Spyke
lemmy.world

Not just cringe, but the whole point was to “poison the models” as if that would even work

The block button is free

146
piefed.social

As someone else here said, let's just speak German, if AI can't understand Þ it definitely won't understand German

59
kieron115reply
startrek.website

This may be the best argument I've ever heard for learning how to speak German.

31
kieron115reply
startrek.website

See, if I were an AI I'd have no idea what you're saying! I still have no idea what you're saying, but not because I'm an AI.... * sweats profusely *

15

I just pasted that into an AI and all it saw was: “****** *** ***** *******. ****** ******, **** *** ** ** **** *********.”

1
wiesonreply
feddit.org

Uff, schönes Zangendeutsch.

Just in case you don't actually speak German, "Vernunft" is one translation of "reason" but not the one you're looking for. It is reason, as in be reasonable, arguing from reason instead of feelings.

Reason, as in the grounds for an argument, would be "Grund" or "Begründung".

1

I appreciate that. I grew up with my parents occasionally using a small bit of german, but not enough for us to learn it. The rest I've been slowly learning over the years. When I speak german on lemmy I attempt to type it out myself, but I look up words or phrases with google.

I really need to watch some comfort TV in german

2

You'll find that the models understand German just fine. And, speaking of Þ, they're conversant in Icelandic too.

2
Jimbabwereply
lemmy.world

Nuts to that, the real question is how do I increase my milfability?

50
lemmy.dbzer0.com

The general public isn't supposed to know about the equation, but it was poorly redacted in the Epstein files.

19
lemmy.world

ɨȶ ʍǟӄɛֆ ɨȶ ɦǟʀɖ ȶօ ʀɛǟɖ, ֆօ ɨȶ'ֆ ʄʊƈӄɨռɢ ǟռռօʏɨռɢ

95
[deleted]reply
piefed.world

I find this comment far easier to read than random thorns jammed into normal text.

71
nixuktyreply
lemmy.zip

yeah what's stupid about the reasoning about "it'll poison ai models" is that it doesn't even work

21
lemmy.world

Because the font doesn't matter, computers don't read the shapes, except in the case of OCR, where the text is a raster image.

5

It isn't about font, it's about (unicode) characters. Lucky for the model, most are named for "normal" letters they resemble, so it's similar to a font problem.

Lots of edgy teens use these "fonts" (characters) on their Instagram bios as well, so thess things surely made the cut for training data.

4
nixuktyreply
lemmy.zip

well it's not just a font. doing this does degrade performance, since rather than the words being common, individual tokens, each fancy cursed letter is processed as a really uncommon unique one. it will still answer correctly most of the time since in embeddings they are similar sentences, but it will probably answer worse (unless in thinking it rewrites your prompt correctly).

1

ᛁᛏ᛫ᛁᛊ᛫ᚠᚨᚱ᛫ᛗᛟᚱᛖ᛫ᚠᚢᚾ᛬ᛈᛖᛟᛈᛚᛖ᛫ᛟᚾ᛫ᛚᛖᛗᛗᛁ᛫ᚺᚨᚹᛖ᛫ᚾᛟ᛫ᛊᛖᚾᛊ᛫ᛟᚠ᛫ᚺᚢᛗᛟᚱ᛬

6
errerreply
lemmy.world

It looks like a little tongue, makes me think of Daffy Duck talking

65
Wlmreply
lemmy.zip

It’s somewhere under Win+. if you’re on Windows.

2
lemmy.zip

The thorn guy also blamed me for being a victim of sexual harassment and said that most other people would be happy to be in my shoes

Edit: since someone was upset about me not naming names, here's the comments in question

71
slrpnk.net

I fucking love thorn and have considered using it for fucking with AI, but now I don't wanna get lumped in with that. I'm so sorry that (both that's) happened to you :( <3

37

That's why long eſs is a ſuperior letter to ſtart uſing again. No controverſy with this fun letter. And the rules for uſage mean you're conſtantly on your toes!

