English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

RegDwigнt

00:13

Elijah Wood Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED

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1:44 "and the camera was placed in such a way that it looked like we were sitting side-by-side with him taller than I".

Fuck this shit, guys.

English is officially broken beyond repair.

Shut down the site.

Cerberus

00:27

@RegDwigнt ...taller than I am.

This ↑ is actually correct.

*...with him taller than with me.

This ↑ isn't.

skullpatrol

01:21

@CroCo I think a good way to come up with that meaning is to think about the action of "sweeping" a floor with long far reaching strokes covering as much area as possible.

So the travel restrictions are blocking as many people as possible.

Twitter isn't a good place to try to learn English idioms.

RegDwigнt

13:36

@Cerberus it actually is not. Because the sentence is in past tense.

Pineapples lose again.

Terran Swett

14:43

Someone posted this sentence on another site: "My fixed ctc is 5,13,672 and total ctc is 13,33,672."

That's the digit grouping used in India. I'm curious how these would be pronounced out loud.

Presumably 13,33,672 is not pronounced "one million three hundred thirty three thousand six hundred seventy two."

Is it "thirteen lakh thirty three thousand six hundred seventy two"?

Robusto

15:12

@Cerberus "... with him taller than me" is what I would say/write. And as the resident non-pineapple here, I propose everyone else stop talking about it now.

Cerberus

@RegDwigнt Well, the main clause may be in the past, but his height is a timeless fact. So you could use either past or present.

@Robusto You poor, unfortunate soul.

The Little Mermaid | Poor Unfortunate Souls | Disney Sing-Along

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Now let me post an appropriate music video for once.

Robusto

@Cerberus No, that's not right. He is talking about the apparentness of the height, not the actual height. So it was not timeless, you poor benighted and (no doubt) besotted pineapple, you.

Your brain has been besotted with cheese and Latin.

3

@Cerberus If Disney is where you learned your English, you truly are unfortunate.

Cerberus

@Robusto He is comparing the appearance with the actor true height, it could be argued. At any rate, the tense is irrelevant.

@Robusto No, television for young children is generally dubbed here.

Robusto

@Cerberus Sophistry.

Cerberus

Only adults don't need dubbing.

pokes Reg

@Robusto The Sophists of Athens were a grand school.

Robusto

15:20

@Cerberus Wow, that is your idea of an English sentence? "Television for young children is general dubbed here"?

@Cerberus What you should have said is "It can be argued that the Sophists of Athens were a grand school." But you blew it.

Cerberus

@Robusto Grrr.

@Robusto No, I would argue that it is inarguable.

Robusto

Feb 10 '11 at 16:06, by Robusto

That's why we go over this stuff.

Anyway, now that this pleasing little one-act comedy is over, I'm off to get ready to ride. Laterz.

Cerberus

15:35

@Robusto Have fun!

RegDwigнt

15:53

@Robusto that's actually good to know. One of those things that are painfully obvious if you think about them, it's just that you never do.

I'll add it to my pile of excuses of why I don't play the church organ.

tchrist

@Cerberus Are you sitting down?

RegDwigнt

Though I'm secretly hoping one day I can just ask our cantor and he'll just let me.

Fun thing about that: he'll often play the organ remotely from wherever in the church we happen to be practicing. He just stands there with some cheapo Casio keyboard but then presses a key and a fucking church organ plays. Shit's hilarious.

I don't know if it's got Bluetooth or something. No idea how you'd hook it up like that.

tchrist

How odd.

RegDwigнt

But yeah anyway. Point being, there's no pedals on the cheapo Casio.

So I can totally play that.

Indeed for like ten years of my life I played one. That was the only instrument I had at the time. A keyboard the size of a large kitten.

tchrist

Only one octave??

RegDwigнt

15:57

No, the keys were not regular size.

I don't remember the exact ambitus. Maybe two octaves. Maybe two and a half, even.

tchrist

pussy toes

RegDwigнt

Yeah.

After a couple years one of the keys just fell off.

Because it was not connected by a hinge or anything, just the plastic bent in one place. And after being bent back and forth ten thousand times it just broke clean off.

tchrist

@Robusto In a snowstorm?

RegDwigнt

So the next couple years I had to play around that hole.

Teaches you things.

The school of life.

tchrist

No sex talk in this chat.

