English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

tchrist

00:00

You're right: it's not a word. It's two words.

Mitch

@tchrist In the end was the word.

@tchrist go ke?

Criggie

But the bird is the word ?

tchrist

@Mitch Flunked catechism, or just jumping straight from alpha to omega?

Mitch

@tchrist The written word is a false prophet.

tchrist

Not on the subway walls.

Dannyu NDos

00:02

@Mitch I cannot grok.

tchrist

Or tenement halls.

Mitch

@tchrist do they still have tenements? I've been to the museum.

tchrist

Mitch

@DannyuNDos Ask @M.A.R. for a prescription for that.

tchrist

Robusto

00:08

@Mitch Polite people don't mention poop in chat.

Mitch

@DannyuNDos @tchrist got it. It's a reference to the first words of the fourth gospel in the Christian New Testament.

@Robusto goddammit

Robusto

@Mitch Hey, I don't make the rules. You've been warned.

Additional Information

Dannyu NDos

@Mitch No, it's a reference to that angry German programmer.

They got an error message containing "grok", sought for "grok" in an English-to-German dict, couldn't find it, and became furious.

Mitch

@Robusto Stool sample

@DannyuNDos Are you giving me the gowk?

Dannyu NDos

No...?

Not that either...?

Mitch

00:22

@DannyuNDos Didn't Heinlein make it up?

Dannyu NDos

Yes

alphabet

@CowperKettle Presumably the effects are worth it for some number of people.

@Criggie There are people who give pets with cancer chemotherapy. You just gotta have enough money.

Criggie

yeah there is that.

alphabet

Sadly, I've heard that even the most ambitious plans for America's health insurance system would not provide coverage for raccoons.

Criggie

if you pay enough premium, I'm sure someone would.

alphabet

00:27

The dark side of anti-depressants for dogs

@Criggie Despite our vital roles in sanitation and home remodeling, humans still refuse to give us minimum wage.

Did you know that OSHA refuses to inspect dumpsters to ensure the safety of uncompensated guerrilla sanitation workers?

CowperKettle

Curious. They used to capitalize some nouns, like Knowledge here - almost like in German.

jlliagre

@CowperKettle Too bad we read the punchline first.

jlliagre

00:50

How you guys pronounce "Reich"?

alphabet

@jlliagre /ɹɐɪk/

Some English speakers pronounce some German words containing ch with /x/, but in most cases it becomes a /k/ instead.

jlliagre

@alphabet "Rike". How odd... I was expecting /ɹɐɪʃ/.

tchrist

@jlliagre Are you looking for a monoglot anglophone unschooled in German to answer you, or an educated person?

alphabet

@jlliagre Yeah, the name Bach is usually also pronounced with a /k/.

tchrist

It ends in /x/.

And it has a raised diphthong because /x/ is unvoiced.

jlliagre

01:00

I'm asking because I was puzzled by this comment: (Where it doesn't, they have to live with frequent mispronunciation, like composer Steve Reich who prefers a "-sh" sound instead of "-k" to avoid associations with the Third Reich.)

tchrist

Oh, that's normal. People who can't be arsed to pronounce /x/ often blow it off and say /k/.

Lock Ness.

Joe Hands Back.

alphabet

You can listen to English pronunciations of Third Reich here: youglish.com/pronounce/Third%20Reich/english

The most common pronunciation is with /k/, but you hear /x/ also. Nobody uses /ʃ/.

tchrist

So it's like [ɻʷʌɪ̯x], if you want to write it that way.

jlliagre

To my ears, the way Germans pronounce it is much closer to a /ʃ/ than to a /k/. French wouldn't understand "Rike". On the other hand, in France we usually pronounce "Bach" as /bak/. Go figure.

alphabet

Generally there's a tendency to see insufficiently nativized pronunciations as pretentious and overly nativized ones as unrefined; I think pronouncing Reich with a /x/ isn't in "pretentious" territory, but saying it with a /k/ certainly isn't considered wrong.

tchrist

01:07

Okay wait, if you are asking about Germans, then it very much depends whether you're from the north or the south, amongst other things.

And the sound you mention, or something you might perceive to be that, certainly occurs.

jlliagre

@alphabet Yes, those French who pronounce Bach with /x/ are seen as pretentious.

alphabet

There's also the fact that English contains many, many Greek-derived words where ch is pronounced /k/, but relatively few where it's pronounced /ʃ/.

tchrist

They have a /ç/ phoneme, and this can be a [x] allophone. Compare someone from Hamburg saying these words with someone from München doing so.

