English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

00:03

Well I got it right anyway.

jlliagre

@Cerberus I was confused by the plaque too but without it, I wouldn't have identified the location. I used the way people were dressed for the year. I knew a little about the guy but not dates.

Cerberus

@jlliagre Yeah, same.

But the number of people suggested it must be later than I thought.

And the plaque also suggested later.

Because, in the most obvious year, not many people would have come.

jlliagre

@Cerberus Funny. From a more recent and readable version of this plaque that also says W TYM DOMU MIESZKAŁ, Google translate "invents" a regular conjugation for a French irregular verb (vivre = live). It says "Il a vivé dans cette maison" while the right phrase would be "Il a vécu dans cette maison".

Cerberus

00:19

@jlliagre Wow, that sounds like GPT...

I managed to read the title of the epic he translated from the plaque.

This was the third one...

It was just so random, could have been anywhere.

Maybe we guessed the same continent.

jlliagre

@Cerberus Likely: 3️⃣ 📍 8180 km - 🗓️ 11 yrs - ⚡ 89 / 200

Cerberus

And the year I has no idea of.

The fourth one is pretty weird.

But easy.

Without Google, I would have guessed the right city.

Though of course not the exact year.

Lambie

@jlliagre Who cares about all that?

jlliagre

@Cerberus I mismatched the year.

@Lambie Not me.

Cerberus

@jlliagre The year would be impossible to guess.

Within a period of about 15 years.

Maybe a bit less.

The last one of course points to a certain area.

jlliagre

00:31

@Cerberus Well, I knew it because these events occurs at a regular pace and I know which ones happened in the meantime.

Cerberus

Ah, I am not interested at all in those events.

jlliagre

I know.

Cerberus

But I found the event easily, of course, using Google.

jlliagre

@Cerberus I identified it because of the theme.

Cerberus

I guessed the country from that.

And would have picked that city by default.

jlliagre

00:46

@Cerberus The fifth is the one I'm most interested in seeing your guess.

Cerberus

I might been 1600 km off without Google.

I would have guessed a few years from the actual year.

jlliagre

@Cerberus I failed miserably: 5️⃣ 📍 8873 km - 🗓️ 3 yrs - ⚡ 102 / 200

Cerberus

If I had thought about the photo more deeply, I might have got the city right without Google.

@jlliagre Hmm.

I can't really imagine where you guessed!

#WhenTaken #170 (15.08.2024)

I scored 859/1000 🎉

1️⃣ 📍 201.3 metres - 🗓️ 2 yrs - ⚡ 198 / 200
2️⃣ 📍 1 km - 🗓️ 2 yrs - ⚡ 198 / 200
3️⃣ 📍 8823 km - 🗓️ 19 yrs - ⚡ 63 / 200
4️⃣ 📍 83.7 metres - 🗓️ 0 yrs - ⚡ 200 / 200
5️⃣ 📍 477.2 metres - 🗓️ 0 yrs - ⚡ 200 / 200

https://whentaken.com

jlliagre

@Cerberus When I looked at the picture, there was an obvious clue that should have lead me to the right continent, but for some reason, I forgot about the country and stayed in the wrong continent.

Cerberus

A combination of clues would have led you to the right continent.

You forgot about a country?

jlliagre

00:56

I picked a country where Dutch and English coexist.

Cerberus

That's right.

jlliagre

Well, I knew about the right country but it didn't show up in my memory at the right time.

Cerberus

But there are other places somewhat near the right country that I would have guessed instead?

There is nothing 8800 km away where those languages are both used like that.

jlliagre

@Cerberus I thought about an island but the building didn't match how I imagine it.

Cerberus

Hmm I thought of islands first.

So the place where you guessed, they don't speak the exact right language there!

And somehow I picture that place to look different.

Though I don't know how.

My guess for the third one was near the right location of the fifth.

jlliagre

01:01

@Cerberus I know but I can't tell the difference.

Cerberus

@jlliagre Hmm I guess that isn't always easy.

I think the other language doesn't have ij.

jlliagre

@Cerberus Ha, mine was an island up to the North of the sea.

Cerberus

@jlliagre Mine too!

One where they are now pretty homophobic.

Oh, no, I picked a different one, forgot.

One where they speak your language.

jlliagre

@Cerberus I'll try to remember about the ij.

@Cerberus or créole.

Cerberus

@jlliagre Did you notice the names of the shops? They also suggest the correct region to me.

@jlliagre I'm not surprised!