RegDwigнt

16:00

That is not a rule I've instated.

tchrist

@Cerberus The comparatively constant number of new coronavirus cases in China daily do not represent the spread of the disease. They represent the upper limits of the number of kits they can test daily.

RegDwigнt

Anyway, that was the instrument I composed my first actual pieces on. That are now lost forever because I never wrote anything down.

One of them was quite nice actually.

No idea how it went. Can't remember a note.

Cerberus

@tchrist Hah, I'm not surprised.

We just have no idea what the situation in China really is, nor do the Chinese.

tchrist

Bach often used a much smaller keyboard at home. Probably many people did. There are places where he wrote something down too far compared to if he had had a larger keyboard.

RegDwigнt

Oh I'm loving my new melodica.

tchrist

16:02

@Cerberus They are behaving as though it is much worse than the numbers they provide us with.

Cerberus

@tchrist Oh, laptop keyboards suck, they are so small.

RegDwigнt

As well as the piano app on my tablet.

Cerberus

@tchrist I don't know about that.

tchrist

@Cerberus You don't quarantine 50 million people for a constant increase of 3k a day.

And there's no way that it's only 3k a day spreading.

Cerberus

China is not America nor Europe...

They do such things much more easily than we.

RegDwigнt

16:04

Nice try but I'm not biting.

Cerberus

Back in your cage, Stalin!

RegDwigнt

Continue speaking your non-English, Antje.

Cerberus

Oh, you meant than we.

tchrist

They're rounding up all the sick cases and taking them . . . somewhere.

Cerberus

That is 100% correct.

@tchrist Just as they have rounded up millions of Muslims in the west.

tchrist

16:05

Mortality rate in Muslim camps is less brutal than in Virus camps.

RegDwigнt

@tchrist well they kept a plane full of Russians in some prison for two weeks. Only got flown out a couple days ago.

tchrist

@RegDwigнt The Chinese or the North Koreans?

RegDwigнt

The Chineseans.

tchrist

14 more Americans with the virus. They're on one of the embargoed ships.

Or quarantined, I forget the distinction.

Cerberus

@tchrist I'm not entirely sure about that.

RegDwigнt

16:07

I don't care for this stupid mass hysteria. People are too bored.

Cerberus

I'm sure more than 800 people have died in those camps.

RegDwigнt

25000 Germans died of the fucking common cold just last February. Who's talking about that?

Cerberus

A million people have been rounded up, and I'm sure they haven't stopped yet.

tchrist

Flu?

RegDwigнt

Well yes flu.

Cerberus

16:08

says nothing

tchrist

Yeah, that makes sense.

RegDwigнt

Not an epidemic, either. Just your regular flu.

But because it's regular, nobody gives a fuck.

tchrist

I know. Same sort of thing here.

Cerberus

But the Wuhan virus is more contagious (I think?) and more lethal.

So it may become much worse.

RegDwigнt

Your poor English is more contagious and more lethal.

Cerberus

16:09

Better than yours or Rob's, Mr.

RegDwigнt

You've contaminated Elijah Wood already.

tchrist

Remember that there have NOT been 800 deaths amongst 37000.

Cerberus

Yeah.

We just have no idea.

RegDwigнt

My point exactly. So what's the point of even discussing it.

A tempest in a teapot.

tchrist

Of the 3500 completed cases, 800 have died and 2700 recovered.

The other 90% remain undecided.

Cerberus

16:11

"Completed".

Does that mean registered till the end of symptoms?

tchrist

No, it means we know their outcomes: live or die.

They have either beaten it or it them.

Cerberus

Yeah.

But there will be many, many more who have recovered without ever having been registered.

RegDwigнt

There are many more still who can't even spell corona but are tweeting about it regardless.

tchrist

@RegDwigнt We just had a 4yo kid die of the flu in Denver a couple days ago because the anti-vaccine mom refused to fill the Tamiflu script her physician gave her for the lad.

@Cerberus Yes, which is why nobody is trumpeting a 20% mortality rate.

RegDwigнt

@tchrist serves her right. Shame about the kid tho.

Cerberus

16:15

@tchrist Yes.

tchrist

The corona virus may be far more widespread than anyone realizes; have you looked at Betelgeuse's corona lately? Not very healthy if you ask me.

Cerberus

Hmm if they develop a vaccine and this virus becomes a pandemic, perhaps the hyper-religious and the stupid will thin out quite a bit.

How morbid of me.

