English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2018-12-31

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1:41 AM

@tchrist I am still using Times New Roman, Arial, and Courier New in my browser, LOL.

@Chappo Hello, I remember we talked about dictionaries long ago. Last month, a new edition of Collins English Dictionary was published. It looks the same as the previous one, black without dust jacket.

2:02 AM

@tchrist Better would be 13 months of 28 days each. One intercalary day for New Year, and one for leap years.

It will never happen, of course. Too reasonable.

@Robusto Lunacy, I tell you, sheer lunacy.

Or use the Chinese calendar.

Tolkien managed to make his calendar more accurate than ours.

The calendars here start on Sunday, like in the US. I prefer those that start on Monday.

I guess if I want that I need to print my own calendar.

Hello @phenry welcome to this chat.

2:54 AM

@tchrist You're all nutballs

@Robusto 365 weeks of 1 day per week, one leap-week when needed.

wait... 1 month of 365 days plus a 1 day weekend every 4 years etc.

2 hours later…

4:27 AM

@Mitch The hat looks nice on the bull.

3 hours later…

7:40 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, blacklisted website in body, pattern-matching website in body, potentially bad ns for domain in body (392): Testo Drive 365 - Best Male Enhancement Ingredients by dsanbkha on english.SE

4 hours later…

12:00 PM

@Robusto better would be no months at all. Who needs months. I never know what month it is now.

Months and years are a waste of brain space. You could use that space for knowing how to cook spaghetti, or who Justin Bieber is. Or why Pepsi is better than Coke.

Calendars are for people who have too much free time. When you have actual things to do, you ain't got no time to sit and scribble in a calendar. That you then throw away.

Tolkien is dead, and dead are all the Maya. That's what obsessing with calendars will do to you. I demand they put that on the packaging, just like they do for cigarettes.

Calendars are just a scam by the gift-card industry to milk you for money all life long. Yours says New Year, the next guy's says no it isn't. Yours says Christmas time, half the world population says there is no such thing as Christmas, fuck off. And half of the rest says well yes there's Christmas but it's not today, what are you, a heathen.

And astronomers just laugh into everyone's collective faces. And count Caesium atoms instead or something. Which are also not a thing, but that's a story for a different time.

12:38 PM

I wonder how do I pronounce the Dutch name Marijn Liffijt. I need to translate it into Russian, so I need to know how it sounds.

@CowperKettle Hello.

The ij/ei sound is probably difficult for you.

forvo.com/search/Marijn/nl

Maybe /ɛʲ/ is a serviceable approximation for you.

Thank you!

It must be Mareyn Liffeyt then ))

Very well!

Марейн Лиффейт

Looks good enough to me.

In various dialects, ij is just long i, so /iː/. In case you don't want modern standard pronuciation.

@CowperKettle Are you you have spelled it correctly?

Isn't it Lijffijt?

12:48 PM

I'll just give it in parentheses so that anybody who is interested might look up

@Cerberus It may be! The article I'm translating is not perfectly written.

google.com/…

Yes, it is Lijffijt

Right.

Leyffeyt

There should be some UN decision to standardize names and surnames.

There are no doubt established guidelines on how Dutch should be rendered in Russian, just as I know there are vice versa.

@RegDwigнt Not to mention weeks, hours, or minutes.

Year and day are the only units conexed with a relevant phaenomenon.

The rest is arbitrary.

1:40 PM

@Cerberus I thought it was silence.

2:10 PM

@CowperKettle Hey. I remember you used Anki as your flashcard app. Did you consider other apps and select Anki, or just go for it?

I've been using Tinycards for German, and I have over a thousand cards already, but it's a very rigid and unajdustable system that I think wastes my time.

It's not been very easy to find comparative reviews that address my concerns. I guess I won't definitely know until I try a bunch of them. But that's time-consuming.

@Cerberus Why is that starred.

Let's see.

Hello.

@Wrzlprmft I assume you mean the discretionary hyphens. Using 𝒲 as a substitute for W is an abuse, sure. But I can’t see that using a discretionary hyphen as a discretionary hyphen is an abuse. — MetaEd ♦ 5 mins ago

@MetaEd: Let’s take this discussion here. No, I did not refer to the discretionary hyphens, but to using phonetics for small caps. I elaborated this above

Hello @Wrzlprmft I checked out the physics and fonts stuff you linked to in your profile, cool. =)

@Færd Don't ask me!

@Jasper thanks

@Cerberus It's very unfair. You just literally said hello.

And to just one person.

