English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2014-03-26 (page 1 of 7)

« first day (1231 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (3699 days later) »

12:08 AM

@MrHen Oy, that's a bit obnoxious.

@BraddSzonye Yeah. I was digging through the Unanswered list and recognized the bizarre example.

And thought, "Hang on..."

Heh.

12:38 AM

@BraddSzonye I'm not sure because I don't speak Japanese, though I can pidgin Chinese a bit. I think this を正す part is tricky. 正 should essentially mean "right" or "correct" (I assume that it's the same in Chinese and Japanese.)

My guess: 英作文 ~ English composition; 参考書の ~ (of) reference (book); を正す ~ ? (correction?)

@DamkerngT. Thanks. Based on feedback from the original poster, it might mean Correcting Errors in English Composition Manuals.

That is, it's a grammar book peeving about other grammar books. :)

A-ha!

That book must be something. :-)

I sort of had a suspicion that's what it meant, but it seemed like an awfully persnickety topic for a book, so I was favoring other translations.

But the OP seems to confirm it (and seemed a little miffed that I didn't believe him previously)

0

Q: "This box of matches is empty"

There are several Japanese books teaching Japanese students how to write in English. I found this example in 『英作文参考書の誤りを正す』 (Correcting Errors in English Composition: A Reference) by Michio Kawakami and J.D. Monkman. The authors of this book claim that this sentence is incorrect: This box of...

grammaticality meaning-in-context

I think it is, indeed! Thank you for letting me know the true meaning of the title.

Oh, I think we got that question on both ELU and ELL yesterday.

Yep.

It got closed here, so the dude reposted it on ELL, then it got reopened here.

12:45 AM

I see, you edited the one on ELL and added the link to the book. Thank you very much.

He and I got into a bit of a tiff, which I felt bad about, so I tried to help out by improving the question and answering it.

Your answer is good. Upvoted.

Thank you!

I remember now, I've seen your comment to the question already. :-)

No problem. A good answer is a good answer. I'd love to upvote good answers.

1 hour later…

1:51 AM

user image

Can barely get past 30k these days.

Look how neatly I had everything stacked up!

Those stupid 4 blues in a row ruined everything.

It's only a game.

ONLY!

2:08 AM

No! Not here too, everyone is going crazy over 2048

Only.

I thought this was a more high-brow intellectual kinda place :P

Et tu @Cerberus?

@terdon Et ego te petam, Caesar.

But I'll have you know that my high score is 68k.

All the intellectuals are playing 2048

Meh.

Threes is better!

2:16 AM

Threes is for philistines.

Tsk.

Better than Israelites.

Three is a magic number. Two is not.

At least the Philistines are an Unknown Sea People, you hear!

Exactly.

Anyway, I feel comfortable in my gender. Every time I pee outdoors, anyway.

Well, they did become the Carthaginians

2:18 AM

No. The Phoenicians became the Carthaginians.

> Ceterum autem censeo Carthaginem esse delendam

Phoenician, shmoenician. They all said shalom.

Or salaam.

@Robusto Same. Or any time I don't have to bear children.

The Sea Peoples, or Peoples of the Sea, are thought to have been a confederacy of seafaring raiders who could have possibly originated from either western Anatolia or southern Europe, specifically a region of the Aegean Sea, who sailed around the eastern Mediterranean and invaded Anatolia, Syria, Canaan, Cyprus, and Egypt toward the end of the Bronze Age. However, the actual identity of the Sea Peoples has remained enigmatic and modern scholars have only the scattered records of ancient civilizations and archaeological analysis to inform them. The Sea Peoples are documented during the la...

Anyway, the author of that malediction was a man censor who went by the punishing name of Cat O'Nine Tails.

Or Cato the Elder.

2:22 AM

Cato the younger wasn't allowed to stay up late enough for that.

@Cerberus That too. Or when I don't have a period. Or don't have to worry about my hair being just so, or makeup, or fuss over my appearance, or go clothes shopping endlessly, etc. But I have nothing against those who do, mind you. Very much the opposite, in fact.

