English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Martha

01:21

@Robusto In TOBG, well, let's just say they started with jewel-toned solid polyester satin and went downhill from there. And the costumers for The Tudors apparently don't believe in underwear.

Robusto

Wow, you can tell polyester from whatever onscreen?

Martha

Certain kinds, yes.

But that fabric would be wrong even if it were 100% silk.

JPmiaou

@Martha The Tudors does use underwear -- as outerwear. No self-respecting 16th century Englishman would've gone out in public in just his shirt. Ever.

Martha

I've seen pictures of whoever plays Henry VIII in a leather vest but no shirt.

JPmiaou

Shakespeare in Love, on the other hand, is absolutely perfect. Lovely story, lots of layers, good ending, excellent acting, and some glorious costumes.

Robusto

01:26

@JPmiaou — /nod

Perfect on so many levels. It was Tom Stoppard messing with Shakespeare the way Shakespeare messed with plots and dialogue and the whole thing.

@Martha: I take it TOBG was an Eeeek! moment for you then?

I'll take my answer offline, as I am off.

Martha

@Robusto Oh, I wouldn't go that far. I just have no interest in subjecting myself to it. (I also don't like movies where I know the ending is bad. I'll watch snippets of Anne of the Thousand Days, but I get depressed if I try to watch it all the way through.)

Cerberus

04:03

Greetings!

(Please bear with me, I've had a little too much...)

Recently I was looking for something, an expression, and the first website Google gave was EL&U! So I suppose were are getting famous. Sort of.

Billare

Awesome.

What were you looking for?

Also, @Cerberus, do you know the answer to the question on quotation marks I posted?

Cerberus

04:22

Hi.

Oh I haven't seen that question yet, lemme see...

I'm afraid intuition is the first thing that goes. Oh and memory. Let me consult Fowler.

Billare

Awesome.

Cerberus

04:47

Added answer. In short: I don't know; Fowler doesn't mention such a distinction; it is probably not very current.

Billare

Yeah, I just added a comment @ the question.

Cerberus

Seen and replied to.

I should go to bed. Bye!

Billare

Ciao.

And thanks.

Alain Pannetier

07:17

Good Morning everyone.

For those in the applicable TZ I ean.

I mean

I've read the exchanges above about period dramas and I thought I'd add my 2cts.

I'd like to second Martha's down-vote about the series "The Tudors".

And "The other Boleyn Girl" as well actually.

However my critics go much further than the underwear.

"The Tudors" are just written in a commercial way with very little concern for historical matters. The underlying historical facts are all mixed up. Some characters are a "merge" of various historical characters and above all, ages differences are not respected. The look of Henry the 8th is light years away from the look we've all seen in Holbein's paintings. In one word I could describe it as the NCIS/CSI series for period dramas.

Here is an excerpt of my preferred list.

Charles Dickens - 1838 - Oliver Twist (BBC 2007)
Charles Dickens - 1852 - Bleak House (BBC 1985)
Charles Dickens - 1852 - Bleak House (BBC 2005)
Charles Dickens - 1855 - Little Dorrit (BBC 2008)
Emily Brontë - 1847 - Wuthering Heights
Evelyn Waugh - 1945 - Brideshead Revisited (ITV 1981)
George Eliot - 1861 - Silas Marner (BBC 1985)
George Eliot - 1874 - Middlemarch (BBC 1994)
Henry Fielding - 1749 - Tom Jones a Foundling (BBC 1997)
Jane Austen - 1811 - Sense and Sensibility (Ang Lee 1995) (BBC 2008)

Alain Pannetier

07:47

You can leave me a message at [email protected] if you need more detail.

While I'm here, I've got a question...

I used to see a link to add a bounty to questions. At that time I wasn't submitting questions to the forum. Now that I do, I can't seem to find this link any more. Can someone kindly point me in the right direction ?

Alain Pannetier

10:34

Good Morning again

RegDwight

Ahoi.

Alain Pannetier

I have one more question.

I keep seeing people quoting the OED. All I have is a hardback volume of the OED (at home) and the entries I find on line are much terser than what you guys come up with. Are you all subscribers ?

RegDwight

Some people are. I am not.

Quite a few folks here have free access via their universities.

Alain Pannetier

Hum, that makes more sense.

295 quids per year is quite expensive. May be they also have an electronic version.

I have a huge collection of dictionaries but of course, they're sitting on a shelf and browsing through them is quite slow.

RegDwight

BTW, I realize that I am too late to the party, but I just wanted to point out that I'm no fan of "The Other Boleyn Girl", either.

And I just can't force myself to watch "The Tudors".

"Shakespeare in love", yes, that was a fine movie.

