English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2011-04-05 (page 3 of 5)

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3:00 PM

If only we had moderators to keep this room under control.

This room is boring.

Perhaps the language of this room should be changed to something else.

@Cerberus Én benne vagyok...

@Cerberus I take offense at the word "offence".

@Kosmonaut —Word.

Ghagy Názgo?

@Kosmonaut: I take offence at the word Fahrenheit. I mean, what kind of a word is that?

@Cerberus — Beats the crap out of Celsius.

3:07 PM

@Cerberus Yes, but I intended offense.

If it came to a war, Fahrenheit would win.

@Kos: That shows was Offensies are like.

Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury which was first published in a shorter form as "The Fireman" (Galaxy Science Fiction, Vol. 1 No. 5, February 1951). The short novel presents a future American society in which the masses are hedonistic and critical thought through reading is outlawed. The central character, Guy Montag, is employed as a "fireman" (which, in this future, means "bookburner"). The novel's title refers to the supposed temperature at which book paper combusts. Although sources contemporary with the novel's writing gave the temperature as , Bradbury is beli...

@Rob: Fahrenheit would slip on an icy road because he miscalced the freezing point of water.

And die a horrible death.

"Offensies"? What are those? Cute, kitschy little Germans who walk around with their flies unzipped?

3:08 PM

Borshch that it was NOT called "Celsius 232.777778"

@Cerberus — Fahrenheit knows that water freezes at 32 degrees.

@Kos: That sounds kind of cool, the book, not your weird slang.

@Rob: Offensies is the official term for offense-writers.

@Robusto Oh yeah, Fahrenheit won so many wars.

Name one.

Hmm ... it could also be a misspelling of Offensees ... open seas?

@Fahrenheit: What if you were very drunk?

I think that would be Seeen?

Seeën?

3:10 PM

@RegDwight — Fahrenheit won the COLD war, dummy. Sheesh.

4

Haha.

@Robusto See, that wasn't even a real war.

A grudging +1.

@RegDwight — Says the Commie who lost.

@RegDwight That sounds like loser talk.

3:11 PM

Jinx!

Hey!

I will gladly pay @Kosmo a capitalist Coke for that Jinx.

So they are using Fahrenheit in the EU now? That's news to me.

Because in this country, we can AFFORD such trifles.

Does the noble Putin look like a loser? No! His well-trained upper body could wrestly Fahrenheit to the ground one armed!

3:12 PM

BTW, @Kosmonaut and I are even now enjoying free and fair access to soft drinks and other products of our capitalist, consumer utopia. Even bagels.

Um, your point being?

The EU will soon devour Russia too. THEN look who's laughing, stupid Americans!

I had a McDonald's BUILT-IN to my house!

@RegDwight — Stop flailing about. You lost the COLD war. Deal with it. The reason we didn't force Fahrenheit down your Commie throats is because we wanted to save the good stuff for ourselves.

Celsius is a crutch for people who can't remember the number 32.

3

The reason is that you thought you could roll Fahrenheit to Russia over the North Pole, but then it turned out the ice had melted, and the moloch of clumsiness fell through.

3:15 PM

You know, I am enjoying free and fair access to soft drinks and other products of consumer utopia, too, in addition to enjoying free and fair access to democracy and no access to Rush Limbaugh at all. Not bad for someone who supposedly "lost" the cold war, if you ask me.

(To be fair, we did sort of lose the Napoleontic war, which is why we have Celsius in the first place, I think?)

It's called the American Dream for a reason. In Europe, it's called Reality.

Hear, hear!

Hey stop starring those damn Fahrenheit obscenities!

Word.

I mean, we've been there before like a zillion times.

You should be glad that the Celsius gang is above that.

I know!

3:19 PM

If you don't know how to remember a freaking 0, no amount of having to remember a 32 will help.

Exactly!

I think we've won, by the way.

The enemy is nowhere in sight.

Celebrate good times. Come on!

We did take some heavy casualties among the starred lines. One was alas friendly fire.

Well, them's like that. If they are running out of arguments, they start throwing stars and stripes around.

Don't forget bombs.

Oh no wait, that was France.

