Falsehoods programmers believe about languages

[Guest]

@TrickDacy @rimu another example is Irish, which I've heard claim as an explanation for Irish English also contains more of "it is/isn't" and such constructs in favour of yes no.

Another European example is Finnish which has yes but not no. You want me to go on?

[darklamer@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

Now there you have one more pet peeve of mine, language preference settings that pretend that all language versions are equal, that shitty translations aren't abundant. If the original text is in a language that I can read then I want the original, not some shitty translation. It shouldn't be that hard!

[giooschi@lemmy.world]

Even in english this isn't true, for example dots can appear inside a sentence for multiple reasons (a decimal number, an abbreviation, a quotation, three dots, etc, etc), which would make you split it into more than one piece.

[peoplebeproblems@midwest.social]

It would be a useful way to predict it possibly, but presumably the author meant if you have support for localization, you also provide an obvious and easy means of changing the language.

More importantly, you should be using the language an existing user has already used in the past.

[30p87@feddit.org]

And I always want the english version instead of the german version, despite me being german. Literally only google fucks that up. Every other site, even the small local german Uni website or the canteens meal site, respects my browsers setting. Google does not, and serves me german.

[fluckx@lemmy.world]

Geolocation is an accurate way to predict the user’s language.

This makes me so angry. It really really really really really does.

Despite setting everything to English I still get my receipts in French. And all because my IP is CG-NAT to the capital which is marked as french speaking.

What is so hard about letting me decide. The absolute fucking arrogance thinking you as a company know better than me in which language I would like to be served.

Eat a dick Microsoft.

[Guest]

My wife is Vietnamese, so I have a basic grasp of it, but they don't really have a word for yes.
The verb itself is used to answer the question.
Want something to drink? Drink.
Want to go to the park? Go.

They have a word for no, but as you can probably ascertain, it's only for the negative.

[threeme2189@sh.itjust.works]

Arabic doesn't have a word for "yes".

(Yes) in Arabic is نعم pronounced as (Na'am) or ( Na ع m) & this is the word which most people use in all Arab countries . The Arabic dialect word for (Yes) is ايوة or ايوا pronounced as (Aywa)and also used by all Arabs.

[addie@feddit.uk]

Scottish Gaelic doesn't have 'yes' or 'no' - you answer with the positive or negative form of the verb used in the question.

http://www.gaidhliggachlatha.com/blog-mios-na-gaidhlig/how-to-say-yes-and-no-in-scottish-gaelic

[Guest]

@2xsaiko @TehPers there's other examples too. E.g. Thai has no spaces between words but spaces between phrases/sentences. However the spaces between phrases involve style choices similar to comma in English and many other Latin script writing systems. Also, Thai may have spaces around abbreviations special characters.

I'm quite familiar with Thai so that's close at hand but I guess it's the same in a lot of other writing systems based on Brahmic scripts.

[hddsx@lemmy.ca]

Jesus. I mistyped that horrendously to make a point about !0

I read my comment just now waking up and went wtf

[bizdelnick@lemmy.ml]

There are perfect guidelines on preparing translatable strings in the GNU gettext documentation.

[nostradavid@programming.dev]

Until you use exit codes, which flips the logic.

[vivendi@lemmy.zip]

Persian is a perfectly neutral language. Some westerners apparently struggle with understanding how we speak out language. We also don't have an equivalent to "The"

[laggykar@programming.dev]

It's not even that, there are multiple languages spoken in the same region. Webpages should just use the language the browser tells it to use.

[Guest]

Can they answer “not no”?

[schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de]

I think Latin doesn't really have words for yes and no.

[schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de]

yup I too remember getting YouTube ads in Hungarian when I was there as a tourist - despite not understanding Hungarian at all and watching videos only in other languages, they really ought to know that

[schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de]

There are languages that don't have the concept of "punctuation" at all.

[Guest]

Another European example is Finnish which has yes but not no.

No in Finnish is ei, similar to Estonian ei or Swedish nej.