English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2015-07-24 (page 2 of 2)

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cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

2:00 PM

@Mitch I wish it weren't. But how could it not be?

How much more progress could we make if cultural lessons were part of the collective consciousness?

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 someone recently (here?) was annoyed that people nowadays aren't totally aghast at the terrible massacres that the (X, Y or Z) perpetrated 2000 years ago, as much as the massacres that took place in the 20th c.

Intellectually of course, but it just doesn't feel as important.

I think of it like Hume's description of miracles. There were so many in the past and fewer nowadays because we're not there (or know someone who was there) to see the (non) miracle happen.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Heh.

The price of adaptation, I suppose.

@Robusto That's really not that bad for a children's song. Far less saccharine than I expected.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@Rob I don't remember hearing about Raffi until maybe ten years ago.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Robusto yeah. But they're listening to the CD of the exact album I had on vinyl as a child.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

2:08 PM

The music of my childhood was Top 40 and whatever Dad played on the jukebox. I used to go out to the bench swing in the backyard and listen to Casey Kasem.

I must shower.

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Casey Kasem has that effect on me, too.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

:D

@TRiG WTF, XKCD is TL;DR?

That was my reaction.

2:27 PM

user image

See, XKCD, that is how to bring a point across.

Fucking XKCD. Fuck XKCD.

Matt E. Эллен

Is that Ronald Regan smoking?

so it is

Also shilling.

@FumbleFingers: It goes back farther than that. — Robusto 18 mins ago

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

user image

@Robusto not pictured: the gang.

Matt E. Эллен

For me pdf 2nd most popular. third is Buddhism and fourth is mp3. Islam is first.

2:43 PM

@MattE.Эллен I have lapsed into apostasy with respect to PDF. Please don't kill me.

Matt E. Эллен

Say 3 hail Jobs and something something Catholic joke

Nice!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I get Islam, PDF, Judaism, Catholicism, Buddhism, in that order

user image

Matt E. Эллен

Europe is more consistent than North America ;)

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

2:47 PM

user image

Haha.

Weird.

Matt E. Эллен

although the distance between Canada and the Dominican Republic is a lot further than UK and Netherlands

@MattE.Эллен Theoretically there is no distance between Canada and the DR. In practice, though, there is.

Matt E. Эллен

I guess we need to practice harder

3:26 PM

@Cerberus same here.

hi

r, accelerated curing techniques may be used to give an early indication of 28 day strength.

plz tell me what is this "28 day strenght"

Matt E. Эллен

have you googled it?

no

Matt E. Эллен

you should try that.

it's a term from a specific field

lol

I was reading a text about medicine but in fact it was about engineering.

Matt E. Эллен

3:42 PM

ah :)

28-day strength is what Cillian Murphy demonstrated in 28 Days Later.

Hey

Hey tchrist II.

But I am off to mute commies.

That's not fair. I've got enough with a twin at the bar I work at.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

4:00 PM

@NicholasJ. You could upload an avatar, then you wouldn't be a twin.

Try this one:

gravatar.com/avatar/…

Matt E. Эллен

lol

4:14 PM

Funny.

4:25 PM

@RegDwigнt Perhaps based on region...

4:55 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I don't get any of them. Well, I sorta get PDF. It's mainly gzipped postscript and some extra attached font files?

@Mitch Pray harder?

prays to PDF

sorry... prays to P*F

huh... all I get back is 'file corrupted'

pfft

You can't say your prayers weren't answered.

My ordering is PDF, Islam, Buddhism, square feet

blasphemy

mine are foot shaped.

Matt E. Эллен

pee dee eff

prehaps Bowdlerise it to pad foot

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

5:15 PM

Islam, PDF, Buddhism, square feet.

In a course on quantum physics, the instructor told the class that the final would include an essay on the history of the field. Tao, then 12, blew off studying, and when he sat down for the exam, he was stunned to discover that the essay would count for half the grade. ‘‘I remember crying,’’ Tao said, ‘‘and the proctor had to escort me out.’’ He failed.

Poor baby, quantum physics at the age of 12 :-/

Matt E. Эллен

Tao tried to take a shortcut, but that was not the way

Why did they name him Tao if he was not The Way?

Matt E. Эллен

Maybe he had a twin called Zen

If there's anything I hate it's a crybaby Zen master.

