@tchrist An "effeminate homosexual man."

@Mahnax That would be correct. You didn’t know that?

@tchrist Nope.

Ah for the innocence of youth!

I have a brother named Neil. He got called Nelly a lot. Hated it.

I don't actually know much of that kind of slang.

It's not used here at all.

@tchrist 'The incomnrenhensible Room1?

It’s grade-school abusive slang.

Well, not in my experience.

Ok

The stuff mean kids say.

@ChairOTP Aye.

Insult of choice here is "fag" for mean kids.

Well, yes, but smelly nelly is a nice bit a rhyme.

I find "fag" quite an offensive term.

Please don’t flag him.

You should be glad I'm not nicknaming you.

It gets tossed around rather often here, not many are bothered by it anymore.

Fag has the same connotation than faggot?

@ChairOTP Here it does.

Yes.

It's just a short form.

It’s essentially maricón. Or mariquita, although that’s more of a queen.

@ChairOTP "same connotation as", not "than".

Here friends use to call each other 'marica' in a friendly way.

  El mariquita se peina           en su peinador de seda.
  Los vecinos se sonríen          en sus ventanas postreras.
  El mariquita organiza           los bucles de su cabeza.
  Por los patios gritan loros,    surtidores de planetas.
  El mariquita se adorna          con un jazmín sinvergüenza.
  La tarde se pone extraña        de peines y enredaderas.
  El escándalo temblaba           rayado como una cebra.
 ¡Los mariquitas del Sur          cantan en las azoteas!

O.o?

Lorca.

But it's relevant because of?

Because of smelly nellies, and El mariquita se adorna con un jazmín sinvergüenza.

Sometimes my friends and I playfully refer to each other as "f*ckasses".

I'm not sure why that is.

@Mahnax That’s rather playful. :)

It depends on how you say it. And of course, the context.

@tchrist …

I’m more used to hearing dumbass. I guess it is one of those cost-of-inflation things.

cost-of-inflation? @tchrist

When dumbass is not strong enough, one turns to stiffer spirits.

People get used to words. They aren’t as taboo anymore.

So it is like monetary inflation, as time goes by, except it is raising the stakes of the language instead.

Oh gotchu.

@Chair I must say that your English is quite good.

@Mahnax I think it's understandable but not as good as I wished.

That’s the best way.

ChairOTP, Mahnax is telling the truth. In all the time that you've been talking to us, I have spotted only one error - the one I corrected earlier. So your written English is great; better than that of a lot of native speakers.

@ChairOTP No, seriously, you should be proud of this. As WMD just said, it is great.

I like using correct spelling and punctuation, since we're forced to in Spanish, I kept the habit.

If everything were ever as good as we wished, we would have nothing left to strive for.

@Mahnax then I must say, thank you.

@ChairOTP Very good; that applies to any language!

@ChairOTP You surpassed half of the English-speaking world just now.

:-)

Can you see them hanging down the ladder, cursing at each other in their admittedly native slang?

“hanging down the ladder”??

Ar eyou asking me, @Cerberus?

Are*

If you look down, you can see those you have surpassed. Or something.

Scratch that metaphor.

It's bed time.

@ChairOTP It was just a joke.

And now I must leave you.

Good night!

Once again, metaphors give me a hard time, because I'm used to think you use idioms all the time.

@Cerberus Good night, and thank you for your time.

Buenas noches!

Bye @Cerberus

May I ask how many languages do you guys know?

@Cerberus O madrugadas, en tu caso.

@WMD Oogoo boogoo!

@tchrist È vero.

Adieu!

You may ask, but you are unlikely to receive an integer response.

De veras.

poof

Then I reformulate and ask, how many languages are you fluent at?

Each of us has a different number.

Now I'm pretty sure the answer is certainly an integer.

Por casualidad, it is. :)

@ChairOTP I speak fluent English, passable French, a wee bit of Finnish, and tiny pieces of a few other languages.

I’m only fluent in two languages, but can get by in maybe three others, or a couple past that if I have some settling-in time.

I want to learn French, and I hope it doesn't take as much time as English.

It won’t.

I'm not here, but it is very hard to say when someone is "fluent".

