Zompist Bboard Again

I think it's pretty obvious what masako's talking about

https://twitter.com/LetsLearns

Seems to be a Twitter account offering bad English lessons but not so bad as to be easily identified as such. Their profile says theyre a parody account but I fell for it and so have, apparently, some of the people reading. I think this is a bad sign ... the account has 90000 followers. I suspect that they have recently renamed themselves, as up until a few weeks ago their content was entirely different, consisting mostly of photoshopped meme-like pics.

I really hope that the latest change in weather doesn't mean that fall is starting here.

Just noticed a make of car called the "Velar". No sign of the "Palatal" or "Postalveolar" yet.

Thats funny especially since they dont have a history of using nonsense words or mashups like "Alero", "Starion", etc. So they chose the name for what it means. I looked it up on Wiktionary and it seems that it comes from a word meaning sail, so my guess is that's the meaning they are going for .... but who would know that?? Were it not for phonetics I would think of vellum paper first.

I note that the car company recommends pronouncing it with the vowel of BED, not SCREECH. (Sorry cant think of the canonical words right now)

There's velocity though, and Fr. vélo.

Maybe even a (very weak) portmanteau with that and car.

Scraping the barrel in the marketing department, but they have to get paid for something.

French Wikipedia has not one, but two explanations!

« Velar » veut dire « voiler » ou « dévoiler » en latin, par rapport à son toit de pavillon dissocié à son hayon sur la proue.
Translation: Velar means 'to veil' or 'unveil' in Latin (*), referring to its... and the rest is car geek speak and I have absolutely zero idea what it means.

And later they suggest it means « V Eight LAnd Rover »

(*) the verb is velare ; the noun is velum which means both sail and veil. The velum ('palate veil') is the soft palate. Sorry alice. I think I've so thoroughly dissected your joke that I killed it.

alice wrote: ↑Thu Jul 02, 2020 6:28 am Just noticed a make of car called the "Velar". No sign of the "Palatal" or "Postalveolar" yet.

Yes, I noticed that one a few weeks ago, too.

Has anyone made the experience that, sometimes, freshly ground black peppers can smell like, well, like manure? Not taste like it, thankfully, but smell?

I didn't know that (never cooked with fresh pepper), but apparently it releases some components similar to those found in manure and horse sweat.

*****

Oh, we got a new prime minister! I don't get what the fuss is all about, nor do I understand why we so desperately needed yet another middle-aged bland centrist technocrat. But! He's something of a rarity: a prominent politician with a noticeable regional accent. At last!

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Sat Jul 04, 2020 2:42 am I didn't know that (never cooked with fresh pepper), but apparently it releases some components similar to those found in manure and horse sweat.

Apparently it's white pepper that smells like (pig) manure.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sat Jul 04, 2020 6:58 pm

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Sat Jul 04, 2020 2:42 am I didn't know that (never cooked with fresh pepper), but apparently it releases some components similar to those found in manure and horse sweat.

Apparently it's white pepper that smells like (pig) manure.

White and black pepper are from the same kind of peppercorn, but harvested at different times and processed differently; Additionally, white pepper tends to be ground finer. So it would make sense if one smells like manure sometimes, the other would as well, even if different sorts.

i found some dirty laundry from eleven months ago ,stashed in a handbag that i brought with me from where i lived then to where i lived until I moved here. It wasnt really that smelly, perhaps helped at least a bit by that the same handbag also had a loose bar of soap in it.

I maintain that clothes wash themselves eventually.

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Jun 30, 2020 10:29 am I really hope that the latest change in weather doesn't mean that fall is starting here.

Apparently that was too much to hope for.

sasasha wrote: ↑Sun Jul 05, 2020 5:16 pm I maintain that clothes wash themselves eventually.

In some languages, they do - grammatically: passives often develop from reflexives.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sat Jul 04, 2020 6:58 pm

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Sat Jul 04, 2020 2:42 am I didn't know that (never cooked with fresh pepper), but apparently it releases some components similar to those found in manure and horse sweat.

Apparently it's white pepper that smells like (pig) manure.

OMFG A few months ago, when I still had a job, I was annoyed by the smell of manure while a colleague was packaging powdered white pepper. There are farms nearby, and the windows were open, so naturally I thought they were spreading manure. But it must've been the pepper all along.

would there be any interest here in starting up a "bad translations" thread for things such as product instructions that are badly translated either into English or into some other language? There's already 9999999 posts like that on Reddit so we wouldnt really be providing anything that doesnt already exist .... and maybe thats why desptie the ZBB being online so long nobody's done it. I dont know.

I am very annoyed that Google has been recently giving priority to Google Books results in searches. I just tried searching some words from the Vulgate, the Vulgate!, from Mark's passage of Jesus' death after seeing it in an image (Et facta hora sexta tenebrae factae sunt per totam terram in horam nonam), and it gave me:
- five Google Books results to the same two books from 2018, which are Bibles, but nevertheless 2018 limited-view books
- three Google Books results to a 1889 medievalist publication of an 8th-9th c. manuscript that happens to contain this particular passage of Mark as part of a comparison of the Passion passages
- finally two results to Bible study tools.com --which is not the best site, as it is quite annoying with ads unlike many others and I'm on my adblock-less phone, but I'll take it

I've noticed this for a couple weeks and it's starting to get on my nerves.



Unrelatedly, I noticed that someone joined us under the name "Skookum" in January, who seems to often read the forum, but has never made a post. I'm kind of curious because "skookum" is of course NW Pacific word, and I wonder if it's someone from my neck in the woods, maybe even Berek/Kereb.

speaking of the pacific NW .... my breakfast today is the world's most beautiful fish!

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2521/ ... nal_10.jpg