English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

22:00

No.

Matt Эллен

seque?

the fuh?

RegDwighт

You won't understand it. Only members of the sequet do.

Sequeondly, you should be thanqueful you don't have to type this in Querillyque.

Matt Эллен

curly kale?

RegDwighт

No, Barry Manilow.

tchrist

@Cerberus Calling the waves is easy enough, Glendower, but having them come at your summons is something else altogether.

RegDwighт

22:15

Frigging frigg frigg frigg. TIL.

►

No wait, hold on: TIL on YouTube.

> That's Chopin's Prelude No. 20 in C minor, opus 28. Barry lifted the whole melody, not just the intro.

tchrist

You didn’t know!!?!??

RegDwighт

First time I hear that.

Or the prelude, for that matter.

tchrist

You keep saying that. I am trying to figure out why it not English.

I think it has to be "First time I’ve heard that.” Maybe.

RegDwighт

I will never stop being not English. I didn't watch my buddies die face down in the mud for people to call me English.

tchrist

But I knew that about that Barry song since like high school.

Because my choir teacher thought it was hilarious.

RegDwighт

22:17

Your schools are higher than ours, then.

tchrist

Well, he was nearly a piano major, so knew his stuff.

RegDwighт

@tchrist it probably was, at the time. Then the 90s came and since then everyone has recycled every melody ever, openly, many times over.

And I'm not talking Pachelbel's canon vs. Coolio.

I'm talking like real obscure stuff like Grieg vs. Juliet.

tchrist

@RegDwighт Doh Ti La Sol La Sol La Ti Doh will endure forever. Even Beethoven nabbed it.

But I don’t understand why we have so damn many commercials with Bach inventions in playing in the bachground.

Robusto

RegDwighт

Hm. Was her name Juliet? Or Mascha? It was some shade of strange.

Robusto

22:20

@Cerberus: Also Wilgelm. Pretty sure the spelling is inconsistent throughout. And the g would have been pronounced like a y today.

tchrist

The G is interesting.

I thought Norman French had Williaume there, or some such.

Robusto

Well, I would have to go down into the basement and dust off my English Historical Documents from the period. That's the only complete representation of the whole tapestry that I have.

Cerberus

@Robusto Yeah, spelling was always inconsistent. Why a y? This is Latin...

RegDwighт

And it was Juliette after all.

►

tchrist

I am also reminded of Eco’s fra Guglielmo da Baskerville. There is another g.

Robusto

22:23

@Cerberus I just mean the sound, not the character.

Cerberus

Countless spellings have existed.

@Robusto But g was not pronounced like y in Latin.

tchrist

Willielmo of Basquervilla.

Cerberus

My father's name is Willem, and it's also my middle name.

Robusto

Here's one. Willelm.

tchrist

@RegDwighт Make it stop.

Robusto

22:25

Hey, it's a big tapestry, OK? Don't expect consistency.

RegDwighт

@Cerberus everyone has that as some kind of name in your country.

Cerberus

Yeah.

RegDwighт

@tchrist I knew you'd appreciate.

I did say obscure.

I had to deliver.

Cerberus

Willems, Willemse, and Willemsen are also common last names.

What's the commonest German last name?

Biedermeier?

Robusto

@Cerberus I didn't think such a posh toff as yourself would have a common last name. Pfft.

RegDwighт

22:26

Meyer, Becker, Schmidt.

Not sure which wins. It's regional, too.

tchrist

If we’re passing out earbugs. . . .

►

Robusto

@Cerberus But it was in OE.

I choose not to click on earworms, tyvm.

RegDwighт

@tchrist whom did he sample?

Cerberus

@Robusto My last name is nothing like that, although I am in fact a commoner.

Robusto

@Cerberus Say it ain't so.

tchrist

22:29

@RegDwighт Dunno. It is from the same period as the Barry song, and it drove me crazy because everyone was playing it. It’s very easy to sound out, so everyone did. Your Chopin brought it to mind. I think it is from a real music box, or seems to be.

RegDwighт

Ah, tonic, subdominant, dominant. What a lovely yet original combination.

Cerberus

@RegDwighт So I was right, Meyer...that's also quite common here, as is Smit/Smid/Smidt. Becker is not.

Robusto

@RegDwighт It never gets old.

RegDwighт

Tell me about it. I am writing OVER SEVEN songs as we speak.

Cerberus

@Robusto Alas! Then again, we're not a huge fan of nobility here. We have always been a bourgeois nation.

Robusto

22:30

With a queen.

Actually, with many queens, ne?

tchrist

The dog is complaining about burgers.

Cerberus

She's fairly new.

1813.

RegDwighт

@Robusto nono, many queers. With an R. The queen is but one.

Cerberus

We were a Republic for a longer time.

So. There.

tchrist

@Cerberus She doesn’t show her age then.

RegDwighт

22:31

@tchrist le bourgeois gentilchien.

tchrist

I know that song.

Cerberus

She's still young.

Robusto

@RegDwighт Queens can be queers, and vice versa.

RegDwighт

Lekker middageten.

Cerberus

@RegDwighт Haha yes!

