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[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 215 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Be Polish. Live at the crossroads of three major continental zones. Incorporates traditions from Arabic, Latin, and Nordic languages into a unique synthesis. Everybody hates it. Nobody wants to speak it.

Be English. Live at the ass end of nowhere, and become a haven for vagrants, dissidents, pirates, and exiles. Incorporate traditions from Latin, Germanic, and Frankish languages into a unique synthesis. Everyone hates it. Nobody wants to speak it. Become worlds most spoken language anyway.

Moral of the story. People will have to learn your shitty incoherent language if you build a big enough navy.

[-] shalafi@lemmy.world 42 points 1 day ago
[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 25 points 1 day ago

glances at who builds all the processors and hardware components

Time to start learning Chinese and/or Korean.

[-] SpaghettiYeti@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago

See, those are essentially the raw goods now. Finished goods are entertainment and the internet.

[-] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 1 points 19 hours ago

The French in the '90s had Daft Punk and the Minitel.

Après moi je dis ça je ne dis rien.

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[-] Sabata11792@ani.social 8 points 1 day ago

How long until internet slang/lingo snowballs out of control and becomes an actual language? I mean, it's already constantly spawning words and a diverse enough environment.
I notice sometime I lack an optimal word to describe a concept IRL that an internet term would fit perfectly but would be cringe or meaningless unless the listener was also terminally online. There's also stealing terms from other languages that catch on, but that don't work offline(IE. Zeitgeist, pantsdrunk, kawaii) that get spread around enough to be generally know, even if a bit odd.

Yes, including brainrot. Especially brainrot. It's not all pleasant.

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[-] ytg@sopuli.xyz 22 points 1 day ago

Have you ever seen transcribed Georgian?

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[-] harcesz@szmer.info 15 points 1 day ago

This is outrageous! I will call all users of our Polish instance "SZMER" to... OK, I might be getting your point.

[-] PugJesus@lemmy.world 53 points 2 days ago

Hungarian and Finnish have entered the chat

[-] negativenull@lemmy.world 22 points 1 day ago
[-] Akasazh@feddit.nl 4 points 1 day ago

drinks your einstock

[-] Justas@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago

Lithuanian: Palaikyk mano alų.

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[-] lvxferre@mander.xyz 35 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The orthography is OK. It spams ⟨z⟩ for the same reason why Romance and Germanic languages spam ⟨h⟩ - too few letters, too many sounds, got to use digraphs.

The phonetic and phonemic part is like your typical European language. As in, "WE NEED A NEW SOUND! OTHERWISE WE CAN'T REPRESENT THE KITCHEN SINK DRIPPING!!!!"

The morphology is complicated, but the alternative is to make the syntax become a hellish mess. Like Mandarin or English. Language is complicated, no matter which one.

[-] Rinox@feddit.it 3 points 1 day ago

Then there's Italian. We have less letters than other European languages (we don't have k,j,w,x,y) and we still manage to avoid shit like "thoroughly" or spamming letters. We have accents, but use them way less than in Spanish and no special accents or characters like ñ ç č ß å ø ö etc

Once you understand the rules is probably one of the easier languages to spell and pronounce

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[-] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

Germanic languages spam ⟨h⟩

? English? German has way less h. Ok, more ch, but that's for different reasons, same reasons as ck.

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[-] Justas@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago

Just come up with new letters, Lithuanian has 9 (ą, ę, ė, į, ų, ū, č, š, ž) extra letters. If a small language can do it, so can English.

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English syntax hard?

There's a lot of issues with English. Most of them are for using loanwords without phonetically changing how they're spoken in the English alphabet. Then people wonder why they're spelled like Ledoux and sound like Lehdoo.

Romance. Romance languages are the fucking reason you word slurring tongue twats.

But hey, at least we're not Turkik.

[-] lvxferre@mander.xyz 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

English syntax hard?

Yes, it is. It has 9001 rules for the allowed order of the words, 350 for each, and you have lots of those small words with grammatical purpose that don't really convey anything, but must be there otherwise your sentence sounds broken. Refer to my examples with yes/no questions and *blue famous raincoat (instead of "famous blue raincoat").

That happens because any language is complex, there's no way around. You can dump that complexity in the word order, like English does, or dump it in different word forms, like Polish; but you won't be able to get rid of it.

There’s a lot of issues with English. Most of them are for using loanwords without phonetically changing how they’re spoken in the English alphabet.

That's something else, the spelling. It's a fair point when it comes to contrast with Polish though - sure, the ⟨z⟩ might look odd, but it is consistent, most of the time you can correctly predict how you're supposed to pronounce a word in Polish.

[-] ytg@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 day ago

English syntax hard?

Yes. Sequence of tenses. It's harder than Latin. As in, what the hell does "future-in-the-past" mean?
Or tenses (+aspect+mood) in general, I guess. You guys have too many of them.

As for the orthography, you know what is to blame. The Great Vowel Shift.

[-] Klear@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago

the alternative is to make the syntax become a hellish mess

The alternative is Czech.

