R
Rami Chowdhury
Well, if you admit you set out to offend people, then you're trolling.
Well, if you admit you set out to offend people, then you're trolling.
C
Chris Jones
On Tue, Sep 01, 2009 at 03:16:03PM EDT, r wrote:
[..]
"Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow"
And further on..
"This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."
T. S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men"
The very worst about you rant is that you may be the harbinger, a sign
of things to come.
A loud steady voice told him that "By this as your standard, you will
conquer".
'nuff said.. have a good night.
CJ
[..]
Bring on the metric system Terry, i have been waiting all my life!!
Now, if we can only convince those 800 million Mandarin Chinese
speakers... *ahem* Do we have a Chinese translator in the house?
"Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow"
And further on..
"This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."
T. S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men"
The very worst about you rant is that you may be the harbinger, a sign
of things to come.
A loud steady voice told him that "By this as your standard, you will
conquer".
'nuff said.. have a good night.
CJ
G
Gabriel Genellina
Bueno, voy a escribir en el segundo lenguaje más hablado en el mundo
(español), después del mandarín (con más de 1000 millones de personas). El
inglés está recién en el tercer puesto, con menos de la mitad de hablantes
(500 millones).
Si no me entendés, jodete.
Fuente: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=languages+in+the+world
D
Dennis Lee Bieber
That "idiotic pronunciation" is a result historical shifts in vowel
sounds... Look up Grimm's Law (yes, /those/ Grimms).
The words with the most "idiotic" pronunciation are most likely the
older words in the language... Words created when the populace
pronounced the vowels differently.
Languages evolve -- but the spelling has frozen... Unless you
propose creating the equivalent of the French institute that decrees
what is and is not the French language. Though how you'll then impose
that upon the common people. The power of the English language is that
it has not been afraid to incorporate terms from other languages (heck
-- some english words are considered offensive in polite company, but
the equivalents absorbed from other languages are taken as is)
Oh, and are you blaming /schools/ for great differences in Cockney,
"Oxbridge", Southern US, midwest, etc. dialects...
H
Hendrik van Rooyen
What do you call someone who speaks three languages? - trilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks two languages? - bilingual.
What do you call someone who only speaks one language?
- A stupid gringo!
Nice one Gabriel - and with a link too!
Looks like I am going to have to learn some Castilian, or something.
- Hendrik
S
Steven D'Aprano
This thread has intrigued me enough to bite the bullet and look up "r"'s
posts. Oh my! They say a little learning is a dangerous thing, and this
is a great example -- the only think bigger than r's ignorance and
naivety on these topics is his confidence that he alone understands The
Truth. Oh well, we were all kiddies like that once, so absolutely sure of
ourselves on the basis of the most shallow paddling around on the shore
of the sea of knowledge.
I will limit myself to commenting on only one thing. (A good thing too,
because this is long enough as it is.)
This is Not Even Wrong. Evolution isn't a *thing*, it is a *process*.
Nothing exists to "benefit evolution", that's like saying that horses
have long legs to "benefit running" or people have lungs to "benefit
breathing". Horses have long legs so *they* can run, which is beneficial
to *them* (but not earthworms, oak trees, eagles or sharks) because it
enables them, indirectly, to survive long enough to produce offspring
which are more likely to survive than they otherwise would be. Horses
aren't the mechanism for running to make more running. Running is one of
the ways horses survive long enough to make more horses.
"R" is utterly confused if he thinks species live or die according to
because they're benefiting evolution. Species live or die according to
whether or not they reproduce, not due to services rendered to a process.
Suggesting that species exist for the benefit of evolution is backwards
-- it is like saying that we have computers and light bulbs and
televisions and DVD players so that electricity can run through wires. Or
that we build cars for the benefit of combustion.
(This sort of nonsense, anthropomorphizing the process of evolution,
seems to be unique to those on the right-wing of politics. Go figure.)
Steve (the other Steve) is right -- species which are incapable of
dealing with the complexity and dynamism of the world are doomed to
extinction. Biologists have a word for stasis: "dead". The most vigorous,
lively ecosystems are those that are complex, like rain forests (what
used to be called "jungles" when I was a lad), coral reefs and mangroves.
Messy, complicated, complex ecosystems are successful because they are
resilient to damage -- a plague comes along and even if it kills off
every individual of one species of fruit, there are a thousand different
species unharmed.
The sort of monoculture which "r" sings the praises of are fragile and
brittle. Look at the Cavendish banana, nearly extinct because a disease
is wiping the plants out, and there's not enough genetic variability in
it to survive. (Fortunately there are dozens of varieties of bananas, so
when the Cavendish becomes extinct, we'll still have bananas.)
