English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2011-03-29 (page 1 of 2)

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12:02 AM

Ok, "greetings", "who", "are"... but what the heck does "meriti" mean?

Hail to those who are deserving / who have deserved it!

Either from "meritus", "deserving", or as the past participle of "mereor", to deserve.

Oh! I should've been able to figure that out from "merit". :/

So who deserved what?

12:25 AM

Well, that I leave for the reader to determine!

Though I bet you'd deserve it!

3 hours later…

3:28 AM

-1

Q: "I can't do those kinds of things anymore now."

Is that sentence grammatically correct? What do you think of it?

grammar sentence

0

Q: "It's too late for me to do that now."

Is this sentence ok? Is now at the end of the sentence redundant?

grammar sentence

someone may need to be redirected to writers.se

0

Q: Is this sentence ambiguous?

I'm trying to write something sort of poetic sounding. Instead of memories let's discover the present that we wanted to search for. I'm thinking that maybe I should write the word "moment" after "present" to make it unambiguous. I would rather not though, because I don't want to limit the...

sentence ambiguity poetry

4:14 AM

@MrHen Yeah -- these questions are making me very cranky.

@Martha and a very late in-chiming. Yes, you have to have 600 votes on questions themselves.... I think I was at 1200 total votes on ubuntu.stackexchange before I got Electorate.

5 hours later…

9:42 AM

@Cerberus — Greetings to those who deserve it?

And what to those who don't?

9:54 AM

Greetings to you, o mighty @Robusto, whether or not you deserve it.

Of course I deserve it.

I deserve all the praise and none of the blame.

But where do I put all them blames, then? Me has so manies!

Give them to Dutch boys who have spoiled their wooden shoes with sparkles and spoilers.

Believe it or not, I knew you would mention wooden shoes.

Yeah, yeah.

@Reg: Have you ever been to America? Other than in the Rammstein sense, that is.

Oh by the way, I finished The Club Dumas a few days ago. Interesting.

10:11 AM

@Robusto No, much to my dismay. Many friends of mine have, and I was planning on visiting myself, but then the whole Dubya/TSA thing happened.

My wife and I make a point visiting a different country each year, but the US is not our top priority. Same for UK, for not entirely unsimilar reasons.

1

A: From which language has English borrowed the most words?

I initially though it was French, but it's a draw between French and Latin. There have been many studies on this topic, which came up as you would expect, with different percentages, but the conclusion remains the same. There is a paragraph about this topic in the Wikipedia article. One intere...

The OP asks an interesting question and Alain Pannetier has an interesting, in-depth answer, but the OP didn't even bother to uptick the reply. Rude.

I wonder if there are usage stats by influence; i.e. French and Latin may have the most words in English, but I bet the Germanic words get used most often.

@Robusto I don't think it's outright rude. What happens quite often is that OPs let some voting take place before voting themselves. Which is quite sensible, actually, as more often than not the OP is the last person to know which answer is correct and which isn't. I mean, that's why he's asking the question in the first place.

Besides, keep in mind that not everyone is on the site 24/7 like us. (This is more of a general argument, in this particular case it doesn't apply as the answer was posted at 8:36 and the OP was last seen at 9:02.)

OK, I see your point. Myself, I do upvote all useful answers. I wait to award a checkmark until responses peter out.

What is more alarming in this case is that this particular OP never accepts any answers.

Ha! And in fact 0 votes as well.

I retract everything.

nicholas ainsworth

505 6

usage word-choice grammaticality grammar verbs meaning past-tense

Ahh, crap. And I just answered one of his questions. I really should look at who is asking.

Off to Frühstück ...

10:26 AM

(Though the general argument still stands. It happens extremely often that I get 25 points rather than 15 when an answer of mine is accepted. I.e. the OP is the last to vote.)

@Robusto Mahlzeit!

2 hours later…

12:36 PM

Greetings.

I still find these statistics on word origins problematic.

They never explain 1. what their corpus is or 2. how they count exactly.

That is only to be expected, because the whole matter is inherently very problematic.

Yikes, is it generally considered helpful to edit quote marks into nearly every question as I witness @Billare doing right now?

What exactly did he do?

english.stackexchange.com/posts/18479/revisions

english.stackexchange.com/posts/18476/revisions

etc

Oh, I see.

