English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Feeds

12:12 AM

0

Q: I am looking for a noun for what is washed up on the beach by the tide

Something like residue, but more specific for what's washed in by the tide. Many thanks

Færd

12:25 AM

@Cerberus Yes, I think so.

@Cerberus Women were banned from entering sporting venues as spectators with men right after the revolution.

And it gradually became a more serious problem.

If a stupid law stated, for example, that it was illegal to peel a banana with your right hand, then people would start to peel bananas with their left hands in public in protest.

And the state would crack down on left-hand-banana-peelers and punish them, because it would be an admission of defeat not to.

Cerberus

Ah, OK.

Why was it initially not a serious problem, but did it later become one?

Færd

And it would turn into a most ludicrous fight, such as this one about women entering stadiums.

Cerberus

Is this a fight?

Færd

@Cerberus Because this ludicrous plot needs time to get serious and attract substantial public attention.

@Cerberus Not a physical fight. It's a sort of public campaign, rather.

I messed up right and left in the hypothetical parallel I drew. I think you get the point, nonetheless.

Cerberus

@Færd So was it at first not really enforced, or did people at first not object to it that much?

@Færd OK.

I understand the issue, but was unsure about its history.

Færd

12:42 AM

@Cerberus At first women were facing limitations much stricter than to let them bother about attending sport matches.

There were rumors of universities becoming sexually segregated.

Cerberus

Ah, OK.

So, in the end, restrictions did not become much worse after the first couple of years?

Færd

At the very first hijab wasn't mandatory. Women who participated in the revolution hadn't thought it would become mandatory ever.

But after a while, it was enforced.

Then there were massive protests, which were gradually and sometimes maybe brutally stamped out.

Then started the war, and religious sentiments became rampant and campaigning for progressive goals seemed pointless.

Because so many young men were sacrificing their lives to preserve what they saw the Islamic order of things.

Have you read Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi? I strongly recommend it.

Persepolis (comics)

Persepolis is a graphic autobiography by Marjane Satrapi that depicts her childhood up to her early adult years in Iran during and after the Islamic Revolution. The title is a reference to the ancient capital of the Persian Empire, Persepolis. Newsweek ranked the book #5 on its list of the ten best non-fiction books of the decade. Originally published in French, the graphic novel has been translated from French to English, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Italian, Greek, Swedish, Georgian, and other languages, and has sold 1,500,000 copies overall. French comics publisher L'Association published the...

Cerberus

1:35 AM

@Færd Yes, I know that. The revolution often devours its own children.

I have not read it.

I have read The House of the Mosque.

The House of the Mosque

The House of the Mosque (Dutch: Het huis van de moskee) is a Dutch-language novel by Iranian writer Kader Abdolah, published in 2005. The English language translation of The House of the Mosque was published in January 2010. == Plot == The book follows the life of an Iranian family from 1969 on through the regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the installment of the Khomeini government, and ends after Khomeini's death. The story is a "semi-mythical narrative ... bearing a 'flying carpet' element of fantasy" that is countered by the horrifying events that...

Feeds

4:02 AM

0

Q: Does the word 'people' imply a state (alive/dead)?

If you refer to 'people' in a room does that imply that those people are any particular state? Specifically does it imply that they are alive or dead? If you said: People in a boardroom It is reasonable to assume they are alive, but I am not sure if its implied. Conversely, if you said: Peo...

single-word-requests

SmokeDetector

4:27 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] URL in title, bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, blacklisted website in body, blacklisted website in title, +2 more: youtube-to-mp3.live/get-back-right-lecrae-mp3-song-download/ by tomorpgn on english.SE

Feeds

5:10 AM

-1

Q: Word like "zeitgeist" for a place rather than a time

Zeitgeist refers to the prevailing thoughts and beliefs of a particular time period. Is there a word for the prevailing thoughts and beliefs of a particular place, independent of time? An example sentence: "Knowing all your neighbors and an obsession with high school football define the ____ of ...

single-word-requests

Hakase

10:59 AM

hey guys

I'm not sure it'd be a good question for the site but who knows

is Grammarly a good extension for language checking?

can I trust that it'll catch most things the default spellchecker doesn't catch and won't make it worse?

usually I see someone use the wrong its/it's or they're/their/there and I edit their posts but Grammarly doesn't seem to catch these 100% of the time

but the default spellchecker doesn't ever catch those

if you know a better extension of that sort I'd like to know

RegDwigнt

Grammarly is the worst thing ever devised by any idiot.