@Mitch Cato the Toddler was a real handful.

@Robusto All of the above.

And men are attractive and fertile for longer, relatively.

Relatively. But women live longer.

A little bit.

Women are fertile; men are virile.

2:24 AM

They didnt have time outs back then.

Well, able to procreate.

Procreation is better than amateur creation.

Men

Just

Still, women seem to be proer at dealing with their creations.

Proer? Is that some kind of Dutchism? Like Boer?

Pro is one of those words that can't be made comparative. You have to use more in front of it.

A Boer is one who has more B.O. than other folks.

2:27 AM

Yeah. More Proer to you.

To be honest, it's all about probity.

@Robusto really? Reference? Or should I read the wiki article above?

@Cerb, are you still dabbling at sleep?

@Robusto I really hope that was not meant to be sheep, but given the conversation here the past few hours I wound't be surprised.

> According to Roman sources, Phoenician colonists from modern-day Lebanon, led by Queen Dido (Elissa), founded Carthage.

2:31 AM

@Robusto Huh, thanks, had no idea.

That's why we go over this stuff.

@Robusto sigh

Robusto.

Probusto.

@Robusto Sounds like a professional wrestler

When I made a little linguistic joke, the idea is that you chuckle, instead of teaching me things I obviously already know, for how else could I make such a joke?

2:32 AM

Or sculptor I guess, take your pick

Yes. I'm the face. @Cerb is the heel.

@Cerberus Hey, he can still teach us(me) plebes!

I'm sure you know that "proer" is not a word!

Depends on the keyboard I'm using

Romanian.

2:33 AM

@Cerberus Make it funnier and I will. The problem is, you have so many misspellings, I have to wonder. If you were more scrupulous in your spelling, your jokes would shine forth much brighter.

In his defense, proer @Cerberus is not even writing his native language and we all know he has trouble with English :P

When I make a typo, chances are that the best remedy is, "hey, a typo", rather than, "as large ad is not correct: in a comparison, you have to use as twice".

♫ Wenn ich ein reicher Mann wäre ... ♫

But I'll grant you that I make many typos.

At least I try to correct them immediately.

And I blame Autocorrect, OKAY!?

@Cerberus You make so many typos your blood type is Type O.

2:36 AM

It's Never My Fault.

Wouldn't my type be OVER 9000, rather?

@terdon Hmm wait, I don't get that. You may explain it.

Cue the Beatles: ♫Oh, oh, yes it is, yes it iiiiiissss ♫

Oh man, this is going downhill...

See? There went another typo.

Going downhill? I think we're in some kind of trough already.

Meanwhile, you are all Threes tiles that my eyes are trying to slide into each other, I'm that tired.

@Robusto *the Underworld.

2:38 AM

@Robusto yeah, and it's slanted

@Cerberus Well, we're in the same time zone and I bet I'm less sober than you.

So I don't buy that excuse.

@Cerberus True story: I had to drive somewhere the other day after playing 2048 for an hour, and when I got to a traffic light I expected all the like-colored cars ahead of me to merge.

Only for a second, but the feeling was that that's how the physics should work.

I guess you'd call that 2048 satiation.

@terdon Hah! What did you drink?

@Cerberus 'ti punch and raki

Like when I was a kid learning chess, I'd be eating my dinner and thinking that a piece of potato was en pris because it was a knight's move away from a floret of broccoli.

@Robusto Haha, I assume you pushed them hard? But they wouldn't budge, and the people kept screaming, so you pushed harder?

2:41 AM

@Robusto Oh man, I've had that with chess, seeing the possible moves of people. "OK, if she were a knight she'd..."

Jinx.

@terdon Ti? Ti who?

:)

Haha.

The Ti'Punch (or Créole Ti Punch, pronounced with nasal 'o' as in French "on"; literally "small punch") is a rum-based mixed drink that is especially popular in Martinique, Guadeloupe, Haiti, French Guyana and other French-speaking Caribbean states. It is very similar to the daiquiri, which is usually identified with Cuba. The drink is traditionally made with rhum agricole, lime, and cane syrup; white rum, other fruit flavors, and sugar can be substituted. Service It is usually served as an apéritif before starting a meal, both as a matter of tradition and because the drink itself is ...

