English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

CowperKettle

01:19

Cerberus

Ought we to be concerned?

CowperKettle

> Most of the alien civilizations that ever dotted our galaxy have probably killed themselves off already.

livescience.com/milky-way-alien-life-map.html

tchrist

@Cerberus The variant is up to 70 percent more transmissible than earlier versions, officials said, though some scientists are skeptical. People in southeast England, including London, were told to stay at home.

CowperKettle

Yes, it is hard to tell yet. More data are needed, or at least is needed.

Cerberus

01:35

@CowperKettle are

@tchrist Hmm, that is not good.

@CowperKettle This sounds like idle speculation, frankly.

Too many huge uncertainties.

tchrist

04:01

‘Latinx’ hasn’t even caught on among Latinos. It never will. The term is an English-language contrivance, not a real gesture at gender inclusivity. —José Antonio del Real

2

> The opposition to “Latinx” is often quotidian: The -x is hard to say in Spanish. Its plural derivatives, like “latinxs” and “amigxs” and “tixs,” are impossible to pronounce. For Spanish speakers navigating nonbinary gender in their day-to-day lives, the -x modification does not provide a road map for dealing with pronouns (el/ella) or gendered articles (el/la, un/una) in spoken Spanish.

> This English-language modification to Spanish-language grammar does not achieve linguistically what it hopes to achieve culturally: an expansive recognition of autonomy and difference that people can use in everyday life.

I've been saying this forever. I'm glad to see that someone with Spanish names is speaking out against it.

It's just people who don't even speak the language imposing a useless and unpronounceable contrivance out of some ignorant crusade borne of complete tone-deafness.

> “Hispanic” soon had detractors. By the 1990s, a growing consensus among academics and activists held that the term obscured the legacy of colonization and genocide by Spain. “Latino” emerged as a preferred pan-ethnic identifier, and in 2000 it was added to the census alongside “Hispanic.” (The “race” of Hispanics/Latinos is a fraught topic, because the census does not recognize the common Latin American racial category of mestizo, which denotes a mix of European and Indigenous ancestry.)

> “Latinx” is the latest twist in this saga. It began to circulate on the Internet around the turn of the century, primarily through chat spaces and early forms of social media, adopted first by queer-identifying people of Latin American descent. Since 2015, young people have embraced it with particular exuberance, especially in university settings.

> Where and by whom “Latinx” is used has helped spur the complaints that it may alienate working-class Latino communities (especially those that speak Spanish) or at least fail to reflect their preferences.

> “I keep thinking, people who are watching this, do they identify with that term?” asks Richard T. Rodríguez, an associate professor at the University of California at Riverside, of political messaging during the pandemic that has used “Latinx.” “The x is jarring, kind of like biting in glass.”

I keep saying that.

Language is a spoken thing. It is completely useless if it cannot be spoken.

2

Cerberus

Just ignore hysterical Twitter hypes.

tchrist

Weird that Wyoming's data are down in Colorado. :/

Cerberus

04:17

Perhaps they are very low.

tchrist

Can't go below zero.

> The average number of new deaths on a day has consistently been about 1.8 percent of new cases 26 days prior and about 2.3 percent of hospitalizations 10 days earlier. What this means is that we have a sense of what’s likely looming. If we extrapolate outward from the current figures, we see that we might expect to see an average of as many as 3,900 deaths per day by Jan. 12, using the per-case ratio

Like a bomb that's already gone off.

> The Dutch government said it would ban flights from the United Kingdom starting Sunday at 6 a.m. until at the latest Jan. 1.

@Cerberus Hope you're not in the UK right now. :/

Cerberus

05:40

@tchrist Let's hope vaccination will proceed faster than expected.

@tchrist I wouldn't travel abroad during an epidemic!

Foreign travel is said to have been a major factor in praecipitating the post-aestive waves.

Now, if only they could keep the ban on British travel forever.

British tourists are the most numerous, and the worst kind.

Faheem Mitha

07:06

@Cerberus Personally, I thought it dysfunctional. My limited experience of British (read English) doctors is that they are totally uninterested in helping. Still much better than nothing at all.

