English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

@Kit Show them a live demo of zombo.com.

@RegDwight I love you! That's brilliant!

:D You can do anything at zombo.com.

Not to mention I've sent him the demo link about 5×thousand times.

Oh, this one's good too. His security measure for emailing me someone else's login and userid was to write it on a piece of paper, take a picture of it, and email it to me from his iPhone.

Sorry, but you know I had to edit the times sign.

You can email anything with an iPhone! Anything at all!

3:05 PM

@RegDwight No offense taken, although I did intend the frustration expressed by jamming all the words together.

My thought was to maybe not give me someone else's credentials, but hey, wtf do I know?

I'm just a programmer. He's a research professor.

Perhaps I should set up a message with the most useful Unicode signs and pin it. Kind of like they did at GLU.

in German Language and Usage, May 25 at 8:07, by Stefano Palazzo

„äöüÄÖÜß“

I just need to get my ASCII code sheet from my office.

151

I'm camped out in a hive for the summer.

ù

What?

8212

3:07 PM

╣

I'm not giving more hints than that.

I am quite undone.

—ù

I suppose I should pre-emptively install Skype.

Warmer.

3:08 PM

—¶?

I can do these: äöß etc. but I can't get an umlaut on an 'n'. :(

Just as warm.

Or diaeresis or whatever it is properly called.

ù¶?

@z7sg diacritical?

Җ

3:10 PM

Um... this game is less fun than working!

n

ő

ű

Wow this chat doesn't like the trema.

۩

@MattEllen What the heck is that?

3:10 PM

Trema (diacritic)

A trema (from the Greek τρῆμα trêma; plural tremas or tremata) is a diacritic consisting of two dots ( ¨ ) placed over a letter, most commonly a vowel. (When that letter is an i, the diacritic replaces the tittle: ï.) The trema is usually used to denote one of two distinct phonological phenomena: diaeresis ( ), in which the trema is used to show that a vowel letter is not part of a digraph or diphthong; and umlaut ( ), in which the trema denotes a sound shift. The diacritical mark is itself commonly referred to as either a diaeresis or umlaut, depending on which role it is fulfilling. ...

ah trema that's the word

@RegDwight Positively ~~tremulous~~ trema-less.

n̈

:P

That looks... misaligned.

Wow! How do you make that rotated d?

3:12 PM

@Martha according to charmap: Arabic place of Sajdah

@Martha Looks fine from here.

Secret unicorn know-how. Can't possibly reveal.

@Rhodri thwack

×

@Kit alt+0215

3:14 PM

×

Ah, thanks.

np :)

See? Misaligned.

See? Lies.

I've sent him the demo link 5×thousand times already.

I think this is approximately the right time to ping @michaelmyers

3:17 PM

My n̈ is somewhere between those two.

Chat is particularly incomprehensible today. This is good.

N̈̈öön̈ë can understand it.

@z7sg The loose trema showed as a square box for me, in the traditional font manager "Yer what?" style. But then I'm on Ubuntu.

(Same here, except with Matt's message)

It is incomprehensible indeed. What diacritics are we having trouble with?

Yes.

3:22 PM

@RegDwight Yeah, that too.

Ah.

Äh.

FTFY.

@Rhodri So am I.

Where's the trema? Why you eated?

Bad doggie, bad.

@RegDwight F̈̈T̈̈F̈̈Ÿ̈

3:24 PM

Puter ate!

I don't know what your evil acronyms mean, you know that.

Oh, I remember now.

May 13 at 12:22, by RegDwight

"Fixed that for you."

This chat totally prevents me from finishing reading that article on procrastination.

6

And I'm not making that up.

I'm at the "Mr. Chips" part right now.

Still like 50% to go.

Mmm, chips.

I just ate a bag of honey barbeque chips.

I am playing "beat the clock" with session variables today. It's fun!

@Kit do you have a countdown timer?

Nope. Fast and loose. Makes it more exciting that way.

It goes like this: Uh-oh. Broken. Can I fix it before the session expires? Ready, steady, GO!

@Kit you like your women like you like your session variables?

3:31 PM

It's "ready, set, go." Hmph.

@MattEllen Slight and mischevious?

Oh, fast and loose. Um, no.

Yes.

Maybe. It depends.

:D

jolly good

@Martha I prefer the British version.

@Kit me too

au revoir mes petite pois!

@MattEllen jolly good? What are you, a 75 year old Brit?

Oh, you are a Brit.

I keep thinking you're from California.

