English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2011-05-05 (page 2 of 4)

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4:01 PM

In other news, the niece has reportedly learned to wave. And clap her hands, though that's possibly not on purpose, because she's been observed to clap while bawling.

> In particular, since the cases themselves will serve adequately to limit the extensivity, we might expect that (a) languages with complex case systems will be less likely to have articles, and (b) when articles arise they may well develop from a demonstrative and/or a numeral.

Discuss. ;)

Mr. Disappointment

Well guys and gals, I'm out for now - see ya.

Haha.

There you have your discussion, @Vitaly.

Cu @MrD.

Well, Hungarian is said to have a complex case system (I dunno, I don't see it), and the definite article (a/az) can be used as a demonstrative (i.e. it can mean both "the" and "that"), while the indefinite article either doesn't exist or is identical to the word for "one" (egy).

Later @MrDisappointment

4:04 PM

@Martha Which is not unsimilar to English, I might add.

@Kosmonaut ↑

One -> an -> a; that -> the.

@RegDwight Well, except English has different words for these. Hungarian doesn't. (a and az are pure allomorphs - the distinction between them is identical to the English use of a vs. an.)

@Martha Yeah, I was more like aiming at the original argument Vitaly quoted.

As in, we have a language with a complex case system, and one where cases are next to non-existent, but they are not entirely unsimilar in how they handle articles.

In short, point b) seems to stand, but point a) not that much.

Is ‘@’ the definite article here? Does RegDwight's omission of it (when mentioning me) indicate that I am the one and only Vitaly, by way of using the null form?

4:11 PM

@Vitaly In German, you would be der Vitaly in many situations and dialects.

Except in the North, where a proper name prefixed with the definite article would indicate that you're a dog or a cow or something.

@RegDwight unsimilar => dissimilar (NNS rookie move)

@Robusto Interesting, I didn't realize that.

@Robusto I dunno, I use unsimilar all the time.

I'll let you both fight it out.

52 mins ago, by Vitaly

@Kosmonaut Well, I had native speakers correct other native speakers unwittingly, just because they thought it was the writing of a non-native speaker, i.e. me…

4:14 PM

@Vitaly That's the thing.

So many of my "errors" get attributed to my ananasness.

Too many.

As if I had learned English by listening to the Russian television.

While in reality, I am learning it by mimicking native speakers, like a child would do.

Except that apparently, some native speakers are more equal than others.

@Martha — Another country heard from.

@RegDwight Like a child would do? That's so old-fashioned. Learning English through subliminal stimuli is all the rage now-a-days. Try the 25th frame sometime.

@Vitaly The 25th frame is a myth.

I am sure Skeptics has at least 25 questions on the subject.

@Robusto Hmmm?

@RegDwight Well, some native speakers can't spell their way out of a paper bag, and think good writing is equivalent to stringing together eggcorns and mixed metaphors, with some mangled idioms thrown in for good measure.

@Martha I remember reading that before.

Are you quoting yourself?

You were talking about some SciFi IIRC.

4:21 PM

Not quoting, but I might have written a similar rant before.

9

A: Is it easy to spot an educated non-native speaker on a website like this?

In my younger days, I could occasionally be found reading fan fiction (Star Wars, if you must know), and I saw things done to language that I still shudder to think of. Mangled idioms, atrocious-to-nonexistent grammar, mixed metaphors, totally inappropriate word choices, eggcorns out the wazoo......

There you have it. Star Wars.

I remember too much stuff.

@RegDwight Yeah. And then you go find it and quote it. You need to stop. :)

Thank God I have to go in a minute so I'll just miss all of your interesting discussions.

Less stuff to remember makes little Reg happy.

@Martha — Hungary. You are, by your own admission, a NNS.

Ha. Now this is a fight I don't wanna miss.

4:32 PM

@Robusto Well, yes and no. I only ever went to school in the U.S.

Look at my profile, the Santayana quote.

