English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

3:10 AM

> . . . there's no disguizing or circumcizing away its existence.

4:40 AM

in Language Overflow, 22 hours ago, by V.V.

RaceYouAnytime

5:45 AM

Is anyone else reviewing new posts right now?

It's getting a little crazy out there.

8:49 AM

which one is correct?
- A medical doctor
- An medical doctor

A medical doctor

someone said "medical" sounds "emdical" .. isn't that true?

user288256

Use an before words which sound like they start with a vowel.

^

@Ghalib anyway, either "A medical" or "An medical"?

8:56 AM

A med doc, would be understood by most.

I'm not looking for a understandable thing, I'm trying to know the correct thing

user288256

Do you want to say the short form or the full form?

user288256

You need to say "A medical doctor". But if you are going to say the short form i.e. MD (Medical doctor) then you should say "An MD" because "M" in MD sounds like it starts with a vowel. (An AM 'M')

Oh I got it. It's :
- A medical doctor
- An MD

user288256

Yep.

9:01 AM

thx

user288256

Also "An MBA"

user288256

Although it starts with "M" it sounds like a vowel "AM"

Yep

user288256

9:28 AM

an A (ay)
a B
a C
a D
an E (ee)

user288256

an F (eff)
a G
an H (aych)
an I (eye)
a J
a K

user288256

an L (el)
an M (em)
an N (en)
an O (oh)
a P
a Q

user288256

an R (arr)
an S (ess)
a T
a U
a V

user288256

a W
an X (ex)
a Y
a Z

user288256

(In short forms I mean)

9:29 AM

like

user288256

"a NATO meeting"

what does "NATO" mean?

user288256

It stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It is pronounced as a whole word hence the use of "a" before it.

user288256

But "an NCO" because the letters are pronounced separately.

ah ok

user288256

9:36 AM

"A UFO" etc.

got it

user288256

I was just giving you examples.

user288256

Cool.

Gigili

10:14 AM

@АлексейШиманский прирвет! как дела?

Matt E. Эллен

10:35 AM

@Lawrence yeah, no worries.

thanks for doing that

Kenneth Branagh Is 'Mr. Will', Shakespeare In His Mid-Life Crisis

Impressive!

NVZ

10:56 AM

Shakespeare In His Mid-Life Crisis

►

user288256

I think avatars are sticking in chat today. There aren't as many people as we see here.

user288256

Probably some glitch.

Lawrence

2:10 PM

@MattE.Эллен Glad to have the information preserved. Besides, @NVZ and @muru did the lion's share of the work. The first few entries in the index might come in useful as explanations to new participants. The blogs are a distillation of EL&U culture, possibly even deserving a place on the ELU-writable help page.

NVZ

@Lawrence oh, don't mention it. :)

Lawrence

@NVZ :)

NVZ

2:37 PM

2

Q: What sort of resource request questions do we accept on meta?

We often migrate resource request questions to meta, and there's no denying that some resources are very useful to the users of this community. Here's my attempt at broadly categorising these requests: For resources that help the community in doing research for better questions and answers. Fo...

Come one, come all.

Mazura

6:18 PM

What was the activity 12 days ago that put both those SWR meta questions on the featured sidebar?

7:17 PM

I quite often surprise myself while talking/writing in my native tongue. Seldom does that happen in other languages that I know though. For me this is a good measure of how much you've internalized a language.

7:27 PM

Should it be the other?

Hmm.

7:42 PM

Don't ask why. I never really know how to answer article questions

@Færd not necessarily

Verbal Regency Exercises for English Students

> This worksheet provides exercises about verbal regency. The students have to complete the sentences using the correct form of the verbs given (infinitive or gerund). It helps them understand the structure after prepositions, expressions and certain verbs.

caub

I prefer to exercise my written regexcy

reges rule

(presuming reges the plural of regex)

Wait, plural of rex: close enough.

caub

was joking about regexps

"régir" in French

As was I!

7:52 PM

@tchrist rejeese

Rejezes

caub

reglisses

With tricanine counsel, I've created the predicate-frames tag for how particular verbs are used with what arguments where and when.

Re-geese

regoose?

Comparative aspects of the Portuguese and English verbal regency for the making of a bilingual dictionary but I can't find the source.

The verbal regency between semantics and aspect: Some inconsistencies between archaic Latin and classical Latin

> Some verbs meaning wish, lack and deprivation show, in the ancient Latin documents, a genitive-government alternating with the standard one: the accusative case with the verbs of wish, the ablative case with the verbs of lack and deprivation.
The difference in the grammatical relation of the arguments replaced and in their position within the sentence is the reason why the possibility of a common frame of analysis of these constructions was never suggested. This study stresses the semantic continuum existing among them, in order to link the differentiation in the choice of the object-mark…

I never realized the Romans were governed not by their generals but by their genitals.

The starred tail of a citation of mine over on the starboard was from this:

@RaceYouAnytime Then I can only surmize that this news will have come as a surprize to you. I would advize you to exercize some superficial investigations into these matters, and, having found, devized, or at least improvized the requizite answers, that you might kindly apprize us of your findings in this regard and suggest whether we should revize or even excize our previous position. While the invariant set admittedly comprizes a smaller number of words than the variant set, I promize you’ll have found that there's no disguizing or circumcizing away its existence. — tchrist ♦ 17 hours ago

Because I said I would not admonish someone for using the non-word *chastize. :)

@tchrist To an Asian, that explains the western world

8:00 PM

@caub Is remembering which English verbs take -ise and which ones -ize easier or harder for you because of knowing French?

@M.A.R. I'm having trouble thinking of you in a kimono.

> Yet the specific objectives of this thesis are to identify the difficulties that Brazilian students of Spanish have in relation to verbal regency and also to analize lexicographic works in Spanish and Portuguese in order to identify how these students treat the questions related to verbal regency.

Oops. That's not an -ize verb.

I mean, it can be.

But analize means making something more anal.

Probably not what was meant there. :)

@tchrist I wonder why

@tchrist you never know

Seriously? I've had all my five edits pending in SO's suggested edit queue for at least a couple of hours

@M.A.R. In American, more often than not the word "Asian" conjures up imagery of the inhabitants of Asia's easternmost edge: Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and such. But in Britain by the same measure it summons thoughts of the Indian subcontinent: people from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka.

Great, we're the middle people then

I thought Cathay was the Middle Kingdom.

East Asia = Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, etc
South Asia = India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka
North Asia = ???
West Asia = ???

user288256

8:16 PM

North Asia would be Russia and its parts in Asia.

user288256

I guess.

user288256

West Asia would be Middle East.

8:34 PM

@Ghalib Isn't that odd?

Near East

The Near East is a geographical term that roughly encompasses Western Asia. Despite having varying definitions within different academic circles, the term was originally applied to the maximum extent of the Ottoman Empire. The term has fallen into disuse in English and has been replaced by the terms "Middle East" and "West Asia", the former of which may include Egypt, and the latter strictly Southwest Asia including the Transcaucasus. According to the National Geographic Society, the terms Near East and Middle East denote the same territories and are "generally accepted as comprising the countries...

Somehow "Near East" has become "Middle East", raising thereby the question of how the western part could be a middle anything.

@M.A.R. Thanks. Yeah, I suppose not. And the reason is you can choose for the other languages to be definite or not.

user288256

> Western Asia, West Asia, Southwestern Asia or Southwest Asia is the westernmost subregion of Asia. The concept is in limited use, as it significantly overlaps with the Middle East (or the Near East).