English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Robusto

00:08

@DannyuNDos You'd be surprised.

Let's see, I can name Germany and Netherlands. I don't remember the others.

Wait, Russia? I don't think these colors are accurate.

Dannyu NDos

I can name them all.

Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Gabon, Estonia, Ruxemburg, Lithuania, Armenia, Yemen, Bulgaria, Sierra Leone, and Russia.

And Bolivia is missing.

Robusto

01:10

@DannyuNDos You get the prize. I never thought it worth my time to memorize the flags.

@DannyuNDos Whoa whoa whoa ... Ruxembourg?

Dannyu NDos

Aw shoot, Luxembourg, I mean.

Robusto

Too late. FAIL!

Dannyu NDos

And this is how Koreans confuse L and R.

Robusto

Japanese have the same issue.

Actually, they don't have an /L/ sound.

Funny thing is, though, when I hear Korean on videos I try to pass it through my Japanese filter, which I do until I realize I don't understand even a single word. Then I nod to myself: Korean.

7

Q: Are the Japanese and Korean spoken languages somehow related?

According to Wikipedia, Historical and modern linguists classify Korean as a language isolate. [A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical ... relationship with other languages] Yet whenever I hear Korean spoken, my ear is tricked for a sh...

spoken-language

Dannyu NDos

It's because of the codas. Japanese has two, and Korean has seven.

Robusto

01:16

I'm not familiar with coda. By that do you mean "particle"?

Dannyu NDos

I mean, as in a syllable: onset - nucleus - coda.

Robusto

I don't know what that means. Japanese has pitch accent. Is that what you mean?

alphabet

Coda = the end part of a syllable, after the vowel

Robusto

Yes, I know what coda means. From "tail" ...

Dannyu NDos

In Japanese, there are only two codas, namely ん and っ. Korean has seven, namely ㄱ, ㄴ, ㄷ, ㄹ, ㅁ, ㅂ, ㅇ.

Robusto

01:21

Japanese doesn't have onsets/nuclei/coda. All syllables but one ends in a vowel sound, and that one is /n/ which is arguably a semi-vowel.

Dannyu NDos

I think you're thinking of moras?

Robusto

Do you mean morae?

Dannyu NDos

Yeah

Robusto

I'm in a game atm and others are yelling at me to pay attention. More later.

Cerberus

01:53

@CowperKettle Are you sure, and the whole panel/array?

CowperKettle

02:38

> What's the most uncomfortable part of a nuclear winter?
Icy BMs.

@Cerberus I'm not sure..

tchrist

Moray Eels are Straight out of Alien

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Cerberus

03:01

@CowperKettle Neither am I.

jlliagre

03:36

@Robusto There was indeed, even its color matches. A croissant is initially a shape, the shape of the crescent moon.

tchrist

@jlliagre Vert? :)

Croissant fertile

Le Croissant fertile est une expression désignant une région (non officielle) biogéographique du Proche et Moyen-Orient formant une bande de terres cultivables grâce à un climat suffisamment pluvieux, délimitée au sud par le désert de Syrie (qui forme la partie nord du désert d'Arabie), à l'ouest par la mer Méditerranée, et par les montagnes du Taurus et du Zagros au nord et à l'est. Il traverse les entités actuelles que sont la Palestine, Israël, la Jordanie, la Syrie, le Liban, le sud-est de la Turquie, le nord et l'est de l'Irak, et le bord ouest de l'Iran. Le terme fut introduit en 1916 par...

Mitch

@MetaEd taken literally, I understand your intention... educated in a system that historically is X but not a believer in any of the X mysticism. or lore possibly practicing any or only major traditions (well known holidays).

tchrist

Wow, what a name for a man!

> Le terme fut introduit en 1916 par l'archéologue James Henry Breasted car l'arc formé ressemble à un croissant.

jlliagre

@Mitch A crotte feuilletée?? I never ate anything like that!

Mitch

@jlliagre I mean it sorta looks like that

Who knows what the French will actually eat

tchrist

03:43

@Mitch Pain au chocolat?

Pain au chocolat

Pain au chocolat (French pronunciation: [pɛ̃ o ʃɔkɔla] , literally "bread with chocolate"), also known as chocolatine (pronounced [ʃɔkɔlatin] ) in the south-west part of France and in Canada, or couque au chocolat in Belgium, is a type of Viennoiserie pastry consisting of a cuboid-shaped piece of yeast-leavened laminated dough, similar in texture to a puff pastry, with one or two pieces of dark chocolate in the center. The chocolate usually has a slight bite to the texture. Pain au chocolat is made of the same layered doughs as a croissant. Often sold still hot or warm from the oven, they a...