@RegDwighт Yay!

Every Dutchman says that daily.

tchrist

22:32

What, is this homoïnstructo time on ELU chat?

RegDwighт

►

tchrist

A surfeit of queenery.

Cerberus

Oh, right! Was that Bea in the actual video?

RegDwighт

@Robusto is right, as always. If that queen ain't queer, neither has any meaning.

Robusto

More Willelms. Damn, that is one long tapestry.

tchrist

22:33

invokes Freddie Mercury

RegDwighт

Mammmaaaaah!!

tchrist

We have no more Willelms in America: they all succumbed to Dutch Elm Disease.

Robusto

mercury => curry me

RegDwighт

Invokes George Gershwin.

Robusto

Rhapsody in Blow Me.

RegDwighт

22:34

Rapusodi in buru.

tchrist

Bohemian R.

RegDwighт

Drei Idioten, ein Gedanke.

Robusto

Genau.

tchrist

Does the Boho thing take us back to the Homo thing?

Robusto

My eyes are tired. I can't look at the screen anymore.

Laters.

tchrist

22:35

Or is that Soho?

Byze

RegDwighт

No, Bono.

CU.

Cerberus

@RegDwighт Ja, die Falsche haben sie reingelassen!

Lekker Mittagessen.

RegDwighт

Aber ganz tolle bevolkering!

Cerberus

Ganz.

tchrist

Duck.

Cerberus

22:40

It's funny how his accent really sounds like a bad Dutch accent.

RegDwighт

It's actually a good Dutch accent. If there is such a thing.

Cerberus

Bad as in like that of an uneducated Dutchman who is trying to speak German.

RegDwighт

I know.

Cerberus

I mean, my German sucks, that is, my passive vocab is fine, but my active vocab is selbst nicht mittelmässig.

But my accent is better than Trix's!

RegDwighт

Beatrix's German is better than this, the way I remember it.

Her father would be proud.

Cerberus

22:43

Oh, yes.

Her father, husband, great-grandmother...

Everyone, really.

She is said to sound almost German.

RegDwighт

Actually I think she hasn't visited in a while.

Cerberus

Always impersonated with a German accent.

MετάEd

I know nothing! Nothing!

RegDwighт

Too busy putting an end to all the Balkens, I guess.

Cerberus

Perhaps she will have more time on her hands now.

Hah, we got rid of Balkie last year.

No, three years ago.

I don't remember.

It took forever.

I wonder whether Bea and Angela get along.

RegDwighт

22:45

"Everything that has a Balken, has an Ende." — The Prophet, Matrix Revolutions

Cerberus

We prefer to call him Balkellende.

RegDwighт

You'll have to lay that one out for me.

Cerberus

Balkelending, in Trix's German.

Was my layout sufficient?

Or outlay.

RegDwighт

I like Google's thinking.

Cerberus

As in Ball-kleidung?

You misspelled him.

Balkellende.

RegDwighт

22:48

As in ball dress, yes.

@Cerberus I noticed.

Cerberus

Right.

RegDwighт

Still, it's funny how there's 0 hits.

Cerberus

Ellende = Elendung.

RegDwighт

I am the first person to misspell thus.

@Cerberus ah that.

Cerberus

You're unique.

Huh, and I'm misspelling Elendung.

RegDwighт

22:49

I was trying to think of something with Kelle. Which would be a scoop.

Door bell.

Cerberus

Äländung?

OK.

Hmm apparently Elendung doesn't exist, only Elend and Elendig.

No idea why I added -ung.

RegDwighт

There's elendig.

Miserable.

And Elend. Misery, hardship, disaster.

Cerberus

Yeah, I know.

RegDwighт

Anyway I must be going. Didn't see the time.

Cerberus

G'nacht.

RegDwighт

22:54

Goethenacht.

Cerberus

@RegDwighт Ich hoffe, daß du Schlafen Kant.

RegDwighт

23:43

@tchrist's gonna love this.

8

Q: Can a literate user be encouraged to stop deliberate writing errors?

As a grammar and punctuation pedant, I spend some time on fixing the quality of questions (and some answers) on SO. In the vast majority of cases, I am quite sure the OP genuinely doesn't have excellent English, and so silently improving it - in my view - aids English and non-English speakers ali...

Sorry to break the news to you, but if you can't tell a hyphen from a dash, you are not a "punctuation pedant". You are not even a punctuation noob. You are not a punctuation anything. Seriously. — ЯegDwight 23 secs ago

tchrist

Wah.

RegDwighт

And I'm not here!

Though there was another one I wanted to show you.

1

Q: Glitch in C#-Syntax highlighter

I just observed a small glitch in the C#-syntax-highlighter in this answer: The Word Remove should be completely black. Reproduced with IE9 and SRWare Iron. EDIT: I retagged that to support, because this is no bug actually (See answers from animuson and Oded).

support syntax-highlighting

That one's weird. Why would anyone do any such thing?

(And what is a ?)

disappears

Cerberus

23:59

arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/…

Perhaps it is unkind of me, but I find this somewhat funny.

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