5:40 PM

starring Johnny "Dogen" Depp

I read that as "someone is on the internet"

or equivalently " "

In other news Hawking is going on reddit

I read that as "Hawks are gnawing on rabbits"

And as all rabbits know, "if wishes were hawks, rabbits would fly"

Matt E. Эллен

5:59 PM

which is why rabbits don't wish for anything, just in case

6:27 PM

gah, stackoverflowexception

in ninject

Matt E. Эллен

stop using so many stacks

pain to work with big solutions

no fun finding the culprit among 5 000 klasses

medium sized at least

Matt E. Эллен

that's a lot of classes

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@Rob this here site is pretty interesting if you can get past the text size and purpleness.

6:46 PM

@JohanLarsson I went to the Institut Suédois yesterday, in Paris.

We had drinks in the garden.

nice

The garden stand was called Hej.

So immediately I thought of you.

I promised to go visit friends last saturday, been working 16h per day since then :)

Poor you!

Or not?

it is fun

6:49 PM

We had crips with dill and something like graslok.

Which I assumed was bieslook in Dutch.

gräslök

That!

gah, third edit

Yup the thing I typed, except with diacritics.

Gräs = grass, right?

bieslook is correct

ÿep

6:50 PM

And lök is garlic/bieslook/etc., right?

why are you so sloppy with them dots?

Look in Dutch (but only used in Flanders).

lök is onion

Err, well, I forgot where the dots should be exactly.

Ah, I see.

vitlök is garlic, 'white onion'

6:51 PM

Of course onion is also a look in Dutch.

So look is the name of the family in Dutch/Flemish.

Onion = ui.

Which is unpronounceable to foreigners muwaha.

user image

user image

You can borrow chairs and books for free.

what is it?

Only French books, though.

oh, nice

The garden of the Institut Suédois.

what did you read?

6:55 PM

In fact, nothing...I only saw that they were free on the way out.

But at least I learned a word of Swedish from the bloke selling drinks: something that sounded like to, "two".

Matt E. Эллен

does it mean two?

två?

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Nice.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@Robusto voulez voulez voulez-vous

oui

7:12 PM

@Cerberus zwo

@MattE.Эллен they're superstitious about wishing

@JohanLarsson like a stack of cards.

or rather, like a big lego building that was built inside a bottle

or a watch that was created by shaking a bunch of watch parts in a shoe box.

wait...

you are on fire

@MattE.Эллен Yes.

Matt E. Эллен

cool :)

@JohanLarsson If that means "two", then yes!

@Cerberus put it out!!

7:17 PM

@Mitch Put it up.

@Mitch But if one rabbit's foot brings good luck, why don't four bring 4x good luck?

like a water treatment system were every few months you have to redo the ppipes or the sewage treatment method or the biology of poop.

@Robusto ha ha it was good luck for the rabbit if you have one

wait...i remember as kid people having a rabbit's foot key chain. aside from being pretty morbid (and hopefully fake) was that a thing like pet rocks (someone just had a goofy idea and started marketing it) or did everybody just have rabbit foot keychains?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

I'd rather carry a shrunken head.

In the David Lodge novel "How Far Can you Go?" there is the sentence "sensible as the sun disappearing behind a cloud" appears. This seems like an unusual/oldfashioned use of the word sensible.

I have one!

Oops. I've said too much

7:23 PM

Meaning, something that can be sensed?

poetic

needs context, but I read it as 'sensible' as 'makes as much sense as'

@FaheemMitha what was the sentence or so before?

@Mitch I'll have to look for it. One sec.

"But always there came a point of withdrawal on the part of the girl - silent, unexplained, unacknowledged, yet as sensible as the sudden disappearance of the sun behind a cloud, signifying (she was morally certain) that the girl in question had discovered Boys, or possibly, a boy."

This isn't standard usage, I think.

But I think it means something one can sense.

The context is young ladies in convent schools. And their communication (or lack of it) with nuns.

I wonder if convent schools still exist in the UK. They probably do.

Matt E. Эллен

7:49 PM

@FaheemMitha ODO marks that type of usage as archaic.

@MattE.Эллен which usage? then don't use the archaic one. Use the one I gave, which is 'makes as much sense as'. it's metaphorical.

@MattE.Эллен I figured. But what is the usage in question, exactly?

From theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/24/…

@FaheemMitha also, convent schools (boarding schools at convents) are rare in the US. Roman Catholic parochial schools are still common, but the staff has a lot of non-nuns now.

One would have thought that the cheeky little tinker would be grateful that his fetid fly-blown little country had been visited by emissaries of her gracious majesty, Victoria , empress of the greatest empire the world has ever seen and that she had condescended to rule over such a swarthy mass of loin-cloths and dung-gatherers and teach them the techniques of a forward defensive stroke and the LBW rules.

Many of them still do not know how to pass the Port !!! Damn his britches !

Poncingham Talbot-Pratt

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch "the withdrawal makes as much sense as the sun going behind a cloud" doesn't seem as fitting as "the withdrawal is as able to be sensed as the sun going behind the cloud", IMO

7:53 PM

I'm guessing this is satirical, but am not completely sure.

Matt E. Эллен

@FaheemMitha the one I linked to

@Mitch Sure, but I was talking about the UK.

@MattE.Эллен Oh, sorry, missed the link.

Matt E. Эллен

no worries

archaic Readily perceived; appreciable:
it will effect a sensible reduction in these figures

@FaheemMitha 'sensible' is not used there

7:54 PM

This one? ^^

Matt E. Эллен

@FaheemMitha yes

@Mitch Unrelated.

@FaheemMitha oops, I missed that part.

Yes, that's what I thought.

I said "something that can be sensed", but "Readily perceived" is better.

@FaheemMitha but it makes perfect ... ahem... sense in that archaic meaning without trying, without having to think of looking it up.

7:55 PM

@Mitch Sure, one can infer the probable meaning. But I was just struck by the usage.

What are 'LBW' rules? Cricket?

Matt E. Эллен

leg before wicket, yes, cricket

@FaheemMitha native speakers got worked up over 'a tarmac' yesterday so I guess it is warranted

Though Lodge much of the time writes like a pop novelist - he's fond of talking about sex, for example, and is rarely serious, his writing is full of interesting stylistic quirks. I wonder how much time he spends polishing his sentences.

@Mitch Hmm. Where?

@MattE.Эллен Isn't India the better cricketers?

7:57 PM

@Mitch Dunno. Someone told me the other day that India and the UK have similar ranking. Something called the Ashes?

@MattE.Эллен also, is that a bad thing?

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch are they? I don't follow cricket. But we did invent it in their country, so probably

@Mitch depends on whose side you're on! If the umpire judges LBW, then the batter will be out.

@MattE.Эллен wha?? I bet you'll claim next that tea was invented in India.

Matt E. Эллен

@FaheemMitha The Ashes is between the UK and Australia

@MattE.Эллен isn't it dangerous to put your leg anywhere near the hurtling wooden missile?

7:59 PM

@MattE.Эллен Oh. Never mind, then.

@FaheemMitha search for tarmac

@Mitch Ok. Here, you mean?

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch yes, although batters legs are heavily padded

Cricket is boring.

Matt E. Эллен

Yes it is

8:00 PM

It would be more enjoyable if the chicken legs were heavily battered.

mmm fried chicken

Matt E. Эллен

mmmmm fried thought jinx

I don't see any recent hits for tarmac in this room.

@FaheemMitha not chat, main site

chat.stackexchange.com/search?q=tarmac&room=95

@Mitch Oh, sorry.

2

Q: Is the term "walking across a tarmac" grammatically correct?

The term in context: Mr Obama and his daughter Sasha, 14, walk across a tarmac in New York on Friday. Shouldn't it be walk across tarmac or walk across the tarmac or walk across a road/footpath. I would think that tarmac is not a word to be preceded with 'a'.

8:03 PM

When a word is marked as archaic, what does that mean, exactly? That it is not generally used in speech, or in writing, or in both? Or something else?

@Mitch I think "a tarmac" is wrong.

Though apparently that was not the concensus on the site.

I agree with WS2's first comment.

@FaheemMitha 'hardly ever used that way nowadays, if ever'

@FaheemMitha it sounds 'off' but in the circumstances is grammatical.

Matt E. Эллен

9

A: Archaic vs Historical in dictionaries

I've had an email from the Oxford University Press, and this is what they say: Archaic: very old-fashioned language, not in ordinary use at all today, but sometimes used to give a deliberately old-fashioned effect or found in works of the past that are still widely read. Historical: stil...

