English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

00:07

29

Should I put a comma before last item in list? I would like crackers, cheese and some soda. I would like crackers, cheese, and some soda.

Martha

@MarkSzymanski Ah, yet another "oxford comma" question.

But it's very strange: the question doesn't say what it's a duplicate of. Is that what you were actually remarking on?

Cerberus

00:22

@Martha: I have already added that in a comment just now.

Martha

Yes, I saw that (thanks for doing that, btw), but I think the lack of a "this is a duplicate of ..." message at the top is some sort of bug.

MrHen

1

Q: Are there other repeated single word sentances like the Buffalo sentence.

My friend told me about the Buffalo sentence. Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo is a grammatically valid sentence in the English language, used as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated linguistic constructs. I was wonder...

sentence sentence-patterns

This really bugs me. The link in the question answers the question.

JSBangs

some people are just lazy

Martha

4

Q: Analyzing Will Ferrell's "I Thought" joke

I'm reading Will Ferrell's Twitter where he wrote Just thought a thought but the thought I thought wasn't the thought I thought I thought. Does the sentence still have the same meaning if you remove the last "I thought"? Is this grammatical word play possible with other words? Is ther...

jokes

That one's even more recent.

MrHen

I wouldn't be surprised if that is where they got the link

Martha

00:29

And gah: some idiot has upvoted the new question.

MrHen

@Martha Yeah, I noticed that nearly everything gets upvoted at least once.

Ack, the comment just added blows my mind.

Billare

01:27

Anyone with a free slot, do consider joining the History Q/A proposal...:)

Billare

01:41

@Cerberus Do the Dutch really wear clogs out to do stuff or is that seen a completely touristy thing?

Cerberus

02:42

@Billare I think the wooden shoes have always been worn by people in the country, mainly by those who work outdoors. I am not sure how wide spread they used to be. In modern times you will still see them, though they are probably rarer than in the past, if only because many people have migrated from the country to the city. I have never seen anyone in an urban environment wearing them. I have seen them on peasants and workmen in the country, though.

I believe they are also worn in some areas in Germany.

Their point is that they are cheap (even if you have no money you can just carve them out of a log yourself) and water resistant. They won't get wet if you walk around through low puddles; and if they do get wet you can dry them in no time, because they cannot get soaked with water.

Oh I must be off to bed... bye!

RegDwight

09:12

@Martha When I hit "edit", the message was right there in the source code. No idea why it wasn't displayed. (In fact, I am somewhat certain that I had seen it right after closing the question). Anyhow, I then hit "save" without touching anything else, and the message (re-)appeared, and the edit history *almost* reflects that no changes were made, except for the edit summary that reads "added 5 characters in body". Really strange.

@Billare Heh. History.

Feb 25 at 15:57, by Orbling

That's the one stack I have to avoid. @51

Feb 25 at 15:58, by Robusto

@RegDwight — I might fall prey to that one myself. Get thee behind me, Satan!

RegDwight

09:25

@Robusto: nicholas ainsworth now accepting answers. Three and counting.

kiamlaluno

10:11

It should be clear to him he can accept also previously asked questions, should not it be?

(Never write when you didn't sleep at all.)

Robusto

11:00

Hola.

RegDwight

Allo!

Robusto

I should write ".Hola." because Spanish has punctuation at the beginning and end of a sentence. Note the upside-down period ...

RegDwight

Hm. There's a mid dot in Unicode, do they have a top dot as well?

Robusto

Just has to be upside-down. Same baseline.

RegDwight

˙Hola.

Robusto

11:04

Another example of Commie one-upmanship.

RegDwight

¿dıɥsuɐɯuʍop-ǝpısdn uɐǝɯ noʎ ʎןuıɐʇɹǝɔ

3

Robusto

OK, have a star for your upside-downmanship.

I forgot, you're on the other side of the world, where people walk around upside down.

RegDwight

Shiny!

Robusto

Now I gotta go. See? You chased me out. So you can say you've accomplished something today.

RegDwight

@Robusto Yes, that's why we're sometimes missing articles, too. They just fall out of our pockets. Gravity sucks.

