English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2018-06-16

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12:18 AM

@RegDwigнt Yeah, I respect your rationale. I was thinking that doubling the third in a major chord can be problematic, which may be why my ear likes the C-G-C-B progression better. Entirely your choice, of course.

6 hours later…

6:03 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] URL in title, bad NS for domain in body, bad NS for domain in title, bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, +2 more: menintalk.com/luminaryv/ by opidevho on english.SE

2 hours later…

7:44 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] URL in title, bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, blacklisted website in body, blacklisted website in title, +3 more: www.healthdietalert.com/total-tone-turmeric-slim/ by user303506 on english.SE

So we won our football match with Morocco last nigh (bows Thank you! Thank you!) through an own goal that our competition so beautifully awarded themselves in the second to last minute of the stoppage time! And we're going to perfectly squash Spain and Portugal as well with the aid of such heavenly strokes of luck. You'll see.

Although I'm not going to give that much of a damn if we don't. I'm not a die-hard sports fan.

But I'd like to tell dear Nike and Adidas that we seem to be doing fine without you. Please feel free to stuff your shoes and jerseys into whichever orifices you find closer at hand.

8:31 AM

(Correction: maybe I shouldn't have included Adidas in my barb barrage)

8:59 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad NS for domain in body, bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, blacklisted website in body, body starts with title and ends in URL, +1 more: Total Tone Diet This product by pokgjh on english.SE

9:50 AM

What is it with all the spam recently?!

2 hours later…

11:42 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer: What is the difference between turgid, tumid, and tumescent? by Elaine Luther on english.SE

1 hour later…

12:50 PM

0

Q: Looking for word that with meaning to reexamine your own life and point of view objectively.

Word for stepping back mentally and examine objectively your own behavior and values.

single-word-requests

1:36 PM

Osip Mandelstam — The Swamp («Из омута злого и вязкого»)

Just woke up after three days of heavy drinking, sat on my mobile phone and hit record.

In the lyrics that chord is placed on the word "dream" in the line "In a life that resembles a dream". You can play just a C major with no shenanigans, works fine. But the major seventh gives it a dreamlike quality. On the guitar maybe even more so. Doesn't need to stand out, can be subtle.

And the other two times the chord pops up is in the intro and outro simply cuz these are just reprises of the third stanza. There you can definitely just play C major, and maybe in the intro it's actually better to do so. Then it's more unexpected when you do play maj7 in the song proper.

Oh and yeah I guess I need to ping that silly bugger @Cerberus as well.

Really that chord is not the shtick here anyway. The shtick here is the B♭ that's not in the key at all.

So if it gets your knickers in a twist, kill the Cmaj7 with fire and let that B♭ reharmonization be the only odd thing out, that's its only job really.

Normally there'd be a Dm in its stead, of course, and if you only ever play the melody, that's what your ear will supplement. Nobody expects the Spanish B♭.

Like the other week I was playing Bach's Invention no 3, and there's a bit like that in there. If you just play first violin, there's a motif repeated twice and you hear the same chords in your head twice. But if you add the second violin it reharmonizes the second appearance. It's magical. I dig shit like that. Polyphony FTW.

Of course in my case it's once again justified by the lyrics. Bach on the other hand was just fucking around cause he could.

2:11 PM

@RegDwigнt Yeah, that works. Hooray for real instruments and musicians. Rock on.

It also helps that the harmonies are no longer so close, given that the left hand descends into the nether regions.

The B♭ says a different thing, by the way. When I play the unexpanded C7 even starting an octave below middle-C the B♮ is not a problem and does leave something hanging nicely. Although the B♭ does ask for the next chord to be F-major, you could still leave that unresolved, of course. But now I'm liking the B♮.

And don't get me started on Bach. I remember taking examples of Bach to my music theory teacher, yelling "You'd mark me off if I ever did this kind of thing!" And he'd laugh and say, "You couldn't pull it off. Bach could."

And did.

2:52 PM

So in the past 30 minutes I learned how to use YouTube, ReverbNation, and MovieMaker. Fuck, I didn't want to spend my Saturday learning shit. I wanted to finish building the LEGO roller coaster.

@Robusto yeah well. It's the same with languages. We've been there before. If I say "a drywall" everyone is WHAAA thats no English, fucken pineapple. If a native speaker says "a drywall", as millions of them indeed do, it's a-okay.

