8 ms·

This is a good list, but it needs examples.

tgv 2y ago
Some more obscure examples: - Sentences in all languages can be templated as easily as in English: {user} is in {location} etc. Some languages have complex agreement between parts of the sentence, e.g. where gender of the verb must match the subject. - For every lower-case character, there is exactly one (language-independent) upper-case character, and vice versa. Dutch capitalizes ijzer as IJzer. - The lower-case/upper-case distinction exists in all languages. Plenty of languages without: Hebrew/Arabic, “Chinese”. Japanese doesn’t even have spaces. - All languages (that use the Latin alphabet) have the same alphabetical sorting order. Spanish has ll, ch and rr in between k/m, c/d and q/s respectively.
- dizhn 2y ago
  iİ , ıI Neither google nor microsoft swift keyboard know that İt's is not the same thing as It's.
- gus_massa 2y ago
  We dropped the special case for ll and ch in 1994. I don't remember a special case for rr, but in any case it's not a special case now. (It's interesting, because when computers were finaly powerful enough to remember all the weird cases, we dropped them.)
  - tgv 2y ago
    Damn, I should have known that. The ñ is an exception too, as its numerical value falls outside a-z, but it's sorted between n and o.
    - gus_massa 2y ago
      Yes, ñ is between n and o, except in an index in LaTeX that puts it at the end incorrectly.
- Groxx 2y ago
  >Some languages have complex agreement between parts of the sentence, e.g. where gender of the verb must match the subject. English is one of these, in some cases. E.g. "cats chase mice" while "my cat chases mice". IIRC there are similar whole-sentence complications with tense too, but my brain isn't caffeinated enough to think of them at the moment.
  - tgv 2y ago
    That's rather simple agreement. The languages I know of are compatible with that. They either have a similar or simpler number agreement, at least for the third person. English has better examples, e.g. a vs an. If you template some text, you need to write agreement rules for that: "Are you interested in [a/an] {product}?"
- SAI_Peregrinus 2y ago
  Not to mention positional cases in Hebrew, Arabic, and similar languages. E.g. Hebrew has 22 letters, only 5 of them have a final case.
- 1-more 2y ago
  A great example I just saw was when I was reviewing a PR with translations into one of the Slavic languages that does Slavic plurals and it just avoided the problem by translating the sentence as "the number of things: {number}" whereas in other languages it was "{number} things". Genius, frankly. Slavic plurals (not in every Slavic language don't quote me): - when the name of the number ends with "one" you put the noun in the singular. So numbers like 1 and 21 and 100001 use singular nouns, but not 11 because its number is not "ten-one" - When the name of the number ends with "two" through "four" you put the noun in the genitive singular so you say "I have two of chicken." Again, the teens don't fit because they aren't formed by "ten-two" etc. - Otherwise: genitive plural "I have five of chickens."

tgv 2y ago

Some more obscure examples: - Sentences in all languages can be templated as easily as in English: {user} is in {location} etc. Some languages have complex agreement between parts of the sentence, e.g. where gender of the verb must match the subject. - For every lower-case character, there is exactly one (language-independent) upper-case character, and vice versa. Dutch capitalizes ijzer as IJzer. - The lower-case/upper-case distinction exists in all languages. Plenty of languages without: Hebrew/Arabic, “Chinese”. Japanese doesn’t even have spaces. - All languages (that use the Latin alphabet) have the same alphabetical sorting order. Spanish has ll, ch and rr in between k/m, c/d and q/s respectively.

dizhn 2y ago
iİ , ıI Neither google nor microsoft swift keyboard know that İt's is not the same thing as It's.
gus_massa 2y ago
We dropped the special case for ll and ch in 1994. I don't remember a special case for rr, but in any case it's not a special case now. (It's interesting, because when computers were finaly powerful enough to remember all the weird cases, we dropped them.)
- tgv 2y ago
  Damn, I should have known that. The ñ is an exception too, as its numerical value falls outside a-z, but it's sorted between n and o.
  - gus_massa 2y ago
    Yes, ñ is between n and o, except in an index in LaTeX that puts it at the end incorrectly.
Groxx 2y ago
>Some languages have complex agreement between parts of the sentence, e.g. where gender of the verb must match the subject. English is one of these, in some cases. E.g. "cats chase mice" while "my cat chases mice". IIRC there are similar whole-sentence complications with tense too, but my brain isn't caffeinated enough to think of them at the moment.
- tgv 2y ago
  That's rather simple agreement. The languages I know of are compatible with that. They either have a similar or simpler number agreement, at least for the third person. English has better examples, e.g. a vs an. If you template some text, you need to write agreement rules for that: "Are you interested in [a/an] {product}?"
SAI_Peregrinus 2y ago
Not to mention positional cases in Hebrew, Arabic, and similar languages. E.g. Hebrew has 22 letters, only 5 of them have a final case.
1-more 2y ago
A great example I just saw was when I was reviewing a PR with translations into one of the Slavic languages that does Slavic plurals and it just avoided the problem by translating the sentence as "the number of things: {number}" whereas in other languages it was "{number} things". Genius, frankly. Slavic plurals (not in every Slavic language don't quote me): - when the name of the number ends with "one" you put the noun in the singular. So numbers like 1 and 21 and 100001 use singular nouns, but not 11 because its number is not "ten-one" - When the name of the number ends with "two" through "four" you put the noun in the genitive singular so you say "I have two of chicken." Again, the teens don't fit because they aren't formed by "ten-two" etc. - Otherwise: genitive plural "I have five of chickens."