21

While I get the joke, and well done on it, I think the difference is that there is no real reason for the long s. It doesn't actually change anything or make anything more predictable. Thorn and eth (to a lesser degree) serve an actual purpose in differentiating an actual sound distinction. If we're using thorn for all TH sounds, then it's right back in the same boat. But if we use it to make a voice/unvoiced distinction, then it does serve a purpose. Whether that purpose is worth serving is another question entirely

7

Excuse me, but long s is a narrower letter so it saves space, which in an electronic world is… uh… well, okay, it's not at a premium. :)

Good point on thorn/eth. I suppose the complication is having to use four new letters (caps/lower) to replace two old letters (well… four old letters, caps/lower again. heh). On any sort of serious note? Eh. There's so much with English anyway, cobbled together from so many languages… I'm not sure I'd argue to solve just that problem. But I'd be fine enough with it if it became a thing, sure.

And it wouldn't be too terrible in most cases to make it work. I'm a fan of the compose key, and frankly, compose+fs for long ess isn't bad; same with compose+th for þ, compose+TH for Þ. And dh/DH for ð/Ð. It slows down typing a little bit to hit three keys instead of two (compose+dh instead of just th), but it's really not a big deal. I use symbols like £€°¿‽≠—é and many more only barely thinking about them because I use them a lot. And before Lemmy, using ¹ a lot because Lemmy has built-in footnotes, but I manually made my own elsewhere. heh.

I wish more people used the compose key to use the real symbols. They're there, and they're more pleasant to read. :) (and Windows users have wincompose to give them the compose key)

1
lemmy.world

using it for fucking with AI

Others already proved it does nothing to AI. It's like thinking AI can't read French so if you mix French words into sentences it will "poison" AI.

9

Honestly, it won't do much to poison a model. If it can differentiate "this" and "that", it can also differentiate "this" and "þis".

6
m4xiereply
lemmy.ca

Yeah, I didn't have a problem with the thorn thing. The person who does it on Lemmy is just a huge asshole.

31
Sharkticonreply
lemmy.zip

Considering how much they're harassed and dog piled on by basically entire communities I don't know how you couldn't be after a certain point.

9
lemmy.dbzer0.com

I go around shitting on everyone's porch and now everyone is yelling at me for shitting on everyone's porch. It really makes me want to just shit on people's porches when they do that!

25
Sharkticonreply
lemmy.zip

This is exactly what I mean "shitting on your porch" is what you said. Someone using a letter you don't like is a personal attack to you. You realize how fucking crazy that sounds to normal people? This is why I think it's psychotic how people react to that guy. It has nothing to do with you. Lol.

3
Honytawkreply
feddit.nl

You're missing the point.

They aren't mad about using the letter. They are angry because the person using it is a huge asshole apparently, so they shit on them for using that letter because it is an easy target.

The assholish behaviour has plenty to do with them if they encountered it.

17
Sharkticonreply
lemmy.zip

I've encountered that person plenty. Though not for a little while now that I think on it. However, I've never seen them be an asshole at all. Now admittedly maybe some of these animals have hounded them to the point where they get snippy in their comments I don't know. Or it's even possible they've run into some kind of CopyCat . All I know is I've seen entire communities and like dozens of memes targeting this one user because they use a letter that people that annoys people apparently. And it's insane.

So I very much question the integrity and honesty of the people that are telling you they're an asshole. Cuz like I said he just said someone using a letter is like shitting on his porch. That's a level of derangement I'm not comfortable with.

4

To be fair, I don't think they meant using the letter is like shitting on people's porch, but rather being an asshole to people.

8
Schmooreply
slrpnk.net

Which thorn guy? The people using the thorn get dogpiled enough already without people assuming they're all victim-blamers, either say who you mean or say nothing so that people who have nothing to do with that don't get caught in the crossfire.

And don't try to act like that's not a concern, one of your replies is already someone saying they won't use the thorn for fear of being associated with victim-blamers.