And Bach was a native speaker of music. Like, he even spelled his name in music.

Good luck spelling your name, Rob.

@RegDwigнt BTW, I just took my morning shower and found myself humming your tune in there. So ... kudos.

What a difference a freakin' piano makes, amiright?

Thanks, man.

@RegDwigнt Liszt might be able to manage it.

Well he made the mistake of dying, so I'm not quite sure actually.

A rookie move.

3:00 PM

At liszt he didn't break his fingers like fucken Schumann did cuz he didn't know how to press the buttons on the piano.

Schumann had an excuse. His wife could play better than he could, and it messed with his head.

That and the syphilis that all of them had as was custom back in the day.

Well, maybe that's why Liszt joined a monastery toward the end of his life. His indiscretions caught up with him.

That I didn't know.

@RegDwigнt BTW, I think people only point out your occasional lapses because they are so few and far between.

3:03 PM

What did I tell you about learning things on a Saturday.

@Robusto Yeah I know. So I've been gradually slipping into making more mistakes for that reason alone. Also cause I'm getting old and into the habit of not giving a fuck.

See, I started that way. Makes the transition easier.

Though what I'm talking about here is not mistakes, that's kinda the whole point. A native speaker says something and I repeat after them, and it's fine when they do it but not fine when I copy them.

Maybe you don't copy them in the same context?

Context is just about everything in language.

Feb 18 '11 at 20:19, by RegDwight

@Robusto Never mind blancmange, I remember being criticized for pronouncing eau incorrectly! I was like "o", and he was like "no-no-no, not o, o!"

Feb 18 '11 at 20:19, by RegDwight

That went on for hours.

Yeah.

How is your accent, btw? I've never heard you speak.

Also, +1 on your YouTube video. Maybe that will help ease the pain of having to learn on a Saturday.

3:11 PM

I was so eager to learn how to ride a horse in Armenia, but then the ranch never called us back about the reservation, so we ended up not going.

Well, I don't +1 equestrianship.

In the last couple months I've been getting increasingly aware of how much cool shit's out there that I know nothing about and still have to learn. All started with the violin.

So now if I have to learn YouTube I just do.

As someone once said, "The quest for knowledge is a terminal condition."

Because fuck it, the worst thing I can produce by doing everything wrong is still better than 99% of the things out there.

Nothing ventured nothing gained.

And it informs your appreciation of whatever it is you're trying to learn.

3:14 PM

Yeah, Dunning-Kruger.

I learned programming because I got tired of programmers telling me that something I wanted couldn't be done.

One of the biggest things I learned was that most of them were either lazy or stupid.

My father likes to say "laziness is the driving force of progress".

Not sure where he got it from. Could be a quote by Strugatskis or something.

Hahaha, that certainly is true in software development. I'd rather spend 20 minutes writing a software routine for doing a task than to do it by hand even once.

So how about you write a proper synthesizer so I don't have to play the piano after drinking for three days.

Just an idea. No pressure.

Yeah, I'll get right on that ...

3:18 PM

You could add a flute, too. I'll allow it.

The other week I listened to some cool shit by the Chicago Symphony and was meaning to ask if you were on that recording, but I haven't been able to find that video ever again.

My YouTube history is all like here's all the hot garbage you watched, but that one good video you don't need no more.

@RegDwigнt No, never on a CSO recording. I was in the Civic Orchestra, which is their training orchestra.

Yeah well you never know how accurate the YouTube descriptions are, do you.

Chicago was close enough, that's my keyword to pay attention to.

Actually they might label it Boston and I'd still ask just to be sure.

Heh, that crazy YouTube ...

Alas, I can't even remember what the piece was.

I was looking into Prometheus by that Russian guy, what's his name. With the light organ.

Around that time I watched a bunch of cool stuff.

So, here's a thought: every time you think you need to drink, try doing something musical instead. Listen, play, compose ... I find that music eases pain better than alcohol does. Of course, I'm not Russian, so YMMV.

3:23 PM

I often play guitar when I'm drunk, so it's not an XOR.

Sometimes piano as well.

Violin I don't touch for fear of dropping it.

@RegDwigнt It could only be Scriabin, and you know it.

