it comes to comparing languages

Cerberus

Saudi Arabia must love that.

M.A.R.

03:26

Turkish is the most Turkish language ever Turkished, in my opinion. At least it's what they've been telling me to be proud of my mother tongue.

tchrist

> Taking a cue from Gilles Deleuze’s notion of control societies, I will specifically focus on the fate of “Japanese women’s language,” or a set of speech forms exclusively associated with femaleness. This essay will ask what has happened to “women’s language” as the society shifts from disciplinary society (Foucault) to control society (Deleuze).

@M.A.R. Then you guys read far too much into the fable of Onan.

user2236

Well, computer scientists like to compare languages :-)

tchrist

Maybe "women's language" in Japan is like Polari was. I don't know.

M.A.R.

@tchrist The Onan is a satire website, everyone knows that.

tchrist

As opposed to the Peach, which is the real porn.

> Women’s language is a set of speech forms used, or said to be used, by Japanese women and often thought to be rooted in traditional Japanese culture, prior to contact with the West. It is also commonly said to be naturally or seamlessly associated with the “proper” demeanor of “the Japanese woman,” with features including indirectness and circumlocution.

full paper here

Also in French. :)

user2236

03:30

Thanks for sharing

tchrist

de rien

user2236

:)

M.A.R.

@user2236 It occurs to me it's very easy to invent a computer language. Just ask @TCh. It's much more difficult to be consistent about it

Is there a programming language with emojis?

tchrist

I don't know what you mean.

user2236

All languages are invented

tchrist

03:32

You can have an emojicon in any language. As a literal.

user2236

^

M.A.R.

Mine was discovered

tchrist

But as nuts and bolts of the language? For that you need APL or MUMPS or something.

M.A.R.

@tchrist OK but as keywords

tchrist

What I just said. :)

M.A.R.

03:33

Well I've got the mumps vaccine. Is APL dangerous?

tchrist

But yes, you could do it in any language with pluggable keywords. We just haz better cence than cats on keyboards.

M.A.R.

Oh I know about that one

It always sounded like something that would get old really fast

user2236

COVID-19 is the language of the 21st century

tchrist

user2236

The only language with a number!

So far.

M.A.R.

03:36

Now you're talking my language! Which has no genders

user2236

Coolio 😎

tchrist

@M.A.R. Just specifics?

The Moscow Times is in the Netherlands now?

M.A.R.

@tchrist It has mandatory emojis as participles

Spoken language uses emoticons instead

tchrist

Can you preposition them?

user2236

The body is a language.

M.A.R.

03:41

No, prepositions are entirely useless. We just point to a noun and the reader has to decide the preposition in their mind.

tchrist

I just mean can you position them before the nouns.

Pre-position is a verb. :)

M.A.R.

Oh. There are no nasty tricks like that in my language.

user2236

🙈🙉🙊

M.A.R.

You form interrogatives by adding ???, ?!?, or ?!! to the end of your sentence.

Informally, people just use !!1 instead

user2236

🤔 no evil

tchrist

03:47

@M.A.R. If !0 is 1 and !1 is 0, isn't !!1 still 1?

user2236

Stop mocking factorials.

tchrist

Those are postpositioned. These are prepositioned!

!a ≠ a!

¡ɐ ≠ ɐ¡

user2236

!o!

tchrist

/o\

user2236

¡ i

Cerberus

04:29

@MattE.Эллен Today's was kind of funny.

The semantic closeness of the words is not so bad, but it's still quite hard to guess, I feel.

user2236

04:58

> the highest levels of anger and sadness ever recorded by Gallup phone survey data.

:(

tchrist

05:20

> The Biden administration will be giving elderly Americans a second COVID-19 booster shot, multiple people familiar with the plan told The New York Times. Those above the age of 50 will be able to get a second booster of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines.

50 is elderly?

user2236

Apparently?!

50 is the new 65

The sun has set on the age of aquarius...

user2236

06:50

One of the good things about growing old is you don't have to worry about the tragity of dying young.

tragedy

Vikas

@user2236 But I also fear more health issues when you get old :(

user2236

That's a natural feeling.

Only you can take care of your health.

Life is fragile, handle with care.

Sounds like a "special operation" has already taken place to remove your pilgrimage rights.

And people remained silent 😶?

Right, in fear of them calling out the tanks like in China.

Re: Tiananmen square

user2236

07:41

You can destroy the house, but you can't destroy the sense of family.

> I mean, talk about what happened to Tiananmen Square. This is Tiananmen Square squared

Says Biden about the invasion of the Ukraine

Matt E. Эллен