You really must change your hair color.

☺

3:33 PM

@Kit Tsk. A 75-year-old Brit would have said "Jolly good, what?"

@Rhodri Jolly good, whot?

Bloody well right.

It was funny how people kept reversing "what?" and "pardon?" in the Wikipedia article on U and non-U English.

Rather, old stick!

@RegDwight You need to read faster. I've read every article on that site, plus the one blog post I could find, plus a couple of the articles on the Links page. All before coffee, no less. (Of course, that's because I haven't gotten around to making any coffee yet, even though it's almost noon... but nevermind that.)

3:39 PM

@Martha Haha brilliant.

@Martha Procrastinating when you should clearly be getting on with making a nice cup of coffee eh?

in War Metal Tyrant, 2 hours ago, by RegDwight

Sorry, I'm in four other rooms right now. Also, at work.

What is this "work" that you speak of?

I dunno, I have yet to check.

Abomination, I say!

Best not speak its name.

3:42 PM

F*CK! F*CKING project leader! Back later.

Yes, that is an important task.

Thanks, Reg. I had to explain why I was laughing out loud.

@Kit Wow. I wanna become a project leader now.

BTW thanks for the poem @Rhodri.

Jul 14 at 16:01, by RegDwight

@Kit No flirting in this chat.

s/Kit/Jez/

@RegDwight It seems as if you believe by quoting yourself you give an ordinary statement an air of authority.

3:51 PM

Apr 11 at 15:06, by RegDwight

Yes, and yes.

@RegDwight Which poem was that?

Nintendo vs. Atari.

You posted a link, I never thanked.

@RegDwight hey, i'm not the one getting into intimacies between me and the project leader.

@Jez Once you become the project leader, which is your stated goal right now, getting into intimacies between you and the project leader will get rather trivial.

@RegDwight Oh, "When I Was A Boy"? No problem, I enjoy being a filk evangelist.

3:56 PM

@RegDwight so? i didn't say i wanted that anyway ;-)

Trivial, but no doubt frequent.

Brings a whole new meaning to NSFW.

Q: Abbreviations: What does NSFW mean?

Right. Another gen-ref question we have to close.

6

Does NSFW mean anything else other than "Not Suited For Work"?

abbreviations

Q: What is the technical term for the area within a fort?

@RegDwight hey I wanted to ask... Is it ok if I edit this image to make it cleare?

4

I would like to know what is the name of the area within a trace italienne fortification, i.e. item 38 in the image here below (which unfortunately was omitted in Wikipedia):

technical

Inside the question

@Alenanno Of course.

Q: Since "Jap" is a racist/derogatory word, what's an appropriate short form for Japanese/the Japanese language?

4:02 PM

0

Since Jap is a racist/derogatory word, what's an appropriate short form for Japanese/the Japanese language?

word-choice abbreviations politeness

Is 'Jap' (especially when plural) really that derogotary?

Why hasn't that been downvoted into oblivion?

'The Japs are building fewer nuke plants now' sounds ok for casual usage

@Jez That's what he initially asked. Look at the edit history.

10k users will also see a deleted answer that addressed the original version of the question.

well then the premise of the question is now wrong

@RegDwight look at it now

4:06 PM

Vewy nais.

How's that for procrastination. :P

Argh, it's that late again?

procrastination?

I gotta go.

See ya

@Jez Oh hey, so I was going to bring up that question.

Now that's what I call a quickie, @Kit.

4:07 PM

There's a lot of offensiveness going on there.

@RegDwight Oh don't start.

@Alenanno OT isn't it?

I thought about voting to close

TTYL. Over and out!

bye

@z7sg uhm... thinking

there are enough fenced-off words in English without people getting pissy over 'Jap'. any Japs here? I'm gonna call you Japs.

@z7sg It's a bailey. Why close?

4:08 PM

@Kit bailey?

@Alenanno Yeah.

as in 'motte and bailey'

@Kit What does it mean there? lol

@Jez Right.

@Alenanno It means an enclosed courtyard within a castle. What does it mean there?

ah ok

4:10 PM

Well, technically within a motte.

Hence motte-and-bailey.