[-] BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 18 points 1 day ago

A Polish colleague of mine once accidentally picked Czech in an online work training exercise and then spent the next 30 minutes giggling to himself. I asked him afterwards what was up "Czech sounds like baby talk"

[-] Klear@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

So I've heard. The feeling is mutual, oddly enough.

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[-] dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago

the alternative is to make the syntax become a hellish mess. Like Mandarin or English.

Now hang on just a second. English is fine. You just have to memorize or correctly guess the etymology of whatever word it is you're trying to spell/pronounce in order to get ... oh, okay, I think I see the problem now.

[-] lvxferre@mander.xyz 30 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Ah, what you're saying is spelling. Syntax is word order, obligatory words, stuff like this. English syntax is a maze, or how programmers would call it, spaghetti code.

For example, here's how to ask a yes/no question in...

  • Latin - attach -ne after the relevant word. (Note: Latin has no word for "yes", but still has this sort of question.)
  • Spanish - why bother? Intonation is enough.
  • Polish - start the sentence with "czy".
  • German - shift the verb to the start of the sentence (first position).
  • English - if the verb belongs to a small list of exceptions, do it as in German. However most verbs refuse this movement to the first position, so for those you need to spawn a dummy support "do", then let it steal the conjugation from the leftmost verb, and then shift that "do" instead. Noting that semantic "do" also refuses the movement, so it still requires a support "do", yielding questions like "did you do this?"

Then there's the adjective order. In Latin for example it's just a "...near the noun? Whatever, just don't be ambiguous." Polish is probably like Latin in this. English though? Quantity or number, then quality or opinion, then size, then age, then shape, then colour, then material or place of origin, then purpose or qualifier, then the noun. And don't you dare to switch them - "your famous blue raincoat" is a-OK, but *"your blue famous raincoat" makes you sound like a maniac.

[-] ytg@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 day ago

In Latin for example it’s just a “…near the noun? Whatever, just don’t be ambiguous."

It doesn't need to be remotely close to the noun lol

Though Latin syntax can get annoying sometimes (when do I use the subjunctive? What's the correct negation? Perfect or imperfect… maybe pluperfect? Which noun is this random genitive modifying?), it does make sense eventually. I guess that is also true for English, but I still mess up the tenses sometimes.

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[-] BakerBagel@midwest.social 11 points 1 day ago

Syntax is for nerds. I prefer a vibes based language.

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[-] AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee 11 points 1 day ago
[-] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago
[-] Aceticon@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

Yeah, Welsh is even more special ...

[-] AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee 8 points 1 day ago

It's actually not. The Basque language has zero relationship to any other language in existence. It's totally unique.

[-] Magister@lemmy.world 27 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Bezwzględny Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz wyruszył ze Szczebrzeszyna przez Szymankowszczyznę do Pszczyny. I choć nieraz zalewała go żółć, niepomny następstw znalazł ostatecznie szczęście w źdźble trawy.

EDIT: copy/pasted from somewhere, this looks incredible to pronounce! The only polish word I know is kurwa, and Zubrowka.

[-] coffee_whatever@lemmy.world 43 points 2 days ago

The only polish word I know is kurwa, and Zubrowka.

You're right, you know just one word in Polish, because it's Żubrówka you filthy peasant.

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[-] harcesz@szmer.info 7 points 1 day ago

Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiwicz is a popular joke name. Plausible sounding, but, to my surprise, not registered to actually exist. Yet to close to my real name for me to find the video link all that funny, rather than a common expirience even with other Poles.

[-] MHanak@lemmy.world 17 points 2 days ago

It may look hard, but those are more of a spelling nightmare than pronounciation ones

Hard ones to pronounce are for example: "Chrząszcz brzmi w trzczcinie w szczebrzeszynie" or "stół z powyłamywanymi nogami"

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[-] Pistcow@lemm.ee 20 points 1 day ago
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[-] MudMan@fedia.io 24 points 2 days ago

I feel like we'd all be much more on board with this if Poland wasn't in the shadow of Hungary right next door looking like somebody's cat had a serious episode on top of a keyboard.

[-] Vikthor@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

Did Hungary annex Slovakia again or what?

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[-] BlackLaZoR@fedia.io 16 points 2 days ago

It's not spelling, it's the grammar and ortography that would make you want to peel your skin off.

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[-] BurnedOliveTree@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

I wonder if we had ž etc like Czechs would it make it easier for foreigners to read

[-] Justas@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 day ago

Fun fact: The Czech adopted š, č and ž to look less German. The Lithuanians adopted it to look less Polish.

[-] Jyrdano@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Based Jan Hus. Sparking religious wars and linguistic reforms.

[-] Justas@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago

That happened hundreds of years after Hus.

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[-] Jyrdano@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

It would certainly make Polish easier to read for Czechs. Not sure about other foreigners, šžčřě might be just as alien.

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[-] Jayb151@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

Took 2 years of Polish at University. I spent more time on that one class than all my other classes combined... And I went to school for Education.

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this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
962 points (98.4% liked)

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