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Subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language

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Re: Subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language

#101

Post by yakubin »

carlosjobim wrote: post #95
yakubin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People in 24h cultures always use 12 analog hours in normal situations No, we don't. The only person I know who by default uses 12h is my grandmother. Everybody else always uses 24h.

I've never heard anybody from a 24h country use 24h unless it's regarding situations where there cannot be any ambiguity. You either live in an exceptional place, or interact with exceptional people. World you really say "At fifteen o'clock" instead of "At three o'clock" or "Three in the afternoon"?

Yes.

Re: Subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language

#102

Post by cratermoon »

cubefox wrote: post #44
matsemann wrote: post #5

I'm a but wary in general about how US tech used around the world slowly erodes the nuances of different cultures. Often the software doesn't take into account how things work in other languages, different regions etc. I'm also not sure I'd blame the engineers in SV too much, of course they design software based on their own context. But with tech becoming global, it's a bit sad how it's not prioritized more. Example…

A lot of those points also apply to other European countries. Though regarding the quotation marks, that seems to be more the fault of the local keyboard layouts. I don't understand why German keyboards don't have the keys to write „ord“. MS Word relies on a software solution to automatically convert "ord" into the German format, but most software (like browsers) understandably don't bother with implementing such rep…

>> Other than in English-speaking countries and some Spanish-speaking countries, the terms a.m. and p.m. are seldom used and often unknown.

I did not know that. The terms are from the Latin ante meridiem and post meridiem (meridiem, midday, ante before, post after) so it seemed logical to me that any Romance language would have them. But then, English is not a Romance language (but borrowed heavily from them) so, chalk another one up to English being an absolute mess.

Re: Subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language

#103

Post by kqr »

karaterobot wrote: post #47

Pretty thin soup here. Basically, the argument comes down to grammar and spelling suggestions, and then a couple of other features like document templates. I would need stronger evidence to believe that Word's grammar suggestions have empirically affected the language people use—outside Word itself, possibly. It would be much more tenable to say that Word influences how people write Word documents, but they seem to b…

As far as myself go, predictive typing systems have a definitive effect on how I write (qualitatively and stylometrically), and this is the reason I avoid them.

I want to use the words in my head, not the ones in the machine. At least until recently it's not been up to par.

Re: Subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language

#104

Post by wayfinder »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #93
sshine wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s similarly comical how video-recorded board meetings will have grown-up people hold woke signs while others recite from library books with controversial wording, everyone starts shouting, and they get escorted off property for reading aloud the book (available to kids). It feels like the US is overstretching its own diversity. Maybe it’s just as bad some places in Europe, and it just doesn’t get televised.

> It feels like the US is overstretching its own diversity. Something about this line is bothering me. In the US, we're very diverse sure, but also that diversity comes with deep history of violence, struggle, systemic oppression, etc. To many, current movements might come off like they're overstepping, but so much about our culture is so deeply steeped in the opposite. So much of our daily life has been structured a…

Nah I agree with OP

The problem isn’t the deep history of discrimination. I consider that something that created a lot of growth.

The problem is discrimination is natural and it is only fought with diversity but there is no such place that is truly diverse.

I live in, by world standards, a diverse part of the LA metro area. Except there’s like no Black people. Now if I go to a more Black-dominated part of LA, there might not be Koreans. Now if I take the entirety of LA, it will have both Black people and Koreans and maybe you could call it diverse? Except there will be very few Nigerians or Kazakhstanis.

The issue is that I cannot speak for Nigerians or Kazakhstanis however hard I try. It’s like an electrician who just read some books but has never worked with an actual electrician. My attempts to accommodate a group of people I don’t know will be completely fake. They will know I don’t know a single Nigerian or Kazakhstani.

So when people try to be woke, it usually comes from that level of inexperience. It’s not real diversity. It’s that electrician trying their best but doing it all wrong.

Re: Subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language

#105

Post by cratermoon »

crazygringo wrote: post #73
cubefox wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of those points also apply to other European countries. Though regarding the quotation marks, that seems to be more the fault of the local keyboard layouts. I don't understand why German keyboards don't have the keys to write „ord“. MS Word relies on a software solution to automatically convert "ord" into the German format, but most software (like browsers) understandably don't bother with implementing such rep…

> why German keyboards don't have the keys to write „ord“ I'm assuming for the same reason American/English keyboards don't have the keys to write “place”, just "place". Which is because American/English typewriters didn't -- they invented straight quotes to save extra keys. And looking up on Google Images, it looks like German typewriters were the same -- Shift+2 was a straight double quote. It's my personal opinion…

On the MacBook keyboard with US or CA input, you can get “” with option left bracket/left curly brace and ‘’ with option right bracket/right curly brace. With a little practice it's not that much harder to do. I'm still not quite up to speed with it, but it's nice. Should contractions also use ’?