Well, at least it's not phyllo, which is what I somehow thought he'd been talking about.

> bien que les Européens et les Nord-Américains la connaissent sous un nom grec, cette pâte est clairement d'origine turque

Mitch

@MetaEd However there's lots of room in all those word for variations and the variations for X=Christian only overlap a little with the variations for Jewish. There is a non-trivial proportion of Jews who are 1) non-believers and 2) strong traditionalists ie very kosher, follow shabbat restrictions, do the whole 4 hr hagadah etc etc. I can't imagine any body who is a non-believer Christian but goes to church/confession every week. Except maybe some Jesuits?

tchrist

Damn you, now I want Weichselstrudel.

Mitch

mmm

Cerberus

@tchrist Ohh I had no idea it was from leaf!

I thought it was filo- and I never looked up its origin.

tchrist

Mitch

03:53

wait... phyllo- and feuille are cognate?

Cerberus

Probably!

Feuille most be from Latin folium.

The sounds and meanings seem too close to be an coincidence.

Though you never know...

tchrist

> From Greek φύλλο (fýllo, “leaf”). Doublet of phyllon, distantly also with foil, folio and folium.

Mitch

distantly... that's pretty close

tchrist

I believe they mean that both L and G took it from a common ancestral form up in PIE.

Mitch

But as to actual pastry construction, would a pastry chef dare to use phyllo to make a croissant?

tchrist

03:57

No, wrong dough.

Cerberus

Etymonline mentions the shared root *bhel- "to thrive, bloom," possibly a variant of PIE root *bhel- (2) "to blow, swell.".

Which also led to blade, blood, and bloom.

Mitch

or wrong flattening process. with croissants you put sticks of butten in between layers of dough, then flatten it, then repeat the process, butter then fold butter then fold

jlliagre

@Mitch We might eat pets de nonne (nun's farts) and crottes d'âne (donkey's poop). For some reason, they look alike:

Mitch

@Cerberus if you go far enough back the PIE roots go back to Nostratic where Proto-Semitic goes back to also.where there are lots of roots that produce many words.

tchrist

mille-feuille

Noun: mille-feuille (plural mille-feuilles)

A type of pastry made of several layers of puff pastry usually filled with cream or custard, and topped with icing or sugar.
Synonyms: Napoleon cake, (originally US slang) napoleon
mille-feuille m (plural mille-feuilles)
(cooking) mille-feuille, vanilla slice
mille-feuille f (plural mille-feuilles)

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Mitch

04:01

Eventually if you go back far enough you get to Proto-Language which has only one root, and every word in every language afterwards has some slightly different sound change to account for different words.

@jlliagre I, of course, was kidding, and now it turns out that I wasn't far from the truth.

tchrist

milfoil

Noun: milfoil (countable and uncountable, plural milfoils)

Common yarrow, Achillea millefolium.
Any of several similar pungent Eurasian herbs, of the genus Achillea
Any plants of the genus Myriophyllum; water milfoil.

Yarrow is Achillea millefolium.

jlliagre

Pets de nonne

tchrist

Beignets

Mitch

They look just as expected

jlliagre

Crottes d'âne

Mitch

04:04

Pets de rire

tchrist

> Louisiana-style beignets are square or rectangular fried pastries made from leavened dough rather than choux pastry. In New Orleans, they are best known as a breakfast served with powdered sugar on top.

> Dans le reste du monde francophone, le beignet emprunte plusieurs
noms. Aux Antilles, c'est un beignet antillais. Au Canada francophone
(au Québec et au Nouveau-Brunswick principalement), on dit « beigne »
et ils ont la forme d'un anneau. On peut aussi trouver la variété trou
de beigne, qui est le bout de pâte retiré pour former le trou du beigne
à l'ancienne. Aux États-Unis en Louisiane, ils sont appelés beignet
cadien. En Belgique francophone, ils sont appelés croustillons. En
Suisse romande, boule de Berlin, merveilles (proches des oreillettes).

CowperKettle

04:20

Vladimir Zelensky spent 4 years in Mongolia as a child. His father, an IT specialist, was sent there by the USSR to build a computer mainframe for a copper/molybdenum ore processing plant in the 1970s; while there, he also set up an IT school.