Which is the norm in a lot of places. India has state/govt hospitals but there are completely inadequate for the population and very poorly financed. But India has historically had very low public spending, and that has not changed.

It's entirely possible that the NHS is overall functional. It likely shines better for more serious situations.

CowperKettle

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle Which vaccine?

@Cerberus How so?

As one can see from the following graph, India is right at the bottom. Though there are presumably others that are lower still, but not shown.

statista.com/statistics/268826/…

And bear in mind that India is very poor, so 3% of the GDP is really not much.

CowperKettle

07:24

@FaheemMitha ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle So vaccines not specified?

CowperKettle

10:06

@FaheemMitha Yes, they count all doses. They failed to include some 2 million doses injected in China, probably because China does not provide figures.

It's a rough estimate statistics, not a precise one. But it's a pleasure to observe how the process is finally getting underway.

Andrew Leach

10:29

@Cerberus I think that judgement is better visited on Americans, myself.

Faheem Mitha

11:16

@CowperKettle Yes, I see.

Conrado

11:48

@tchrist Not only the working-class Latin American expats living in N. A. have experienced this difficulty related to inclusive language. The Real Academia went on the (record a few days ago)[infobae.com/cultura/2020/12/14/…, reiterating its position from at least since 2018 that it does not support the glass-biting movement.

“El problema es confundir la gramática con el machismo”, afirmó Darío Villanueva, director de la RAE... paltech.org

(Oh, I mixed up the parenthetical markdown punctuation again..)

M.A.R.

12:58

Herbology lab course final exam: 6 multiple choice questions

Education in pandemic times SMH

CowperKettle

13:09

Арбитман, Роман Эмильевич

Роман Эмильевич Арбитман (7 апреля 1962, Саратов — 18 декабря 2020) — русский прозаик, писатель-фантаст, литературный критик, педагог. == Биография == Сын саратовского искусствоведа Эмилия Николаевича Арбитмана. Окончил филологический факультет Саратовского государственного университета (1984). В 1984—1987 годах работал учителем в Аряшской средней школе Новобурасского района области, в 1987—1989 годах — корректором в издательстве Саратовского университета. Как литературный критик выступал с конца 1980-х годов, публиковался в «Литературной газете», «Книжном обозрении», «Сегодня», «Литератор» (Санкт...

A writer who kept a bit of correspondence with my father died 2 days ago.

Last year he sent us an electronic copy of his book.

And several weeks ago he asked for an email to send his new book to us.

I sent him the email address, but he didn't reply, because he was hospitalized.

He wrote humoristic sci-fi/fantasy detectives

He spent two weeks on a mechanical ventilator with covid.

CowperKettle

13:30

My dad and he chatted in Facebook, and now the writer's wife wrote that he died.

M.A.R.

13:54

@CowperKettle Sorry for your loss

Mitch

14:07

@tchrist agreed. But there's the difficulty that it has become a thing in English as the article recognizes. -In English- people use it (well in formal circumstances). It's a word -in English-.

A chewing-on-tinfoil word but still a word

@CowperKettle that's awful

Robusto

14:26

@Cerberus I disagree. That is just linguistics groupthink. Most of the language we use is not spoken. This chat, for example. And linguistics, while cavalierly disparaging written language, relies on it for constructing its theories about language origins and development. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

The whole EL&U SE, and all its sisters, are useless because they are not "spoken"? Please.

tchrist

15:12

@Conrado Muñoz Machado, actual cabeza de la institución, resaltó: “La posición de la RAE es clara. El desdoblamiento altera la economía del idioma. Y yo añado: y la belleza. Este tipo de variantes la estropean. Es una lengua hermosa y precisa. ¿Por qué tiene que venir usted a estropearla?”

Barbarians at the gates. Bxrbxrxxns, I mean.

Faheem Mitha

> Taxes for Financial Years 2017-2018, 2018-2019, and 2019-2020.

Is the comma before the "and" standard or not? Or is it that Oxford comma thing one hears so much about?

Robusto

@tchrist: My remark above about written/spoken language was intended for you in response to your "Language is a spoken thing" comment, not @Cerb's whatever. I hadn't had coffee and got the wrong link.

