show transcript
tumblr post by seokoilua: it’s so wild to me that some people just speak english all the time… like they can’t switch it off to speak in a #real language when they need to
What could be more relaxing than having to remember the gender of toast?
Scheiße, sie sind uns auf der Spur.
Oh you’re a language fan? Speak every language.
Me gusta patinar en mi clase de matematicas
I grew up knowing the most popular language, why would I learn some backwater dump of a language like french only spoken by like 3.8% of humans unless I’m going to go live there or in one of the places they fucked over? Mandarin I could get, same with Spanish just due to total surface area and the best Venn diagram result. But there are so many little languages in the world and humans have finite time to live.
There’s no shame in admitting you won’t learn a second language because you don’t have time or don’t want to.
Now calling French “some backwater dump of a language” when it has had such an immense cultural impact worldwide (including in the “most popular language”) just sounds silly.
Also, it’s okay to learn one of these “little languages” for fun. Not everything in life needs to be practical and/or min-mixed for ultimate efficiency.
I thought I did say that? Why would there be shame?
For the rest, yeah, I wanted to make fun of french. I don’t really see an issue with that either. The french seem to take their language way too seriously, and it’s fun to take them down a peg from time to time. They may have been historically relevant through a series of accidents but they aren’t that relevant today. Its kinda funny that their relevance is mostly through their historical rival taking over the planet.
At least in my life there’s always been a “why don’t these fucking Americans learn my language” vibe coming from Europe. The reason is most of the European languages are completely irrelevant and too small to matter. It’s fine to acknowledge that, just as it’s fine to learn one if you want to.
I grew up knowing the most popular language, why would I learn some backwater dump of a language like french only spoken by like 3.8% of humans unless I’m going to go live there or in one of the places they fucked over? Mandarin I could get, same with Spanish just due to total surface area and the best Venn diagram result. But there are so many little languages in the world and humans have finite time to live.
because, if nothing else, it would make your English better
Middle English borrowed vocabulary extensively from French dialects, which are the source of approximately 28 per cent of Modern English words, and from Latin, which is the source of an additional 28 per cent.
when you learn more about a language that influenced “your language”, those borrowed words open up and gain more meaning. You master their intricacies and start using them with more tact
That makes some, but not a lot, of sense. You obviously don’t need to learn another language to learn more about your own, you can just learn your own more directly.
Besides, the German part of English is way better anyway.
i fucking hate when some entrepreneurs who left Ukraine come by and obviously can speak Ukrainian but still insist on speaking English-only even though there is no real reason for it. And even when you just start talking Ukrainian they will still speak English for some reason and never switch and pretend nothing is wrong. Now that’s an inferiority complex.
As a person from a Ukrainian immigrant family who’s mom is the last to speak the language, that is just painfully sad. The language is such an important part of the culture and to deny it’s existence even to yourself is just sad
it is what it is. these guys think they are better than those in Ukraine by virtue of moving out to another country and doing business there even though most Ukrainian entrepreneurs in the field probably end up making more money than them anyway. But then magically - when it comes to do their dream project - some tinder for deep thinkers or whatever the fuck with AI - they turn to their motherland for some cheap labour and act like they’re the master race even though they’re just cheapskate poseurs who are ashamed of their own national identity.
it’s so wild to me that people just speak with their mouths all the time… like they can’t switch it off to sign in a real language when they need to
“It’s so wild to me that people just speak… When they can just text”
- My wife in an adjacent room
“The meat is doing the thinking.”
Taím ag obair ar mé féin a fheabhsú 😔
Some people never pressed Alt+Shift to change to another language keyboard layout…
I use Alt+CapsLock
I use win+space because I’m the cool type yo
based win+space user
Im more of a super + space person :3
That launches KRunner
I only tried KDE a couple of times, but I always rebind KRunner to just the super key funnily enough :3
I rebound that “menu” key nobody uses below R-Shift for language switching
Rebind alt to ctrl as God intended, win/menu to alt, and the crummy corner ctrl keys pressed by the pathetic pinky, to switch to the desired language at once.
we found the haiku user
Mac user, more like. Macs have the main modifier, the command key, under the thumb aka the strongest digit. But have you also seen MS Natural 4000 ergonomic keyboards? They have humongous alt keys, which are of course properly remapped to cmd in Mac. Using that pair is nothing short of a revelation. I don’t want to ever once pretend again that my pinky finger is seriously supposed to be often used in shortcuts. It’s nonsensical and self-debilitating.
Blasphemy! I use that daily. Brings up the context menu for whatever is the active item.
