English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2017-07-17 (page 1 of 2)

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2:34 AM

@tchrist I would include munch in there just to feel better. :)

I'm honestly not sure why this word family ring to me so natural and apt for their meaning. I didn't know any Italian or French before starting to learn Esperanto.

I guess English can find a place at the table with German and Dutch.

2:56 AM

Hello @SohaFarhinPine, how are you?

@Færd But where does munch fall in the customary order of meals (breakfast, brunch/second breakfast, lunch(eon), tapas/tea, dinner, and supper)? It it perhaps between supper and breakfast? :)

Between morning and lunch

So elevenses then?

Sure.

I've always heard it used as "munchies."

WTF?

> From Middle English monchen, a variant of mocchen, mucchen ("to munch (food); chew audibly"; > Modern English dialectal mouch), probably imitative in origin (compare crunch). Compare also Old French mangier, mengier (“to bite; eat”), of similar sound and meaning.

@Cerberus ^^^^^

3:13 AM

Carrots are good to munch on between meals.

5 hours later…

8:34 AM

Hello All

1 hour later…

user288256

9:41 AM

Is this sentence correct: "I was entering a site somewhere and they wanted us to give ourselves a label."

user288256

The last bit I mean.

user288256

'wanted us to give ourselves a label'

user288256

By' label' I mean writing something like "native speaker of xyz language" with our name.

Yes: because "us" is giving the label to "us".

user288256

Oh okay, thank you!

10:15 AM

I shouldn't reply without reading the original message properly.

user288256

Don't be so hard on yourself.

user288256

And I mean that in the nicest way.

@Ghalib What if I'm a stone? It'd be in my nature to be hard on myself then. =P

user288256

haha

@Ghalib Hi good start week ^^

user288256

10:29 AM

@Sayros Hey Sayros. How is it going?

good hamdoulah

user288256

Glad to hear it.

user288256

I spell it like this: "Hamdolillah"

user288256

Sometimes with "u".

user288256

"Hamdulillah"

user288256

10:31 AM

Your version is good too.

yes it depends from the dialect of the country but in natiive Arabic your pronocnication is the correct one

user288256

Roman Arabic is easier to type, way too easier than the original script. At least for me.

"Hamdolillah"

user288256

okay, cool.

user288256

10:48 AM

And the full term is "Al-hamdulillah" i.e 'Praise be to Allah'.

11:11 AM

yes exactly

12:06 PM

So is that the general pattern for what in English is 'Praise Be Unto ___'?

For example 'Al-hamdul Mohammed'?

12:23 PM

@tchrist Yeah, which means they'll have clearances until pigs fly.

user288256

@Mitch That's correct. But we normally don't use "Al-hamdu" with "Muhammad". We mostly use "Al-hamdu" with "lillah" i.e. "God or Allah". That is, we are just praising God, no one else. I might be mistaken but I don't see "Al-hamdu" with other things. Hmm, thinks.

user288256

Can't remember other words.

user288256

For 'Mohammad' we have a separate salutation that we use. It goes like this: "Allahumma salli ala Muhammadiw Wa la aali Muhammadin..." It is about three, four lines. A fixed salutation.

user288256

But you got the meaning right.

user288256

12:41 PM

@Mitch And I have a question for you too. Can we use "Same here" and "Likewise" interchangeably in English? Then there is "Ditto" which is pretty similar.

1:01 PM

@Ghalib I'm confused. Often in English texts (written by Muslims), I'll see 'blah lah blah Muhammed, pbuh', where the abbreviation is for 'Praised Be Unto Him', presumably as a sign of respect (also with other prophets). I, knowing no Arabic beyond 'Salaam' and 'shakrun' (?), wondered if the 'al-hamdu...' was part of that 'pbuh' but in Arabic. So I think I am wrong. How do you do the 'pbuh', abbreviated or not, in Arabic?

@Ghalib Mostly. YEs, they are synonyms, but remember...