Robusto

15:34

All you need to know to understand 5G

►

Cerberus

16:08

@AndrewLeach I meant tourists as a local problem: in Amsterdam, everyone agrees British tourists are the biggest problem; my British neighbour agrees. We get a certain type of tourists from each country.

@FaheemMitha They drink a lot, they scream through the night, they pee and vomit everywhere, they fight, even with local residents who are trying to get to their front doors through the crowds. Etc.

We are very, very happy with almost all the tourists gone.

@Robusto I think I agree with you, but I have no idea what point of mine you were trying to disagree with!

Your arrow probably points to the wrong chat line.

Robusto

16:25

1 hour ago, by Robusto

@tchrist: My remark above about written/spoken language was intended for you in response to your "Language is a spoken thing" comment, not @Cerb's whatever. I hadn't had coffee and got the wrong link.

Gigili

2 days ago, by Gigili

Oct 6 at 19:46, by Gigili

Glad to know you missed me.

Robusto

@Cerberus: Yeah, sorry about that. I was waiting for coffee to brew. Always a dangerous time.

Gigili

What does the following verse, or sentence refer to?

> The pristine church on the hill.
The architectural display of cookie cutter steeples, [...]

"cookie cutter steeples"

it looks like the steeples are cookie cutter cuts or what?

Robusto

@Gigili They are identical, as if all cut out of the same mold.

Gigili

Thanks.

Mitch

17:03

@Cerberus Is it the soccer hooligans?

@Gigili Shabe Yalda Mobarak!

I always want to say 'mubarak' like the former president of Egypt.

Is that weird?

Yeah that's weird.

Faheem Mitha

18:07

@Cerberus Yikes, that's terrible. My sympathies.

Gigili

@Mitch Merci!

That's weird, but then you are also weird, as weird as the former president of Egypt I'd say

Rob's hat fits so perfectly that inspires me to use those silly hats too.

Conrado

18:40

Actually, it was to protest a lack of affordable housing...

Gigili

19:01

@Conrado looks good to me

CowperKettle

Word of the day: coulter (a blade that precedes the ploughshare)

The phrase "swords to ploughshares" can be in reality "swords to coulters"

Mitch

20:15

@AndrewLeach And I think the most numerous and most worst are the Dutch tourists. Like @Cerberus.

I say that only to provide symmetry.

Everyone knows that the Dutch tourists are pleasantly innocuous.

wait wait wait

that's not entirely true.

I was in Prague on a visit... I remember going through Old Town Square... all the restaurants on the square were spilling out with tables out into the open area. And -all the customers were... wearing orange. The most godawful orange. Not Trump orange (that's it's own kind of awful). Not Halloween orange (which is it's own kind of wonderful).

Orangemen orange.

with the beer drinking and hooligans with half their awfully oranged shirts half on and the other half half off.

and of course one of them had a soccer ball (do you call it a 'foodball') and was kicking it. Sure it would have been awful if he were kicking it between tables.

No.

He was kicking it as high as possible. Above the tables.

Over and over.

and rather than stopping him, everyone else was terribly involved in the kicking it up as high as it could go.

I don't think anyone was injured. I don't think anyone broke any windows, any 15th century classic art glass windows to rain down shards to impale unsuspecting people below. I don't think that happened.

But it certainly could have happened.

All I'm just saying is...

It was a poor choice of color.

@Gigili That's a weird thing to say. Mubarak may well have been weird, but he sure hid it well.

M.A.R.

22:53

Education quality in 2020:

Dune: Book two is pretty thought-provoking

Maybe a bit nihilistic

Which is at conflict with the humanist themes of the novel

But that doesn't mean much anyway. Sometimes nihilism is just self-evident but morbid statements with an appendage of "well that sucks, I'm out".

And the only way out of it stripping the punchline

r/crappydesign is loads of fun, if you visit it only once a month

tchrist

23:53

> Another reason to expect change—or, at least, to wish for it—is that covid-19 has served as a warning. The 80bn animals slaughtered for food and fur each year are Petri dishes for the viruses and bacteria that evolve into a lethal human pathogen every decade or so. This year the bill came due and it was astronomical.

From this fortnight's Economist.

They do a doubleheader at year's end.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…