MACadd Poll Which Language Next

The results are in and with 40% of the vote French has won with Dutch and German tied at 30%.
French will be the first language to be translated, then German as I have more visitors to my site from Germany than the Netherlands, at the time of the vote closing.

🇨🇵 Youpi! 🇨🇵

Youpi!

No need to ask what option you voted for then,

Je n’ai pas voté

क्योंकि हिंदी को कहीं भी पहुंचने की संभावना बहुत कम थी

Clive:

most-spoken language: English 16.5%, Mandarin Chinese 14.6%, Hindi 8.3%, Spanish 7%, French 3.6%, Arabic 3.6%, Bengali 3.4%, Russian 3.4%, Portuguese 3.3%, Indonesian 2.6% (2020 est.)

Source: https://www.indexmundi.com/world/languages.html

So Hindi is spoken, by rather more people than French (and German/Dutch don’t even figure in that list), but, alas, RISC OS’ language support is…lacking.

यही कारण है कि संभवतः कोई भी हिंदी भाषी RISC OS का उपयोग नहीं कर रहा है।

alas, RISC OS’ language support is…lacking

It is – but then it is in Windows & MacOS & probably Linux too. Oh, Unicode provides the alphabet (after a fashion – not really very well) but beyond that? Not really. I had very decent Hindi fonts working on RISCOS long before the apology for them appeared in Unicode. Sadly of course crammed into 224 character fonts, but at least you could touch type them with the traditional Hindi keyboard layout – which is very different from the semi-phonetic Anglo-Indian “Hindi” keyboard available on modern systems, which is a pain to type on.

यही कारण है कि संभवतः कोई भी हिंदी भाषी RISC OS का उपयोग नहीं कर रहा है। (That’s probably why no Hindi speaking person is using RISC OS.)

I think the real reason is that most computer-literate Hindi-speaking Indians back in Acorn days knew Hindi as their mother tongue, but were educated in English medium and did all their computing in English, not in Hindi – in which they’re verbally fluent but barely literate. Even today that’s very common in the middle class.

most-spoken language

From that indexmundi link, I find the most-spoken first language interesting. English and Hindi both drop down the list quite a lot. Most educated Indians speak and understand Hindi well enough, but a relatively small number speak it as their first language. Their English is often better – at least in reading and writing, if not speech – than their Hindi.

Unicode provides the alphabet (after a fashion – not really very well)

I’ve heard less than nice things said about the east Asian “CJK” block. Makes me wonder, how many Hindis (as in native first language) were involved in designing the relevant parts of the Unicode spec?

Makes me wonder, how many Hindis (as in native first language) were involved in designing the relevant parts of the Unicode spec?

Plenty – in the sense of it being their mother tongue, learnt at their ayah’s knee and possibly at their mother’s – but mostly educated in English. Oh, they’ll be able to read Hindi okay, and write it well enough for ordinary purposes. But in terms of formal (or technical) language, their English will be far better.

(For the exact meaning of Ayah, see https://clive.semmens.org.uk/Fiction/Penny/Glossary.html )

It has mostly been done just doing testing to see if I can break things, if people are interested I have a short post with some images for people to see.

Hex → Hexagone ? I’m dying!!!

I’m not sure what it is actually asking for, but maybe “Première Hex” and “Dernière Hex”? You’ll need to check if it’s “dernière” or “dernier” (ditto premier/première) and that will introduce you to the massive headache of French’s gendered words and what needs to accord with what.

Enjoy it – ’cos if I remember correctly, not only does German have the masculine and feminine, it also has a neuter.

Now somebody please explain why languages have this nonsense? Who really cares if a carrot is a male word or a female word?

Aside: you might think male for the very obvious “it looks like”, but no, it’s “carotte” so it’s female. But a cucumber is masculine.
Size matters, I guess. ;)

“Données par recherche d’ad”.

You’ll have noticed that not only are literal translations problématique, French also uses more words to say the same thing.
Perhaps “Recherche par l’adresse MAC”…?
It’s still likely longer than the icon, but less.

