The number of things we take for granted in languages, without really noticing them as a native or familiar speaker, is astounding.
I remember being asked by someone who was speaking my native language as his second language. I believe the words he chose were correct, maybe even in the correct form and all, but I simply couldn't understand him due to slight differences in pronunciation and intonation.
Now, I sometimes get asked to explain concepts of my native language (e.g. which endings to choose for a word) and more often than not, my response is "wow, thanks for making me realize what an impossible mess that is - even understanding the grammatical concepts behind this, I have no idea how to reasonably explain this. This is a mess, and nobody should have to learn that language, ever."
A non-native speaker once asked me why we say "Going overseas" instead of "Going to overseas". I couldn't give them an answer at the time(even though I'm a native speaker).
Later I asked a very smart friend of mine who studied english as a second language (and was quite proficient at that point) and he was immediately able to recognize that it was because "overseas" is an adverb. It seems obvious in retrospect, but you just don't think about those things as a native speaker.
That explanation sounds circular to me - by definition any word you'd use in that way is an adverb.
A more intuitive explanation is perhaps that "overseas" came from the combination of two words, "over" (a preposition), and "seas" (a noun). And when you write it out as three words "going over seas" it makes perfect grammatical sense.
Disclaimer, I have no idea if my explanation is rooted in facts about the English language or how it actually developed. But that's how I'd answer the question if someone asked me for an intuitive explanation about why we don't use "to". Because there's already a preposition ("over")! You wouldn't write "going to over seas", would you?
>A non-native speaker once asked me why we say "Going overseas" instead of "Going to overseas". I couldn't give them an answer at the time(even though I'm a native speaker).
>Later I asked a very smart friend of mine who studied english as a second language (and was quite proficient at that point) and he was immediately able to recognize that it was because "overseas" is an adverb. It seems obvious in retrospect, but you just don't think about those things as a native speaker.
What about 'Going bananas' -- is that still an adverb?
When I was in Australia I enjoyed the difference in how they used “overseas” there. It was used in a general sense to mean outside the country —- naturally since Australia is an island. In the US, there’s a slight distinction, since there are certain countries you can get to via land borders, so “overseas” tends to imply places that are farther away.
Reminds me of the time a native French speaker asked me if I had ever tried ... and here he said a word that I'll transcribe as "balling"; the first syllable was quite short and the vowel only slightly rounded. Anyway, I didn't recognize it. After a little back-and-forth I finally got what he was talking about, and said, "Oh, BOWLing."
Huh, most of the words pairs you listed have extremely distinct consonant differences, but not very distinct vowel length to my ear (which is pretty influenced by southern appalachian english). Ie, "loose" is a "s" sound, and "lose" is a "z" sound, "ck" is much harder than "g", same with "f" vs "v" and "d" vs "t". None of those words sound awkward when shortened to me, they just sounded like they were being spoken faster for some reason (for emphasis or pacing reasons). So I wouldn't consider those different due to simple vowel length differences, but due to core phoneme differences. I do see that the people in that thread who combine "muck" and "mug" are from New England, so maybe those are specific to that accent.
There are words which I do pronounce the "same" as each other - but do actually vary them on on length alone. These are mostly for "merged" words.
Ie:
"Mary" - longer sound on the "a" vowel than the "ry" sound
"Merry" - longer sound is the "ry" sound
"Marry" - is said like "Mary" except the "a" sound is even longer. "ry" sound is same length.
Part of me also wonders if the southern "drawl", where vowel sounds are extended, is actually a weird way of standardizing vowel length times across distinct phonemes. Though I wouldn't be surprised if there's still variation there too, but it would certainly be interesting to compare.
I think there's an extremely subtle difference in length, plus in American english you might pronounce "writing" with either /d/ or /t/ (probably /d/ in casual speech).
I think if you said "I am riding a book" almost every native english speaker would hear "I am writing a book."
I'm British and only learnt this after studying Japanese which encodes vowel length in its writing system, eg, uncle: おじさん, grandfather: おじいさん. I refused to believe that English had vowel length, and was shocked to learn that my ears are actually very capable of hearing it. The other classic example in English is "merry" versus "Mary", but I couldn't find a whole sentence that is distinguished merely by a vowel length, so I made one (at least for my non-rhotic British accent):
Look how many clothes he shared!
Look how many clothes he shed!
It really depends on your dialect (idiolect?). If you are ocker*, kiwi, or yarpie then vowel length may matter because there can be words with the same vowel sound where only the vowel length changes the meaning. English in Northern England also has vowel length rules (although presumably not often confusing since most speakers are very familiar with English as spoken in the rest of the country).