Oh. Okay. TTYL.

kiamlaluno

11:11

I thought that should happen to Australians.

kiamlaluno

11:22

(I will change my nick to "The always late parentheses-version-x man.")

(I am sure I am known for that, by now.)

Ed Guiness

11:41

hazaa

kiamlaluno

Navashigah!

RegDwight

Are those names of file-sharing networks?

Ed Guiness

don't you hate it when...

...you make up a word only to discover it's not made up, but real, and with a meaning you didn't intend.

RegDwight

Hehe. Well, tackle on a few more syllables here and there.

Ed Guiness

i will!

tack, that is

RegDwight

11:44

Geez, did I just say "tackle"?

Haha.

Ed Guiness

muscle memory no doubt

kiamlaluno

It's a Navashi-sharing network.

RegDwight

I will add this to my collection of bagles and noönes.

kiamlaluno

New York bagel, I hope.

RegDwight

Happy New Your?

kiamlaluno

11:46

Bah!

Happy new Me!

RegDwight

Hey, no editing in shape!

kiamlaluno

It was an edit in hope, not in shape.

I stopped being in shape ages ago.

Or was that "being sharp?"

OK; I stopped.

Cerberus

Greetings!

Ed Guiness

"squirmish" - love it. languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3058

Rhodri

Aaaargh! The fileservers seem to be on a go slow, the water supply to our kitchen is cut off, and I'm running out of things to waste time on.

Cerberus

11:51

Hey what's wrong with noöne?

kiamlaluno

No one is wrong.

Cerberus

Poor Rhodri! My advice: get some water from the bathroom, make tea, and read a book? Or maybe waste time in this chat?

Rhodri

I'll go for the latter. Entertain me, people!

Cerberus

Oh!

Well I must say the squirmish meme by Palin is better than I expected.

Ed Guiness

@Billare did you get all those quote marks out of your system? ;-P

Rhodri

11:54

No water to the bathroom either. We have to go a whole floor downstairs to make tea :-(

Ed Guiness

indeed, i plan to use squirmish next opportunity

Cerberus

Yikes.

x2

Oh damn I gotta go, work...

Later!

Have fun squirming and not having water!

Rhodri

Have fun, or whatever passes for it at work :-)

@EdGuiness It's a rather neat portmanteau when you think about it.

Ed Guiness

@Rhodri and appropriate to the circumstance and person!

now, i just need to be vigilant for distasteful skirmishes in my day job

so I can spring out this lovely new word

plenty of opportunities to use misunderestimated, not so many for squirmish

but i'm a patient man

Rhodri

::nods:: Patience is a virtue. Also a category of card games.

Ed Guiness

12:01

Virtue is also a card game. virtuegame.com

Rhodri

Wow. If that was available in the UK, it would be very handy for me.

I help out with a Scripture Union kids camp. In particular, I take a crate of boardgames suitable for 12-15 year olds along.

Ed Guiness

Scripture Union, is that like a holiday thing? Don't tell me it's exposing children to religion?

Rhodri

Yes, we do indoctrinate children.

Into the glories of Python, at least :-)

Ed Guiness

not that they should be protected from fair exposure of course. when I said "exposure" I was really thinking indoctrination

ahah... you read my mind!

anyhoo. back to the grind. ciao.

Rhodri

I prefer to think of it as inspiration.

Cheers.

Don't enjoy yourself too much.

Ed Guiness

12:12

I'm sure the muslim/jewish camp helpers think the same. :O oops, now I've outstayed.

ciao again

Robusto

12:39

@EdGuiness — The Muslims and Jews have a new camp now? Have they abandoned Camp David then?

Rhodri

I thought they'd both moved into Camp I'm-Not-Talking-To-You?

RegDwight

Hm... I think I'll just stop posting answers altogether. This site has become a doggy-dog world. Just look at the "tolerate" question.

JSBangs

nuts. i've hit the rep cap for today, so i lost my motivation to answer any more questions

@RegDwight it's not nearly as bad as SO

RegDwight

@JSBangs You can still get rep for accepted answers.

