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Does anyone out there have a favorite Linux program for downloading podcasts? I've been using Chess Griffin's mashpodder but (a) it's now abandonware, and (b) due to the way it identifies files, it doesn't work with modern podcasts where the base name of the file is always "media.mp3" and the earlier parts of the URL change. As such, I'm looking for a replacement, preferably something that I can run as a cron job so that it fires every day without any intervention on my part and where the configuration lives in a file that I can edit with a simple text editor like vim. I'm considering rolling my own in Python just to get more experience with that language, but I thought I'd see if any Soylentils had suggestions for me to check out before I went to the effort of doing that.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday July 27 2018, @07:37PM (1 child)
Correct.
However, what I *thought* happened there was that you had one verbal form descended from a verbal form, and one verbal form created by verbing the nominal form, much like canne and can are both verbs. On re-examining, I'm not sure that's actually true, but I'm still not sure it's not true.
Regardless of the correct etymology for will in the sense of 'will it to happen' you're still using the same sequence of letters with two quite different meanings; will (do in the future) and will (to power etc.)
As to can being a verb with no infinitive, that really kind of depends on the meaning of infinitive. 'To can' would be what we normally call an infinitive form in English, and I think we agree that unambiguously belongs to the 'canne' family not the 'can' family.
But why do we call that the infinitive form? Well, in imitation of Latin, of course. That's roughly the sense of the corresponding Latin imperative. But the Latin grammarians didn't call it the infinitive to denote the sense of the form, but only to denote that it was seen as the most 'basic' form of the verb, in relation to the others. And 'to can' isn't the simplest form in English, in fact it's not a basic form at all, but a verbal phrase!
Swedish borrowed the same word from Latin but followed the denotation instead of the form, so in Swedish grammars 'kan' is the 'infinitiv' form here. If we adopt that meaning of infinitive, then what we call an infinitive traditionally can be seen as a regular verbal phrase used to denote an activity in abstract, and examined in that light it all makes sense. It's awkward to have 'to can' be ambiguous as to 'putting in a can' or 'knowing how to' and it's obviously better to resolve it by having 'to can' mean 'to put in a can' rather than the opposite, because there aren't many other phrases in general usage that could be substituted in the case of canning, but there ARE many phrases in current using that can denote 'to know (how to.)
"survives in English (no need to visit Sweden) in the word "ken""
Correct, but like shild it's a word I've been informed authoritatively I may not expect the modern reader to know.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by Arik on Friday July 27 2018, @07:40PM
canne and can were not both verbs, but both have produce verbs in modern English.
also s/imperative/infinitive
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?