@Kit I think the bailey is an enclosed area outside of the motte

The actual motte is quite small, it's like a mini castle on top of an earthwork

Motte-and-bailey

A motte-and-bailey is a form of castle, with a wooden or stone keep situated on a raised earthwork called a motte, accompanied by an enclosed courtyard, or bailey, surrounded by a protective ditch and palisade. Relatively easy to build with unskilled, often forced labour, but still militarily formidable, these castles were built across northern Europe from the 10th century onwards, spreading from Normandy and Anjou in France, into the Holy Roman Empire in the 11th century. The Normans introduced the design into England and Wales following their invasion in 1066. Motte and bailey castles w...

The earthwork is the motte.

So the bailey is on it.

Within the walls.

Yeah see the bailey is outside, I'm not sure that applies to the other situation.

The walls form what is called a keep

A reconstruction of Carisbrooke Castle in England during the 14th century, showing the keep built on the motte (top) and the bailey (bottom)

Not a great diagram tbh. A simple motte-and-bailey is basically a stone keep on a hump of earth surrounded by an enclosed field (bailey)

I thought close because this is a topic for Castles.SE

Whoa, there is a Castles.SE? :D

4:16 PM

Well, of course there isn't! But there should be! Shall I propose it?

No kidding. I always thought that the bailey was on the inside.

Here is a better diagram just to ram my point home:

@z7sg I love Middle Ages and I loved Stronghold ahah

Anyway, we are no closer to finding the word! I suspect an actual expert in military fortifications is needed.

What category can I put my castles proposal in??

Ah who am I kidding it's a silly idea? :(

Propose it anyways. Castles are important.

4:20 PM

Well, if it is, only few will follow. But if you like it, why not? I'll follow it.

4:35 PM

Frig. I feel like H&B I've edited my answer so many times.

It's ward I think. That's what I was confusing with bailey.

Interesting.

Q: Referring to oneself in first vs. third person in online profiles

2

Suppose I am writing a post/blog, how should I mention myself? For example, Ray Wenderlich (Site Admin) Ray is an indie software developer currently focusing on iPhone and iPad development. He’s the founder of a small iPhone development studio called Razware. Now another example from ...

writing-style internet

Any migration votes on this?

@Kit Ward looks like the one!

I still think bailey might work. I wish I could read Dutch.

@RegDwight My comment didn't get upvoted but obviously I think it should migrate.

4:43 PM

Well, I was thinking Writers, not Programmers.

Okay I have voted now.

@z7sg It's not exclusive to programmers, though. He mentions Facebook and Google+ profiles as well.

I think it's marginal even for Writers, but it's certainly not EL&U

I agree that Writers makes more sense. Of course, being at that nice comfortable 101, I cannot vote.

@Mana It's not exclusive but I thought he was aiming for a professional blog profile with his examples and so on. That would fit into programmers. Well what do I know about progs though I don't get on with that place!

4:46 PM

Hm. It would? I'm unconvinced. If you take away programmer and replace it with cook, does it belong on Cooking.SE?

I am pretty sure Mark and Anna would kill me for migrating it to Proggers.

@RegDwight Hell if they kill you I'll kill them back doubles!

aww, I saw a poor ickle run-over cat on the way home. :-(

@Jez Hey, I saw one of those once when I was jogging! It has been forever burned into my mind.

@Jez Did you scrape it up and inter it?

4:48 PM

funnily enough, no

►

@RegDwight Heh. Turns out I've already voted on it.

Well, two votes from @Martha seal the deal.

@Mana I've killed a few animals with my car (I even ate one, a pheasant, mmmm) so I'm somewhat inured to that but I drove past a dead biker once and I was surprised how badly that hit me. I felt sick and for some reason I suddenly needed to smoke a cigarette.

@Alenanno @Mana area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/33804/castles

I created it anywayz.

@z7sg I saw a biker wipe out hitting a dog. That is still with me.

5:01 PM

@Kit That's awful... makes me angry actually. Was it a small dog?

I crashed my bicycle trying to avoid a dog. For Frigg's sake why can people not be responsible enough to properly train and control their animals? >:(

cant really do that with cats.

it's curious, they're usually excellent at getting away from moving things

me especially

@z7sg This was a motorcycle, and the dog was something like a boxer. It was really sad. The guy ditched sideways and both of them dragged probably 50 feet or so. And he pulled himself over and had the dog's head in his lap, trying to comfort it until the ambulance came.

Sometimes the trick is not to try to avoid.

Cats are especially like that.

Cats are usually quite aware of their surroundings, they like to know what's going down. They see moving things and get out the way... usually. Dogs just bound about like 5-year-olds, oblivious to danger... well some dogs do.

english.stackexchange.com/questions/35016/…

Hey, that sounds familiar.

