Messages

1

English & Linguistics / Re: Quotes from work

« on: May 07, 2013, 04:27:37 PM »

"The logic is deeply embedded in the code."

Hey, it's a legitimate statement In some systems the business logic is heavily driven by something outside the code, such as a rules engine, or is modular and flexible so that business logic changes are easy, while in others the business logic is pervasive throughout the code, meaning it isn't easy to change.

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English & Linguistics / Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...

« on: November 09, 2012, 08:53:43 AM »

There's a perfectly reasonable way to refer to women as a group without using the word women. "Hey guys, ..." completely works.

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English & Linguistics / Re: Dear Expert

« on: July 13, 2012, 11:51:28 AM »

I don't think we can really know in any particular case, but there's a lot of evidence he actively tried to coin new words and phrases, so I could definitely believe that he was the first to use a number of those.

For instance, there are a huge number of words that, as far as we know, Shakespeare was either the first to use or the first to use in a particular sense: http://thinkonmywords.com/additional/p161.html has a thorough breakdown of a good number of them. Now, a lot of them are variants on words already in use in other languages, but it's still pretty darn impressive, and a number of them are unusual portmanteaus he could well have coined.

And we do have a good number of written sources from around the time, including people who liked to use vernacular, so if a phrase were in common use before him, there's a decent chance we'd run into it.

So yeah, I'm pretty confident he's at the very least the person who introduced many of those phrases into widespread usage, and likely the very first user for a number of them.

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English & Linguistics / Re: Quotes from work

« on: March 01, 2012, 07:32:42 PM »

Heh, yeah, the academics in question weren't intended to include you. I just have many memories of academics who seemed to apply an approach where if a sentence could possibly be rephrased to use "it is", it should be, along with banishing the word "I" (and usually "we").

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English & Linguistics / Re: Quotes from work

« on: February 25, 2012, 07:44:53 PM »

I think "No one knows when Garn finished his translation of the Voice of Warning" or "There's no conclusive evidence for when Garn finished his translation of the Voice of Warning" are even more natural and readable (though believe me I understand a lot of academics would have apoplexy over using such phrasings).

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English & Linguistics / Re: English-to-English translation

« on: January 15, 2012, 03:39:45 PM »

It's pretty startling how many different accents there are (or were in the past; I think it's declining) in London.

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English & Linguistics / Re: I just learned a word

« on: June 23, 2011, 10:01:31 AM »

Weird, fillip seems only mildly unusual to me. I think I might read an author or two who uses the word moderately often, and that might be why, but I can't place it.

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English & Linguistics / Re: On Special

« on: April 14, 2011, 11:39:32 AM »

Doesn't surprise me; the Cajun side of my family periodically turns up Jewish ancestors in their genealogical excursions.

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English & Linguistics / Re: Quotes from work

« on: March 31, 2011, 12:39:40 PM »

Posting on the forum would probably be a good start, but I think you'd be most likely to get assistance via their advertising arm (note: getting the name may require making a small facebook ad buy or somesuch): http://www.facebook.com/business/contact.php

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English & Linguistics / Re: Quotes from work

« on: March 31, 2011, 11:56:45 AM »

Not Zuckerberg, of course, but Facebook does have a department for resolving exceptions, and they might be sympathetic to the argument that your bank really is XXXXXXXX Bank, with the caps. If you guys ask nicely and try to get to someone with sufficient decision-making power, it could work out.

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English & Linguistics / Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...

« on: December 02, 2010, 06:44:07 PM »

I love that I can get Starbucks to make things with whole milk, and sometimes I even indulge and go half and half. Not that I go to Starbucks too often, but we have a lot of gift cards saved up.

I drink a lot of whole milk (from a carton -- much better than from plastic, I discovered fairly recently. If we had a front porch I'd get it delivered daily), but it amusingly takes down my fat intake in a lot of my cooking, because I use it instead of heavy whipping cream (though I do cook it down more, resulting in some heavenly sauces that require a lot of stirring).