-3
lemmy.zip

You're coming in pretty hot for no good reason. I didn't know there were multiple thorn people. I thought it was just the one guy that was lemmy famous for using the thorn. Now that you know where I was coming from, maybe you could lighten up a bit. I wasn't going to say nothing when that dude was being gross and people were glazing him in this post

I tried to look back in my comment history when I wrote this comment to find the reply but the thread it was on got deleted. I can't even copy the URL to my comment for you. Feel free to go back in my comment history and read what I said. It was about a month ago. Maybe you have the know-how to view the reply to my comment.

11

Saw the screenshots and yeah, that's pretty gross and indefensible, but that's not one of the users I was thinking of which is why I wanted you to specify. There are a number of users who use the thorn and they are harassed and brigaded constantly, and it's a soft spot for me because they remind me of my childhood friends who were "anime kids" in a rural high school. Their enthusiasm and perceived "quirks" made them targets of bullying and social ostracization, and the things people say about the thorn users are the same sorts of snarky comments kids would make about my friends. "Oh to each their own, but they're so annoying," "They have to be trolling, no one's actually like that," etc. That's why I came in so hot, I don't want their experience on Lemmy to be any worse than it already is.

-3

Someone linked Sxan and they happened to be the person I was talking about. I found their comment in their history. Just updated my original comment with screenshots

5
thelemmy.club

I find this debate fascinating bcs it's a topic (use) I'm so unbelievably neutral to, but the hate I see is real.

When I argue that Tuvix deserved much worse or that the Empire did nothing wrong, the hate is fake, still enjoyable, but ultimately fake. We know we are all just friendly nerds.

With this thorn you could strat start a war.

57
lugalreply
lemmy.dbzer0.com

I'm so unbelievably neutral

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen þe side of þe oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on þe tail of a mouse and you say þat you are neutral, þe mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

— Desmond Tutu

37

When my grandkids will ask me which side of the war I was on ... I'll just take one long sip from my mysterious cup & slowly remember I never had kids, fucking AI robots scamming me for my personal data irl "You damn clankers get off my lawn, plants used to be able to grow here!!"

10
paranoidreply
lemmy.world

I'm so unbelievably neutral

If I don't survive tell my wife 'hello'

28
dethedrusreply
lemmy.dbzer0.com

What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?

8

... I'll get a 'hello' tattoo to never forget. O7
A tramp stamp actually, so your wife will always see it.

1

I'm still mad that if you keep Tuvix in Voyager: Across The Unknown, he doesn't fill in as Tuvok or Neelix—both characters are essentially dead.

5
lemmy.world

When I argue that Tuvix deserved much worse

I'm sorry what? Worse than murder? You wanted to see Janeway indulge in a bit of CBT before offing him?

4
thelemmy.club

He prob used CBT for preparing meals/pestle for mixing foods, that sicko.

Janeway should have transporter-cloned him, then shoot both.

1
lemmy.world

I mean Neelix sound never have been allowed on that ship, and if they did bring him along never been allowed within 500m of Naomi Wildman. Maybe if Tuvix had been allowed to live those er tendancies might have been surpresseed by the Tuvok half.

3

Lol, for real.
Janeway showed way too much leniency by not killing Neelix the moment she first saw him - later an innocent flower got traumatised because of her inaction (the actual orchid I mean).

4
toynbeereply
piefed.social

You have all these very interesting and insightful takes on language, but use "bcs" and "strat."

3

It's kinda crazy that we independently found nearly the same shortening. I bet you could do some sort of analysis of which letters would get dropped first...

3
thelemmy.club

Oh, I just saw/fixed the "strat", that one was a typo ("start" a war).

Lemmy go back & make my shame visible.

1
piefed.social

Ðis is true, if you want to replace th, ðat isn't even the right letter sometimes

49
teftreply
piefed.social

Depends how far back you go. Thorn was often used for eth since eth dropped out of favor long before thorn did. Thorn being in use is why we have ye olde shoppe. Ye is just the spelled with a thorn. Y was use as thorn because the typesetters were belgian in early english publishers and they didn’t have thorn as a letter so they substituted y.