Alain Pannetier

10:40

I found some nice ones on Google books recently following my participation in EL&S.

About period dramas, I guess the targeted audience is quite different. If I would put it in a provocative way I'd say taht some talk to your reptilian brain, the others to your cortex.

Going back to dictionaries, do you know whether the OED has an electronic version, i.e. you purchase a DVD or sth and it's at hand

RegDwight

Yeah well, it's just that Natalie Portman can easily talk to both, so they kind of wasted her in TOBG.

@AlainPannetier That's my understanding. I don't think they toss physical copies around at all.

...actually, I just looked on their site, and they do.

Oh well, I have enough dead tree laying around.

Alain Pannetier

The problem is that I'm frequently on foreign assignments and, although I understand I can't take my library with me, technology offers so many alternatives now. I mean if private Bradley Manning can reuse a cd of Lady Gaga, why can't I carry on filling up my Hard Drive.

I'll have a look.

RegDwight

oed.com/public/howtosub/how-to-subscribe

Alain Pannetier

I've seen this page this morning early.

But unless I'm even dumber than I think, I cannot find a reference to a CD/DVD copy. I found some on amazon though.

RegDwight

oed.com/public/buy/the-oed-in-print-and-on-cdrom

Alain Pannetier

10:54

Wow, that's much better. If you look on amazon, you can see they don't propose the electronic version. You can purchase the leather bound version though for "only" 6000 bucks.

RegDwight

A bargain.

Alain Pannetier

Thx a lot. Would you also have an idea why I can't start a bounty on some questions.

RegDwight

Which one(s)?

Alain Pannetier

Here I cansee the linK.

And here I can't.

RegDwight

The second question is too young (12 hours right now).

"A bounty can be started on a question two days after the question was asked."

49

A: How does the bounty system work?

Sources: the official FAQ and blog. See also the official privileges page for bounties. What is a bounty? A bounty is a special reputation award given to answers. This feature was designed to motivate answerers, and make questions get the answers they deserve. As a bounty starter, the boun...

Alain Pannetier

11:02

Thanks. I guess I overlooked that when I read the FAQs last month. Sorry.

RegDwight

No prob. Nobody can remember all the details.

Artic

Hi.

RegDwight

Ahoi.

Artic

Does anybody use the phrase "to have a bad hair day"?

Alain Pannetier

Hello. @RegDwight, a few clicks further down the link you gave me, I found that page and it explicitly says "The full content of the 20 volume Oxford English Dictionary (Second Edition), on the CD-ROM plus the three Additions volumes and 7,000 new words and meanings"

Thks for all, TTYL.

RegDwight

11:10

@Artic I would say so.

I have a few bad-hair-day-related Dilbert stickers right here.

Artic

@RegDwight What did you mean by "bad-hair-day-related"

RegDwight

Though when I search Google Images for "bad hair day Dilbert sticker", I get this:

@Artic Well, the stickers literally say "bad hair day". And they show Dilbert or Dogbert or someone else with their hair messed-up.

Artic

@RegDwight This comrades have really bad hair day.

@RegDwight This phrase mean - bad luck for the day or something like this. But I'm not sure anyone use it. I don wana look weird when I say this.

RegDwight

11:38

@Artic People use it all the time.

It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with luck.

Xblast time here, so sorry if I'm not extremely responsive.

Robusto

12:30

Just going on the record here that I still can't abide Jane Austen.

@RegDwight — Demonstrating just how far they put a boot up someone's ass, I suppose?

In other news, it's good to see Yoichi Oishi back on the board. I wondered how he was faring in the wake of the quake/tsunami/meltdown.

RegDwight

Mar 17 at 20:06, by RegDwight

I sure hope everything is fine with him and his loved ones.

@Robusto I'm not sure what they need the window for, they should be able to get their boots just as high without any support.

That's pretty much their whole job.

Robusto

12:45

I always wonder what kind of kids see that sort of thing and think: "That's what I want to be when I grow up!"

*Und alle singen:*

*Die Fahne hoch! Die Reihen fest geschlossen!*
*SA marschiert mit ruhig, festem Schritt.*

Stupid asterisks.

RegDwight

Harr. Do feel free to leave the SA out of this.)))

Robusto

Hmm ... so those lines didn't get filtered in Deutschland?

I thought the music and lyrics were banned.

RegDwight

@Robusto What do you mean? I see "*** ***** ****! *** ***** **** ***********! SA ********* *** *****, ****** *******."

@Robusto But to answer your question, I doubt anyone wants to become George W. Bush, either. It's just that one day you wake up and realize that you are George W. Bush.

Kind of like Gregor Samsa.

Robusto

So W. is a cockroach?

Or at least "some huge, monstrous vermin"?