> ek/my (ik/mij)
jy/jou (jij/jou)
hy/hom (hij/hem)
sy/haar (zij/haar)
ons (wij/ons)
julle (jullie)
hulle (zij/hen/hun)

See?

By the way, I didn't actually know they used as much of the other language in that place.

I know they do on the other places, which is why I thought of those first.

CowperKettle

03:31

Are Hallucinations Popping the AI Bubble?

►

CowperKettle

04:30

Word of the day: looped

> Then let us fill a bumper, and drink a health of those
Who carry caps and pouches, and wear the loopèd clothes.

CowperKettle

04:43

Hm. I'm not sure about that. Is it that strict, the use of the subjunctive? Maybe the future simple just indicates a stronger conviction.

Criggie

I wouldn't trust any quote from him to be grammatically correct.

alphabet

04:59

@CowperKettle English doesn't have a future tense or a subjunctive mood. The difference is between using the present tense "will" vs. the past tense "would." In "I think she'd be a terrible president," the past tense form "would" indicates not past time but modal remoteness, i.e. the idea that her being a terrible president is just a hypothetical.

But using the present tense form "will" certainly does mean that the sentence presupposes that Kamala will be president. So the Tweet is right in saying that Trump is (unintentionally) saying that Kamala will be president.

CowperKettle

alphabet

And replacing "she'll" with "she'd" does fix the issue by turning it into a hypothetical situation.

Cerberus

05:18

@CowperKettle This would (subjunctive) would be used with a conditional function, indicating that it would only be true under a certain condition, i.e. that Harris should become president.

If the simple will is used, that suggests there is no condition.

So in that sense the post is correct.

But informally you will see indicative and subjunctive used fairly loosely in situations like this, so it would not really be a reasonable interpretation.

CowperKettle

06:44

Yes, that's what I thought, that it was a common slip of the tongue, to use future simple in such situations

Greek of the day: Ring of Gyges

Michael Rybkin

07:02

@alphabet Thank you.

Xanne

07:14

Wordle 1,154 4/6

🟨⬜⬜⬜🟩
⬜🟩⬜⬜⬜
🟨🟩🟩⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

CowperKettle

07:26

In a half-year, India installed more renewable electricity capacity than in the whole year of 2023

It's great to see this growth.

India has so much sun that I hope it will surge ahead.

In economy and in quality of life.

With air conditioners installed, life will get so much better.

Vikas

08:22

CowperKettle

08:58

@Vikas This reminds me..

Railway Mania

Railway Mania was a stock market bubble in the rail transportation industry of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in the 1840s. It followed a common pattern: as the price of railway shares increased, speculators invested more money, which further increased the price of railway shares, until the share price collapsed. The mania reached its zenith in 1846, when 263 Acts of Parliament for setting up new railway companies were passed, with the proposed routes totalling 9,500 miles (15,300 km). About a third of the railways authorised were never built—the companies either collapsed due...

SmokeDetector

09:17

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted website in answer, link at end of answer, potentially bad ns for domain in answer, potentially bad keyword in answer, potentially bad keyword in username (160): Word to classify what powers a god is associated with?‭ by Spammer‭ on english.SE

Vikas

M.A.R.

10:14

@Vikas makes it look even more pointless to me.

If I hear an Iranian won some medal, I'll be a bit happy. But I guess because I know they're happy?

It feels like yet another proxy for proud nations to feel even prouder. But what exactly is this pride?

Americans don't like prideful Russians. Russians don't like prideful Americans. Ultimately it seems to be another way for people to come up with labels to dislike each other.

sanya

Please see the links attached

1)Inquest report findings: https://x.com/epicnephrin_e/status/1822184860007465331?s=46

2)Interview of victim's father and relative: https://youtu.be/YqEpfhKFYSc?feature=shared

3)Renovation in the vicnity of crime scene on the night the case was transferred to CBI: https://x.com/epicnephrin_e/status/1823340539770548612?s=46

4)Vigil for the victim: https://x.com/jaankiii_/status/1823791177302204660?s=46

5) Disruption of vigil by violent mob: https://x.com/drsfaizanahmad/status/1823806309906722964?s=46 https://x.com/epicnephrin_e/status/1823833873223991636?s=46

M.A.R.

10:36

@sanya sorry, this is not the appropriate venue for this.

People don't come online in this chat to see trigger warnings.

Michael Rybkin

11:03

What exactly does "loop" mean in this context?