RegDwigнt

Cerberus

Better.

My first name actually means the same thing as corona, except in a different language.

tchrist

The corona light of Betelgeuse is sickly and wan.

But probably it's just a little sneeze.

RegDwigнt

16:17

Betelgeuse's corona does not even exist anymore. You're way behind the times, Tom.

tchrist

The causality cone constrains me.

RegDwigнt

1375

Year 1375 (MCCCLXXV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. == Events == === January–December === April 14 – The Mamluks from Egypt complete their conquest of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia. Levon V Lusignan of Armenia is imprisoned for several years in Cairo, until a ransom is paid by King John I of Castile. June 18 – The future King John I of Castile marries Eleanor of Aragon. June 27 – Hundred Years' War: The English, weakened by the plague, lose so much ground to the French that they agree to sign the Treaty of Bruges, leaving them...

By my calculations it must be one of those things that killed Betelgeuse.

tchrist

@Cerberus Pleased to meet you, Goron.

RegDwigнt

> Moscow and Tver sign a truce. Tver agrees to help Moscow fight the Blue Horde.

Oh yeah. That must be it. Them Russians again.

tchrist

Blue horde? I thought the Keltoi had been long ago suppressed.

RegDwigнt

16:20

Or maybe it was the Treaty of Bruges after all.

Both "blue horde" and "bruges" sound conspicuously close to "betelgeuse".

Coincidence? I think not!

tchrist

Your literacy does you credit.

The Star (Clarke short story)

"The Star" is a science fiction short story by English writer Arthur C. Clarke. It appeared in the science fiction magazine Infinity Science Fiction in 1955 and won the Hugo Award in 1956. It is collected in Clarke's 1958 book of short stories The Other Side of the Sky, and was reprinted in the January 1965 issue of Short Story International as the lead-off story. == Plot summary == A group of space explorers from Earth return from an expedition to a remote star system, where they discovered the remnants of an advanced civilization destroyed when its star went supernova. The group's chief...

RegDwigнt

> In Nanjing, capital of the Ming Dynasty of China, a bureau secretary of the Ministry of Justice, Ru Taisu, sends a 17,000 character-long memorial to the throne, to be read aloud to the Hongwu Emperor. By the 16,370th character, the emperor has been offended by several passages, and has Ru Taisu summoned to court and flogged for the perceived insult. The next day, having had the remaining characters read to him, he likes four of Ru's recommendations, and instates these in reforms.

> Ru is nevertheless castigated for having forced the emperor to hear thousands of characters before getting to the part with true substance. The last 500 characters are elevated in court as the model-type memorial that all officials should aspire to create while writing their own.

tchrist

How could Ru father the Rus if the Emperor had him castigated?

RegDwigнt

In vitro.

tchrist

Tough egg to crack.

RegDwigнt

16:23

Or Virgin Masha.

tchrist

> The final paragraph of "The Star" reveals the deepest root of the priest's pain. Determining the exact year of the long-ago supernova and the star system's distance from Earth, he calculated the date the emitted light from the explosion reached Earth, proving that the cataclysm that destroyed the peaceful planet was the same star that heralded the birth of Jesus.

RegDwigнt

Only if you don't subscribe to the theory that we mysteriously lost 300 years along the way.

Also, only if you do subscribe to the theory that Jesus existed and was heralded by a star.

tchrist

Superluminal travel.

Or supraliminal, I always get those two cunfosed.

RegDwigнt

Sux æterna.

tchrist

Luke he ate eggies.

RegDwigнt

16:28

Coito ergo cum.

tchrist

You've been to Iowa, I see.

They don't have Stop and Goes. They have Cum and Goes.

This bothers foreign visitors to that storied land, but its autochthons are content with their custard nuts of dough.

Cerberus

@tchrist Why, thank you.

tchrist

@Cerberus Your nasg is very shiny today, Goron.

Kum & Go

Kum & Go is a convenience store chain primarily located in the Midwestern United States. The company, based in Des Moines, Iowa, operates over 400 stores in 11 states—primarily in its home state of Iowa. Other states include: Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Montana, Colorado, and Wyoming. Kum & Go was ranked as the 23rd-largest convenience store chain in the United States by Convenience Store News in 2010. == Background == The chain was founded by William A. Krause and Tony S. Gentle, who founded the Hampton Oil Company in Hampton, Iowa, in 1...

