TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML)
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@Zecc Yes, and, uh, no but yes, I guess...? (and yes but no...)
Ultra-ing
The reform was published in 1990 (less than a year after the relevant committee was gathered, that part was impressively quick!). It was published as a governmental decree. But the government (*) has no legal authority on defining the language's orthography! So the decree has no binding value to anyone. So no, it didn't take years to become official since all the official-ness it could get was done at the moment it was published. But yes it took years to become official since e.g. various administrations took years to make it official for their communicates.
(*) note that while the Académie has an official authority on defining that, since its inception in 1634, but I hesitate to call it "legal" since AFAIK it isn't actually defined in any legal text -- and in any case, it has no actual authority (it doesn't have a court or anything similar), apart from a moral one (which is pretty weak, though the fact that most people know about them, and they're in the news regularly, means they still do have some impact, albeit not necessarily the one they'd like!).
And for the second part (is it ignored), yes most people will say that they don't care about it, or even that they despise it, and may (in some cases) actively refuse to use e.g. some "new" spellings. But OTOH most people actually use it as quite a lot of the changes were actually truly helpful. Typically the plural of composed nouns, as the example which started this here, were almost impossible to remember before, and somewhat slightly more logical now, and more importantly, now they're usually what people instinctively use, so even if they're not aware they're using the reformed orthography, well, they are.
Also since the reform is now 30 years old (), that means anyone under 40 or so only ever knew that orthography. Not quite because some teachers held out etc. but on the whole, it's much less disputed now simply because most people never knew anything else.
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@PleegWat Post-1990, your edit is .
Pre-1990... um... let's see... aha! nope, both of your answer were wrong.
Edit: though... uh... if you switch to the 9th (=current) edition, it says that actually that plural hasn't changed since the previous edition (the 8th (1935) one). Though I'm not sure when the "R" tome of the 9th edition came out, it could be before 1990, though again since they're currently at "S", and despite them taking decades for each tome, I suspect "R" didn't came out that long ago so maybe not.
But actually, see my other Wall'o'Text , and how the reform was done by the government and I have no idea whether the Académie itself has actually officially endorsed it (for its dictionary) or not!
So, to sum up,
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@remi We have a rare few such words in Dutch, the most well known being 'proces-verbaal', in which only the first part is pluralised. So I suspected something similar was going on, but my initial posted version felt wrong which made me suspect I needed to pluralise both.
I suspect most Dutch people don't know the proper pluralisation here since it comes up so rarely.
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@PleegWat said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
rabats-joie?
Technically it should be "rabattent-joie" (and technically, since I addressed @remi directly I guess I should have written rabats-joie originally). But I don't know (or care much about) the official position, that might be overly- even for Les Immortels... then again, from what I know about them it might not.
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@ixvedeusi said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
Technically it should be "rabattent-joie"
I guess it should, though I don't think that was ever used. I don't think there are any compound noun that forms its plural in this way?
(and technically, since I addressed @remi directly I guess I should have written rabats-joie originally).
Well, are we familiar enough that you're tutoying me? Otherwise it'd be "rabattez-joie." But again, I don't think any compound noun is ever formed this way, even if it "should" (quotes because talking of rules about language... cue rules/guideline meme).
But I don't know (or care much about) the official position, that might be overly- even for Les Immortels... then again, from what I know about them it might not.
I suspect nothing is overly- for them. After all, when you're immortal you've got to find something to keep you busy!
They say it's rabat-joie, both in singular and plural, in all editions that I can access and show the plural (i.e. 8th and 9th!). But Wiktionary says rabat-joies since 1990, which makes sense since one of the new rules was that the plural of compound nouns is the plural of the second part. Larousse agrees with Wiktionary here (well it's probably the other way round!) but IMO gives a slight preference to the "old" form in the way it shows the information.
@PleegWat said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
'proces-verbaal'
Eh, that one is a direct import from French (with a slightly adapted spelling). And the meaning also hasn't changed that much, we use it for the same things (if you want to look somewhat refined, the minutes of any meeting can be called procès-verbal).
in which only the first part is pluralised.
Well if it was so in French that would make it the same in singular/plural, since the plural of procès is (wait for it...) procès. Post-reform, I can say with certainty that the plural is the plural of the second part i.e. procès-verbaux. Pre-reform, I think it also was the case, but the Académie's dictionary doesn't say.
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@remi said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
Eh, that one is a direct import from French (with a slightly adapted spelling). And the meaning also hasn't changed that much, we use it for the same things (if you want to look somewhat refined, the minutes of any meeting can be called procès-verbal).