French is much easier than English, and I believe it's more closely related to Spanish than English, too.

Maybe the pronunciation will give me a headache.

It definitely is, but as in Spanish the grammar is more complex than in English.

@Cerberus Able to carry on a conversation for a few hours solid will probably suffice.

Agree.

@tchrist Any conversation?

@Cerberus I don’t know.

Exactly.

Probably not.

Such words are extremely difficult to define.

Mostly when people are said to be "fluent" in language x...

They are, because as far as I know fluent does not equal to speaking like a native.

That is correct.

"does not equal speaking like a native". You shouldn't say "to" in there.

Most times when I heard some foreigner speak who was supposedly "fluent" in Dutch, the word seemed grossly inappropriate.

By the end of grade 12, I'll be fluent in French.

Or just "is not the same as speaking like a native".

@WMD copy that ;)

@Mahnax I mean no disrespect, but I rather doubt that. Have you been through immersion?

You need to define fluency better first!

Immersion is very popular nowadays when it comes to learning a language.

@tchrist No, but this is what I've been told. Most kids who do IB French come out near-fluent or fluent.

It's possible that they're mistaken.

I think you have to live completely in the language for quite some time.

OK.

I had 7 years of Spanish by the time I moved to Spain, and it is as though I knew nothing.

I did this test that was supposed to mean that your English was "as good as that of an educated native speaker" according to the European ESL system. But that was bullshit.

Just reminded me of Milhouse's grandma trying to teach him Italian.

After a year, it was very different.

@tchrist Knew nothing as in...?

I felt like an idiot.

I have never been to England for longer than two weeks, and I hardly spoke to any people at all.

We just rented a cottage.

But I don't feel like an idiot.

@tchrist Really? 7 years didn't work at all?

It worked, for things like grammar.

But it didn’t get the sound of the language in my head.

This was a long time ago.

You don't really need immersion. But it certainly helps a lot.

I've been learning English on my own, because my school sucked at some subjects like languages and others..

No access to Spanish-language TV or such.

@tchrist Yeah, that does make a difference.

We grew up with plenty of German and English television.

I rather not watch Spanish TV, there's nothing interesting in my opinion.

Heh.

*any TV

Yes, well; there is that.

Wot wot?

TV.

Not worth the bother.

Yeah, well, I don't watch TV either, but it can be a great help.

But I remember how something like five months into living in Madrid, I suddenly realized I could listen to the radio and follow them.

And there are plenty of good programmes. You'd better download them, though, so that you can watch them at your convenience.

At first, it was hard to keep it all in my head at once. Too much trouble finding word boundaries and such.

I do so.

Good.

I watch TV for entertainment when I'm really bored, but mostly with educative purposes.

And the news, if your foreign language is still too weak to understand films.

@ChairOTP But yours is probably good enough.

There are now Spanish radio stations, but I virtually never listen to them. They have little that's interesting to say.

Or rather, to listen to.

Let alone Spanish music isn't what I would say good music.

I refuse to pass cultural judgement. I am not particularly fond of “pop” music, at least of the highly marketed variety.

Noöne is.

They must be. It sells.

@Cerberus Allow me to introduce you to 70% of my school.

Hehe.

Well, pop music can be fun at times.

There's pop music

But it usually becomes boring very quickly.

and commercial pop

Club music isn’t really “pop”; it’s various kinds of dance music.

I must say that pop music that is in, say, French or Spanish or Italian is somehow more interesting.

But it gets all samey/samey after awhile.

I hate all music played in nearly all clubs.

Sorry.

Right.

I try to stick to whatever has indie influences.

wub wub wub wub wub wub weeeeeeeuuugghh

@Mahnax shakes you

Are you all right?

I hate not being able to think from the pounding noise.

I… I don't know what came over me.

@ChairOTP Your first version was right!

wub wub wub wu— Augh!

kills dubstep

@tchrist I can still think; but speaking...

That's better.

@Cerberus ups.

pats you on the back

@ChairOTP Woohoo!

@tchrist or listening to someone.

Even when you scream out loud, they still can't hear you.

You can only shout in each other's ear.