@JSBangs Thank God.

kiamlaluno

(Tole rate?)

("Another one hit the cap...")

Rhodri

12:48

(Headwear abuse. It's a terrible thing.)

kiamlaluno

(Yeah... I can barely understand why a person with an empty head would wear headwearing.)

("She sells sea shells by the sea shore.")

Robusto

@RegDwight — I have had zero motivation to post answers lately. Just phoning it in, going through the motions.

Rhodri

@RegDwight At least there's division in the ranks about the "I am sat" question.

4

Q: Is "I am sat" bad English?

I believe it is incorrect and instead either the present continuous I am sitting or the predicate adjective I am seated should be used. I hear this quite often, however, and ultimately usage overrules formality. Does anybody know where this originated or how to describe it grammatic...

grammar

Robusto

If it weren't for the chat I'd have dropped this site like a bad habit.

RegDwight

@Rhodri Who! J D OConal is back. Haven't seen him for quite some time.

Rhodri

12:53

I was thinking much the same.

RegDwight

@Robusto Now, now, now.

Mar 14 at 13:53, by RegDwight

But hey, now that you've taken the lead, no running off to Writers.SE or some other foolery. Do stick around.

JSBangs

i really only have one time for active participation on one SE site at a time. if linguistics.SE ever opens, I may leave english behind...

RegDwight

Robusto promised not to run off to W.SE anytime soon.

Robusto

@RegDwight — But it's just no fun anymore. Bunch of vultures waiting to pounce on the one or two meager questions that come in.

RegDwight

@Robusto We've been having up to 50 questions per day lately.

Robusto

12:55

Seriously, I need a new hobby during my compile time because this isn't filling the void.

RegDwight

I don't remember the last time we had less than 20 questions on any given day, workday or weekend.

JSBangs

w.se has even fewer questions than this, so that's not going to help. but both Q's and A's there tend to be much longer and more subjective

Robusto

@RegDwight — 50 interesting questions? 50 articulate, intelligent questions? What is the ratio of chaff to wheat here? Or, to put it another way, the S/N ratio seems very low to me.

RegDwight

@Robusto The chaff ratio is pretty much exactly the same.

JSBangs

if our top users are experiencing burnout, then we may actually have a problem

RegDwight

12:57

Our very first question ever asked for the difference between can and could.

On a general note: if you don't like chaff, then vote it down, vote to close, flag as noise, whatever, but don't just sit on your hands.

I've been running amok this morning, closing like 20 questions in a row. All of them should have been closed by the community.

Robusto

@RegDwight — That's still better than

5

Q: Is "I am sat" bad English?

I believe it is incorrect and instead either the present continuous I am sitting or the predicate adjective I am seated should be used. I hear this quite often, however, and ultimately usage overrules formality. Does anybody know where this originated or how to describe it grammatic...

grammar

JSBangs

@Robusto i'm sorry, but what exactly is the problem with this question?

RegDwight

@Robusto How so? I think the latter is an interesting question, actually.

Robusto

That kind of question makes me so want to give a sarcastic reply.

RegDwight

Well, that's no sign of anything. You are sarcastic all the time.

kiamlaluno

13:01

"I sat sit on my SAT every sat."

Robusto

It's like the point in a chess game when I'm bored with the position and I will sac a piece just to make things interesting again. Not a wise policy, nor a good strategy. But at least it's not boring.

JSBangs

i'm actually a fan of this question: english.stackexchange.com/questions/18586/…

writing a better response now

RegDwight

@Robusto Heh. That's an interesting point, actually. I've been spending tons of rep on downvotes lately.

Robusto

That's another thing. The time shift is awful. Most of the decent questions happen when I'm sleeping or otherwise engaged.

So I start to give supercilious answers, like this one:

1

A: "Knocked up" to mean "woken up"

This is a difference between American and British English. In England if you knock someone up you get them out of bed. In America you usually have to get them into bed to knock them up (unless you're both in high school, in which case you will have to tilt the seat back in your parents' car). And...

RegDwight

@Robusto That must be a cognitive bias. Because I have the exact same impression, and we are like seven hours apart.