Don't worry, he's scuttled back under the molding.

@RegDwight: So how were the Scots in kilts?

RegDwight

13:05

@Robusto Oh, not bad at all.

I mean, there was some very authentic stuff, which we liked a lot, and some pop-re-hash-bordering-on-caricature stuff, which we, um, liked somewhat less, but yeah, we realize that they have to pay their bills, too, and overall, they did find a good balance.

Robusto

@RegDwight — Did you lay into anyone with a broadsword this time? Pictures!

Cerberus

What the... I wake up to find this kind of language.

Robusto

Yep, we're back to swordplay, @Cerberus.

I hope you brought yours this time instead of leaving it in your other pants.

RegDwight

@Robusto Nah, we left our swords (and cameras) at home.

Cerberus

13:21

Heh. So I see.

Robusto

@RegDwight — Oh, it was that kind of party.

RegDwight

Geschlossene Gesellschaft. Keine Fotos!

Robusto

Das ist aber Schade.

Cerberus

The combination of swords and cameras would point to a different genre probably.

RegDwight

Well, there were some people who tried taking pictures, but I think they got beheaded or something. I mean, it was pretty dark, and then those flashes would flash up, it kind of sucked huge balls.

Robusto

13:22

So, absent pictorial evidence all we have is your notoriously unreliable word to go on.

In witness whereof:

56 secs ago, by RegDwight

Well, there were some people who tried taking pictures, but I think they got beheaded or something. I mean, it was pretty dark, and then those flashes would flash up, it kind of sucked huge balls.

Cerberus

Wow now that it is in your quote, I suddenly believe it.

RegDwight

@Robusto That, and you must discount for the fact that I have some musical education, and my wife is a professional dancer, so our criticism is kind of like Bach going over Händel's stuff and complaining, "OMG, how could he go with a Fis there? Obviously, it must be a Ges!"

I don't think there were too many people there who realized that X wasn't perfect, Y sucked, and Z was excellent beyond belief.

Cerberus

So what was this performance exactly? Scottish folk music?

RegDwight

50+ Scottish bagpipers and 30+ drummers, some Scottish dancers, some Irish dancers, some excellent singers, and a band (complete with an electric bass and a digital piano).

Plus some fireworks to round it up.

Robusto

@RegDwight — See, Bach never bothered complaining. He just rewrote the pieces to suit his own tastes.

Cerberus

13:29

Wow that sounds pretty serious. Was it in a concert hall?

RegDwight

Yup.

Cerberus

The 50+ bagpipers alone must have been impressive. Not that I know anything about the instrument or the genre.

RegDwight

Well, they did deliver on their Gänsehaut garantiert promise.

Cerberus

Goose skin?

RegDwight

Yeah.

Cerberus

13:31

Does that influence the timbre of the bags?

RegDwight

Huh wha?

Cerberus

Oh, Goose bumps?

RegDwight

Yeah, I thought you were talking about the literal translation.

Cerberus

I was! I had no idea German used the same expression (we don't in Dutch).

In fact we say kippenvel, chicken skin.

Robusto

Interesting. In English we say "goosebumps" or "goose flesh" but not "goose skin".

RegDwight

13:33

@Cerberus Whoa, chicken skin is so different from goose skin.

Cerberus

@Rob: Exactly! That is why it only dawned on me when I transferred goose skin to goose bumps.

RegDwight

@Robusto In Russian, it's something like "ants".

Cerberus

@Reg: Is it? To be honest I haven't much experience with either bird organ... or do you mean they have different connotations in German?

Robusto

Russians can't afford geese, I guess.

Cerberus

Aww.

Robusto

13:36

Also, Gans is a mild insult in German — Steig ab, du Gans! — when one is too timid to use Idiot.

RegDwight

@Cerberus What? Who? Sorry, I'm trying to read "The Language Instinct" @Kosmonaut recommended.

Cerberus

Kippenvel could mean you're cold, you have a tingling sensation from excitement, you are scared to death, you are utterly moved by beauty or sadness...

RegDwight

@Robusto Every animal is an insult in German.

Robusto

Steig ab, du Affe!

RegDwight

Gans, Kuh, Sau, Ziege...

@Robusto Absolutely.

Cerberus

13:37

The language instinct? Let me see...

RegDwight

Feb 18 at 21:22, by Kosmonaut

The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language

Steven Pinker

Perennial (HarperCollins)

In The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker, well-known for his revolutionary theory of how children acquire language, lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, how it evolved. With wit, education, and deft use of everyday examples of humor and wordplay, Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution like web spinning in spiders or sonar in bats.

Robusto

But probably not: Steig ab, du Adler!

Cerberus

Reading the Wiki article as we speak.