Now you know.

Re: Subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language

#106

Post by Kwpolska »

> While it would be an overstatement to say Word alone made English the dominant language, as a US firm, Microsoft's mother-tongue is American-English. When this is coupled with Word’s ubiquity, it at least reinforces this dominance.

> "Word primarily operates in English," says Noël Wolf, a linguistic expert at the language learning platform Babbel. "As businesses become increasingly global, the widespread use of Word in professional and technical fields has led to the borrowing of English terms and structures, which contribute to the trend of linguistic homogenisation."

Uh, what? Microsoft Word is available in dozens of languages, with spell checking available. I was able to find a copy of Word 3.0 (1986) in German on a certain well-known old-software site. If you tell modern Word your text is in German, it will underline non-English words, and if you tell it your text is in British English, it will probably complain about your mention of your "favorite color".

Re: Subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language

#107

Post by FFP999 »

> While it would be an overstatement to say Word alone made English the dominant language, as a US firm, Microsoft's mother-tongue is American-English.

As if American movies, music, and TV weren't already a major export when Gates was practically still in diapers.

Re: Subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language

#108

Post by cratermoon »

mcpackieh wrote: post #79
chrismorgan wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A funny/sad aspect of it is that I get the impression that violation of the /^(? \S+) (? \S+) (? \S+)$/ custom isn’t even all that rare in the USA because it’s still moderately common to reuse names and add ordinals, a practice which has largely fallen out of practice in other English-first countries (so that violation of the convention has become rarer in them, though certainly there are other deviations—e.g. I have…

I also know Americans who go by their middle names because everybody in the family has the same first name, with the first name turned into an initial before their middle name. Usually software can handle this by entering "J Bob" in the first name field, but not always. Sometimes software asks for first name and middle name separately, and then you know you're going to have trouble because another system thinks "J Bo…

Names are not strings. Until software developers get that through their heads, the situation is going to stay broken.

I consulted on a project for a US-based airline. The horror show that is Sabre infests everything, and Sabre doesn't understand any character that didn't exist in six-bit BCD

Re: Subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language

#109

Post by AtlasBarfed »

sshine wrote: post #31
didntcheck wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one that always gets me is how Google's image captcha assumes everyone knows what American school buses, fire hydrants, crosswalks, and various other street features look like. As a youngish EU citizen I do know those from cartoons and the internet, but I doubt my parents do > Or how things are moderated to an US standard It's just comical how adults on Youtube talking about adult topics are pressured into censor…

It’s similarly comical how video-recorded board meetings will have grown-up people hold woke signs while others recite from library books with controversial wording, everyone starts shouting, and they get escorted off property for reading aloud the book (available to kids). It feels like the US is overstretching its own diversity. Maybe it’s just as bad some places in Europe, and it just doesn’t get televised.

The actual substantive issues of racism and diversity have actually been brilliantly taken over by the ultra-rich and political powers that be. What's the real giveaway? Corporations LOVE talking about them.

In the social media massively distributed bullhorn industry, these issues are used to create a distracting perma-debate that both parties can employ and divide for their needed political support. But notice that the debates never center on the most important diversity issue: the fact that the rich have almost all the money, is squeezing everyone, and the squeezing appears as fissures along racial and ethnic lines.

Basically, non-whites basically are saying "hey we need money and investment from white people". Which is true! 99% of nonwhite communities need massive investment.

But white people say "we don't have any money". Which is true! Because the white middle class is gone, the upper middle class is now being hollowed out, and generational warfare has left most young "upper class" white people as well as the once-middle-class whites completely laden with loans. So 90% of whites don't have money, and THEY need investment.

So where's the money? Oh ... right.

Re: Subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language

#110

Post by neilkk »

VeninVidiaVicii wrote: post #39
vasdae wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>ChatGPT can output in my language, but the language is stiff and feels off. I'm Spanish and I'm tired of American companies pretending only Mexican Spanish exists.

Same with European Portuguese, I can’t actually use Siri or any voice controlled software because I refuse to speak in Brazilian Portuguese. It is so unnatural (frankly I don’t know how), I would just prefer to speak English.

Fewer than 5% of native speakers are Portuguese...
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