See here on Ich-Laut and ach-Laut.

> The allophonic distribution of [ç] after front vowels and [x] after other vowels is also found in other languages, such as Scots, e.g. licht [lɪçt] 'light', dochter [ˈdɔxtər] 'daughter', and the same distribution is reconstructed for Middle English. However, it is by no means inevitable: Dutch, Yiddish, and many Southern German dialects retain [x] (which can be realized as [χ] instead) in all positions.

Robusto

@jlliagre The /ch/ in Reich in German is sounded with an /sh/ that is moved farther back in the mouth. No front-of-the-tongue /sh/ if you please.

tchrist

> In Western varieties, there is a strong tendency to realize /ç/ as unrounded [ʃ] or [ɕ], and the phoneme may be confused or merged with /ʃ/ altogether, secondarily leading to hypercorrection effects where /ʃ/ is replaced with /ç/, for instance in Fisch [fɪʃ], which may be realized as [fɪç].

alphabet

01:15

And, of course, since that /k/ is word-final, you can also hear some English speakers occasionally pronouncing it with an ejective [k'].

Huh. Looking on YouGlish the pronunciation with /x/ (or something similar) is more common than I'd have guessed--I'd assumed it'd be something like 10%, but it seems closer to 40-50%.

And on rare occasions you can find speakers using /ʃ/. Odd.

jlliagre

01:30

@alphabet Spanish and Italians pronounce it closer to Germans: /x/ while Portuguese pronounce it more like the French, with a /ʃ/.

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle if it's approved for human use by Russian FDA, saying it's only a veterinary drug because USFDA doesn't approve it doesn't hold much water. But anyhow, phenothiazines are only sparsely used, and there should be a good reason to choose them over other drugs. They have affinities for like half the entire receptors in the brain.

@Mitch many tranquilizers are like that. Very potent opioids that are hard to formulate in doses that wouldn't kill humans, but they'd put an elephant to deep sleep no problem.

@Mitch well, many drugs fell out of favor or maybe even were withdrawn from the market for human use, but vets still use them for animals.

Teratogenicity shouldn't be a concern for most pets for example.

@alphabet well, if they can find a way to make a depressed human stick to an exercise routine, next we can move on to dogs

tchrist

01:50

@M.A.R. Because animals seldom have the wherewithal to afford an attorney.

Confess your darkest secrets to your dog and he will never betray your confidences.

@Robusto Boebert won, damn it.

Robusto

@tchrist Shit. Is that a safe red district?

tchrist

She jumped districts after the redraw because she figured she'd lose otherwise.

nytimes.com/2024/06/25/us/politics/…

> The victory by the MAGA lawmaker in the conservative eastern part of the state put her on track to another term in the House, after she abandoned a district in more politically competitive terrain.

Robusto

@tchrist Yes, I know.

@tchrist All those people want to do is punish us.

tchrist

@Robusto Football hooligans.

Robusto

@tchrist Will CO have a net gain of one seat?

tchrist

02:00

Yes.

We added an eighth congressional district.

CowperKettle

@M.A.R. Russian ministry of health approves a lot of totally unscientific stuff

Robusto

@tchrist More blue or less blue?

tchrist

@Robusto Districts 1, 2, 6, 7, and 8 are currently held by Democrats, 3 and 5 by Republicans, and 4 is vacant. But the boundaries are different this time.

Robusto

@tchrist So which way does 4 lean?

tchrist

@Robusto It's very red. That's why she moved there.

Robusto

02:06

So is that a net gain for Republicans then?

tchrist

We aren't sure yet.

Robusto

Well, I hope not.

tchrist

> Now, with Ms. Boebert gone, Democrats are hoping to pick up the seat she now holds in the conservative district, which includes high-end ski resorts as well as energy facilities and working ranches. Democrats have been boosting a right-wing conservative in a crowded primary there, gambling that a far-right Republican might be easier for Mr. Frisch to defeat in November.

Mitch

@M.A.R. nah I'm talking about the other direction, drugs that are OK for humans but are dangerous for nonhumans.

tchrist

So we're currently 5 to 2, summing to 7. Next year we will be 8 in total.

And our governor and both senators are Democrats.

We might take her 3 from them. We don't know yet. It seems like a long shot but there are a lot of ski towns there, too.

@Mitch Theobromine. Xylitol.

I'll leave the booze for you to decide on for yourself.

But you don't want to mess with a drunken pig, I promise.

Criggie

02:28

But what do we do with a drunken sailor ?

alphabet

02:49

This whole business of Democrats boosting extreme-right Republicans in primaries in hopes of winning the subsequent election is...rather unsavory and calls into question their whole "defending democracy" shtick.