And it got mutilated into the copilot button 😔
Still a menu icon on my keyboard :3
doG help us all!
Hey! I use that button sometimes
Lol
I was gonna say that I don’t use Alt+Shift because Linux Mint doesn’t have a preconfigured shortcut for that and I just assigned keyboard layouts to F7 and F8, but then I double-checked to make sure I wouldn’t spread misinformation and it turned out that Linux Mint DOES have preconfigured shortcuts in the keyboard settings. That’s something new I learnt today and that’s all because of you, so thank you :3
Every French-speaking qwerty user should learn about https://qwerty-fr.org/. qwerty layout, all French special characters, even the ones that the standard azerty layout does not have, and no dead keys.
Other Latin alphabets might have something similar idk. If you write in Cyrillic, glhf I guess.
I’ll have you know that I regularly do that by accident and switch from UK-US, which is the same except for a few symbols. I usually realise after the 3rd or 4th password attempt.
Or had to use the keybord by memory.
Hey, I didn’t switch to an English (well, US-ANSI) keyboard layout until my 40s!
…
Well, I’m still in my mid 40s. So not that long ago. But it’s so much better for programming. 😁
So much better!
The french is insane for programming 😓
You might be interested in an actually good keymap, like Ergo-L
Interesting. What about swedish too 😅
But I doubt I ger to use it in a professional environment, at least not 100% 🫤
Although I don’t think English is that great of a language overall, imo it’s very very powerful.
What it lacks in logical consistency it makes up for with lots and lots of words (and idioms) that mean similar things but are slightly different for different use cases.
It has a very powerful toolbox for describing things in a very direct, specific manner.
one of its “powers” is that it doesn’t belong to a certain nation (consider académie française for contrast)
it’s not even the “native” language of the country that made it globish. There are native speakers in different countries and none of these variations invalidate others.
consider Indian English, consider Tok Pisin! 🤯
I’ve never heard of this that’s incredibly interesting
I saw a video of a Spanish author, fluent in English, who said in an interview that he preferred writing in English for more or less these reasons.
Found it: https://youtu.be/NJYoqCDKoT4
Oh, that was cool. Spanish is my second language (after English) and sometimes I’m not sure if I’m having trouble finding the right words because I just don’t know the terms, or if it’s because the terms don’t exist at all in the language.
Tangentially, it’s true what they say about one’s personality being different when they speak in a different language. I wish I could be as quick-witted and punny in Spanish as I can be in English, but between the words I don’t know and the processing time it sometimes takes to communicate ideas, it’s a challenge.
Really? My impression is that most of the time English is more imprecise with the meaning of words than my native language, and tends to overload them a lot
About the only language with more flexibility is Mandarin Chinese.
Its pretty much the defining feature of English. It has so many shared words, rules and logic and can borrow so effortlessly. That realistically speaking so long as you understand the language you can do some wild stuff.
The concept of “English doesn’t have a word to express x, y, z.” Is basically nonsense. English can absorb and adapt anything to it self.
It’s both why it’s such a mess and frequently clowned on as a language as well as its greatest strength.
English is just the borg of language.
About the only language with more flexibility is Mandarin Chinese.
That’s nonsense. Inflectional languages can modify the meaning of words in subtle ways by prepending prefixes or appending suffixes (often both), and this applies widely across the vocabulary. In place of that, English uses function words compounded with content words to form new terms, but these pairs are hard-defined. E.g. ‘get’ adopts different meanings if it’s ‘get on’, ‘get off’, ‘get up’, ‘get down’, ‘get in’, etc. But you can’t say something like ‘make in’ and expect it to have anywhere near the same shade of meaning as ‘get in’.
I do recognize and appreciate the flexibility of English, but isn’t that opposite to the “precision”? (I’m sure there’s a more appropriate linguistic term but that’s not my geek area)
As you said, all the borrowing allows it to express almost anything, but very often in ad-hoc, incoherent ways.
Btw, I didn’t mean that English doesn’t have a word to express X, just that several, very specific words in Italian often get translated to the same, broader-meaning English word (that can then become more specific with extra adjectives/qualifiers/whatever)
very specific words in Italian often get translated to the same, broader-meaning English word
That sounds like a translation issue.
