User talk:FreeMorpheme

NASA Cheer

Can you explain what this is? (per your article on The American Crowd.)--Theloniouszen 05:09, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Ah, the NASA Cheer. This appears primarily in space films, obviously. NASA mission control in Houston is frequently depicted as banks and banks of consoles in front of huge screens with men in glasses and short sleeves working hard at their desks, sweating profusely and manipulating slide rules with vigour. When the astronaut heroes are brought safely home, every man-jack of them will erupt in a huge cheer, admid much back slapping and lighting of cigars, (cut with shot of wife and children weeping at home/in the family room). Perhaps this happens in real life, however I'd say it appears often enough and with enough predictability to be labelled a film cliché. Hope this helps. FreeMorpheme

Yup, thanks!--Theloniouszen 15:19, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually this is for real. Just watch NASA channel. They don't only cheer when people come back to Earth, they cheer for space rocks. "WE GOT THE PHOTO OF THE ROCK! YAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY!" Everyone jumps up applauding.

Apostrophe problem

Hi FreeMorpheme. OK, let's look at your problem cases:

   * This accounts for 50% of all soft drinks volume.
   * They remain important as drinks producers.
   * This accounts for all carbonates consumption.

Let me say first that having the phrases embedded in whole sentences really does help to make things clear. I would put no apostrophe in any of these. Let's analyse the last one. The thought could have been rendered like this:

   * This accounts for all consumption of carbonates.

That would equally capture the meaning, yes? So it looks as if the following transformation is legitimate:

• consumption of carbonates → carbonates' consumption

We have the following kind of transformation as a model, after all:

• intervention of the governments → the governments' intervention

But no! We simply do not make the first transformation. Instead, as I have indicated, carbonates is taken as a simple premodifier without an apostrophe. Consider: if it needed an apostrophe, so would a singular modifier (carbonate) also need an apostrophe. But we don't give it one, do we? We would say:

   * This accounts for all carbonate consumption.

How could this ever be justified (which it certainly is, as much more standard than the versions with plurals are), if some forms ever do get apostrophes? They don't!

I hope this helps. Noetica 22:40, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Claude Valentini

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English Wikipaedia Campaign

Now then mate, would you like to join a "English English" Wiki split campaign? I've been on WP for years, and tried in vain years ago to do it. I've since observed a lot of Brits share the antipathy towards Americanese on WP. What I noted was that other languages, like Norwegian (Nynorsk & Bokmal) have two WPs; as do others (Dutch, Flemish, Afrikaans...) so there is plenty of precedent. How would you feel about forming a "user group" to actively campaign for the split? The main focus to begin with would be to spread the word and recruit as many people as possible: a few hundred users should have some weight. What do you think?

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"I'm just some bloke off t'inter'" (talk) 10:39, 18 August 2008 (UTC)