3:22 PM

Well, to be fair, everyone and his dog likes to throw bombs.

True.

Hey is it true that hydrogyn nuclear bombs work with fusion?

OMG. Don't get me started on those ones. Those crazy Commie Russians almost evaporated the whole planet with one of those.

Oh?

I remember they blew a big one on Nova Zembla?

Precisely.

How fitting that name is...

New Earth.

Oh, is Zembla like Terra?

3:26 PM

Zemlya.

Ah.

Then why do we write it with a b? Or is that Dutch?

Yes, Terra. Earth. Soil. Land.

Земля. Not a single b in there.

Interesting.

Yeah looks like Zemlya... is there some palatalization in the e?

As in N(y)eva.

Е always palatalizes everything.

Right. But it is never so transcribed?

3:30 PM

Well, don't open the can of worms that are transliterations.

The German transliteration for Медведев is Medwedjew.

Ah, yes.

So they transliterate the last е differently.

Actually that looks much better than Medvedev.

But they can't pronounce it for the life of them.

Doesn't this spelling help them approximate it more closely?

3:32 PM

There is no such thing as Tanya, Katya, Tonya, Kolya.

What?

That's not an approximation. At all.

No?

How are those spelled in Cyrillic?

They might just as well transliterate it as Tano, Kato, Tono, Kolo.

Таня, Катя, Тоня, Коля.

No я?

Ah.

3:34 PM

There is a я, but it is not pronounced as ya.

We were taught that я is normally pronounced ya-ish?

Oh.

я я я я weisst nicht wie gut ich dir bin

Every single one of those names is a shibboleth.

Haha nice.

@Robusto zu dir bin.

3:35 PM

Then why are they spelled with я ? Is Russian spelling not very phonetic?

I don't know much about it except what the average tourist knows.

@RegDwight That ain't how the song goes.

@Cerberus Russian has lots of palatalization. The spelling reflects that. That's why you have two letters for each vowel and those crazy ь and ъ.

That being said, Russian spelling is most certainly not phonetic.

Those are crazy indeed!

Jan 28 at 15:28, by RegDwight

@kiamlaluno: Ever tried Russian? Everything is a schwa, except when it ain't.

So you have, say, молоко (milk) or водоворот (whirl), and you pronounce them as /məɫɐˈko/ and /vədəvʌˈro̞t/.

But I suppose there are some more complicated rules to pronounce я that would come closer to reality? As in, я is ponounced o after n, or whatever? I know Russian has heavy vocal reduction.

3:39 PM

@Cerberus It's not pronounced as o, I was exaggerating.

It's pronounced as an a there, and the preceding consonant is palatalized.

Okay, but if я follows a vowel, it is pronounced like ya, isn't it?

So in a sense it pretty much amounts to a ya, except that if you just write ya, people will mispronounce it.

@Cerberus Yes. Much like ё, ю, е.

Ohh, you mean people will pronounce it like a vocal y?

Can someone recommend me a good movie?

Then they have never heard Russian.

3:41 PM

@Cerberus No, they pronounce it as /j/.

6

Q: Good movies for learning English

Sometimes, I find it easier to learn so many English vocabulary and expressions and usage by watching movies. If you're a non-native English speaker, you probably noticed some of them that help you learn. What are good movies you watched that are great for learning English? (Expressions, usage, ...

@Cerberus well, I ninja edited the question!

Du, du liegst mir im Herzen.
Du, du, liegst mir im Sinn.
Du, du, machst mir viel schmerzen,
Weiss nicht wie gut ich dir bin.

I forgot what IPA j stood for: is that English y in you? Or j in Jew?

As in you.

3:43 PM

OK.

So they will pronounce the ya in Novaya and in Zemlya identically.

So what if the difference then between palatalized n and n + /j/? They sound pretty similar to my untrained ears...

Du bist alles, was ich habe auf der welt,
Du bist alles, was ich will.
Du, du allein kannst mich versteh’n,
Du, du darfst nie mehr von mir geh’n.

@Cerberus That's the thing. Untrained ears. That's like me trying to understand the difference between the four a's in Chinese.