Language shapes the way people interpret the world. If you think in Italian then this precision is defined by that language and may or may not exists.The article you mention states:
The strongest interpretation of the linguistic relativity hypothesis, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis or “Whorfianism”, posits that a language’s vocabulary (among other features) shapes or limits its speakers’ view of the world. This interpretation is widely criticized by
I’d add you don’t think in any language. You express yourself in a language.
a multilingual can write what you wrote. Monolinguals are shaped by the limits of one language (and mostly a poor utilitarian corner of that language.) They can’t think of something with which they have no words for or don’t even feel like they’re missing words for something they need to communicate
Ooh, that sounds like a fun game. What are the words you’re talking about? I bet I could find a more precise word (or sometimes compound words or phrases) that expresses that concept very exactly.
I second this game idea. It sounds fun, and like it could be helpful for other non-native English speakers who want to learn more vocabulary.
Also, what a lot of non-native speakers might not understand is that sometimes, especially with English, the correct translation is to leave a word untranslated.
You know, since all words are English words, as long as you get the grammar correct 🤣
(joking but it’s kind of true though)
You’re right. English can be real tricky. I’ve known Spanish speakers to say “scape” instead of “escape,” because similar words in Spanish that have English counterparts usually drop the e-. For example, escuela -> school; estudiar -> to study; hell, even Español -> Spanish. There are loads of examples of this pattern, but a handful of words (like “escape” and “escalate”) defy it. It’s gotta be so confusing.
The thing is that English can be precise, and often is in the written language, but people simply don’t speak like that. Indirect expressions and implied meaning are utilised more often than lengthy, often Latin or Greek based, terms in the spoken language of native speakers.
I use “big words” and “flowery words” sometimes when I speak. I’m not trying to be weird, just that sometimes those are the best words to fit the moment. I’ve had coworkers remark on my vocabulary, even making up a “word of the day” based on something I said, haha.
So yeah, most people don’t speak like that, but thankfully some of us are nerds. The words I use on Lemmy are the same words I speak (albeit formatted more coherently than the ungrammatical weirdness that sometimes escape my mouth.)
What’s your native language?
Italian
I think other germanic languages are much better at that. Look at german or swedish, they often have much more precise constructions for concepts. Tho langauges are very complex and its very hard to speak generally about them like this. I still hate how english works even tho im basically a native speaker. Standing there and listeneing to a non-native trying to pronounce priests or trying to explain to them what shouldnt’ve means is painful. Of course my other first language being hungarian this is kinda hypocritical cause thats much more of a bitch to learners.
¿Que?
Er sagt, dass manche Leute die ganze Zeit nur englisch sprechen, als könnten sie nicht anders
SPRICH DEUTSCH DU - aaah ok. Weitermachen.
Domo arigato.
De nada
ona li ken ala ken kama sona?
Meap!
Du glemte tilføjelse med et ægte sprog
Listen, I’m trying, men min dansk er stadig meget dårlig
Ohhh, kamelåså
We are talking about real languages, not swedish with a potato.
Did you mean German with a Köttbullar ?
Selvom dansk lyder en smule fjollet, det kan godt lide jeg 😁
Jeg er sikker på dit dansk bliver bedre og bedre :)
and you try to learn Danish, one of the hardest languages in the world. I mean, same, jeg lærer dansk, but ayoo we need to chill and just pick up spanish or something
At least it isn’t dutch, a language I still think is a prank people took seriously.
Ret flot, du huskede nutids -r på et ord med r-lyd, det er der mange indfødte, der ikke forstår… Pero, hablamos Español oder Deutsch… Bara inte prada det dritt sproket Svenska… I have no idea how close to Swedish I got there, maybe I mixed in a bit of colonial Norwegian, who cares? Real people speak real languages, not drunkenly Danish with mashed potatoes dripping down their shirts. (There, that should be enough to piss off those frikadelle reinventing posers across the sund)
lol, maybe. But, I was in Copenhagen recently and fell in love with the place. Just kinda sparked an interest, you know?
Hey same, talk about an uphill battle!
patetisk
præcist
“sekoilu” means “mucking around, messing about” in Finnish. The last a is grammatically correct, but the first “o” turns it into a pun on SEO I guess. Somehow it all adds extra meaning. Like, Finnish being a #real language. 😈
Luulin että tämmöinen sekoilu oli jo lopetettu. Never stop the madness ja kohta mennään taas! :D
The -a at the end marks the partitive, right?
yes
Jeśli język ma mniej niż 7 przypadków to nie jest prawdziwy /j
Latein ist dem Chat beigetreten.