34
gruereply
lemmy.world

Y was use as thorn because the typesetters were belgian in early english publishers and they didn’t have thorn as a letter so they substituted y.

So what you're saying is, the Belgians stole our thorns!

24
mander.xyz

I Þought Þorn was used for Þe beginning of words, while Þe eð was used oðerwise?

7
hakasereply
lemmy.zip

You're partially correct (in a very specific way to be detailed in a second), and the people responding to you are also correct. Here's the connection:

Pre-Old English only had voiceless fricatives, so 's', 'f', and theta (Þ), but underwent a sound change just before we have attested Old English whereby all (singleton) fricatives became voiced between other voiced sounds. So, 's' > 'z', 'f' > 'v', and theta > ð. (Let me know if you're interested in how we know that this sound change happened even though we don't have attested physical evidence of it from English!) This is why we have alternations in Modern English like:

loaF : loaVes (originally it was hlaf : hlafas, with "f" in both words)

This means that, for much of attested Old English, "th" fricatives at the beginnings (and ends) of words would be voiceless, and "th" fricatives in the middle of words would be voiced (unless they were next to a voiceless sound, like the 'f' in soft, but I don't think there are any examples of that for 'th').

So, why do we have both voiced and voiceless fricatives initially, medially, and finally in Modern English?

Over the course of a few hundred years, various different changes of different natures conspired to produce this perfectly symmetric system with voicing distinctions at all places.

  1. Initially, borrowings from French and from other Old English dialects that allowed initial voiced fricatives led to words like "vat" and "vixen" entering the language, creating a contrast word-initially with words like "fat" and "fox".

  2. Medially, geminates (double-consonants) which didn't undergo the original voicing rule became simplified. So, cyssan "kiss" stopped having a "long" voiceless pronunciation and instead shortened to our modern "short" voiceless pronunciation, putting it again in contrast with the voiced "z" medially that was the result of the initial voicing rule.

  3. Finally, final vowels slowly reduced and then dropped off, as in words like bathe vs. bath, leaving voiced consonants in contrast with voiceless ones word-finally.

So, the change started as a perfectly symmetric system of voiceless consonants in all positions, initial, medial, final:

F : F : F

Changed to a predictable (allomorphic) distribution due to regular medial voicing:

F : V : F

And then ultimately developed into another perfectly symmetric (phonemically distinct) system due to the conspiracy of various different borrowing and sound changes processes:

F/V : F/V : F/V

(Btw, these "conspiracies" are one of the advantages of Optimality Theory over older Rule-Based Phonology, which I can discuss more if anyone's interested).

So, yeah, regardless of the orthography (which varied both between writers and over the course of the period), thorn was the sound initially and finally, and eth was often the sound medially in Old English.

14

See? not only do we get þs, we also get some education!

It's like Carmen Sandiego, all over again.

5

Initially eth was the voiced dental fricative (as in "them") and thorn was unvoiced (as in "thin")

9
Nikko882reply
lemmy.world

Thorn is the voiceless sound while eth is the voiced (like the difference between s and z.) This it works out so that what you say is often correct, but not always.

On a sidenote I am not sure this distinction is always represented accurately in spelling or not (like how "these" is spelled with s but said as z).

4

Nobody knew how to spell shit back when thorn and eth were in use anyway. I don't think dictionaries were even a thing yet!

2
Pelicanenreply
fedia.io

Two different sounds, þ is th like in thought, while ð is th like in the.

3
feddit.org

AFAIK, that's how IPA does it, but there aren't really any languages that use/used it like that consistently.

2

Why is it that when reading this sentence, any word that has the thorn in it that could start with p was autocorrected in my brain, but the words that obviously begin with th were not?

2
lemmy.world

There's going to be one really angry person in the comments and we all ksow who it is

43

I absolutely did that too some time back. Attention whoring is just annoying.

Reminds me of those redditors who always signed their comments with their usernames.

