English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

simchona

19:00

@JSBձոգչ Bite your tongue

JSBձոգչ

lol

tchrist

runs a defragger on the room

David Wallace

@Mitch I can honestly say that if I ever DID know everything about Kelly Osbourne, then it would almost certainly be a good thing for me to have no time to do anything about it.

@JSBձոգչ Am I allowed to disagree with this, or will it make me too unpopular?

Matt Эллен

19:17

David Wallace

Without the comma, it suggests that what you have is "OSx with Disk Utility". With the comma, it means that you want to use "Disk Utility" to burn the ISO file. So the comma adds clarity. Where a comma adds clarity, it's a good thing, not an error.

tchrist

@MattЭллен Itsy bitsy?

Matt Эллен

@tchrist indeed! a peacock spider

simchona

@tchrist Did it go up the water spout?

JSBձոգչ

@DavidWallace no disagreeing with me in this chat

David Wallace

19:21

OK, so how about I protest against a group of North Americans asserting that anyone who disagrees with them about English is clearly wrong? There are other continents, where English is spoken and written differently, right?

JSBձոգչ

@DavidWallace i disagree. i think that it's clear either way that "with Disk Utility" is an instrumental adjunct phrase, and it's inappropriate to use a comma before such a phrase

@DavidWallace can you adduce actual evidence that the common practice in Rightpondia or the Antipodes is different?

tchrist

His pond is uʍopəpᴉsdn.

JSBձոգչ

Antipodes it is, then

tchrist

So the left and right are backwards.

David Wallace

Give me a few minutes, and I may be able to. The point is, it looks to me like hhh got a very chilly reception here, when all he offered was some crazy hyphenation, and a belief that comma rules may be different between US and UK English.

simchona

19:24

@DavidWallace Umm. No. He accused everyone of being wrong for not agreeing

Matt Эллен

@DavidWallace and ignored what he was told and was belligerent (IMO)

simchona

People were entirely willing to help.

JSBձոգչ

@tchrist i had not considered this additional wrinkle

David Wallace

Have there been deleted comments then, that I haven't seen?

tchrist

We are in the postbellum period. No belligerence is permitted.

simchona

19:25

35 mins ago, by hhh

@JSBձոգչ What do you mean? You see there are more people, not just you. My native UK teacher taught me this comma -thing, I doubt whether he is wrong (ofc I may have misunderstood but I doubt it because he stressed then that comma has a more-meaning like priorization in English -- not grammatical thing like in Finnish, Swedish or Germany)

David Wallace

So he is supposed to reject the teachings of a (presumably well qualified) British teacher, in favour of those of a group of unqualified Americans and Canadians; rather than accept that there may be a difference between British English and North American English?

simchona

@DavidWallace He asked. He didn't trust anyone.

And who's to say exactly what his teacher said?

Secondhand information is no good.

David Wallace

All information is second hand.

simchona

And this was pure hearsay.

This isn't just 'this is how I learned grammar'. This was 'so and so said X, and of course he's right, and none of you have ever heard of this so I want a REAL UK English speaker to say something'

David Wallace

And did a non-North-American speaker say anything, before I arrived?

simchona

19:30

The whole "not listening" thing was a bit more important

tchrist

@DavidWallace It is unreasonable, and rather insulting actually, to assume that his teacher had better training than anyone from North America.

David Wallace

Umm, teachers in UK need certain qualifications. People spending their time in chat rooms do not.

simchona

@DavidWallace Then why come to a chat room at all?

Why not ask his teacher, since we're all so unqualified?

David Wallace

He expected to receive some insight, some clarification. But all he got was hostility.

Matt Эллен

@DavidWallace Indeed. I do not doubt the qualifications of his teacher, but his attitude seemed to be that his idea was right and he wanted people to agree with him. He wasn't searching for clarity, he was searching for agreement.

simchona

19:32

There wasn't hostility UNTIL he said that we all didn't know anything

Robusto

@tchrist I don't keep a list. But they look awful with the font this chat uses. font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif;

David Wallace

@simchona I don't think he actually said that. He simply tried to explore why you all disagree with his teacher. I can honestly say that for MY dialect, his teacher was right.

simchona

@DavidWallace And that's fine. But he also disrupted chat, which also didn't go over well.