See: nytimes.com/2024/03/18/us/politics/…

> Some Democrats say the tactic risks undercutting a central campaign message about the dangers to democracy if Trump retakes power.

Good to know it's just a "campaign message."

I mean about the race for Boebert's old seat: thehill.com/homenews/campaign/…

At least the pro-ethnic-cleansing lobby had a nice night

Have I gone on my regularly scheduled angry political rant yet?

user 85795

03:07

in This Is Fine, 47 mins ago, by Jolenealaska

Boebert wins GOP primary in new Colorado House district

Criggie

03:26

how the flrick are these morons being elected ?

Based on what I see of people like Boebert - they should not win an election unless the competition is Florida Man.

alphabet

I'm just surprised the Clintons haven't murdered her yet /s

tchrist

04:16

It's all about your side grinding the other side. She was running in a primary so she had no Democrat running against her. That means the goal is to be the most outrageous you possibly can. She probably would have lost in her current/old district, they say, though, which is why she moved.

And once you're in a non-competitive district, you just have to get through the primary. Which you do by being as far right/left as you can so nobody can sneak in farther towards the far end and beat you. By the time you hit the main election, if 75% of the district votes for your party even if the candidate is a convicted felon, then there's no contest.

theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/25/…

Notice all the uncontesteds.

That image is from nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/25/us/elections/…

Michael Rybkin

07:57

Does this sentence sound good to you guys?

More than one and a half centuries later English has overcome its status as merely the language of the colonial power and has become an integral part of the Indian linguistic mosaic.

M.A.R.

10:06

@Mitch there should be quite a few, most of which are not yet studied. Metabolic enzymes tend to have different activities between species. If a domestic animal lacks an enzyme or if the enzyme has a much lower activity than the human counterpart, the drug would be unsafe.

Michael Rybkin

youtube.com/watch?v=O3kLvz1w7MU#t=1m13s Is he saying "big what"?

jlliagre

10:51

@MichaelRybkin "Big woop", maybe.

big woop

big whoop, no big woop From whoopee, used sarcastically. (US) IPA(key): /bɪɡ wʊp/ big woop (colloquial, US) so what? Used dismissively to discount the importance of something or the magnitude of its effects. “big whoop”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Michael Rybkin

11:26

@jlliagre That's what I thought, but was not sure. Thank you.

Robusto

13:10

Wordle 1,103 3/6

⬛🟩⬛🟨⬛
🟨⬛⬛⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

user 85795

⬛🟩⬛🟨⬛

🟨⬛⬛⬛🟩

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

jlliagre

Wordle 1,103 4/6

⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛
⬛⬛🟩🟩🟩
⬛🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

user 85795

⬛⬛🟨⬛⬛

⬛🟨🟨🟨⬛

⬛⬛🟨⬛⬛

⬛⬛🟨⬛⬛ ✝️

Mitch

@tchrist I spent a late night early evening at an emergency vet after being at a party where someone was feeding a dog grapes. How could one possibly know that grapes are toxic for dogs?

user 85795

LMGTFY

Mitch

13:24

@M.A.R. It just seems weird that something like theobromine (in chocolate) would be totally great for humans but bad for dogs. It's so specific. How did evolution select for one and not the other?

@user85795 Well, that's how we found out.

But seriously I feel like a buffet for humans would be just fine as a buffet for dogs.

And vice versa maybe as long as everything was cooked.

jlliagre

No racoon comment yet?

user 85795

Soon.

🦝

^(removed) racoon comment.

Mitch

13:53

You know what's really annoying is when people use the same words but with slightly different meanings.
You know what's really annoying is when you employ similar phrases having almost the same idea.
You know what's really annoying is when you paraphrase a sentence that is different enough to have different implications.
You know what's really annoying is that similarity in meaning is not a transitive relation whether intentional or not.

That's not what I meant but you get the idea.

user 85795

For all real numbers a, b, and c:

If a=b and b=c, then a=c.

If a<b and b<c, then a<c.

Michael Rybkin

15:34

Does this sentence sound good to you guys?

More than one and a half centuries later English has overcome its status as merely the language of the colonial power and has become an integral part of the Indian linguistic mosaic.

Robusto

18:17

@MichaelRybkin Sure. Be aware it's present tense, so that should fit in with the rest of the narration, but with that caveat satisfied there's no trouble with it.