Even in their promotional materials they show alleged "mistakes" that are not mistakes by any stretch of imagination.

How anyone, anyone, would ever use shit like that is beyond me.

These people are literally morons. Clinically retarded.

As to better extensions, well I guess any extension is better, but really the question is whether any extension is any good. And so far we are not there yet. And we never might get there. That is the state of the art of the scientific research right now. Computers don't get grammar.

At two years of age, you had a better grasp of the English grammar than the most advanced computer of today has.

Hakase

dang I didn't expect it to be so bad

RegDwigнt

Yeah it's sorta sad really.

Hakase

it's 2018 where are the machine learning spellcheckers

RegDwigнt

But guys like Grammarly cash in on the fact that nobody realizes that.

@Hakase well simple spellcheckers are fine, obviously. But those of course utterly fail at the things that you actually want to check, the tricky ones like its vs it's and they're vs their, because these do rely on understanding the grammar underneath.

Hakase

11:11 AM

I was hoping I could eventually find some extension that would fix bogus grammar in other people's comments so that when I read reddit my brain doesn't hurt :D

RegDwigнt

It's easy to say if you've misspelled zeitgeist or Khabarovsk. Not so easy to say if you meant its or it's, which is, like, why you make the mistake in the first place.

Hakase

I think ms office spellcheck is more advanced than what browsers have

RegDwigнt

@Hakase well we still struggle to even formulate the BNF for English grammar.

Hakase

it has some understanding of nouns and verbs

RegDwigнt

I dunno who started this trend of ending app names in -ly or why. But for me so far it's been a great indicator of horrible useless apps, so I guess I should be thankful for having such a clear flag.

Hakase

11:15 AM

ye it's a nice thing they do that to themselves

RegDwigнt

Like, the other day I tried out musical.ly cause I thought it had something to do with music. Well silly me. Couldn't have been more wrong.

The first app I uninstalled literally within seconds of opening it.

Hakase

a list of these pinterest.com/fritinancy/names-that-end-in-ly

RegDwigнt

I am scared to even click.

But here's that question on BNF that we had a couple years ago, I found it now.

35

Q: Is there an Extended Backus–Naur form (EBNF) that covers all of English?

Is there an EBNF (Extended Backus–Naur form) that covers all of English, and if so, what is it?

grammar

Hakase

it's a surprisingly long list

RegDwigнt

I am sort of intrigued to know why it's a thing now.

And, like, if it's a thing now, why wasn't it a thing earlier.

I mean, they don't even pick actual English words that end in -ly, 99% of those are made-up nonsense names that don't even follow the rules of English morphology.

Like grammarly, for starters.

It's not that that word doesn't exist in English, it's that it couldn't.

And we are supposed to trust those people with checking our English.

Musically at least is a word. But loggly? Sevenly? Genially?

Hakase

12:00 PM

I guess it makes you wonder that and that's what makes it memorable

other words are not as interesting that they'd make you think about them for a second

Cerberus

12:13 PM

@Hakase You should never trust it. But it can help alert you to problems that you might otherwise have missed altogether.

Just like a spelling checker: don't trust it, but use it as a tool, and always be the final judge yourself when it marks an error.

And don't assume that it gets all errors, because it absolutely won't.

Færd

12:39 PM

That's the pragmatic approach.

Mitch

3:12 PM

@Færd That's a good book/graphic novel. Somehow the movie just wasn't as good even though the animation was very faithful to the original images. It also captures a lot of the complexity of the general immigrant experience.

@Hakase OMG those are all awful. I'm surprised there's no '-ly -ly' company.

zulily is close

Robusto

4:55 PM

0

Q: Two different german words ("Raum", "Zimmer") both translates to "room"

I'm searching for an English translation of "Raum" and "Zimmer". It is related with this question. Is a translation to two different words possible? Or is it only "room"?

translation german

Huh? I thought this was English.SE, not German.SE ...

Andrew Leach

5:51 PM

Well, translation into English is on-topic, but questions need FAR more data than is present here. The current answer would be suitable on German.SE and it provides a lot of the information which should actually be in the question! — Andrew Leach ♦ 49 secs ago

SmokeDetector

6:25 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer, toxic answer detected: Origin and status of "hosed", meaning "broken" by MrDabek on english.SE

Færd

6:35 PM

@Mitch I liked the book better too.

The film abridges the original story and leaves a lot of the details out, IIRC.