Yes, you cannot talk to people in a venue like that; it’s not what it’s for, of course.

If you're away from the big speakers, you can still have a shouting philosophical conversation.

After everything's over, there's the tinnitus that lasts for a long time playing over and over in your ear.

Sometimes it never stops.

That happens sometimes, yes.

Many people wear earplugs.

That's a good idea, if you're not going to drink.

I tried it once, but it was impossible.

Really?

What does that have to do with drinking?

Impossible, how?

I used cheap earplugs.

Bad idea.

Wearing earplugs affects your equilibrium, being drunk makes it worse.

I could not survive without earplugs.

I couldn't get used to the fact that I had to really, really shout extremely loudly.

And I’m not talking about clubs, just about normal life. Like at $job.

@ChairOTP Hmm I've never heard of that! It doesn't seem to bother people?

@Cerberus If you're willing to make a show in front of everyone, I think they couldn't care less.

I have never heard of earplugs affecting one’s balance.

Sound cannot disturb me when I'm working except if it's extremely loud, perhaps.

@ChairOTP I have never heard of this effect, and people have never mentioned anything like this.

I put on earplugs when the neighbor mows his lawn, if I’m coding.

I also don't see how that would work.

It does not affect your balance in a notable way, if you know what I mean. But from time to time, you can get a bit dizzy.

Surely your plugs don't push against your inner ear that hard?

It can’t.

The eardrum is in the way.

@ChairOTP Hmm, if you say so...

The semicircular canals are in the middle ear.

Can’t get there from here.

It's not like you're going to fall because of using them.

I don't really remember how my teacher explained it, but it does have effect on us.

I find sunglasses can affect my sense of balance.

@ChairOTP You would probably say an effect there.

Nothing makes my balance any worse than it already is...so I'm fine.

@Mahnax why?

@ChairOTP Erm, it's just the way a native speaker would say it, I guess.

My balance gets affected when I stand up too quickly.

I'm not very good at explaining these things.

@Mahnax Ok ;)

@ChairOTP Heh.

You're right: it is to have an effect on x, somehow, at least there.

Spanish has places where you don’t need an article, but for which in English you do.

But you can say her policies had effect, I would say...

I wouldn't say that.

Then I see no difference.

Took effect, yes. Had effect, I don’t know.

I agree.

So, have an affect, but took effect?

Yeah.

@Cerberus That one doesn’t sound right.

books.google.com/ngrams/…

Regular English corpus.

Well, you need a comma there.

@Mahnax What does this mean?

It means that we like to use an.

I would say to have effect can be used to mean to be effective, but without on x.

English doesn't have an organisation as the RAE in Spanish?

No, not per se.

There is no formal body that makes rules that everyone is supposed to respect.

In practice, there are style guides, like the Chicago Manual of Style, which are considered de facto standards in many publishing situations.

Or Fowler, or whoever.

The OED is more extensive than the RAE’s dictionary, but it is not prescriptive (usually), since it is just saying what people say, not telling them how they should say it. Usually.

There are as many style books as there are publishing houses...

And then some.

How come the OED is more extensive when Spanish has way more vocabulary?

Hah.

Long subject.

How do you define a word?

Good luck with that one.

And I wonder why you think that Spanish has “more vocabulary”.

Because it does.

It has more verbal inflections, but those don’t really count. They all reduce to one citation form.

Or at least that's why I've been told and what I've read.

“Because it does” is hardly an answer.

@tchrist It is even irrelevant whether they count.

Synonyms and antonyms, perhaps?

You can only compare "vocabularies" if you define them very, very precisely.

But now I really have to go to bed.

Here, read this.

Good luck!

Good night.

Again with the problem with defining words precisely.

Night!

> This suggests that there are, at the very least, a quarter of a million distinct English words, excluding inflections, and words from technical and regional vocabulary not covered by the OED, or words not yet added to the published dictionary, of which perhaps 20 per cent are no longer in current use. If distinct senses were counted, the total would probably approach three quarters of a million.

I would say that dog would be just one word, that has different meaning is another thing.

Yet ball and ball are different words.

Just as in Spanish, taco and taco, and taco and taco, are different words.