English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

RegDwight

7:00 PM

Them odessity are crazy.

No wonder they call themselves like that.

valya

do you need a hand from captain obvious?

I like them

но Одесса уже не та

RegDwight

I didn't say I don't like them, only that they are crazy. There's a subtle difference.

@valya Тру зэт.

valya

I never assumed you did

we like crazy people here. "crazy" as in "oddly funny"

RegDwight

Yeah, like Kharms.

Daniil Kharms

Daniil Kharms (; – 2 February 1942) was an early Soviet-era surrealist and absurdist poet, writer and dramatist. One of his pseudonyms, which was signed in Latin alphabet, was Daniel Charms. Life Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachev (Даниил Иванович Ювачёв) was born in St. Petersburg, into the family of Ivan Yuvachev, a well known member of the revolutionary group, The People's Will. By this time the elder Yuvachev had already been imprisoned for his involvement in subversive acts against the tsar Alexander III and had become a religious philosopher, acquaintance of Anton Chekhov during the latte...

valya

I love Kharms

RegDwight

7:03 PM

Who doesn't.

valya

I always wondered how is it to read Kharms without being native Russian speaker

he is not odessit though

RegDwight

I have an excellent German translation. I laugh my ass off every time.

psmears

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Sorry

Cat just walked across the keyboard

RegDwight

Haha.

valya

he used to draw a blue elephant on his cheek, climb on the closet and read his works. I regret not seeing this

RegDwight

7:07 PM

yesterday, by Martha

oops, sorry, that was niece helping

@valya On the positive side, you can draw a blue elephant on your cheek, climb on the closet and read his works, too.

Works for me.

valya

I actually tried to once, the last december

but it was pretty silly, i think

and I was deadly drunk

RegDwight

Kharms is actually not that hard to translate. Absurdity translates rather well. What doesn't translate is stuff like Lermontov's.

Just try to translate "Парус" and you will see.

valya

yeah

maybe you're right

but I believe that being a native speaker allows you to see something well-hidden in the absurdity. I'm not sure though

kiamlaluno

"Paris"?

valya

maybe "sail"

RegDwight

7:11 PM

"The sail". Parus.

Robusto

@RegDwight — Don't judge me.

RegDwight

I don't. I fail you.

valya

one of my friends have been translating "finnegans wake"

RegDwight

I think the most excellent translation of The sail would be titled "The fail".

en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Sail

valya

doesn't seem like fail to me

RegDwight

7:16 PM

Epic fail. It doesn't even rhyme. Which it should.

valya

GNU license. that explains that

en.wikisource.org/w/…

RegDwight

Um, @Cerberus, what's up with the comments by iminei?

0

A: Another phrase for "dealing with people you wouldn't normally want to deal with but you do"

An opportunist deals with people by the maxim the end justifies the means: he will use people or parties as a means to whatever his goals are, sometimes disregarding ethical concerns. He may form a coalition with liberals even though he is a socialist himself, if this coalition furthers his goals...

Robusto

@valya — That sounds like an exercise in futility.

valya

@Robusto there is an english version on the left page, a russian translation with comments and variants on the right side. not so futile, I enjoyed a few first pages

RegDwight

If it's by Хоружий, it must be excellent. Or so I'm told.

I dunno which books he has or has not translated just yet.

Robusto

7:30 PM

Finnegans Wake is nearly impossible to read in English. Multi-layered, multi-lingual puns everywhere.

valya

actually, translations of Ulysses seem worse to me. the ones I've seen is just a russian text with reference numbers above every other word, and all notes go into the very end of a book

@RegDwight I haven't heard about his translations of the "wake"

RegDwight

Hooray for hyperlinking!

@valya Then I guess we'll have to wait.

valya

@RegDwight look forward to. I'm waiting for having my leg broken or something to read Ulysses in one turn

the most strange things about Ulysses are ideas to make a movie on it

RegDwight

With Bruce Willis and Anne Hathaway?

valya

the latter as mr Mulligan

Robusto

7:52 PM

I can't imagine a movie made out of Ulysses or Finnegans Wake.

You could maybe get away with Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man.

RegDwight

It doesn't matter if you can, all it takes is one Hollywood producer.

Robusto

Some stories from Dubliners maybe. But they sure didn't do a good job on The Dead.

valya

the funny thing is if they dare to try, there could be girls with posters with Stephen's face

Young Artist: The Saga

Robusto

Joyce is all about the words. If you take away the words, you might have a movie, but you won't have Joyce.

valya

it doesnt matter if you have girls

RegDwight

8:10 PM

Tell that to @Cerberus. He just won't stop asking for girls.