WS2 speaks BrE. that may very well be the usage in UK. But in the US 'the tarmac' als means the area where the planes are parked.

"the tarmac" is similar to "the sand". As in, walking across the sand. You would hardly say "walking across a sand".

@MattE.Эллен Thank you.

Matt E. Эллен

yes, tarmac is a mass/uncountable noun

@FaheemMitha no probs

8:06 PM

@Mitch I wasn't aware that there were authorities here.

So, would Shakespearean English be considered archaic? Say if I were to use naughty in the sense Shakespeare used it?

tarmac is a surfacing material, but also by extension the are that is so surfaced, or by extension the area that used to be surfaced that way but currently is built some other way (concrete)

Matt E. Эллен

saying "there's a crack in the tarmac" is fine. Saying "a tarmac has a crack" is not.

@Mitch Yes, I understand the logic of the extension. Still sounds weird, though.

so for the latter two meanings it is a place, and therefore can be treated as a count noun. The caption writer was stuc because it is very idiomatic to say 'The president was out on the tarmac..' but since the object had not already been specified, the writer felt compelled to say 'a tarmac'

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch I see. I've not heard that usage before!

8:09 PM

@MattE.Эллен That leads e to believe that it is an AmE/BrE difference.

Matt E. Эллен

aye. seems that way

written for the Guardian by an American correspondent.

Matt E. Эллен

those crazy i-mericuns

@FaheemMitha lots of things sound weird but because rule based are grammatical.

The Shakespearean sense of naughty (meaning, roughly bad/wicked, I think) is not mentioned here at all:

oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/naughty

So maybe it isn't even archaic, then?

8:10 PM

@FaheemMitha lots of pieces of it, yes.

No, it is, actually. I guess I'm going blind.

Choice number 3.

@FaheemMitha then people would be confused. 'zounds' is better because no one uses that today (unless they're playing D&D)

@FaheemMitha OED will be more comprehensive. of the 400K 'words' only about 40K are actually used, the rest are archaicisms.

Though logically, naughty should really mean something like vacuous or empty. Since it's clearly derived from naught.

@Mitch Yes, agreed.

@Mitch We should bring them back.

I thought I read somebody somewhere would use out of the way words, because he thought they deserved an airing, poor things.

Matt E. Эллен

@FaheemMitha zero was considered wicked in times past

@MattE.Эллен like with lots of these 'is it grammatical questions' puzzles, it is possible to come up with a bizarre set of circumstances where it does make sense.

8:14 PM

@MattE.Эллен Why? And reference, please.

@FaheemMitha every day use an old one.

I'm make a mental note to say "zounds" more often.

@FaheemMitha it's not obvious? if you wish on naught, and it comes true, then what?

Also "shiver me timbers" and "zadooks".

@FaheemMitha argh. please don't. I should have come up with a better one.

8:15 PM

@Mitch I don't follow.

@FaheemMitha I'm funnin'

The last one has zero hits, so I'm probably spelling it wrong.

@Mitch Too late.

gadzooks

@Mitch Thanks.

Matt E. Эллен

@FaheemMitha I read it in "Zero: a biography of a dangerous idea". I believe the pythagoreans killed a man for pointing zero out.

I can't remember exactly what it says

and I don't have the book to hand :D

8:16 PM

@MattE.Эллен I blame the pythagoreans

Thanks, Pythagoras.

Does the OED give away their stuff online?

Yes, sort of.

They allow its online use from public libraries

@Mitch Hmm, not very useful to me here. Probably UK public libraries?

so if you log on to your local library, you can then follow links to the online OED

Matt E. Эллен

@FaheemMitha yes, and university libraries that subscribe. that's international, I believe

and anyone who subscribes, in fact

8:18 PM

@FaheemMitha there may be other ways

So, what is oxforddictionaries.com?

Matt E. Эллен

that's a cut down version

OED.com is an etymological dictionary

You could probably buy a subscription. In this world, everything is on sale.

@MattE.Эллен ok

Matt E. Эллен

oxforddictionaries.com is good enough for most dictionary uses

@MattE.Эллен it's a full dictionary, n which one major part is word history. (an etymological dictionary doesn't care about meanings as much as listing the history, often without explaining the meaning changes well) OED does it all well.

Despite the fact that it is wrong a lot.

8:22 PM

So OED.com is not the Oxford Dictionary online, then?