JSBangs

13:07

@Robusto i'm upvoting that

Billare

@RegDwight I am interested in Linguistics.SE, the problem is I thought Jewish life & learning would be quicker to launch into beta, (271 commits and counting), but it's interminably stuck at 90%. As soon as that launches, I"ll commit, as I'm committed to two other proposals other than that already (Philosophy.SE and History.SE).

JSBangs

thoughts: we're getting a higher percentage of ESL-type questions, but I don't really see this as a problem because they're legitimate questions, and the askers seem to be sincere. OTOH we could be a lot more aggressive about closing GAFT/D questions, especially if they're contributing to noise on the site.

Rhodri

@Robusto Thanks for the link, I'd missed that one. And I have supercilious information to add, too.

JSBangs

@Billare, why did you comment for dup but not cast a close vote on english.stackexchange.com/questions/18631/… ?

Billare

@JSBangs I can't cast close votes.

@JSBangs Not high enough rep.

RegDwight

13:19

My current procedure on any "please proofread this" question is as follows:
1. Leave a "welcome, we love you, but this is off-topic" comment.
2. Wait a few days, hoping it gets improved or closed by the community.
3. Check back only to find out that *nothing* has happened.
4. Close (and possibly downvote) with extreme prejudice.

Robusto

@RegDwight — Could be. But perception, as they say, is reality.

JSBangs

@Billare O RLY? i thought you had more rep than that

RegDwight

Generally speaking, the community is being quite hesitant to close-vote lately.

People leave comments and flags, but no close-votes.

JSBangs

@RegDwight i'll take that as a gentle hint to close like a madman

Billare

@JSBangs Nope, I am lowly and repless.

Robusto

13:21

And some folks vote to close and offer an answer. Weird.

JSBangs

@Billare you only need 3000 rep. you'll get there soon

RegDwight

@JSBangs I dunno, I take that as a gentle hint in the other direction. By which I mean, some people seem to think, "why should I bother close-voting, let the mods handle this". Which is bad. This site should be driven by the community, not by my mad closing skillz.

Robusto

@RegDwight: Oh, BTW, I got The Flanders Panel and started reading it.

RegDwight

@Robusto Excellent!

IIRC, it's much shorter. Some 160 pages or something.

Robusto

@RegDwight — You do have mad squabbles when it comes to closing questions, dude. But I want to see you close a question upside down now! Until you do that, I will withhold my applause.

JSBangs

13:25

hmmm. the privileges page tells me i have the ability to create tag synonyms, but i have no idea how to do so

RegDwight

@Robusto I'll skip that phase, thank you. The next question will get closed uphill, both ways, barefoot in the snow.

Robusto

[Withholds applause]

Billare

JD O Conal is hardcore.

RegDwight

@Billare In general? Yes. Or do you mean something in particular?

Robusto

@Billare — Who dat?

RegDwight

13:27

@JSBangs /tags/synonyms

Billare

@Robusto english.stackexchange.com/questions/18609/…

@JSBangs Would a question asking about Grimm's Law be on topic?

Robusto

If J D O Conal is so hardcore, how come I'm the only one who's upvoted his answer so far?

RegDwight

@Robusto Because it was wrong just 11 minutes ago?

Billare

@Robusto Heh, I merely on glanced at it, I had a hard time parsing it at first glance

Robusto

@RegDwight — No "A for effort" then?

JSBangs

13:31

@RegDwight allows me to view but not to create. i wanted to make [definition] a syn of [meaning], and i found the place to suggest it on the [definition] tag page... but it won't let me until i get 5 rep for that tag

which is ridiculous, b/c there's only one question w/ that tag

(which is why it needs to be synonymized)

RegDwight

@JSBangs Ah well, that's a known issue. (The restrictions used to be even more draconian, they've relaxed them quite a bit.)

Billare

@RegDwight The problem, IMO, with alot of these restrictions is that they generalize stuff that works on StackOverflow to all the sites

@RegDwight at StackOverflow, absolutely high rep is essential to edit tags and edit tag wikis, since there is no way for question askers to answer questions without filtering with tags

RegDwight

@JSBangs On a second thought, I think you've got it backwards. (Which is a common problem, too.) You have to navigate to the [meaning] tag and suggest [definition] as a synonym there. Not the other way round.