5:04 PM

Feb 10 at 15:55, by RegDwight

Ur in my internets stealing comentz!

Ayyy.

Evening, MrD

A: How to introduce someone...

0

I have find a job in the near future in hotel resort and it consist to welcoming people very well in the restaurant because it is a business meeting. I would you like to find the best way for welcoming people properly in a 5 star hotel. Could you help me for this deal because I never did this kin...

Sweet.

Q: What's a synonym for "written form"?

-1

Every word has a "written form". Like i'm not saying spelling. for example, the "written form" of oi can be OI or oi or OIII. In this case, oi has 3 "written forms". What's that word exactly? "written form" just doesn't seem right, though it's the current one that I can think of. In fact I can...

vocabulary

@z7sg following! :)

5:08 PM

@Rhodri Howdy.

@Kit Am I the only one who fails to understand this question?

@Kit Judging by the -1, no.

@Alenanno Safe! :D

@z7sg baseball term?

@Rhodri He says he edited it. groan

5:09 PM

@Kit Haha, this is such a moving target.

@RegDwight So I don't get hit by a road train.

Hint @everyone: if you don't know what the OP means, don't guess and answer. Vote to close and comment.

4

@RegDwight Not much more rep to go for me before you can be relieved of my flagging where close votes would do.

@RegDwight What is the close-reasons priority chart we must consider when closing? The order to "check", I mean

@Alenanno Naaa Jamaican bredrin

A: What is the technical term for the area within a fort?

5:13 PM

I hate when FF answers the questions I've already answered. It's a good thing his doesn't really answer the question.

0

I think the whole area within the palisade might just be the castra, which seems to basically mean the whole fort, as opposed to the three primary divisions within the palisade (praetorium, praetentura, retentura) and the various roads/walkways (via quintana, etc.).

@Kit He's talking very specifically about Roman forts there, which is entirely not what the OP asked.

@Rhodri Also, it means the whole fortification, which is not what the OP asked either.

@Alenanno I don't have a chart handy, but if your ability to understand a question is inversely proportional to the number of times you read it, or the number of edits/comments the OP leaves, then it's a NARQ, plain and simple.

I wonder why it was missed off the wikipedia article

@Kit Two reasons to downvote, then.

5:18 PM

@MattEllen Me too. I wish I could read Dutch so I could track it down for sure.

@Rhodri And we only get one turn. :(

We should just call it "the middle" and be done with it

@MattEllen How about "creamy center" instead?

Or just "nougat"?

@Kit because nougat isn't the centre?

nougat is a thing by itself

OK, fine. Creamy nougat center.

5:21 PM

win!

Also, I know the answer now

bah

no I don't

looks like it's called a hexagon

maybe that's just cos it's hexagonal lol

Just ask the Pentagon what they call their hexagon.

cringe

I suppose it's info@pentagon.us

Why the hell does pentagon.com redirect to japan.org?

5:37 PM

:-O

darpa.gov is full-o-fail too

Q: Where did the word "umpteenth" come from?

I like this question

6

Where did the word "umpteenth" come from, and why is it a "teen", if it is supposed to represent a very large number?

etymology

Umpteenth is one of my favorite words.

6:01 PM

7pm BST, and the evening shift arrives. Hi all!

HELLO!

@Rhodri Um, it's still me.

@Kit Yes, but @nohat, @restday and @simchona just showed up all at the same time. I thought it deserved a remark.

Right. I'm pretty sleepy.

rest_day

my day is just starting :)

6:06 PM

Besides, it beat trying to figure out where $CLIENT's RTSP server generates RTCP.

Q: What's a synonym for "written form"?

-2

Every word has a "written form". Like i'm not saying spelling. for example, the "written form" of oi can be OI or oi or OIII. In this case, oi has 3 "written forms". What's that word exactly? "written form" just doesn't seem right, though it's the current one that I can think of. In fact I can...

vocabulary

Why is this still open?

It contains "Like i'm not saying spelling." as a "sentence."

Q: What is the proper name of a "line account"?

Reopened FYI

1

I've come across having to translate the Danish word "stregregnskab" to English. The direct translation would be "line account", but I seem to recall there being a proper name for this sort of account. For the record, "stregregnskab" means an account such as the one shown below, usually used for...

single-word-requests phrase-requests translation

@Kit I am pretty certain he is looking for what the Germans call Schreibweise, except that the English word for that is, um, spelling.

@RegDwight But like i'm not saying spelling.

You know?