I figured as much. Probably Napoleon again.
The few others I can think of all end in -generaal. The most prominent of them is staten-generaal, which is most definitely pre-Napoleonic, but that just means it must have been nicked from the French earlier. Probably a lingua franca thing.
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@PleegWat said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
staten-generaal
I also guess that one is much older -- probably going back to latin rather than French, given how widespread both the "state" (or état in French but it's the same root) and "general" roots are in both Romance and Germanic languages (and maybe other, but I'm less familiar).
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@remi said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
a ému Émile.
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TIL: I have seen now that what I had believed to be was at most . There is indeed a further shore.
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@HardwareGeek initially I thought that was a cassowary so I dropped the phone and ran away, but, turns out it's indeed an animal that it's safe to at least look at pictures of.
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@PleegWat said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@remi said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
Eh, that one is a direct import from French (with a slightly adapted spelling). And the meaning also hasn't changed that much, we use it for the same things (if you want to look somewhat refined, the minutes of any meeting can be called procès-verbal).
I figured as much. Probably Napoleon again.
The few others I can think of all end in -generaal. The most prominent of them is staten-generaal, which is most definitely pre-Napoleonic, but that just means it must have been nicked from the French earlier. Probably a lingua franca thing.
In English, the same "plural goes on first word" thing happens with titles ending in -general. And some other hyphenated compounds. Surgeons-general and attorneys-at-law are two I can think of. I think it has something to do with when the compound suffix is an adjective (phrases).
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@Benjamin-Hall said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
In English, the same "plural goes on first word" thing happens with titles ending in -general. And some other hyphenated compounds.
In proper English, the plural appends when the noun ends and the noun is a word, not a phrase.
Thus, "Whoppers Jr." and "Tims-Tam".
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@Gribnit said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@HardwareGeek initially I thought that was a cassowary
Was it trying to layout widgets through constraint solving?
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@Zecc said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Gribnit said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@HardwareGeek initially I thought that was a cassowary
Was it trying to layout widgets through constraint solving?
I'd be wary of that.
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@Zecc as they do
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@Benjamin-Hall said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
In English, the same "plural goes on first word" thing happens with titles ending in -general. And some other hyphenated compounds. Surgeons-general and attorneys-at-law are two I can think of. I think it has something to do with when the compound suffix is an adjective (phrases).
There are similar rules depending on the grammatical status of both words in French. See e.g. this page (in French, duh) that summarises it:
There is some logic to the general rules, but not always, and each situation has exceptions (even post-reform, which simplified things a bit).
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Speaking of French orthography and grammar, there used to be (still is, though it has lost some of its status nowadays) a yearly event where one well-known literary critic and TV presenter (Bernard Pivot) would read a dictée broadcast live on TV.
Ostensibly, la dictée de Pivot is part of a contest for the best students, and the event is held in some prestigious location (I remember that it sometimes used the National Assembly chamber), but due to the TV broadcast it really is (was?) a nation-wide event, with a lot of people gathering at home and trying to do it.
It is, on purpose, always extremely difficult, using a lot of rare words, words commonly misspelled (or confused with other similar words), unusual grammatical cases and the like. Plural compound nouns are a common feature. The text itself makes little sense, it is just a pretext to bundle as many difficulties as possible in a short text.
No one (except maybe the overall winner of the contest?) ever gets it perfectly right. Doing less than a handful of errors (half a dozen or so) is an excellent score. Someone well versed in common rules will easily do a dozen of errors.
See for example one year's example here:
http://maurice.labadie.pagesperso-orange.fr/filtemps/dicpivot.htmThe dictée is always split in two parts, the first one being slightly easier. As children, we would often stop after the first part. The second one makes the whole exercise longer (duh), and often has a few even more esoteric words or constructs.
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There's one historical precedent for Pivot's dictation, which is Mérimée's dictation that was given by a French author (Prosper Mérimée) to Napoleon III and his court in 1857. Taking dictations was apparently an enjoyable leisure activity for the upper classes in the 19th century.
That dictation follows the same ideas that Pivot reused, being extremely hard. The Wiki page says that the Emperor himself did 75 errors, though he wasn't renowned for being a good writer. Even known authors did a lot of errors, and the best one was the Austrian ambassador (!) who only did 3 errors.
Pivot himself did a special dictation as an hommage to this one on the 200th birthday of Mérimée (see the linked Wiki page which has all details).
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@remi said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
There is some logic to the general rules, but not always, and each situation has exceptions
French in a nutshell.