And bam three stars.

2:22 PM

Probably Jasper and two sock puppets.

@Wrzlprmft Ah, that's clear now. Thanks for the link.

Remember, a star is worth nothing.

Some secret charm you're not willing to divulge.

No, just crazy people.

It is worth a rag.

2:23 PM

I've been watching Midsomer Murders...

Oh

I'm sick so I think I won't be celebrating this year's end.

What, ill?

Or sick of the series?

Sorry to hear that. :(

Flu/cold.

Are you going to celebrate anything?

Is it just preventing you celebrating the new year is it more serious?

@Cerberus Not much.

2:26 PM

Just that.

Ah good

I could go to the party, but in this state I don't feel like it, and it would probably not be good for me nor for the others.

We had the Yalda Night, which was the winter solstice.

Ah, when was that?

A couple weeks ago.

2:27 PM

OK.

It's odd how we think the solstice is at the 21st of December, while in fact it is not.

@Cerberus Take care and get well soon.

I will!

It was 10 days ago, to be exact.

That is the 21st.

So when is it?

2:29 PM

Even so, I believe the nights had been getting shorter several days before.

Hmm

> The winter solstice occurs during the hemisphere's winter. In the Northern Hemisphere, this is the December solstice (usually 21 or 22 December) and in the Southern Hemisphere, this is the June solstice (usually 20 or 21 June).

Hmm.

That's the beginning of Dey (the month overlapping Dec and Jan in our calendar). Today is Dey 10.

We noticed how some weather site said the nights were already lessening before the 21st.

Strange.

2:33 PM

@Færd That makes more sense that ours.

Do you also celebrate the Gregorian new year?

@RegDwigнt By the way:

> In the oldest Roman calendar, which the Romans believed to have been instituted by their legendary founder Romulus, the first month was Martius ("Mars' month", March), and the calendar year had only ten months. Ianuarius and Februarius were supposed to have been added by Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, originally at the end of the year. It is unclear when the Romans reset the course of the year so that January and February came first.[1]

The oldest Romans had it right, just ten months. Easier to calculate with.

2:54 PM

@Cerberus The later Romans had XII fingers.

3:11 PM

@Færd @snailboat recommended it to me. And her word is the word.

1 hour later…

4:30 PM

@RegDwigнt It’s not really that hard to find a word that covers all breasts, you know. Try brassière for one.

Or maybe for two.

5:02 PM

@Færd Do you actually do anything for Yalda?

@Jasper The eye glasses have a good color, but are barely noticeable on the small avatars.

0

Q: If single words solved any problem, answered any question, would we not speak in grunts?

If single words answered any question, would we not speak only by grunting? Is this what you English majors strive for, or is it simply a cheap trick to win arguments? Le mot just seldom appears unaccompanied by adjectives, adverbs, dependent clauses, and the like.English majors such as yourselve...

discussion single-word-requests

This is just screaming for answers, of which I have many. But that would be unprductive.

@Cerberus The printed calendar is only a (very close) approximation to astronomical reality.

Also, Dec 21st, or the winter solstice, is not necessarily the shortest day of the year.

I think the actual shortest day of the year is a few days before or after.

I'm sure wikipedia would explain it all but I can't be bothered.

I'm too busy right now internetting things that don't require thought.

6:10 PM

@tchrist Why do these sentences sound unnatural to you? Get can be used to mean "understand", which can be used with meaning(s), so I really don't get your objection. By the way, why did you quote the words in your comment separately rather than together (or maybe just get)?

@userr2684291 Because native speakers would never say “Did you get the meaning?” instead of “Did you understand?”

It doesn't matter what a dictionary or thesaurus suggests. It’s about actual usage.

I sometimes use quotation marks around entire phrases so they stand out better.

“Did you get the meaning?” sounds like a non–native-speaker pattern, not a native one.

Contrast this with getting a joke.

“Did you get it?” and “Did you get the joke?” are just fine.

One doesn't get meanings; one understands things.

“Did you get my meaning?” should be simply “Did you understand me?” or “Did you understand what I meant?”

This is why dictionaries are dangerous things.

And thesauri even more perilous still.

Sure, but... I think you're objecting to the wrong thing. Can Did you get the meaning? not be used to mean "Did you understand the meaning [of the story we've been discussing or whatever]?"?

@userr2684291 It sounds foreign, not English.

A native speaker might puzzle over it a while to see whether something other than simple understanding was being asked about.

Would Did you understand the meaning? sound okay to you?

It’s a bit redundant.

