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Identify Any Language Written in the Roman Alphabet at a Glance

theweek.com

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Re: Identify Any Language Written in the Roman Alphabet at a Glance

#81

Post by dragonwriter »

Karunamon wrote: post #80
dragonwriter wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Upvote" means something different than "agree"; one of the things it means is "I endorse people visiting this". I can imagine quite a few sources that I wouldn't want to direct traffic to even if they published something where I agree with the sentiment.

The idea of voting for a link for any reason other than its quality is completely anti ethical to a karmic voting system like the one used here.

Yes, but "quality" is both vague and subjective, not only will different people evaluate aspects of quality differently, different people will legitimately have different views on what components "quality" of a link has. I don't think it's unreasonable to consider the source as a one factor in overall quality (if nothing else as a proxy for things the rater is unable to evaluate about the article in isolation.)

Re: Identify Any Language Written in the Roman Alphabet at a Glance

#83

Post by adrianN »

brendyn wrote: post #41

Some of my Chinese friends use の instead of Chinese equivalent 的 just for fun. Personally I distinguish them by just going and learning the languages. It's easy to distinguish them by noticing Japanese has curvy characters mixed with blocky complicated Chinese ones, where is Chinese is 100% complicated blocky characters. Also I just want to put it out there randomly that if you want to learn a language but believe yo…

For some languages a couple hundred hours might be enough to participate meaningfully in a normal conversation. But if you're for example an English native speaker and want to learn Chinese, you'll have a really hard time understanding anything but very simple sentences.

On the other hand if you know English and German well, it is very easy to learn for example Dutch, and a couple hundred hours will get you really far.

Re: Identify Any Language Written in the Roman Alphabet at a Glance

#85

Post by Karunamon »

dragonwriter wrote: post #81
Karunamon wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of voting for a link for any reason other than its quality is completely anti ethical to a karmic voting system like the one used here.

Yes, but "quality" is both vague and subjective, not only will different people evaluate aspects of quality differently, different people will legitimately have different views on what components "quality" of a link has. I don't think it's unreasonable to consider the source as a one factor in overall quality (if nothing else as a proxy for things the rater is unable to evaluate about the article in isolation.)

But why should things other than the article directly linked to matter? Why should it be acceptable to downvote an otherwise interesting and correct article just because of the source?

That smacks of voting for ideological correctness over truth or interestingness, a problem that otherwise intelligent people should be able to look past. What makes this site meaningfully different from the front page of Reddit if people will crap on an article because it comes from a source that doesn't align with their politics?

Re: Identify Any Language Written in the Roman Alphabet at a Glance

#86

Post by restalis »

adrianN wrote: post #83
brendyn wrote: post #41

Some of my Chinese friends use の instead of Chinese equivalent 的 just for fun. Personally I distinguish them by just going and learning the languages. It's easy to distinguish them by noticing Japanese has curvy characters mixed with blocky complicated Chinese ones, where is Chinese is 100% complicated blocky characters. Also I just want to put it out there randomly that if you want to learn a language but believe yo…

For some languages a couple hundred hours might be enough to participate meaningfully in a normal conversation. But if you're for example an English native speaker and want to learn Chinese, you'll have a really hard time understanding anything but very simple sentences. On the other hand if you know English and German well, it is very easy to learn for example Dutch, and a couple hundred hours will get you really fa…

You're discussing about the language overlap being relevant for the amount of time and effort necessary to get results. That is true, of course, and it if often thanks to the (shared and) already possessed mental models necessary to master the new language. The most important bit of this mental model of a given language is the way speakers phrase their thoughts. This is exactly what you get right by following the brendyn's advice of taking it slow. In time you'll sense and reproduce the natural expressions. (This advice is especially valuable for learning English, BTW! Trying to make sense out of the compound verbs is a poor strategy, therefore just let them sink in slowly in your mind, each within an appropriate context.)

Re: Identify Any Language Written in the Roman Alphabet at a Glance

#87

Post by dragonwriter »

Karunamon wrote: post #85
dragonwriter wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but "quality" is both vague and subjective, not only will different people evaluate aspects of quality differently, different people will legitimately have different views on what components "quality" of a link has. I don't think it's unreasonable to consider the source as a one factor in overall quality (if nothing else as a proxy for things the rater is unable to evaluate about the article in isolation.)

But why should things other than the article directly linked to matter? Why should it be acceptable to downvote an otherwise interesting and correct article just because of the source? That smacks of voting for ideological correctness over truth or interestingness, a problem that otherwise intelligent people should be able to look past. What makes this site meaningfully different from the front page of Reddit if peop…

> Why should it be acceptable to downvote an otherwise interesting and correct article just because of the source?

"Correct" is often a probabilistic assessment, not something a potential up/downvoter can determine absolutely.

The source is often an important input to that probabilistic assessment.

> That smacks of voting for ideological correctness over truth or interestingness

Different outlets of the same ideological bent (whether relatively neutral or not) can have wildly different editorial standards which produce wildly different reliability.

Re: Identify Any Language Written in the Roman Alphabet at a Glance

#90

Post by pge »

sharpercoder wrote: post #76

>Dutch, German, and Afrikaans: Of these three close relations to English, only German uses Ä/ä, Ö/ö, and Ü/ü. Incorrect: Dutch uses the trema on the i, e, o, u, a as well. Examples: * reünie * knieën * ruïne * Aäron * zoöloog

And anal English speakers (such as the copy editors of the New Yorker) also use the diaresis (the double dot over a vowel). In English, it is used over the second of two vowels in a row which are voiced separately, such as naive (should have the double dot over the i) or cooperate (double dot over the second o). The distinction is between a word like coop (meaning a house for chickens) in which the two vowels make one sound and a word like cooperation, in which the two o's are separate sounds.
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