You would HATE being a person who could read in the Middle English era. There was no standardized spelling, people used many different conventions/regional spellings, and it was mostly either phonetic spelling or random French bullshit. Also some earlier writers used really conservative spelling to emulate Old English. It was the wild west out there.

For example, here’s a (not comprensive) list of the variant spellings you may see for each second person pronoun:

Singular Nominative 2P:

thou, thoue, thow, thowe, thu, thue, þeu, þeou, thouȝ, thugh, thogh, ðhu; þou, þoue, þow, þowe, þu, þue, þouȝ, þugh, þogh, þo

(after alveolars and in contractions): tou, towe, touȝ, tu, to, te

Singular Objective 2P:

the, thee, thei, thi, thie, thy, ðe, de, þeo, þhe, yhe, ye, þe, þee, þi, þy

(after alveolars and in contractions): te

Singular Genitive, Dative, and Possessive 2P:

(usually before consonants): thi, thy, thei, they, yhi, yi, þhi; þei, þey, þy

(usually before vowels and “h”): thin, thyn, thine, thyne, thien, thyen, thein, theyn, thinne, yin; þin, þyn, þine, þyne, þinne; þines

(female referent): þinre, þire, þinen

(after “t” or “d”): ti, ty, tin, tyn, tine, tines

Plural Nominative 2P:

ye, yee, yeȝ, yhe, yie, iye, iȝe, hye, hie; ȝe, ȝee, ȝhe, ȝie, ȝeo; ge, gie, geo

Plural Objective 2P:

you, yow, youe, yowe, yo, yoe, yogh, yau, yaw, yeu, yew, yhu, yu, yw, yhow, yhou; ȝou, ȝow, ȝouȝ, ȝowȝ, ȝowe, ȝo, ȝu, ȝw, ȝuw, ȝue, ȝiou, ȝeu, ȝew, ȝewe, ȝau, ȝaw, ȝhou, ȝiu, ȝeou, ȝehw, ȝhowe; gou, gu, giu, geu, geau; ou, owe, eou, eow, eow, eo, eu, euwȝ, æu, hou, heou, heu

Plural Genitive & Dative 2P:

your, youre, yowr, yowre, ȝour, ȝoure yowyr, yowur, yor, yur, yure, yeur, yhure, yhour, yhoure; ȝowyr, ȝowur, ȝor, ȝore, ȝur, ȝure, ȝiore, ȝhour, ȝhoure, ȝaure, ȝiure, ȝiwer, ȝeur, ȝeure, ȝeuer, ȝeuwer, ȝewer, ȝewere; gur, gure, giur, giure, giuor, giuer, giuwer, giwer; ihore, ihoire, iure, eour, eoure, eouer, eouwer, eouwere, eower, eowwer, eore, eur, eure, euwer, euwere, eowrum, æure, our, oure, or, ore, ouer, ouwer, ouwere, ower, owur, hour

(early ME): þinen (genitive), þinum (dative), þirum (dative fem.)

Plural Possessive 2P:

youres, yourez, yours, youris, yurs, yowres, yowris, yowrys, yourn, youren; ȝours, ȝoures, ȝouris, ȝourys, ȝowers, ȝores, ȝures, ȝuris, ȝhurs, ȝourn, ȝouren; eowræs

You can find a lot more about Middle English spellings in LALME (A Linguistics Atlas of Late Mediæval English) (electronic version here)

Some of the more innovative spellings come from Northern Middle English/Northumbria (northern England and southern Scotland, though the dialects of the latter would largely split off and develop mostly on its own in the early stages of Middle English and become Scots) and to a lesser extent Midlands Middle English/Mercian, in large part due to significant past influence of North Germanic/Scandinavian languages; i.e., Old Norse, which was somewhat mutually intelligible with Old English and caused/progressed both the loss of inflections and the formation & solidification of Modern English syntax (in particular, Old English syntax shifted to become near-identical to Old Norse syntax; Old English also entirely lost inflection of grammatical gender, grammarical case, etc. and adopted many core vocabulary of Old Norse). Those changes happened primarily to facilitate communication with vikings in the Danelaw, since Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians were very eager to communicate with each other; things like declensions were very different in the two languages (the 12 different declensions of “the” probably weren’t fun to deal with for Scandinavians), so Old English speakers started omitting or simplifying them, and they mostly died off in (early) Middle English. English also completely lost dual pronouns (pronouns with exactly 2 referents). Word order was primarily SVO in Old Norse, so Old English’s relatively liberal word order (or lack of consistent word order) was simplified/regularized significantly to be more SVO.

