English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Robusto

00:22

Are you writing in the style of ChatGPT on purpose? — Robusto 20 secs ago

Laurel

Could you flag it for mod attention instead of trying to handle it yourselves?

In my experience comments like that tend to escalate things. I'm also pretty sure this isn't ChatGPT at a glance

Laurel

00:43

(Wow, no matter how I tried to word that, the tone seems to come off as "royally pissed" :p I'm really not angry)

Robusto

@Laurel I only have one self.

alkaline water ...with lemon

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@Laurel In my view, the way I phrased it was innocuous enough. It wasn't an accusation, just a comment. But I see TPTB have erased it, so no harm, no foul. And this is what mods [don't] get paid for, ne?

Laurel

I mean it's possible that I'm being overly cautious about this but I really have seen this type of thing erupt into an argument

I'm pretty involved in AI detection so I feel confident in my judgement wrt the answer, but I'll get a second opinion

CowperKettle

00:58

Starting today, tweets are no longer tweets, they are Xcrements.

Xanne

@Araucaria-Nothereanymore. It sounds formal, but it’s got a few clunkers that indicate NNS.

alphabet

(Got confused as to why you were linking to an answer from LPH. I forgot that I don't have enough rep on ELL to see deleted posts, so I was just seeing the one at the bottom of the page.)

Laurel

There are no deleted answers on that question btw. It's just the comment that's deleted

alphabet

This answers to this have gone all over the place; apparently intuitions vary widely on this issue: english.stackexchange.com/questions/611370

Laurel

@alphabet Also git gud

alphabet

01:09

@Laurel Oh wait, was it the one from LPH you were linking to?

Laurel

Well I wasn't the one who linked it but yes, one is a link to the answer and the other was a link to a comment under the answer

alphabet

LPH has a somewhat idiosyncratic writing style. I doubt it's ChatGPT, particularly since it includes a link to a comment earlier in the thread.

The second paragraph is also stating a position on the issue; ChatGPT would equivocate more.

Perhaps relevant: english.stackexchange.com/a/611423/470858

(And I get the distinct impression that, in the second paragraph, LPH is talking about how other people view himself/herself.)

@Xanne NNS = non-native speaker?

Robusto

May 4, 2011 at 12:44, by Robusto

So we have a new term for non-native speaker: pineapple.

Non-native speaker -> NNS -> Ananas -> pineapple

Laurel

01:38

@alphabet You know, the fact that some expressions/dialects are characterized as "uneducated" or undesirable has bothered me for a while, and it's really hard to address it because it's a societal issue. It especially bothers me on ELL, since it kinda feels like we're teaching them racism. But you also can't just not mention it, so your option is really only to teach about racism which is also understandably hard

Maybe my problem is that I'm trying to solve all the problems (and it's just me)

Robusto

Wisdom is being able to discriminate between problems that are solvable and those that are not.

Xanne

@Laurel There is standard English and there’s non-standard English.

Laurel

Yes but why are some types of English non-standard? When I think about it, it still comes down to "welp, people were racist"

Of course, not all of it is about race. I'm not really sure why let's say southern us English is considered non-standard

alphabet

01:56

@Laurel On ELL, what's most relevant is that EFL students typically aren't trying to learn these "non-standard" dialects.

Of course, in one sense it is true: many of these dialects developed among groups shut out of any decent formal educational system; this may have caused those dialects to evolve faster and diverge further from other dialects. (Not sure if you can quantify this, though.) But regardless, that doesn't make them "uneducated," of course, since plenty of educated people still use them, particularly when talking to other members of that community.

Laurel

@alphabet Yeah... but still. Shaming other people's dialects isn't necessary for that

alphabet

And of course, this isn't just in the US. In the UK, there's a long debate about the perception of Scots, which was long stigmatized as an inferior dialect of English but is arguably best classified as a separate language.

Laurel

I'm thinking about a researcher who I believe was a black woman. She showed her family anonymized clips of her speaking in both AAVE and standard, and her family said that the AAVE clip was of an unintelligent person

I think non-standard dialects are cool

@alphabet It's a descendant of Old English (or middle?) just like modern English

I think it should be on topic here but I'd expect that ruling to be controversial :p

alphabet

There's a lot of overlap between AAVE and various "lower-class" Southern white dialects; the sharp distinction between AAVE and "white" dialects is much more apparent in the North, since African-Americans migrated northward much more than white working-class Southerners.