Folk lærer å bruke andre språk av nødvendighet eller interesse. Hvis du allerede kan snakke med utlendinger pga de allerede snakker morsmålet ditt til en ganske høy standard, er det mye mindre insentiv til å bytte til et språk som skaper enorme kommunikasjonsvansker bare for å få øve på språket. Og det er egentlig det vanskeligste ting med å studere et annet språk om man har engelsk som morsmål. Ihvertfall da jeg begynte å lære norsk, var det ekstremt vanskelig å få folk til å bruke norsk i det hele tatt. Ingen var tolmodig nokk å lytte mens jeg prøvde å forklare noe med barnehage norsk. Spesielt når de kunne bare bytte til engelsk og snakke helt flytende om nesten alt.
Det jeg synes er verre er når folk fra et annet land kan ikke engelsk. Hvis man ikke har nødt til eller interesse i å lære engelsk, er det fordi man ikke har lyst til å snakke med utlendinger eller reise til andre land, eller gjøre noe som helst som trenger kommunikasjon med andre kulturer. Og jo, jeg forstår at det finnes steder i verden som ikke har tilgang til undervisning i engelsk eller internett, men jeg snakker om steder som Spania og Tyskland. Selve litt utenfor Berlin var det ingen som ville prøve å snakke engelsk, bortsett fra et par hasjentusiaster ved en busstopp i Zeuthen.
Når jeg reiser til Storbritannia er folk veldig imponert av at jeg kan norsk, men utenfor Norge er jeg funksjonelt enspråklig. Fordi jeg kan ikke bruke norsk å kommunisere med folk fra for eksempel Latvia. Da må jeg bytte til engelsk. Selve om Norsk, Dansk, og Svensk er gjensidig forståelige, er det mange som fortsatt foretrekker å bruke engelsk i blandede grupper. Dvs, når vi snakker et annet språk er det kun med folk som bruker det som morsmål. Jeg kan ikke øve tysk ved å snakke med folk fra Frankrike eller Portugal, men en fra Tyskland kan øve på engelsk ved å snakke med mange folk fra mange forskjellige land.
For å trekke en konklusjon, folk fra engelsktalende land lærer fremmede språk hvis de flytter til et annet land, men i absolutt alle andre situasjoner er det mye mer effektivt å bruke engelsk selve om en snakker med utlendinger.
Beklager min dårlig norsk.
Det gode med norsk er at du faktisk næsten lærer tre sprog, I hvert fald på skrift. Dansk er nemt at læse hvis man kan norsk, og med lidt øvelse kan man også lære at forstå de kedelige typer ovre østpå.
Ja, det stemmer. Jeg har brukt norsk både i Sverige og Danmark men det var selvsagt ikke like lett å forstå muntlig dansk som muntlig svensk, men mye lettere å forstå skriftlig dansk en skriftlig svensk. Men det er mest sannsynlig pga alle innvandrere i Norge lærer bokmål selv om de bor i et sted som primært bruker nynorsk, som er mye nærmere svensk enn dansk.
Jeg forstår fint talt norsk men har flere problemer med svensk, sådan er det i Jylland. Sjællænderne derimod forstår bedst svensk.
Muligvis vil du have nemmere ved jysk - fx dialekter - end ved fx lavkøbenhavnsk.
三年前ぐらいから日本語を勉強している人です。あなたのメッセージを翻訳した。
英語はどこにでもある存在。故に、英語とコンタクトすることを世界中のどこでも逃さない。
が、他の言語を練習することが難しいとは言えない。
電子書籍を読む、動画や映画を観る、音楽を聴く、それにインターネットでネイティブに会うこともできます。
よって、目標の国を旅行しなくても、言語を覚えることができると思う。例え英語だけを話せても。
後、あなたはおそらく英語を覚えることが楽しいや簡単や有用だと思うだろうが、それは甘いだと思う。
人は時間がなかったりモチベがなかったり、私の思う日本人の場合、日本語との違いは大きすぎて、継続的に触れても覚えることがとても難しいのです。
上に、この頃大体の人々は強制的な英語授業を受ける。それでも授業を受けなかった人々もある。最初の一歩をしないと何も始まらないかもしれない。
英語を覚えなくても、自動的に文化交流をしたくないと考えるのが甘い。
悪い日本語でスマン。
I have no idea why I wrote this tbh
Personalmente, creo que el español y japonés tienen mucho en común, y hablarlo se me hace facil; escribirlo es otra cosa. Gracias por compartir eso.
La cosa extraña para mi es que he estudiado como escribir/leer los hiragana y katakana. Pero, no hablo el japones. No tengo ni idea de que dijo OP, pero puedo leer y hablar partes de su comentario. (Lo siento, uso un teclado de los ee.uu y no es facil poner los acentos en las letras.)
Vou escrever em português já que não falo espanhol e assim para uma pessoa que fale espanhol deve ser fácil de perceber.