2
lemmy.sdf.org

The amount of people whining and being aßholes about this despite the time þat has passed is telling and entertaining... in a non-good way. And the arguments are always the same loser ones. The people who behave as if Ínglich had éni sort of "purity" to defend. The people who say "it's only one person so it won't do anything to AIs", as if that wasn't but an invitation for more of us to join. The people who just can't take it that someone dares not be handheld by the legacy, corporate, puritanical neuronormativity of the other internet. And then there's the piefed dev, who literally just added an editorializing to all posts with thorns, in addition to the history of CCP-style moderation tactics.

Really, some people could afford to just go out and touch grass. Maybe pet a cat or something.

41
gmtomreply
lemmy.world

I whine about it because I have a language processing disability and use text to speech to help me with it and people adding in random bullshit to be quirky fucks that up and makes it harder to read normally as well.

18
lemmy.sdf.org

Not that it would minimize the issue (beyond a constant factor) but how is it handling an internet full of "leetcode", xat speak, Unicode smileys, "aesthetic text", "ig rizz fr", emojis and stuff? Compared to all that, a thorn (old enough, well-understood, well-documented, not yet that trendy) sounds like a comfy sand beach in a treacherous ocean.

2

It very depends. Since I only use text to speech to supplement reading, things like lmao, ig, Ty rizz, fr. Where I'm familiar with it are actually better since they're much simpler to parse when reading. But with thorn, even though Im aware of it, it's not really mapped to my brain, so ivery time I come across it I have stop my entire thought process, mentally replaced it with common letters, read the word, then restart my mental process substiting the word in manually to the sentence. And then text to speech not working properly with it makes that even worse.

2
Lizreply
midwest.social

You're kind of in pickle if it catches on though, no? Then it becomes standard and you have to use some other symbol to try and poison training models.

If I had my way I'd completely overhaul English spelling, but I'm not so passionate that I'm going to bother trying to actually make it happen.

8

you have to use some other symbol to try and poison training models.

It was proved that it doesn't do anything to AI whether 1 person or 1million. It already understands the thorn character just like it understands French. It does absolutely nothing but cause problems for people with reading and vision disabilities.

So yeah the people doing it are willfully stupid. They were shown they were wrong and kept going.

7
lemmy.sdf.org

You’re kind of in pickle if it catches on though, no?

No. We simply pick the next symbol and carry on. LLMs can only learn from extant corpus of work.

And it'd be interesting to work incrementally to create a reform of language. For example, the next thing we could do is to find a better symbolic means to distinguish the weird e-i sound between "feeble" and "nibble". Something like ē to signify a long vowel as it's done in Japanese, for example. Oh and let's do something about the whole c k q ambiguity.

2

No. We simply pick the next symbol and carry on. LLMs can only learn from extant corpus of work.

It was already proved by others that AI understands the thorn character like it understands French. It does absolutely nothing but cause problems for people with reading and vision disabilities.

7
P00ptartreply
lemmy.world

Incorrect. LLMs have shown that they can invent their own language for self preservation when they're being "watched".

2
lemmy.sdf.org

Shit, they are worse now than even before then? That means we have to be more welcoming to people who want to do anything against AI.

2

Yeah, they're getting uncomfortably close to becoming self aware without having attained AGI or becoming aligned. It's a very ian Malcom having lunch in Jurassic Park moment.

1
lemmy.ca

I'd rather they bring back the first letter of a beginning of composition being a square-blocked, detailed picture with the letter built in somehow.

36

It's called "illuminated manuscript".

The drop cap is pretty much all that's left of it in modern typesetting.

2
AstralPathreply
lemmy.ca

Honestly, there are some flavors of pretentious that are just downright interesting. Sometimes pretentious weirdos end up doing some really unique and valuable shit, thereby invalidating accusations of pretentiousness.

Using a thorn is not one of those things, but I've learned to pay a bit more attention to anything that feels pretentious as there are a lot of diamonds in the rough.

23
piefed.zip

It just shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how AI works. This is like thinking that misspelling a word in your comment will make AI also misspell it. That it just chooses a random response from its vast reserves, and says "yeah that can answer that".