Hey @RegDwight, your crazy mod skillz are needed.

To the extent that I know anything about pop culture, it's all American pop culture.

I have to go, but for the record: I am obviously with @Martha on this one, because (whether or not she realizes it) I am in a very similar situation myself, language-wise.

@Vitaly Flag it. Gotta run. CU.

The thing is I am not sure how to flag those.

CU @Reg.

4:36 PM

@Vitaly I flagged it as "not an answer". You can also just use the custom flag if you want to explain more.

Yeah, thanks.

@RegDwight Well, except I've only ever lived in the U.S. Occasional barely-two-week-long "vacations" hardly allow me to immerse myself in a non-English-speaking culture, especially when I spend half of it translating for my brother-in-law, or letting the cousins' children use me for homework practice.

@Martha — These are precisely the covert operatives we have to ferret out with our language traps.

Who, the children of my various cousins?

5:01 PM

So what is this stuff about missing articles? Do you have a practical example of a puzzling sentence?

Kinda-interesting footnote: I was looking through my cousin's DVR for something to watch, and everything on there was dubbed, which drives me nuts. Dr. House shouldn't sound like, like, well, anyone other than Dr. House. The only thing on there that I hadn't seen and that didn't star some actor I've seen in a gazillion movies already was Twilight. So I've been corrupted. (I had been studiously avoiding the whole vampire-fangirl genre up til now.)

I thought vampires were Romanian, not Hungarian. I stand corrected.

The moral: dubbing sucks?

@Robusto No, vampires are English. Well, with a touch of Irish and French thrown in.

That's just what they want you to believe.

5:06 PM

@Robusto Various territories have passed between the two countries from time to time; I'm sure the odd vampire must have come with them...

Are there any vampires who are not odd?

@psmears Yeah, but if you study the folklore of the area, it will be curiously devoid of anything resembling a vampire.

@Robusto Yes, but it's a sad tale

amazon.com/Even-Vampires-Blues-Dark-Ones/dp/045121823X

@Martha Almost... too quiet?

@psmears Snrk. That would be quite the conspiracy theory. I prefer Occam's Razor.

@Martha Ah, so you're involved in the conspiracy too. It all makes sense :-p

5:16 PM

Gah...

6

Q: What is the difference between "archetype" and "prototype" ?

I'm very confused by the difference between "archetype" and "prototype" , and even more baffled when to use which !! Can someone clarify ?

ambiguity word-usage

The answers are all wrong...

@Cerberus Hello.

I wonder is it correct to say: "Something to look forward to" or I misspelled it?

Wait... no, Robusto's is accurate enough

@MrHen You had me worried there for a minute ;-)

@Eugene Misspelled what?

@MrHen "Something to look forward to"

5:19 PM

@psmears Yeah. My skimming failed me.

@Eugene Nothing in there is misspelled.

@MrHen Okei. Great. Thank you.

@psmears My dictionary doesn't even have the "similar" meaning

> While prototype and archetype are often used interchangeably, they really mean quite different things.

It's usage notes go so far as to say that.

While they may have been synonyms, they are no longer and mean two completely separate things.

5:33 PM

Gah! I just went to delete/convert this answer:

2

A: Is there a sequence following "ace" (as in "ace pilot")?

In military aviation Ace is a title of achievement. To be called an Ace you must have five confirmed kills in aerial battle.

only to find out that it's the highest-voted answer so far.

That serves me right for giving people some time to improve rather than deleting on sight.

Sigh.

There, now it's tied for most votes.

Mr. Disappointment

5:48 PM

Now it's behind.

3

Q: WANTED: Suggestions for Stack Exchange Contest "Recipes"

This is an offshoot of the Community Promotion Contest underway on on Gaming. I am putting together a series of contests to help promote and enliven Stack Exchange communities. Communities would be able to pick a contest appropriate to their site and run with it. These "recipes" would provide ...

discussion promotion

That's a cross-room jinx.