Billare

@RegDwight so their stability is of supreme importance. not so much on a growing site.

RegDwight

@Billare Well, arguably that's what the beta is there for.

JSBangs

13:35

@RegDwight aha! works now

Billare

@RegDwight Arguably.

RegDwight

@Billare I mean, we were given 90+ days to get it right, with extremely relaxed rep requirements for everything.

Billare

@RegDwight I really don't think Beta conditions are the same as main site conditions. Particularly, opening up to the broad StackExchange network opens up a different set of questions than you might have in the beta.

@JSBangs About Grimm's law question..

Robusto

I just this moment realized that StackExchange is a pun. Duh.

RegDwight

@Billare Yeah, sure. Absolutely. The whole process is still relatively young. They are still figuring it out and tweaking it all the time.

@Robusto Congratulations!

JSBangs

13:38

@Billare i'm on the fence. so long as the question is about Grimm's Law specifically as it applies to English, i have no problem with it. But it's the sort of thing that might go better on the hypothetical ling.se

Robusto

Oh good, here comes @Martha. She can THWACK Jeff & Joel for the StackExchange pun.

RegDwight

She can't thwack that hard.

Martha

Who am I thwacking and why?

Billare

@JSBangs I'm not sure how to post it so that it might expressly apply to only English.

Robusto

BTW, there's an interesting article in The New Yorker this week about Watson and the whole Jeopardy debacle. Adam Gopnik writes that puns are one of the reasons computers still flunk their Turing tests. So I think that rather than thwacking puns, we should be rewarding them, as evidence of a higher order of thought than is commonly seen from mere machines.

Billare

13:41

Would "How does Griimm's Law apply to English" be a good question?

Robusto

@Billare — Well, that's strictly a question for Linguistics.SE.

RegDwight

@Robusto I have to laugh so hard every time I see someone's name is Gopnik.

Gopnik

Gopnik is a stereotypical class of young males up to 30 years old found in Russia and post-Soviet countries, similar to a Chav or Ned in Great Britain, characterized by aggressive behavior, specifically towards the weak, predilection to the criminal subculture, abuse of alcohol beverages (specifically beer and vodka) and specific fashion preferences. The term ' () (plural gopniki, gopota, gopary) is slang used in Russia. Origins of the term * The term "gopnik" was probably derived from slang term gop-stop, meaning street robbery. * Another version is that "gopnik" derived from the acro...

google.com/…

Robusto

@RegDwight — You think it's a pseudonym? A nom de plume ?

RegDwight

I think it's just another case of Pina.

Robusto

Didn't these used to be called yobs in Britain?

RegDwight

13:44

@Robusto That's another extremely obscene word in Russian.

Robusto

I thought all Russian words were obscene to some degree.

RegDwight

@Robusto Well, every word in every language is obscene to some degree.

Billare

gtg

RegDwight

CU.

Robusto

Adam Gopnik

Adam Gopnik, (born August 24, 1956) is an American writer, essayist and commentator. He is best known as a staff writer for The New Yorker—to which he has contributed non-fiction, fiction, memoir and criticism—and as the author of the essay collection Paris to the Moon, an account of five years that Gopnik, his wife Martha, and son Luke, spent in the French capital. Background and education Adam Gopnik was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but was raised in Montreal, Quebec. Gopnik's parents, Irwin and Myrna Gopnik, served as professors at McGill University, from which Gopnik received hi...

RegDwight

13:46

@Robusto I know, I know. I think even Pinker mentions him somewhere.

JSBangs

@Billare you can always just try to post it and see what happens.

typically if a Q is interesting but off-topic, I'll leave a comment with the answer but also vote to close

RegDwight

@JSBangs Uh. I'm not so sure, actually. Why deprive Linguistics.SE of an good question? That's how we got a lot of questions that would belong on Writers, but cannot be migrated because they are too old now.