JSBձոգչ

@DavidWallace perhaps you missed the part where i offered both insight and clarification.

the hostility began when he started fighting back

David Wallace

@JSBձոգչ Yes, I take it back. You offered insight, with respect to your own dialect. The hostility began when he suggested that your insight might not apply to EVERY dialect of English. Which indeed it does not (at least, regarding the commas; with regard to the hyphens, I believe your words are probably correct everywhere).

JSBձոգչ

19:41

@DavidWallace okay... but i'm still waiting for some actual evidence that the comma is accepted in that position in UK english

tchrist

@Robusto Really? They look fine here on a Mac: “double” and ‘single’ alike both look like fine. Are you on some other kind of system that has different implementations? I have found that just because it says Verdana or whatnot by no means guarantees that it is the same font file — at all. Maybe that is it?

Matt Эллен

@JSBձոգչ can you show me an example you think is wrong (not hhh's) and I'll see what I think? :)

David Wallace

@JSBձոգչ Yes, fair enough. And I must decide whether I can be bothered going to look for any. My point is, it seemed that hhh's treatment here wasn't very nice. So close on the heels of the incident between Chris and tchrist, I found this disappointing.

tchrist

Nathan always put commas in funny places. He said that he thought that those in the Commonwealth are taught different rules. So I ran it by a PhD English-teacher of my acquaintance in the UK, and she said that his commas were wrong but that a lot of people did it that way for some reason, and that we should do it my way. So we did.

@DavidWallace Chris was being disingenuous. Please don’t make me prove it.

JSBձոգչ

@MattЭллен I wanted to bake a cake and some biscuits, with a cigarette lighter for heat.

David Wallace

19:45

For those of us who don't know the Nathan that tchrist refers to - he's a New Zealander.

Matt Эллен

@JSBձոգչ Thanks. That seems OK to me, but make the with part seem like an afterthought or condition.

David Wallace

@tchrist and YOU were being obnoxious.

JSBձոգչ

@MattЭллен i could maybe accept thet "with" part as an afterthought in this context. but this isn't the semantic difference that hhh had insisted on, and it's pretty marginal

and it's partly justified by my unusual example.

I start my car, with my keys.

^ is even more odd, because the trailing clause is short and not unusual

tchrist

I often react to disingenuousness frostily. I am hardly alone in that. Not all of us are saints, David.

simchona

@DavidWallace and @tchrist: Stop, both of you.

Matt Эллен

19:47

@JSBձոգչ yes, it makes it seem exceptionally pedantic.

tchrist

I would prefer not to drag stuff back up out of the gutter. I would also appreciate not being reminded of it.

Feel free to add commas to that sentence, as you see, fit.

Matt Эллен

@JSBձոգչ the comma seems like you've elided but only.

David Wallace

I started my motorbike with the push-button ignition, by hotwiring it, because the button didn't work.

tchrist

@DavidWallace That is unremarkable, except insofar as it would be a bit unwieldy without them.

David Wallace

OK, then how about just "I started my motorbike with the push-button ignition".

tchrist

19:50

What about it?

David Wallace

Well it seems ambiguous to me.

tchrist

Well, sure.

And you are not going to fix that by commifying it.

JSBձոգչ

@DavidWallace your example is correct. hhh's example has the comma before "with", which is what we objected to.

@DavidWallace as @tchrist said, it's ambiguous even with the comma.

David Wallace

Do I mean the motorbike that has the push-button ignition (as opposed to my other motorbike), or do I mean that that's how I started it? But if I write "I started my motorbike, with the push-button ignition", it's clear what I mean.

Robusto

@tchrist Everything looks better on the Mac.