Or the Irish Potato Famine: millions of Irish dead from famine because
90% of their food intake came from a *single* source, potatoes, which in
turn came from not just a single variety but just a handful of closely
related individuals.
(Well, also because the English were brutish thugs during the famine too,
but that's just politics.)
As for the idea "nice guys finish last", that's a ridiculous over-
simplification. Vampire bats share their food with other vampire bats who
otherwise would be hungry. Remoras stick to sharks, who carry them around
for years without eating them. There's those little birds which climb
into the mouths of crocodiles to clean their teeth while the crocodile
sits patiently with it's mouth wide open. Wolves and wild dogs and hyenas
hunt cooperatively. Baboons and chimpanzees form alliances. Penguins
huddle together through the freezing months of darkness, and although the
winds are so cold that the penguins on the outside would freeze to death,
few of them do, because they all take their share of time in the centre.
Monkeys cry out warnings when they see a leopard or a hawk, even though
it puts them personally at risk. Meercats post sentries, who expose
themselves to danger to protect the rest of the colony.
And the most successful mammal on the planet, more successful than any
other large animal, is also the most cooperative, least selfish species
around. It is so unselfish, so cooperative, that individuals will rush
into burning buildings to save complete strangers, and that cooperation
has let the species colonize the entire planet and even send a few
individuals, risking life and limb, to the Moon.
posts. Oh my! They say a little learning is a dangerous thing, and this
is a great example -- the only think bigger than r's ignorance and
naivety on these topics is his confidence that he alone understands The
Truth. Oh well, we were all kiddies like that once, so absolutely sure of
ourselves on the basis of the most shallow paddling around on the shore
of the sea of knowledge.
I will limit myself to commenting on only one thing. (A good thing too,
because this is long enough as it is.)
This is Not Even Wrong. Evolution isn't a *thing*, it is a *process*.
Nothing exists to "benefit evolution", that's like saying that horses
have long legs to "benefit running" or people have lungs to "benefit
breathing". Horses have long legs so *they* can run, which is beneficial
to *them* (but not earthworms, oak trees, eagles or sharks) because it
enables them, indirectly, to survive long enough to produce offspring
which are more likely to survive than they otherwise would be. Horses
aren't the mechanism for running to make more running. Running is one of
the ways horses survive long enough to make more horses.
"R" is utterly confused if he thinks species live or die according to
because they're benefiting evolution. Species live or die according to
whether or not they reproduce, not due to services rendered to a process.
Suggesting that species exist for the benefit of evolution is backwards
-- it is like saying that we have computers and light bulbs and
televisions and DVD players so that electricity can run through wires. Or
that we build cars for the benefit of combustion.
(This sort of nonsense, anthropomorphizing the process of evolution,
seems to be unique to those on the right-wing of politics. Go figure.)
Steve (the other Steve) is right -- species which are incapable of
dealing with the complexity and dynamism of the world are doomed to
extinction. Biologists have a word for stasis: "dead". The most vigorous,
lively ecosystems are those that are complex, like rain forests (what
used to be called "jungles" when I was a lad), coral reefs and mangroves.
Messy, complicated, complex ecosystems are successful because they are
resilient to damage -- a plague comes along and even if it kills off
every individual of one species of fruit, there are a thousand different
species unharmed.
The sort of monoculture which "r" sings the praises of are fragile and
brittle. Look at the Cavendish banana, nearly extinct because a disease
is wiping the plants out, and there's not enough genetic variability in
it to survive. (Fortunately there are dozens of varieties of bananas, so
when the Cavendish becomes extinct, we'll still have bananas.)
Or the Irish Potato Famine: millions of Irish dead from famine because
90% of their food intake came from a *single* source, potatoes, which in
turn came from not just a single variety but just a handful of closely
related individuals.
(Well, also because the English were brutish thugs during the famine too,
but that's just politics.)
As for the idea "nice guys finish last", that's a ridiculous over-
simplification. Vampire bats share their food with other vampire bats who
otherwise would be hungry. Remoras stick to sharks, who carry them around
for years without eating them. There's those little birds which climb
into the mouths of crocodiles to clean their teeth while the crocodile
sits patiently with it's mouth wide open. Wolves and wild dogs and hyenas
hunt cooperatively. Baboons and chimpanzees form alliances. Penguins
huddle together through the freezing months of darkness, and although the
winds are so cold that the penguins on the outside would freeze to death,
few of them do, because they all take their share of time in the centre.
Monkeys cry out warnings when they see a leopard or a hawk, even though
it puts them personally at risk. Meercats post sentries, who expose
themselves to danger to protect the rest of the colony.