I am not sure.

I tend to find the quotation marks helpful.

You don't?

I thought it might fall into the category of trivial edits that are discouraged.

but whatever

12:50 PM

I'm not sure.

I believe trivial edits are discouraged here somewhat less than on other .se sites, because this one is about the language...

Oh I must go. Bye!

1:13 PM

@RegDwight This is exactly how I upvote and accept answers on my questions.

-1

Q: Who discovered the Language English?

I want to know who discovered the language English. For example, who discovered the definition for the words? Say, nap means sleep. Who decide this?

I discovered English. Everyone who speaks it should be paying me royalties.

@Robusto who do i make the check out to?

I only take gold.

No checks.

boullion or coins?

1:18 PM

Bullion or coins, no bouillion. Must be 999 or 1,000 fine.

If only that question was the worse we got on Skeptics...

I can't be bothered to spell-check chats.

user image

Ed Guinness reminded me of that one. Works here.

i predict an early death for skeptics.se

1:23 PM

I predict a slow and painful death for them.

it's the sort of thing that a lot of people would say that they want to participate in, but it's not actually a good fit for the SE system, and the Q's they've been getting prove it

@JSBangs I figure once they run out of old, hashed out topics they will go crazy and start eating each other.

I want to start sybarites.se.

The thing is, that will take much longer than, say, with Atheism. Because that was just one topic. Skeptics has quite a few to run out of.

yet, but i'm hoping that the Powers What Be step in and shut things down before they actually get to cannibalism and human sacrifice

1:25 PM

@Robusto I think Gaming.SE is too broad. I demand a Kehrmaschinen-Simulator.SE.

@RegDwight Which reminds me... I should go ask them about who invented Calculus...

@JSBangs I entirely agree.

And there should be a philosophy.se as well. Because all philosophical questions have clear and unequivocal answers.

@JSBangs No one there has any domain-specific knowledge.

@JSBangs Well, few people do.

I'll be the first to jump in with "42".

1:27 PM

@JSBangs Cannibalism is perfectly okay and hugely popular.

77

Q: How can I tell if a corpse is safe to eat?

I am playing a human wizard, and I just killed a monster, leaving a corpse on the ground. How do I tell whether it is safe to eat this corpse? I leave the monster unspecified because I am interested in "how can I figure out whether this is edible," rather than whether any particular monster is e...

roguelikes nethack

@Robusto Sounds like a good target for a fake screenshot.

@Robusto a philosophy.se could work, because there is such a thing as a philosophy expert. there are ways to phrase philosophy questions objectively

@RegDwight one of my all-time favorite gaming.se questions

@JSBangs Am I God?

@RegDwight no. i am.

The only things that the skeptics there can answer is questions professional skeptics have already addressed.

1:28 PM

@JSBangs No i am, no i am, I do not like that no i am.

@JSBangs There are but the people who are asking questions are not likely to know anything about Philosophy and are mostly interested in deep conversations they have with their high-school buddies.

@MrHen That's why Philosophy SE must not deal in applied philosophy. No, "how does this apply to my life

Is this a valid question for Skeptics.SE? "Is there really a point to Q & A sites?"

@MrHen very true. the dillettante : expert ratio would be problematic, for sure

@MrHen Even though the greats are overrated, it should be about quoting them and regurgitating them

@JSBangs The truly uncurious dilettantes will be intimidated by technical language

1:30 PM

OTOH i found much the same thing on physics.se, where everyone wants to chime in with the weird thought experiment they came up with while they were high. these are the ones that tend to float to the top in the SE network activity. fortunately there's enough real physics questions on the site to keep things from bogging down

@Billare Ugh. There no longer anything objective about that. If that is what philosophy.se would look like I would steer far, far away.

@JSBangs Math SE evolved in thhat way

@JSBangs I think the theoretical physics site needs to go up to save Physics SE...the researchers attract the grad students, which attract the talented undergrads

@Billare Haha, I can only imagine how many 2 + 2 questions were asked.

@JSBangs Well, popularity is like that. On any site of the network. Look at our boobs and Chuck Norris questions.

@RegDwight chuck norris? i missed that one

1:31 PM

@RegDwight Hmm... I haven't seen the Chuck Norris one yet

22

Q: What does it mean, 'Chuck Norris can lead a horse to water AND make it drink'? Why is it funny?

