Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I find generalizations of the form "group X is stupid because it doesn't do Y exactly in a way I'd like people to do Y" more a failure of imagination and evidence of the narrow-mindedness than anything else. Maybe they don't have something like Three Body, or maybe they do - but making an impression on the whole culture by such a narrow measure sounds pointless.
When I cooperated with Japanese people at my work (was some years ago) I (eventually) found out several of them did not speak English, and the English emails they regularly sent me are a product of an automatic translation. That explained a lot actually. It would be nice if they told me about it upfront, but I understand it may be harder for them to admit something like that. But none of those people were dumb - or dumber than any other very smart people I worked with, despite the occasional communication problems. Maybe if you understood Japanese you'd have a different impression?
On the other hand, if I would evaluate people by the content I find on the social media, I'd be forced to conclude that the vast majority of humanity are complete utter morons. I don't think it's actually true though, I think it's just how the social media works, unfortunately.
It's amusing in a post talking about translation and language prowess that you've actually made a (very common with Americans) grammatical error.
This should be either "if I evaluated" or "if I were to evaluate", since it forms a subordinate clause to the second conditional, if you're interested. Mistakes of this form are nearly guaranteed with Dutchmen, which I always find interesting because their English is otherwise near-perfect, and typically more orthodox than the average, say, Brit.
I am not a Dutchman (not that there's anything wrong with that ;), neither I am a native English speaker, so I make such mistakes regularly, especially when I tweak the phrase several times before posting and forget to re-read the whole thing and see if it still sounds like a coherent and correct phrase. I do know about that rule, in fact, by a weird coincidence, I was reading an article about it just yesterday (even though I knew it before that), but of course that means nothing. I sometimes make such mistakes even in my native language. I appreciate you pointing it out, which reminds me of the necessity of paying more attention.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link