English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Robusto

00:10

#WhenTaken #133 (09.07.2024)

I scored 850/1000 🎉

1️⃣ 📍 259 km - 🗓️ 9 yrs - ⚡ 178 / 200
2️⃣ 📍 7 km - 🗓️ 3 yrs - ⚡ 197 / 200
3️⃣ 📍 19.0 metres - 🗓️ 12 yrs - ⚡ 179 / 200
4️⃣ 📍 9 km - 🗓️ 0 yrs - ⚡ 200 / 200
5️⃣ 📍 18811 km - 🗓️ 4 yrs - ⚡ 96 / 200

https://whentaken.com

@jlliagre We made exactly the same mistake on #5.

jlliagre

@Robusto Yes, that was unguessable.

Robusto

I should have noted your epic fail on that one and used it to my advantage, but I have too much integrity for that. ;-)

Vikas

01:17

@Mitch 1) Yeah it's mostly an adult and female thing. Especially married females.

@Mitch 2) I think it has less to do with religion but more about decoration. And it's not mandatory. People living in big cities tend to avoid it.

@Mitch 3) This is usually called 'maang' and it's more important symbol than bindi. Most of the married females would use it at least once after getting married. In fact, it's part of wedding. In our tradition, male would put that on her scalp during wedding. After that it's done by herself.

@Mitch Yes, very common to have both.

Maang confirms that you're married. But yeah some young females would avoid both.

M.A.R.

03:35

@Vikas is it looked down upon as an old tradition and hence not modern?

Vikas

04:17

No, there's nothing like looked down upon. It's just that yeah it is old tradition and maybe not so modern. And even the modern person who doesn't use it might use it for some special day/event/festival.

Personally, I think it saves a few seconds when you don't use it daily.

An Indian politician. You can see both things on the forehead/scalp.

alphabet

-1

Q: This is relating to a number of posts from a few years ago that I have just stumbled upon

There seems to be some confusion around the word, food, and its plural form. The word, food, is one of those nouns that is singular as well as plural, so you don't put an s on the end to make it plural. The proliferation of the word, foods, has come about because of the spread of American English...

These are just hilarious.

"English is OUR LANGUAGE and we must PROTECT IT because this is the ONLY THING we have to FEEL SUPERIOR ABOUT"

alphabet

04:49

Word of the day: therian. "A therian is someone who identifies as a specific non-human animal. Spiritually, psychologically, and emotionally, they relate to the essence and behaviors of this animal, even though they don’t have the physiology to match. Oftentimes, therians feel most like themselves when they engage in specific activities this animal would do."

As an actual raccoon, I am miffed at those therian "raccoons" appropriating our cultural heritage.

CowperKettle

06:48

@alphabet Gognate with Russian zveri - animals

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer (63): Inventory or repository?‭ by leo123crown‭ on english.SE

HippoSawrUs

07:35

Should I use a, an, or the if I change a specific a-word to some random b-word in brackets? And what are braces used for, besides grocery lists? It comes up a lot, but I can't remember.

M.A.R.

08:32

@alphabet but uh, what does that entail? A therian who identifies as a dog likes sniffing butts and chasing their sacrum?

CowperKettle

@M.A.R. There are children around in the parks dressed as animals. They mostly walk on all fours in the grass and make jumps, because jumps are complicated in their technique.

Квадробика, сходка

►

They call themselves quadrobers

Квадроберы

Туториал на прыжок (квадробика)

►

A jumping tutorial

⭐️КВАДРОБИКА:ТУТОРИАЛ НА ВСЕ!⭐️ПОЛНЫЙ курс ДЛЯ НОВИЧКОВ!❤️от Ирисовой звезды

►

It will be over soon, and people will be nostalgic for this brief craze

CowperKettle

08:51

US presidents explain L'Hôpital's rule in under 90 seconds

►

jlliagre

09:12

@CowperKettle Give me a break Donald, I'm not exactly French ;-)

SmokeDetector

09:35

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected, potentially bad keyword in answer (79): When to use "I" + is‭ by Fish Bagger‭ on english.SE

CowperKettle

eminem explains e to the x in Math in under 90 seconds

►

CowperKettle

11:00

> John McLean (1761 – October 16, 1823) was an American merchant most famous because of his will. The will was the subject of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court case Harvard College v. Amory, which led to the prudent man rule

alphabet

12:00

@CowperKettle Has there been a moral panic about it yet, as with every new teen trend?

@M.A.R. WikiHow tries to explain it; wikihow.com/What-Is-a-Therian

Raccoon therian tips -- Yikes.

More raccoon therian tips - Yikety yikes.