There are no exact synonyms

user288256

@Mitch It is "Peace Be Upon him". I have never heard "Praised Be Upon him". But there are similar structures that are used, I think those are confusing you.

user288256

@Mitch Okay, thank you

'Likewise' is a bit ore formal than 'same here', or rather it may be informal but only used in educated speech. it's a little fancier.

user288256

There are similar lines that are used. For example there is a line which is used for the companions of Prophet: "RadhiAllahu'anhu".

user288256

Written as a respect for them. It means "Allah is pleased with him."

1:06 PM

'ditto' is a synonym of those two, but sounds either too familiar or too cute or too trying to be clever by a word that no one really uses except to sound clever.

user288256

I see, thanks!

@Ghalib oh...haha...they sound so much a like and to me aren't terribly dissimilar in meaning.

user288256

Yeah, that's true.

There's this thing I find, that the insider makes distinctions that separate things as though they are a world apart but the outsider has a hard time seeing how they are different.

But then the other situation happens a lot too where the insider doesn't distinguish too things at all, but the outsider thinks they are entirely different.

I can think of both kinds of examples in phonology. But in vocab or semantics it's vague.

Nope...vocab is full of both sides.

user288256

1:29 PM

By "insider" you mean "a native speaker of that language" I'm guessing?

user288256

And by "outsider" I guess you mean "a non native speaker of that language".

user288256

I thought that word 'insider' had negative connotations, no?

user288256

In some other context maybe.

@Ghalib Yes. The person who knows the language fluently and unconsciously. The outsider is the learner, the one who has to think real hard about every single issue to try to get it even close to right.

@Ghalib Connotations sometimes come just from context.

user288256

@Mitch Yep. :)

1:37 PM

Insider trading is considered a bad thing.

Afternoon

user288256

Yeah, I mean even dictionaries make that word sound negative all the time "someone who is an accepted member of a group and who therefore has special or secret knowledge or influence"

user288256

So, yeah, context. That's true.

@tchrist That doesn't seem very confident.

The author is probably speculating.

While the etymology of munch may be unclear, that of manger is not.

@Ghalib That sounds pretty good. It makes me want to be an insider.

user288256

1:43 PM

Hah.

user288256

It's synonyms are fun to read in the dictionary: Counter-espionage, Counterintelligence, Double agent, MI6.

user288256

Cambridge Dictionary I mean.

user288256

They are broad. But related words I know.

user288256

*Its

user288256

I mean typo above.

2:03 PM

@Cerberus *munch

Is it too early to muncha buncha lunch? Probably.

@Ghalib When I see the error in others, it's shockingly out of place. When I commit the error, it's just a slip of the finger and ignorable.

@tchrist is nineses or tenses a thing?

@Mitch Nay.

takes a break

to get coffee

no big thing

We are all but devices for converting caffeine into code.

@Mitch have a kit-kat

Speaking of which, should I dehyphenate and capitalize the UK's?

2:08 PM

meows

K's, stupid auto correct

@tchrist Ob math joke: a comathematician is a means of transforming theorems into ffee.

@M.A.R. I blame the K

@Mitch three K's?

THE K?

Agent K?

A K!

There could be more than one

A K 47?

2:11 PM

@M.A.R. NOU K!

nuking

But let North Korea know the was started from this chat

Actually, I think I read some day that the warwas never over

I mean the 100 years war was mostly non-combatitive mutual seething at home.

It also lasted 138 years

So that's a lesson learned.

user288256

@Mitch Hah true. Aren't we all hypocrites? :P

@Mitch what was the lesson? Round up to the closest high-sounding number when mentioning how long a war took?

user288256

@Mitch The time you get morning tea there I take after work tea or late afternoon tea or whatever that time of the day tea.

user288256

2:20 PM

Since we are at 10+ hours difference.

@M.A.R. The next time, they got better at counting. 30 years war

Then the 7 years war. then the 6 day war. then the ... just missed it.

Why can't we all just get along?

Because there aren't enough longs to go around.

user288256

@Mitch Because reasons.

user288256

And just because.

@Mitch we are getting along. We're just saving either the humanity, or our honor in the process

2:27 PM

user image

And it's for the greater good.

Whoever that is.