Erdenet

Erdenet (Mongolian: Эрдэнэт, literally "with treasure") is the third-largest city in Mongolia, with a 2018 population of 98,057, and the capital of the aimag (province) of Orkhon. Located in the northern part of the country, it lies in a valley between the Selenge and Orkhon rivers about 240 km (149 mi) (as the crow flies) northwest of Ulaanbaatar, Darkhan, the capital. The road length between Ulaanbaatar and Erdenet is about 370 km (230 mi). == History == Erdenet, one of the youngest settlements in Mongolia, was founded in 1974 in an area where large deposits of copper had been discovered in the...

It looks like home.

Like a typical Russian town.

alphabet

Huh. Interesting how much that doesn't look like a typical American town (of the same size)

I'm surprised it consists largely--from that picture--of apartment buildings rather than houses

CowperKettle

04:39

Ancient Egyptian sculptors only produced idealized representations of heads, but they experimented on the side, producing realistic heads.

This is by Thuthmos, the royal sculptor in the 14th century BC

Thutmose (sculptor)

Thutmose, also known as "The King's Favourite and Master of Works, the Sculptor Thutmose" (also spelled Djhutmose, Thutmosis, and Thutmes), was an Ancient Egyptian sculptor. He flourished around 1350 BC, and is thought to have been the official court sculptor of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten in the latter part of his reign. A German archaeological expedition digging in Akhenaten's deserted city of Akhetaten, known today as Amarna, found a ruined house and studio complex (labeled P47.1-3) in early December 1912; the building was identified as that of Thutmose based on an ivory horse blinker found...

tchrist

Oh that's well before Alexander then.

user 85795

04:54

The great one who was tutored by Aristotle?

Cerberus

05:04

Pretty cool!

@jlliagre Wait those are oliebollen!

jlliagre

> Il est appelé croustillon en Belgique francophone (crostilion en wallon). À Liège, il est parfois nommé « soupir de nonne » ou « pet-de-nonne » par belgicisme (et ne désigne donc pas la pâtisserie française du même nom, voisine mais distincte du croustillon).

Croustillon

Les croustillons sont une pâtisserie belgo-néerlandaise constituée de petites bouchées de pâte à beignets cuites dans une friture et généralement saupoudrées de sucre glace (couramment nommé sucre impalpable ou sucre farine en Belgique francophone). C'est une pâtisserie classique et de préparation aisée, emblématique des fêtes foraines et, en raison de racines très régionales et folkloriques, connue sous divers noms selon les traditions locales. == Préparation et consommation == Par des baraques et roulottes de fêtes foraines ou autres foires, le croustillon est traditionnellement vendu en lot...

alphabet

Huh. TIL that (a) for some AmE speakers poor and pour aren't homophones, and (b) the *non-*homophonous pronunciation of "poor" is the "traditional" one. Somehow I either haven't heard or haven't noticed this.

Now that I think about it: I think I have noticed this odd pronunciation of "poor" before. It's the one MW transcribes as "ˈpu̇r".

CowperKettle

> An oliebol (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈoːlibɔl]) is a Dutch beignet.

Oh, that totally explains it.

alphabet

I have absolutely no clue how to make that sound. It's the pronunciation Cambridge gives also with IPA /pʊr/.

My brain does not want to put a [ʊ] before an /r/.

From Wikipedia:

> For many speakers of American English, the historical /iur/ merges with /ɜr/ after palatal consonants, as in "cure," "sure," "pure," and "mature", and merges with /ɔr/ in other environments such as in "poor" and "moor."

Somehow I hadn't quite noticed that poor is one of the words where people without this merger have a /ʊr/. I thought we all said /ɔr/ there.

CowperKettle

06:14

мем Лукашенко Откуда готовилось нападение... на французском языке (heygen)

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Again Lukashenko in French

Идущий к реке на английском Going to the river meme in english (heygen)

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A famous old Russian meme translated (only a small bit though). The original name fo the meme is Идущий к реке (The one who goes to the river)

The guy is walking to the river and is telling how he has reached an enlightened state in which all he needs is to contemplate the Universe.

But he is telling that with a lot of expletives. Probably the state of enlightement has its glitches.

Кандибобер на английском Kandibber meme in english (heygen)

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Another meme, in which a passer-by woman is asked something by a TV crew, and erupts in a stream of consciousness, in which he calls her hat "candibober" (who knows what that is)

The original in Russian, 12 years ago:

Кандибобер - Kandibober (english subtitles)

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user 85795

07:11

@M.A.R. you may be interested in this question

Unfortunately, it appears to be asked on the wrong site.

M.A.R.

07:33

@user85795 I'm not sure how I'm supposed to answer that. Write a book about it myself?