Q: Can X have a decrementing effect on Y? Or is that not the same as "decreasing" / becoming smaller ?

3:44 PM

Oh, in Zemlya... so how would you pronounce the y there then, in real Russian?

@Reg: Of course. But I was just wondering whether current transcription is optimal.

/zʲɪmˈlʲa/

There is no Y in there. There's a palatalized L and an A.

Note how the Z is palatalized, too, but you don't write it Zyemlya.

Hmm I think I don't know enough about palatalization. Let me find the word on Forvo.

3:47 PM

@Kosmonaut Not available in my country. In my country, the Hoff is on TV 24/7.

Hoffgerät is actually a slang term for TV in Germany

@Kosmonaut First time I hear it.

@Reg: Can you name a common word with palatalized l in Russian?

Okay, ruin my joke then!

He was on TV Total just yesterday.

@Cerberus любовь.

3:48 PM

Thanks.

You Dutch have a very special problem with L's.

@RegDwight with a bonus palatalized [v]

You can't even get the German ones right.

@JSBangs An /f/, actually.

Do I have a problem?

@RegDwight of course. that was a typo, actually -- as i was repeating it to myself i was saying [ljub@fj]

3:50 PM

Can't we?

We just use them differently.

I think.

Even the L in Holland is much harder in Dutch than it is in German.

Do you have another Russian word where palatalized l isn't the first phoneme? I find it difficult to hear.

@Cerberus колесо.

@RegDwight where does the stress go in that one?

Last syllable. /kəlʲɪˈso/

3:52 PM

But we can do the German l. In fact, if you are 50+ and of an old family, you will probably use it in some words.

Linda de Mol can't even pronounce her own name the German way.

After what, 60 years?

I would use German l in the phrase heel leuk, sometimes.

Then again, Linda de Mol...

Well, if I ever meet you in person, I will let you say "Linda de Mol" in German ten times in a row. I'm very curious how many you will get right.

As you go lower along the social ladder, the Dutch l will go from near-German all the way down to Slavic!

Well, there's a language continuum between Dutch and German anyway.

I think Kosmonaut briefly mentioned it once.

9

A: Where do accents and dialects come from?

What do we mean by "dialect"? First of all, let me say that the distinction between "dialect", "slang", and "language" is fuzzy, arbitrary, and fundamentally a social (cultural, political) construct. Two dialects of the same language can be mutually unintelligible (e.g. Moroccan and Baghdadi Ar...

3:55 PM

@RegDwight likes to ruin other people's jokes because he can't tell funny jokes himself.

@Robusto Absolutely not!

I'm not saying I would get it exactly right; but in my experience it isn't much more difficult than, say, most German vowels, which sound more "pure" than Dutch vowels. Maybe you should listen to a speech by the Queen. Nobility is often accused of German-ish pronunciation.

@Tom "X has a decrementing effect on Y" sounds odd. Also ambiguous. Do you mean Y decreases as X increases?

@Rhodri no, I meant that X causes Y to decrease

@Cerberus Well, Beatrix is fluent in German, for all I can tell.

3:59 PM

@Reg: Is she? Well the thing is that very old-fashioned Dutch, which sounds affected now, is closer to German pronunciation than modern Dutch. So it is probably the combined effect of her father, her husband, and her upbringing that caused her affected accent.

But I know some other older people who sound almost as affected.

@Rhodri I changed it now to simply X reduces Y

@Tom I was about to suggest that!

@Tom: That sounds efficient!

Has anyone else used the chat on a smart phone? The interface I pretty decent.

What, does that work?

I had no idea.

4:00 PM

@Kosmonaut I'd have to have a smart phone to do that. Or, you know, any phone.

Well, the browser interface... Not the iPhone keyboard :)

@Kosmonaut It keeps misspelling duck.

It refused to load on mine I think, but then again I was using Opera Mini.

Duck off!

See?

4:01 PM

I know, i and u are too close together.

You just can't type duck, it will be displayed as duck instead.

hunter2

What are those asterisks?

Does that look like duck to you?

No.

4:02 PM

Cue Reg for a hunter2 quote from probably two days ago max.