I hope I'm in that good

If all wars are for the greater good, does it mean he/she is 10000 years old?

tries to make reservations

@Mitch Poor other alot!!

2:28 PM

booked until next year

@tchrist Yes, I meant munch, that was a typo.

Doves and pigeons are pretty much the same animal, right?

I think so?

@Mitch this conversation again?

To my pharmaceutical ear, a Dove is a shampoo.

user288256

@Cerberus One is dark and one is light. What does it represent?

2:35 PM

The Force.

user288256

okay.

@M.A.R. To my gustatory mouth, Dove is a chocolate covered ice-cream bar.

@Mitch you eat shampoo?

@M.A.R. There is nothing new under the sun

'There is nothing new under the sun' is not new under the sun

' 'There is nothing new under the sun' is not new under the sun' is probably not new under the sun

But the fourth level shall be new

2:39 PM

' ' 'There is nothing new under the sun' is not new under the sun' is probably not new under the sun' is probably pretty new under the sun

@M.A.R. Jinx

If someone self-contradicts, do they explode?

after that it is all new

@M.A.R. I'm pretty sure not.

It's just words

So that was probably laws of physics

There are like 5 episodes in TOS where they get some robot to short circuit by making it realize a contradiction.

Fiction is dumb like that

@Mitch but there's that words and swords thing

2:41 PM

What's the longest word in the world?

@Mitch TOS? Table Of Subjects?

@Mitch The German alphabet

@M.A.R. The Original Series of Star Trek

Well, actually no. I think it was a word meaning "place" in Dutch or French

@M.A.R. 'smiles' because there is a 'mile' between the two ends.

@Mitch well, that works too

2:43 PM

That's not a dad joke. It's an actual joke. For kids. Dad's may say it, but it is of too high a quality to come under the label 'dad joke'. Dad jokes are attempts at puns but barely make sense if at all.

@M.A.R. Qué?

@Mitch no, that's not it

But it had, like, 76 letters

So most probably some made up compound noun

@Ghalib Discrimination?

@Mitch How would you describe the difference?

One is used in a symbolic context, the other in a practical?

@M.A.R. pneumo...coniosis?

@M.A.R. Steamshipcaptain'ssociety?

user288256

@Cerberus Yeah perhaps. I was thinking racism.

@Ghalib Isn't that [a form of] discrimination?

2:51 PM

Oh, it even has a Wikipedia page

What does?

user288256

@Cerberus Yes it is. I'm not saying you are wrong. You are right (as well).

The longest word in any given language depends on the word formation rules of each specific language, and on the types of words allowed for consideration. Agglutinative languages allow for the creation of long words via compounding. Even non-agglutinative languages may allow word formation of theoretically limitless length in certain contexts. Words consisting of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of characters have been coined with the goal of being ranked among the world's longest words; technical scientific terms can run to hundreds of thousands of characters in length. Place names may not...

@Ghalib Ah, OK.

In human social affairs, discrimination is treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person based on the group, class, or category to which the person is perceived to belong rather than on individual attributes. This includes treatment of an individual or group, based on their actual or perceived membership in a certain group or social category, "in a way that is worse than the way people are usually treated". It involves the group's initial reaction or interaction going on to influence the individual's actual behavior towards the group leader or the group...

3:09 PM

Does anyone know the game Crusader Kings II?

> Adds the ability to “reform” a pagan religion to make it more capable of competing with the Abrahamic faiths.
Zoroastrians can restore the old Persian Empire by reclaiming it from the Muslim conquerors.

In the description of one of its expansion packs.

Sounds like fun.

@Cerberus I think my cousin used to play it

Yay!

It was a strategic game

Kinda RPG-like too, as far as I remember

@Cerberus historically inaccurate: the very reason Muslims did win, other than a very incompetent military leadership, was people were sick of Zoroastrian theocracy

@M.A.R. That's correct.

@M.A.R. I believe you.

So if taking the land back was going to be a thing, it wasn't gonna be because of people wanting Zoroastrian feudalism back

3:14 PM

But how does that contradict what the expansion says?

