Good idea, but I probably won’t take the time to watch the videos. Or just a few of them.
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November 5th (Guy Fawkes’ / Bonfire Night in the UK) was my latest “bonfire”, which I had at home in the garden. Last year was the last time I attended a public bonfire, for the same festival.
My latest fire actually on a camp was more than five years ago.
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Is Winnie the Pooh someway related with poo?
Is it a pun? A joke? What else?
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Within the last five years.
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I’ve never read Winnie-the-Pooh, so I don’t know for sure, but I’ve thought that “Pooh” was a mocking title, because of his below-average intellect. It may be similar to this:
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“the two negative exclamations Pooh! plus Bah!”
What’s that?
I don’t know English exclamations. Could you tell me more?
We also have “bah” in Italian (or maybe just in Tuscany). It’s an ambiguous exclamation, since it could mean “indeed” or the opposite “whatever, I don’t think so” depending on the tone you use.
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It can actually be overloaded even more.
Examples:
A: Hey, did you hear the news? John bought a new car.
R1: Baah? ( expresses question … in this case “where did he find the money” )
R2: Ah, bah? (expresses interest … in this case “oh, really? Interesting”)
R3: Baaahh! (expresses disdain … in this case it is usually followed by a sentence that explains why. E.g. “It is only a rental” or “it is a used car”)
A: Are you going to work, tomorrow?
R1: Baaah. (expresses denial … in this case a dismissive “Nope” implying that you have other things to do)
Even more interesting/varied can be the use of the “ah” exclamation.
ah? ( “what was that? I didn’t understand”)
aah! (“Yes”)
aaah! (“Interesting”)
aaaah! (“now I understood what you were saying”)
aaAah! (“derision” - usually accompanied with a shooing hand gesture)
The good thing about most exclamations is that they are more or less universal, in the sense that even if a language doesn’t usually have those exclamations formally, if you see them expressed on some foreigner, you immediately get what they mean, even if you do not know their language.
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Bah in french is just like “I don’t mind” with an once of resignation.
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Oh, forget about it! 
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Now for a deeply divisive question…
Pineapple on Pizza??
- Yes
- No
0 voters
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Italian pizza doesn’t usually have pineapple, but we like to have variety. So once I had the opportunity to eat pizza with pineapple beside other ingredients. It was nice, but it’s difficult to arrange a good mix with pineapple.
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Thanks to everybody who responded to my poll above! I just wanted to let you know that I’ve started making the videos (first three done today), and I’ll probably post them in their own thread once I start releasing them.
Continuing my trend of abusing this topic for “market research”, what time of day are you most likely to want to watch a video? I’m guessing most people spend time on these forums (and/or youtube) in the evenings, but it would be cool to get some time-zone-compensated data.
- 12:00 AM
- 2:00 AM
- 4:00 AM
- 6:00 AM
- 8:00 AM
- 10:00 AM
- 12:00 PM
- 2:00 PM
- 4:00 PM
- 6:00 PM
- 8:00 PM
- 10:00 PM
0 voters
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I say yes, but not the standard Hawaiian pizza, with tomato sauce, ham and cheese next to the pineapple. If you use pineapple, make it with something like gorgonzola or goat cheese or so.
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Which of these are the most pretentious?
- Three octopi
- Three syllabi
- Three memoranda
- Three staves
- Three tyrannosauri
- One datum
- One pasto
- None of these are pretentious
0 voters
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Miss an option: me
I don’t know why syllable would pluralise syllabi as the Latin root is a feminine noun_syllaba, -ae_; we’d expect English syllable, syllabae if anything.
The Latin word derives from a Greek sullabḗ, but even this pluralises to sullabaí, which would suggest English syllable, syllabai.
I guess -i is being used as a sort of “pseudo-Classical stand-in inflection” for both Latin -ae and Greek -aí, reflecting the derivation of the word, which isn’t unreasonable.
octopi is an interesting one. The Classical Latin word for octopus (or cuttlefish) is polypus or pólypus, and that does pluralise -í, so there’s an understandable comparison there.
However, English octopus does not descend from polypus. It comes from a New Latin word octópús, coined from Greek, and that word has a Hellenic plural octópodés.
In an English mouth, that could become octopus, octopodes (/-'əʊdi:z, -'oʊdi:z/, to rhyme with roadies).
Personally, I would probably cut through the whole tangled issue and just not pluralise.
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none of these is pretentious, some are just wrong.
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It wouldn’t. But syllabus might.
Yes, I think octopi is not even the technical plural of octopus.
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Ah, nice catch! > ~ <
syllabus, syllabi is A-OK in my book.
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How should modern loanwords pluralise in English?
- A. English-style: -s / -ies
- B. According to their language of origin
- C. According to their language of origin, but only for some languages and not others
- D. They shouldn’t pluralise
- E. B if a technical publication, A or C if a popular one
0 voters