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English & Linguistics / Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...

« on: November 24, 2010, 10:05:08 PM »

Yeah, I'm a fan of arrowed. I feel it implies a sense of accuracy, while darted is more about speed.

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English & Linguistics / Re: Dear Expert

« on: July 20, 2010, 10:07:32 PM »

It sounds nearly as bad as Japan, where those preparing for university entrance exams (or even high school ones!) must memorize insane points of English grammar (frequently incorrect ones, at that).

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English & Linguistics / Re: Dear Expert

« on: July 20, 2010, 08:03:26 PM »

Ah, I misunderstood the question, I think. I agree with Jonathon's "because".

More seriously, it emphasizes the verb, which is especially important in subjunctive. And it sounds cooler (a very important aspect of linguistic development, especially when the linguistic developers are dramatic people).

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English & Linguistics / Re: Dear Expert

« on: July 20, 2010, 05:32:31 PM »

The subjunctive indicates the hypothetical/possible (note: I know you know this, it just leads into the answer); the first doesn't, so we don't use that, and the second lacks a verb, so we don't use that. The inversion is because it flows better, and because the main alternative ("if he be") would suggest a constraint rather than an emphasis, as would leaving the subjunctive out entirely.

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English & Linguistics / Re: I hate journalistic writing

« on: June 15, 2010, 09:03:48 AM »

They forgot the exclamation mark on "inconceivable!"

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English & Linguistics / Dear Expert

« on: May 21, 2010, 09:08:18 AM »

??

A way of saying "I..." when speaking fairly formally (keigo). Used by girls a lot more than guys. As a non-Japanese guy, you probably don't ever want to use this unless you're very unambiguously in a formal situation (edit: because if you use it in the wrong situation, you'll sound like a girl, and Japanese people think that's hilarious).

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English & Linguistics / Military English

« on: March 18, 2010, 03:46:45 PM »

I'm pretty sure the derivation worked as follows: Charlie was originally for the Viet Cong, or Victor Charlie, and that was extended to the North Vietnamese (because you don't want to call your enemies "Victors").

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English & Linguistics / The random etymology of the day

« on: February 25, 2010, 11:22:33 AM »

Wikipedia attributes it to an Algonquin root. So, absent some astounding developments in the migration history of North America, no .

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English & Linguistics / Who started saying /be?????/?

« on: January 28, 2010, 02:53:26 PM »

Yep, Kyoto was the capital for quite some time (with a really brief interlude). Before that, the main capital of note (and substantial historical record) was Nara.

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English & Linguistics / Who started saying /be?????/?

« on: January 28, 2010, 01:47:22 PM »

The wikipedia page has what looks to be a reasonable account of the name's origins.

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English & Linguistics / Holey Cwap

« on: January 25, 2010, 09:10:05 AM »

That's just a way of grouping terms that start with the same word. Roquefort is a bleu cheese, but its name does not start with Bleu, so it isn't put under the Bleu alphabetical grouping.

But yes, bleu is a term for the type of cheese. I don't know how you'd generally refer to it in France, but "fromage bleu" does return a good number of hits on google.fr.

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English & Linguistics / I hate journalistic writing

« on: January 19, 2010, 01:47:13 PM »

If you scroll down, on the right there's a link back to the article.

Easiest way to find it is to search for "oxymoron" on the page.

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English & Linguistics / Statistics editing help

« on: September 24, 2009, 09:59:27 AM »

That's strange, the R squared and Chi squared rows should both have decimal points everywhere, but the degrees of freedom (df) row should have decimal points nowhere (degrees of freedom are always integers).

DLK isn't a statistical term I (or Google) have any familiarity with. I suspect it is specific to the model they are talking about, so the decimal points are almost certainly appropriate.

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English & Linguistics / Homophones

« on: November 14, 2004, 05:00:40 PM »

http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.8.0/pod/perlf...rl--and--Perl--

Actually, it was never PERL, and it is now Perl if one talks about the language , or perl the implementation (preferentially).