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch what?! it's perfect in every way. any time you think it's wrong, it's just people not using words correctly

@Mitch You should tell them.

File a bug report.

Matt E. Эллен

@FaheemMitha correct. run by the same company, though

Don't forget to use zounds a lot.

@MattE.Эллен Oh. Multiple variant dictionary versions. Confusing.

Matt E. Эллен

aye. there's also OALD

and other OUP dictionary sites

8:25 PM

<Sigh>. So, which one to use? Decisions, decisions...

@FaheemMitha depends on what you mean by 'authority'. there are site mods who police the site. There are people with high rep who have earned a lot of points (by answering or asking a lot and being upvoted). There are people who have studied a lot about the English language and linguistics and are able to answer questions with great insight and knowledge.

@FaheemMitha it is a subset. they use the same database (I think). Well, ODO is created by the same people as OED.

@FaheemMitha I did. they didn't fix it.

@MattE.Эллен that is really annoying.

@FaheemMitha ODO is fine, just not super comprehensive.

OED is the best, but it has so many entries, there are bound to be typos and thinkos. Many individual words need multiple books and even more scholars to figure out.

and frankly they're holding back. they don't give all the explanation and all the quotes they could.

Matt E. Эллен

Yeah, a lot of the OED entries need updating, as they haven't been changed since the 80s or before

'Dude' is still 'dude'

'cellphone' was just the twinkle in the eye of some telephone engineer

Matt E. Эллен

ha! having a UK library card gives me access to all sorts of OUP online stuff. :D

apparently they maintain Reddit's AMA style manual

rental cars?

Matt E. Эллен

8:34 PM

amamanualofstyle.com

Reddit has a style manual?

Matt E. Эллен

the AMA does (j/k I don't know what AMA means in this context)

american ... mumble mumble association?

Matt E. Эллен

American Medical Association

so... Oxford controls (the style of) all of the USA medical knowledge! A quick word in the right ear and all that knowledge will be illegible

8:58 PM

@MattE.Эллен Ask Me Anything.

What, do you need to see a doctor about your left one?

At least that is a Reddit thing, where users can ask a guest questions.

Matt E. Эллен

@Cerberus I know what it means in the context of Reddit :D I meant in the context of AMA manual of style

Oh OK...

bangs own heads

I had a question. It's about a 'friend'

8:59 PM

Ahhh.

Tell us.

About this friend.

Is he square by any chance?

Matt E. Эллен

Is one of his "legs" longer than the "other"?

see, this 'friend' knows this girl... I've said too much

@Cerberus he has square feet

that he wants to convert to

@MattE.Эллен whoa man that's personal.

I mean I don't think my friend want to talk about that

@Mitch Ok, thank you.

Matt E. Эллен

you're amoung "friend"s

@MattE.Эллен ha ha. what?

Matt E. Эллен

9:02 PM

you can tell us anything about your "friend", we won't judge!

@Mitch Haha.

@Mitch What about this girl, is she his or her age?

Matt E. Эллен

she is her own age

(By his or her I mean your 'friend's'. Technically I can't assume sex.)

@MattE.Эллен Interesting...

Let's hear the story, @Mitch. Should we get some popcorn ready?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus He already referred to his friend as "he"

as did you.

9:37 PM

@FaheemMitha So this friend had this joke that he told this girl (age not appropriate to reveal)

And she reacted to it ... in a funny way.

So does she like him or what?

The joke was: "How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?"

The answer is: "That's not funny"

Then he told another: "How many Germans does it take to screw in a light bulb?"

You can see how this might all be a little insensitive.

Anyway, the answer is "One".

@Mitch How did she react to it, then?

@Mitch That's a non-numerical answer, therefore invalid.

@Mitch I don't get it.

9:53 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 But that might have been the common gender.

@Mitch Hmm did this friend ask her why she didn't think it was funny?

Her reaction seems a bit immature.

But as to whether or not she liked this friend, it's hard to say.

Matt E. Эллен

10:10 PM

@Mitch what was funny about The Way?

"restored exemplar" of how to click 'submit' (duh). Why?

lol oh I get it pffft

10:51 PM

so, the 10k for seeing flags, is it 10k so-wide?

11:30 PM

Can an unregistered user flag a question as a duplicate? I hate to ask here but meta doesn't let unregistered users post. XP (I don't know which account I want to commit to yet...).

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