Every rudimentary textbook on every field in pharmacy has plenty of examples on how scientists in the field solved a difficult problem of course.

It's not very accessible knowledge to the populace, and often not very enticing writing.

Given the growing distrust of science, it's probably a good idea.

user 85795

Yeah, it almost sounds like a textbook reference request.

After the coV pandemic the populace appears ready for a Brief History Of Virology exposition.

Cha-ching to anybody who can come up with one. 😷 🧬💉🧫⚗️🧪📖💲💰

Dannyu NDos

07:52

I used to have trouble pronouncing Spanish /ʎ/. Weirdly enough, I've just found it easy when I tried pronouncing the French word "travaille" as [tʕaː va iʎ].

Xanne

08:12

Wordle 900 4/6

🟨⬜🟨🟨⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟨🟨🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

CowperKettle

11:28

If you pour root beer into a square glass, it'll be just beer.

jlliagre

@CowperKettle Squaring the circle!

user 85795

Square that^ circle.

CowperKettle

11:50

I don't get this joke, even though Google easily translated it.

> BOI WHAT is the Spongebob-conglomerate AI project started by songwriter and producer, Mathue, in bringing Spongebob characters to sing a variety of songs and genres from rap, country, and rock.

Just a Pineapple

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I wonder if totally everything was made using AI here. A million views of this song.

user 85795

@CowperKettle has anything as nasty as this happened in the special operation: Abandoned babies found decomposing in Gaza hospital weeks after it was evacuated

I think your stories of human flesh eating prison inmates being released to fight in the special operation comes pretty close.

CowperKettle

13:15

@user85795 Something similar happened when the Russian Army left Sevastopol during the Crimean War. They left wounded in the city hospital, without personnel, without doctors, without anything. The French and the Brits delayed their entry into the city, and discovered the wounded either in a horrible state or dead.

At least that's what I remember from an audiobook on the Crimean War.

alphabet

13:25

@user85795 By official estimates, Israel's invasion of Gaza has killed more civilians in ~2 months than Russia's invasion of Ukraine has in ~2 years. Granted, both numbers are undercounts.

CowperKettle

Gene of the day: ROBO1 - its variations affect children's ability to do math en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROBO1

alphabet

One might argue that the level of civilian death and displacement in Gaza suggests that this is not an ordinary military conflict but the start of a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Not to be controversial or anything.

CowperKettle

I just don't read any news about Gaza, and even about Ukraine. I just can't keep up.

Prose poem of the day: Les Chants de Maldoror en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Chants_de_Maldoror

CowperKettle

15:08

> a team of researchers at the National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology (QST) in Japan have now demonstrated that it’s possible to accurately reconstruct complex images with AI — based almost solely from a person’s thoughts petapixel.com/2023/12/04/…

jlliagre

15:21

@CowperKettle That one is clearer than the one with the white owl. Here, the pun is about essence that means either essence (the most essential element of sth) or gas (gasoline, petrol). Pétrole means oil (petroleum).

CowperKettle

16:24

@jlliagre Ah! Now I see!

Araucaria - Him

16:38

@tchrist @Robusto @Mitch @M.A.R. @MetaEd @everybody

I found out while investigating today the very sad news that our Prof Lawler has apparently passed away. All I could find was this mention here. No obituaries or anything like that anywhere. Or none that I could find.

8

(entry for 27th Nov)

Sorry @alphabet, missed you off there. Know you are a fan of his posts.

CowperKettle

16:59

On the Nate Hagens YouTube podcast, the British guest Kate Raworth did not understand the word doozy, and Nate had to explain the meaning. Is this a strictly a US word? youtu.be/GocuMZX3hIs?si=WNKZBGBaAHpuij1j

Laurel

17:16

@Araucaria-Him He hasn't been on the site for about a month. If someone could confirm the news, maybe we could post something on meta like I've seen other sites do. I did find his personal(!!!!) contact info

Not sure if anyone would answer the phone tho. Maybe his schools would be a better point of contact

Araucaria - Him

@Laurel I'm an occasional email correspondent of his. I emailed him a couple of weeks ago to find out if he was ok and didn't hear anything back, which is why I did a bit of research. Yes, maybe the schools are the way to go.

alphabet

@Araucaria-Him So sorry to hear that! Maybe try [email protected] ?

Laurel

Alternatively, WWU: chss.wwu.edu/linguistics/jlawler

alphabet

But I'd expect an obituary online or a statement from UMich by now.

But we should decide on a fitting tribute to him.

M.A.R.