Mr. Disappointment

I'm not familiar with the consequences.

You will be banned for life.

Oh, and @Kosmonaut, too.

Mr. Disappointment

Uh oh.

Because we don't like no stinkin' bagels round here.

Mr. Disappointment

5:51 PM

By the way, isn't this answer just as pointless?

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/23968/is-there-a-sequence-following-ace-as-in-ace-pilot#23976

Kind of.

Seriously, you posted that Contest-Recipe link just milliseconds apart from someone else in another room.

Your message ID: 934079; his: 934073.

@RegDwight — That would be the Commie point of view.

@Robusto Well, what do you think this site is all about?

ELU is run by Commies, for Commies.

Mr. Disappointment

...

This is not a bagel-loving democracy. It's a malevolent pryanik-obsessed dictatorship.

5:58 PM

Go have some borscht and kvass and shut up.

There is no T in borshch.

But yeah, you're right, that's what I oughta do.

This looks familiar:

0

Q: Question marks at the end of declarative sentences

I often see declarative sentences ending with question marks, like these: I tried your solution but it didn't work? or This seems to be easy but I'm out of ideas? , assuming a request like "could you help me please?" or "what to do with it?" but not expressing it explicitly. Is it st...

But it's a different take, I think.

Lemme hunt.

3

Q: Is the question mark misused in affirmative sentences?

For example, I found the following sentence written by a native English speaker (UK) so I'm going to assume that he knows how to put it the right way, although I wouldn't use this form. I now have a bit more time to fix bugs etc but I'm open to offers if anyone wants to help maintain this...

grammar punctuation question-mark

Mr. Disappointment

Ya, I saw that one.

Actually, not that different at all.

Mr. Disappointment

It's the same, right?

Mhm.

I remembered a different conversation from this chat room.

That one was really different.

Mar 10 at 15:20, by Robusto

Hey, @Kosmonaut: Question for you, which, if you don't have a ready answer for, I may ask as a general question on the site proper:
Question tags: Do they always require a question mark? I see them both ways quite a bit, by competent writers whose prose I respect. In speech, question tags that are simply extensions of a declarative statement seem not to require a question mark. Others that really do ask for clarification, seem to require one.

Mar 10 at 15:28, by RegDwight

I will sometimes omit question marks to indicate that I am not raising my voice. As in, "What do you mean, I'm wrong. I'm not." That is totally not the same as "What do you mean, I'm wrong? I'm not!"

There was also a follow-up discussion a few days later, but it was even shorter IIRC.

Mr. Disappointment

6:11 PM

That is different.

Yup.Anyhow, back to the questions...

Looks dupish to me.

I've posted a link, let's see if it attracts any close-votes.

Mr. Disappointment

I'd say.

I would cast mine, but I don't have any.

BTW, I flagged this as NARA:

0

A: How did the phrase "are you nuts" come about?

You will never be thinking out of your own box(shell) if you are a nut!

But you might want to kill it before this one gains any ground. IDK.

@RegDwight Shouldn't it be a comment?

@Kosmonaut It is.

Eh?

6:17 PM

Ctrl+R or what have you.

I'm confused.

It is a comment now.

You learn English.

I am refreshing the page and it is an answer.

Yes, an answer "deleted by RegDwight♦ 2 mins ago",

with a lilac background.

user image

6:20 PM

@Kosmonaut Ah.

Darn it.

I'm talking about that other answer.

Sorries.

Stop putting confusing grayish arrows in front of your stuff.

I have always felt that those grayish arrows are overly subtle.

Anyhows, chalk me up for converting this answer.

I see that that other one has been "deleted by owner" in the mean time.

Converted

And I gave it a little upvote :)

You're very generous, kind sir.

@Kosmonaut We should probably just ask Robusto to post an "Eeeek! Arrow too subtle".

Or something.

I don't think @Martha is a big fan of Eeeeks anymore.

Huh, what?