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@Zerosquare said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@remi said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
There is some logic to the general rules, but not always, and each situation has exceptions
FrenchLanguage in a nutshell.FTFY.
French isn't the easiest one but honestly I think that applies to any language.
Filed under: something about lojban
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You're not wrong. It also works for pronouncing English words.
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Had never even heard of these things before.
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Alyssa, 29, is a pet caregiver from Utah
Also a reddit moderator and aspiring philosophy professor?
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@boomzilla It's interesting that the first two collectors mentioned in the article both stated that collecting these stuffed toys eased their mental health issues (OCD and anxiety, respectively). They don't mention mental health issues for the other people they interviewed, but I wonder if that might be a common trait that fuels the toxicity.
If collecting stuffed toys soothes your anxiety, by all means, collect to your heart's content. But it seems to me it might be better for your anxiety to collect something that's not insanely popular.
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@boomzilla said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
Had never even heard of these things before.
Beanie babies, take 2; internet boogaloo?
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TIL: Eating an orange Necco wafer after some, yet-to-be-documented color of Necco wafer, produces a flavor as unto a urinated-in swimming pool.
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@Gribnit said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
urinated-in swimming pool.
REDUNDANT
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TIL Chik-Fil-A sells bags of ice.
That's better than a 5lb bag (or 2 vs a 10lb bag) at my local grocery store. 20lb bag at the grocery store is a better deal.
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I wonder what happens if you try to return a bag of liquid water with a "this ice is defective" claim.
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@Zerosquare hasn’t shown up on the likes of Bored Panda as a Karen story yet.
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@boomzilla said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
Chik-Fil-A sells bags of ice.
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Nope, you breathe it.
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@Zecc dunno, the air quality in NYC you might eat it a bit.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@boomzilla said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
Chik-Fil-A sells bags of ice.
This isn't Canada, sir. Ice has value.
Actually, I suspect the idea came from their catering business, but they have an ice maker so I guess why not?
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@boomzilla A local McDonald's restaurant here does that as well upon special request, only need to ask far enough ahead in time that they can crank up their icemaker and collect the ice without rushing.
Works great for college parties where you only had to rent a chest refrigerator and you could just put the big ice bag in there to keep the ice in the middle frozen for use without needing an extra freezer. You just had to remember to pull out the bag before the last of the ice melted or the meltwater would flood the insides.
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@JBert said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
chest refrigerator
And now I'm thinking about sweaty boobs.
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@Zecc said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@JBert said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
chest refrigerator
And now I'm thinking about sweaty boobs.
"Moose had bitch tits".
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@Bulb said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@loopback0 said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Arantor said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
TIL that Atlassian has had a major outage for several days. I couldn’t imagine it happening to a nicer service.
Apparently it might have one for another two weeks
W-T-M-F-F does it take two eFfing weeks to restore backups‽
I once restored a good at Hipchat instance from backup. The gigabyte file took nearly three hours to import, despite it being mostly a bunch of json files, and being run on a server with 64 cores and 128gb of RAM (and an early NVMe SSD).
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@izzion said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
effected
I'm surprised grammar guy hasn't said anything yet....
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@boomzilla said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
Chik-Fil-A sells bags of ice.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Piero_Manzoni_-Merda_D'artista%281961%29_-_panoramio.jpg
iframely does not want to work...
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@Tsaukpaetra said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
I once restored a good at Hipchat instance from backup.
@Tsaukpaetra said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
I'm surprised grammar guy hasn't said anything yet....
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@BernieTheBernie said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
iframely does not want to work...
Probably too much escape nonsense for nodebb's regex parser.
Then again, who wants to work?
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@boomzilla said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@BernieTheBernie said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
iframely does not want to work...
Probably too much escape nonsense for nodebb's regex parser.
CS people, for the 100,000th time: You can't parse HTML with a regular expression, and we have all the theory to prove it.
: Hold my .
The gods of irony: https://blog.codinghorror.com/parsing-html-the-cthulhu-way/
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@topspin this is markdown, sir.
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@boomzilla it's still banging-your-head-against-the-wall madness inducing that the same guy who apparently wrote this blog post had his people write 500 iterations of parsers that replace stuff with MD5 hashes.
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@topspin said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@boomzilla it's still banging-your-head-against-the-wall madness inducing that the same guy who apparently wrote this blog post had his people write 500 iterations of parsers that replace stuff with MD5 hashes.
2009 Jeff wasn't thinking about future Civilized Discourse™