Cerberus

Nasg? I am no Nasgul.

You're confusing mythologies.

tchrist

I didn't say you were a ghoul, just that your ring is shiny to match your Goron.

Cerberus

16:36

I don't know Goron, only Sauron.

And he has no ring.

tchrist

Gymraeg goron < L corona

Cerberus

Gymreaeg, is that some language from the British Isles?

People decided that today was a good day to hold the national championship of cycling against the wind.

Basically people are told not to travel unless absolutely necessary by the government because of the giant storm.

11 Beaufort today in the north.

tchrist

Black Speech nazgûl < Gymraeg nasg "ring" + Persian غول‎ (ğul) from Arabic غُول‎ (ḡūl, ghūl), "demon" said to feed on corpses, from a verbal root meaning "to seize".

Welsh language

Welsh (Cymraeg [kəmˈrɑːɨɡ] (listen) or y Gymraeg [ə gəmˈrɑːɨɡ]) is a Brittonic language of the Celtic language family. It is spoken natively in Wales, by some in England, and in Y Wladfa (the Welsh colony in Chubut Province, Argentina). Historically, it has also been known in English as "British", "Cambrian", "Cambric" and "Cymric".According to the United Kingdom Census 2011, 19 percent of residents in Wales aged three and over were able to speak Welsh. According to the 2001 Census, 21 percent of the population aged 3+ were able to speak Welsh. This suggests that there was a decrease in the number...

Cerberus

Ah, I was wondering about the G.

I know Cymr- is Welsih.

tchrist

They're horrible with /k/, hence goron. :)

You should go ask your countrymen the Walloons about all that.

Cerberus

16:43

They were only my fellow countrymen for fifteen years or so.

tchrist

Till they welshed on the deal.

You still called them Welsh.

Cerberus

I don't think they ever felt there was a deal...

We called whom Welsh?

tchrist

> Walloon < French Wallon (feminine Wallonne), n.adj. < medieval Latin Wallōn-em, < Germanic *walah, walh, foreigner (Old English wealh): see Welsh adj. The name represents the appellation given by the Germanic Flemings and Franks to their Romanic-speaking neighbours.

Cerberus

See Welsh?

I had no idea those could be related.

But I suppose it makes sense as "foreigner".

tchrist

Yep!

> Etymology: Cognate with Old Frisian walsk ‘French’ (rare), Old High German walesg , walisc , walahisc ‘Latin’, ‘Romance’ (Middle High German walhisch , welhisch , walsch , welsch ‘Italian’, ‘French’, ‘Romance’; German welsch , in the same senses), Middle Dutch walsc ‘French’, ‘Italian’, ‘Walloon’, ‘speaking a Romance language, especially French’ (Dutch waalsch ‘Walloon’, ‘speaking a Romance language, especially French’), Middle Low German Walsch , Wallesch ‘Romance, especially Italian’, Old Icelandic valskr ‘foreign, especially French’, Old Swedish valsker ‘French’, ‘Italian’, ‘from a sou…

> With the place name compare post-classical Latin Wallia , Walia , Guallia , Gualia (12th cent.), Anglo-Norman Gales , Galis , Galleis , Gualles , Gwales , Wales , Wals , Walays , etc., Old French Vales , Gales (c1100; < Old English), and also Anglo-Norman terre de Gales , paijs de Gales (both 14th cent.; Middle French, French pays de Galles ). Post-classical Latin Wallia denotes only Wales, while the alternative name Cambria , with which it is often used interchangeably, can also be used to include (or sometimes exclusively denote) the British territories in northern Britain, e.g. Strathc…

> The British people inhabited Britain south of the Firth of Forth, and following the advent of the Anglo-Saxons gradually retreated until the area under their influence consisted of Strathclyde (until the 12th cent.), Cornwall (cf. Cornish adj.2), and present-day Wales (cf. sense A. 2).
In quots. eOE2, eOE3 at α. apparently: spec. Cornish or south-west British.
In Anglo-Saxon law codes the word repeatedly occurs with the implication of lower or unfree status of the British in Anglo-Saxon society; cf. quots. eOE3, lOE at α. and sense A. 1b.

So the Germans just called everybody who was foreign to them Welsh.

Be it in Flanders or Britain.

Cerberus

16:50

Good to know.

tchrist

It's always an exonym.

Cerberus

Makes sense, I suppose.

tchrist

I don't know the Walloonian endonym.

