john-aj
Joined 8 years ago
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171
Submissions
56
Member since
Jan 12
Recent submissions
Comment · 4 months ago
Isn't it still an option that you can enable in the context menu?
Comment · 8 months ago
Great idea, although it is quite inconvenient that you have to tap/swipe to show the modern version (at least on mobile). Makes it difficult to compare.
Comment · 1 year ago
That is surprisingly pleasant to use, actually!
Comment · 1 year ago
>In German you need to have that noun info upfront, otherwise you might not get the grammar correct!
In reality, (1) people rarely change their mind about what noun they're going to use such that the gender is different, and (2) when it needs to be done, speakers of German either ignore it or just go back and repair what they said, changing the forms of the determiner and adjective. Germans speak with no more planning than English speakers.
One might say the same thing about certain English grammatical phenomena. When asking a question, you have to consider whether the subject is going to be singular or plural: Is/are the dog/dogs hungry? This isn't needed in languages without subject-verb agreement, such as Swedish. But it makes very little difference to native speakers.
Comment · 2 years ago
It is possible to emulate this in Emacs Lisp. I've created a package to that extent, see http://ankarstrom.se/~john/etc/emacs/scroll-without-point.el. (I've made a few changes to it the last couple of weeks that I have yet to upload, though.) I should probably publish it somewhere else eventually, but I've always felt it to be a bit of a hack. Still, I use it and it works well 99% of the time.
Comment · 2 years ago
Chiming in from theoretical linguistics: it is impossible for natural languages to "count", i.e. make reference to numbers other than 0, 1 or infinity.
As an example, there are languages where prenominal genitives are impossible (0).
Then, there are languages, such as German, where only one prenominal genitive is possible (1):
> Annas Haus
> *Annas Hunds Haus
Finally, there are languages, such as English, where an infinite number of prenominal genitives are possible (infinity).
> Anna's house
> Anna's dog's house
> Anna's mother's dog's house
> Anna's mother's sister's ... dog's house
But there are no languages where only two or three prenominal genitives are possible.
This property is taken to be part of Universal Grammar, i.e. the genetic/biological/mental system that makes human language possible.
Comment · 2 years ago
I agree. But if you remove the "so", there is no contradiction. It is possible the author used "so" not to mean "in other words", but simply as a relatively meaningless discourse marker.
Comment · 2 years ago
>My editor is written in Ruby
Which editor is that?
Comment · 4 years ago
That only speaks for the 1800s, though. There were a lot of incorrect beliefs among scientists during that time that weren't commonplace before; race biology comes to mind.
Soap has been around for a long time, and thousand-year-old religions have rules about cleaning oneself. My impression was that doctors actually stopped believing in disinfection during the rise of modern science, as they began see these beliefs as unscientific superstitions. I don't currently have a source for this, though.
Comment · 4 years ago
Isn't Ruby also included by default?
Comment · 4 years ago
Where? I don't see it when I do a search.
Comment · 4 years ago
Indeed. Nvi, which was recommended elsewhere in the thread, supports UTF-8 and is my preferred vi clone. (Actually, OpenBSD vi is an old version of nvi without UTF-8 support.)
Comment · 4 years ago
In statistics, one usually differentiates between
- nominal scales (e.g. man/woman),
- ordinal scales (elementary school/middle school/high school),
- interval scales (degrees Celsius) and
- ratio scales (human height, degrees Kelvin).
Only ratio scales may be multiplied and divided. Interval scales may be subtracted and added. Ordinal scales may only be compared (less/greater/equal). Nominal scales may only be compared in terms of (in)equality.
Comment · 4 years ago
Learning about phonetics absolutely helps. It provides an accurate way of precisely describing how sounds are pronounced.
Do keep in mind, though, that the IPA classifications that you find on Wikipedia are sometimes rough estimates. With particularly difficult sounds, it may be a good idea to look at multiple phonetic descriptions.
Begin with the sounds of your own native language, which you already know how to pronounce, and try to describe them phonetically. A tip for learning to feel where your tongue is, is to pronounce the sounds without tone, i.e. whisper them, or even without air, i.e. simply mouth them.
Comment · 5 years ago
When translating Russian, both are usually translated as blue. Синий is used about dark blue things, like the sea, and голубой about light blue things, like the sky.
But translating it to "dark/light blue" would be incorrect, as the lightness is not an important part of the words. It is just that Russian speakers are forced to specify the lightness, similarly to how German speakers are forced to specify the sex of their neighbor (Nachbar/Nachbarin). In most cases, Nachbarin should simply be translated to "neighbor".