zompist bboard

I suspect that in 1954, the "like" usage was widespread, but considered ungrammatical by perscriptivists. This would be consistent with the fact that the Winston ads were attacked as ungrammatical (and signalling a moral/social decay), but not nonsensical. Maybe there was a class divide involved in...

Magic ( Magia ) Magical ability or magic is defined as the capacity an intelligence has to transform the mind's ideas into real energy; expressed as change in reality. [...] I hope you find this interesting, sorry if this post was too long. I'll be glad to clarify or respond to any question. No nee...

" That's the kind of thing [that] people would find weird if they saw you doing. " Is that bolded bit grammatical for you? Sounds fine to me. I also find nothing wrong with the sentence, and definitely prefer it without the resumptive pronoun although I think I might say it both with and without th...

I used to find the walking-forwards-through-time metaphor, due no doubt to a plethora of phrases like putting the past behind us and looking forward to a better day . Then I read somewhere that speakers of some language—I'm pretty sure it was Japanese—considered themselves to be moving backwards thr...

And the phrase " I edited it. " [ aiɛdɪtɪdɪt̚ ] Amazing. The more I say it, the more I love it. Now, let's just borrow a line from the phrasal reduplication thread, and we have I edited it edited it. [aɪ ˈɛɾɪɾɪɾɪt ̩ɛɾɪɾɪɾɪt̚] Quite the tongue twister, even more so in dialects that don't flap interv...

What else might have influenced your choice? My immense hate for Subway and their worthless, dry sandwiches and the fact that it's a frigging sandwich . I don't suddenly call a hamburger with lettuce and tomato a Big Mac every time I speak of a hamburger with lettuce and tomato just because that's ...

(1) a street always runs north-south (2) an avenue always runs east-west (3) street numbers increase going north (4) avenue numbers increase going west . Wait what? Streets run north-south but they increase going north? To me, "running north-south" would mean that one street stretches from the nort...

I find that the grid system works really well with consistently numbered streets. In Edmonton, we don't count intersections or blocks as much as give street numbers and landmarks. The system is set up such that (1) a street always runs north-south (2) an avenue always runs east-west (3) street numbe...

zompist wrote:Spanish has an interesting derivation using a verb plus a plural: tocadiscos, paraguas, lavaplatos.

As does French, I think. A quick google search brings up cherche-étoiles for 'planisphere', and I'm sure I've seen more.

So maybe you can say that's true for your [idio/dia]lect, but certainly not for American English, much less English as a whole. Definitely dialect. Like Gray, I'm completely stunned that so many of you disagree with spats on this, since to me 'I gave him it' is downright ungrammatical. I certainly ...

What got you lost regarding the orthography? I'm lost on the orthography too, although in my case this probably has more to do with being unable to properly discern unfamiliar sounds. It's pretty obvious that I'm not cut out, or would at least need a lot of training, for field linguistics, since fr...

Come on Sevley, a French to English translation is easy. We want to win! Oh, fine, since you insisted, I poured out my heart and soul, cross-referencing multiple sources from various scholarly publications, as well as seeking the advice of several native speakers of both languages, in order to reso...

A1 Bedroom A2 Laundry Room A3 Kitchen A4 Living Room A5 Dining Room A6 (Small) Den (Large) Bonus Room, Extra Room, Family Room A7 (Formal) Foyer (Informal) Entranceway A8 Master Bedroom A9 Full Bathroom A10 Walk-in Closet A11 Half Bathroom A12 Garage B1 Bedroom B2 Full Bathroom B3 Hallway B4 (part ...

[wɪkɨˈpʰiːdjə]

This time I would prefer to go

• De: Franc͔ais
  To: English

but obviously I can go the other way too, if necessary.

Upon first reading the joke I only had a vague idea as to what the point was supposed to be, and although I was able to guess at the intended meaning I have to agree that its forcefulness is lost on almost everybody, even if they eventually get it. In my case, I find "shall" to be merely a more arch...

Lyhoko Leaci wrote:Still waiting for Åge Kruger's English translation...

And Sevly, you need to send me the French translation, too. And you didn't need to do an English translation... Unless Åge Kruger has learned how to do PM ventriloquism...

Heh, right. I'll fix that up in a jiffy.

Done and sent and done and sent and yeah.

I don't know if they're quite as weird as others are making them out to be. Well, okay, the last one is outright nonsensical and I could never see it meaning what you see it meaning, but the middle two are merely odd. They seem to me to be putting 'finish' in a sort of middle voice, on analogy with ...

I have to side with Zoris on the voting here. Right now brandrinn has twice rushed into a decision following three or so voices saying one thing and another few dissenting, showing how it would have made more sense to at least wait a specified amount of time (e.g. Zoris's suggestion of one week) bef...

I'm in as a learner as well, would be open to both Inyauk and Feayran although I must say that I'm anxious to see materials for Rammy and the other conlangs that don't have any documented materials available yet. Anywhom, from what I can see we have: (EDIT: LISTS UPDATED AS OF APRIL 29) Learners (11...

You actually do need to think about the fact that they might not pronounce final <e>'s in Spanish words, or that <v> is /b/, or all those other sort of things, and must consider the fact that it won't initially make sense to them. Those are not issues of phonetics. Okay, but they are the issues of ...

From: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian
To: [English, French[/i].

I'm also willing to go from Swahili if anyone wants to try it. Mbwa, perhaps?

I read a book recently What book? How old? What is the situation in which the spelling Mekkiko is used? Grilling me, huh. Well, it was in The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis, published in 2007. It's been a month or so since I read it, so I don't remember that many details about the situation since ...

I just read an entry on TVtropes about a guy whose elementary school teacher told him that a sentence should never begin with a pronoun. That's right, pronouns . Sevly thinks, from an example given, that the teacher was trying to stop students from using dummy subjects like 'it' in 'It was nice of y...