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Not the parent commenter, but -- days of week in Polish are a nice example, IMO. `Środa` means `Wednesday`, but depending on the grammatical case it's going to

Not the parent commenter, but -- days of week in Polish are a nice example, IMO. `Środa` means `Wednesday`, but depending on the grammatical case it's going to be translated either to `środa` or `środę` (or five more, but somewhat less likely to appear in UI [1]). - Next <Wednesday> is 2018-01-03. = Najbliższa <środa> przypada na 2018-01-03. - This event happens on <Wednesday>. = To zdarzenie ma miejsce w <środę>. If you mix the variants, it's going to sound very off (but it will be understandable, so there's that). What's more, days of week have different genders, which affects qualifiers: - <this> Wednesday = <ta> środa (Wednesday is a "she") - <this> Monday = <ten> poniedziałek (Monday is a "he") ... together with the grammatical cases affecting the qualifiers: - <This> Wednesday is crazy. = <Ta> środa jest szalona. - <This> Thursday is crazy. = <Ten> czwartek jest szalony. - I'm busy <this> Wednesday. = Jestem zajęty w <tę> środę. - I'm busy <this> Thursday. = Jestem zajęty w <ten> czwartek. [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C5%9Broda https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C5%9Broda

encom 1y ago
This is fascinating, thank you. The intricacies of languages is so interesting. I especially love the insane way we danes spell out numbers. 59 == nioghalvtredssindstyve 59 == 9 [ni] + [og] ((3 [treds] - 0,5 [halv]) * [sinds] 20 [tyve]) So 9+2,5*20 == 59 Halvtreds means half third, or halfway to three. There's also halvfjerds and halvfems for 3,5 and 4,5. Exercise: spell out 79.
kpil 1y ago
I once worked with translating an application to polish, and found out we had to have separate placeholders for "name" for persons (nazwisko) and for things (nazwa). Which is a simple example why you need context. All UI frameworks should have a "translate" mode, where all labels and static text can be right-clicked and modified...

encom 1y ago

This is fascinating, thank you. The intricacies of languages is so interesting. I especially love the insane way we danes spell out numbers. 59 == nioghalvtredssindstyve 59 == 9 [ni] + [og] ((3 [treds] - 0,5 [halv]) * [sinds] 20 [tyve]) So 9+2,5*20 == 59 Halvtreds means half third, or halfway to three. There's also halvfjerds and halvfems for 3,5 and 4,5. Exercise: spell out 79.

kpil 1y ago

I once worked with translating an application to polish, and found out we had to have separate placeholders for "name" for persons (nazwisko) and for things (nazwa). Which is a simple example why you need context. All UI frameworks should have a "translate" mode, where all labels and static text can be right-clicked and modified...