I can't tell if this is intended to be read straightforwardly or as satire. The general summary seems to be Labour bad because I dislike Labour decisions
Labour flaws are presented with hyperbole like [demolishing foundations]
While Tory flaws are accompanied with commentary like [it's not perfect, but nothing is]
"I'm getting Facebook ads for something we were just talking about verbally so it must be listening in" has been debunked time and again. Any combination of other browsing based inference, baader meinhof, and pure coincidence would be at play
I think that by "can guess fake words" in the title OP means that the tool can come up with a plausible guess for the etymology, even for fake words. Unfortunately, the more common reading of that phrase is that it can tell fake words from real ones
Agree. It does a good job at coming up with a plausible meaning of novel words like "multiarborality" → "the state of relating to many trees" but it doesn't indicate that this is a "fake" word even though I just made it up.
Doesn't look fake to me. English is not a closed-world language, as far as I know.
Between things like "verbing" and "nouning", and the cultural acceptance of doing them in casual speech, I'd say English is a great language because you get to "invent" new words on the fly, and your interlocutors know what you mean.
In this sense, even if no one before ever said or wrote "multiarborality", it's pretty clear what it means (as long as you don't misread it), and IMHO it's perfectly fine to derive its etymology by deconstructing it back to "common" words and pulling etymology on those, recursively.
1. English doesn’t really have an official regulation body, like French does.
2. The lack of cases and complex grammar. Any language with a case system is going to have more complexity when it comes to adding new words, because otherwise you end up with awkward looking constructions.
3. English itself is something of a hybrid between Latin and Germanic languages, which to my knowledge gives it a more diverse ancestry than the typical language. Ergo having a new word of dubious origins is more natural.
I won’t comment on the second reason, since that seems like something a linguist should address, but I don’t really buy the first and last reasons:
1. Doesn’t seem relevant, as we’re discussing making up a word in conversation and not putting it into dictionaries.
3. Especially in this globalised world, English loanwords are everywhere. No one bats an eye at it and plenty of languages distort those words to fit their own language. For example: when referring to an internet post you say you’re “posting”; another language would keep the “post” but replace the “ing” with the modifier appropriate for them.
1. Well I think perhaps then we could reverse it and just see the lack of a regulatory body as a symptom of a culture that cares less about following strict linguistic rules. Compared to French, which also has a ton of slang and experimentation, but notably the power structures underlying the language care enough about maintaining a standard.
3. Loanwords are everywhere but I think they are easier to incorporate into everyday speech in English than in some other languages, especially ones with case endings. A word like taco, for example, has become indistinguishable from other “native” English words. Taco in say, Polish, requires more thinking about how it fits into the case system and what endings should be used. It’s a more complicated process than in English.
It's not more complicated if you know the language.
Language is a tool. People will use their language for what they need it for. If there isn't a word they'll make one up or steal it. This is absolutely universal. I know you can dig up any number of texts that say English is special, but they're all wrong.
"Languages differ not in what they can express, but in what they must express" as Roman Jakobson phrased it. (The "must express" refers to grammar - in some languages you need a subject, or to know the time something happened, or in which direction[0] it happened. Other languages don't care, but you can add that information if you need it.)
[0] E.g. Mam, spoken in Guatemala, marks all verbs for direction, even if they're abstract, then you add one based on convention or metaphor or maybe taste.
I still disagree but I think this would be too hard to discuss over asynchronous text. You have some arguments I’d like to explore and spend some back and forth trying to understand your point and explaining mine better, but unfortunately have stuff to still do today.
Still, I want to thank you for the polite and reasoned replies. I wish we were having this conversation in person, I’m confident it would’ve been interesting.
Loanwords are a different thing, IMHO - even those where some language would take the root and localize the verbing part. In loanwords, you're still actually lending a "real" word from English, one you'd find in an English dictionary. That's a distinct thing from ad-hoc inventing new words that are not in the dictionary and not intended to end up in one - words meant to exist for the duration of a conversation or some engagement, or within the scope of some work.
It is my impression that introducing such ad-hoc words in English is something people wouldn't bat an eye on, while in other languages/cultures I'm familiar with, it'd be something Serious that you probably shouldn't do unless absolutely necessary.
I bet you could, but in the other languages I know, I believe it would be frowned upon. The cultural acceptance of this feature is just as important as the feature itself.
Conversely, in the other languages I know I see it happening all the time. I don’t think frowning on it has to do with the language, but with the person. There are sticklers and SNOOTs¹ everywhere, even in English.
"An expansion of the 2020 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award winning story. Arboreality is a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award and the winner of the 2023 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction."
"Flonkers: A made-up word, likely humorous". Aren't all words made up? Edit: This one, unlike my previous example, is actually in use - flonkers: an animal that looks fat but is actually just fluffy.
Yeah I just filled in "inbreathiate", which should be a fake / made up word but this tool generates a meaning anyway... which is also neat, but the "can guess fake words" description isn't accurate.
At least it did say "slartibartfast" was a fictional character.
> They are a net positive by a large margin
Maybe initially. The 'large' margin is getting smaller every day. Pricing is opaque and ever increasing. A subscription is slowly becoming a requirement rather than a ln add on. Most of the price increases are not passed on to the driver. Drivers in most markets are 'independent contractors', which they're realising is a bad deal.
They've only recently moved from market-capture mode to tighten-the-screw mode. Expect the enshittification to accelerate
As a UK resident who's recently given up alcohol, the pub culture part is the thing I miss the most. The quick pseudo-answer is non-alcoholic drinks, but it creates a weird dynamic when most of the group gets slowly inebriated over the evening, and you sip lemonade
I've never drunk and find pubs awkward and generally un-fun. Some of that is I maybe want one small soft drink a day at most anyway, and I'm quickly just standing/sitting without a drink, worrying I've got nothing to say, and seeing no good reason to be there. 100% on me, and I only mention it as context to the below:
I've seen a lot of people drinking the modern zero/low alcohol beers (lucky saint maybe?) and it largely just works. They're happy, and get to engage feeling pretty much like normal. Obviously if the goal is to get drunk quickly then it sucks, but observationally you've got a fair few rounds before it appears to be a barrier.
I've been looking for something like this (Not for Korean though) and I'd even be happy to pay - though I'd prefer to pay by usage rather than a standing subscription fee.
So far, no luck, but watching this thread!
Must be something to do with our situation? Basically both I and my partner just got told we were making fraudulent accounts. Used our real names, emails, phone numbers and same result. Used multiple other phone numbers to see if they were blacklisted for some reason, nope. Used my mother’s WiFi in case it was something to do with IP, nope. Tried from India with an Indian phone, nope.
BetterTouchTool has a different approach, it's not a programming language per se, but lets you write JavaScript or AppleScript code to achieve anything you can do with AutoHotkey, and more. If BTT were available for Windows, I'd never touch AHK again.
Yes, AHK is "lower level" regarding input tracking, so in KM left vs right modifiers aren't properly supported (though there are hackarounds that can make it work)
Then the sripting language is easier for batch editing and various permutations with proper functions and variables (though again KM can be partially hacked around to make it easier)
Labour flaws are presented with hyperbole like [demolishing foundations] While Tory flaws are accompanied with commentary like [it's not perfect, but nothing is]