Most people use PCs. I am using one now.

tchrist

19:51

@Robusto Really? Why is that?

David Wallace

Putting the comma in makes it clear that I am using the push-button ignition to start the motorbike. The comma adds clarity.

tchrist

What do you call a computer running Linux, or FreeBSD, or OpenBSD? The middle one we can (sometimes) call a Mac, but since the other two are not Macs, does that mean they are PCs?

David Wallace

I like to use commas whenever they add clarity. I don't really want to accept that it's wrong to do so. Commas are a tool, not a holy instrument.

tchrist

@DavidWallace Not for me, it doesn’t.

I do not believe it makes any difference there.

At least, it is not obvious.

Which is the root problem.

David Wallace

That's OK. You and I do not speak the same dialect. Which was kind of the point.

tchrist

19:53

I thought we were writing.

Not speaking.

David Wallace

OK, we don't write the same dialect. Now who's trolling?

tchrist

In which case, your antipodean elocution is immaterial.

I do not believe that that word means what you think it means.

Or are we talking eye-dialects here?

David Wallace

Which word? I used several.

tchrist

Dialect.

Or perhaps speak. I can’t tell.

Does a person who puts a space in front of a question mark speak a different dialect ?

I should say not.

David Wallace

Then I believe you are mistaken. Or maybe it means something different in your dialect from what it means in mine.

Maybe the question-mark-spacer writes a different dialect.

tchrist

19:56

If a comma makes a difference in the sense, then I question how that translates into speech.

David Wallace

I write in New Zealand English usually. Which dialect do you write in?

tchrist

I am pretty sure that makes no sense.

And checking the OED, it agrees with me 100%.

David Wallace

I am pretty sure you are wrong.

Robusto

@tchrist Because Apple gives a shit about design, and it shows. Microsoft doesn't, and that shows too.

Matt Эллен

Given that language starts with speech, and translates into writing, it makes sense to write in a dialect.

tchrist

19:57

dialect /ˈdaɪəlɛkt/.
Etymology: a. Fr. dialecte (16th c. in Hatz.-Darm.), or ad. L. dialectus, Gr. διάλεκτος discourse, conversation, way of speaking, language of a country or district, f. διαλέγεσθαι to discourse, converse, f. δια- through, across + λέγειν to speak.
1. Manner of speaking, language, speech; esp. a manner of speech peculiar to, or characteristic of, a particular person or class; phraseology, idiom.
2. a. One of the subordinate forms or varieties of a language arising from local peculiarities of vocabulary, pronunciation, and idiom. (In relation to modern languages usually sp…

David Wallace

Bother. My OED is in my house, not at my home.

tchrist

Unless you are writing in eye-dialect, what you are alleging makes no sense to me.

Nor does it conform to any of the OED’s attested senses of that word.

Matt Эллен

For example I write I've in ways that Kit finds odd, because of my dialect.

tchrist

What, in italics? :)

Matt Эллен

:Þ

tchrist

19:59

I’ve not considered that before.

David Wallace

Did you not read what you just pasted? "...One of the subordinate forms or varieties of a language arising from local peculiarities of vocabulary, pronunciation, and idiom..." - New Zealand English is one such. Or more precisely, I write in North Island urban New Zealand English.

Matt Эллен

I'm not entirely sure, but I think I use the contraction in ways that are unusual to her.

tchrist

Commas are not speech.

@MattЭллен I just did so, by way of example. :)

Matt Эллен

@tchrist lol, I didn't even notice! :D

tchrist

Writing I’ve not instead of I haven’t sounds a bit . . . snooty? Depends.

I bet that is what she means.

David Wallace

20:00

@MattЭллен I've an idea I do the same.

Matt Эллен

@tchrist probably

@DavidWallace yay!

tchrist

@DavidWallace Barrie says that he would say ‘I’ve got’ there.

Which I find interesting. Not bothersome at all, just interesting.

David Wallace

Even within England (the country, not the Barrie), there are several dialects.

Robusto

At least.

David Wallace

OK, several or more.