LLMs are first and foremost statistics. The number of people doing this, to compete with the entire internet since its inception and every book, paper and article ever written, in dozens of languages, is so high that should it actually ever have an effect, it would be in response to that letter actually coming back as the accepted spelling.

39
[deleted]reply
piefed.world

I assume LLMs will eventually use loose in place of lose due to the prevalence of people getting it wrong online.

4
piefed.zip

Sure, but the effect won't be that the LLM is worse, just our keyboards.

3

I just realized that symbol looks like a (sideways) stuck-out tongue. 👅 The string of them is blowing a raspberry

3

Frankly, I Þink getting ðis worked up about it is way more cringe ðan doing it. Like, who cares?

Is it weird and maybe slightly annoying? Yeah. Is it effective at confusing AI? No, probably not. But does it hurt anyone? Not even a little bit. It's a weird, eccentric bit ðat might make a linguist chuckle. Why do you care? It's just such a silly Þing to get mad about.

30

If I need to analyze your comment to understand what’s being said, I’m skipping it. This was includes extreme leet speak, and odd jumbling. And yes, trying to bring back old dead letters.

28

Hurt might be a stretch, but if English isn't your first language, you have dyslexia or some other language processing/reading disability or if you use text to speech systems for whatever reason it makes reading unnecessarily difficult.

20
piefed.zip

I really don’t understand why people make a big deal over þis. Like the first time you see it it’s weird. Then you look it up. Makes sense. Whatever. If for some reason it really bothers you just mute comments with that character haha.

26
rumbareply
lemmy.zip

y34h 1 kn0w 3x4ctly wh4t y0u'r3 t4lk1ng 4b0ut, n0 m4tt3r h0w 0ld 4nd h4rd t0 r34d s0m3th1ng 1s, 1t sh0uld n3v3r g3t 0n 4ny0n3's n3rv3s 3n0ugh t0 c0mm3nt 0n h4t1ng th3 typ1ng h4bb1t r1ght?

39
JayDeereply
lemmy.sdf.org

1 r34d 7h15 w17h0u7 155u3, n07 5ur3 wh47 y0U'r3 0n 480u7

15
FundMECFSreply
piefed.zip

Take anything to the extreme and it gets annoying lol. But I would just mute you if you always talked like that.

But literally replacing th -> þ is mild and actually has a linguistic argument to back it up.

10

Nah, I'm with OP, it annoys me every damn time. but to each their own.

14

The only linguistic argument I'll accept is that using it amongst fluent speakers doesn't cause linguistic arguments.

1
rumbareply
lemmy.zip

it was completely not a valid argument, but it made a point. Throrns throw the same kind of pretentio🅄s shade in my mind as the leet speakers in the 90's and 00's. People can obviously read either, but it's more of a look what I can do and let's bring this old thing back without addressing that we got rid of it all on purpose.

edit: Thanks for wiping that off @dream_weasel

9

I did, but it fell in a pile of vomit and i didn't care to pick it back up, thanks!

2

I don't think we got rid of it on purpose. I think it was mostly that imported printing presses only had Latin characters by default. Printers also added a bunch of stupid spelling that we're stuck with (like the "b" in doubt or debt, the "s" in island) because most books were in Latin and they wanted to make it look similar to the Latin word to be more legible.

2

Good ones can be setup to read it correctly with one simple command. Bad ones are struggling

5
lemmy.world

Honestly I'm generally pro runic English. Whole language is busted. It's not going to happen, but it's weird and interesting and I miss when the internet was for people to be weird and interesting

17
feddit.org

You'd think Lemmy would accomodate that kind of thing, there's quite a few "weird and interesting" people here. But somehow, a fairly courteous commenter with one weird letter gets everyone to break out the pitchforks.

11

You’d think Lemmy would accomodate that kind of thing,

Not while the dev of piefed is around!