Most times, I wouldn’t put the meaning at the end.

It isn’t wrong, just reduplicative.

Tautological, if you would.

6:21 PM

Hehe.

Ahah! If you know tautological you must speak another Indo-European tongue besides English!

Your average non–college-educated native speaker of English does not know it.

German? French? Polish? Greek?

Those folks would know it.

I'm a native speaker of Croatian.

Oh that makes sense now.

But I still disagree with you.

That is your right and your privilege, and I shall not hold it against you.

6:26 PM

I think you're objecting to the wrong thing because a context where such a usage would be valid (and by valid I mean where each word is warrantedly in its right and proper and decorous place) exists.

I'm not asserting that it is impossible to construe such a context.

I'm just reporting what we would normally say instead.

What do you mean by construe?

Construct.

Okay.

In this case. Imagine.

Read: I'm not saying nobody could ever think of such a setting.

Where by "think" I mean "dream up". :) Reminds me a bit of so-called "rescue readings" of isolated sentences.

6:30 PM

I don't think that's the normal usage of that word, but alright.

Well, that's what I meant it to mean. :)

I'm very good at Humpty-Dumpty.

Aha.

I think I know what you're referring to.

> †1. transitive. To form by putting together materials, to construct v. Obsolete.

Alas, I've been obsolesced.

My reply originally said "...but I bet the two have the same root or something...", but I didn't wanna conjure those spirits.

> 4. a. transitive. To give the sense or meaning of; to expound, explain, interpret (language).

That's ok.

> 4. b. To expound, interpret, or take in a specified way (often apart from the real sense).

That is what I meant by construe.

I meant take something in a particular way.

Senses 2 and 3 of that verb are specialized, technical ones related to grammar.

6:34 PM

Yeah. I'd looked it up when I asked you that.

Sense 5 amplifies sense 4 for use in the field of Law.

> 6. a. transf. To interpret, give a meaning to, put a construction on (actions, things, or persons).

> 7. a. To deduce (a meaning, etc.) by interpretation; to judge by inference, infer.

(These are numbered sequentially in the order that sense first appeared in written English.)

Goodness, the latest is sense 9, which is marked obsolete but cites Shakespeare.

> †9. To inform by way of explanation; to explain.

a1616 Shakespeare Twelfth Night (1623) iii. i. 56 My Lady is within sir. I will conster to them whence you come.

Yeah, that sounds weird to me.

That conster is written construe in modernized editions of that work.

It feels a little weird, like a teach-vs-learn directionality flip.

Or come-vs-go or imply-vs-infer or concave-vs-convex or bring-vs-take or compose-vs-comprise.

> conster continued to be the pronunciation down to the 19th c., even after it had disappeared as a written form. Walker, 1791, called this ‘a scandal to seminaries of learning’

That's a long time!

"a scandal to seminaries of learning" is an amusing thing to say.

There are doubtless countless many of those in every generation.

It would have been nice if it had been constroy to oppose destroy.

> a 1640 J. Fletcher & P. Massinger Trag. Barnavelt (1980) ɪ. iii. 12 To have yoʳ actions consturd, scornd, and scoffd at by such malignant soules.

That spelling for the past tense strongly suggests that it was pronounced constered back then.

> If our word had been derived through Fr. it would have had the forms construy, constroy: cf. destroy.

6:49 PM

Words that come to English having been driven through France sometimes arrive curiously mutated. This is why rocket and arugula are the same thing.

The Etymology of the Word ‘Arugula’

> "Rocket," on the other hand, came up to English from a northern Italian dialect word, ruchetta, which worked its way over the Alps and became the French roquette. Englishmen then did away with the poncy French "qu," turned that feminine "ette" into a more utilitarian "et," and ended up with "rocket."

> Rucola is the Standard Italian word for the plant today, but the OED notes that the word in Calabria (the toe of the boot) is aruculu. Most Italian emigrants to the U.S. came from the South, bringing their dialects with them, so it makes sense that the calabrese term (or something similar) would be the one to filter into American English.

So Americans got arugula from the south of Italy via a long sea passage, while Englishmen got rocket via the overland route through France.

That article is very "tongue in cheek" if you didn't notice. "Poncy", etc.

Yep.

Oh my, the rocket meaning the plant dates from 1530 while the one meaning a cylindrical projectile hurled into the air dates from 1566.

So the culinary word antedates the pyrotechnic one. I would have guessed the reverse ordering.