MετάEd

20:04

@Chris I have to assume the editing of your apostrophes was not intended as a troll. I routinely edit to replace apostrophe-quote with the typographic apostrophe. That substitution is recommended by the Unicode standard and raises no eyebrows here. However other editors do not bother, and that raises no eyebrows either. For that reason, I do not think you can conclude anything about convention here by comparing questions.

David Wallace

I learnt my English at answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091007151752AAxLJkP

Robusto

Nov 24 at 0:38, by Robusto

Oh, and I see @tchrist is trying to fuck with my head by editing a post of mine to change quotes to italics and add a spaced ellipsis. Very funny.

Chris

@MετάEd Well thank the Great Satan for that! I couldn't sleep if I thought someone on the internet wanted to troll me.

David Wallace

@Robusto He does that to me too. I find it annoying.

Robusto

Hey, looks like Syria's internet went dark today. I wonder what's going on.

MετάEd

20:08

@Chris Hyperbole aside, I will take time to thank the Great Satan. We're on pretty good terms already, but it never hurts ...

2

Robusto

I can imagine what's going on, and it's not pleasant.

@Chris Just think of @tchrist as the Rain Man of code points.

Nov 10 at 15:09, by Robusto

@MετάEd Looks like a question for The Character (secret identity: @tchrist).

It's his mutant power.

Aug 9 at 23:58, by Robusto

OK, in our Mutant Army (EL&U.X-Men), we have four official mutants with super powers: @Reg, aka Twister, who twists your words until you die; @tchrist, aka The Character, who can kill you with codepoints; @Cerberus, aka Hellhound (we haven't figured out if misspellings and syntactical omissions are a super power yet, but we're working on it); and Robusto, aka Nuance, who draws finer and finer distinctions until you're just sick to death of it.

Matt Эллен

I'd bring my super power up, but, well, you know.

David Wallace

@Robusto Are you turning into Reg, quoting yourself all the time?

Robusto

Sep 5 at 23:21, by Robusto

Come back when RegDwight is here.

@MattЭллен Well we know ... what, exactly? I've forgotten whether you were allowed a super power or not.

Matt Эллен

@Robusto Sloth

Robusto

20:18

Oh ... right! Yes, welcome!

Matt Эллен

I'll just sleep over here.

Robusto

@Cerberus used to be the Dormouse.

Aug 2 at 12:41, by Robusto

Wait, @MattЭллен can be The Dormouse, and we can spend our sessions trying to stuff him into a teapot after he falls asleep.

David Wallace

gpeters.com/names/baby-names.php?name=Sloth&button=Go

Robusto

Aug 2 at 12:42, by Robusto

I'm having fun impersonating @Reg.

Chris

Robusto has got a notepad document full of chat tidbits to paste?

Robusto

20:20

Self-quoting is a disease. I think I need a 12-step program or an intervention or something.

Chris

I question his status as part of the X-Men. "have large, weird collections" is the sort of behavior listed as a bullet point on the Brotherhood of Mutants recruitment flier under the heading "You might be an evil mutant if you..."

Matt Эллен

or x-men fans

Robusto

@Chris They are all open tabs.

Chris

In your browser?

Mine crashes a few times a day from memory explosion

Robusto

No, in my Rolodex. Yes, of course in my browser.

Chris

20:22

Firebug is a beast.

@MετάEd May I share that poem you posted?

Robusto

Apr 12 '11 at 14:26, by Robusto

@RegDwight — But you do store it all in a database, and reproduce it relentlessly, especially when nobody asked for it.

Apr 12 '11 at 14:26, by RegDwight

Not database. Tabs.

@Chris This is all a parody of @Reg.

Chris

Also, is there a name for an individual section that is divided by an asterism?

"chunk" seems inelegant at best

Robusto

"Chunk" is an excellent word.

"Hunk" is good too.

Chris

If you're a fat kid in the Goonies, it is

Robusto

Apr 12 '11 at 14:27, by RegDwight

Mar 12 at 1:50, by RegDwight

Yes, I have 4273568 tabs open at the moment.