Neither of them put the behavior of the pro-regime people into a full context though. You don't get much insight into the psyche of someone on the dark side of her story.

RegDwigнt

7:00 PM

"Room" can also be translated back into German as "Platz". Which can the be translated back into English as "place". Which can then be translated into German as "Ort". Or "Stelle", or "Stätte". Or "Fleck", which can then be translated into English as "spot", then into German as "Pickel", then into English as either "pimple" or "pickax". You see where this is going? As others have said, relations between words in different languages simply aren't bijective. That's why people love using Google to translate song lyrics into Chinese and back into English again. It just doesn't work. It can't. — RegDwigнt ♦ 33 secs ago

Translation 101. Not sure why this would be a surprise to anyone.

Feeds

0

Q: Is there a word for "pretending to joke when you say something serious"?

I'm currently reading "the body keeps the score", and this passage appears in the first page of chapter 6. (Warning: passage is about emotional trauma, do not read if you're not ready for that) "I know I wasn't wanted", she told me, "I'm not sure when I first realized that, but I've thought ...

single-word-requests phrase-requests

BladorthinTheGrey

Can anyone think of a word for the reason you are fighting for a cause

like the deeper root reason

Mitch

7:36 PM

@Færd That's understandable and I was fine with the abridgement. But something about the paper images being animated, even though done seamlessly, something about it just changed the tone of it all for me somehow in a way I just didn't care for.

@RegDwigнt because people only know one language

@Færd Oh yeah, I was totally curious about all the other aspects. But then it is simply an autobiography, what happened to her and what her thoughts were. Those other people who stayed, they should write their autobiography.

@BladorthinTheGrey oh, that's different, you're looking for the reason for anything, but the very first or most important thing that causes all the rest.

i'd use things like root cause or fundamental or base or basis or primary reason. look for variations on that (in a thesaurus)

@RegDwigнt I know where you're going with this. Pimple translates to Meryl Streep, and she was in that movie with that other guy, who was in that movie with...

KEVIN BACON!

I win!

Was it Footloose? (the first one)

Robusto

@AndrewLeach Yeah, but the problem is, even if he provides the additional information he's then asking us to look up those words in a dictionary for him.

Mitch

@Robusto It's like Tom Sawyer and whitewashing the fence. He's getting us to do his work for him, and we do it because we like whitewashing fences.

or wrestling with a pig

whatever

choose your own metaphor

kissing a pig?

lipstick on a pig?

lipstick on a silk purse

Robusto

@Mitch I would rather mauve-wash a fence.

Mitch

If only that were on the menu

Robusto

It is on the menu in "mauves only" restaurants.

Mitch

7:49 PM

@Robusto because of course I went straight to dict.leo and did exactly what @RegDwigнt outlined going from German to English to German until I found Kevin Bacon

@Robusto You can have any flavor you want as long as it's mauve-flavored

Robusto

@Mitch I prefer his tastier brother, Canadian Bacon.

Mitch

Canadians supposedly have no idea what Canadian Bacon is.

Robusto

They lie.

Mitch

Probably better that they don't know.

Robusto

Either that or they're drunk on poutine.

They also pretend not to know about the Canada goose, though Wikipedia at least lists that as the name for the species.

Mitch

7:51 PM

I went to a vegan restaurant the other day. They had on the menu: vegan-chicken, vegan-beef, vegan-shrimp. And all I could think was, that doesn't make it very vegan if they mix in the choice of meat with the vegan stuff

Robusto

Heard in Brooklyn: "That vegan restaurant is so good you'd swear it's vegetarian!"

Mitch

but then I realized it was all faux-beef etc, it was a vegan thingy made to look and taste beefy but aha! we fooled you, no one died in making this vegan-beef charlatanry

at least no one we know.

Robusto

May 3 '14 at 18:10, by Robusto

Last year I came up with the idea for FauxFu® (rhymes with tofu), which would be real chicken that vegans can serve their carnivorous friends who have dietary restrictions regarding soybeans. A simple web search revealed that someone had already fleshed out the whole idea for the joke. Life ain't fair.

Mitch

@Robusto Look man, American cheese is american and I clog my arteries with it the way any patriotic American should.

@Robusto haha because it's all tasteless

@Robusto and you'd have to go to a special non-vegan store/restaurant to get some?

Robusto

Of course.

Færd

8:05 PM

@Mitch Fair point.

Mitch

I'm going to write my own autobiography now

I'm bored with writing other people's autobiographies