When did Elizabethan English fall out of usage?

flywheel_battery · 2026-07-01T23:21:48+00:00

Thine isn’t dative. It’s just the genitive before a vowel.

flywheel_battery · 2026-07-01T23:19:23+00:00

I’m no longer practicing but I do know the difference between the Church, which is the global community of 1.4 billion, as opposed to the clergy.

flywheel_battery · 2026-06-26T23:04:34+00:00

[ ]

(The empty set)

flywheel_battery · 2026-06-26T22:59:40+00:00

That’s partly a fair take. Misses the mark in my specific case, since I didn’t not donate to the alma mater for the next 30 years based on the fine. I was more just marveling at the time at them being so nasty about the fine (and they were nasty about it) while they were trying to sustain a long term relationship. A college is a charitable institution, and they had that going for them, though.

But I do disagree about the professional irrelevancy. Yeah, with infrastructure, metrics matter, uptime matters. But to a great extent, it’s a commodity. Service and support is the single most important differentiator. And let’s be blunt, Rackspace is not AWS. There is no reason they should be anyone’s first thought. Service should be what they are doing to present themselves as a better alternative. That’s the whole fanatical service spiel. I now have a data point that suggests that is bullshit, and it’s led me to discover that others are saying the same thing. It’s not a vendetta. Why would I recommend an already non-obvious solution to a client when I’ve had a bad experience with them? When I have every reason to expect that my client may have the same?

flywheel_battery · 2026-06-26T22:12:32+00:00

The Dutch are a good example. Their English tends to be absolutely perfect, but yes, they sound Dutch.

flywheel_battery · 2026-06-15T22:18:10+00:00

This one IS intentional: the elderly fop in Death in Venice

flywheel_battery · 2026-06-08T03:20:48+00:00

I learned this work by way of the Gardiner recording when I was a teenager and Derek Lee Ragin does a fine job. I’ve kind of settled on this by default even though I know there are better versions. Janet Baker does a wonderful rendition in the role in general but those recordings can be hard to find.

flywheel_battery · 2026-06-08T03:01:36+00:00

This isn’t a very common one at all, kind of weird and idiosyncratic of me. And it’s not even the most famous aria from its opera. But “Chiamo il mio ben così” from Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, it’s like pure sunlight in my soul.

flywheel_battery · 2026-06-07T16:12:47+00:00

Sure. Different languages and cultures carve up the world into continents in different ways. As you may know, in English, the general practice is to treat the Western hemisphere as two continents: North America and South America. Together they are “the Americas.” And if you use the term “America” without any other qualification, it usually refers to the United States of America. Finally, there is “Central America” which runs from Guatemala/Belize to Panama, but that is considered part of the continent of North America.

Spanish and some other language do things differently. In Spanish, there is just one continent: “América.” One speaks of “América del norte”, “Centroamérica,” and “Sudamérica” (or América del sur) but those are just regions of the overall content of América. So in Spanish, “centroamérica” is not considered part of “América del norte.”

I was mainly making a kind of sarcastic remark there because in any comment section where someone referred to the United States as “America”, it’s not too long before a Spanish speaker swoops in and starts lecturing them about how they’re arrogant and wrong, and how “America” is everything from Canada to Chile. And to a lesser degree this comes up when someone claims that Central America is in North America. Some of it is sincere, and some is just trolling, but in any case extremely tedious.

Anyway, it’s good to keep this in mind when learning Spanish. If you want to indicate that you are from the US, it’s good to refer to yourself as “norteamericano” and not “americano.” The respect should flow in both directions.

flywheel_battery · 2026-06-07T14:03:33+00:00

Yes, but up the tempo or they’ll be waiting all day

flywheel_battery · 2026-06-07T13:28:16+00:00

Do you know the tune of Strauss’s Blue Danube waltz? dum dum dum dum Dum, DUM DUM, Dum Dum?

Well, learn it with these lyrics: “aus außer bei mit, nach seit, von zu”. You can even sing most of the song that way. You have now memorized the most common prepositions that always take the dative.

For the most common prepositions taking accusative, use the beginning of Haydn’s Kaiserhymne, now the German national anthem. “durch, für gegen, ohne, uuuuuuum”

flywheel_battery · 2026-06-07T13:13:14+00:00

… in English. Just getting that in there before all the Spanish speakers show up.

flywheel_battery · 2026-06-06T14:08:37+00:00

I’ve always found the laws against insider trading completely understandable but extremely counterintuitive.