Apropos no, did we find out that person's name?

I mean, Cher's?

I never get tired of hunter2.

Mar 10 at 21:40, by Kosmonaut

It's like Monty Python, you just reference it and your mind goes through the whole thing again and you enjoy it.

That's not 2 days ago, you Commie Traitor with your summer time and stuff.

Hah.

Your clock is off by a few weeks.

4:04 PM

No, Cher is still a mystery.

Okay. But you did promise to be thinking of her now.

I mean, five minutes have long passed. Even on your Commie-Traitor watch.

No, is long past.

Hey how am I a traitor? Who defended Celsius?

Cher is having her beauty sleep at the moment.

Ah yes. Sorry. I tend to hate everyone just for fun.

I admit that I find it difficult to parse or analyse or whatever the l in колесо.

Anyhowz, before Cher, were you thinking of Beria or what?

4:07 PM

Not Beria.

Darn.

If anyone is bored to the extent of .. well.. the uttermost amount of boredom possible... and feels like... checking someone's essay (A) --- do not hesitate to say so! Just saying :)

Was he born in the 19th century?

@Cerberus I guess so.

Hmm ok. But it still wasn't he.

4:07 PM

@Tom You can always post your essay on Writers.SE.

But I thought CC was not an option?

@RegDwight that's the thing, it must stay private.

A piece of advice: if you want mere language help, you could just replace a few words from a sentence if you want to know about a certain construction.

29 March 1899

I did the same when I was asking for help on my friend's PhD proposal.

Lavrentiy Beria

Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (or Beriya; ; ; 29 March 1899 – 23 December 1953) was a Georgian Soviet politician, and chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus (NKVD) under Joseph Stalin. Beria was the longest lived and most influential of Stalin's secret police chiefs, wielding his most substantial influence during and shortly after World War II, when he simultaneously administrated vast sections of the Soviet state and served as de facto Marshal of the Soviet Union in command of the dreaded NKVD field units, responsible for anti-partisan reprisal operations on both friendly ...

Note how he is not Byeryiya.

4:09 PM

@Reg: Lukcy bastard! But, no.

@Cerberus I did that now, finished everything except for the conclusion. The only issue is that I cannot ask about mistakes that I am unaware of

Yes the y after r certainly sounds suboptimal...

So a quick glance would be highly appreciated, but understandably very unlikely

@Tom: I understand. I just don't feel qualified to proofread economic stuff. Besides, I must be going back to Amsterdam in a few minutes.

@RegDwight — I bet you have posters of that guy in your house. It's, like, a shrine to NKVD.

4:11 PM

@Tom No offense and no harm meant, but you aren't Chuck Noland, are you?

Who?

@Cerberus Tom Hanks for the incognoscenti.

@Robusto How much are you willing to bet?

@RegDwight did chuck noland have internet?

@Cerberus I understand, thanks anyway

Oh...

Well, he did have Watson.

So he could play Jeopardy all day.

4:13 PM

Heh

@RegDwight — You ready to throw down with me, Dude?

(In fact I hardly feel qualified for proofreading Dutch. And I'd probably be too demanding, muwahaha...)

@Robusto Yes. All in. You're not winning this one.

@Cerberus well the fact is that there's not going to be anyone checking it otherwise, so it'd be much and much better

So many scientific papers are badly written, that is, much less clear than they could be. See the Modernism Generator.

4:14 PM

Wow, so confrontational.

@Robusto he's probably dutch too.

No he's a commie.

Mar 13 at 15:21, by RegDwight

Thank God the meme doesn't go like prachtigez lullenz hebbenz or something.

@Reg, @Rob, I want the YouTube videos of this.

@Rhodri No, you most certainly don't want a YouTube video of prachtige lullen.

I'm not sure they even allow it.

4:16 PM

What the fukc was that quote about... no I don't want to know.

Harharhar.

@RegDwight Now I'm really intrigued

You and your "prachtig"... lose that word!

@Rhodri No you are not.

Makes anything worse.

Brb.

4:17 PM

@Cerberus But it's so prachtig!

Okay, okay. Goede lullen.

Tom is utterly speechless.

