English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2012-10-24 (page 3 of 5)

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4:00 PM

@Gigili Hate it when that happens.

@MattЭллен I thought it was time to compile.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist Probably because they are logged into multiple rooms in multiple tabs, and they click "leave", and one tab "leaves" but the other tab re-joins

41

Q: Is there an English phrase for an inability to actually *leave* already?

There is a Hungarian expression, küszöbgörcs, which literally means "threshold-cramp", and is used to describe that long conversation you have in the entryway, with all the guests awkwardly holding their coats and purses, and every so often somebody says something like "Ok, we really have to leav...

single-word-requests idioms phrase-requests

Ugh.

@MετάEd Does anyone believe in the existence of this fabled ability?

incredulous look

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus You mean you've never encountered the situation where a doorway conversation lasts a really long time?

@Cerberus and it's more of a disability than an ability. I know several people who suffer from it.

4:07 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 On the contrary.

It always happens.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

oh, I get it. You mean the fabled ability of actually leaving.

Now can someone tell me why football hooligans have chosen my street to riot?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes.

The riot police have arrived.

I'm not sure what to think of that.

They are pushing people back.

But a large bunch of football fans is still standing in front of my house, although they are so far just drinking.

Not rioting, just singing loud songs about how they are Jews and Amsterdam is the best.

The riot police have closed off the other end of the street.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Those are the same songs I sing! Though I'm neither Jewish nor Amsterdamish.

Are they?

These guys aren't Jewish either.

But they traditionally identify themselves with Jews.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

No. I was joking. Usually I sing "Down by the Bay" or "Birdhouse in your soul".

4:11 PM

Not to put too fine a point on it.

By the way, don't you hate it when people say "they identify with Jews", without an object?

Yay! claps hands

OK, I was clapping about the song.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Hmm are those racist or homophobic songs?

@KitFox How lovely. If you will just go stand over there, the police will escort you back to your buses presently.

What's that now?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus No. I try to not be racist or homophobic.

4:14 PM

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I have no issue with the phrase "identify with X"

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 How boring...

@KitFox Ohh now you mention it. I know that song.

Who watches over you?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, I didn't think you would.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@KitFox I always interpret it as a statement "... who watches over you."

4:16 PM

I think we have conversed about that song before, in this very room.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Well, OK.

I remember discussing the bee in your bunny.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus about a week ago

Or was it B? Be?

We even discussed that.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

A bee in your bonnet

we did?

4:17 PM

Ohh yes, that was it.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

> Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet

Yes, bonnet.

It was last year or so though, I think.

@tchrist He is? I never noticed.

I remember it was an expression now.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

4:18 PM

It was an expression then too

*is

@Robusto So what is this Greek line about?

Where is it from, and what is it for?

Jan 13 at 17:01, by Robusto

I guess it wasn't quite a year ago.

@Cerberus Apparently it is a dedication. I'm thoroughly disappointed. I was hoping it was a Homeric epigram or something.

@Robusto Homeric? It is New Greek!

@Cerberus How would I know? It's all Greek to me.

4:20 PM

@Robusto Right. I can show you a very easy way to tell whether it's New or Ancient Greek, if you like.

Anyway, Mahlzeit.

@Cerberus Choor.

Hmm your line is unlucky: no word starting with a vowel.

user image

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus The "bee" expression? phrases.org.uk/meanings/bee-in-your-bonnet.html

In Ancient Greek, you must always have a breathing mark on the first or second vowel of a word if it starts with a vowel.

In New Greek, there are no breathing marks.

user image

What do you think, Ancient or New?

Do you see any words starting with vowels?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Who are you asking?

4:26 PM

Looks new to me. I mean, I don't think they had printing presses, did they?

Whoever is interested.

user image

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Did they have << >> quote marks in old greek?

Guillemets.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 No, but those could be added in a modern edition.

Breathing marks, however, exist only in Ancient Greek.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Would modernizing the edition change the breathing marks?

4:29 PM

Nope.

So. What are breathing marks?

I don't know what they look like.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Is it a little superscript h?

