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  1. A little-appreciated benefit of (British) English speakers learning a european language: you can look up recipes in that language and be guaranteed that they’ll use metric units

  2. ↪ Aaron Parecki: hot take: Dutch is basically German with a funny accent

    I’ve gotten through entire (admittedly short) conversations in dutch just by speaking german in a dutchey way. It’s not just a weird version of german though, they have some (adorable) words of their own too!

  3. ↪ Quinn "kind of here" Norton: I've never liked gendered they/them because it introduces ambiguity in plurality. So I have an idea, hear me out. We already use single sound vowel pronouns with no problem, I & (kinda) You, so they're already natural in English. So just take they and them and strip the TH...

    although I’m not convinced that the singular/plural ambiguity is a big problem. “you” already has ambiguous quantity, and both “you” and “we” are inherently ambiguous and context-dependent

  4. ↪ Quinn "kind of here" Norton: I've never liked gendered they/them because it introduces ambiguity in plurality. So I have an idea, hear me out. We already use single sound vowel pronouns with no problem, I & (kinda) You, so they're already natural in English. So just take they and them and strip the TH...

    as a staunch “they” proponent, I’d say it’s not a bad idea. I’d type ey/em/eir and pronounce [eɪ] [ɛm] [eə]. Possible use singular verb conjugation too for reduced ambiguity e.g. “ey wants to be referred to using “ey””

  7. Tried watching Türkisch für Anfänger for German practice and learned two things: my hearing comprehension is much worse than I anticipated, and Lena is really, really annoying.

  8. about Songlines, an indigenous Australian belief which serves as a communication and navigation tool. Songlines, as well as much other aboriginal culture, seems to be fascinating supporting evidence for the thesis of The Singing Neanderthals — that proto-language was made up of holistic (no grammar), multi-modal communications utilising metaphor and mimickry.

  9. Noticed an English pronunciation habit: I say “the” as [ði] (thee) when the word afterwards starts with a vowel, and [ðə] (thuh) when the next word starts with a consonant.

  12. ↪ Erin Jo Richey: This is relevant to my interests. "Share: the icon no one agrees on." https://bold.pixelapse.com/minming/share-the-icon-no-one-agrees-on

    @erinjo perhaps the difficulty in creating an effective icon stems from the fact that the physical metaphors associated with “share” do not map well to the online behaviour associated with the term, allowing the word to be used successfully but making giving it an image a challenge.

    My theory: the most basic usage of “share” generally refers to organising mutual access to some resource between pre-determined, consenting participants (he shared his food with him, she shared her connection with her coworkers, the schools shared a playing field). This holds for more abstract non-physical use of “share”, as in “she shared her story”, ”they shared a secret”.

    In some cases (e.g. private messaging [where the verb “message” or “send” would more often be used] or posting to a group) the “known participants” facet holds up, but not so much the pre-determination and/or mutual consent/awareness present in the physical examples — unless for example the context is an online group set up explicitly for the sharing of links to resources about a topic.

    In the common case of “sharing” as it’s characterised online (posting a short text post containing a link and optionally some comment, typically with a link preview, broadcast to a wide audience on a whim with no mutual pre-determination), not much of the original metaphor holds up, and I’d argue that “post” is a more suitable term (“publish” less so as its use connotes posting of a thought-out original work).

    None of this is backed up by actual data though — I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on it.

  13. Just booked a trip on a flying metal box, then spent two minutes saying “ineliminable” over and over because it’s so fun to say.

    Yep, totally a responsible adult. Totally.

  15. Reading Lakoff+Johnson on time metaphors, wondering if the way we use the two main inconsistent metaphors (time as objects passing by a stationary observer vs time as a landscape through which an observer passes) has personality side effects, as one is a metaphor where the observer is helpless, whereas in the other the observer is in control.

  20. speakers: is there a German word for German words for concepts for which there isn’t an equivalent in English/x other language? (bonus points if that word describes itself)