Laurel

It just seems silly that old English is on topic but not the language that the same group was speaking a little later

CowperKettle

02:05

Hard Attack: How English is getting more "choppy"

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alphabet

@Laurel It diverged after Middle English. There's a fair amount of mutual intelligibility--when I've heard it I think I understand about 75%.

@CowperKettle That video was really interesting. I do often pronounce "to" before vowels as [tə.ʔ] rather than [tuw].

I've noticed that I pronounce "to eat" (in isolation) as [tə.ʔiʔ]

Laurel

@alphabet That's a higher percentage probably than some British English dialects :p

alphabet

After watching Geoff Lindsey's video on ejectives, I became quite self-conscious of all the popping noises I make at the ends of words.

CowperKettle

02:29

Zalishchyky

Zalishchyky (; zaw-leesh-chee-kee; Ukrainian: Залiщики; Polish: Zaleszczyki), also spelled Zalischyky, is a small city located on the Dniester River in Chortkiv Raion, Ternopil Oblast, western Ukraine. It hosts the administration of Zalishchyky urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. Population: 8,928 (2022 estimate). == Etymology == Zalishchyky's name, as well as its precursors Zalissia and Zalishche, probably derives from "zalis", a compound of the Ukrainian words "за" (za) and "ліс" (lis), together meaning "behind (the) forest". Hinterwalden, the name for a Saxon settlement in ...

CowperKettle

02:53

Антоха МС — Время Ток

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Nice minimalist song in Russian.

CowperKettle

03:09

Hold on, Republicans, help is on the way.

> For while the tired waves, vainly breaking
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

> And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But teenward, look, the land is bright.

alphabet

I know that, as a progressive, I'm ~supposed~ to dislike "Rich Men North of Richmond." But it's a good song and is now stuck in my head forever.

CowperKettle

A lot of Communist songs, for instance, from the Civil War, are stuck in my head ever since I sang them to my grandma as a preschooler, with her lying in her bed and me standing on the footboard's lower rail and clinging to the footboard frame, because I was too short.

CowperKettle

03:39

Варшавянка - Вихри враждебные веют над нами

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Polish revolutionary song from the 1880s translated into Russian and adopted as a Russian revolutionary song

> (original Polish title: Warszawianka) is a Polish socialist revolutionary song written some time between 1879 and 1883.[1] The Polish title, a deliberate reference to the earlier song by the same title, could be translated as either The Varsovian, The Song of Warsaw (as in the Leon Lishner version[2]) or "the lady of Warsaw". To distinguish between the two, it is often called "Warszawianka 1905 roku"

Whirlwinds of Danger

Whirlwinds of Danger (original Polish title: Warszawianka) is a Polish socialist revolutionary song written some time between 1879 and 1883. The Polish title, a deliberate reference to the earlier song by the same title, could be translated as either The Varsovian, The Song of Warsaw (as in the Leon Lishner version) or "the lady of Warsaw". To distinguish between the two, it is often called "Warszawianka 1905 roku" ("Warszawianka of 1905"), after the song became the anthem of worker protests during the Revolution in the Kingdom of Poland (1905–1907), when 30 workers were shot during the May Day...

> The Spanish song "To The Barricades" is set to the same tune. In East Germany, a German translation was created and used as a common piece of marching music by the Army; whilst France's 1st Parachute Hussar Regiment adopted the same music using different lyrics.

A las Barricadas

"A las Barricadas" ("To the Barricades") was one of the most popular songs of the Spanish anarchists during the Spanish Civil War. "A las Barricadas" is sung to the tune of "Whirlwinds of Danger" ("Warszawianka"), composed by Józef Pławiński. The lyrics written by Valeriano Orobón Fernández in 1936 were partly based on the original Polish lyrics by Wacław Święcicki."The Confederation" referred to in the final stanza is the anarcho-syndicalist CNT (Spanish: Confederación Nacional del Trabajo — "National Confederation of Labor"), which at the time was the largest labour union, the main anarchist...

Remade into one of the most popular song of anarchists in the Spanish Civil War

This song had some traveling.

Robusto

03:53

Art or craft? You be the judge.

FYI, it's the famous Benvenuto Cellini salt cellar.