@Chris What's wrong with section?

Chris

20:26

Nothing, unless there is a more formal term.

In the vein of stanza or strophe or verse

Robusto

Write your complaint here: ____. Be thorough and detailed. Don't leave anything out.

3

⁂

David Wallace

Asterism sounds like a disease.

Robusto

Section (typography)

:"Section break" redirects here. For the term's use in overhead lines, see Overhead lines#Breaks. In books and documents, a section is a subdivision, especially of a chapter. Sections are visually separated from each other with a section break, typically consisting of extra space between the sections. They are a concern in the process of typography and pagination, where it may be desirable to have a page break follow a section break for the sake of aesthetics or readability. In fiction, sections often represent scenes, and accordingly the space separating them is sometimes also called a...

David Wallace

Like, a vision defect where you see nothing but stars, or something.

MετάEd

20:45

@Chris I appreciate you for asking. If you mean linking to it, +1ing it, liking it, absolutely yes. If you mean reproducing rights, almost always yes. I would need to approve the publication.

David Wallace

Hah! Ed may I like your poem please?

Robusto

@Chris Flourished section breaks Space between paragraphs in a section break is sometimes accompanied by an asterism (either proper ⁂ or manual * * *), a horizontal rule, fleurons, or by other ornamental symbols.

From the Wikipedia article.

David Wallace

They put fleurons in the water here.

Matt Эллен

I thought Captain Scarlet had to fight the Fleurons?

David Wallace

with a candlestick in the scullery?

MετάEd

20:49

@DavidWallace "Like" is problematic isn't it.

David Wallace

No, it's like ... will you let me love you?

MετάEd

@DavidWallace Exactly. So how does one fix it so it doesn't look like that?

David Wallace

The word "like" should be removed from the English language.

MετάEd

"If you mean linking to it, +1ing it, lik ing it"?

Now I'm inviting you to lik it.

I should have written "like-ing".

Which is awful, but at least it's meaningful.

Matt Эллен

"social networking oriented approval mechanism"

MετάEd

20:52

@MattЭллен SNOAMing

Works for me.

David Wallace

Let me lik you then snoam you.

2

Matt Эллен

:D

David Wallace

Oh, jinx!

tchrist

@Robusto ❧

David Wallace

There's a code point for a turd?

tchrist

20:53

‭ ☙  2619       REVERSED ROTATED FLORAL HEART BULLET
        * a binding signature mark
        x (rotated floral heart bullet - 2767)
‭ ❦  2766       FLORAL HEART
        = Aldus leaf
‭ ❧  2767       ROTATED FLORAL HEART BULLET
        = hedera, ivy leaf
        x (reversed rotated floral heart bullet - 2619)

David Wallace

Shoot me with your reversed rotated floral heart bullet, and I will snoam no more.

tchrist

Careful, you’re apt to be convicted of suicide.

David Wallace

Hah! I just discovered Windows-Tab in win7. Neat.

MετάEd

21:21

@DavidWallace Have you tried Windows-LeftArrow?

Robusto

I just got a defect that a timer I created was "not moving"; the evidence for this was a static image file showing the timer not moving.

Don't you just love QA people?

In fact, the timer does move, but I stop the timer when the window loses focus so that it would behave like all our other timers.

David Wallace

I think you have to take their word for it at some point. The image file was just to show which timer they were talking about.

Robusto

Oh, I don't doubt it wasn't working for them. Because they're idiots.

I just showed it to them, working, on their machines.

So, no, I don't have to take their word for it. If they had any brains they'd be developers. Instead, they're just QA drones.

David Wallace

I had one many years ago who used to list a whole lot of bugs in IE6, as if they were bugs in my application. Then demand that I fix them.

She discovered this really odd thing where radio buttons would look weird if you pressed space bar and tab simultaneously. I suggested that not many people would be likely to do that and she jumped down my throat.

