The Gyllenhaal Experiment • Hacker News Board

js2 wrote: post #37

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you spell bureau? Maybe you can make a mnemonic, how are you with spelling burette? A crazy person is using a burette with a gold (Au) end, extruding a 3D wireframe model of a desk (bureau): Bure(tte)+au+crazy ... and hopefully you can remember where the final "c" goes.

I cannot spell bureau. It trips me up even typing it. Maybe this is the thread that will have finally jammed it into my brain. I'll get back to you in a week or so. :-)

> I cannot spell bureau. It trips me up even typing it.

If it makes you feel any better, it trips me up reading it; I had to do 3 takes before my brain accepted that those letters were a word, and I still can't tell how to pronounce it. I suspect the problem is "eau"; that is a lot of vowels together for an English speaker.

Re: The Gyllenhaal Experiment

#97

Post by mirimir » Tue, Feb 26, 2019, 6:22 AM UTC

Splines wrote: post #93

mirimir wrote: post #92

The site doesn't work in Firefox or Midori.

I realize this is probably not helpful for you, but it works on my machine. FF 65.0.1 on Win10.

Thanks. I have Firefox 60.3.0esr (64-bit) in Debian jessie. So maybe it's the age, or that I block WebGL. Or maybe spoofing referrer. Or blocking local storage. Or something else about NoScript.

Re: The Gyllenhaal Experiment

#98

Post by jgtrosh » Tue, Feb 26, 2019, 7:24 AM UTC

zepearl wrote: post #40

js2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently the two years of French I took in high school didn't help me with my English either. :-(

7 years french => I keep screwing up "Peugeot" (cars)

Including Renault we now have 2 weird ways to spell the O sound in French (eau, eo) and 1 weird silent pair of consonants (lt).

Re: The Gyllenhaal Experiment

#99

Post by jgtrosh » Tue, Feb 26, 2019, 7:25 AM UTC

alanfranz wrote: post #83

jaza wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I love about Spanish. There is this iron-clad rule that everything is spelt exactly as it's pronounced. Compared to English (or French), it's so ridiculously easy that (I sometimes think to myself) it must be a toy, not an actual human language. And when they borrow words from other (not phonetic) languages, they just say "to hell with that spelling", and spell it in a perfectly logical way themselves.

There is an actual rule from the Real Academia that says that you can spell some imported words either as they are meant to in the original language, or as they are written. Many times they just adapt their writing, eg leader -> líder, but when an actual English word happens in Spain.. good luck at recognizing it! It took me about one hour to understand which band we were talking about. The Eagles was spelt like 'los…

I have a buddy in Spain called something like “jébi”. Took me a while to understand it's supposed to mean “heavy” as in “heavy metal”.

Re: The Gyllenhaal Experiment

#100

Post by esolyt » Tue, Feb 26, 2019, 8:57 AM UTC

cannam wrote: post #10

Oh that was disappointing - I hadn't heard of one of them so I hit what I thought was the "skip" button, and it took me straight to the results of all of the questions without letting me try any of the rest. I realise that this is because I am stupid - there is a warning, but I thought it was just warning me I wouldn't be able to try that question again, not that I wouldn't be able to try any of them. (It said that y…

No, you're not stupid.

"Skip" implies moving to the next item "Skip to results" is a confusing way to phrase it. I guess "Go to results" would've made more sense. Weirdly, the actual skip button is labeled "Show Me Another".

Apparently, it happened to a lot of people. It's bad UX in an otherwise amazingly designed article.