Benvenuto Cellini

Benvenuto Cellini (, Italian: [beɱveˈnuːto tʃelˈliːni]; 3 November 1500 – 13 February 1571) was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, and author. His best-known extant works include the Cellini Salt Cellar, the sculpture of Perseus with the Head of Medusa, and his autobiography, which has been described as "one of the most important documents of the 16th century". == Biography == === Youth === Benvenuto Cellini was born in Florence, in present-day Italy. His parents were Giovanni Cellini and Maria Lisabetta Granacci. They were married for 18 years before the birth of their first child. Benven...

CowperKettle

It's quite salty, yes.

> The word salt cellar is attested in English from the 15th century. It combines the English word salt with the Anglo-Norman word saler, which already by itself meant "salt container".

Oh. Salty salt.

It should be on the flag of some People's Democratic Republic.

Robusto

Procol Harum - A Salty Dog

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Slashing Its Budget, West Virginia University Asks, What Is Essential?

If this be a trend, I hate it.

5 Crises Republicans Made up to Distract You | Robert Reich

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> I hope we can live through all this, because I don’t know how much more stupidity I can take.

CowperKettle

04:24

Асса с английскими субтитрами (художественный, реж. Соловьев Сергей, 1987 г.)

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This iwas a cult movie when I was aged 10.

Here, with English subtitles.

Right at the square near our school, there was the word "ASSA" painted by someone in huge letters

> While there are no causal links to it, Sovietology uses the release of Assa as a benchmark for when Perestroika reached the mass culture, and accordingly, entered its prime phase. This could be explained by the fact that the film was the first sanctioned production to feature the rock band Kino.

Soon the head singer/songwriter of the rock group died in a car crash, and many walls were covered with Цой Жив

> In the 2020 videogame, Cyberpunk 2077, graffiti reading "цой жив" (Tsoi lives) can be found in various locations.

These graffiti are still around. And here's a funny meme with a nun writing Ной Жив (Noah Lives)

Which looks a lot like Tsoi Zhiv :)

CowperKettle

05:24

Wayuu people

The Wayuu (also Wayu, Wayúu, Guajiro, Wahiro) are an Amerindian ethnic group of the Guajira Peninsula in northernmost part of Colombia and northwest Venezuela. The Wayuu language is part of the Maipuran (Arawak) language family. == Geography == The Wayúu inhabit the arid Guajira Peninsula straddling the Venezuela-Colombia border, on the Caribbean Sea coast. Two major rivers flow through this mostly harsh environment: the Rancheria River in Colombia and the El Limón River in Venezuela representing the main source of water, along with artificial ponds designed to hold rain water during the ...

A people that has never been subjugated in South America.

They first celebrated Christmas in 1942

Their language is considered to be the farthest from English in terms of linguistic structure (word order etc)

CowperKettle

05:36

Coat of arms of Volchansk, a local town.

Journalists were making fun.

Xanne

07:10

Wordle 791 5/6

🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜
🟨⬜🟨⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

I almost missed this.

Araucaria - Not here any more.

08:03

@Laurel Who's trying to handle it?

jlliagre

Wordle 791 5/6

⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
🟩🟩⬜🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

@Xanne Same here

M.A.R.

As a non-physicist, try to imagine "chance" as "accident". Every time you drive your car, you are at risk of an accident. That risk level can be quantified statistically. When you say that chance does not exist, what exactly do you mean? that accidents do not exist? or that statistics does not exist? — niels nielsen yesterday

CowperKettle

08:25

When a neural network has not enough capacity to predict something, it's chance.

It's simple.

Like in the saying: "Skip school, and your adult life will be full of magical events"

jlliagre

@Araucaria-Nothereanymore. Not ChatGPT. In that reply, I quickly recognized the very personal style of this user before seeing his name. He uses the same one when he writes in French. I remember when I first read posts from him several years ago, I also wondered if it could be the result of some prototype AI program, long before ChatGPT existed, but no. Maybe it's the other way around and ChatGPT is using him as a model. ;-)

Araucaria - Not here any more.

@Laurel It's totally unnecessary for users to talk about 'sounding uneducated' and so forth. All they need to do is describe the so-called standard varieties. The reason those are learned/taught is that they're the most widely understood.

@jlliagre Ha ha! I thought that one seemed far out, even for LPH!

@Laurel @alphabet You mght appreciate this question and answer:

2

Q: Misspoken English?

In a university course on anthro. linguistics I first heard the term 'east Tennessee mumble fuck' to describe the dialect spoken there which seemed to follow no rules in the world of linguistics. Is anyone here familiar with that term? Secondly I grew up in Ypsilanti, MI aka Ypsi-tucky as most o...

north-american-english

CowperKettle