Robusto

They're all about corner cases. "If I pour a glass of lemonade on my keyboard, your code doesn't work. I'm writing a defect for that."

David Wallace

21:32

And if I grab your head and shove it through your monitor, you stop caring about whether my code works, so I'll close all of your defects.

Chris

I've become very spoiled by my current job and the last 2 or 3 contracts I took prior. Web applications to be used in an intranet environment, with only one approved browser? Sweet. Said approved browser is not IE, but Firefox? Sweeter still.

Matt Эллен

I remember I was a tester once and I found a weird bug in the postcode look up part of the app. it was written by a third party, so nothing ever changed.

David Wallace

@Chris Oh, but that takes all the fun out of web development.

jabuka.tv/stari-most-u-mostaru-medu-20-najljepsih-na-svijetu

Presumably, this refers to the new old bridge, not the one that was destroyed.

MετάEd

@DavidWallace I think you just smile, nod, and mark it as an OS bug. There's no arguing with some people.

Chris

@DavidWallace But then it gets put back in: w3.org/wiki/HTML/Elements/nextid

Plus, I still have users. But they're also coworkers. Which means that instead of support tickets, I have drifts of hand-written notes on my desk after a 4-day weekend.

RegDwighт

21:49

@Robusto you are the first person ever to say that. I am bursting into tears.

Robusto

Tears of joy? Rage? Grief? Help me out here.

RegDwighт

Can't they be all and everything?

What makes you think I would be able to tell that? Or able to tell anything from anything, for that matter.

Robusto

I dunno. Haven't you taken the ladders course yet?

RegDwighт

Twice. But there were too many tits.

So I didn't learn much.

tchrist

ponders what too many tits could possibly mean, outside a cow

RegDwighт

21:53

11 hours ago, by Matt Эллен

Here's a starter pack for the ladders course

tchrist

Here I thought you’d become a birder.

So to speak.

RegDwighт

Tits are birds, boobs are idiots. — RegDwighт Jan 19 '11 at 14:54

@RegDwight: Boobs are idiots, but boobies are also birds. — John Y Jan 20 '11 at 3:41

And somewhere else someone said that tits can be idiots, too.

Just to give you a quick wrap up.

tchrist

Sep 3 at 15:24, by tchrist

@Robusto Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt. ―St Jerome, In Ecclestiasten Commentarius, I

Robusto

@RegDwighт Tits may be idiots, but they've managed to outsmart men lo these many millennia.

RegDwighт

So I think according to Socrates and, um, maybe Kant, what follows is that birds are idiots.

Robusto

21:57

@tchrist You thought that one good enough to self-reference?

RegDwighт

Well, it's not bad enough.

It's so bad it's bad again, and then a little bit good.

Matt Эллен

@RegDwighт nope. birds are women.

tchrist

Back to the birder thing, I see.

RegDwighт

@MattЭллен you read too much Nietzsche.

Matt Эллен

I've only read one book of his!

RegDwighт

21:58

I did say "too much".

Matt Эллен

:D

tchrist

Oh gee.

0

Q: Plural of “Animus/Anima”

What is the plural of the words “animus” and “anima”? In any context (literary, Jung psychology, apothecary etc.). Is there English v. Latin differences? Interwebs are no help: versions differ from “animuses”, to “animi”, to uncountable. “Animuses” is correct as native English plural, if I unders...

RegDwighт

Such animusity.

tchrist

Ask the Japanese. Better cartoons.

RegDwighт

The Japanese only stole from the English.

tchrist

22:00

WTBFzInterwebz?

RegDwighт

For once. Normally they steal from the Germans.

tchrist

Kitlins all.

What, like they stole WW2 from the Germans?

RegDwighт

That was a start. A rough one.

MετάEd

@tchrist That raises the question of what too many tits could possibly mean inside a cow.