They mark whether a word starts with a glottal stop or an h.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 It is based on a part of capital H, but it looks like a tiny c (for h) or a reverse c (for glottal stop).

user image

This is "hoi".

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

my favourite bit of greek! the hoi polloi!

user image

This is the soft breathing mark, which means no h.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Indeed.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

4:32 PM

Hm, so is that where the use of the apostrophe as a marker of glottal stop comes from?

I don't think so.

A apostrophe marks that something is left out.

Greek has apostrophes too.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

But it's also used to mark stops. Like when you're writing British dialogue: Bri'ish

It marks the omission of the t.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

It is also used to mark stops. Like in just about all modern sci-fi/fantasy where they have made-up words that use glottal stops.

I don't know what that is about.

4:34 PM

@MετάEd Done. Ish. Maybe I’ll hack on it later when I have more time.

An apostrophe can become a conventional sign in certain words, I suppose.

But its function is marking any form of -cope.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

The glottal stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or ʻokina in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of that name. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨⟩. It is called the glottal stop because the technical term for the gap between the vocal folds, which is closed up in the production of this sound, is the glottis. Phonetic and phonological features Fe...

> In the traditional Romanization of many languages, such as Arabic, the glottal stop is transcribed with an apostrophe, ⟨’⟩, and this is the source of the IPA character ⟨ʔ⟩

Well, Romanization is a whole nother business.

@Robusto I’m actually just teasing. He does not complain seriously; it is something of a running joke. He is too good-natured for that.

I believe q is used to transcribe a sound like ch in Chinese.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

4:38 PM

@Cerberus sort-of

There are two "ch" sounds in Chinese: q and ch. And they don't sound exactly like English ch.

@tchrist admissible

Darn it.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Funneh.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus q has the tongue closer to the teeth, and ch has it farther back in your mouth than English ch, which has it more in the middle.

ch is retroflex in Chinese. Not in English.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

4:42 PM

I think my 'q' sound is probably too English, but I think I have a decent 'ch'.

The q is an aspirated Englishlike ch.

Ah OK. So dental v. retroflex /tʃ/.

Probably not correctly transcribed that way, but anyway.

Pretty close.

At least, insofar as I understand these things.

Sounds almost as hard as their tones.

Tones are easy.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

4:44 PM

@Cerberus No. It just takes a bit of practice. Tones are way harder.

Sounds are hard.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@KitFox WHAT?!

Hahaha

Well.

I found that about half of the Chinese sounds were pretty difficult. Learning tones was not difficult for me at all.

4:45 PM

slowly retracts hand from monsters' arena

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

so Cerb, just go study some Chinese and report back to us which one is harder so we can settle this.

I feel funny.

I can't decide if I want to talk about it or not.

@MετάEd It just isn’t true that Britons spell yard as meter. They don’t. They spell it garden.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Sure!

Give me a minute.

> Het toestel, met afmetingen van 13,1 x 6,7 x 1,1cm, beschikt ten opzichte van zijn voorganger over een groter scherm van 4,5". De resolutie bedraagt 960x540 pixels. Intern is een 1GHz dualcore Cortex A9-processor op basis van de Chinese MTK6577-chipset te vinden. Verder biedt het toestel 1GB werkgeheugen en 4GB aan flashopslag. Wolfgang levert de smartphone standaard met een Sandisk micro-sd-kaartje van 16GB.

> 229 euro

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 What do you think?

I would prefer the Galaxy Nexus, but this one is cheap!

New dual-SIM Aldi is selling.

@KitFox You know you want to.

I don't think I could explain it.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

4:54 PM

@Cerberus 4.5" screen, 960x540, 1GHz dual core, 1 GB ram, 4GB storage? Not all that impressive. Hard to compare the price to what I'm familiar with.

I wouldn't buy a phone with less than 8GB storage... or more realistically, 16

I don't even know why the Nexus 7 has an 8GB model.

Yeah.

@tchrist: Your answer:

4

A: How and when did American spelling supersede British spelling in the US?

