Ask Lemmy

In Russian to say "I saw a video" sounds like "Ia VIDel VIDeo" which just sounds stupid too. Everytime I say it I have to rollback, find a synonym, and repeat the sentence in less stupid way

Oh no, the most I’ve dealt with a similar problem is knowing when to use porque vs. por que in Spanish. I still don’t know

The fact that it can be read so many different ways depending on the accent. I have a different accent than those around me, and it's inevitable to feel expectations violated.

Apparently people also find it funny when I say the word "envelope". "Hey it's Leni, say envelope" they might say, maybe with me responding "guys, I'm not a freaking circus seal" like Jango Fett has a secret pet in denial.

So in German we have these weird symbols: äßöü one of them is even in my name. In my opinion they are not necessary and cause more trouble that they are worth.

UTF 8 has alleviated some of the pain. However I still regularly find documents encoded in old character encodings and I have to manually fix all these accents.

I also have one of them in my name. In the past in school a SYS-Admin entered my name with an ö instead of the alternate form oe. All was fine. I was about 13yo, so I had no idea about backups and didn't care. I stored all my files on their NAS. One day they had drive failures and could recover all data except from students with accents in their name. I don't know what shitty software they used but I am still annoyed at this.

We also have das,dass which I always get wrong while writing texts.

There are some good things. The time forms can be pretty fun to use.

All in all German is a 6/10 for me could be better could be worse.

All the French that's embedded in it. Stupid Normans making it sound weird if I go to a restaurant and order pig.

Actually, I find the french and double dose of viking influence quite fascinating. English etymology is a wild ride!

It's becoming more common in English for people to say "whenever" when it should just be "when." It's like nails on a chalkboard when I hear it used wrong like that

English is not my native but I hate how they just assemble bunch of words together to make a single adjective out of it, and you can't know that until the very end. It gets obvious how stupid this is if I replace all whitespace with commas.

A desktop, computer, environment.

Air, missile.

Air, plane.

Pocket, record, player.

Water, beer, pong, table, thong. Okey I made this one up

English's acceptance of old world spellings and superfluous letters. Everything should be spelled phonetically and consistently, and we should change the alphabet to get rid of confusion. Here's my suggestions:

1. Everything is spelled phonetically. No exceptional letter rules, and names are included.
2. Vowels change sound with an accent, not a silent e or modifier. So Kate is now Kāt. Vote is Vōt.
3. C can always be replaced with an S or K, so now it makes the CH sound. So cat is kat, chase is cās.
4. X is bullshit and doesn't mean anything, so we'll use the Mayan version and now it makes the SH sound.
5. Y can always be replaced with an i or e, so we'll go old English and now it makes the TH sound.
6. The -ed and -er sounds don't need the E. It doesn't do anything.
7. Double letters are unnecessary , so now the vowel sound of U,(ū) makes the oo sound. The original sound is now ēū, as in kēūkumbr.
8. G is now a vowel. Put a line on top for the J sound.
9. Since j is now unnecessary, it makes the French J sound, or DZh. We don't us it much but it's nice to have.
10. Since ū has changed, it can now replace W, ūic kan bē asīnd ā nū soūnd låtr az nēd bē.
11. Z is on thin fucking ice, but for now it'll replace soft s' where it's used. Or ēūzd, if ū ūil. It will be the difference between prōnoūns and prōnoūnz.

So naū anē budē kan prōnoūns anē ūrd imēdēetlē, and nō ūun ūil sā unuyr nām rong. Yis haz Ben mī Ted Tok.

Hmm, could probably use a long a letter. Tok doesn't feel right. Maybe the French ê?

I'm not sure about the NG sound. Maybe J is also a vowel, and G accented is NG? I'm open to suggestions. Sugjestxunz.

Edit: also dates. It should be YYYY/MM/DD. Categories should always go from least to most specific.

On that subject, even though it's not language specific, we should have thirteen four week months with names that make sense. Every date of every year is the same day, planning ahead and due dates are simple. It makes 364 days, so new years day and leap year are extra special holiday days, nobody works or buys anything. If you have an emergency on one of those days, and can't make it til Sunday the first, yo either call an acquaintance who can help, or lose and die. Sorry mate. Buy three days worth of food on Saturday the 28th of Thirtember. Hope the power doesn't go out. Or move the free day to July, which is now called September.