CowperKettle

12:25

@alphabet Yes, but a tepid one

> Is your refrigerator running?
Because at this point I'll fucking vote for it

Robusto

12:35

> It is not well known, but the saber-tooth cat of the genus smilodon had cousins: the more severe frownodon and the cattier smirkodon.

Robusto

12:48

Wordle 1,117 5/6

⬛🟨⬛⬛🟩
🟨⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Daily Octordle #898
6️⃣8️⃣
9️⃣🕚
3️⃣🔟
7️⃣4️⃣
Score: 58

Daily Sequence Octordle #898
4️⃣5️⃣
6️⃣8️⃣
9️⃣🔟
🕚🕛
Score: 65

jlliagre

13:14

Wordle 1,117 5/6

⬛⬛⬛🟩🟩
⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛
⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛
⬛🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

@Robusto Once again, similar paths.

Daily Octordle #898
5️⃣6️⃣
🕚4️⃣
9️⃣🔟
8️⃣7️⃣
Score: 60

Daily Sequence Octordle #898
4️⃣5️⃣
6️⃣7️⃣
8️⃣9️⃣
🔟🕚
Score: 60

#WhenTaken #134 (10.07.2024)

I scored 809/1000 🎉

1️⃣ 📍 953 km - 🗓️ 3 yrs - ⚡ 168 / 200
2️⃣ 📍 318 km - 🗓️ 5 yrs - ⚡ 185 / 200
3️⃣ 📍 238 km - 🗓️ 11 yrs - ⚡ 174 / 200
4️⃣ 📍 505 km - 🗓️ 12 yrs - ⚡ 164 / 200
5️⃣ 📍 842 km - 🗓️ 23 yrs - ⚡ 118 / 200

https://whentaken.com
Never close.

M.A.R.

13:42

@alphabet I'm trying my hardest not to consider this as absolute nonsense.

Wait. Maybe it is absolute nonsense and I'm overthinking it.

WTF does a human know of being a frog

@CowperKettle that comes up in every election everywhere in the world

It's the one joke to unite humanity as a whole

@Robusto googling images of cats smirking doesn't disappoint

reddit.com/…

Mitch

13:59

@Vikas Nice...thanks for all the answers to my questions (which probably sound like a child's).

Of course, all the men can wear whatever they feel like (some a shirt and pants, some a salwar kameez, some that look like pajamas (what you'd wear to sleep here) to me).

alphabet

@M.A.R. It appears to be the latest version of the "otherkin" phenomenon that people took seriously on Tumblr a while back. That or it's an excuse to engage in bestiality.

Mitch

@vikas And a lot of the men around town carry what looks like a towel with them that they hang around their neck sometimes, but also sometimes wrap around their head, but I can't tell when exactly they switch between the two (they don't seem to do one while it's hot or outside vs indoors).

(by shirt and pants above I meant short and pants like I would wear... an oxford shirt (a collar and buttons all the way down the front), a golf shirt w a collar and just three buttons at top, or a t-shirt).

M.A.R.

I've never paid much attention to what I'm wearing

Maybe it's cultural, maybe I'm just like those schizophrenics that wear full clothing in the middle of summer

tchrist

@M.A.R. nytimes.com/2024/07/08/style/mens-shorts-paul-mescal.html

M.A.R.

@tchrist that man will get a healthy dose of vit D even indoors

Mitch

14:14

@M.A.R. Me neither, but maybe that's a dude thing, or maybe it's no one else cares.

Vikas

@Mitch You're welcome. If you're satisfied with the solution kindly type any number between 0 and 5, where 0 being worst and 5 being best.

@Mitch Dupatta. Many ways to wrap it. It evolved with time and some girls or women would even avoid it.

Mitch

@Vikas As a large language model, I have no feelings or inner states or emotions corresponding to anger, joy, disgust, sadness, or some other fifth thing. But if you were to ask me how would I explain to a good person who is just curious how to build a nuclear weapon, I would have to say '6'.

But you didn't hear it from me.

Mitch

14:36

@Vikas I'm sure the producers of the show are very meticulous about all the little details and everything is intentional and attempting to be realistic about small village life.

MetaEd

14:51

"This life is a test. It is only a test. Had this been an actual life, you would have received further instructions as to what to do and where to go."

Mitch

whew...

That's a lot of pressure off then

Vikas

16:09

@Mitch Yeah village people are more likely to follow the traditions.

M.A.R.

16:32

@Vikas that's true about 'village people' everywhere I reckon

It'd be weird if it were ever backwards

@MetaEd how is that supposed to help? I'm always more anxious about getting an A than living well.

