• rtxn@lemmy.worldM
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    2 days ago

    English is a horrible language full of ambiguity. F/LOSS is libre, but not necessarily gratis.

    • hakase@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      All natural human languages have ambiguity. English is no better or worse than any other.

      • OneMeaningManyNames@lemmy.mlBanned
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        2 days ago

        Ambiguity is inherent in all human languages, agreed. But English is one of the most fucked up languages, and in many ways different than most other languages.

        Possible reason: it is a hybrid language over-prescribed by racist and classist institutions, which currently serves as a lingua-franca and still rapidly evolves because of all the tech and marketing that happens in the US (in other words, what the fuck is a “slopometer”).

          • OneMeaningManyNames@lemmy.mlBanned
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            2 days ago

            Well, I look up the community, no posts. I look up your post history, your sole contributions are calls for a badlinguistics community, or calling out comments for being badlinguistics. I find your crusade rather amusing, and I am here to respond to any possible criticism you have about my greatlinguistics.

            • hakase@lemmy.zip
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              1 day ago

              While I fully realize that this response is probably a waste of my time, hopefully this comment will at least be useful to someone else reading the thread.

              English is one of the most fucked up languages, and in many ways different than most other languages.

              Imma need a source for this claim, as well as a useful definition of a “fucked up language”. Linguists unanimously agree that English is a mostly unremarkable language, outside of maybe its dummy-do support phenomena. Its /r/ phoneme is somewhat unusual, but nowhere near the least common sounds in human language.

              English is, linguistically speaking, a pretty boring language, all things considered.

              Possible reason: it is a hybrid language over-prescribed by racist and classist institutions, which currently serves as a lingua-franca and still rapidly evolves because of all the tech and marketing that happens in the US (in other words, what the fuck is a “slopometer”).

              English is not a hybrid language. There are some who have argued that it is a creole (see here), but that hypothesis has mostly fallen out of favor among modern linguists, and either way I highly doubt that as a .ml you want to say that English is fucked up because it’s a creole (implying that all other creoles are similarly “fucked up” languages, whatever that means).

              And, while English does have a large percentage of loanwords (over 70%), that’s nowhere near as many as, for example, Armenian, with more than 90% of its vocabulary being borrowings. Again, English is unremarkable here.

              Next, all human languages show the results of prescriptivism - English is, again, painfully boring.

              Hundreds of languages have served as linguae francae over the millennia - I don’t suppose you’d want to say that Swahili is a fucked up language just because it’s currently also a lingua franca? Once again, humans finding means to communicate is a universal linguistic phenomenon, and is not indicative of “fucked-up-edness”, whatever that is.

              Whether English (or any other language for that matter) evolves more quickly due to technology is a popular and divisive topic, with good evidence on both sides of the argument. It seems likely that tech does speed up some aspects of language change while also slowing down other aspects. Stating a conclusion here would be premature, but either way, this behavior is identical in all languages that see heavy tech use.

              “Slopometer” is a neologism, which, again, all natural human languages have.

              “/c/[insert_community_name]” is not necessarily linking that community, only invoking it to illustrate a point. “Badlinguistics” was a popular community on the other website for discussing comments like yours.

              Speaking of which, your comment is badlinguistics because it clearly shows a complete lack of familiarity with the modern scientific study of language. Everything you said was not only wrong, but immediately and obviously wrong to anyone who has taken even an introductory linguistics course.

              • OneMeaningManyNames@lemmy.mlBanned
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                1 day ago

                “/c/[insert_community_name]” is not necessarily linking that community, only invoking it to illustrate a point. “Badlinguistics” was a popular community on the other website for discussing comments like yours.

                Well here it is not that popular. It has two members and since you are not the mod, you are probably the one. Since there are no posts why don’t you write proper essays instead of attacking random people on Lemmy. I am not gonna respond to this shit.

                English is a human language, ok fucker? But it is an uncommon one, thus making it hard to generalize from English to other languages. This is well known in linguistics. I would bother to get you some quote, but I prefer to leave you seething here.

                • hakase@lemmy.zip
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                  1 day ago

                  Yeah, your comments here make it perfectly clear just how versed you are in what is and is not well known in linguistics.

                  • OneMeaningManyNames@lemmy.mlBanned
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                    1 day ago

                    How about Pinker? You dig Pinker? I am not delving in the books of this jester without a little wager. Just tell me any linguist you esteem, they probably state somewhere that English is a peculiar language. Then you’ll strip for Lemmy if you are wrong mf.

    • jaybone@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      Isn’t it usually the opposite, gratis (because if it’s open source, you could just build it yourself, unless there’s a proprietary build env or hosted env) but not necessarily libre (because of the license?)

      So wouldn’t gratis normally be the superset of libre.

      Then there’s a set of gratis but not open source… someone should do a venn diagram.

      • iopq@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I could potentially just say it costs money to use this software, but allow you to build it yourself if you don’t want to

        It’s called Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) in case you were wondering

          • iopq@lemmy.world
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            16 hours ago

            Okay, I’d have to think of a more pure example, but you get the idea. Downloads and support not free, but compile it yourself if you want

            • SparroHawc@lemmy.zip
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              7 hours ago

              Oh, there’s plenty of examples on mobile app stores. Since it costs to get your app on it, there’s a natural barrier to entry for FOSS - so the people who do put it up sometimes charge for it despite the source being readily available.

        • Grail@multiverse.soulism.net
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          2 days ago

          Wait, but persona non gratis can’t possibly mean a person who isn’t free as in beer, can it? You can’t have Me for free, I’ll only sell My sex for money.

          • jaybone@lemmy.zip
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            2 days ago

            Persona non grata means person not welcome.

            Gratis is free of charge, or you are welcome to take it.

            • OneMeaningManyNames@lemmy.mlBanned
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              2 days ago

              I am probably just old, but I remember the days when “free as in speech, not free as in beer” was enough explanation.

          • unwarlikeExtortion@lemmy.ml
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            2 days ago

            Actually, both “persona non grata” (latin has cases) and “gratis coffee/beer/bootloader” both make sense.

            Just convert the “x is gratis” into “you’re welcome to [relevant-action-verb] x”.

            As in, “The kernel is gratis” = “You’re free to [use] the Kernel” (which is basically “it’s free” in everyday english).

            For “Persona non grata” it would be “(You’re a) person not welcome (to [come] here)”.

            This is what it originally meant. It has nothing to do with price and everything to do with gratuity. I (a provider) am grateful to you and welcome you to use/come/see/do/whatever.

            “Gratis” would be the ketchup packet at McDonalds - they’re happy you paid for a burger so they’ll give you a ketcup packet as they’re grateful you did.