RegDwight

@Cerberus Yeah, the meanings are many, no matter what metaphor in which language we're talking about.

@Robusto Now that you mention it... you could manage to make it sound insulting.

By which I mean, you could manage to make it sound insulting.

Cerberus

So Pinker disagrees with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? Categorically so? That would seem strange.

I mean, how can thinking not be influenced by language?

Robusto

13:40

@RegDwight — Lech' mich am Arsch, du Adler!

RegDwight

@Cerberus What does Michael Dorn have to do with anything?

Robusto

See, I did it!

Cerberus

@Reg: Well he is highly relevant to the case.

RegDwight

@Robusto Who is Lech?

Lech Wałęsa

Lech Walesa (Polish: ) (, or ; born 29 September 1943) is a Polish politician, trade-union organizer, and human-rights activist. A charismatic leader, he co-founded Solidarity (Solidarność), the Soviet bloc's first independent trade union, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and served as President of Poland 1990–95. Wałęsa was an electrician by trade, with no higher education. Soon after beginning work at the Gdańsk (then, "Lenin") Shipyards, he became a trade-union activist. For this he was persecuted by the Polish communist government, placed under surveillance, fired in 1976, and ar...

Cerberus

Hehe.

Robusto

13:41

Forgot the apostrophe

RegDwight

The apostrophe doesn't help.

Cerberus

I remember the first time I found that piece in my Mozart collection. I couldn't believe it.

RegDwight

At all.

Robusto

Is it lecken? I don't remember.

RegDwight

Mar 10 at 20:49, by RegDwight

That reminds me of KV231, somehow.

Cerberus

13:42

Lecken I think.

Leck mir den Arsch, I'd say?

RegDwight

Leck mich am Arsch.

Robusto

It really sucks when I can't remember how to spell a German word.

RegDwight

The Mozart one is Leck mich im Arsch.

Cerberus

Leck mir den Arsch fein recht schön sauber

Leck mir den Arsch fein recht schön sauber (English: Lick my ass right well and clean) is a canon for three voices in B-flat major, K. 233/382d, long thought to have been composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart during 1782 in Vienna. Authenticity In 1988, Wolfgang Plath, an editor of the Bärenreiter Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (NMA), presented evidence that the composer of this piece, as well as K. 234/382c, was in fact Wenzel Trnka (1739–1791). That Mozart might not be the author of K. 229, K. 230, K. 231, K. 233, K. 234 was already mentioned in the NMA in 1974. Th...

In fact I seem to remember there being more than one piece...

RegDwight

That is a different one.

Cerberus

13:43

Right.

RegDwight

Leck mich im Arsch

Leck mich im Arsch (literally "Lick me in the arse") is a canon in B-flat major composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, K. 231 (K. 382c), with lyrics in German. It was one of a set of at least six canons probably written in Vienna in 1782. Sung by six voices as a three-part round, it is thought to be a party piece for his friends. English translation A literal translation of the song's title and lyrics into English would be "Lick me in the ". A more idiomatic translation would be "Kiss my arse", or even "Get stuffed". Publication and modern discovery Mozart died in 1791 and his wi...

He had a few more, but I forgot the titles.

Cerberus

When the CD was playing, I was like, huh? They couldn't be singing that?

And now there are encyclopaedia articles. Mozart must be laughing in his grave.

RegDwight

I dunno, he's probably weeping as nobody has actually done what he kept asking for.

Cerberus

Ah, what? Burn it?

RegDwight

No. Lick it.

Cerberus

13:46

Heh. You don't know that.

RegDwight

I do.

I know everything, and then some.

Cerberus

Even using the concept of "knowing" like that shows that you don't know knowing!

RegDwight

See? I knew you would say that.

Cerberus

Oh. I thought you'd say "I know".

RegDwight

See? You didn't know what I was gonna say.

Robusto

13:48

@RegDwight: Hey, speaking of insults involving asses: I heard someone in a bar near Frankfurt tell someone else something that sounded like: "Say that again and I'll hit you in the head so hard you'll hear your teeth playing the piano in your ass!" I can't remember the exact German. Is that a common expression, or did he make that up on the spot?

Cerberus

Lovely.

RegDwight

Hold on a sec, Besprechung.

Cerberus

From the Wiki article on the Pinker book:

> Each of these thinkers argue for sociobiology, the concept that human behavior and thought are best explained in terms of evolution of genes and memes.

Is this still controversial?

I thought it was mainstream already.

(If anyone should want a bridge problem: I have 18 HCP with 5 clubs and 3 spades (not much else), I open 1C, mate bids 1S: what am I to bid? Do I jump? I can't seem to get to a decent contract the right way.)

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…