Robusto

Well, Joyce is a girl's name.

psmears

OK Fail, let's try that again

@Robusto imdb.com/title/tt0062414

The sad thing is that I was looking it up to make a weak joke about there being a film based on Ulysses (of the Homeric sort)

Only it turns out the top result was about Joyce after all

RegDwight

"Also Known As: Odysseus".

psmears

@RegDwight Weird... though if you click on the link there it says "Finland", so perhaps the translation changed the name...

Robusto

8:29 PM

Interesting historical fact: I saw John Huston's production of The Dead at the Oscar Wilde Theater in Dublin.

And I fell asleep a couple of times during it.

BTW, I have the blurb copy for the Ulysses movie you linked: "In a world where poetry and marital infidelity run rampant through the mental landscape ... ONE MAN ... well, OK, TWO MEN ... well, OK, ONE WOMAN ... manages to bring things to a statisfying ... OK, well, SATISFIED ... conclusion."

YES!

yes i said yes

RegDwight

10:42 PM

@Robusto Harr. I was just about to post a stupid reply ("marital infidelity" should be "marital... well, OK, MARTIAL infidelity", or something like that), but it appears it was so stupid that it killed the chat server, and in fact the whole data center in Oregon. Grmpf.

17

Q: Chat (and Blog and SEDE) servers down?

All the SE chat (and blog) services that I was on have suddenly gone offline is something up with the servers? But SO works fine..

Cerberus

Greetings.

@Reg: I think that imei guy is definitely on something...

His refusal to use capitals and other sloppiness oddly contrasts with his fairly rich vocabulary.

Martha

11:01 PM

Oddly, I didn't get any more work done this afternoon than I usually do.

Cerberus

Might it have been your niece commanding all your attention?

Martha

Nope: unfortunately, my niece lives an hour away from me, so I only see her on weekends. Plus, you know, work=at office=babies frowned upon.

Cerberus

What to do about this question, probably off topic:

0

Q: What is the use of etiquette today?

What practical use does "proper etiquette" have these days with regards to English language? I ask this after reading answers from do you really answer "how do you do?" with "how do you do?" which indicate that "etiquette" teaches a certain usage of this greeting which is diff...

etiquette

@Martha: Ah, the evil non-baby place...

Martha

Yeah, the etiquette question is off-topic.

Although I see @F'x has added an answer that tries to keep it on-topic. Which is good.

Cerberus

11:22 PM

@Martha: Yes, he has.

Too bad that, as I was once told, questions about the social aspects of language are off topic.

RegDwight

Argl, these downtimes suck.

Like, big time.

Cerberus

Tell me about it.

We even shook off poor @Robusto.

Brb.

RegDwight

No offense to @F'x, but I still think that question is off-topic.

Martha

I think his answer is a good start, but the question also needs to be rewritten (like, almost completely): a question about the differences between etiquette, manners, protocol, etc. would get much the same information and be on topic.

(Hmm, do we already have such a question? Looking...)

RegDwight

Yeah, something in that vein.

(By which I mean rewriting, not having such a question.)

Martha

11:28 PM

Didn't find a word-choice question about manners or etiquette, so I'm off to write a suggestion to the OP.

Cerberus

@Martha: Really, do you think this answer could ever be on topic? I thought we were not to talk about social aspects of language at all?

(Perhaps I should read the list of on-topic and off-topic questions again, but I don't want to.)

Martha

Since the meaning of the words is inseparable from their social context, I don't see how we could outlaw "social aspects".

@Cerberus Ditto.

Cerberus

@Martha: Okay, if the OP rephrased the question as specified in your comment, it would indeed be on topic by all standards (I think). But frankly that would be a very different question.

Martha

Well, yeah. Not arguing that.

RegDwight

Thanks for the comment, @Martha. Upvoted and appreciated.

Now if only I could figure out what n0nChun is up to...

Martha

11:37 PM

Hmm, where?

Cerberus

I hope it is something fun.

Hey, would the following question be off topic:

RegDwight

@Martha Um. It's a bit confusing, so before I post a link, here's a wrap-up. He posted a dupe of the synchronicity question. The dupe promptly got closed as such. He then offered a 50-rep bounty on the original question (where the only answer was Martha's). Right as I was going to comment, "Hey Martha, here's some easy rep coming your way", he basically reposted my comment on that answer of yours as a separate answer. Which is his fair right and all, but this is where it gets interesting.