The projectile is also from Italian, but from rocchetta. Perhaps that O in rocchetta instead of the U in rucchetta might be a difference between northern and southern Italian dialects. I’d have to check more carefully; unstressed O becoming a “higher” vowel U is pretty common in many but not all Romance languages.

Modern/official Italian uses 7 vowels. The many dialects may well have some that do things differently for all I know (I'm not especially studied in Italian dialects).

Latin's phonemic long-vs-short vowel distinction didn't survive the transition into Romance, but how those each took separate paths in our modern tongues varies across them, and indeed often within each language when it has many dialects (whether written or not).

@userr2684291 Your English is really very good.

7:10 PM

Thank you.

I wonder how dictionaries get etymologies of words. Did a lot of research go into the first edition, and in subsequent editions they just get copied over?

Also, how does one start to begin to research the etymology of a word?

@Jasper That's what I've heard at least. That's why you have people complaining about a lot of entries' being out of date even in the latest edition.

@userr2684291 I have also heard that some just copy entries from others, lol.

7:29 PM

@Jasper There are probably some books on this.

It is 2019 in Yekaterinburg.

The first half hour have been so-so.

1 hour later…

8:30 PM

0

A: Past subjunctive

Of Tense, Not Mood The verb phrase had to be divided is not one of those whose subordinate clauses sometimes take something other than the normal indicative by some speakers and writers and occasions. But even if it were, there are no subordinate clauses here in your original. ...

@Cerberus I can assure you I did not star that, contrary to popular belief!

8:46 PM

@Cerberus I believe Iranian Armenians and other Christians do. It can pass me by without so much as a notice, if I'm not reminded of it by others.

There seems to be an upsurge in observing some Western holidays and celebrations (Valentine's Day, Christmas, New Year, etc) among those who have stronger cultural affiliation with or influence from the West. For example, among the millions-strong Iranian diaspora.

@Mitch Well, it's a night of family gatherings and parties, poetry, dringking for some, eating pomegranates and watermelons, various kinds of shows and dances. Different traditions for different people, milder for some and more intense for others.

I was invited to recite and sing Hafez at a Yalda ceremony that featured a number of other performances.

And I spend the rest of the night with my parents at home, again with Hafez and filling up on pomegranates to bursting.

.

@Jasper I applaud your abstinence. :)

.

Happy New Year everyone!

9:05 PM

@Færd In fact, I only star meaningful things. I wonder why anyone would think otherwise. =)

9:47 PM

@Jasper I believe you.

Maybe that's because they think you tend to read more meaning between the lines than most others do. Then again, you could say that it's subjective and relative, and it would be a sufficient answer.

Is New Year there a big celebration @Færd?

The Gregorian New Year? Not much.

I kinda answered that half a page above. To Cerb.

I see. Well, there are lots of fireworks here.

Is it where you are?

Ah.

But maybe Chinese New Year is a bigger thing here.

Here, all the shops are closed during Chinese New Year.

9:53 PM

It should be well past midnight over there.

But they are still open during Christmas period.

Well, it's already early morning here.

I think I will participate more on ELU and ELL in 2019.

I just created new accounts on these two sites for the new year. =)

That's a nice resolution.

Anyway, it is strange that Hello has 4 stars. Unbelievable!

Was thinking about the very thing. Heck, lemme make it five.

Even in the given context, I don't find it funny or anything.

But I guess some may find it funny.

But then again, if they find it funny, why don't they star more of my lines, which is more funny? Hmm...

9:58 PM

@tchrist You need a new idiot test, unless there's some joke I didn't get. :-P

Gotta go have those dreams that are circling above my head before they fly away.

See you in your dreams @Færd

Seize you later.

10:17 PM

TIL that the phrase "pretty much" has been in use since the 1700s, and occasionally earlier.

Google Books has someone writing about "a Stone with the Inscription engraven upon it, tho' pretty much defaced" in 1723.

In fact, back then it was used in ways that are rare nowadays: in 1709, someone wrote, "We may see that he hath consulted his Brethren pretty much".

Google Ngrams says the phrase became popular around 1720.

10:35 PM

@TannerSwett I thought of a pick up phrase. "You are pretty awesome, because you are pretty and you are awesome"

10:48 PM

Nov 9 at 14:20, by Mitch

Oct 18 at 14:11, by Mitch

Jun 1 at 19:04, by Mitch

May 17 '17 at 19:08, by Mitch

there's nothing new under the sun

11:22 PM

Hello! I have a question regarding a certain phrase. What does: "The product does not defer from its design" mean? The context is in the discussion of design defects.

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Dec '1831

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