JSBangs

it will be a very long time before linguistics.se gets off the ground

it's only at 38% commit

RegDwight

Yes. It will also be a very long time before German.SE gets off the ground. But that doesn't mean that questions about German should be posted to SO for the time being.

JSBangs

@RegDwight @Billare is not sure whether his Q is on-topic or not

my point is that the only way to find out is to ask

(well, not the only way, but one of the ways, and arguably the best way under the current circumstance)

RegDwight

13:53

Well, I am not against the question as such, quite the contrary. I would really like to see some advanced questions here. However, my point is that it would be a pity if it got closed here, possibly with a few good answers, only to not get migrated to the much more appropriate Linguistics once it does go live.

Rhodri

We have a winner in the gracious concession stakes:

1

Q: Should one use 'a' or 'an' when the following word is in parentheses?

This question is a little hard to summarize in the title. I sometimes like to use parentheses to add additional (but nonessential) details to a sentence - like I did just there. My criteria for such use is usually that the sentence could be read with the text in the parentheses, or excluding the...

grammar articles parentheses phonics

JSBangs

@Rhodri yes, now if only we could actually close the question there

Robusto

@RegDwight can close it. It has 4 close votes already.

So he could offer a 5th, non-hammer vote.

Rhodri

@JSBangs Alas, I am a minnow of insufficient reputation

If only we had someone with a Modly Hammer of Righteous Closure around

JSBangs

we should get @Robusto to donate some rep to poor @Rhodri and @Billare, since he has plenty

Robusto

13:57

The Indians in the office are gathered around a projector watching a streamed edition of the India-Pakistan cricket match. They got here at 5:00 a.m. to start watching, and it's been going on for 5 hours. Longer than a frickin' Wagner opera.

RegDwight

@Rhodri My hammer is motley, not modly.

Robusto

@JSBangs — I'm a miser, can't you tell? They'll have to prove themselves as Lebowski Achievers.

RegDwight

@Robusto It's always hammer time in Iceland!

Robusto

RegDwight

@JSBangs I propose that we lock all ArthurRex questions and only unlock them to be answered by Rhodri. He will get a whole bunch of 100-rep bounties in no time.

JSBangs

13:58

@Robusto yeah, and i'm saving up to get myself some mod tools at 10K, so I can't spare any at the moment

Robusto

@RegDwight — So now you're in Iceland? The only place worse off than Russia? My, how you get around.

JSBangs

@RegDwight O_o i thought Rhodri was a girl

Robusto

@JSBangs — Just think of all the time you wasted being nice.

RegDwight

As previously stated, my wife and I make a point visiting a different country each year.

I could be anywhere right now.

Robusto

@RegDwight — Except U.S. or U.K.

RegDwight

14:00

Except Novosibirsk.

JSBangs

@RegDwight visited Romania yet? That's where my wife is from

RegDwight

@JSBangs No offence, but I'd rather visit US than Romania.

Robusto

Feb 16 at 12:30, by Robusto

You're a man? Shit, I've been wasting all this time chatting you up ...

RegDwight

One of my classmates was from Timisoara.

JSBangs

@RegDwight and he described it as a demonic hellhole, or what?

FWIW my wife's from the opposite side of the country from Timisoara

Rhodri

14:03

@JSBangs Erm, no. @Rob's picture even looks a bit like me.

RegDwight

@Robusto You should know by now that there are no men here, only sissy girls and American Dads in nurse drag.

Robusto

@RegDwight — Say what you want about "American Dad", but I've paid my deoxyribonucleic debt to the gene pool. Some of the rest of you still have to kick in with your share.

Or not. We might be better off ...

See? It's been 50 minutes without a new question on E&U.SE.

RegDwight

@JSBangs Well, not a demonic hellhole, but the general impression around these parts (generally supported and propagated by immigrants from Romania themselves) is that it's extremely poor and underdeveloped by EU standards, corruption runs amok, unemployment and illiteracy are through the roof, and the only people who make any money are fortune-tellers.

@Robusto Try looking away from the monitor for a sec. That should get us 40 all-new, high-quality questions.