RegDwighт

Ehrgeiz

| genre = Fighting | modes = Up to 2 players simultaneously | cabinet = Upright | arcadecvx= Namco System 12 | display = Raster, 640 x 480 pixels (Horizontal), 65536 colors, 19 inch monitor | input = 8-way Joystick, 6 Buttons | platforms = Arcade, PlayStation, PlayStation Network }} , fully titled Ehrgeiz: God Bless The Ring, is a 3D fighting game developed by DreamFactory and published by Namco in 1998 for the arcade platform. It was first ported to the PlayStation and published by Square Co. in 1998, then to Japan's PlayStation Network by Square Enix in 2008. Perhaps the most noteworth...

tchrist

22:01

@MετάEd Took you long enough, Groucho!

RegDwighт

Just one example out of more than one that I can name off the top of my head.

MετάEd

@tchrist It took me no time at all. Time is nonlinear in chatrooms.

Robusto

@tchrist Actually, the Germans stole it from them. They were invading China long before any of that Sudetenland nonsense.

Johan Larsson

Do you like Hunter S. Thompson? I do/did.

RegDwighт

Oh man. There goes Chris. I was hoping he would ping me or something.

Matt Эллен

22:03

@JohanLarsson Hunter S Thompson?

Robusto

@JohanLarsson You mean Hunter S. Thompson? Only his very good friends called him Huntes. And you don't strike me as one of his friends.

Jinx.

tchrist

Huntes is the intimate form.

cornbread ninja

punches the goddamn downstairs neighbor kid

Robusto

Ouch! Now what did I do?

Anyway, gotta commute.

David Wallace

That is becoming a common theme with you lately, Cornbread.

Matt Эллен

22:04

Johan Larsson

@Robusto lol

RegDwighт

@Robusto hey now. It was the Russians, way before the Japanese, who invaded China. And Japan.

cornbread ninja

@DavidWallace welp, he can't seem to watch tv at a reasonable volume. And he needs a job and a different mama.

Matt Эллен

@JohanLarsson say "I do" if you currently do. say "I did" if you have liked him in the past but no longer do.

cornbread ninja

It sounds like they have an angry dinosaur down there.

Matt Эллен

22:05

@cornbreadninja government conspiracy coverup?

cornbread ninja

@MattЭллен just trashy neighbors.

David Wallace

@cornbreadninja The flat upstairs from me is for sale. I have a job, no TV, and haven't spoken to my mother for about ten years.

Matt Эллен

@cornbreadninja ah

Johan Larsson

@MattЭллен thanks, I guess I do then, don't really have a strong opinion.

cornbread ninja

The TV is always way too loud, which means that when his mama is home, they speak loudly to each other. She's an insufferable wench and he's a brat, and she yells at him a lot. This makes the little girl who inexplicably lives with them now start to cry.

@DavidWallace How much?

Matt Эллен

22:07

@cornbreadninja and you have cameras so you can sell the film to hbo?

cornbread ninja

I've just called the landlords to complain, and also to request a 6-month lease.

David Wallace

I'm not sure. Probably likely to be around 100k NZD, which is about 80k USD. Or I could buy it and you could rent it from me.

cornbread ninja

@MattЭллен they are far below HBO's standards. These are like Honey Boo Boo people.

@DavidWallace egad.

David Wallace

I'll even help you shift.

cornbread ninja

At least he's not listening to The Worst Music Ever Recorded right now.

Matt Эллен

22:09

@cornbreadninja oh no, he lent that to me.

cornbread ninja

Do I need to explain Honey Boo Boo?

Matt Эллен

she's a fat kid?

David Wallace

@cornbreadninja Probably. For the non-Americans in the room.

Matt Эллен

I think I've heard of her. Didn't Obama mention her the other day?

cornbread ninja

@MattЭллен I mean more like the mom of HBB.

David Wallace

22:11

Oh, I googled it. It sounds dreadful.

Matt Эллен

oh, she's not fat, but her mother is. I see.

tchrist

magnifica

David Wallace

She's fatter than a child that age should be. She is likely to be overweight in later life.

cornbread ninja

Anyway. Eight more months.

