Diacritiques

In our ongoing series Language topics on the #wordpress IRC channel, we present the latest instalment. This morning’s discussions mainly dealt with nouns and verbs, and the purity of English.

The participants were spread out between Lausanne and Tokyo, and most but not all of them are native speakers of English (at least two are bilingual from childhood, and several more have acquired a near-native level in a foreign language). Both sexes were represented.

“Phenny”, who pitches in at the end of the excerpt, is not a human being, but a bot, capable of consulting a variety of dictionaries and carrying out Google searches.

This is a bit long, so please read on below the fold.

<masquerade> “Movable Type is badly designed” <– that sentence is designed _poorly_
<westi|work> masquerade: MT was designed!!???!!
* masquerade laffs
<MCincubus> “badly” is an adverb that means “in a bad manner”
<Firas> MCincubus: it’s a prescriptive holdout
<Firas> poorly vs badly
<Firas> fuck prescriptivists to hell
<MCincubus> heh… yeah, I usually agree.
<MCincubus> My father became depressed when “dialog” became an f’ing VERB.
<MCincubus> “We’re dialoging here.” ARGH!
<masquerade> dialog is a verb?
<masquerade> wtf?
<Firas> hah
<Firas> that depresses me too
<swoolley> talk is a verb, discuss is a verb
<MCincubus> discuss is not a noun, though
<MCincubus> talk goes both ways
<swoolley> discussion is
<MCincubus> having a talk, talking
<michel_v> heh
<swoolley> dialog is the name of a program
<michel_v> dialoguer is a french verb, I reckon
<swoolley> (proper noun)
<MCincubus> Greek, Latin, French, Old English, yeah, michel_v
* masquerade sighs
<masquerade> dialog being a verb is like compile being a noun
<swoolley> compilation
<Firas> “this program is a compile”
<Firas> :p
<masquerade> just doesn’t work..
<swoolley> compile can be used as a noun
<swoolley> “on the third compile …”
<Firas> that’s a verb
<Firas> “on the third try”
<swoolley> “on the third item …”
<swoolley> a try is a noun
<Firas> yeah
<Firas> hmm
<swoolley> how many tries did it take?
<Firas> “on the third compilation”
<masquerade> thus is why english is fucked
<masquerade> its a retarded language
<MCincubus> “on the third explode”
<swoolley> masquerade: it’s
<Firas> MCincubus: lol
<swoolley> MCincubus: explosion
* swoolley was just messing with people on “on the third compile”
<masquerade> “on the third compile” really isn’t proper right?
<Firas> nope
<swoolley> compilation is correct
<Firas> but again, /me is a descriptivist
<jalenack> isn’t proper right?
<Firas> if everyone uses it as a noun
<Firas> then it becomes a noun
<Firas> thus is the way of language :)
<masquerade> jalenack, pretend there is ac omma there
<jalenack> need a comma!
<MCincubus> actually, “on the third explode” is a slightly dishonest because “explode” is largely intransitive.
<chrys_seren> ,
<masquerade> everyone, pretend my tpying tonight has no errors
<jalenack> riigghhttt..
<Firas> oh noe
* masquerade sets down the bottle
<Firas> chrys_seren has something to say
<MCincubus> Firas, “noes” Always. :-)
<Firas> suddenly an adult has walked into our conversation
<chrys_seren> just supplied the comma
<Firas> MCincubus: yeah, wanted to type that, pressed enter too soon
<chrys_seren> “a comma, a comma, my kingdom for a comma”
<Firas> chrys_seren: ahh
<Firas> anyway
<Firas> if you’re talking about the php function explode()
<MCincubus> I keep the ()
<Firas> then you wouldn’t want to say on the third explosion
<MCincubus> On the third explode()
<Firas> yep
<swoolley> then you say on the third “explode()”
<masquerade> using the () creates an entirely fifferent meaning
<swoolley> quote it so that it’s considered separate
<Firas> well, you can always say, on the third call to explode
<swoolley> most programming books use a different font
<MCincubus> I’d <code></code> it in HTML
<Firas> yeah
<swoolley> Firas: the third call might not be the third instance in the code.
<Firas> true
<swoolley> gotta be careful of that kind of stuff ;)
<MCincubus> hm… explode = ex plaude. applaud = app plaud. That just occured to me.
<masquerade> er, i quit
<Firas> MCincubus: you know the coolest language epiphany i had
<Firas> is i was watching the lady killers
<masquerade> Firas, that was a halarious movie
<Firas> and he turns to them and says “mes dames”
<Firas> and i was like, omfg!
<Firas> madam = ma dame, my lady
<masquerade> “You brought your bitch, to the waffle house!”
<MCincubus> Firas, haha
<Firas> and hence plural = mes dames
<bunnywabbit_> madame
<bunnywabbit_> mesdames
<bunnywabbit_> :-)
<zedrdave> bunnywabbit_: in english, it’d be madam :)
<bunnywabbit_> monsieur
<Firas> bunnywabbit_: yeah but most english speakers don’t say that
<bunnywabbit_> messieurs
<bunnywabbit_> ah yeah
<Firas> they say ladies or madams or whatever
<masquerade> the americans need to stop stealing words from other languages
<masquerade> english has enough words..
<zedrdave> not to be mistaken with A madam ;)
<MCincubus> it’s funny, because certain things have etymological derivations that are obvious to some but completely hidden to others.
<zedrdave> masquerade: because they’ve all been stolen already ;)
<MCincubus> like, explode being “to clap out of” only now occured to me.
<Firas> .ety explode
<phenny> explode: Latin explodere to drive off the stage by clapping, from ex- + plaudere to clap
<zedrdave> the girl wrote “I bought a yukata for my little mama-san”
<zedrdave> ostensibly to say, her mum…
<Firas> way to go MCincubus :)
<Firas> zedrdave: lol
<zedrdave> except in Japanese, mamasan is the word for a madam ;)
<tinster> masquerade, English borrowed terms from other languages all the time
<Firas> like a woman pimp?
<zedrdave> so it gave it a *very* different meaning
<bunnywabbit_> all languages borrow words from other languages
<Firas> .ety madam
<phenny> madam: Middle English, from Middle French ma dame, literally, my lady
<zedrdave> Firas: yea. e.g. in a hostess bar…
<bunnywabbit_> .ety language
* tinster grins at bunnywabbit_… except the Spanish have a council which prevents such things. Possibly the French too
<phenny> language: Middle English, from Old French, from langue tongue, language, from Latin lingua — more at TONGUE
<bunnywabbit_> tinster: in french too, but nobody listens to them
<MCincubus> tinster, ESPECIALLY the French
<Firas> 90% of english is effing francais
<bunnywabbit_> obsession with “purity” of a language, bleh
<Firas> chrys_seren: and the rest is german :)
<chrys_seren> Firas, old norse :)
<bunnywabbit_> english is english
<zedrdave> chrys_seren: by way of latin, it should be rather close, I’d say…
<masquerade> its not borrrowing words that’s annoying
<masquerade> borrowing _every_ word that sounds cool is annoying
<tinster> skool
<MCincubus> sometimes words have meanings that can’t be translated without a lot of other words.
<MCincubus> naive, for example
<Firas> .g we real cool we die soon
<phenny> we real cool we die soon: web.mit.edu/adorai/www/we…
<Firas> best poem evar