It actually isn’t that way at all. Your question has too many false assumptions. Yes, there were a few changes that Webster tried, but it is much more complicated than that. English has never had a single agreed-upon spelling, even within any one country. There is no such thing as the Americ...

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 But you can put your stuff on a card.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Enh, that doesn't work all that well. Apps have to support it.

...is well-reasoned, insightful, and (barring any small details) I recognize as correct...

but...

4:56 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Don't most large applications support it?

And how about the cache for Youtube and Google Maps?

the question is still answerable, and I don't see your (excellent) answer addressing it.

Those take up the most space on my phone.

In addition to this large game that I will probably never play.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Maybe? I don't really pay attention to which apps do and don't support it because I don't use SD cards for apps. And considering the future of phones is more storage, expect apps to support it less.

That phone isn't future proof anyway.

But I suppose the 4 GB could become a problem for people who use some fairly large applications.

all it needs is a single sentence like "the change of the spelling differences between BrE and AmE spelling was not abrupt, but mostly was set officially by 18XX" or "Despite these minor remarks, for the most part spelling in America was set as different from spelling in the UK on Sept 4th, 18XX by a proclamation on a battlefield of the Crimean War". Or something in between.

5:00 PM

I think it was the Franco-Prussian War?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Mitch Looks like a cross-over point in the 1840s if ngrams is to be believed.

With the final defeat of the Crusaders of the Holy Order of British Spelling, there came an end to this era.

@KitFox slips on banana peel no, you're right, that doesn't make me feel funny either.

@Cerberus The english weren't involved in that.

@Cerberus and the fourth age began.

@KitFox I don't mean to make light of your predicament, but it was too hard to pass up. Thinking about talking about it can help resolve it.

Haha.

@Mitch Not openly, no...

5:04 PM

I'm not offended.

@Cerberus history-shmistory. it's just a bunch of places and dates. foreign ones. those foreign dates. sooo exotic.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I wonder if we couldn't break the Am/Br thing up by the classes of words. i.e. the -or/-our words, the -ae-/-e- words (paedatrics/pediatrics), etc

@Mitch History is a bunch of foreign dates, I see.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 right. there's gotta be -some- quantifiable thing.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Mitch well, a quick ngram test of some different ae/e words don't give as much useful info as or/our words

5:07 PM

@Cerberus well, what else is there? You know the past is a foreign country. We should attack now, to prevent future wars...against ourselves!

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 color colour?

How about marijuana? And sharing files?

I say we strike fast.

color/colour in US 1840-1860 from steady low to steady high

And don't forget: no parents allowed on the school's playground, or you are a paedophile! (This is in England.)

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Mitch books.google.com/ngrams/…

center/centre 1890-1910 from steady low to steady high

books.google.com/ngrams/…

Matt Эллен

5:10 PM

@Cerb @Kit - yes I brought it up a couple of weeks ago

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 shiny rainbow...color/colour overwhelms all the other patterns.

Matt Эллен

Oct 11 at 13:23, by Matt Эллен

I have "Birdhouse in your soul" playing in my mind

Right.

still no explanation of what the hell Carlo did? He was behaving so well (still fractured language and fractured thought, but still civilized)

Matt Эллен

maybe there are a lot of deleted questions/answers that we can't see?

5:13 PM

@Mitch What do you mean, what he did?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus he is suspended

Huh?

Why?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

1 min ago, by Mitch

still no explanation of what the hell Carlo did? He was behaving so well (still fractured language and fractured thought, but still civilized)

Matt Эллен

@Cerberus for low quality contributions

Aww.

He was very nice in chat.

Matt Эллен

5:13 PM

most of the time

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

he has resorted to posting messages on MetaEd's blog, which he expects Ed to forward to Reg

Nice, right, but ...um... something.

Hehe, oh dear.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 yeah, that's weird.

books.google.com/ngrams/…

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Mitch That settles it. Blame it on Polk.

5:15 PM

for just neighbor/neighbor in AmE. 1830-1850 same pattern of switchover.

totally Webster's fault.

sorta jinx,

I think I will make me a cuppa.

