Posts by Irony Deficient

Re: back to the etymological roots

You’re giving far too much credit to the suggestion of a bog-standard Latin word. (Audeo means “I am prepared, I dare/have courage, &c.”; audemus is simply the plural form of audeo.)

Since AUDACITY® is a registered trademark in the USA (if not elsewhere) that is now owned by Muse Group, and given that Muse Group filed for a US trademark on the Audacity headphones logo a few months ago, perhaps a moose mascot/logo would be suitably punning for a product named Audemus.

The collective noun of Modesty users

Surely “a blush of Modesty users”?

(the) I-10

Perhaps the “the” is used with interstate freeways with one-syllable numbers; as it happens, parts of both the I-5 and the I-10 are found in southern California. Do native newscasters also say “the I-15”, “the I-210”, and “the I-405”? Do they say “the 101” (“the one-oh-one”) in reference to US routes?

Re: Please, Dr. Syntax

The first reference for “math” in the OED suggests that “math” came from the abbreviation “math.” — it dates back to 1890. In contrast, the earliest reference for “maths” is from 1911. Similarly, “economics” and “statistics” in the US were called “ec” and “stat” by students (presumably in reference to courses of study), from their abbreviations “ec.” and “stat.”. I’d imagine that “home ec” is still used here in the States more often than “home economics”. There isn’t an entry for “ecs” being used anywhere for “economics”, though.

Re: “maths” instead of “math”

Old English rímcræft was pronounced like modern English “reamcraft”. (Pronouncing a “long i” like modern “eye” is a consequence of the Great Vowel Shift during the Middle English period.)

“maths” instead of “math”

Those who prefer “maths” over “math” would likely refer to “mathematics” having a plural form (it was originally a plurale tantum), and “maths” preserves that plural form. The displaced Old English word had a singular form — rímcræft (“number art/science”).

Re: “Re-wilding”

I do not know who invents these new words but this one is particularly horrible.

The OED notes that the verb “wild”, although rare, goes back nearly eight centuries:

1225 Ancr. R. 136 Vet kelf & to wilde is þet fleschs þet awiligeð [MS. T. wildes] so sone hit euer etteð.

Since “re-” is one of the most productive verbal prefixes in modern English, “re-wild” isn’t an unreasonable combination.

Re: The Joy of Date Routines

What I want to know is...If the localization in Linux is NOT an English speaking country, is the date shift between Julian and Gregorian calendars correct for that country?

It could depend upon the country. For example, different principalities within the Holy Roman Empire had different dates of switching from Julian to Gregorian, so localization would have to be extremely local for countries such as Germany. Sweden (then including Finland) wound up with a date of 30th February 1712 when abandoning its first attempt to switch over. Even in (now) English-speaking countries, Alaska switched only in 1867, after its purchase from Russia by the USA.

I find it quite amusing that Cod is semantically equivalent to God.

Well, the acrostic

∝ → ἸΧΘΥΣ (Ἰησοῦς Χρῑστός Θεοῦ Yἱός Σωτήρ)

has been around since the 2nd century AD …

Re: Wonderful unicode

True enough. For example, in English we’re used to “i” being the lower case form of “I”. But in Turkish and Azeri, “i” and “ı” are different vowels with different sounds; “i” is the lower case form of “İ” (a “dotted I”), and “ı” (a “dotless i”) is the lower case form of “I”.

Another example is how to capitalize German „ß“: should it be „SS“, or „SZ“, or „ẞ“? (The answer is “it depends”.) Similarly, the lower case form of „SS“ is sometimes „ss“ and sometimes „ß“. Those arcane rules tend to be locale-specific rather than alphabet-specific, since e.g. Swiss German doesn’t use „ß“.

The problem these days is Unicode and “smart” software that changes what is entered.

The former, not so much; the latter, quite possibly.

Is a “-” a hyphen, minus sign, en or em dash? Never an issue in ASCII but they’re all different in Unicode.

ASCII only has a combination “hyphen-minus” character, which makes a poor dash of any length. Most proportional fonts use lines of different widths for hyphen (‐, U+2010), minus sign (−, U+2212), en dash (–, U+2013), and em dash (—, U+2014) [never mind the two-em dash (U+2E3A) and three-em dash (U+2E3B), which are still missing from most fonts], so with proportional fonts the usual challenge is relying on sight alone to distinguish between the ASCII hyphen-minus (-, U+002D) and the Unicode hyphen (‐, U+2010).

If “smart” software is automatically changing e.g. ASCII hyphen-minus characters in scripts or database schemas to Unicode hyphen characters, then perhaps that software isn’t the right choice for working with scripts or database schemas.