However, these connections are typically to a local Internet service provider, thus reducing the local loop costs and possibly the recurring line costs.

Mitch

14:09

@CowperKettle I don't think 'a slip of the tongue' (a small production error) is how one should interpret the variation between "she'd" and "she'll".

You might call it a slip of the mind, a 'thinko' (patterned after typo), or a Freudian slip (one's unconscious saying what you are really thinking). It's not an eggcorn. "she'd" really means, whatever you call it subjunctive or 'remote' or hypothetical, that it's a possibility (not guaranteed), and "she'll" means that it is expected to happen in the future (no present tense or possibility involved).

@alphabet "English doesn't have a future tense": that's linguistic jargon that nobody but linguists say for the fact that English doesn't have an -inflected- future tense like say Latin or French.

-Of course- English has a grammatical future tense, just not inflected, actually -two kinds- using the modal 'will' or using the 'going'. Both are grammatical (ie not lexical) constructions.

One can undeniably use the words 'doesn't have a future tense' for Chinese (Mandarin) which has no inflection at all, but does have markers for perfect and continuous, but none for tense. Those ideas are expressed lexically (if context doesn't specify) by using a time word like yesterday or tomorrow.

As to 'does not have a subjunctive mood', yeah, it's almost totally gone from contemporary English except in some rare attempts at being fancy or the New Yorker.

The mandative subjunctive (is that a mood? I suppose that's a mood) is hanging on a little bit stronger but barely. You're more likely to hear "I recommend he show up at the stated time." rather than "...shows up..." but again that's also somewhat formal.

In other news about being pedantic, is there a grammar checker option in Google Search?

Perhaps you didn't click on the link, it's unclear from your comment, but if you do there is a notice saying "Grammar check ?" (the question mark is circled) and the grammatical version He doesn't know anything Emphasis not mine. I did not give any prompt, the notice appeared by itself. I'm using Chrome browser by the way. — Mari-Lou A 5 hours ago

I can't tell what's going on with that thread.

Also, how do I clarify that (in my answer) I wasn't expecting to use google search as an explicit grammar checker (eg "Is this correct?") but as a way to look at examples.

alphabet

14:45

@Mitch The subjunctive construction is very much alive, as in "They demanded that he resign" (not "They demanded that he resigns"). But it isn't really a mood, since it doesn't use a specialized set of verb forms; it just uses the bare infinitive form.

There's also the special "irrealis were" (as in "If she were president...") but it has no systematic relationship with the subjunctive construction so it's best treated as a sui generis verb form.

M.A.R.

@MichaelRybkin I think it's meant as in an electronic circuit loop kinda thing. The wires that connect your modem at home to your ISP.

jlliagre

15:21

Local loop

In telephony, the local loop (also referred to as the local tail, subscriber line, or in the aggregate as the last mile) is the physical link or circuit that connects from the demarcation point of the customer premises to the edge of the common carrier or telecommunications service provider's network. At the edge of the carrier access network in a traditional public telephone network, the local loop terminates in a circuit switch housed in an incumbent local exchange carrier or telephone exchange. == Infrastructure == Traditionally, the local loop was an electrical circuit in the form of a single...

Mitch

15:49

@alphabet What you say is what I was talking about in the comment you referred to, the mandative subjunctive. It -does- use a specialized set of verb forms, just as much as the present or past inflects in English (which is hardly anything at all in comparison to Romance, but it's still there). Also you're mixing form and function and 'is', something is expressed in a form 'were/be' or dropping the 's', the meaning/associatio of that form is the mood.

CowperKettle

17:33

A satanist who killed and dismembered (along with his satanist friends) several teenagers got 20 years of jail but went free 5 years earlier after a tour of duty in Ukraine. Today he's been sentenced to 10 years, this time for drug dealing. He says he will enroll into the Special Military Operation again. e1.ru/text/criminal/2024/08/16/73970336

Cerberus

Wow.

Do you think many Russians know about and are frustrated by such events?

CowperKettle

17:48

@Cerberus I think many know, because, amazingly, this is printed in widely-read media and is not banned by censorship

Why there's no censorship of such reports? It amazes me.

e1.ru is a city news portal of Yekaterinburg, lots of people read it, maybe hundreds of thousands

Cerberus

@CowperKettle Yeah, that is interesting.

Do you think many people talk about it?

CowperKettle

People talk only with close friends and relatives.

I think they do talk.

Cerberus

OK.

So it is an issue that many people around the country think about?