Southern Middle English – the dialects of West Saxon and Kent – were significantly more conservative (partly due to having next to no influence from Norse). Those are where many more conservative spellings are from. The West Saxon dialects were the most influential/dominant (especially due to the Kingdom of Wessex’ great power) until the Norman Conquest, when East Midlands English (especially around London) took over that role.

Southern American English & Maritime Canadian English varieties were both primarily based on more southern English varieties – specifically, the time’s London English and West Country English. Appalachian English was also heavily influenced by Scottish English and the English of northern England. Canadian English in general was based on both Southern and Midlands English. Meanwhile, New England’s English was primarily derived from East Midlands dialects. Generally, dialects derived from the time’s West Country English are significantly more conservative and more similar to the general speech of ~15th century England, while more Midlands (of the time) influenced American and Canadian varieties are similar to standard ~17-18th century English. Dialects influenced by the time’s Scottish English and Northern English also generally contain a lot more conservative Anglic constructions – modern Appalachian/Southern American English varieties and modern Scottish/Northern varieties share a large amount of vocabulary and other features which were lost in other dialects.

Standard varieties of Modern British English are comparatively generally significantly more innovative and don’t share many features with Middle & Early Modern English varieties – general British English started diverging greatly from most other English dialects around the mid-to-late 18th century and early 19th century. This is also a reason why Australia and New Zealand English have a lot of features which seem to only partially agree with other English varieties. For example, the trap-bath vowel split, which was partially completed in Australia and is present in certain words, but not all words, and has variation in some words. When Australia was being colonized, Southern English varieties had recently begun undergoing the split, and it was considered a “Cockneyism” until Received Pronunciation was formed in the late 19th century and embraced it; it wasn’t fully progressed until around that time, which is why New Zealand English (which came from immigrants in the mid 19th century) mostly agrees with Southern English on those vowels.

Maybe access to connected devices (e.g. your computer components or the phone you have plugged in to your computer)

Elixir? Is that the weird older cousin of Gleam?

mfw non-commutativeness

i use gnu/windows btw

on y office maybe? that could be interpreted as “we work there” with very poor grammar

Uh, yeah they would. Republicans and their general… hatred of mankind are already a pretty good motivator. It’s not like there’s any leftists to compete with them either, Americans are scared of those.

That’s painful to look at, I can’t agree that it’s easily readable

You don’t like Floorp?

I feel as though the “human trafficking” part is more important than the bourgeois dog, why isn’t that in the headline? Or specifying the work hours or exact pay (under $8/day)?

REAL

Paywalled article

Chomsky’s work undeniably transformed (cognitive) linguistics, but a large portion of Chomskyan linguistics is heavily debated/controversial.

His universal grammar, although debated, at least contributed a lot to Sapir-Whorf linguistics generally being recognized as wrong, which is nice. Unfortunately, a lot of laymen and even a tiny minority of linguists still believe linguistic determinism because it’s more interesting than reality. But that goes with all fringe, usually nationalism-driven, beliefs; like “Hungarian isn’t Finno-Urgic, it’s Turkic/isolate!” or “Tamil is oldest language and all other languages came from it!” or other crazy shit. Or Altaic, but that one isn’t crazy depending on which variation of it you pick, even if it’s likely wrong or unprovable.

The anime fandom is extraordinarily sexual. It makes sense when you see that in general, anime is one of the most casually extremely objectifying/sexualizing/tokenizing things you can find… specifically towards women and queer people. Even yuri (lesbian) animes tend to be shounen (aimed at young men) and often are very fetishistic, and anything that resembles queerness is usually used in shounen animes specifically as fan service to their male audience.

There are MANY animes that I guarantee you only exist for the purpose of porn (more specifically, designed to get popular from people making & spreading porn of them). Rampant and unavoidable horny fan service is a plague

In Italy, you have to travel to whatever city you have residence in to vote. A lot of (mostly progressive) people have to fly across the country to cast their vote, apparently it sucks for them

A clean room re-write of the books probably wouldn’t cost too much if the company that owns the copyrights to these textbooks don’t want to sell the rights for a reasonable price.