JSBangs

@RegDwight also you're from Bulgaria, right? so Romania is probably not far enough away to make for a good vacation. IMHO Romania is far nicer than Romanians themselves give it credit for as Romanians have a deep inferiority complex... but it should not have entered the EU, as that actually made things worse.

RegDwight

Actually, I'm still waiting for Romania and Moldavia to re-unite.

Robusto

14:11

@RegDwight — I've been trying that. Doesn't help.

JSBangs

@RegDwight not gonna happen anytime soon. You think Romania is bad? Moldavia is 10x worse.

Robusto

Here you are, vultures. Go nuts!

RegDwight

@JSBangs One of my aunts is from Cisinau.

Robusto

0

Q: has been vs have been

I am answering an online english grammar test and encountered the following question Where was Jack yesterday? - I don't know. He ________ seeing the doctor. My answer is: might has been Correct Answer is: might have been Why not might has been? "He" is singular?

grammar

Help some poor schmuck cheat on his online test.

RegDwight

@Robusto That question is okay. He's not cheating.

JSBangs

14:14

@RegDwight then you know.

Robusto

@RegDwight — I'm exaggerating for effect.

JSBangs

don't get me started on the EU. it's a decent idea for the highly developed economies of north/west Europe, but opening it up to the less developed countries of east/south europe was a disaster. viz. Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy to some extent

Martha

My great-uncle had a factory in Temesvár, before they up and renamed it to Timisoara (or however it's spelled).

JSBangs

at least Romania is still technically solvent

@Martha Timișoara

RegDwight

@JSBangs Yeah, if Greece could bring the EU in so much trouble, I wonder in how much trouble Romania could get them.

Martha

14:18

@JSBangs I can't do the s-cedilla easily, so I think I'll continue to write it as Temesvár. At least I know what that means (Temes-castle, where Temes is an old personal name. Really old. As in, 11th century.)

RegDwight

In fact, never mind Greece. Ireland.

And Germany's been cheating on their tests for decades, too.

JSBangs

@RegDwight yep. it's bad for France, Germany et al. and bad for Ireland, Greece, etc. Everybody loses! Hooray for the EU!

Robusto

EU is just the short form of eeeeeeeuuuuuuuuu!

RegDwight

Okay, now I am officially worried.

1

A: "has been" vs "have been"

Might is an auxiliary (modal) verb (it's actually the past tense of may), and those always require the following verb to be the plural form. Other examples of this are can/could and shall/should. (Which is why the (in)famous "I can has cheezburger" strikes us as ungrammatical: the correct form wo...

Whoever upvoted this, didn't read it.

JSBangs

@RegDwight or doesn't know plural from infinitive

downvote, downvote man!

RegDwight

14:28

@JSBangs I was busy commenting. But now I have.

But back to my point about people not voting to close:

0

Q: Are there other repeated single word sentences like the Buffalo sentence?

My friend told me about the Buffalo sentence: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. It is a grammatically valid sentence in the English language, used as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated linguistic constructs. I was w...

sentence sentence-patterns

I see comments, downvotes, and flags all over the place. But no votes to close. What's a poor boy to do?

Martha

FWIW, I was in a hurry, and from a quick skim of the question, I wasn't sure if it really was a duplicate or not.

RegDwight

14:48

@Martha Not blaming anyone in particular. I wouldn't have been too sure myself, actually, at the time you left your comment. What makes me wonder is not anyone's behavior in particular, but the overall picture: we've got a downvote on the question, a NARQ comment, two possible-duplicate comments, one of them upvoted thrice, obvious duplication of effort in all three answers, the OP admitting it's a dupe, plus some flags to sweeten the deal.

So what I'm looking at is the sum of all that vs the overall number of close-votes, which is zero.

And this situation is not new, I just happened to think of this particular question first.

MrHen

@RegDwight Well, one of those comments and flags was mine and I can't close things. So that may be part of it.

In other news, I discovered flagging things.

Rhodri

@RegDwight At least @Alex has fixed his error now.

The world does improve. Slowly.

RegDwight

@Rhodri Ah, excellent. If only it always worked like that.

Downvote duly retracted. Pinging @JSBangs.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…