Cerberus

I believe they just say Wallon now.

tchrist

We are all become Furriners.

Cerberus

16:53

Wallon

Le wallon (walon en wallon [wa'lɔ̃]) est une langue d'oïl parlée en Belgique, en France et, très résiduellement, dans la partie nord-est de l'État américain du Wisconsin. Elle est reconnue comme langue régionale endogène par la Communauté française de Belgique, au sein de laquelle elle est la plus importante des langues romanes endogènes pour ce qui est de la superficie (70 à 75 % de la Région wallonne) et de la population (1 000 000 à 1 300 000 locuteurs en 1998). Le wallon était la langue la plus parlée en Belgique romane jusqu'à la Première Guerre mondiale. Depuis, son usage dans la vie quotidienne…

tchrist

> The place-name element Wal- ( < Old English Wealh , Anglian Walh ) is common in names dating from the Anglo-Saxon period. In early names and in names from border areas this probably denotes settlements of Celtic Britons; however, the nature of the evidence makes it difficult to identify early formations.

In later formations it is more likely that it refers to foreign settlers from the continent. It has also been suggested that it may sometimes denote settlements of serfs. Compare e.g. (on) Wealadene Hertfordshire (c1000; now St Paul's Walden), Wealtun , Suffolk (a1016; now Walton), Walec…

Cerberus

I must venture out into the storm now, wearing a scarf sent to me by a Brazilian river from the northern Cambrian territories.

tchrist

Here too. Stormy stormy white.

Cerberus

11 Beaufort in the north.

tchrist

Good and strong.

No, just pretty strong.

Yours goes to eleven?

I knew it was an oily French tongue, but didn't know it got its own TLA.

> Le nom Wallon est issu du moyen néerlandais Wale (aujourd'hui Waal), continuateur de walh utilisé par les Germains pour désigner les populations celtophones ou romanes, suivi du suffixe -on. Sa plus ancienne trace écrite, d'après les travaux d'Albert Henry, philologue romaniste belge, date de la seconde moitié du xve siècle dans les Mémoires de Jean, sire de Haynin et de Louvignies 6,7,8 où il désigne les populations romanes des Pays-Bas bourguignons.

La portée sémantique se réduira encore un peu plus lors de la République et de l'Empire français, le Royaume-Uni des Pays-Bas et l'indépen…

@Loong What's up?

Do you ping on German? :)

> Après la Première Guerre mondiale, les écoles publiques vont imposer une éducation en langue française à tous les enfants, ce qui induit un dénigrement du wallon, renforcé par les consignes officielles de 1952 visant à punir son utilisation dans les écoles. Depuis le milieu du xxe siècle, la transmission générationnelle de la langue a diminué.

> Avec la reconnaissance du néerlandais, la volonté de défendre le wallon commence à naître au sein du mouvement wallon et c'est ainsi que, par exemple, la Ligue wallonne de Liège commence à publier, dans L’Âme wallonne, de nombreux articles en wallon. Son usage était auparavant resté cantonné aux publications des associations culturelles et folkloriques. La promotion de la langue wallonne ne sera pourtant jamais forte de la part des wallingants, trop attachés à un certain jacobinisme français.

> Malgré une riche littérature commençant au xvie siècle, l'utilisation du wallon a nettement diminué depuis l'annexion de la Wallonie à la France, en 1795. Cette période a définitivement établi le français comme langue de promotion sociale. Entre 1815 et 1919, le canton de Malmédy majoritairement wallophone est intégré au royaume de Prusse puis à l'empire allemand.

> Le wallon va constituer une langue minoritaire de l'empire allemand. Avec la guerre franco-prussienne de 1870 et le Kulturkampf qui va bientôt lui succéder, Malmédy va subir une tentative de germanisation forcée, l’enseignement du français étant interdit dans les écoles au profit de celui de l’allemand. Les curés se voyant interdire de prêcher en français, certains contourneront cette interdiction en prêchant en wallon.

Man, so much stuff I never knew.

That's all from here:

Histoire de la langue wallonne

Langue véhiculaire du diocèse médiéval de Liège, héritier de la Cité des Tongres, le wallon reste jusqu'au début du XXe siècle la langue parlée par la majorité de la population de la Belgique romane, car le français y est seulement la langue des lettrés et des classes supérieures. Le bilinguisme wallon-français est alors une réalité, que ce soit dans le monde professionnel ou dans le monde politique. Dans la sidérurgie et à la mine, le wallon est souvent la langue utilisée pour la formation des ouvriers et dans de nombreuses communes, les conseils communaux se font souvent dans les deux langues…

Cerberus

17:11

@tchrist Pool Walloon.