Cerberus

Inanimate objects can go with 's and whose in some contexts, but not others; what is a good guideline to follow here?

RegDwight

He then commented on his dupe "hey, how come this has been closed" and on the original question "hm, how can I award the bounty to myself".

1

Q: A single word for a psychological bias

Possible Duplicate: Word meaning coincidence of reference to the unusual What is that psychological bias called when you come across a particular term and then end up finding it everywhere for the next few days?

single-word-requests

8

Q: Word meaning coincidence of reference to the unusual

Most of us have had the experience of stumbling over a new fact or bit of knowledge and then finding several more references to it in the near future. For example, you see a strange word which you're forced to look-up and then the next day the same word appears in the headline of your local pape...

meaning single-word-requests

The really funny part is that in the mean time his answer got upvoted twice, but my comment only once. ((((((

@Cerberus Wait, what? Do you have an example or five?

Cerberus

@Reg: No your comment got three upvotes.

RegDwight

11:44 PM

Well, thank you kind sir.

But I still don't quite understand the situation. I have commented to that extent on his dupe.

Martha

The single-word-requests tag doesn't always mean you want a single word. His phrasing was "what is that psychological bias called...", which doesn't place any restrictions on the number of words the answer is allowed to contain.

RegDwight

@Martha Read the title.

Cerberus

@Reg: About my question on inanimate etc.: all dupes ask "can I use... at all?", and none of the answers I have ever seen gave a good explanation of when it is good practice and when it isn't.

Martha

Oh, totally missed that. Yeah, that makes his actions... puzzling.

RegDwight

I am totally gonna cut him some slack for every single one of his actions. It's the combination that kills me.

Cerberus

11:46 PM

I think that guy is just confused or sloppy; doesn't really look like trolling to me.

RegDwight

Nah, not saying that.

Cerberus

Perhaps a bit crazy, yes.

RegDwight

Confused is certainly the right word.

I mean, he hasn't even at-mentioned anyone on his dupe. He simply left a comment. It might have just as well gone unnoticed by me.

Martha

Btw, I still think "Baader-Meinhof phenomenon" is just a subtype of synchronicity, and until someone comes up with a more euphonious name for the subtype, I'm just gonna call it synchronicity.

Cerberus

He probably doesn't know how @ works.

RegDwight

11:48 PM

@Martha I didn't have enough characters left to address that as well.

I mean, the B-M article got deleted on Wikipedia, while the synchronicity one still exists. They must have their reasons for that.

Cerberus

@Martha: It may very well be. I was just annoyed by its having been removed from Wikipedia: it should then be explained in the Synchronicity article that the term B-M is used and where it came from, since it is a very common term.

RegDwight

@Cerberus That's the only term I know from Reddit and elsewhere.

But yeah, not anywhere as funny as trVoldemort going berserk and posting the exact same question three times in a row.

Cerberus

I know both from different contexts I think; both are well known as far as I know, though I think B-M is exclusively anglophone?

Martha

I'm pretty sure the article was removed by an ultra-PC nonthinking admin type who only looked at the title.

RegDwight

Well, lemme check...

Cerberus

11:52 PM

@Martha: I have seen several useful articles deleted or trimmed to nothingness on several versions of Wikipedia...

We could reinstate B-M, as a link from the disamb page to a full paragraph in the Synch article?

RegDwight

Argh, Deletionpedia returns one internal server error after another.

Cerberus

Yeah got that too.

I hate it when they delete a page, instead of simply turning it into a redirect.

I thought that was common policy?

RegDwight

Deleted by popular vote.

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Baader-Meinhof phenomenon (2nd nomination)

|Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log||}} :The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a ). No further edits should be made to this page. The result was delete. *YES! 17:20, 16 August 2009 (UTC) Baader-Meinhof phenomenon AfDs for this article: : ([ delete]) – ()() :() This page is composed almost entirely of OR backed up with pseudoscientific psych-speak. If it has been documented in any notable source...

Cerberus

Huh I get "file not found" for that link.

RegDwight

Harr, why doesn't the link work?

@Cerberus Yeah, working on fixing that. I thought it was the parentheses, but no.

Cerberus

11:57 PM

Some parts of Wiki are still messy.

Martha

It's the / messing up the link, btw.

Cerberus

Off topic: I sometimes wonder whether Wiki will continue to improve, as it has improved apparently continually over the past years.