Well, explicitly mentioning "Zoroastrian" sounds like they're taking it back because Muslims invaded their religion

@Cerberus The Expanse is actually pretty good. In the near future when Earthers have colonized Mars, Ganymede, and a few asteroids (for mining), the politics get confusing.

Incidentally, not everything in the expansion packs is meant to be historically true, though they usually do limit themselves to the "quite possible".

Even when all science ficition is spoken in English.

@Cerberus alternate history

@M.A.R. Strictly speaking, those two lines in the description need not be connected.

3:16 PM

in some sense simulation games are alternate histories.

Actually, when Iranians attacked baghdad years later, to overthrow Baby Omaiia or however that romanizes, it was kinda considered a retaliation

So not really untrue

Bany, not baby

Do you think 'reform' of an alternate religion is what it takes to compete favorably with societies based on Abrahamism?

@M.A.R. Baby Omaiia is kinda cute

So what the text is suggesting, if this is to take place at a time when Zoroastrianism was still alive, is that the religion could be reformed, in such a way that it became viable again.

Zoroastrianism never really died

I don't know exactly up to what time Zoroastrianism was still strong enough in Persia to stand a chance.

3:19 PM

Its traditions lived through the centuries

Zoroastrianism is pretty close to Abrahamism, more so than other religions like Hinduism or Buddhism or whatever the Mayans and Incans thought

Proof: Nowruz

Genghis Khan was no slouch with his mountain wolf religion.

But a reincarnation of Zoroastrianism never happened, and it didn't need to happen

@Mitch Yes, that is absolutely possible in the game, although they usually try not to stray too far from real history. There are exceptions, such as the expansion pack in which the Aztecs grow powerful enough to invade Europe in the 14th century or whatever.

3:21 PM

@Cerberus I find that unlikely given the lack of evidence of a strong Aztec naval force

which makes me wonder... don't other languages have ordering rules for stacks of adjectives too?

And they have an expansion in which the New World is generated at random, to look completely different in each game you play. In a sense, though, that allows for realistic gameplay: your discoverers will actually not know what to find and where, as opposed to when you already know to send them to the rich Incan cities when you're playing the game.

English can't be special.

Is it 'anything goes' in other languages?

@Cerberus there really was no gold in North America. But in South America was there?

@Mitch Even in 600? It would make sense, though, owing to both proximity and Persian influence in Judaea and Arabia.

@M.A.R. Of course. And aren't many elements of modem Islam taken from Zoroastrianism? Like the dervishes?

@Cerberus Z has a very small pantheon (not monotheistic) but way smaller than Hinduism. And one guy is good and one guy is bad. So can be shoe horned in either direction.

@Mitch Yes, hence "exception". It's extremely unlikely, from the perspective of any point in time!

3:25 PM

oh

@Mitch That is indeed closer to Judaeism (the fount of the Abrahamic religions) than are other major religions in neighbouring regions like Egyptian, Greek, Indian polytheism.

user288256

I haven't played a video game in a long time.

user288256

Those were good times.

@Mitch It depends on the language!

@Cerberus It would have been more likely that the Aztecs could have resisted the Europeans (but that would still probably have required more advanced tech in Mexico)

3:27 PM

Yeah.

@Cerberus huh? I never thought dervishes had anything to do with it. They were part of the Sufi teachings that emerged years later

I never linked them to Zoroastrians

But not having a navy makes defense pretty unlikely.

@M.A.R. Oh, perhaps I am mistaken, then? But I'm sure there must be many other elements of Persian culture that shaped Islam.

@Mitch Lots of precious metals in Central and South America!

The Indians in North America were perhaps not advanced enough for the mining and melting required, then? I don't know enough about them.

@Cerberus yeah, even then

@Mitch In fact, the enormous and sustained shipping of precious metals from the New World to Europe by the Spanish caused high inflation in Eurasia. Inflation was not understood by the Spanish court at the time, so they didn't understand why all the stuff they wanted to buy became more and more expensive all the time.

@Mitch Or not having horses, guns...

3:33 PM

That awesome book I read these days anticipated Zoroaster to have lived around 1000 B.C.

@Cerberus probably not. I don't think they did any metal work at all (in NA). or north of the Aztecs.

