How do you say - - ?

[macdoum]

Liis,
As you can see there are all sorts of Mouse Ears

Related Plants: Blue Cadet, Cat and Mouse, Frosted Mouse Ears, Green Mouse Ears, Holy Mouse Ears, Royal Mouse Ears

[Liis]

Quirky conventions (?):
Butterflies almost never have "butterfly" in their English names, but nearly invariably so in Estonian (liblikas) and Swedish (fjäril)
So Green hairstreak, Small white, Tortoiseshell, Brimstone etc but Kapsaliblikas, Naeriliblikas, Nässelfjäril, Kålfjäril etc

On the other hand streets in Estonian as often as not go without their "tänav" = street: Havi, Humala, Jaagu, Endla. But you would never say just Oxford for Oxford street, would you?

[alice44]

Hmmmm I think the convention varies

5th Avenue (NY, NY) absolutely has to have the avenue
I never say street or avenue after the name of the road I live on

I think we almost always say Monarch Butterfly
When I was thinking about it I thought maybe common butterflies would not need the word butterfly but I think Monarchs are the most famous. I think it might be common not to include butterfly with -- Oregon Swallowtail (Butterfly). You can see that begins to get rather long.

[Liis]

Streets - yes, to make it all even more tricky the street convention probably varies between UK and US streets.

About the butterflies: including, or not, butterfly as part of the name of the butterfly may have to do with the language structure too: in Swedish you glue the different parts of a composite word together, in English you line up the corresponding words separately.
So it is much more of an effort to lose the butterfly from citronfjäril than from the brimstone.

Some butterfly names...: www.learnaboutbutterflies.com/British ...names.htm.

[Liis]

Pet grieve, repeat performance - should I move over to Rantings? - the deceptively simple Estonian words for complicated, specific scientific concepts; easy to read, easy to slip into everyday texts, there to sit as enormous erratic boulders for poor translators
Now specifically with flowers all over the places and habitats, it is the season of those various precisely defined forests, grasslands, marshes, mires ...

Example, hopefully illustrative even for non-Estonian readers: Salumets - easy to read, nothing frighteningly hi-sci, is it? English: Eutrophic boreo-nemoral forest ...
More words for habitat habituees: http://www.botany.ut.ee/jaanus.paal/etk ... tsioon.pdf
And the problem is those Estonian words are used ...

[Jo UK]

Liis - such a huge erratic boulder!
It could have been a oligo-mesotrophic boreal

Eutrophic -
–adjective
1.
Medicine/Medical . pertaining to or being in a condition of eutrophy.

2.
Ecology . (of a lake) characterized by an abundant accumulation of nutrients that support a dense growth of algae and other organisms, the decay of which depletes the shallow waters of oxygen in summer.

Nemoral
Nem"o*ral\, a. [L. nemoralis, fr. nemus, nemoris, a wood or grove: cf. F. n['e]moral.] Of or pertaining to a wood or grove. [R.]

Boreal -
–adjective
1.
of or pertaining to the north wind.

2.
of or pertaining to the north.

3.
( sometimes initial capital letter ) pertaining to Boreas.

If there is a more brief or commonly used expression, I failed to find it!

[Liis]

The boreo-nemoral part is still a mystery to me, and particularly what, precisely, the "boreo" is to the north of? are there boreo-nemoral forests in, say, Italy?

Another problem - when is half demi-, semi- or hemi-?
Stumbled - literally - on it in the cow-wheat story. Seems that the thing should be hemi-parasitic, but half-parasitic would be OK in not too scientific contexts.
So semi-arid but demi-literate and hemi-plegic?

[Jo UK]

Doesn't this just prove that our understanding of a language becomes so automatic and unconscious that we have difficulty in thinking about it. It's a bit like driving a car or riding a bicyle - try to describe it, and it is lost!

http://www.easyenglishvocabulary.com/lesson107.html

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/semi-demi-and-hemi/

[Liis]

Doesn't this just prove that our understanding of a language becomes so automatic and unconscious that we have difficulty in thinking about it. It's a bit like driving a car or riding a bicyle - try to describe it, and it is lost!

http://www.easyenglishvocabulary.com/lesson107.html

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/semi-demi-and-hemi/

Thank you Jo for very useful - and entertaining - refs!
Understanding of language - yes, when you know it, you don't think. But when it is a foreign language to learn you grasp at all kinds of regularities and rules to make the learning easier (hmmm - few, simple & logical rules, of course).
How much is the difference between varieties of English still upheld? Especially UK-US?