6:29 PM

I wonder if you're still a fan of the Eeeek meme, or whether you suffer from burn-out.

Hey.

Selber hey.

"Eeek! This meme is out of control!"

Has someone already proposed making the grey arrows bigger and, er, less grey?

@Kosmonaut That's drachenstern's domain.

6:30 PM

"Eeek" has its uses. I just don't want to see it so overused that it becomes diluted.

@Martha Too late. Nowadays every second post on MSO has an Eeeek carefully shopped in into images.

People go to great lengths.

Oh and @Reg I heard "nach Fall der Mauer" just now on the news. The omission of (an? the?) article before "Fall" didn't strike me as odd, but I still noticed that we'd never do that in English or Dutch, I think.

@Cerberus I'm not sure I would do that in German, either.

Nach dem Fall der Mauer.

Yeah. But in casual speech?

Absolutely.

6:32 PM

Right.

It's a single historical event.

But after fall of the Wall in casual speech? I don't think so?

That's what I'm saying.

Notice the article before Wall, which makes it odd to my ears.

Okay then you more or less confirm what I was thinking when I heard that.

Well, apart from it being the Wall, you need a case marker.

Of in English.

Genitive article in German.

6:35 PM

Uhm...

Sorry.

I don't get it. I see no accusative, only gen. and dat.?

Oh.

You're too slow.)))

Yes.

I'm faster at noticing my own mistakes.

6:36 PM

I often hope that my slow replies will somehow land on four paws if they will fit the next line equally well.

In order to omit the article completely, you'd need to introduce some kind of equivalent of of, as in "Fall von Mauer"

Not that that would be grammatical.

Yeah.

@Martha — Wait, I thought there were FOUR e's in Eeeek! At least that's what you said last time.

Suppose it were something masculine or neuter.

It's only to illustrate that you can't just have "Fall Mauer", or "fall wall" for that matter, with nothing in between.

6:37 PM

Nach Fall Caesars.

Would that sound more... I don't know...

@Cerberus There you have a marker.

You gender-based language speakers have to sexualize everything. It's really kind of skeevy.

Yeah that's why I said m/n.

@Robusto Caesar was a manly man.

@Rob: And yet we make less of a problem of sexism!

6:38 PM

We are not saying, "nach dem Fall der Caesar".

@Cerberus — Sez you.

Caesar was in fact rather short and bony, I think.

"Short and bony" — see, there you go again ...

Mar 18 at 17:47, by Martha

@Robusto The number of e's in Eeeek is variable. Ideally, it should correspond to the level of eeekiness of the problem. For example, that question about the missing red boxes on the main page of StackOverflow should, in my opinion, be prefaced by "Ek". At most.

@Rob: We have only the "he/she" debate in Holland, not the "their" debate.

6:40 PM

@psmears Here's your non-sequitur-of-the-day badge.

We just use "his" and hardly anybody's complaining.

@PSM: What Reg says. Congratulations!

@RegDwight Non-sequitur? May I politely refer you to the little grey arrow on the left?

@Cerberus Well, I'll admit to being unsure about who is a "he" and who is a "she" in Holland, but I'm always sure who "they" are.

We never notice the grey arrows. They might as well not exist.

@Rob: The Germans?

@psmears May I politely point you to our discussion about ignoring grayish arrows?

6:41 PM

No. They are always the Russians.

@Rob: Today Holland is celebrating the day you guys freed us of the German yoke.

And a very unfunny yoke it was.

Yeah, some big-ass celebration upcoming in Russia, too.

Indeed. My father was born in 1940 and remembers some of it.

I'll be waving the flag and listening to war songs all day.

6:42 PM

War songs, even?

Вставай, страна огромная!

@RegDwight Why certainly. But I'll ignore that too :)

@Robusto No, as I've said repeatedly, the number of e's in Eeeeek depends on the severity of the situation.