Chuck Norris can lead a horse to water and make it drink. I read this on chucknorrisfacts.com. What I think this sentence means, is: Chuck Norris can take his horse to where the water is and then his horse will drink the water. So, what is funny about this? Isn't it something pretty normal?

grammar meaning fun

@JSBangs Lubos Motl is doing a pretty good job of helping the Physics site all by himself too...the guy loves answering questions.

@Billare math.se and physics.se definitely have the highest ratios of people with awesome names

@JSBangs Triple the rep of the next highest person.

@MrHen What do you mean? How is there nothing objective about quoting the greats? They're probably all wrong, but established disciplines have been established about the word; Kantian has a very precise meaning, that probably Kant himself didn't know about

@Billare Well, just wait and see how much Joel will pwn Jewish Life and Learning.

1:34 PM

@RegDwight however, i believe that i have the highest-voted single answer on english.se right now for the English formal "you" question, and that was a great question well within the core purpose of the site. unlike boobs and chuck norris.

@JSBangs Well, but that one was due to SuperCollider, too. Don't tell me that every awesome answer on this site gets 80 upvotes.

@RegDwight Will he? He doesn't seem to participate much in any of the sites...

@Billare He's been drumming up support for months.

@RegDwight More interested in the backend and running his company

@RegDwight Well, yeah, because he knows alot of Jewish people -- he was born in Israel, I think -- but that doesn't mean he'll participate

@Billare Ever listen to people talk about Nietzsche? They each have their preferred translation from a specific source and consider all of the others dead wrong translations. Interpretations of primary or secondary sources is half of philosophy and it is something very, very easy to screw up.

1:37 PM

@Billare Well, given how much he participates in this site, and Programmers, and OnStartups, I stick to my prediction.

@MrHen I shy away from people who talk about Nietzsche. There are so many people who like foreign philosophers who love to peddle in obscurantism.

@MrHen That's why I joined the Philosophy proposal, so I can get clear answers to my questions in conversational, non-academic language.

@MrHen I think the StackExchange platform really helps with that.

I want to learn more about Wittgenstein, Frege, and leftist philosophers other than..argh I forgot his name..Rawls.

hey, my test finally completed

only took 20 minutes

@Billare: Fair enough. I can see a point to making the site a place to learn about philosophy as opposed to practicing philosophy.

Hey, maybe we should have Pedants.SE. Then we could ask about the proper way to do, say, or appreciate anything — just imagine the seething resentment for all the accepted answers.

@Robusto Or Golf.SE where you want to keep your rep as low as possible.

1:41 PM

Skepticism isn't actually a topic, is it? It's more of an attitude.

They already have Code Golf, but it didn't work there.

@Billare — I doubt that this is true.

did codegolf get shut down?

@JSBangs Generally speaking, it's the answers to "soft" and "basic" questions that get upvoted most. On every site. Because if a question is easy, everyone and his dog feels entitled to participate. If a question is hard to answer, people might upvote the question, but they will be hesitant to vote on the answers.

I keep making the point in their meta that ANY question is on topic there as long as you have this "attitude."

Cold golf ... heheh. Golfing in Greenland.

1:42 PM

@Billare yes, and that's the fatal flaw. especially since the attitude required is so banal and childish

@Billare It is a topic but it is hard to define exactly what Skepticism is or why it needs to be its own "field."

@JSBangs They keep making hay about the "science" and the "null hypothesis"...as if economics and political science or basically most fields of human endeavor nowadays don't use null hypothesis -- to determine what is on topic.

good evening lady and gentlemen

Hi @Eimantas

The lady is currently out.

hmm... too bad

.)

1:49 PM

Why does Skeptics have so much traffic though? The Einstein got 10k views in like 2 days.

Well, Einstein is an extremely popular search term, I imagine.

@Robusto What's "This"?

> Skepticism isn't actually a topic, is it? It's more of an attitude.

@RegDwight I'm not sure I can believe that without more evidence.

@Kosmonaut Yeah, I mean, I am not even sure the person who said that exists.

1:53 PM

@Billare — Look at what the answer links to. This is that.

@Robusto Ah, cool! I didn't know that feature.

@Kosmonaut I am also quite skeptical about Fahrenheit and NY bagles.

I think I will post that as a question, to Borror's horror.