Not sure what to say, just that I prefer your English!

This is an English channel after all, although it was renamed to New Holland this afternoon. :)

See, and Rhodri wanted a video!

@Tom It was easier to rename it than to get rid of all the rusty bicycles.

True, all decisions should be made like that, would make life much simpler (I hope noone saw that!). :)

Then again, you would just leave your bicycles everywhere, claiming the land for Beatrix.

@Tom Noöne most certainly did.

Heh seems like first impressions are a good indication after all

4:25 PM

See, when I misspell a word, @Robusto is immediately Gewehr bei Fuß.

Yes, they really are that mad.

But when it's anybody else, him doesn't carez.

Great I spotted an immense spelling mistake but cannot edit the post anymore.

Haha.

can we get some mod lovage on closing this stupid question rather than arguing over the Dutch?

1

Q: Is the truth a privative?

A privative is the absence of something, and as such doesn't exist. So cold is a privative, as it is merely the absence of heat. This question is inspired by this answer about a single noun for an honest person. It seems to me that the truth is merely the absence of all lies, and as such can be...

privatives truth

4:28 PM

By the way @Reg, did I mention I am now at the same street as where your beloved idol used to live?

@Cerberus Linda de Mol?

@Cerberus do you reside in het gooi?

You live in your parents' house now?

Yes, and yes, and I am there from time to time to study.

She almost crashed into my mother, a few years ago, but she was very friendly and apologized profusely.

She was speeding.

Do they prepare for the next Domino Day in that street, too?

Then stomp. Like, real hard.

4:31 PM

What? Does Linda have something to do with D-day?

OH I gotta go, catch train.

Bai!

CU.

I gotta go in a few moments, too.

Bye!

1 hour later…

5:44 PM

Ugh. Just lost 700 points on MSO.

Looks like I will never reach 3k there, let alone 10k. Might as well give up.

@RegDwight How did you lose points?

Well, I just posted a link to my site on every single question. Nobody had told me that that was not allowed!

Seriously though:

9

A: How about a message letting us know the reason for large changes to our rep?

We amended question rep on meta so it is in line with the rest of the sites. So now, upvotes on questions are worth 5 points. Additionally, we are planning another change to rep that restricts the amount of rep you can get from questions only, see: Should we cap reputation gained from questions...

Every single time I come close to reaching 2900 rep on MSO, TPTB come up with new creative ways to set me back.

Hi @Mitch

@RegDwight Ha, bummer

Very much so.

In related news, TAFKAArthurRex lost 100 points today.

5:58 PM

Why is that?

Flags.

@RegDwight which puts him at, what, -50?

I think the Popeye answer was at -9 before I noticed it was destroyed

I also noticed he has a set of similar questions on cooking

The Popeye answer recurred at least once that I spotted today.

Is he a disaffected former employee of SE?

5:59 PM

He seems to be really, really good at wording titles to catch people's attentions

I wish the actual questions were worth something

Then he'd be great for the site

As it is...

@JSBangs I dunno if there's a way to tell, now that the rep graph is gone.

@Rhodri I deleted that one.

@MrHen Cooking is where it all started.

Mar 3 at 18:50, by RegDwight

13

Q: Is it acceptable to glean questions from other cooking sites?

I've noticed that AtillaNYC has been copying questions from other cooking sites verbatim. Is this acceptable and/or encouraged? Edit by Dinah: My original question is above except that I did not include any names. Below is an edit by hobodave as is the user link above. I'm not removing his ed...

discussion etiquette

Heh

I hadn't thought of Googling the questions he asks

Perhaps that is why he was asking us not to Google them?

Hehe.

That would also explain the catchy titles

"Please don't copy your answers from the same place I copied the question from!"

6:05 PM

Hmm...

quora.com/Where-does-the-term-cold-calling-originate-from

7

Q: Where does the term "cold calling" originate from?

Did it exist before The Telephone - has it always been associated with 'sales'? Here is an example.

phrases etymology

Yep

Unless Quora is pulling questions from SE

I found another one with no answer

6:41 PM

Someone was saying the rep graphs are available through Googlle now?

@Robusto Huh what?