In New Zealand, can’t and cunt have the same vowel sound, and foreigners can make embarrassing or hilarious errors!
Shed and shared have different vowel sounds in my accent (shared rhymes with ear or air - a diphthong?).
As a NZer I got thrown when going to California, by asking the front desk staff to do something and then waiting patiently when they said "I can't do that". Turns out when you come from a place where there's a vowel difference between "can" and "can't", that's what you listen for. I didn't at all pick up on the "t" sound at the end.
I agree, it certainly sounds queer to my ear. She says can't has a short vowel, whereas in NZ English it is important that the vowel length is spoken long.
Yes. I have learned that r following a vowel in British English tends to vanish. I remember reading about the pun in the title of Waugh in Africa when I was in my twenties and wondering what the pun was since in my Midwestern American English, Waugh and war are very different sounding words. I encountered a similar one later where a writer friend from England had a scene where a character expressed confusion about pawn shop vs porn shop.
> The number of things we take for granted in languages, without really noticing them as a native or familiar speaker, is astounding.
And this is just the parsing and cognition of language, now imagine what goes on in the perception of reality itself (of which language processing is but one component), which is far more complex and less understood than language. And yet, we literally run our world upon this flawed (to a degree which we haven't the slightest idea) system, and seem to think nothing of it, if not worse.
> And yet, we literally run our world upon this flawed (to a degree which we haven't the slightest idea) system, and seem to think nothing of it, if not worse.
Can you elaborate? Do you think there should be another "system" replacing it? A uniformization? In what ways?
I believe there should, or at the very least that it is an idea worth spending some "collective compute" upon.
Have you ever noticed this pattern in reality where the same ideas get discussed (here and elsewhere) repeatedly, and each iteration of the discussion of a topic has large similarities across many dimensions? For example, many of the same facts, ideas, perspectives (with all their historic imperfections) can be found within each iteration of a discussion, perhaps with some new variations here and there depending on some event that has occurred. Some of these conversations have been going on for decades, if not centuries!
As a thought experiment, imagine the existence of a system where there is only one "thread" per topic, and a "critical mass" of sufficiently intelligent, knowledgeable, and diverse (etc, etc) users exist who discuss the topic on an ongoing basis within this thread, such that knowledge accumulates over time, and repetition/etc is largely eliminated. Also imagine that when and where you identify architectural flaws in this general idea, the system is such that it recognizes these shortcomings, and addresses them (to an acceptable degree), an example of which might be that distinct threads are in some way merged with, or inherit from other threads (overriding certain aspects of them where it is optimal, etc), and improvements over time in one thread are automatically realized by other threads.
Expanding this thought experiment to some obvious(?) end state design nearing "perfection", including similar ~cultural/behavioural design and enforcement aspects, as well as fundamental changes to things like the very structure of how we communicate with each other (and therefore contemplate) about ideas....if such a system was to physically exist within reality, is it possible that it may have a noteworthy effect on the future state of reality? (Another angle to think of it from is: did the development and widespread adoption of the scientific method and other advancements within humanity have an affect on the future state of reality?)
Hopefully this gets the general idea across...despite being a fairly simple idea, it can be difficult to communicate it accurately (within the communication mediums we currently have access to).
A very rudimentary example (but the best I've been able to find) of such a system is this: https://www.kialo.com, but there are 5 to 10 different approaches I know of that are out there that come at the same general problem in unique ways. Kialo is currently far from perfect, but I think it brings a genuinely new form of thinking to the table in the way it structures and visualizes discussions...and think about how hilariously simplistic initial iterations of today's highly sophisticated products were when they were first introduced, and how back then very few of us could imagine with any sort of accuracy what would be achieved a few decades hence. Man's capabilities for imagination are hilariously flawed and inconsistent, and we seem to accept this shortcoming (and many others) as if it is immutable, without any concern for whether this belief (or, absence of belief) is actually true.
Thank you for developing your thought! I totally agree that the "thread" system seems to be the best way to go to accumulate knowledge on a particular subject. Taking as an example my own experience, I've been jotting down my thoughts on several social, political and personal topics, dedicating myself to it entirely so that I can gather the thoughts of each side, but also read articles about it, to develop my own opinion with all that I've found. I also try to update them regularly to see if they're still in line with my current opinion, or if the latter changed.