Before Zoroaster, there was this duality belief which seems to have leaked from Vedic India that there are a bunch of nice gods, and a bunch of evil gods

@Mitch Right.

The Dervish state (Somali: Dawlada Daraawiish, Arabic: دولة الدراويش‎‎ Dawlat ad-Darāwīsh) was an early 20th-century Somali Muslim kingdom. It was established by Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, a religious leader who gathered Somali forces from across the Horn of Africa and united them into loyalists known as the Dervishes. The Dervishes enabled Hassan to carve out a powerful state through conquest of lands claimed by the Somali Sultans, the Ethiopian Empire, and the European powers. The Dervish state acquired renown in the Islamic and Western worlds due to its resistance against the European empires...

This sounds cool.

@Cerberus o.o

@M.A.R. Ah, from India, really!

That's interesting.

3:37 PM

The old European pantheons (Norse, Roman, Greek) didn't seem to have a special 'evil' component.

Wait...who were the Norse gods always seeming to fight against?

It was too hard for Zoroaster to negate all the previous teachings, because of other zowtars (priests) already protesting, but he could emphasize the role of one God, Ahooramazda, over all other Gods

Ahriman just felt left out.

This Ahooramazda was the Zeus, but much stronger. An almighty God who's the father of all the other Gods

Even Angreminoo, the evilness or Ahriman, was Ahooramazda's son

So you see, pretty much like Islam but without Arabic names

12

Q: Is Kaspersky Lab a military unit?

In this article, McClatchy DC bureau claims that one of the certificates the Kaspersky Lab received from Russian FSB/KGB reveals that the entire Kaspersky Lab joint-stock company is actually a FSB military unit #43753. Kaspersky Lab is a company that develops antivirus software, available worldw...

military russia internet espionage

Oh man.

Uninstalling Kaspersky

@Mitch Not nearly as prominently as the Abrahamic religions do, indeed.

There were evil spirits and semi-evil gods, but those were usually part of nature, and had less of a moral dimension than the Abrahamic Devil.

@Cerberus what's interesting is Indian Gods eventually became Iranian evil Gods

3:42 PM

@M.A.R. Yes, quite a bit more like the Abrahamic religions. Sons is not quite the same as angels, but still.

Vedic Indians and Iranians are believed to be of the same origin

@M.A.R. Meh, I've heard several different stories about the subject. But is the source mentioned on that page at all reliable?

@M.A.R. Oh, really?

So are all the Indian gods than were incorporated into Zoroastrianism evil in Z.?

And were they also evil in Indian religions?

But they were made to migrate, perhaps because of bad weather, Sakai tribes or overpopulation

@M.A.R. Well, you, I, and they are all of Indo-European descent.

We come from the same culture, which is also still very clear in how our languages are related.

@Cerberus no: Iranians and Indians shared the same Gods, but after they were separated, Indians worshipped their Gods, and I don't know about their evil guys. But Iranian Gods evolved into other Gods mostly, and most of the Indian gods became sources of evil

user288256

3:49 PM

@Cerberus Even languages like Dutch and Persian?

Only Mitra and that god of rain I forgot the name of stayed as shared Gods

@M.A.R. I'm having a little bit of trouble distinguishing "Indian gods" from the other gods in this.

@Ghalib Absolutely!

@M.A.R. haha...like baal/beeelzebub was the devil for Judaism, even though in the early days he was just one of many gods that the Hebrews believed in.

@Cerberus the idea is Iranian and Indian mythology used to be pretty much the same thing, but after their people got separated, not only did they go different ways, most of the Gods they shared became the source of evil

Why can't the gods all just get along?

user288256

3:53 PM

@Mitch Because they all have Alpha male syndrome? Or Alpha female.

Deeva is a group of gods Indians worshipped, while Iranians think Deeva are the origin of evil

And then there's "devuh"

@Ghalib This is somewhat of a circular argument but: kinship terms are the slowest to change in vocab. Dutch and Persian family names are very interrecognizable (if written phonetically)

@M.A.R. Jai guru deva om

In modern Persian, "deev" is an evil monster.

user288256

@Cerberus Pardon my ignorance but where does the region of Indo European end? I mean what about other asian languages like Chinese, Japanese etc. Are they related to a language like Dutch as well?