C'est trop tard poor vous.

tchrist

Probably so.

Cerberus

Although, actually, I believe the French address their God informally.

What is tutoyer in English?

The wind was there, but it wasn't so bad. The shop is a short walk anyway.

tchrist

L’État Français has ever sought to impose the Sun King's tongue through his lands.

Cerberus

More like 7 or 8 B. here.

@tchrist Yes.

tchrist

@Cerberus This from the people whose children vouvoient ses parents?

Certainly in Spanish or Portuguese one tu's the Deity.

Cerberus

17:15

@tchrist Oui!

@tchrist There you go.

In Dutch, it has always been gij ('thou').

But I think U is also traditional, though probably newer.

Jij sounds rather evangelical.

Then again, few people believe in the Christian god these days, so I don't really know.

I attended a Catholic funeral service for the first time, ten days ago.

My toe is still hurting from having to kneel on this horrible bench.

Nie wieder!

tchrist

They've been trying to kill the ocky French tongues for centuries now, and frankly they've pretty much succeeded. Alas for the trobadors perduts.

Cerberus

Yeah.

But the past couple of decades have seen a resurgence in regional languages everywhere.

So those still alive now have a future.

tchrist

I don't know if it's enough to rescue the langues d’oc.

Cerberus

The problem lies with the village dialects. Those are poorly protected.

tchrist

And poorly documented.

More oral than written.

Cerberus

17:19

The village in Limburg where the service was has its own dialect, as do most villages there.

But for how long?

tchrist

You mean the Roman rite was in dialect?

The Mass?

Cerberus

@tchrist Yeah, though there has been lots of research even on the tiny dialects.

@tchrist No.

That was in Dutch.

tchrist

Which "service"?

Cerberus

I don't know what to call it. Whatever the deacon does in a Catholic church, memorising the dead and going through the rites.

tchrist

Yes, ok.

Nissart isn't written much, I think. Niçois, Niçard, Nizzardo. Nobody can spell that word.

Now it's used mainly for salades. :)

Cerberus

17:23

Hah.

I managed to guess Nissart before seeing the other spellings.

Nizza is Italian, so yeah.

tchrist

It's really interesting how the choice of writing systems changes how the language is perceived.

Cerberus

I suppose so.

> Origin of cant2
1325–75; Middle English: side, border < Anglo-French cant, Old French chant < a Romance base *cantu(m) with the related senses “rim, border” and “angle corner,” probably < Celtic; compare Latin cant(h)us iron tire (< Celtic), Welsh cant periphery, rim, felloe; probably not akin to Greek kanthós corner of the eye; cf. canteen, cantle, canton

tchrist

You can choose an Italian or a French system for writing it, and it will appear more aligned to that language.

Cerberus

Apparently, canton is from cant!

> Origin of canton
1525–35; < Middle French < Old Provençal, derivative of can side, edge (see cant2)

Isn't that lovely.

But...

Why do they not mention Dutch kant and kantelen?

Kant = side, edge.

Kantelen is to cant, sway over.

tchrist

Similarly, Galician by using Castilian orthography instead of Portuguese/Occitan orthography seems far further away from Modern Portuguese than it is. And yet these choices make a difference as we see with "spelling pronunciations".

Cerberus

17:27

True.

tchrist

I knew the connection to French chant but well, wasn't what I thought.

Cerberus

I think that is the other cant!

As in language. That one is from Latin cano "sing", French chanson.

tchrist

arma virumque

Cerberus

Yes.

I suspect chant "sing" and chant "edge" are unrelated.

Just as English cant and cant.

One being from Latin cano, the other probably from Latin/Greek cant(h)us "rim" (of a wheel?).

tchrist

The weird ca > cha thing that happened in French is so odd compared to other Romance, although of course you see it having happened in Italian etc with the i, e.

Cerberus

17:32

Yes, it is weird.

But omnipresent in the language.

The sound in Italian is slightly less weird, but, yes, also weird.