@RegDwight You may cite the Illinois Birth Records Registry as conclusive proof I exist. Pseudoscience SOLVED.

@Billare Well, sure, I may cite anything, like, all day long. But that still doesn't prove your existence.

@Billare bah. citing official birth records didn't work for Obama, and it ain't going to work for you.

1:57 PM

@JSBangs I heard Billare is actually Kenyan.

@Kosmonaut Actually, I'm Nigerian. Same difference.

— You have help from Dr. Johnson: 'After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- "I refute it thus."'

@Robusto LOL. Where is that from?

Boswell's Life of Johnson

2:01 PM

@Robusto Oh, I have heard of this.

Oh, oh, oh, lemme guess, Boswell: Life?

@RegDwight — The Commies win another one.

@Robusto My high school English teacher recommended it...I think.

Not a good showing from persons with Illinois birth certificates ...

I knew that St. Petersburg and Venice and Paris were in the US, but Nigeria?

2:03 PM

@Billare — Well, there are a whole lot of things you should have read before getting into a contest with @RegDwight.

@RegDwight To be clear, I am Nigerian-American.

@Robusto Nah, just read the Bible. It's been twenty years, and I've forgotten everything.

I think the difference between Niger and Nigeria is that at birthday parties in Niger they serve yellowcake. True?

@RegDwight A delightful little mocha blend, if I do say so myself.

@Robusto LOL. That's pretty funny, I'm using that.

@Billare Careful, mocha means "piss" in Russian...

2:06 PM

@Billare — Just remember where to send the royalties.

Yeah, send them to me, I will take them with me when I go visit Robusto's backyard.

Once the TSA is killed off for good.

@RegDwight — They don't like dedicated Commies. This could take a long time.

I'm just wondering what you did to get flagged.

@Robusto Seriously, I have no idea which should worry me most: that they won't let me in or that they won't let me out.

@RegDwight — They'll be happy to let you out. It was CCCP that wouldn't let people out.

@Robusto I don't think I'm flagged just yet. But that's the thing: you never know. Once you learn it, it is too late.

2:09 PM

@RegDwight — Well, your education cannot be complete without a visit to a Bob Evans truck stop in Knoxville, Tennessee. So sooner or later you'll have to make the pilgrimage.

@RegDwight How can I bring more etymologists here?

@RegDwight Where do they hang out? I have a feeling that most of the site is more interested in usage questions.

@Robusto I dunno, I'd rather watch FoxNews from the comfort of my own home. And by "watch" I mean "not watch".

@RegDwight — You have comfort in Russia? I thought that was disallowed.

That's what those crazy Chechens say, too.

@Billare That's not most of the site, that's most of the world.

@RegDwight Huh? Are you saying that the site has different preferences?

2:14 PM

Well, the site description clearly states, "for linguists, etymologists and (serious) enthusiasts". Not "for all the people who don't know where their dictionary is, or what the word dictionary means, for that matter, so they just ask it here"

@RegDwight — What, you haven't wiped them out yet? Buncha slackers.

@RegDwight Right. But sometimes, some of the seeming trivial questions bring up awesome answers. I really like when people go back in history to show how different tenses became different words or something like that.

@Billare Well, I am not strictly against dictionary questions per se. I am only against those questions if they destroy the site. But that applies to all kinds of questions.

2

@RegDwight Good answer. You mentioned in your mod essay that you were evangelizing this site. Where, exactly?

Mostly Reddit and offline.

And in my user profiles across the SE network.

2:22 PM

@RegDwight I see...

I try to collect questions that could be of interest to programmers, sysadmins, mathematicians, gamers, and post them on the appropriate sites as I see fit.

(Uhmmm... that is a good idea; I could do that for drupal.SE.)

Oops, go to go.

TTYL.

Ciao, all.

2:23 PM

Ciao you. :-)

(I hope nobody is going to tell me ciao is a Latin word.)

Ciao is a Latin word.

I knew it somebody would dare saying that! :-)

In fact, it is related to slave.

Well, it's related to schiavo, which is yet an Italian word. :-)

It's amazing to discover that ciao would be a dialect alteration of schiavo.

@Eimantas: there's one of them ladies. Hello @JPmiaou.

2:27 PM

Hi everyone; still reading to catch up.