Now, as far as a collective knowledge accumulation system is concerned, this makes things far more complicated as you justly pointed out. I didn't know Kialo (thanks for the discovery), and I truly like the concept even though there are many flaws. The thing I disagree with the most is the pros/cons system, which incites one to have a radical opinion on every subject and prevents from having a nuanced view, something which I find particularly damaging these days as most people will tend to view everything as black or white and just put the gray part in the trash can. Sure, one can assert that a nuanced view is only made of some pros and some cons, but I would find it far more valuable if they were not separated. Still, I think Kialo benefits from great bases, and hopefully it might be used to build something even better. Regarding the user base, this is also something essential to take into consideration. If such a selective system ever exists, I still think it would be beneficial for the discussions to be viewable by everyone (without necessarily allowing anybody to post) just to avoid the "gatekeeping" effect and enable everyone to enrich their minds.
With regard to this, though:
> For example, many of the same facts, ideas, perspectives (with all their historic imperfections) can be found within each iteration of a discussion, perhaps with some new variations here and there depending on some event that has occurred. Some of these conversations have been going on for decades, if not centuries!
Don't you think that for some topics, especially those which have been discussed for centuries, repetition can be useful to prove that the subject being discussed is still relevant in today's world, in spite of all that happened in that timespan? What I mean is that there are particular subjects, especially philosophical ones, that may need to be iterated again and again until we find credible answers and as we continue to evolve as a species and gain knowledge. I also think that talking continuously about a particular subject may help to raise new solutions, questions or thinking paths that would otherwise never have been discovered. (I think there are some parallels to be made with science here; there are several discoveries that were only found by long-drawn-out research done by intellectual geniuses, and without them, we would probably still not be aware of the theory of relativity to cite the most common example.)
> Taking as an example my own experience, I've been jotting down my thoughts on several social, political and personal topics, dedicating myself to it entirely so that I can gather the thoughts of each side, but also read articles about it, to develop my own opinion with all that I've found. I also try to update them regularly to see if they're still in line with my current opinion, or if the latter changed.
I assume after some time you start to assemble a fairly high dimensional model of reality on these various topics. During this journey, has it ever caught your attention that the articles you read assert that reality is(!) a certain way, but due to your greater depth of knowledge, you know that the article is not actually true? (essentially: https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/) It's easy to overlook this because it's basically the norm, it's "just" "how it is", it's "just" standard bias, "everyone does it", etc. But objectively, what is happening is that a false model of reality is continuously pushed into people's minds. Sometimes the falsities are obvious and egregious, and other times they are benign (or at least, seem to be benign). Regardless, the process continues, and hardly anyone realizes that this is how it (the manufacturing of reality) works - people just perceive it as "reading/watching the news".
> I didn't know Kialo (thanks for the discovery), and I truly like the concept even though there are many flaws. The thing I disagree with the most is the pros/cons system, which incites one to have a radical opinion on every subject and prevents from having a nuanced view, something which I find particularly damaging these days as most people will tend to view everything as black or white and just put the gray part in the trash can. Sure, one can assert that a nuanced view is only made of some pros and some cons, but I would find it far more valuable if they were not separated. Still, I think Kialo benefits from great bases, and hopefully it might be used to build something even better.
Agreed, very good point...and this point has many, many siblings. There is a surprising amount of complexity within reality, designing a system to reconcile the millions of perspectives of it (people perceive reality via perspectives, but typically believe they are seeing reality itself) is no small feat. My intuition of how to go about it is to generally speaking store massive amounts of "facts" (ideas?), and then communicate bundles of those facts in numerous different forms, explicitly stating the ~techniques/perspectives that are being used in the communication, and explicitly stating that what is being communicated is not reality itself, but a carefully and intentionally constructed perspective (slice, subset) of reality.
To my style of thinking, this could be plausibly very impactful - if you combine this with the Gel Mann idea above, I feel like it would make it rather difficult for people to avoid putting two and two together, in turn increasing the popularity of the platform (one would hope).
This amount of complexity can seem a bit daunting, but keep in mind: there is no requirement for perfection, the system only needs to be as good as it needs to be (a level which is unknown, of course).
> Regarding the user base, this is also something essential to take into consideration. If such a selective system ever exists, I still think it would be beneficial for the discussions to be viewable by everyone (without necessarily allowing anybody to post) just to avoid the "gatekeeping" effect and enable everyone to enrich their minds.
This is how I think about it too. Well, some I think would be private (depending on how far you want to take this idea), but the overwhelming majority would be public read-only visibility.
As for users who have write access to the system, I think this is an extremely complex issue (but due to this complexity, it is also filled with opportunity). My intuition is that you'd want to be very restrictive with who gets on (and stays on), and you'd need to have multiple levels of permissions. For people to ascend to higher levels, they would (among other things) first be required to develop the ability to think in certain ways. I find this idea very appealing, because poor thinking skills are a fundamental root cause of everything....so, having a system where quality (near perfect) thinking is not just a goal, but is mandatory....this would be something the world has never seen before.