That’s a long way to say that you’re completely maliciously ignorant on endangered languages & language preservation, fascist bootlicker. Move to some other site to spread your corporatist-compliant “enlightened centrist” propoganda, it’s disgusting to see your comments littered everywhere like trash on a beach. Or at the very least, don’t shill on the behalf of greedy fucks who are abusing a group’s vulnerability and the law to exploit a nearly-dead culture for money. It’s a language with like 2000 fluent speakers, mostly old people who will be dust not long from now. You are, quite plainly, deflecting responsibility for them taking the work of a vulnerable group and claiming ownership of it to make money, against the knowledge and wishes of the group whose labor they practically stole.

And now you’re making a point of gaslighting the victims and the people who are rightfully against the exploitation, by comparing the work of the victims to basic facts of the universe that are observed in nature, while also using it as an attempt to defend your favorite shitty economic system/ideology. Like seriously, do you think languages are just something that exist in the wild outside of the confines of living beings? Do you think these people just observed some feral Lakota words and grammar the same way that Newton observed the laws of the universe? No, they obtained everything almost exclusively via the work of the speakers of the damn language, and despite being a “nonprofit” used it to profit a ton while depriving the native speakers of the records of their own language and oral history.

I am a linguist, and I can say with confidence that a strong majority of linguistics researchers and language preservationists find this, and practices like this, despicable – linguistics is a field where the overwhelming attitude is that knowledge needs to be open (even when facing the challenges of science journals being exploitative as fuck and not open at all, researches still put considerable effort into getting around that), especially in the context of an endangered or dying language/culture. You don’t just exploit a population for profit and refuse to leave, and still talk about how you’re doing a good thing. What these people do – and continue to do – is a disgrace.

Legally, using someone else’s non-recorded spoken language to make a profit without their consent is a gray area assuming you can prove that they got it from you (obviously these people can), but considering written language and recorded spoken language are both protected by the same copyright laws as any other tangible medium (and indeed, it would be a very clear-cut case if what these people provided to the consortium was plainly recorded), it’s obvious that what the LLC did was wrong and it’s very reasonable to say that they infringed on the Lakota peoples’ IP, considering that this was a collaborative work where the actual content came nearly entirely directly from the tribespeople themselves. This is fundamental ethical linguistics 101, even dictionaries of more widely spoken languages (like English) involve a bunch of explicit consent, consent forms, contracts, etc. from the speakers & contributors they use the labor of (or from the whole community that they use the labor of when it’s an endangered language), for both legal and ethical reasons.

I hate to come off as this aggressive, but this capitalist apologia & acting like this is acceptable behaviour in modern society is really crossing a line for me, considering how close the topic of dialectology and language preservation is to me – it’s the whole reason I began to do linguistics.

I uninstalled one drive immediately, it’s so annoying. It’s also really fucky with when it updates files. If I need to use it, I’ll go on my browser

Isn’t the context about the overthrow of the Russian Empire by communist revolutionaries? Not modern first-worlders? Am I missing something here? Why would “foreign imperialists” be relevant to modern first-worlders?

That being said, to actually answer your line of questioning, it is the correct solution to change society while ALSO overthrowing and locking up the oppressors. That may involve the elite dying, but those deaths are necessary. Peaceful reformism and strict nonviolence policies never works – unless you consider extremely high amounts of unnecessary suffering for innocents to achieve comparatively minor goals as “success” (cough cough Nelson Mandela). Even Gandhi and MLK (who took most of his influence from Gandhi), although nonviolence advocates, were well aware that violence is often necessary to achieve a better future, and much of the work they did was to the benefit of violent/militant revolutionaries (although of course they’re portrayed a lot more neutered/“deradicalized”, as well as the roles of complete compliance to nonviolence being completely overstated while violent methods are hidden away as if they didn’t exist, not even to be mentioned).

After capture though, death pentalty is not the way to go, but life imprisonment is fine and they may have a chance to be released later, mostly depending on their status/loyalty. I’m sure a lot of “revolutionaries” would disagree with me though, but I’m not an “eye for an eye” believer… I suppose if you’re in a situation where the former imperialist rulers would likely have power to directly cause damage while detained or incarcerated, or they’re likely to escape or be “rescued”, then it would be justified to chop off their heads or put a bullet in their cranium.

