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Post by Verbivore on Apr 30, 2019 23:52:21 GMT
To start the merry month of May, some German compound words I’ve long been a fan of the German propensity for creating compound words such as Sitzfleisch. Here is a BBC article on the phenomenon. It includes the well-known examples Schadenfreude, Wanderlust, and Doppelgänger, as well as some real corkers: Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän (Danube steamship company captain) and Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz (law for the delegation of monitoring beef-labelling). Although most of my German vocabulary relates to Mercedes-Benz vehicles (e.g. a car's engine bay is called a Motorraum – engine room), I’m always fascinated by those alphabet-long compounds. Perhaps it originated with my childhood sesquipedalian tendencies. (In high school we had a special weekly class on literacy that included speed reading and vocabulary building. That's when I started coming up with the likes of antidisestablishmentarianism, that Welsh town Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, and the following year in my German class, Arbeitsunfähigkeitsbescheinigung. It set a pattern, methinks.) |
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Post by Verbivore on May 2, 2019 3:59:47 GMT
Perhaps I oughtn't have mentioned foreign languages: we've now been invaded by the Russkies! The latest spam post that I eliminated a few moments ago was a long piece all in Cyrillic characters (and my – very little – Russian didn't help make sense of it). It contained links to suspect sites so I regarded it as at least spam, mayhap even malicious. First the Russians; next the Trumpians?  |
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Post by Twoddle on May 2, 2019 9:34:30 GMT
First the Russians; next the Trumpians? Any Trumpian posts will be written by a total genius, and all good. All good. I feel slightly ill now. |
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Post by Verbivore on May 2, 2019 23:24:46 GMT
Found this morning on BBC Travel (it’s a thumbnail for another item, farther down the page than the lead piece). Most unique = most one of a kind? Or does it go unique, uniquer, uniquest?  |
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Post by Little Jack Horner on May 3, 2019 13:06:38 GMT
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Post by Twoddle on May 3, 2019 18:25:58 GMT
I think that people who say I'm not agreeable are knob-heads and should be flogged to within an inch of their lives (and then an inch more).  |
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Post by Dave Miller on May 3, 2019 20:31:04 GMT
I think that the body of the article makes sense and reveals some interesting points - none of which is that “people who always point out grammar mistakes are pretty much jerks”. |
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Post by Verbivore on May 4, 2019 2:37:12 GMT
I think the headline overstates the thesis rather sensationally. A headline fit for Truth, perhaps?
On a different topic: Spam posts.
I've observed over the years that spammers usually post to old, often Quick Questions threads and that when one clicks on the front-page link to such posts it is the first page of the thread that comes up rather than the latest post as is otherwise standard.
Why? I don't know, but the first-page-of-thread phenomenon for spam seems fairly consistent. No doubt some digital electrickery in the board's code.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on May 4, 2019 12:35:32 GMT
I am feeling seriously victimised. According to this forum, I am a “platinum” member but have only made 596 posts — a number that hasn’t changed for several years. But perhaps my sensitivity is paranoia as I notice that everyone’s score seems to have halted. I don’t care but I have nothing better to say (at this point in time) (at the moment). Which phrase should I prefer?
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Post by Dave Miller on May 4, 2019 16:31:25 GMT
At this point in time: a ridiculously ornate phrase, meaning “now”.
At the moment: a sensible idiomatic phrase, meaning “for now, though things may change”.
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Post by Twoddle on May 4, 2019 21:32:23 GMT
At this point in time: a ridiculously ornate phrase, meaning “now”. At the moment: a sensible idiomatic phrase, meaning “for now, though things may change”. "Any time soon" has gained popularity in recent years. It means, "Soon", so why is it felt necessary to add the pretentious wordiness? |
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Post by Dave Miller on May 5, 2019 3:15:56 GMT
I’ve only met “anytime soon” in the negative, as part of a sarcastic remark:
He’s going to repaint the house? Mmm, I don’t think we’ll see that any time soon!
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Post by Twoddle on May 5, 2019 10:39:17 GMT
I’ve only met “anytime soon” in the negative, as part of a sarcastic remark: He’s going to repaint the house? Mmm, I don’t think we’ll see that any time soon! It's true that it's used for negative comments, although I don't believe it's always sarcastic: "The Prime Minister is unlikely to call an election any time soon". Nevertheless, it's unnecessary verbiage, used mainly by reporters and others who think it sounds clever. |
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Post by Twoddle on May 5, 2019 10:43:45 GMT
Perhaps I oughtn't have mentioned foreign languages: we've now been invaded by the Russkies! The latest spam post that I eliminated a few moments ago was a long piece all in Cyrillic characters (and my – very little – Russian didn't help make sense of it). It contained links to suspect sites so I regarded it as at least spam, mayhap even malicious. First the Russians; next the Trumpians? I posted both of the recent Cyrillic spams onto Google Translate, selecting the "Detect Language" option, but it just sat there, staring at me, refusing even to have a stab at a translation. |
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Post by Verbivore on May 5, 2019 21:29:36 GMT
This was a common tongue-twister during my childhood: "She sells sea shells by the sea shore. The shells she sells are surely seashells. So if she sells shells on the seashore, I'm sure she sells seashore shells.” Here’s the story behind it. |
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