81–90 of 422 posts
Here's a country changing their alphabet to boost their international compatibility... now if only the US would switch to the metric system.
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> I speak English only. That's the problem right there. Speaking only one language is super limiting.
If you are going to pick just one, English is a pretty good choice, because there are few places you can go where absolutely nobody speaks it.
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Those dreams of glorious pasts are usually very self-defeating (lots of costly police actions in former colonys) with no visibile reward - and thus not half as dangerous as internalized past injustices. Nazi Germany, Japan, and alot of other countrys got drunk on the injustices of the past and used them to justify atrocities in neighbouring countrys. If it were not for the nukes, alot of those nationalist movements w…
I don't know what that means - Dr. Temperance Brennan
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If you are going to pick just one, English is a pretty good choice, because there are few places you can go where absolutely nobody speaks it.
You typically do not get to pick the language of the place you are born in.
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https://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ng%C3%B4_%C4%90%C3%ACnh_Di%E1%... Can you make out anything in this article other than personal names?
I think that for languages that didn't get adapted into english, the 'similar word' effect is essentially missing - it really only works for romance languages and maybe the odd germanic word. However, if I had a dictionary or something, that article would be much easier to translate than, say, Japanese (or Mandarin, or really any language where writing involves a large number of symbols). I'm not sure that that appli…
Technical words, recent inventions, sports and brand names tend to be straightforward transliterations. Plus more are borrowed. Take Russian words like диносавр, Макдоналдс, киоск, and гамбургер. You probably have no idea what they mean, but the direct transliterations are dinosavr, Makdonalds, kiosk, and gamburger are a little easier to guess?
Not every word by any means. For example refrigerator is холодильник (roughly xolodinьik though the initial sound is not in English). Which literally translates as "cold making thing". But enough to be helpful more often than you'd guess.
I'm ethnical Russian living in Kazakhstan and I think that it's not a very wise decision. As correctly written in the article, overwhelming majority of Kazakhstani citizens speak and write Russian well. I just don't see any point with this change, but costs are tremendous, you have to rewrite every single book including learning books, you have to replace every street plate. When overwhelming majority of people speak…
I'm ethnical Russian living in Kazakhstan and I think that it's not a very wise decision. As correctly written in the article, overwhelming majority of Kazakhstani citizens speak and write Russian well. I just don't see any point with this change, but costs are tremendous, you have to rewrite every single book including learning books, you have to replace every street plate. When overwhelming majority of people speak…
I don't think Canada is a great example, since the vast majority of native French speakers are located in only one region. There is a stronger case for English Spanish bilingualism in the US than French English in Canada. With Kazakhstan, I can totally see the case for equal status of Russian.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those dreams of glorious pasts are usually very self-defeating (lots of costly police actions in former colonys) with no visibile reward - and thus not half as dangerous as internalized past injustices. Nazi Germany, Japan, and alot of other countrys got drunk on the injustices of the past and used them to justify atrocities in neighbouring countrys. If it were not for the nukes, alot of those nationalist movements w…
I don't know what that means - Dr. Temperance Brennan
That's more appropriate for other Internet forums, as HN seems to value substantive discussions rather than pop-culture references and one-liners.
Next, the US will try to adopt the metric system (again).
and they should. Also please get rid of DST while you are at it.
"The federal government controls the nation’s time zones, as well as the start and end dates of daylight saving time. States can choose to exempt themselves from daylight saving time — Arizona and Hawaii do — but nothing in federal law allows them to exempt themselves from standard time."
Florida is attempting to be on DST all year round.