living in a fantasy world much?

[dagibbs]

I read The Econmist regularly, and happened accross an article titled, "The real world economic forum", which I initially parsed as "the (real world) (economic forum)", but was actually meant to be parsed as, "the real (world economic forum)".

IRL, I'm at work... who'd'a thunk it?

Comments

[mbumby.livejournal.com]

Snicker. I haven't gamed in about 25 years, and I parsed it the same way you did first.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

Um... I can try to explain.

The World Economic Forum is an annual forum (get-together) held in Davos, Switzerland to discuss, well, economic issues around the world. In the article title, they were suggesting that the "real" version of this is held elsewhere, rather than the one officially called that. I snickered at myself because I didn't parse "real" as the modifier of "world economic forum", but I understood it to be an "economic forum" about the "real world", as opposed to a fantasy world, or the internet, or something. "On LJ, I ..., but in the real world, I ... ".

Does that help?

(And, of course, IRL is common online-chat shorthand for "In Real Life".)

[gabriel-le.livejournal.com]

(I had to ask too, don't worry)

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

a) I parsed it the same way you did, and I s'pect most of our mutual (and otherwise) acquaintances would tell the same story.

b) Once you did the bracket thing to demonstrate noun modification, my first reaction was "hey, that's not proper LISP syntax!"

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

b) -- that's even geekier than me. ;)