Apr 5 at 22:04, by RegDwight

@Fx If you're looking for a decent Soviet music archive, have a look at http://www.sovmusic.ru/english/

We have only sad music on May 4th, remembrance day, and happy music on May 5th, liberation day.

6:43 PM

It's the second song on the all-time top 20 list.

The top 1 is awesome, too.

You play that music, I will go to any war you like.

It's that deeply engraved.

sovmusic.ru/english/top20.php

Does America have a day where the flags fly at half mast?

Memorial Day.

Ah. When is that? And what is being remembered?

Memorial Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the last Monday of May (May in ). Formerly known as Decoration Day, it commemorates U.S. soldiers who died while in the military service. First enacted to honor Union and Confederate soldiers following the American Civil War, it was extended after World War I to honor Americans who have died in all wars. Memorial Day often marks the start of the summer vacation season, and Labor Day its end. Begun as a ritual of remembrance and reconciliation after the Civil War, by the early 20th century, Memorial Day was an occasion for mor...

Last Monday in May.

6:47 PM

Ah ok.

We don't have memorial days that old because we weren't in any major wars until 1940.

1815-1940

Napoleon wasn't very traumatising.

Yeah, we kicked his ass, too.

Yes you did!

Thanks for that.

Can't mess with our winters, monsieur le bourgeois.

Though, if I may believe Tolstoy, it happened more of less by accident.

Almost jinx: I was just gonna say "well, their weather did, anyway."

6:50 PM

@Cerberus Not as much as the WWII thing.

Oh?

They were standing 28km from Moscow. They could see the Kremlin.

Everything was evacuated, they gave up on the city basically.

So? What if they'd taken Moscow? Would that have been so terrible?

Actually, if it hadn't been for the U.S. and U.S.S.R. working together, Hitler very likely would have won WWII.

It didn't help Napoleon...

@Rob: True, though it is doubtful whether he'd have been able to keep Europe for long.

6:52 PM

Stalin was half hiding behind Ural already, when he had that brilliant idea to call Zhukov.

Who had been previously defending Leningrad.

That guy single-handedly turned the table.

Back to the subject of Memorial Day, I think most European countries don't have an equivalent because there's already All Saints Day, when everybody and his neighbor goes and dumps fake flowers in the cemetery.

Did Zhukov lead the Russian armies at Stalingrad?

@Cerberus No, he was too busy leading them to Berlin.

@Martha: Ah, but that is a catholic day, if I'm not mistaken?

@Reg: Oh, were the Soviets nearing Berlin already, when the Germans were still stuck deep in Russia?

No. It took years.

6:53 PM

@Cerberus — If he'd had another year he'd have had nukes and jet fighters.

Oh ok.

They have to fight their way through Ukraine and Poland.

Kursk. The biggest tank battle in history.

@Rob: That would have been terrible, true. But still: his enemies would have strengthened their armies as well, and Germany was all but exhausted.

@Cerberus If you have Moscow, you have Russia.

I'm saying this as a Russian.

@Cerberus Not really, at least not in Hungary. Well, ok, I don't know if Jews go visit the cemetery on Nov. 2nd, but certainly all my Protestant relatives do.

6:55 PM

@Reg: Really? Why? You didn't say that to Napoleon...

For all I know, Napoleon just got bored and gave up.

Besides, that was 1812.

@Martha: OK, well Dutch Protestants don't do anything on that day. I don't even know exactly when it is. Early January?

@Reg: If I remember correctly, Napoleon triumphantly took Moscow, but had no idea what to do next with his weakened army and scant supply lines.

Precisely. Besides, in 1812, Kiev and St. Petersburg were still strong.

Not so much in 1943.

Yeah.

No?

I believe St. Petersburg was still the capital in 1812?

All the way till the October Revolution, methinks.

6:59 PM

I just think that taking a country's capital generally doesn't predict which side will win.

This isn't Civilization...

Not if it's a highly centralized country.

Look at France.

That helps; but even then.

Two-day march to Paris, bam!

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