@Tonepoet No spaces??

@Cerberus I'm not going to adopt a practice until I thoroughly research it, and punctuation isn't exactly Webster's domain anyway. He wrote a little bit about it in his Philosophical and Practical grammar, but not very much and when I'm looking at the front material of the dictionaries, I see that the lexicographers use the LL.D. abbreviation, without spaces. I suppose provisionally I can take a look at the Chicago Manual of Style 1st edition.

Why not consult Fowler?

He was a man of taste and discernment.

@Cerberus: Is Afrikaans just Dutch with added African and English artifacts, or has it metamorphosed into something stranger over several centuries?

@Robusto The latter.

Interesting. Can you still understand it?

It has some creole elements: the grammar is simplified.

Somewhat.

Seems like rather a vigorous metamorphosis, then.

Yes.

I can possibly understand a written text, with difficulty.

Speech is even more difficult. If I'm lucky, I can pick up the gist.

Wow. That's more change than from Shakesperean English to present-day AmE, I think.

Yes, I think so.

@Cerberus I do not even know where my copy of Fowler's usage guide is, and while he did have insight on punctuation, his work was primarily focused on word distinction. Chicago would be considered the primary influencer of punctuation, and they offer the P.D.F. for download off of their website so I can search it very easily. Maybe I'll see what Fowler has to see about it later.

I wonder why the quick turnover in Afrikaans. Hmmm.

This is a map of local dialects.

The number represents the distance from standard northern Dutch.

Anything over, say, 10 will not be easy for me to understand.

But almost everyone in Holland also speaks standard Dutch, though some with an accent too heavy for me too understand.

Wow, I didn't know that. You can actually go places in your own country and be unable to have a conversation?

Just as most people in Flanders also speak standard Flemish, which is fairly easy for me to understand.

@Robusto I can have a conversation if they stoop to speaking standard Dutch, which they can.

But overhearing a conversation will often be difficult or impossible.

Hmm.

Some of the higher numbers in the east and south-east will be more like German, which I can understand, so those are easier for me than others of a similarly high number elsewhere.

Do you feel that you can understand any dialect of English without difficulty?

Say, the dialect spoken in Hull.

Which I don't really know.

Just an example.

Well, not any. I have to turn on subtitles when I'm watching a British film that takes place in, say, Yorkshire or Lancashire (or Scotland), etc.

Right, and chances are those will be relatively benign dialects, or even mere accents.

I can understand most of the U.S. dialects I hear, however. But inner-city AAVE can be difficult.

What's that?

People say aave for have?

"Black" Engliish.

Ah.

AAVE = African-American Vernacular English.

Ghetto-ese, as some call it.

And each major/older city probably has its own lower-class dialect?

Most people I know call it ebonics.

Or perhaps accent.

Dialects.

Right.

For example, in Chicago you have a working-class accent which is often parodied: "What're youse doin in dere?" ("What are you doing in there?")

I suppose we have more dialects per city, too, if you count so-called street language.

But that's very different from Chicago West Side AAVE, say.

Right.

And Da Nort' Side has its own peculiarities as well.

I grew up in the suburbs, so I speak a rather flat American dialect.

And people who speak those dialects are probably also able to speak more standard English, aren't they?

My brother will pronounce flat almost with a diphthong: flæyut.

@Cerberus Understand it, sure. Speak it, not so much. Not unless they really try.

@KannE There's a history S.E. but you need to keep in mind that migrated questions have to be on-topic by the target website's standards.

Oh, that question isn't about history anyway.

@Robusto And by that I mean, they may still have a heavy accent, but their grammar and vocabulary are changed to standard English to a considerable agree. They are unable to do that?

@Tonepoet No. It's OT for sure.

The OP wants to know how to turn a paragraph about herself, every sentence in it, into a third-person type research paper. I don't think I can even suggest anything...

@Cerberus They probably could, if you challenged them to do it for money. But they wouldn't see the need otherwise, and would probably resent the assertion that they weren't speaking well enough.

This is a writing advice question @KannE Is there any S.E. website that takes writing advice?

@KannE It's off topic for here, and really for any SE site I can think of.

Writers.SE is the only possibility, but this would be seen there as a "gimme da codez" kind of question even there. "Here, do my work for me."

I looked up the writing site, and it's for pros or scholars basically.

That's what people are like.

Hence my "stoop to".

@Robusto No "requests to critique your work or rephrase something. However, please do feel free to use your own writing as examples in on-topic questions" at Writer's.

On the Academia site, the question now is like...How do I deal with the anxiety of being kicked out of med school?...or something like that. Maybe they'll answer any college student question there. I dunno.

@Cerberus Speaking of which, I wonder if stoop is Dutch.

Quite possibly.

A stoep is a sidewalk/pavement.

stoop "bend forward," Old English stupian "to bow, bend," from Proto-Germanic *stup- (source also of Middle Dutch stupen "to bow, bend," Norwegian stupa "fall, drop"), from PIE *(s)teu- (1) "to push, stick, knock, beat" (see steep (adj.))

@KannE I don't think so.

@Cerberus That's a different kind of stoop. I'm talking about the verb.

Right.

The verb I did not know.

I love Sluggo on a stoop. GN.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer (60): "Cheat" or "hack" - related to computer games by Mister Seo on english.SE

@Cerberus A new gift for thee and thine:

@tchrist Optume!