The hex ones are Start and End, I’m thinking of changing that to just Starts and Ends in the English and the translations as well, as Hex is not really needed.

Also the the Translation from the English Data by MAC Address Lookup the Data by bit should be the only bit translated as the MAC Address Lookup is the data provider’s name.

not only does German have the masculine and feminine, it also has a neuter

Indeed it does. I can never remember whether possessive pronouns take the gender of the owner (like in English) or of the owned (like in French), which causes hilarity with our daughter’s in-laws, but rarely any confusion.

I don’t really understand how there can be more than three genders, and luckily no European language has more, but… https://wals.info/feature/30A#2/26.7/148.9

When Sir William Jones introduced the concept of Indo-European language the earliest example known was Sanskrit which had three genders. But now Hittite has come to light as an earlier Indo-European language, and it had only two genders (animate and inanimate). There seems to be some controversy about whether Hittite lost a gender at some point, or whether Proto-Indo-European always had only two and gained a third gender later. The theory seems to be that animate became masculine, inanimate became neuter and feminine developed from inanimate plural. The reasoning is that abstractions were represented by goddesses, and abstractions are ways of referring to collections of things.

Now somebody please explain why languages have this nonsense? Who really cares if a carrot is a male word or a female word?

I don’t really understand how there can be more than three genders

The concept of gender in linguistics is perhaps less confusing if you think of the French word “genre” as we use it in English. A gender in a language is mainly a set of nouns that behave the same way, and are thus of the same genre. In the languages I know of that have this concept (my knowledge is limited to western European), it is partly linked to the biological sex, but not exclusively. (For example, the German for girl, Mädchen, is neuter, because it falls in with other diminutive words which tend to be neuter.) So it’s often related to the shape or feel of the word. A bit like all the mutation in Welsh, where there appear to be a lot of complex rules but it has its own internal logic derived from how the words flow through the mouth.

It’s totally understandable that you get patterns like this in languages, especially highly inflected languages. I don’t know whether there is any evidence that the gender of nouns influences how speakers of that language think of things in terms of biological sex or sex-based stereotypes. There are other patterns, like the different declensions in Latin, which are not obviously tied to biology and so have been given other names by the grammarians.

I don’t know whether there is any evidence that the gender of nouns influences how speakers of that language think of things in terms of biological sex or sex-based stereotypes.

Other than in those languages (like English) that only really have gendering for relatively few words, mostly those that really are linked to sex.

I don’t really understand… concept of gender in linguistics is perhaps less confusing if…

Sorry, my tongue-in-cheek statement was perhaps not sufficiently obviously tongue-in-cheek. I assumed that the link I provided might have clarified it. My French is good enough to have known gender=genre…

The utility of distinguishing animate from inanimate is fairly obvious – mistake a rock for a bear and little harm is done, while the other way round could be disastrous. If you equate animate with can fight back if you mess with it then you see why words for slaves and children and diminutives tend to be neuter (i.e. not animate). The accusative case is a demotion to neuter, which is why neuter words look the same in the nominative and in the accusative.

which is why neuter words look the same in the nominative and in the accusative

Is that generally true across most languages? (Obviously excluding those that don’t distinguish between nominative and accusative, or which don’t have a neuter gender at all…)

The accusative case is a demotion to neuter, which is why neuter words look the same in the nominative and in the accusative.

And interesting how in French the familiar singular can be used in a demeaning way, as we see in our policiers on the TV.

Addressing a suspect as if they were a child demotes/devalues them in a similar way!

This language stuff is awfully interesting if totally off-topic!

I don’t know whether there is any evidence that the gender of nouns influences how speakers of that language think of things in terms of biological sex or sex-based stereotypes.

Gender based nouns allow nuance that we don’t have in English.
For example Antonio Machado’s poem “Caminante no hay Camino” ends with
"Caminante, no hay camino
sino estelas en la mar.”
In Spain the sea is masculine so should be “el mar”
Switching to “la mar” gives the poem an emotional charge that would be hard to achieve in any other way.

Before I am dispatched to Aldershot or Psueds Corner I would just like to say “tambien me encanta el modo subjuntivo”.