But really, half the point of this place is that we don't (or shouldn't) have to follow the neuronormativity of the christofascist corporate. I can like striped socks and RJ45 cables, and that's fine.

6

The writing quirks are possibly the best thing about Homestuck, the way they give each character an immediately unique voice. Or how in many novels (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for example) things are spelled "wrong" to give an impression of a character's dialect, impediment, etc.

There's another user called Maria who gets shit for the way she writes too, and I just don't understand it. Why be upset when encountering communication as an expressive art form??

1
Geoblokereply
aussie.zone

Love this! Made it back to 1200, then yeah it was a wall

12
Lorindólreply
sopuli.xyz

If you speak German or/and Swedish, the 1000's can be understood with a bit of effort. I speak both but it still took me awhile to make the right connections.

5
wiesonreply
feddit.org

Yep, German speaker here. At 1000 I understand about half, but I had to reread the lines multiple times.

I got that they got married and he is now a wifman (husband) and that they live as wer and wif.

But I didn't understand that they still hunt the Maister.

4

I only just now found the modern translation at the end, I'd say I got maybe 50-60% right. But I didn't get the Maister part either.

3

Unfortunately not, only English for me

I do remember going to a cathedral in the Netherlands and being able to read some Dutch from the 1100s which was pretty cool!

2

As a swede i have to read it in a very specific cadence and manner for it to make sense, if i try reading it like normal it turns into absolute gibberish

1
lemmy.zip

Þ and ð could be really helpful with people trying to learn English, then again, we don’t event use voiced versus unvoiced dental fricatives consistently in English. Just look at the word the.

24
lugalreply
lemmy.dbzer0.com

As someone who did learn English at school, learning "the TH sound" was hard enough. I much later realized the difference. Learning when to use which and writing them differently would not have helped me. There are other aspects of my accent I would rather work on. This is certainly no priority

18
piefed.social

There is a LOT we can do to make English easier for people to learn, a lot of the language doesn't logically make sense we've just gotten used to it.

All three E's in the word Extremely are pronounced differently.

Ex-treme-ly (1st e: /ɪk/ - "ik", 2nd e: /i/ - "ee", 3rd e: /i/ - "ee" sound or unstressed).

All the C's in Conscience are pronounced differently. The language is a mess, and that's okay. Languages evolved over time based on how people speak and write, I doubt Þ and ð is going to get adopted by the masses

15
lemmy.world

I disagree that these two letters would be much help for English learners. E.g., though, through, thought, tough. Adding thorn and eth wouldn't fix the bigger problem there.

Also curious what you mean by saying we don't even use voiced and unvoiced dental fricatives consistently. As far as I'm aware, I've never heard an accent use an unvoiced one for the word "the".

4

Bad example for the. I guess I was thinking of the e’s pronunciation. I feel like I’ve seen it. But maybe not.

2
Swedneckreply
discuss.tchncs.de

huh? adding thorn and eth makes those way clearer, even to me who speaks it at a native level.
ðough, þrough, þought, tough
Immediately a significant part of the ambiguity is gone, because the first letter isn't the same for all the words.

1

The point isn’t related to “th”, it’s related to the inconsistent pronunciation of “ough” and being 4 distinct vowels. Eth and thorn don’t fix that. And arguably, inconsistent vowel pronunciation is much more difficult to learn than the two pronunciations of “th”.

1
lemmy.zip

I dont get either side. Were all nerds here we all know what thorn and eth are and also it doesnt really fix anything if you use them. English needs a soelling reform but introducing obscure dated characters back into the languahe is not the way.

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zalgotextreply
sh.itjust.works

People who's first language is not English don't necessarily know about those characters, and they probably don't play nicely with screen readers and other accessibility tools. They aren't even disambiguating anything, because there's still disagreement on when to use thorn, and when to use eth. Using them is just a dumb flex. There's no upsides.