CowperKettle

If I were Putin, I would ban any such news reports. I wonder if there's something weird going on in the system.

Cerberus

Hmm.

CowperKettle

17:56

Noam Chomsky: about the future of our world

►

SmokeDetector

18:17

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Manually reported question (92): How do I claim my ixigo refund?‭ by Riya Chakraborty‭ on english.SE

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted user (72): How do I claim my ixigo refund?‭ by Riya Chakraborty‭ on english.SE

alphabet

18:34

@CowperKettle I'm kind of amazed that an actual satanist committed a crime in the name of satanism. Here alleged satanic crimes always seem to turn out to be fabrications (occasionally leading to false convictions).

Mitch

19:30

@CowperKettle wow that guy is depressing!

I don't think global warming will kill everybody.

MetaEd

@Mitch heat death of the universe would like to have a word

Mitch

It will certainly result in the deaths of many people in coastal areas because of sea-level rise (so many major populations are right on the coast), but if the worst happens and the sea levels rise 10 meters within a couple decades, more people will die because of population displacement and economic and political changes (and resulting wars). SUre there will be deaths due to drought or awful hurricanes/cyclones, but as usual, it's people who are directly going to cause fewer people.

@MetaEd taps fingers

looks at clock

Sure but... I don't think even the first -proton- has lived long enough to destabilize.

user 20458579510081670432

:: re-watches A Brief History of Time ::

Mitch

@user20458579510081670432 It's a thankfully short book!

Mari-Lou, I've looked all over for a grammar checker button on Google Search (because I think that's what you were implying, but it as unclear to me exactly what you were describing).

Here's a screen shot of what I get with your link...

I don't see anything like a 'Grammar Checker ?' on that.

user 20458579510081670432

We don't need no education.

Mitch

19:39

I think it is a coincidence that you chose that sentence to search for because it must have been a common phrase for people to search for for its correctness.

1

Q: What do you think about using ChatGPT and AI features to learn English? Is it trustable 100%?

I'm using it all the time and I'm afraid of it. If you're against using it that much. Tell me what can I do instead (I've got no teachers in real life).

alphabet

TIL that there's a real Canadian actor whose birth name is: Crystal Ocean Supri Heavenly Blue Sky Hellman.

user 20458579510081670432

How old?

MetaEd

3

Q: What does "hypothecate" mean?

I was asked to look over a draft "power of attorney" for things like incorrect names. In it was the following paragraph: 2.1 Property: To purchase, receive, take possession of, lease, sell, convey, exchange, endorse, pledge, release, hypothecate, encumber, or otherwise dispose of property, or a...

meaning legalese

So apparently "hypothecate" means to create a "hypothec", which is a bit like a mortgage.

Analogously, then, a "defec" ...

user 20458579510081670432

legalese

Mari-Lou A

@Mitch This is today's screen shot, I just searched the expression using quotes.

It's identical from a day and a half ago. Maybe Google predicts that my search strings are tied in with Google books and ngrams.

user 20458579510081670432

19:54

Sassy AI.

sassy-ai

😎

Mitch

@MetaEd I can make an interpol of that.

@Mari-LouA wow. well, in a week this will be old news and boring. The week after poor old Grammarly will file for bankruptcy.

@Mari-LouA For years (decades?) google search has parsed a search and found more... 'likely' searches because typos. And will suggest 'Did you mean "..."' with typos fixed, or even better 'Searching for "{fixed more common nearby search}. Did you want to search for {verbatim original with typos}?' And this is a de facto grammar/spelling fix.

user 20458579510081670432

Bankruptcy makes the world go round.

Mitch

So maybe with their newish gemini LLM they're able to make it explicit.

user 20458579510081670432

Did you watch that vid copper posted about LLMs

Mitch

I wonder how come you get a different UI than me? maybe they're A/B testing the grammar checker where you are (presumably a lot more non-native speakers).

@user20458579510081670432 Which one... he posts a lot.

@Mari-LouA I haven't used google docs in a few weeks... I bet with google's roll out of gemini that they might have a 'grammar checker' button there.

user 20458579510081670432

20:11

From Simmons institute, it was so boring I fell asleep

Mitch

@user20458579510081670432 For another conversation?

user 20458579510081670432

Yes, or just random.