2:42 AM

I see we have managed to drag down Terdon into our pit of incomprehensibility.

user image

@Cerberus I was born there. Been trying to claw my way out ever since.

Oh, yeah?

Where is your part of the pit located?

When a Dutch mortgage is "under water" they mean it literally.

@Cerberus Dunno, can't see, the walls are too high.

Quite.

Oh.

No windows?

2:44 AM

@Cerberus Nah, I use Linux. drumroll

(The normal sea level in that cross-section is the second highest btw. The highest is high tide.

@terdon I think you mean rimshot.

@terdon Hah, good for you.

ouch...

Hey, the other day I read that there was another program that would run on Linux! Besides Wine.

2:45 AM

rimshot always sounded vaguely vulgar to me. No idea why.

Same.

@Cerberus pfff, in my field, most things won't run on Windows.

@terdon rm -r drumsounds

Oh, yeah?

What's your field, Linuxology?

@Robusto :)

2:47 AM

Or what is the Greek stem of Linux?

@Cerberus Bioinformatics

Ah.

Computational biology

Well, I am all for Linux. In theory. Just nimby.

To each his own. I'm mostly over my missionary stage. Still spend most of time on SE on Unix & Linux though.

2:48 AM

Good.

@terdon My son does that, but only because he's the only scientist at his company who can program.

I may switch to it some day. But that day is not today.

@Robusto Ouch, poor guy.

I'm actually a biologist by training, computers I've picked up by osmosis.

Nah, he digs it. And everyone's in awe of him.

Computer knowledge anyway

@Robusto Yes, it's easy to confuse people into thinking the easy things are very hard. The flip side is that they often think really hard things are easy. sigh

2:49 AM

He's a biologist (more into neuroscience) first, but he likes computers.

Oh? Where does he work?

@terdon Yeah, you don't have to tell me that. I code for a living.

Ah, yes, preaching to the choir.

@terdon One of the major pharmaceutical companies in Cambridge. Naming no names, but they're Swiss-owned (like which pharma company isn't?).

Massachusetts I assume?

2:51 AM

Not England.

Or not Old England, anyway.

We should start referring to England as Old England. Back formation. Because New England is so much more prominent these days. And the Red Sox won the World Series again. And other reasons, too numerous to go into here.

@Robusto But, but, what of the English language?

That's all been taken care of.

Who was that twit who had an about me something along the lines of "I speak English, from England the original home blah blah"?

Just because it was invented in England doesn't mean it hasn't been perfected in America. And destroyed in, say, India.

Pretty roundly destroyed in the states as well, to be fair.

Though I once had to convince a Scottish friend that Where has Dave went is not "Correct English".

2:54 AM

Je vous en prie

Actually, the worst spoken English I've heard was in England.

@Robusto Hey, I'm not French, I just live there!

It's been pretty well mangled by hiphop.

Yorkshire.

I can't understand them peoples. Or them's in Tyneside, neither.

I know, I went to university there so I'm OK now, but when I first moved there I couldn't understand a word out of their mouths.

And English is (one of) my native language(s) dammit!

Dad's American, Mom's Greek.

2:57 AM

Yeah. It doesn't seem fair that you see someone and you know they're speaking English but it might as well be Urdu for all the sense you get out of it.

That's why God created RP. So the British could understand one another.

Haha.

It is indeed divine.

Like chocolate cake and parmesan.

Not together.

Thank you for that clarification.

Just to be sure.

in The Frying Pan, 3 hours ago, by Jefromi

Name a food which goes with neither garlic nor chocolate!

This not an easy question.

@Cerberus Carrots.

« first day (1231 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (3699 days later) »

Transcript for

Mar '1426

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…

Not for the faint of heart or those easily triggered by Englis...

phrase-requests pronunciation single-word-requests synonyms

join this room
about this room

00:00

06:00

12:00

18:00

all times are UTC

site design / logo © 2024 Stack Exchange Inc; legal

mobile