CowperKettle

> "Results support contentions that ashwagandha supplementation (225 mg) may improve some measures of memory, attention, vigilance, attention, and executive function while decreasing perceptions of tension and fatigue in younger healthy individuals."

mdpi.com/2072-6643/16/12/1813

Oh those MDPI papers.

Robusto

@CowperKettle I'm sorry, I wasn't paying attention. What did you say?

CowperKettle

:)

I bought a package of ashwagandha once, hoping it would decrease my cortisol, which was at 150% of the upper limit.

But I was too wary of taking it, so my sister took the package, and liked it.

Having an elevated cortisol felt like hell. I could not work for 3 months.

Robusto

@Mitch They wanted us to buy chocolatey treats. The original push marketing.

CowperKettle

Only escitalopram restored my translation ability, and even that was restored to about 70%

Robusto

18:20

@CowperKettle I thought escitalopram was an anxiolytic.

CowperKettle

@Robusto Yes, it's an antidepressant, and it was successful at keeping my cortisol within limits - but there were some spikes

While under high cortisol, I felt like everything was stressing me out. I felt tired inside, even if I managed to bicycle 100 km a day with friends.

It's amazing that it's not part of routine measurements in psychiatric clinics.

Psychiatry is medieval in its development.

Xanne

Why does a dog not know what it can eat and not eat?

Even the deer know to stay away from the oleander.

Xanne

18:49

Dogs developed from wolves. Wolves must have had some smarts. OR7 did fine, repopulating California.

Robusto

Daily Sequence Octordle #884
3️⃣6️⃣
7️⃣8️⃣
9️⃣🔟
🕚🕛
Score: 66

Daily Octordle #884
🟥🕐
5️⃣4️⃣
🔟6️⃣
8️⃣🕚
Score: 71

Inversion.

user 85795

Additive or multiplicative?

Robusto

Divisive.

user 85795

🤔

Not subtractive, then.

Michael Rybkin

19:28

@Robusto Thank you very much, sir.

Robusto

@user85795 Actually it's functional inversion.

user 85795

I see.

🧐

Robusto

20:02

#WhenTaken #120 (26.06.2024)

I scored 729/1000 🎉

1️⃣ 📍 1295 km - 🗓️ 20 yrs - ⚡ 119 / 200
2️⃣ 📍 14 km - 🗓️ 10 yrs - ⚡ 184 / 200
3️⃣ 📍 3909 km - 🗓️ 14 yrs - ⚡ 104 / 200
4️⃣ 📍 1320 km - 🗓️ 0 yrs - ⚡ 164 / 200
5️⃣ 📍 4 km - 🗓️ 19 yrs - ⚡ 158 / 200

https://whentaken.com

Tough one.

user 85795

20:17

@Robusto f(1/x) or f(-x) ?

Mitch

@Xanne I mean chocolate is not exactly wide spread historically.

But still -that- one specific plant is OK for humans and not dogs? Neither of us would have much chance to learn it.

user 85795

Perhaps, f^(-1)(x).

user 85795

20:34

Anastrophe.

Yoda, you maybe.

Robusto

@user85795 The reciprocal version.

jlliagre

21:15

#WhenTaken #120 (26.06.2024)

I scored 850/1000 🎉

1️⃣ 📍 2210 km - 🗓️ 8 yrs - ⚡ 137 / 200
2️⃣ 📍 573.3 metres - 🗓️ 6 yrs - ⚡ 193 / 200
3️⃣ 📍 755 km - 🗓️ 4 yrs - ⚡ 173 / 200
4️⃣ 📍 1327 km - 🗓️ 3 yrs - ⚡ 160 / 200
5️⃣ 📍 116.5 metres - 🗓️ 9 yrs - ⚡ 187 / 200

https://whentaken.com

Daily Octordle #884
🔟🕚
5️⃣3️⃣
🕛7️⃣
6️⃣4️⃣
Score: 58

Xanne

@Mitch There are many plants that need processing before they’re edible for humans (e.g., olives). And many poisonous parts of plants. How the animals get along is probably genetics—those who don’t avoid it don’t make it.

jlliagre

Daily Sequence Octordle #884
4️⃣5️⃣
6️⃣7️⃣
8️⃣9️⃣
🔟🕚
Score: 60

alphabet

21:32

@Xanne But wolves evolved to live in areas where wild grapes are common, no? Presumably wolves can't tolerate wild grapes for the same reasons dogs can't tolerate domesticated ones.

jlliagre

@Xanne Raw olives are impossible to eat because of their taste but they aren't specifically toxic. A good joke is to suggest unaware people to taste one.

Dannyu NDos

22:29

@Robusto Modular.

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…