Anyone else up some tea?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

yes please

serves tea and scones

argh...that hurts my ear...cup o' -what-?

oh.

Not quite tea time here, and past tea time there.

Oh well.

5:16 PM

I should be more polite.

especially when comestibles are involved.

Hahaha.

argh again! forgot about lunch! BBIAS

Damn it. Lunch.

user image

Amazing. They are still trying to sell a two-generations-old Ipad for € 600–800.

Who would buy that, if there already exist two newer generations?

Fuits are queer.

u funneh.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

5:23 PM

@Cerberus well, is the latest gen actually in stores and available yet?

Matt Эллен

Fuits? Is that like fruity suet?

@KitFox Funneh, queer...

@MattЭллен Ehhh sure.

@Mitch One simple question,which one is better American English or British English?

@orange Australian English

@JSBձոգչ Great

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

5:26 PM

@orange Canadian English

Matt Эллен

British English.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 You must be from Canada hmm...

Canadian English.

Matt Эллен

By Royal Appointment.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 No, but has already been announced, so I would expect people to wait for it. It can be ordered from the 26th online.

5:28 PM

@tchrist As it happens, so do I.

@orange British!

Matt Эллен

yay!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@orange Well, yes, but I am also a completely unbiased and correct authority on matters of English usage.

Depends on what you want to do with it, of course.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 No you're not. I am.

@orange Texan.

5:28 PM

@KitFox So the vote says Canadian English is better.

No it doesn't.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@KitFox yay!

Indian English is proven to be objectively better.

@Cerberus No it doesn't, eh. (ftfy)

@Cerberus Well British English is more elegant than others.

5:29 PM

@MετάEd Right, right, so that's what this is a boot.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@orange hahahahaha

@orange It certainly is.

@Cerberus Speaking of boot. I can't decide whether to stuff you in it or make you eat it.

But if you have no special interest in British culture and you will be living in America for decades, then perhaps you might want to use American spelling.

@MετάEd A parrot stuffing a dog into a boot? I'd like to see that.

@Cerberus Intercourse the penguin.^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hparrot.

5:31 PM

Is that the parrot speaking?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

18 secs ago, by Cerberus

Is that the parrot speaking?

I didn't know it could speak symbols.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

19 secs ago, by Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

18 secs ago, by Cerberus

Is that the parrot speaking?

THAT'S a parrot speaking

It's funny. Until a year or so ago, I had never noticed how so many Canadians say a boot.

@orange the one with the highest entropy. Or is it lowest?

5:33 PM

I probably heard that something was off now and then, but I never realised it was Canadian. Perhaps also because I didn't know they were Canadian.

Matt Эллен

@Cerberus or "oot and a boot"

And that.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

it's a total myth. "about" and "boot" do not sound anything alike in Canadian.

total

myth

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 right. they sound more like 'boot'. duh

If it looks like a boot, walks like a boot, sounds like a boot...

2

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

5:35 PM

@Mitch fixed.

or root. or roof, or

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 They do to me, when pronounced by a Canadian.

oh.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus your hearing is defective.

@Cerberus your ears are wrong then.

joinx

5:36 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Nah-uh.

that's like jink and yoicks

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus They are completely different sounds.

Hahaha. We've discussed this before.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Not.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Just because you can't hear it doesn't mean they are not different sounds. No Canadian I know has the same vowel for "about" as for "boot".

Matt Эллен

5:38 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 it's like chinese - I can't tell the difference between mother and horse in chinese either.

is it mother and horse?

well, whatever. you get the drift

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@MattЭллен That is different: it is a matter of tone. I am talking about vowels.

Matt Эллен

it's a difference only canadians can hear.

@MattЭллен Hm... you really should see someone about that problem.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I don't know if you're making a serious point.

5:40 PM

@MattЭллен I read that as "it's a difference only canadians can bear."

giggles

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@KitFox Is that "about" in the first sentence supposed to sound like "aboot"? Becasue it TOTALLY DOES NOT.