Mitch

17:16

@jlliagre Français de Nos Régions has an app

alphabet

@MetaEd The kind of test where they test a material's strength by putting it in a hydraulic press and increasing the pressure until it breaks and explodes?

M.A.R.

17:33

That's just Mythbusters

Vikas

17:49

@M.A.R. Yeah mostly.

MetaEd

19:17

@M.A.R. fair

@alphabet in my experience, yes

@Mitch chocolatine (Fr. canadien)

nice of them to put a nice chocolate center in all that pain

jlliagre

19:59

@Mitch The app seriously mislocated me. It was wrong by 50 km. Not great ;-)

Mitch

20:15

@jlliagre Huh... it missed me by 7000km.

jlliagre

@Mitch Pas mal !

Mitch

I did not submit my location info as that would severely distort the bias in the data. As outlier as it could be.

@jlliagre The sun never sleeps on the French Empire.

I wonder if they bother with the calculation of spherical distance.

Like maybe it figured Kerguelen? But really I grew up with French in Kamchatka?

jlliagre

@Mitch Neither does it in the French Republic.

Mitch

Anyway, the quiz/survey is very new so it'll get accurater as it gets more surveyors.

That's not right.

It'll get more accurate as it gets more questionneers.

Close but still not right.

jlliagre

@Mitch The app might be new but the survey has been around for years.

Mitch

20:21

It'll get less biased and less variance as the number of data points increases.

@jlliagre The selection of words to ask about or the text of the questionnaire?

jlliagre

@Mitch The selection likely evolves with time but Avanzi created his first questionnaire in 2015.

> Tout a commencé en 2015. En contrat postdoctoral à Cambridge, j’ai découvert qu’il existait, pour d’autres langues, des applications permettant de demander aux gens comment ils nommaient et prononçaient telle ou telle chose en fonction de leur origine géographique.

Rien n’existait pour le français. Avec des collègues, nous avons donc décidé de monter, sur le même principe, une enquête en ligne. En un week-end, nous avons construit un questionnaire autour de quelques mots comme « serpillère », « crayon », etc. Cela a rapidement fait le buzz sur les réseaux sociaux et en deux mois, nous av…

sorbonne-universite.fr/portraits/mathieu-avanzi

Mitch

I mean franchement (litteralement!) surely there have been variations on such a questionnaire since ... les Encyclopédistes?

jlliagre

@Mitch Maybe but I'm talking about Mathieu Avanzi's questionnaires.

Mitch

wait... on the twitter post that I linked to, it looked like you speak a single French sentence and from that it calculates where you grew up speaking French... but I don't see that on the app. Did you see that anywhere?

MetaEd

20:39

@Mitch apparently I'm from ... uh ... De Troit

jlliagre

@Mitch No I didn't. The app asks us to pronounce a few words and sentences but there is no feedback.

MetaEd

or possibly Des Moines

jlliagre

@MetaEd De Troyes or de Troie?

MetaEd

@jlliagre yes

Robusto

#WhenTaken #134 (10.07.2024)

I scored 790/1000 🎉

1️⃣ 📍 6 km - 🗓️ 5 yrs - ⚡ 195 / 200
2️⃣ 📍 2 km - 🗓️ 48 yrs - ⚡ 100 / 200
3️⃣ 📍 227 km - 🗓️ 1 yrs - ⚡ 191 / 200
4️⃣ 📍 789 km - 🗓️ 4 yrs - ⚡ 172 / 200
5️⃣ 📍 51 km - 🗓️ 25 yrs - ⚡ 132 / 200

https://whentaken.com

Mitch

22:05

@jlliagre Oh. I didn't get that far. I bailed before it could say 'Thank you for trying to speak what you think is French'.

jlliagre

22:29

@Mitch The app doesn't comment on how you speak and anyway asks if you are a native French speaker. There is no risk recording your voice. Once you are done, you can select locations on the world map to listen how people from there pronounced the same word or phrase. There are not a lot of answerers in the US yet and some of them are definitely French. However, the one located near Dallas clearly has an English accent. Une mouche blue :-)

Robusto

23:45

@tchrist Not that I care at all, but I am curious. I recently received the tenth vote on my accepted answer from 10 years ago:

10

A: “Minutes later” vs. “a few minutes later”

You can. But usually the unadorned phrase minutes later (or seconds later) is reserved for emphasizing shortness of time in a way that "a few minutes later" doesn't really manage to convey, despite the fact that brevity would seem to be underscored by a qualifier like "a few" (which term is more ...

Seems to me I should have received a "Nice Answer" and then yet another "Enlightened" badge. But none of that happened. I've received those awards before for even older answers, but not this time. I'm not upset, as I say, just curious.

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