Is “A” a capital Latin A or an uppercase Greek alpha? They look identical in any font […]

Dont forget the Cyrillic А (U+0410) and the Cherokee Ꭺ (U+13AA, pronounced “go”). In a font that uses handwritten forms, the Cherokee Ꭺ would look nothing like the other three. I know of one font where none of them look identical — Unicode BMP Fallback SIL — although that feature is by design.

Re: Calling upon a higher power

“Smite” is a Type 1 Germanic strong verb, like “write”, so it’s conjugated as “smite, smote, has smitten”.

(Not all Type 1 verbs have preserved this pattern in modern English, though — had the Old English verb sċítan preserved its Type 1 strong conjugation, “shite, shote, has shitten” would be used instead of “shit, shat/shit, has shat/has shit”.)

Re: To sadly turn this political

As you wish. Since you’re unwilling to reveal your superior alternative to the USSR’s historical numbers-based reaction to Barbarossa, some might conclude that that alternative was not historically available to Stavka.

Re: To sadly turn this political

How about "Don’t deploy your armies in an offensive posture when you’re not planning to attack?"

Claptrap314, on 22nd June 1941, the approximately 2.75 million soldiers of the Red Army in the military districts on the western border were not deployed in an offensive posture. The USSR was still shipping grains, oil, rubber, and manganese to Germany when the Axis attacked (and the stockpiled oil and rubber in particular were used in carrying out Operation Barbarossa). Stalin’s belief was that the Red Army would not be able to face the Axis on an equal footing until 1944, and so he did whatever he could to not incite Hitler before then, including shipping vital war matériel to Germany.

If you want to know what I would do differently, then, by definition, you are allowing me to change the facts of history.

I’d asked Cederic because he’d stated that he would not use numbers to defend the USSR against the Axis, as the USSR historically did; if he would not have used numbers, then that fact of history would by definition change. If you’re interested in answering the question that was posed to Cederic, then feel free, as long as you observe the same constraints; you can take advantage of eight decades of hindsight, but you can only change the historical decisions that were taken on or after 22nd June 1941.

Re: To sadly turn this political

So no, I wouldn't do that.

Cederic, having the benefit of eighty years of hindsight, what would you have done instead on 22nd June 1941 to defend the USSR in its historical condition on that date (i.e. without changing events or situations prior to that date, e.g. no “don’t purge the officer corps in the Great Terror of 1936–1939” or “redeploy more of the Red Army away from the western borders”)?

Re: Shipping channel

As a Western hardliner, I'm very interested in learning just how important Mr Putin considers Crimea. […] Their bases there are of little real importance (the USA could knock them all out in minutes), but they may be terribly important psychologically.

He considered it important enough to declare Sevastopolʹ a federal city (a status that only Moscow and St. Petersburg had previously), and to construct the road/rail Crimean Bridge across the Kerch Strait. I disagree that Sevastopolʹ is of little real importance as a naval base to Russia; it was important enough to them that Medvedev had extended the Russian Navy’s leasing of its base from Ukraine until 2042. The sieges of Sevastopolʹ in both the Crimean War and WWII undoubtedly enhanced its psychological importance to Russians.

Re: To sadly turn this political

Although Russia might not have the latest military hardware they do have numbers and if you look at WWII they don't hesitate to use them.

If you look at WWII, the USSR was attacked by 3.8 million Axis soldiers in Operation Barbarossa. If you’d had numbers, would you have hesitated to use them to defend yourself?

Using the default keymap for Australia (same as the US)

If easy typing of £, €, dead acute, and dead grave is a priority for you, then the solution is to not use the default input source for Australia (and the US); use the “ABC Extended” input source (which was called “U.S. Extended” in older versions of macOS) instead. I was able to install it via System Preferences → Keyboard → Input Sources; I dont know if that path has changed in recent versions of macOS. With ABC Extended active, £ is Option 3, € is Shift Option 2, dead acute is Option e (e.g. é is Option e then e), and dead grave is Option ` (e.g. à is Option ` then a).

As to Vissles’ design choices, they took a standard 84-key layout, installed macOS-friendly keycaps on the keyboard, and are marketing it as a Mac keyboard. If a right Option key is important to you, and you don’t want to remap keys using a program like Karabiner Elements so that its right Control key would function as a right Option key, then the V84 doesn’t meet your needs, and shouldn’t be on your to-buy list.

their imperial measurements

“Our” Imperial measurements? We stuck with William III’s bushel, Anne’s wine gallon, and their multiples and subdivisions, with the system locally referred to as “US customary units”, even after the units’ redefinitions in terms of SI units. Your newfangled George IV-era Imperial bushel, gallon, et al. had no purchase here.

Re: Börkäge

Only for Spin̈al Tap.

Re: Börkäge

Note that é and ü also appear in loanwords adopted into Swedish, e.g. idé, müsli.