But to state the obvious, nobody said a boot and about were 100 % identical, just that they sound alike enough for a non-Canadian ignorant of this phenomenon to interpret the latter as the former when pronounced by a Canadian.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus ridiculous

I agree.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

5:41 PM

they are as different as "boat" and "cheese"

They should change their pronunciation.

It's rounder and cuter than the squat American way of saying it.

@Mitch It is not directly answerable as written. There are other questions that can be answered, but they were not asked. See here.

@tchrist OK. but we did research here!

29 mins ago, by Mitch

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=neighbor%2C+neighbour&year_start=18‌00&year_end=2000&corpus=17&smoothing=3&share=

Cheese, folks.

5:45 PM

> 1. The omission of all superfluous or silent letters; as a in bread. Thus bread, head, give, breast, built, meant, realm, friend, would be spelt, bred, hed, giv, brest, bilt, ment, relm, frend.

don't laugh (immediately that is)

> 2. A substitution of a character that has a certain definite sound, for one that is more vague and indeterminate. Thus by putting ee instead of ea or ie, the words mean, near, speak grieve, zeal, would become meen, neer, speek, greev, zeel. .. Thus greef should be substituted for grief; kee for key; beleev for believe; laf for laugh; dawter for daughter; plow for plough; tuf for tough; proov for prove; blud for blood; and draft for draught.

'cheese' sounds -exactly- like 'about'.

@tchrist We all know this one.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

5:46 PM

@Mitch Huh what do you mean?

@Mitch Cheese sounds exactly like cheese? Yes, of course.

historically the process of sound change from a bilabial plosive to a palatal affricate is well know, it's harder to explain going from (once the orthography was fixed in the early 1900's) the t in about to the s in cheese. and as we all know, vowels do whatever they want. Is that enough for you?

@Cerberus Or you could go with that

@Mitch Actually i was looking at apple.com

Haha, you said "bilabial." Perv.

@Mitch Notwithstanding all the false positives and false negatives, and constraining it to one single solitary word amongst a sea of changes, you would still need to explain this.

English spelling reform

5:49 PM

@Mitch Haha certainly. So the bilabial plosive b and the palatal affricate ch, right?

@KitFox bilabial = of or pertaining to Beelzebub.

@orange Don't. Apple is evil!

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 All due respect for Canadians, but I don't understand why boots are relevant to an election speech.

Because the opposition always wants to give the government a boot.

That’s why they’re always going on a boot.

Not the boot?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus you're just trolling me now

5:53 PM

@Cerberus But the new iPad mini is good.

@Cerberus It might take more than one.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Just as you were me.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus no. I am serious

@orange Just buy a Nexus 7!

@Cerberus exactly.

5:54 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 The boat and the cheese?

@KitFox there's an interview by Ali G with Chomsky. Priceless.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

yes! the vowel in "about" is as different from "boot" as "boat" is from "cheese"

it is completely different

there is no way they get confused

totally

It is not completely different.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

different

vowels

5:55 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Then we hold different views on "trolling".

kinda close.

Hee hee

I'm hungry.

I want me some boat.

Ehm what?

@Mr.Shiny But I am guessing that you will admit the difference between the American and the Canadian vowels in "about"?

I thought Nazis were against different views.

5:56 PM

cripes, now I'm pronouncing 'boat' as boot in my head. god damn you all.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

If all you jokers claimed that Canadians said "aboat" instead of "about" I would be more inclined to agree with you, since that actually matches reality.

@Mitch Stay calm

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@KitFox minor.

@orange massaging temples

stops massaging temples..reminds one of nazis

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@KitFox though the so-called "Canadian rising" isn't restricted to Canada.

And there are Scottish accents that say "aboot" but nobody ever talks about them.

5:58 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Whoa, back off. We don't need no Canadians rising around here.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 we haven't been saying that? oh boat vs boot.

@Mitch Haha bi!

@Robusto man the barricades. light the gasoline doused tires.

@Mitch Why are you pronouncing cheese as boot? I don't get it. What are you, a New Zealander?

@Cerberus yeah, chomsky really tries to be nice and serious.

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