> Don't you think that for some topics, especially those which have been discussed for centuries, repetition can be useful to prove that the subject being discussed is still relevant in today's world, in spite of all that happened in that timespan?
Most definitely. There are many ideas out there that are so important, I consider it an absolute travesty that we discuss them in the low-dimensional, deceitful ways we do. No wonder things only get better slowly, and mostly only for a subset of the global population - expecting otherwise under the current system is silly.
> I also think that talking continuously about a particular subject may help to raise new solutions, questions or thinking paths that would otherwise never have been discovered. (I think there are some parallels to be made with science here; there are several discoveries that were only found by long-drawn-out research done by intellectual geniuses, and without them, we would probably still not be aware of the theory of relativity to cite the most common example.)
"Talking continuously" (extreme and deliberate pedantry) is a feature, not a bug. But the current way we go about this...disorganized, dishonest/inaccurate, distributed & non-cumulative, etc is absolute madness in my mind. Like, I can't wrap my head around how intelligent people can work in highly organized corporations and roles, seeing and living how things can be designed intelligently....and then look at the way we run ~"the world" and not have any "wtf is going on here?" alarms going off in their head.
> I assume after some time you start to assemble a fairly high dimensional model of reality on these various topics. During this journey, has it ever caught your attention that the articles you read assert that reality is(!) a certain way, but due to your greater depth of knowledge, you know that the article is not actually true?
To be honest, I think there's still quite a long way to go before I can reach this point. I've only started this process a few months ago, and it takes many, many hours to discuss all the ins and outs of every subject. I wish I could spend my days doing this, but unfortunately I also have social obligations such as work and studies :-). Perhaps in a few years from now I'll be able to truly feel this for a variety of subjects, but that's far from being the case right now and the only articles which might make me experience this feeling generally are articles from mainstream media talking about stuff I've known in detail for a long period of time (most particularly video games and computer science); in these particular cases, the Gell-Mann amnesia effect is definitely real. Now, when there is a topic I know absolutely nothing about, I'll still read many news articles and assume that all of them are true to begin with, just so that I can compare data and opinions. Only then will I try to read more specialized works, such as books, in order to see to what extent what I've found corresponds to what whizzes have to say on this subject. Talking about newspaper articles, I also try to read fewer "breaking news" articles, but rather try to take a more distant approach which consists in reading articles several months after events occurred in order to get a clearer view of what has happened and the impact of the event in question. The main drawback is that I'm not necessarily fully aware of what's going on in the world 24/7, but at least I find it generates way less anxiety and enables to take a step back on what's happening.
> My intuition is that you'd want to be very restrictive with who gets on (and stays on), and you'd need to have multiple levels of permissions. For people to ascend to higher levels, they would (among other things) first be required to develop the ability to think in certain ways. I find this idea very appealing, because poor thinking skills are a fundamental root cause of everything....so, having a system where quality (near perfect) thinking is not just a goal, but is mandatory....this would be something the world has never seen before.
Absolutely agreed! You perfectly summarized what I had in mind.
Everything else that you said is very interesting; by the bye, it is the very first time I have such an in-depth discussion with someone on HN and it's really great to see where it can lead and all the ideas it may generate. Thank you!
I caught myself yesterday typing that "that's been the established procedure since years."
Which is not standard English, but it's a construction a lot of my German/ESL coworkers use, and apparently it's soaking in. I'm fine with this; I've happily added "do the needful" to my lexicon because it perfectly fills a gap. Sometimes a construction that works elsewhere _works for a reason_ and it's worth borrowing back.
My wife's native language is Spanish and she hates when I use ungrammatical constructs because she trusts me to model correct grammar for her. I, on the other hand, have superlative grammar but enjoy applying other language's grammatical constructs to English. I just workshopped a story with my writing group which is written in a synthetic pidgin that I created for the Burkinabe characters in the piece. There was some admiration for the technical achievement, but concerns that it might be offensive having come from a white author, a concern that I had as well.
I remember being asked by someone who was speaking my native language as his second language. I believe the words he chose were correct, maybe even in the correct form and all, but I simply couldn't understand him due to slight differences in pronunciation and intonation.
Now, I sometimes get asked to explain concepts of my native language (e.g. which endings to choose for a word) and more often than not, my response is "wow, thanks for making me realize what an impossible mess that is - even understanding the grammatical concepts behind this, I have no idea how to reasonably explain this. This is a mess, and nobody should have to learn that language, ever."