And the most successful mammal on the planet, more successful than any
other large animal, is also the most cooperative, least selfish species
around. It is so unselfish, so cooperative, that individuals will rush
into burning buildings to save complete strangers, and that cooperation
has let the species colonize the entire planet and even send a few
individuals, risking life and limb, to the Moon.
G
Gabriel Genellina
En Wed, 02 Sep 2009 04:58:43 -0300, Hendrik van Rooyen
Looks like we all will have to learn mandarin! A nice language but with a
high entrance barrier for western people.
What do you call someone who speaks three languages? - trilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks two languages? - bilingual.
What do you call someone who only speaks one language?
- A stupid gringo!
LOL!
Nice one Gabriel - and with a link too!
Looks like I am going to have to learn some Castilian, or something.
Looks like we all will have to learn mandarin! A nice language but with a
high entrance barrier for western people.
M
Mel
Gabriel said:
It will pay off in the long run. Problem for me: it seems most people in
Toronto speak Cantonese. That's just something I'll have to deal with.
Wrote a little 3-in-a-row game to get familiar with Chinese characters.
Astonished at how Chinese-ready Python 2.5 already is. Collecting characters
from web sites and pasting them in to literals in the program source just
works.
Mel.
R
r
On Sep 2, 4:41 am, Steven D'Aprano
Well horses do have long and well evolved legs for running and humans
lungs for breathing, and they have them because it benefits them which
in turn benefits evolution. the buck stops with evolution.
Dear God i hate the current "progress" of evolution if reproduction
guaranteed survival. I think it is just a "wee" bit more complicated
than that Steven. *wink*
Uh? let's not go there. Leave politics corrupting influence out of
this.
You cannot draw parallels between bio diversity and language
diversity. Bio diversity is fundamental to all species survival, even
a virus. I am quite sure that the adoption of Universal World language
will not usher in the apocalypse for human kind, quite the contrary!
Ok a Jew, a Catholic Priest and a Chinese man walk into a bar.... Now
if the bar suddenly catches fire and only one of them notices, how
should this person convey the danger to the others. Well he could jump-
up-and-down-yelling-oh!-oh!-oh!-with-arms-failing-in-the-air, but i
think human evolution has presented a far more elegant way to
communicate than that of the chimpanzee.
OMG! human kind will be utterly wiped out by the universal language.
Somebody please jump-up-and-down-with-flailing-arms we must warn
everyone of this impending doom before it is too late! </chicken
little>
(snip: more political innuendo)
....could be they are fatting them up for the kill!
....Well yes sharks share a personality trait with cab drivers but...?
And i wonder if they really *know* they are back there? Sharks aren't
exactly evolutions shining jewel.
....Hmm, i have thought about clamping down hard while my dentist pokes
around with his fingers in there. But who then would clean my teeth?
And it could be that those crocs are just slightly vain?
....birds of a feather flock together!
....they could be expendable to the community!
I always found it a funny (but sad irony) of human our "supposedly"
advanced civilization when public warning systems must be read in
multiple languages. I guess the best you can hope for is that yours
will be the read first. ;-)
How do say... "BREAKING NEWS!: There has been a deadly cloud of gas
released from a nearby chem plant, Currently the winds are moving
south-south-west at 10 miles per hour. If you are in the downwind path
of this cloud, move cross wind and up wind immediately or die!"....in
all the languages of the world?
"""Oh evolution thou art very old and wise, save us from the polluting
corruption of stupidity, save us now!"""
I'd like to present a bug report to evolution, obviously the garbage
collector is malfunctioning.
Well horses do have long and well evolved legs for running and humans
lungs for breathing, and they have them because it benefits them which
in turn benefits evolution. the buck stops with evolution.
Dear God i hate the current "progress" of evolution if reproduction
guaranteed survival. I think it is just a "wee" bit more complicated
than that Steven. *wink*
Uh? let's not go there. Leave politics corrupting influence out of
this.
You cannot draw parallels between bio diversity and language
diversity. Bio diversity is fundamental to all species survival, even
a virus. I am quite sure that the adoption of Universal World language
will not usher in the apocalypse for human kind, quite the contrary!
Ok a Jew, a Catholic Priest and a Chinese man walk into a bar.... Now
if the bar suddenly catches fire and only one of them notices, how
should this person convey the danger to the others. Well he could jump-
up-and-down-yelling-oh!-oh!-oh!-with-arms-failing-in-the-air, but i
think human evolution has presented a far more elegant way to
communicate than that of the chimpanzee.
OMG! human kind will be utterly wiped out by the universal language.
Somebody please jump-up-and-down-with-flailing-arms we must warn
everyone of this impending doom before it is too late! </chicken
little>
(snip: more political innuendo)
....could be they are fatting them up for the kill!
....Well yes sharks share a personality trait with cab drivers but...?