Matt Эллен

And then you're moving!

Or is that when the hit man can fit you in?

David Wallace

22:15

What happens in eight months?

cornbread ninja

I'm leaving this crapshack.

Matt Эллен

because you've got a rôle in a holywood blockbuster, and can afford a nice place on the coast.

cornbread ninja

My lease renews on February 1, but they always make me decide by the end of November what I want to do.

I can't afford the fees they want for a two-month lease.

Matt Эллен

yeah, I have the same issue

David Wallace

@cornbreadninja How is that eight months away?

cornbread ninja

22:17

@DavidWallace My six-month lease starts Feb 1.

So . . . eight months.

David Wallace

So you won't be buying the flat upstairs from me after all. I'm very disappointed now.

cornbread ninja

@DavidWallace :(

That kid needs a damn job.

David Wallace

How old is he?

cornbread ninja

Nineteen or whatever, livin' with your mama.

Shameful.

And obviously, I wouldn't give a damn, but he treats it like his apartment while she's at work and has no concept of how do so.

David Wallace

@cornbreadninja Living with my mama? I'm quite sure my mama doesn't have a 19-yo boy living with her. If she does, then good on her!

cornbread ninja

22:21

I'm gonna . . . do something else. lei turs.

@DavidWallace rofl

Chris

22:39

A question on convention: are single word requests generally greeted with any enthusiasm? It seems like such an odd request.

Matt Эллен

there are mixed feelings within the community

David Wallace

They are generally regarded as second class citizens.

Chris

For instance:

0

Q: What word could I use to confront a friend who defends the behavior of a gossip?

I would like a word or a phrase to use to confront a "friend" who glosses over the harmful gossip of another "friend." I think she defends the gossip because the gossip is influential in town. My friend says that she is being "objective." I want to tell her otherwise.

word-choice single-word-requests phrase-requests

I could unload a thesaurus on that question, but it seems like a lot of effort with little likelihood for satisfaction.

RegDwighт

29

Q: Single word requests, crosswords, and the fight against mediocrity

A call to action This topic has been brought up here numerous times before, most recently by JSBangs: I'm now of the opinion that single word requests should be either disallowed entirely or subject to much more stringent requirements. The reasons are as follows: We get lots of...

discussion appropriate-questions scope

Matt Эллен

We often close SWRs as not constructive or too localised

MετάEd

22:41

@Chris I take a very dim view of them, but that's because most of them are posted without making any effort to answer the question before posting. We get used a lot as a human dictionary/thesaurus.

Chris

My aim in joining this SE site is to improve my English, in the same way that hanging around the PHP chat and answering questions has noticeably improved my PHP in a short time. So I am more interested in your reactions than my own. Thanks :)

MετάEd

Going to English experts for dictionary entries is analogous to going to theoretical physicists to calculate your miles per gallon.

Chris

I also need to work on brevity

David Wallace

I'm sure you'll do that shortly.

KitFox

There are a few high-rep users who seem to think that brevity is for schmucks.

Matt Эллен

22:48

Schmucks are the soul of wit!

David Wallace

Riba ribi grize rep

KitFox

Schmucks are the covering of the...I'm not that witty.

MετάEd

@Chris I can also say that SE management also take a very dim view of single word requests unless the OP put a lot of effort into the question or it's a very interesting question from an expert's point of view

KitFox

Personally, I value concision.

Matt Эллен

Yes.

RegDwighт

22:53

►

Brazilians are not funny.

Matt Эллен

I think Cerb showed this yesterday

RegDwighт

My wife showed it to me just now.

It's the worst misuse of canned laughter since what I previously thought to be the worst misuse of canned laughter.

David Wallace

That makes no sense.

RegDwighт

It does.

Just not the one I intended.

Do you always have to notice things?

David Wallace

If I don't, someone else will.

RegDwighт

22:56

You must be new on Earth.

David Wallace

Born yesterday.

RegDwighт

You want things to be done, do them yourself. And welcome.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…