I genuinely forgot the name.

I'm happy I rememberd Prometheus.

Which Ridley Scott turned into a punch line.

Also as a matter of fact I keep confusing Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev.

It's the drinking ...

3:24 PM

Just last Wednesday when talking to my teacher I messed up Tchaikovsky with Prokofiev.

@Robusto no it's them stupid names that are all the same.

So do you have a Russian accent in German or a German accent in Russian, and which comes across in English?

I have both. I think I compared myself to Ahhnold before a few times in this chat. He can't speak English but he can't speak German either.

Schade.

Oh yeah here:

Apr 21 '11 at 20:16, by RegDwight

I am like Schwarzenegger. He wouldn't pass as a native speaker of English. But he wouldn't pass as a native speaker of German, either.

"I don't have an identifiable accent.
In any language.
I have an accent in every language, however slight, but you can't pin it down.
I've been deemed a French, a Lithuanian, you name it."

In Russian it's not really an accent. The sounds are all fine, it's my German melody of the overall sentence that sounds off.

In German if I listen to myself on a recording I can clearly hear that the open /a/ is colored Slavic. Ever so slightly, most people don't really notice, but as someone who's into linguistics and shit I notice it quite clearly.

Like Merkel, she doesn't speak with an East German accent at all. But if you have the ear for it, you totally can notice it, however slightly.

English I dunno. I speak a weird mix of American and RP, but with all-American vocabulary.

Hmm. When I was in Germany I could tell North from South, but that was before unification so I never heard any Ossies.

3:31 PM

Like I don't say /kent/ for can't, I say /kahnt/.

At least you don't turn it into a diphthong.

Cayunt is how they say it in the South.

So you used to be a cyclist?

Lately I've been increasingly weary of NZ and AU accents. I really never noticed either before, but now I can clearly hear them.

@Robusto yeah an amateur, but I did participate in a couple races in that class.

Do you still ride?

I had a chronic inflammation in my left knee in the last couple years, maybe still do. So no, I'm sitting here putting on weight without even eating. It's sad.

I liked it a lot back in the day. I would ride for 100km, then run for 10km more. And do the same the next day.

Yeah, I've been there. After a lifetime of activity my right knee finally gave out, and I was sedentary for about seven years. The worst time of my life.

3:35 PM

Feel you bruh.

Then I got the knee replaced and now I ride about 500 km per week.

Well, up to 500 km.

So you are the first cyborg to pass the Turing test.

But the more I ride, the less I drink. Where I used to open a beer or pour a glass of wine, now I think that would just ruin the feeling.

@RegDwigнt Pass? Man, I aced the fucking Turing test.

Now go program the fucking flute simulator then, Jeez.

I don't drink beer and wine or whiskey are wasted on me.

Vodka?

3:38 PM

Yeah.

Fuckin' Russki ...

But I think I'm giving off the wrong image of myself by showing up here occasionally when I'm drunk, and never showing up when I'm not.

Are you drunk now?

No.

Good man.

That shows restraint.

3:40 PM

There's nothing to restrain myself from really. I don't know how people can become alcoholics. I can drink a full bottle, and then not drink for like eight months. I dunno. Why would you drink a bottle every day. Who does that.

And again, most alcoholic beverages I just can't stand. Like beer or wine or even worse, champagne.

And I get heartburn from whiskey. And I suffer from heartburn anyway, so I just don't touch that.

Not a champagne fan, myself. But I like a beer or a glass of wine, especially if I'm eating out.

I do like scotch, but seldom indulge.

Oh I tried some pomegrenade wine in Armenia. It was lovely. But I only nipped at it once.

Somehow from a nip of wine or beer I instantly get more drunk than from two shots of vodka.

And by beer I mean a pint, not one of those huge glasses you can get in Germany. What did they call them? Humpen? I forget.

Or on New Year's Eve, when I so much as smell at the sparkling wine, it gets to my head immediately. It makes no sense. But it is true.

Krug? Fuck, I can't remember.

3:44 PM

Maß.

Feminine, though. Der Maß is the measure. Die Maß is the big Krug.