[Liis]

Plurals ...
The catch-fly http://www.looduskalender.ee/en/node/10636 - many catch-fly, catch-flys or catch-flies?

[Jo UK]

Liis, I see there is a picture of a fly-catching plant on LK page.
One fly-catcher. Many fly-catchers.
Or carnivorous plants.
Or insect-eating plant -etc.
Catch-fly somehow seems a bit back-to-front!

Oh, but checking the botanical name I see that they (search results) all refer to catch-fly.
I shall retire into my dictionary!

[Liis]

Liis, I see there is a picture of a fly-catching plant on LK page.
One fly-catcher. Many fly-catchers.
Or carnivorous plants.
Or insect-eating plant -etc.
Catch-fly somehow seems a bit back-to-front!

Oh, but checking the botanical name I see that they (search results) all refer to catch-fly.
I shall retire into my dictionary!

Hmm, Jo - that plant's English name doesn't really agree with the article at all! Which says that the point of its sticky stalk is that non-flying insects, such as ants, should not get up to steal nectar. So the catch-fly doesn't mean to catch flies, and certainly doesn't want to eat them ...

While we are on plants - are chives always "they" or can they be "it"?

[macdoum]

A chive=an onion used in seasoning presumably, there may be several or many.

chive
   [chahyv] Show IPA
–noun
a small bulbous plant, Allium schoenoprasum, related to the leek and onion, having long, slender leaves that are used as a seasoning.

Origin: 1350–1400; Middle English cive < Anglo-French chive, Old French cive ≪ Latin caepa onion

Related Words for : chives

Allium schoenoprasum, chive, cive, schnittlaugh

As we usually use the plural I suppose you say "they".. if you say "chive" then it's it.
Liis you get some very complicated work to do.. Words we use said Jo,without thinking of origin or otherwise ..

[Liis]

------------------As we usually use the plural I suppose you say "they".. if you say "chive" then it's it.

Are chives uniquely plural among plants?
Don't think I ever heard or read it in singular.

[Jo UK]

Hmm, Jo - that plant's English name doesn't really agree with the article at all! Which says that the point of its sticky stalk is that non-flying insects, such as ants, should not get up to steal nectar. So the catch-fly doesn't mean to catch flies, and certainly doesn't want to eat them ...

While we are on plants - are chives always "they" or can they be "it"?

I don't think I have ever heard anyone say "I am going to pick a chive" because one needs a bunch of chives for cooking!

[Liis]

!

There used to be a very good synonym dictionary at http://www.yourdictionary.com/thesaurus/ - but now Synonyms is a dead link & I only get the thesaurus.
With, sometimes, a few synonyms.
- has my computer tidied itself up too much (computers do, these days) & lost the correct link?
- have they rearranged the site (and possibly decided that we have too many words anyway)?
- suggestions for other good synonym sites?

[Jo UK]

There is the famous Roget's Thesaurus
http://education.yahoo.com/reference/thesaurus/

Liis, please have a look at this
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/

I think it is the one my husband used to use. He paid a subscription of some kind. If it is good enough to be considered, please let me know. It may be worth a small investment for the sake of LKF!

[Liis]

There is the famous Roget's Thesaurus
http://education.yahoo.com/reference/thesaurus/

Liis, please have a look at this
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/

I think it is the one my husband used to use. He paid a subscription of some kind. If it is good enough to be considered, please let me know. It may be worth a small investment for the sake of LKF!

Thanks, Jo!
The Visual thesaurus turns out to be $20 a year, and looks interesting.
One does get used to one's routine props, even improvements resented ...
I liked the YourDictionary synonyms feature because it was quick to use, simply listed the synonyms and had a fairly broad and thorough assortment.

[Jo UK]

If we subscribed to Visual Thesaurus, would you use it, or would it fall by the wayside in favour of something more familiar?

[Liis]

If we subscribed to Visual Thesaurus, would you use it, or would it fall by the wayside in favour of something more familiar?

I would probably use it and wish I had more time to do so!
The nice thing with Yourdictionary synonyms was that there were many, quickly.
After some more checking it seems that the synonym function is there still. But may be updated, in some aspects. I am not quite sure how to get the link to work, directly, each time. Sometimes it takes 2 or 3 more steps to get the "familiar" list.
It is based on Roget, it appears; however, Roget straight on gives a smaller selection.