@Mitch oh right!

3:55 PM

@Ghalib came thing between Arabic and Hebrew - very close kinship terms. But between arabic and persian? very little similarity in kinship terms.

@Ghalib No, Chinese/Japanese/Indonesian are very different from the IE and Semitic and African languages

user288256

@Mitch So that means I can learn Hebrew easily?

@M.A.R. So the Persians invented entirely new gods, and the Indians invented new gods, and they both kept a couple of old gods, and those old gods became evil in Persia?

very different to the point of not related at all.

@Cerberus exactly

@Ghalib yes. well, as easy as an English person learning ... Norwegian?

3:58 PM

@Ghalib Central and East Asia are not at all Indo-European.

I can't comment on newer Indian gods because I haven't read about them

user288256

@Mitch Okay, cool.

Arabic has a lot of borrowings from Turkish and Persian that Hebrew just does not have.

@M.A.R. Funny!

user288256

@Cerberus Ah okay.

3:59 PM

@Cerberus invents new gods

look uncannily like superheroes

user image

with movie rights

user288256

@Cerberus That's helpful.

@Ghalib Keep in mind that this map is modern: in some areas, people have only recently begun speaking an Indo-European language owing to colonisation, such as in Australia or eastern Russia.

user288256

Oh okay.

4:05 PM

@Ghalib only because you know Arabic well already. Urdu doesn't help at all.

@Cerberus or the entire Americas

user288256

@Cerberus It shows most of Australia in Tai–Kadai. I thought they mostly spoke English.

user288256

Or Indo European languages.

@Mitch Sure.

user288256

And I am not colorblind I'm sure. But you never know. Heh.

@Ghalib Well, the non-English areas are very, very sparsely populated. And those people probably use English as a secondary language.

user288256

4:08 PM

Ah okay.

@Mitch Sure.

@Ghalib the map colors are hard to distinguish. they label that as 'Australian (several families)'

@Cerberus You're very insistent on agreeing with me half-heartedly.

user288256

@Mitch I thought the color that was matching was "Tai–Kadai" one?

user288256

It is so small.

user288256

CTRL + time.

4:11 PM

@Mitch Well, it didn't seem like something I needed to agree with, rather like an afterthought?

@Ghalib sure, but look at the legend and see 'Australian' at the top has almost identical color.

Admittedly, that map is bit unclear.

I'm sure there are better maps.

I'm not going by color, I'm going by I know that place is called Australia and working backwards to the color.

@Cerberus I suppose

user image

@Cerberus I guess.

4:12 PM

Better?

@Mitch Uh-huh.

@Cerberus hm...

What do the numbers mean?

user288256

@Cerberus Yes, better. Thanks.

% population of Earth speaking that/# of varieties?

I suppose.

user288256

@Mitch "legend"?

user288256

4:14 PM

Second map cleared things though

@Ghalib yes, legend, the things on the upper right that matches strings with colors, so that you can (sort of) determine a string that goes with that color in the map.

user288256

Oh okay. I almost never use that word. Although I should.

(Missing from the small version of the map.)

Note that "Altaic" is usually not assumed to be a family, and it wouldn't match the colours on the map if it were, so you may disregard the numbers for Altaic.

user288256

4:32 PM

When we say "gods" does that mean we are talking about "goddesses" too?

Probably!

Normally, in English (and Latin, Greek, etc.), the word gods can include goddesses.

user288256

Interesting.

user288256

Thanks.

And even the singular god can be used in a more general sense, almost like deity, to allow for a female god; or to refer to a very general, abstract concept of godly power, like "the divine".

4:49 PM

@Ghalib almost every map or chart has one (or should have one)

@Ghalib But, and this is probably where confusion can come from, the term 'God' in English is what you canonically use to refer to the god of Christianity and Judaism, but not that of Islam, even though all three are referring to the same entity, the god of Abraham. of and that god is generally considered to be a dude-like.

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Jul '1717

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