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The man who coined the word "robot" defends himself

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Re: The man who coined the word "robot" defends himself

#31

Post by tomashubelbauer »

siftrics wrote: post #25
pawelwentpawel wrote: post #17

When asking Google - what the etymology of the "robot" word is, the answer is from Czech word "robota" which is they translate as "forced labor". While I don't speak Czech, I speak Polish which is a close cousin. For years it didn't occur to me that "robot" and the shortened "bot" words have slavic etymology. In Polish "robić" means to do (carry out, perform etc.) something. "Robię kawę" means "I'm making a coffee" a…

In Russian, работа simply means "work" or "job" without any negative connotation.

Same with Polish, but in Czech where the word originates from, there is a difference and normal work is called "práce" not "robota" which is reserved for forced labor or as an in-jest name for work.

Re: The man who coined the word "robot" defends himself

#32

Post by trusz »

In Hungary we've learn about robot "jobs" in school. I am no expert but in serfdoms the peasants, who owned fields, had to work on the field of the lords for free. [1] I could only found the hungarian wiki page: https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igás_robot We have used the exact word "robot" in hungarian.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom

Re: The man who coined the word "robot" defends himself

#33

Post by j4yav »

arrowsmith wrote: post #13
xnorswap wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite a policy of "use original titles", the HN software automatically mangles titles. This is one of the more bizarre auto-editing of titles it does because of how pointless it feels. "The man who" is established English convention. "A man who" is changing the meaning for the sake of it without producing a clearer title. The person is unambiguously defined, so the definitive article is entirely correct. If the per…

Looks like it doesn't change all titles that start with "the", see e.g. these two from the current front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39066795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39082552 So it only changes "the man" to "a man"? (And I'm guessing also "the woman" to "a woman"?) I'm struggling to understand the reasoning here. Can someone give me an example of a title starting with "the man" which sound…

Sometimes a human also fixes them afterwards.

Re: The man who coined the word "robot" defends himself

#34

Post by lupire »

pawelwentpawel wrote: post #17

When asking Google - what the etymology of the "robot" word is, the answer is from Czech word "robota" which is they translate as "forced labor". While I don't speak Czech, I speak Polish which is a close cousin. For years it didn't occur to me that "robot" and the shortened "bot" words have slavic etymology. In Polish "robić" means to do (carry out, perform etc.) something. "Robię kawę" means "I'm making a coffee" a…

Speaking of Slavic etymology and robota, "slave" is derived from "Slav".

Re: The man who coined the word "robot" defends himself

#35

Post by robertlagrant »

> whose research interests arguably make her one of the most qualified people to write about Čapek’s perspective on robots. “The chemical robots in the form of microparticles that we designed and investigated, and that had properties similar to living cells, were much closer to Čapek’s original ideas than any other robots today,” Čejková explains in the book’s introduction

This doesn't sound right at all. The play's about synthetic humans taking over from humans and falling in love, not tiny chemical robots.

Re: The man who coined the word "robot" defends himself

#36

Post by wastewastewaste »

BossingAround wrote: post #29
pawelwentpawel wrote: post #17

When asking Google - what the etymology of the "robot" word is, the answer is from Czech word "robota" which is they translate as "forced labor". While I don't speak Czech, I speak Polish which is a close cousin. For years it didn't occur to me that "robot" and the shortened "bot" words have slavic etymology. In Polish "robić" means to do (carry out, perform etc.) something. "Robię kawę" means "I'm making a coffee" a…

In Czech, "robotnik" meant "serfs" and "robota" was the work that the serf was forced to do. Of course, nowadays, "robota" took the meaning of "a job" but that is not relevant to the etymology of the words.

We don't know when the word took on a new meaning though, serfdom in Austria Hungary was abolished 70 years before "robot" was first used

Re: The man who coined the word "robot" defends himself

#38

Post by bee_rider »

pawelwentpawel wrote: post #17

When asking Google - what the etymology of the "robot" word is, the answer is from Czech word "robota" which is they translate as "forced labor". While I don't speak Czech, I speak Polish which is a close cousin. For years it didn't occur to me that "robot" and the shortened "bot" words have slavic etymology. In Polish "robić" means to do (carry out, perform etc.) something. "Robię kawę" means "I'm making a coffee" a…

It is sort of funny that when shortening it in English, we ended up with “bot,” dropping the “ro,” which looks like the more important part of the word.

Re: The man who coined the word "robot" defends himself

#39

Post by Loughla »

bee_rider wrote: post #38
pawelwentpawel wrote: post #17

When asking Google - what the etymology of the "robot" word is, the answer is from Czech word "robota" which is they translate as "forced labor". While I don't speak Czech, I speak Polish which is a close cousin. For years it didn't occur to me that "robot" and the shortened "bot" words have slavic etymology. In Polish "robić" means to do (carry out, perform etc.) something. "Robię kawę" means "I'm making a coffee" a…

It is sort of funny that when shortening it in English, we ended up with “bot,” dropping the “ro,” which looks like the more important part of the word.

I'm betting it's because Rob as a shortened version doesn't work.
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