Some psychologist talking about Socrates

Mitch

@Mari-LouA I just checked... Google docs has (and presumably has had) a spelling grammar checker under the 'Tools' menu. And it now has a separate menu item 'Gemini' which is just a ChaGPT-like chat were one -could- ask questions. But cut out the extra mouse clicks and go straight to the 'Grammar/spell check' menuitem.

@alphabet Wow...well looky there, I wonder how long that's been going on?

From the 'circled question mark' link:

> Advertisements
Dangerous content
Deceptive practices
Harassing content
Hateful content
Manipulated media
Medical content
Regulated goods
Sexually explicit content
Violent extremist content
Violent & gory content
Vulgar language & profanity

All seems reasonable....but medical content?

> We don't allow content that contradicts or runs contrary to scientific or medical consensus and evidence-based best practices.

OK, sounds reasonable.

Oh sorry.. out of context... Those are all under their page about 'Content Policies' about their general operations, namely what they try to screen out from their search corpus. It says nothing about what one might spell correct.

user 20458579510081670432

20:37

Manipulated media?

^that sounds like politics to me

Laurel

@Mari-LouA If it detects that you've searched for something which is grammatically incorrect (or is non-prestige English), it'll sometimes give you an AI grammar check. I think you can force it with certain keywords, like maybe "grammar check"

Mitch

@user20458579510081670432 haha that's what I was about to say... or rather I almost expected 'political discourse' to be one of the items (because it sould semantically fit in that list as 'things that people get pissed off about').

But no, manipulated media could be content in any of those items.

It basically means 'lying'.

user 20458579510081670432

🤔

Mitch

And political speech is something that's good to have in a public media, but lying is not.

user 20458579510081670432

Truth Social

Mitch

20:43

I only hear rumors so I don't really know what happens there. Also, that's not google.

Twitter sort of roughly kind of follows the same principles.

user 20458579510081670432

Yeah, channel it towards politics.SE

This is where the "Forum" mentality clashes with the "Q & A Site" mentality.

jlliagre

@MetaEd Mortgage sounds barbaric in French (death pledge / death guarantee). I'm glad this word has been forgotten, and that we use hypothèque instead.

MetaEd

20:59

@jlliagre apparently though they are different instruments so it is not just a matter of wording

jlliagre

@MetaEd Wikipedia and lawyers would emphasize on them but from a buyer standpoint, the difference doesn't look to be that important. We call both of them hypothèques in French anyway, regardless of the common law/civil law implications.

user 20458579510081670432

Are you guys lawyers?

MetaEd

@user20458579510081670432 if you mean impossibly pedantic, then, yes of course

user 20458579510081670432

:D

jlliagre

@user20458579510081670432 I sometimes play devil's advocate, but this probably doesn't count.

user 20458579510081670432

21:17

> Not everything that counts can be counted; and not everything that can be counted counts.

🧐

MetaEd

21:36

so apparently there's a bananapocalypse?

jlliagre

21:59

#WhenTaken #171 (16.08.2024)

I scored 632/1000 🎉

1️⃣ 📍 1720 km - 🗓️ 6 yrs - ⚡ 149 / 200
2️⃣ 📍 4759 km - 🗓️ 1 yrs - ⚡ 121 / 200
3️⃣ 📍 1003 km - 🗓️ 4 yrs - ⚡ 166 / 200
4️⃣ 📍 6987 km - 🗓️ 9 yrs - ⚡ 99 / 200
5️⃣ 📍 9608 km - 🗓️ 5 yrs - ⚡ 97 / 200

whentaken.com

CowperKettle

2

Local news at 03:00 am: a guy was running after another guy near a store entrance, with an axe, and was trying to chop off his hand. Lots of blood. The police and the ambulance came, packed the first guy, stitched the wounds on the other guy, after which the stitched-up guy popped out to the store to buy a bottle of mineral water. e1.ru/text/incidents/2024/08/17/73971797

alphabet

22:20

@Mitch Interesting observation: the grammar checker will correct "The house destroyed the bomb" to "The house was destroyed by the bomb"--even though the original is, of course, grammatically correct.

Mitch

23:03

@alphabet grammatical sure in some rule following sense, but not what people usually say.

alphabet

@CowperKettle Wait till you learn it's a viral marketing stunt for the mineral water company.

Mitch

@alphabet aw man that water is awesome

alphabet

Even an axe murderer can't stop me from getting my mineral water. And yes, one of the minerals is cocaine.

SmokeDetector

23:47

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive body detected, potentially bad keyword in body (48): tickle your ass with a feather joke‭ by fasligand‭ on english.SE

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…