(I can guess the dialect alternation is sciao.)

Hey sis!

thanks @RegDwight

And there's them another lady.

hello JPMiaou

hi @Martha

2:28 PM

Hello!

(Let's play with this new Firefox 4.)

0

Q: In older variations of English in history, how much evidence of written language samples are needed to define the grammar and usage of that period?

In older variations of English in history, how much evidence of written language samples are needed to accurately define the grammar and usage of that period? For example, if we want to define how English was in the year 500 CE, how much evidence in the form of parchments and samples must we ha...

He says he has problems registering, hence the 0% accept rate and no upvotes.

Believable?

@Robusto He's mentioned that before. I replied that it makes no sense to me and asked him what, exactly, happens when he clicks on the accept tick. He never replied back, or at least didn't at-mention me...

@Robusto yes, though probably PEBKAC

Nope, no answer to my comment.

0

Q: Is "is" an auxiliary verb?

John is working now. Is the verb 'is' in this example an auxiliary verb?

grammar auxiliary-verbs

And I even uploaded a screenshot to imgur.

I am so nice, geez.

2:38 PM

@RegDwight: he does show all the signs of having the kind of focused intelligence that misses the bloody obvious all the time.

@Rhodri Well, not everybody on Facebook is like that. No, wait...

@Robusto This came up in conversation the other day: apparently Douglas Adams said in an interview once that 42 was a reference to God playing dice. (Two six-sided dice have 42 dots total.)

Did he really say that?

It would be cool, but I need evidence.

I didn't notice the link was for a screenshot.

ಠ_ಠ

2:44 PM

Well, 42 reduces numerologically to the number 6, so three rolls of the dice represent the number of the Beast.

And, as I learned from The Club Dumas, all rows and columns of the "magic square" add up to 15, also 6 in numerology, so each side of the square is 666.

"Wowee. Pretty scary." — Bob Dylan

I would really like to know your opinion about The Flanders Panel. Then again, I don't remember my own opinion too well.

@RegDwight — Well, I'm not likely to share that with you since you have rebuffed all my attempts to discuss The Club Dumas with you. Although I may read that book in due course.

@Robusto I haven't rebuffed them, I only told you that I was stoopid. Which I still maintain.

@RegDwight — Stoopid is a choice.

Slightly Stoopid

Slightly Stoopid is an American band based in Ocean Beach, San Diego, California, who describe their music as "a fusion of acoustic rock and blues with reggae, hip-hop, and punk". As a band, they have released eight albums (two live) with their sixth studio album, entitled Slightly Not Stoned Enough To Eat Breakfast Yet Stoopid, released on July 22, 2008. The band was originally signed by Bradley Nowell from the band Sublime to his label Skunk Records while still in high school. History Slightly Stoopid was formed in 1995 in Ocean Beach, California by childhood friends Miles Doughty an...

I mean, you keep talking about stuff that you read just a moment ago. I read that stuff 15 years ago, and in another language.

@Robusto Meh. Them's only slightly stoopid. Doesn't count.

2:50 PM

Pfft. There's always an excuse for slacking.

Death metal or no metal at all!

Wimps and posers, leave the hall!

@RegDwight — Well, the title of their latest release should tell the whole story: "Slightly Not Stoned Enough To Eat Breakfast Yet"

See, only a smart person could come up with a title that long.

Weed is the great leveler of intellects.

2 days ago, by RegDwight

Laziness is the driving force behind progress.

Another superb question just in:

0

Q: is this a correct sentence?

Knowledge for pursuit of truth,is it a correct sentence

I mean... I mean... God, how should I put it... It isn't even a sentence!

Then again, huge props for using the correct tag.

2:57 PM

So when will @Martha be able to hand out Thwack badges?

What would the badges be for?

"Lump" - You have been Thwacked by Martha

Honestly, I think we should start rejecting proofreading questions outright. Up until now, I would just leave a comment, link to the FAQ that expressly forbids them, and hoped for the better. I'm thinking about changing my habits.

And make it a Coal Badge

@RegDwight There seems to be quite a lot of them.

Does that mean it is too easy to get twacked?

2:59 PM

@MrHen Yes, they are in infinite supply. I'm just hinting at the fact that my patience isn't.

@kiamlaluno Nah, I am thinking like Coal in your Christmas stocking

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