@Kit If you think the question has problems, why not just edit it?

@Mana I have no idea what he's trying to ask, or believe me, I would.

6:15 PM

@Mana The problems with that question go beyond mere editing.

I don't understand his example. Is "oi" a word?

No, it's onomatopoeia.

@Mana I have a focal brain lesion that prevents me from pronouncing that word.

I can repeat it ad nauseam though.

It drives me into a rage every time I see it.

yip yip yip onomatopoeia bite

He's basically saying that he wants to know the formal way to say the "written form" of an exclamation, like "owch" or "oi" or "whassup" or "yip"

@Mana Now that is an all-new interpretation.

Here's your Non-Sequitur-of-the-Day Award!

6:18 PM

I don't think so. He didn't mention that in his original question.

In his original question he didn't mention much of anything.

Seriously though, @Mana, we do have to see this in perspective. This user has a long history of poor questions.

Some of which you don't even see cause they got deleted.

@Reg I spelt ad nauseam wrong. Would you fix it for me, please?

lol

You mean ad museum?

6:20 PM

So a question about the meaning of 'bailey' has led to a 'Castles' proposal :-)

Fixed.

@RegDwight Thank you.

@Jez Yay! It's all my fault that there is a Castles.SE proposal!

@RegDwight What does that have to do with anything? If he has a long history of poor questions then it's clear he's trying hard to use the site properly.

@Mana Maybe yes, maybe no.

@Mana You might be confusing this with having a short history of poor questions followed by a long history of superb ones.

6:27 PM

@RegDwight Fair enough, but I don't think this is a troll.

Nobody here said he were a troll.

Wait that was a dumb point because yeah

let me try that again

It is pretty obvious that this is just a pineapple.

fair enough.

7:17 PM

@RegDwight I'm confused...

More than usual...

5

Q: Where can I learn slang?

I'd like to find a good website or good books that have English (British and American) slang. I need detailed explanations and if it comes with some pictures for more information that is even better. This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a go...

slang learning

Yes?

What is at all significant about this?

Who said it's significant? It's just plain off-topic, as far as I can tell.

Also, that regex type stuff in mfg's comment is just ugly - I doubt even a computer could parse it.

Oh, you mean that comment in the question.

7:20 PM

@Martha This question exists because it has historical significance

@MrDisappointment (Right, I just noticed that)

@Martha Yeah.

@Martha That notice is no guarantee against deletion. And hey, lemme see who can vote to delete...

I was actually waiting for him to reply with something along the lines of: Its history is significant, and it says that.

Seems like he might not be having such a bad day, after all.

@RegDwight I'm out of delete votes for today. Besides, I think it needs to be closed for two days before it's subject to delete votes.

7:22 PM

It's just that, look pips, there I am once again thinking that I'm overmoderating, and then you go and say that I am undermoderating. :P

waiwai933

@RegDwight In the future, could we place those messages at the top of the post? They're a little easier to spot there.

@MrDisappointment I think the "historical significance" in this case is simply "it was asked a long time ago when the paint on this site was still sticky/we didn't know better".

@waiwai933 Check today's chat cast.

Rebecca specifically requested to put them at the bottom from now on.

@Martha Yeah, I figured, I should just stop beating around the bush...

I had to move them down in all the questions we already had them in.

7:24 PM

Can we delete this thing?

waiwai933

Oh, I see. (I'm still reading through the old ones). Still, I personally like them at the top.

We don't want Google indexing all of the 'this shouldn't even be here' messages to show as the description.

@Martha Yeah, all I'm saying is that I am in berserk mode already. If you want super-über-berserk, you gotta go berserk yourself.

KILL IT WITH FRICKIN' FIRE!!!

@RegDwight I already went as berserk as the site would let me. :)

waiwai933

7:27 PM

Since RegDwight doesn't seem to be that opposed to deletion, and you guys all want it, any problems with me deleting it?

@RegDwight If I flag it, will you kill it?

Ah! no. no problem

@MrDisappointment Huh wha? Ah sorry, 2leit.

Do note that we have more historically significant stuff.

So go flag that one if that strikes your fancy.

Well, my flag went through, but it's gone - I'm happy 'nuff.

@RegDwight I will when I get some time to search. Do you mean there are existing ones with that message? Or that I should go figure which ones are historically insignificant (yeah, you mispelled insignificant)?

7:43 PM

Existing ones with this message.

Sorry, too busy right now to just go hunt for them myself.

They are locked anyhow.