Can't remember where I saw it.

Maybe on MSO.

6:58 PM

Mar 15 at 22:14, by Martha

Didn't say articles are simple, just well-defined. (If you could substitute "one", use "a". Otherwise, use "the".)

@Martha: now dig this:

3

Q: Is there a reason the British omit the article when they "go to hospital"?

Why do British speakers omit the article in constructions like "go to hospital" or "go on holiday"? Pretty much all American speakers would rephrase those as "go to the hospital" and "go on a holiday", I think. Is there any good reason, or forgotten sense behind those words that might explain why...

british-english articles

German would use articles in all of those cases. English has dropped them. And yet, we get along.

@RegDwight Perhaps one side is simply patronizing the other?

the linguistic term for this is arthrousness, but i'm not finding any good references on the net at the moment

@MrHen My point is, if you can't wrap your head around the absence of articles in, say, Russian, then just look at all the cases where English uses no articles, either. (But closely related languages do.)

Oh. Okay.

So when @Robusto says things like this:

Feb 10 at 15:13, by Robusto

@RegDwight: It is "ahead of time" ... this is one case where someone who comes from The Land of No Articles would be legitimately flummoxed.

he's off the mark, as it is "ahead of the time" in e.g. German.

So this has nothing to do with coming from The Land of No Articles, and everything to do with coming from The Actual The Land The of The Articles.

In a nutshell, let's go shopping!

7:08 PM

@JSBangs: Don't you mean anarthrousness, then?

Arthros is Greek for joint, article.

@RegDwight My quoted comment refers to figuring out which article to use. It's of no help whatsoever in figuring out whether to use an article at all.

@Cerberus arthrousness, anarthrousness, it's all the same

?

I thought you were referring to the dropping of articles, but nm.

@Martha But that's where it starts to get interesting! Besides, this:

4

A: "The (Cobra)" vs. "An (elephant)", articles with nouns denoting a class

You can use either. There is functionally no difference between the following sentences: The elephant will flee when confronted by danger. An elephant will flee when confronted by danger. Moreover, you can also use the plural with no article to say the same thing: Elephants will fl...

Yes, that's our friend vgv8, sorry for that. But even he had some golden moments.

@RegDwight Every time I see that question I think I ought to edit it for grammar, but then I look at it and just throw up my hands in disgust.

7:14 PM

I start twitching.

@Kosmonaut You start seeking out a rare bird?

*being

Bird-being? Being a bird? Linda de Mol? What?

Eh?

Genau!

7:24 PM

Tessék?

Um, az, I guess?

0

Q: Does english.stackexchange.com itself follow American or British (International) usage?

Someone edited my queston, moving the question mark outside the quotation marks. This is not correct usage in the U.S., as it is in International English. Which convention does english.stackexchange.com itself follow, when an issue like this arises?

that ought to be fun!

Haha, ain't Jimi from NJ himself?

He is, in point of fact!

Jimi Oke, New Jersey

9.5k 1 8 39

usage word-choice meaning phrases grammar prepositions single-word-requests

7:39 PM

Being a bird. I really have no idea what my point was. Probably wan't any.

Now I need to reboot. I am using 2.7 GB RAM for some reason.

Bye!

@Cerberus Where I live, "some reason" is usually spelled "Firefox".

7:51 PM

16

Q: Eeeek! I sense an Eeeek question about missing a unanswered tab!

We are considering replacing the Unanswered top level tab, with Review. Still pending are a few performance tweaks, but once that is done we would like to make the switch. The trouble is that there is functionality many people depend on, unanswered my tags no answers and so on. We have th...

discussion unanswered-questions

@RegDwight — Way to quote me out of context, and apply my statement to a language other than the one I was talking about.

@RegDwight — Great, now we have meta-Eeeek!

@Robusto Um, that wasn't my intention at all.

@Robusto Pretty much why I posted it.

"Great, now they even start to meta eeeeking on meta... what's next? – Gamecat 13 hours ago"

@Robusto I am not applying your statement to any language other than the one you were talking about.

You were talking about English, so was I, and we're still talking about English.

@Fx 38 minutes later, case dismissed.

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