Mesmo textos japoneses normais, especialmente aqueles escritos um bocado mal como o meu, têm muito hiragana, mas maioria das palavras que se conseguem ler normalmente não dizem muito. Por exemplo, na primeira frase, se só se lesse o hiragana:
“_” “mais ou menos” “desde” “_” “<- especificar objeto” “_” “<- fazendo a ação anterior no objeto especificado” “_” “sou”
Por outro lado, só lendo os kanji:
“3 anos atrás” “japonês” “estudo” “pessoa”
Juntando tudo:
“3 anos atrás” “mais ou menos” “desde” “japonês” “<-” “estudo” “a fazer” “pessoa” “sou”
Ou seja:
“Estudo japonês há cerca de 3 anos”
Por isso mesmo que se saiba ler hiragana, muitas vezes (maioria das vezes) as partes mais importantes das frases são as que não se conseguem ler! Mesmo quando maioria da frase é composta por hiragana ou katakana!
Mais, existem kanjis que parecem-se com katakana. Por exemplo:
口 ロ 夕 タ
Por isso sem contexto pode-se pensar que se está a ler uma coisa quando na verdade é outra.
Mesmo assim, acredito que só conseguir ler hiragana e katakana já é impressionante o suficiente ;)
Me encanta esta respuesta, gracias por escribirla. Es verdad, hay kanji que se parece como katakana a veces. Hay palabaras (en kanji) que puedo entender, per no pronunciarlas. Tambien con el portugues, pero he practicado leer el portugues por leer Turma da Monica. 😂
I cannot understand this of course, I never figured out the shortcut to switch the language, but I read this anyway and spotted “pga” and “dvs” - they real …Norwegian…? (I saw Norsk a lot) words? You can respond in whatever language this is if you wish, I will surely understand it by the time you do.
I was just ranting about how much of a hard time native English speakers are given when it’s next to impossible to actually practice conversation.
Let’s say you have a German speaker learning English and an English speaker learning German. A Frenchman, a Spaniard, a Korean, an Austrian and an Australian walk in. The German uses English with 4 people and the English speaker uses German with none of them, because as soon as the Austrian hears them struggling with German they’ll instinctively switch to English. My own biggest challenge learning Norwegian was convincing the people I met not to switch to English and keep speaking Norwegian, even though it would have been easier for them.
I also made the point that the only way learning a foreign language is even close to a necessity is if you move to another country. And its also the only real way to get enough people to practice with.
Pga = På grunn av = because of Dvs = Det vil si = in other words
I agree with everything you said! I’m learning danish as a native English speaker, and I find the same struggles (also enjoyed slowly reading your Norsk)
I think a part of it is Scandinavian people being a little polite/power dynamic sensitive and switching to English for good intentioned reasons. But also, let me speak poor danish, it’ll be better for all of us in the long run!
Oo abbreviations hell yeah!
I did see you brought in the Franks (French), the Portuguese, and the good people of Tyskland (Germany apparently) in your orig! Kudos on learning Norwegian so well
It’s taken me long enough 😂
[removed minor grammar nitpicks]
It’s absolutely the difficulty I faced learning French as an American in the Midwest. My high school self thought it’d be more useful than Spanish because native English speakers who know French are more rare, but it also meant I never got immersion, even when I’d do my best to converse every chance I got.
Hell, even with Spanish, I regularly had people switch when I tried my Spanish, even when I went to Mexico 😤
Never did end up learning enough to get by before I was out of school and no longer had regular interactions with Spanish speaking people.
Thanks for pointing that out. I tend to miss things due to dyslexia/ADHD. Either it’s a correctly spelled word, but the wrong one so spellcheck doesn’t catch it or I start writing a sentence and change how I want to word it half way through but forget to go back and edit the first part.
French was actually spoken by a large number of Brits until English replaced it as the common language in Europe, after ww2. My grandparents were all conversationally fluent in french.
I guess it’s the same in Norwegian as in Swedish, pga is an abbreviation for “på grund av” which means “because of” and dvs is an abbreviation for “det vill säga” which translates to “so to say”, someone is more than welcome to correct me on this, I had a difficult time to come up with the translation at this time xD
I wish I was better at learning languages. I know barely enough spanish that I think I could sort of communicate and a tiny bit of russian but it would be so fun to actually be able to speak them.
Easiest way to practice Spanish is to move to a Spanish speaking area where people are terrible at speaking English and just use it out of necessity.
I mean I’m trying, but 한국말 is difficult (for me and apparently most other English as a first language speakers). And I’m the the sharpest tool in the shed to start with.
