Activity for matthewsnyderâ€
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Comment | Post #289955 |
This is wrong. Refried beans are fried only once. And you can reinforce the first time. (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Edit | Post #289989 |
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— | 7 months ago |
| Edit | Post #289989 |
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— | 7 months ago |
| Edit | Post #289989 |
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— | 7 months ago |
| Edit | Post #289989 | Initial revision | — | 7 months ago |
| Question | — |
Has the word "humor" shifted meaning? The original meaning of humor of course refers to the obsolete theory of the four humors and their effect on human temperament. I'm not asking about that. It appears that initially, the meaning shifted from any behavior, to a specific type of behavior that we may call (or have called in recent his... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Edit | Post #289988 |
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— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #289988 |
Humor can also take different forms: Physical, visual, musical, etc. For the purposes of this site, let's consider only written and spoken humor. (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Edit | Post #289988 | Initial revision | — | 7 months ago |
| Question | — |
Does humor always spring from surprise? It seems like a lot of humor has an element of surprise. Sudden meanings, unexpected turns of the plot, language unexpected given the context (impolite language in polite context, technical in a non-technical context, etc). I find it hard to think of a joke or other humorous text where there is not a... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Edit | Post #289987 |
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— | 7 months ago |
| Edit | Post #289987 |
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— | 7 months ago |
| Edit | Post #289987 | Initial revision | — | 7 months ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How can fulsome constitute "a case of ironic understatement"? The quoted definition appears to answer your question already. An 300 ml cup of water is full if and only if it contains exactly 300 ml water. There's no mystery there, if you think of a cup the irony makes no sense because a cup is rigid. The same applies to a tank of petrol, which is normally ma... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #286040 |
I don't think this is quite correct. "Defend this inane notion I pulled out of thin air just now" is indeed uninteresting exactly as you say. However, "why does this **source** posit a notion which seems inane" sounds very reasonable to me. I think the problem with the question is not what OP is aski... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Suggested Edit | Post #289010 |
Suggested edit: An example is helpful, even if not exactly right - maybe just calling that out is better than removing (more) |
declined | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #289010 |
No problem! I think this is a good question, just the example has other things so I wonder if it will confuse people. Presumably you want to talk about actual translation requests, not humor, but answers will always be tempted to veer into humor.
Examples are always good though. So maybe just note... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #288998 |
Microsoft used to be notorious, back in Win 98 days, for very poorly made localizations of their software. I think that in the bad old days before the internet, a lot of their developers were clustered in the US, so localizations were done by people who didn't actually know the language very well and... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #289960 |
Incredible - thank you for the poem! (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #288998 |
I don't know Bengali, but from context and the examples given, it seems like the translations are literal but unidiomatic. The famous example of this type of humor is [*English as She Is Spoke*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_as_She_Is_Spoke). The "translations" are probably actual translation... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Comment | Post #289010 |
The example given is actually not a translation request at all. The user has apparently gotten confused about what they're trying to ask, but they're obviously not asking what the words mean literally. That can be found in a dictionary, and in fact the sample text itself already gives the English "tr... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Edit | Post #289957 | Initial revision | — | 7 months ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Should translation questions be considered off-topic? Asking for translations is a common and normal technique that novice language students use to learn their language of choice. This allows them to connect and transfer some of their existing language skills to the target language. A dictionary is arguably nothing more than a bunch of single-word tr... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Edit | Post #289955 | Initial revision | — | 7 months ago |
| Question | — |
Is "pervalue" an antonym of "devalue"? Devalue is commonly used to mean diminish value. Seems like the prefix re- is sometimes used with opposite effect to de-, as in reinforce meaning to increase force or refried meaning more fried. However, revalue does not mean to increase value. In this situation, sometimes per- is used to co... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Edit | Post #289954 | Initial revision | — | 7 months ago |
| Question | — |
What is "nift"? Everyone knows what "nifty" is. It's obvious, isn't it? A thing which possesses nift. But what is this mysterious nift? Looking at things that are considered nifty, I cannot quite come up with a good answer. (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
| Edit | Post #288965 | Initial revision | — | 10 months ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Effectiveness of input-only learning My own experience has been that: You can definitely learn a lot by only listening/reading, never speaking You will still gain some ability to speak/write even though you never practice it It will be more difficult to produce if you only practice receiving, and if it's important to produce wel... (more) |
— | 10 months ago |
| Comment | Post #288754 |
Are you asking about *all* words who happen to exemplify the concept? Or just the word which named the concept? Eggcorn and mondegreen are the latter, "word" and "noun" are the former (the concept of a noun was not first studied by looking at the word "noun"). (more) |
— | 10 months ago |
| Edit | Post #288910 |
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— | 10 months ago |
| Edit | Post #288910 | Initial revision | — | 10 months ago |
| Answer | — |
A: What is the term for a word that is an instance of itself? An eponym is the thing after which something else is named. For example, the linguistical concept of eggcorns is named after the word eggcorn, hence the word eggcorn is the eponym of the concept. The plain language equivalent of this is "namesake". As in, the concept is named for the sake of the w... (more) |
— | 10 months ago |
| Edit | Post #288308 | Initial revision | — | 11 months ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Why do Chinese people say "idear"? This is not something unique to Chinese, it is most commonly seen with British speakers: https://languages.codidact.com/posts/288307 The Chinese were historically much more exposed to British, in particular to upper-class British English. I suspect that a legacy of that is taking up some of their ... (more) |
— | 11 months ago |
| Comment | Post #288307 |
I know generally what the answer is, I asked it as a general way of addressing another question. It's explained here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linking_and_intrusive_R But I don't feel like writing a full explanation that will stand the test of peer review. (more) |
— | 11 months ago |
| Edit | Post #288307 | Initial revision | — | 11 months ago |
| Question | — |
Why do some people say "idea-r", "draw-r-ing" and "china-r"? English speakers from certain areas, in particular British, seem to add an extra `r` sound after vowels. For example: Idea -> idea-r Drawing -> draw-r-ing China -> China-r What is the cause of this? (more) |
— | 11 months ago |