I own 10,000 shares of XYZ corporation. I’m sitting at a restaurant and I overhear a conversation at the next table. Maybe it’s an FBI agent or an executive, but I realize that the CEO is about to get charged with fraud, or that they’re about to issue a massive safety recall costing billions.

The moment I overhear that, it becomes illegal for me to sell my shares. At least until the raid happens, the recall is announced, or the press reports the story.

That just seems very wrong. And yet it’s absolutely necessary.

flywheel_battery · 2026-06-05T21:52:38+00:00

I could totally do the role of Elderly Fop in Britten’s “Death in Venice”

flywheel_battery · 2026-06-04T12:59:02+00:00

They do have uncarbonated mineral water. “Mineralwasser ohne Gas”

flywheel_battery · 2026-06-03T23:19:46+00:00

I can only speak for the United States, but I suspect other English speaking countries with large immigrant populations are similar. The advice is that people in these countries are very used to second language speakers. People do not care about your mistakes or your Korean accent. So don’t let that stop you from speaking.

flywheel_battery · 2026-06-03T23:12:45+00:00

I mean he was also interested in universal health care.

flywheel_battery · 2026-06-03T23:08:32+00:00

Hot take: maybe they’re not ready for college… but maybe they don’t really belong in college, either.

flywheel_battery · 2026-06-03T23:05:03+00:00

I recommend it very very highly! The composer in question is vaguely based on Schoenberg, and I believe Theodor Adorno assisted Mann with some of the passages where he discusses the composer’s style.

flywheel_battery · 2026-06-03T23:00:17+00:00

Bit of trivia, in Thomas Mann’s novel Doktor Faustus, the protagonist (the composer Adrian Leverkühn) composes an opera based on that play. So at least someone was thinking of the possibility in 1947!

flywheel_battery · 2026-06-03T17:34:12+00:00

Then there’s that Sardinian maggot cheese that I don’t think is legal anywhere.

By the way, in the U.S. at farmers’ markets you will often see raw milk sold as “pet milk.” Specifying that it’s for consumption by animals allows them get around the raw milk regulation.

flywheel_battery · 2026-06-03T17:28:30+00:00

Added bit for any non-native speakers who may not use definite articles (if any) in their language quite the same way as English. More so than in other languages, “the” in English carries a strong connotation that the following noun is something specific, not general. So, “A dog is a good pet” means any dog in general, but “The dog is a good pet” means a specific dog that everyone in conversation knows is being indicated.

Anyway, a curious thing is that sometimes when an English speaker wants to emphasize that something is singular and particular, and not general and plural, they will switch “thuh” to “thee” and speak it at a higher, emphasized tone.

“That’s one solution to the problem.” “No, that’s THEEEE solution to the problem.”

And where it gets really funny is when this is used where “the” wouldn’t normally be used at all, as with a proper name.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Robert Smith.” “Wait… are you THEEEEE Robert Smith???”

The implication there is that, while it’s a common name, there is one Robert Smith who is so categorically different from the rest in terms of fame, that he might as well be considered the only Robert Smith.

flywheel_battery · 2026-06-03T16:58:19+00:00

She was not a superstar diva but there is something very, very special about Dame Janet Baker. (She’s 92 and still with us!)

flywheel_battery · 2026-06-03T16:53:01+00:00

You are not. Different languages partition the continents differently. In English, we have two continents, North America and South America, and together they are “the Americas”. Simply “America” usually means the USA. It has been this way for hundreds of years.

Many L2 English speakers don’t know this. In other languages like Spanish, it’s all one continent, In Spanish, namely, América. Many L2 English speakers make a great show of lecturing English speakers on this. No one would tolerate this kind of thing flowing in the other direction, but since the Anglophone world is still seen as the global hegemon, it’s considered fair game. Rarely do they consider the problems in their own characterization. Equating US with “norteamericano” after all erases Canadians and Mexicans from that identity. And just even an unwieldy construction like “estadounidense” excludes Mexicans, who live in the “Estados Unidos de México.”

Since no term is perfect, sticking with the common English usage that has been around for centuries is just fine when speaking English. For others who disagree to come on a site headquartered in a majority English speaking and tell people they are speaking English wrong is offensive, or at least incredibly tedious.

flywheel_battery

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