And i wonder if they really *know* they are back there? Sharks aren't
exactly evolutions shining jewel.
....Hmm, i have thought about clamping down hard while my dentist pokes
around with his fingers in there. But who then would clean my teeth?
And it could be that those crocs are just slightly vain?
....birds of a feather flock together!
....they could be expendable to the community!
I always found it a funny (but sad irony) of human our "supposedly"
advanced civilization when public warning systems must be read in
multiple languages. I guess the best you can hope for is that yours
will be the read first. ;-)
How do say... "BREAKING NEWS!: There has been a deadly cloud of gas
released from a nearby chem plant, Currently the winds are moving
south-south-west at 10 miles per hour. If you are in the downwind path
of this cloud, move cross wind and up wind immediately or die!"....in
all the languages of the world?
"""Oh evolution thou art very old and wise, save us from the polluting
corruption of stupidity, save us now!"""
I'd like to present a bug report to evolution, obviously the garbage
collector is malfunctioning.
N
Nigel Rantor
r said:
I think most people think that when they read the drivel that you generate.
I'm done with your threads and posts.
*plonk*
J
Jan Claeys
Op Sun, 30 Aug 2009 15:28:55 -0700, schreef r:
Maybe we should use a language that has a Turing-complete grammar, so
that even computers can understand & speak it "easily"?
http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Panini:scholar.htm
(with thanks to Anna Ravenscroft for pointing me to this some time ago)
When used by everyone, it would allow us to write programs in the
language all of us speak... *Maybe*...
Maybe we should use a language that has a Turing-complete grammar, so
that even computers can understand & speak it "easily"?
http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Panini:scholar.htm
(with thanks to Anna Ravenscroft for pointing me to this some time ago)
When used by everyone, it would allow us to write programs in the
language all of us speak... *Maybe*...
R
r
Interesting, i do find some things more easily explainable using code,
however, code losses the ability to describe abstract ideas and such.
But you have piqued my interest...?
C
Christopher Culver
Hyuga said:
Musings about the universality of the Chinese writing system, once so
common among Western thinkers, nevertheless do not square with
reality. The Chinese writing system is in fact deeply linked to the
Chinese language, even to the specific dialect being spoken. See
Defrancis' _The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy_ (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1984):
http://preview.tinyurl.com/rbyuuk
R
Robin Becker
r wrote:
........
well allegedly, "the medium is the message" so we also need to take account of
language in addition to the meaning of communications. I don't believe all
languages are equivalent in the meanings that they can encode or convey. Our
mathematics is heavily biassed towards continuous differential systems and as a
result we end up with many physical theories that have smooth equilibrium
descriptions, we may literally be unable to get at other theories of the
physical world because our languages fall short.
........
well allegedly, "the medium is the message" so we also need to take account of
language in addition to the meaning of communications. I don't believe all
languages are equivalent in the meanings that they can encode or convey. Our
mathematics is heavily biassed towards continuous differential systems and as a
result we end up with many physical theories that have smooth equilibrium
descriptions, we may literally be unable to get at other theories of the
physical world because our languages fall short.
C
Christopher Culver
Robin Becker said:
This is the old Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which fell out of favour among
linguists half a century ago already. 1) Language does not constrain
human thought, and 2) any two human languages are both capable of
expressing the same things, though one may already have a convenient
lexeme for the topic at hand while the other uses circumlocution.
R
rurpy
Fashion changes in science as well as clothes.
I wouldn't countSapir-Whorf out yet...
http://edge.org/3rd_culture/boroditsky09/boroditsky09_index.html
M
Mel
Christopher said:
Worf was raised as a Klingon, so you can expect this. If he'd been brought
up speaking Minbari, points 1 and 2 would have been obvious to him.
Mel.
P
Processor-Dev1l
Well, I am from one of the non-English speaking countries (Czech
Republic). We were always messed up with windows-1250 or iso-8859-2.
Unicode is really great thing for us and for our developers.
About the "western" technology made in China and Taiwan... do you
really think US are so modern? I can only recommend you to visit
Japan
.I also think 26 letters are really limited and English is one of the
most limited languages ever. It has too strict syntax. Yeah, it is
easy to learn, but not so cool to hear every day.
Btw how many foreign languages do you speak?
C
Christopher Culver
Fashion changes in science as well as clothes.
A favourite line of crackpots who think that their ridiculous position
is not held by others merely because of "fashion".
That researcher does not say that language *constrains* thought, which
was the assertion of the OP and of the strict form of the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis. She merely says that it may influence thought.
R
Robin Becker
Fashion changes in science as well as clothes.
Sapir-Whorf out yet...
http://edge.org/3rd_culture/boroditsky09/boroditsky09_index.html
very nice link, thanks.