The core issue is that these people (the oppressors/ruling class) can not be rehabilitated, and are likely to stir up considerable trouble and disrupt when they have the opportunity, either in a bid to regain their power, or out of a large feeling of loss that makes them go nuts. You can’t always reasonably ensure that they won’t try to fuck shit up in the future.

That’s just my view, but of course there are people other than me who are just bloodthirsty for vengeance (my opinion is that they’re not thinking all too rationally and it’s the same mindset as parents that hit/yell at their kids, they’re convincing themselves it’s for the greater good but in reality it’s just attempting to satisfy their feelings of anger). Either way, I see their lives as considerably less valuable than the lives of the people they oppressed, not because they have an inherently evil soul or something, but because they are already too far gone and only can bring chaos to the world.

I think that’s good when the objective is to improve the language. One key thing that holds many languages back is that they’re stuck with historical baggage, and it can be pretty difficult to replace/remove “outdated” stuff without breaking everything.

I do not want to be stuck using Python 2, or Scala 2 (although there exist people who use Scala 2 instead of Scala 3).

I agree that the slow compile times are pretty bad (maybe even deal-breakingly for large projects). I think it’s kind of necessary for a language with as powerful of a syntax as Scala though, it’s pretty absurd how expressive you can get. Maybe if it didn’t target the JVM, it’d be able to achieve way faster compile times – I don’t really see a point of even targeting JVM other than for library access (not to say that that isn’t a huge benefit), especially when it has relatively poor compatibility with other JVM languages and it’s nearly impossible to use for Android (don’t try this at home).

Even more so, I think that null handling isn’t nice – I wish it were more similar to Kotlin’s. One thing I’m really confused as to why Scala didn’t go all-in on is Either/Result like in Rust. Types like that exist, but Scala seems to mostly just encourages you to use exceptions for error propogation/handling rather than returning a Monad.

A more minor grudge I have is just the high-level primitive types in general – it’s pretty annoying not being able to specify unsigned integers or certain byte-width types by default, but if it really is an issue than it can be worked around. Also things like mutable pointers/references – I don’t actually know if you can do those in Scala… I’ve had many situations where it’d be useful to have such a thing. But that’s mostly because I was probably using Scala for things it’s not as cut out to do.

With the tuple arguments point, I get it but I haven’t found it much of an issue. I do wish it wasn’t that way and it consistently distinguished between a tuple and an argument list though, either that or make functions take arguments without tuples like in other functional languages or CLI languages (but that’d probably screw a lot of stuff up and make compile times even LONGER). I saw someone on r/ProgrammingLanguages a while back express how their language used commas/delimiters without any brackets to express an argument list.

I think an actually “perfect” language to me would basically just be Rust but with a bunch of the features that Scala adds – of course the significant functional aspect that Scala has (and the clearly superior lambda syntax), but also the significantly more powerful traits and OOP/OOP-like polymorphism. Scala is the only language that I can say I don’t feel anxious liberally using inheritance in, in fact I use inheritance in it constantly and I enjoy it. Scala’s “enum”/variant inheritance pattern is like Rust enums, but on crack. Obviously, Rust would never get inheritance, but I’ve found myself in multiple situations where I’m thinking “damn, it’s annoying that I have to treat <X trait> and <Y trait> as almost completely serparate”. It would especially be nice in certain situations with const generic traits that are basically variants of each other.

Plus, I’ve always personally liked function overloading and default arguments and variadics/variadic generics and stuff, but the Rust community generally seems to be against the former 2. I just really hate there being a hundred functions, all a sea of underscores and adjectives, that are basically the same thing but take different numbers of arguments or slightly different arguments.

The custom operators are a double-edged sword, I love them and always use them, but at the same time it can be unclear as to what they do without digging into documentation. I guess Haskell has a similar problem though, but I don’t think Scala allows you to specify operator precedence like Haskell does and it just relies on the first character’s precedence. I would still want them though.

How it goes now, though, is I use Scala 3 for project design/prototyping, scripting, and less performance-sensitive projects, and Rust for pretty much everything else (and anything involving graphics or web). Scala has good linear algebra tooling, but honestly I’ll usually use C++ or Python for that most of the time because they have better tooling (and possibly better performance). I would say R too, but matplotlib has completely replaced it for literally everything regarding math for me.