Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The city that forgot itself

thecritic.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 93 posts

Re: The city that forgot itself

#71

Post by marssaxman »

marky1991 wrote: post #64
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I have not seen this construction before, therefor it must be wrong" Is a way to raise barriers to your own learning.

What do you expect me to "learn" in this context? I'm a native English speaker, there's nothing to learn here as far as I can see. No one has reported it to be a common phrase in any known dialect and the strongest defense for it is an entry in a community provided dictionary and some people misreading it as other phrases. I have never said anything was "wrong", I said it was poor communication. Wrong is not a useful…

I wonder whether you have ever encountered poetry before.

Re: The city that forgot itself

#72

Post by marssaxman »

stavros wrote: post #30
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think is poetic rather it is broken. No, it is not. You are merely unfamiliar with this sentence construction. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/fix-a-g... https://dictionary.cambridge.org/thesaurus/fix-one-s-gaze https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/fix+his+with+a+gaze

The construction wasn't "fixing her gaze on the shrine" (which would be correct), it was "fixing the shrine with her gaze", which makes no sense. What the article says means either "she fastens the shrine into place using her eyes" or "she repairs the shrine with her eyes".

Only if one is determined to be stubbornly pedantic about it! That would make no sense, so the poetic sense is obviously the one intended.

Re: The city that forgot itself

#73

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

bmacho wrote: post #35
smcin wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP post cites Collins defining "fix a gaze on"! https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/fix-a-g... Yes Collins knows about it. Even this lesser-known site knows about it: https://texttospeech.io/thesaurus/gaze > Definition of gaze: (n): a long fixed look; "he fixed his paternal gaze on me"

We are talking about 'fixing smth with a gaze' and not 'fixing gaze on smth'. The verb, the object and the subject are different.

But it does use the word "fix" in the sense of "fasten upon, stop moving, make immobile" like a "fixed point" and not in the sense of "repair" or "make breakfast",

And does so in relation to "gaze" in the same sentence. How much more do you need - the rest seems nit-picking. Sentences aren't all fixed forms, they are creative combinations of words. (and as has been established, this form is not actually unique)

If you don't want to engage with the piece, then maybe it's not for you. Not everything is written for everyone, and it's useless to complain about that.

Re: The city that forgot itself

#74

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

marky1991 wrote: post #64
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I have not seen this construction before, therefor it must be wrong" Is a way to raise barriers to your own learning.

What do you expect me to "learn" in this context? I'm a native English speaker, there's nothing to learn here as far as I can see. No one has reported it to be a common phrase in any known dialect and the strongest defense for it is an entry in a community provided dictionary and some people misreading it as other phrases. I have never said anything was "wrong", I said it was poor communication. Wrong is not a useful…

> What do you expect me to "learn" in this context?

I have now downgraded my expectations, learning is indeed optional.

> But the whole point of language is to communicate with others and this sentence is clearly confusing to many people.

Or - hear me out - maybe you're not in the target audience of this piece in "The Critic: Britain's Most Civilised Magazine". Not everything is written for everyone, and it's useless to complain about that. But you should at least be able to identify that it is a particular literate British tone, and know if that's your thing or not. If it is, then dig into the idioms. If it isn't then don't read it.

Re: The city that forgot itself

#75

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

afandian wrote: post #59
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I am a native UK English speaker. > It might be a regional dialect, a) it isn't - it might be archaic and poetic, but I don't view it as "regional" > a regional dialect is also a form of broken English Wrong! That's not how it works. As the sibling comment says, what do you want? To understand the piece, improve your vocabulary or to tell the writer that they're Englishing wrong because "The Critic - Britain's M…

Excuse me, do you have a license for that gerund?

Well no, but I get tired of using the literary British voice after a while and I want to mix it up, demonstrate bending the rules, annoy the purists, épater le bourgeois, etc.

Re: The city that forgot itself

#76

Post by TMWNN »

jhbadger wrote: post #39

While I haven't been there, I know of it from Alan Furst's novels (which I recommend) -- he writes novels set before and during WWII and likes to often set them in places like Thessaloniki/Salonika in Greece and Trieste in Italy -- places which were on the border between two (or more) cultures and which lost a lot of their multicultural status due to the war.

>places like Thessaloniki/Salonika in Greece and Trieste in Italy -- places which were on the border between two (or more) cultures and which lost a lot of their multicultural status due to the war

"European borders aren't drawn along ethnic lines, the ethnic lines are drawn along the borders." —/u/sora_mui, two days ago https://np.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1j86d8i/the_balkani...>

Re: The city that forgot itself

#77

Post by afandian »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #75
afandian wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse me, do you have a license for that gerund?

Well no, but I get tired of using the literary British voice after a while and I want to mix it up, demonstrate bending the rules, annoy the purists, épater le bourgeois, etc.

Thank you, that reason is on the list of allowable exceptions.

Re: The city that forgot itself

#78

Post by nindalf »

nottorp wrote: post #70
nindalf wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you describe how the muslim-christian population exchange actually happened? What is the agenda of this piece?

I've pointed you to wikipedia. I'm no historian (trustable or not) so you'll have to document yourself and draw your own conclusions. Also there is a top level post with a bunch of references now.

I'm still mystified about the agenda of the piece? I'm not implying that it has one or doesn't have one, I'm keen to know what agenda you saw in it.

Re: The city that forgot itself

#79

Post by marky1991 »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #74
marky1991 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you expect me to "learn" in this context? I'm a native English speaker, there's nothing to learn here as far as I can see. No one has reported it to be a common phrase in any known dialect and the strongest defense for it is an entry in a community provided dictionary and some people misreading it as other phrases. I have never said anything was "wrong", I said it was poor communication. Wrong is not a useful…

> What do you expect me to "learn" in this context? I have now downgraded my expectations, learning is indeed optional. > But the whole point of language is to communicate with others and this sentence is clearly confusing to many people. Or - hear me out - maybe you're not in the target audience of this piece in "The Critic: Britain's Most Civilised Magazine". Not everything is written for everyone, and it's useless…

"I have now downgraded my expectations, learning is indeed optional."

So I ask you a question and you then don't answer it but instead just reply with sarcasm?

I don't think this is a polite way to have a conversation, so I'm out.

Post reply on HN