> De zware storm heeft ook voordelen. Vluchten van New York naar Londen leverden zondag recordtijden op, melden Britse media. De vlucht van British Airways deed vier uur en 57 minuten over de vlucht van het New Yorkse John F. Kennedy International Airport naar Londen Heathrow. Normaal duurt de vlucht ongeveer zeven uur. Alleen de Concorde vloog in het verleden sneller: het supersonische toestel vloog in minder dan drie uur van New York naar Londen.

In other news.

tchrist

Was wondering why you were keeping track of that.

> Etymology: Found c1400; rare before 1600. Words identical in form and corresponding in sense are found in many languages, Germanic, Slavonic, Romanic, Celtic. Compare Dutch kant, Middle Dutch cant, border, side, brink, edge, corner, Middle Low German kant (masculine) point, creek, border, also kante (feminine) side, edge, whence modern German kante edge, corner, border, brim, margin; also Dutch and German kante point-lace. (There is no trace of the word in the older stages of Germanic.) Also Old French cant and modern Norman cant, Walloon can side, Spanish canto, Portuguese canto, Italian…

Boy that's long.

> It is not clear whether the English word was adopted < Old French or from Low German, or, in different senses, from both.

Cerberus

@tchrist Just because this huge storm (...) has been on the news for days here. Code orange, says the royal weather institute!

tchrist

We'll have heavy snow all the livelong day.

> Etymology: The spelling candilever found in the 17th cent. (if of any authority) compared with the Spanish ‘can debaxo de la viga , mutilus super quem capita trabium imponuntur, a corbel in masonry’ (Minsheu Voc. Hisp. 1617), naturally suggests some such Spanish phrase as can de llevar , ‘modillion for carrying or bearing’: but of this there is actually no trace.

On the other hand the name ‘flying lever bridge’ used in A treatise on Bridge-building by T. Pope, New York, 1811, for what is now called a ‘cantilever bridge’, and the term ‘framed lever’ used for cantilever in Tredgold's Carpe…

Cantilate is what Jewish cantors do.

> cantily Scottish In a canty manner, cheerfully, blithely, cheerily.

Cerberus

Ah, I see.

> Origin of cant3
1250–1300; Middle English < Low German kant merry, bold

This I do not recognise.

tchrist

> cantitate intransitive. To sing as a bird. (Used contemptuously.)

Cerberus

17:41

We have kant "ready".

But my dictionary says it must be derived from kant "side".

tchrist

There are a dozen cants, none of them the one used by those who can’t type.

Cerberus

Hah.

Speaking of viruses, it's funny how English has bat.

So much shorter than Fledermaus.

tchrist

We do have flittermouse.

And flittermice.

Cerberus

Ah, nice.

tchrist

> I am off down the road
Where the fairy lanterns glowed
And the little pretty flitter-mice are flying
A slender band of grey
It runs creepily away
And the hedges and the grasses are a-sighing.

Cerberus

17:48

An old word?

Or a nonce word?

tchrist

1547

Cerberus

Ah, they say it is still in current use.

tchrist

English bat is so much easier to type than Spanish murciélago.

> From metathetic murciégalo, from Latin mus (“mouse”) + caeculus, diminutive of caecus (“blind”). Compare Portuguese and Galician morcego. Also compare with Old Spanish mur (“mouse”).

murine being Latin for mousy

Cerberus

An odd animal.

tchrist

Super.

Twenty percent of the furred beasts are wingèd ones.

And they live a long, long time. We don't know why.

A mouse or a rat lives two, maybe three years. But bats swap years for decades in comparison with same-sized rodents.

> The maximum lifespan of bats is three-and-a-half times longer than other mammals of similar size. Six species have been recorded to live over 30 years in the wild.

> One hypothesis consistent with the rate-of-living theory links this to the fact that they slow down their metabolic rate while hibernating; bats that hibernate, on average, have a longer lifespan than bats that do not.

Another hypothesis is that flying has reduced their mortality rate, which would also be true for birds and gliding mammals. Bat species that give birth to multiple pups generally have a shorter lifespan than species that give birth to only a single pup. Cave-roosting species may have a longer lifespan than non-roosting species because of the decreased predation in caves. A…

Birds don't live long just because they fly.

Nor do birds than don't fly live less long than those who do.

Cerberus

17:57

Aren't vleermuizen far removed from mice?

tchrist

Just talking mass here.

Cerberus

Yeah.

tchrist

To shrews, maybe. To mice, no.

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