Ein Maßkrug ist ein Bierkrug, der das Volumen einer Maß fasst. Auf Bairisch und Schwäbisch heißt sie die Mass ([mas], mit kurzem a wie in massig), in anderen Gegenden die Maß ([maːs], mit langem a wie in Maßband). „Eine Maß“ entsprach ursprünglich 1,069 Liter und wurde mit dem metrischen System zu genau einem Liter. == Herkunft == Die Maßkanne (auch Maasskanne) war im 19. Jahrhundert eine europaweit anerkannte Maßeinheit und entsprach 1,069 Liter. Folglich ist „eine Maß“ einfach als „eine Volumeneinheit“ und somit als ein Biermaß zu verstehen. In Bayern und Österreich wird der Maßkrug sowohl für…

Ahhh.

Genau.

Well or masculine "der" if it's Maßkrug, as krug is the head noun there just like an English.

Who ever came up with the idea that the head would be at the tail.

Stupid vikings.

Well, if the snake is slithering left to right it stands to reason the head would be at the right, right?

Tell that to the ourobouros.

He's confused.

So was Lovecraft.

3:48 PM

That's an epic name, I'm finding.

And it wasn't a pseudonym I think, was it?

> Howard Phillips Lovecraft wurde 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island geboren. Sein Vater, Winfield Scott Lovecraft, war Handelsreisender. Seine Mutter, Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft, konnte den

Nope. Born Howard Philip Lovecraft.

German Jinx.

OK, Phillips.

Phillips is Dutch.

And that is a fillip of information.

3:49 PM

Which of course is the same word as Deutsch, so same difference.

Right. I only just noticed it's 6 pm so maybe I should go practice some string crossings.

Just don't practice them at railroad crossings. /nod

Is there even such a thing as two railroads crossing. Sounds very dangerous.

Actually, a railroad crossing is where train tracks cross a road or highway.

I know.

I was taking it literally. For a spin.

Got it.

3:52 PM

Anyhoo, I'll check back in some time later when it's dark and the German laws prevent me from playing.

Have fun.

Nice talking at ya with none of the kids interfering. Very laidback.

CU

2 hours later…

6:18 PM

-80

Q: Live: Left nav, new theming and responsiveness

We have released left navigation bar, our new theming and a our initial responsive design work on Stack Overflow and Meta Stack Exchange (it's been live on MSO for a week). This work has been in progress and being discussed with the community for several months. The motivation for the work is cov...

discussion featured navigation responsive-design

WTF is this.

Live: half the page is now white not only on the right, but also on the left.

Coming up in the next update: 500% of the page are white.

That'll deal with the spam, I guess.

6:49 PM

@RegDwigнt Damn, I'm only a couple hours late to poop the party.

0

Q: What's the word used to describe an "individual-like" entity?

Most people consider 'individual' to be roughly synonymous with 'person.' Specifically, they would not consider an organization an 'individual.' However, it may be said that organizations possess beliefs, desires, responsibilities, etc. much in the same way that people do. Is there a word that...

single-word-requests

2 hours later…

8:34 PM

Actually I only just remembered, @Robusto, a year ago or so when I was streaming on Twitch I obviously recorded myself speaking English. @MattE.Эллен listened to it and was nonplussed.

There's still some videos saved for eternity in my Twitch Highlights, but I'd have to dig through them because most of the time I played with German friends and so we only speak German in most of them. Pretty much around the time the stream took off and I started speaking English, I stopped streaming. So there's only like two videos in English I think.

9:10 PM

-1

Q: What does it mean to be stubborn?

The definitions of "stubborn" all tend to require the person in mind of being wrong on the matter discussed: "having or showing dogged determination not to change one's attitude or position on something, especially in spite of good reasons to do so." "A stubborn person is determined to do what ...

single-word-requests

1 hour later…

10:27 PM

@Robusto I don't think Lovecraft was confused, I think he's confusing :P

10:38 PM

(Yet we only have two questions about him over at Literature.SE. Hint hint.)

11:02 PM

I don't think Lovecraft was confused, I think he was just a tad bi-curious.

Also, I can't seem to find any videos of myself speaking English. Not sure where Matt watched them.

Or maybe he downloaded them all, so they're no longer up.

room topic changed to English Language and Usage: Incomprehensible since about as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. meta.english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/chat-faq [phrase-requests] [pronunciation] [single-word-requests] [synonyms]

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Jun '1816

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