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Url in title, potentially bad ns for domain in body, potentially bad ns for domain in title, potentially bad keyword in body, potentially bad keyword in title, +1 more (200): whclive.de/furyvswilder/ by furyfghts on english.SE

@Cerberus so Indisch and Surinaams must be completely unintelligible, the creators of the map could not think of any number high enough to assign to them.

Also, since when do you not know what AAVE is. Must've been on your recent list of things to forget.

@Cerberus Who gets # '1' in that picture?

#1 is Cerberus, but he is very tiny when compared to all of the Netherlands.

Use a glass to magnify.

Pour some ale in it.

@Robusto Wait...so is that a Chicago thing? I'd associate that with very non-urban places in the South.

And are you older or younger than him?

@RegDwigнt Everyone is the protagonist in their own movie.

I have a movie? Whoa awesome.

Except anybody else in a Tom Cruise movie. He's the protagonist always.

@RegDwigнt Haven't you been watching youtube lately?

Tom is Cruise Control for cool.

You've been too busy being youtube lately.

@RegDwigнt Tom is Penelope's and Terry's brother

Nah, I've not posted a video in ages.

Though actually I just went and wrote a song about time.

@RegDwigнt Then you're slowly losing all ego

it's called ego-depletion

Not posting it on Meta though, I don't want the stupid watch.

look it up

Mine is fine, thanks much.

@Mitch Ego is one of only two things I will never lose. The other one being weight.

@RegDwigнt DOesn't everybody already have a time piece?

@RegDwigнt Not really. Surinaams is actually pretty close to standard.

It's easy to understand.

10 year old kids have smart phones

@Cerberus well. The map disagrees!

Indisch is now very rare. I'm not really sure what it sounds like, for Indische mensen living in Holland have probably adapted to standard Dutch already.

Here's how someone under 10 finds out the time: "MOOOOMMMMMM!!! What time is it?"

@RegDwigнt It gives no number for Suriname!

makes notes

English is very hard.

@Mitch Standard Dutch.

@Cerberus Are there any non-natives still in Surinam?

@Cerberus Which is spoken everywhere by everybody?

The way you ask for time in Russian is you say something about someone else's mom.

Which you could say is native to Haarlem (though the result of influences from many different dialects, amongst which Flemish).

and the numbers are for what people really speak when at home?

@Mitch What do you mean?

@RegDwigнt You know where I first heard that?

@Mitch Well, that is a difficult question.

Your mom.

Yeah.

It's what you will mostly see on television.

Perfect Russian!

Mitch is very good.

I still don't know what time it is.

That bitch.

@RegDwigнt I suck at abbreviations.

@Mitch But at least you asked.

That's half the rent, as they say in German.

Thank your mom for me.

@RegDwigнt The other half of the rent is spent talking to a policemen about the fine for the leaf you left on your lawn.

Like I'm not even joking. It is perfectly idiomatic Russian to say "what time is it, your mom?"

And you still have to rake it up, even if your mom took it.

And it's perfectly idiomatic to say "your mom, it's five o'clock already".

Though technically you don't say "your mom", you say "mom your".

Your mom is weird.

This is Surinaams.

As pronounced by their wonderful murderer-president.

@RegDwigнt You can probably understand this?

He speaks standard Dutch, but with a Surinaams accent.

Or 'your herring'

матес твой

@Cerberus how am I supposed to understand spoken Dutch? Are you actually insane?

I could understand the subtitles if they had any.

Oh they do.

Well then. I understand everything.

Oh, I thought you could understand some spoken Dutch.

Why do I keep getting Announcer badges. I never announce anything.

@Cerberus well if you actually spoke Dutch the way it's written, then yes.

We do so more than the English do.

That is not very hard.

Try harder.

@RegDwigнt Yes, Cerb. is insane, but do try to understand: He is a dog that natively speaks Latin with one head, English with another and Dutch with the third and greek with all three. =P

I just registered on Latin to upvote Tchrist. And they literally told me "we trust you".

Now that is not a thing that's happened before.

Who did??

OMG, what a terrible mistake.

Muwahaha. Yeah other sites.

I will extinguish those responsible immediately.

They know nothing about my Latin though.

SE itus domem.

Waaah.

@RegDwigнt That's a funny way of writing kaito. >_>

It's also a funny way of writing "lubricant".

Or "car".

Really any word.

I'm versatile like that.

Why does markdown hate me?

I shall now spend all my 100 free points on downvoting everyone who speaks Latin on that site. Because apparently they lack the most basic understanding of what the word "dead" in "dead language" means.

Oh, that's why.

You've been marking it down, so it's retaliating.

@RegDwigнt S.E. has foreseen your plan and thwarted it in advance. You need more rep. to vote against anything. XP

And you think I'm not on eBay yet?

Ye of little faith.

Also, downvoting questions is free.

@RegDwigнt Check your privilege. They don't trust you that much. XP

Oh right. Messed things up in my brain.

It's free as in free but not as in free.

Well then. I'll just ask a bunch of questions and upvote them all. Free rep.

@RegDwigнt We trust you!

In me we trust.

Quite so.

Right guys. Lots of fresh YouTube videos to watch, so Ima show myself the door.

Also need to resume working on the stupid timepiece.

I'm only 46 bars in and it's a fucking quintet.*

Need more time, how ironic.

* (violin, violin, viola, cello, and a pimp)

@RegDwigнt I hope the door looks pretty. Bye bye.