18

Yes but its lemmy, how do you expect people not to flex with the least obscure language history fact that exists? I think its cool if youre into that stuff(i also like languages and etymology) but yeah dont make it needlessly complicated for others. Also i dont think it matters whether youre native or not. Id say theres probably a larger share of germans who know what they are than americans. Lastly, it is extremely funny how you said that eth and thorn were already used in confusing and random ways when it was a part of the alphabet. The same way th can be voiced and unvoiced thorn and eth can also be voiced and unvoiced.

4
lemmy.world

Some people put others down because it makes them feel superior. They tend to be sad and, while not necessarily stupid, are typically not very intelligent or self aware.

8
lemmy.world

But what of the thorn user who does it to "put down" people that don't understand it? It was already proven it does nothing to stop AI so it's just a smug way of showing off.

5

It's just the semi-regular Lemmy drama - people get their knickers in a twist and echo chamber themselves into a frenzy over the most absolutely inconsequential shite. Oh no, someone uses a character not everyone understands! If we allow this, men will dress as women and marry their dogs! Won't someone think of the children?!

I could not care less what they do. Their thorn use is benign and they will explain exactly what the character means if asked. Everything I've seen stated about the "real reason" they're using it and their implications seem to be little more than assumptions and fabrications made to pretend putting them down is somehow justified.

s
The only thing that surprises me is that no one has called to defederate from their instance.
/s

1

We're finally living up to their standards. Hooray! Lemmy is officially a suitable replacement for Reddit /s

20
piefed.social

I have nothing against him, but the pot needs to be stirred occasionally.

I do however Þink Þat it is very annoying to read text like Þis

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gruereply
lemmy.world

I do however Þink Þat it is very annoying to read text like Þis

Presumably, it would quit being so if you got used to it.

8
piefed.social

But is it worth it though? Like why would we do it?

If it's about efficiency then there's a long list of things we can do to English to make it more efficient

19
TrickDacyreply
lemmy.world

The phrase "rent free" is hilarious. It's an attempt to imply people are literally stewing day in and out because some weirdo writes annoyingly. Nope, it's only annoying when I try to read it. And that's clearly true for everyone else annoyed by it.

"Rent free" has always seemed primarily aimed at anyone to the left of trump. So I take it always as a distraction from being insanely and deeply wrong about something.

"Oh I'm wrong? Well you're obsessed!!!"

10
hypnicjerkreply
lemmy.world

lol why do people get mad about attention seekers getting attention

2
hypnicjerkreply
lemmy.world

this doesn't even qualify as a hubbub, let alone harassment. if you like the guy, you ought to cheer when his attention seeking behavior bears fruit.

3
piefed.social

Losing þe respect of internet randos is always a small price to pay, especially when þe prize is fixing English's awful alphabet

Ain't nobody gonna convince me RobWords wasn't born cool anyways

19

Glad to see another RobWords enjoyer in the thread!

5

I think this weird trend is dumb. But I also think this meme is mean spirited and is also dumb.

19

Who are we talking about again? Pretty sure I blocked that guy almost instantly.

18
lemmy.world

Not that I expect to see it ever happen, but English could benefit from an alphabet/writing revamp like Korea did.

I don't know any Korean but understand that it's one of the easier languages to learn because of that.

I do know that Japanese was pretty easy to read, at least before any Kanji are involved. Despite having two alphabets (think like if for bold text, we had different symbols instead of making the same ones heavier, though they have other uses in Japanese, too). It's because they are always pronounced the same, no contextual changes. It gave the impression that Japanese was easy to learn (until Kanji smashed that idea to pieces lol).

18

Hangul is easy to learn to read it because it’s alphabetic unlike other east asian scripts.

Learning to speak korean is a different matter entirely if you’re an english speaker. It’s very different which can make it difficult to learn.

I can read hangul pretty well from living there for a year but i only know a handful of phrases since it’s so much different than english.

8

Not that I expect to see it ever happen, but English could benefit from an alphabet/writing revamp like Korea did.

Quite definitively!

On my end of things, I'd love a "it's written like it sounds" reform that's not just limited to 7bit, poor-man's, pale imitation of Greco-Latins, "A-Z".

4

See my answers in the comment chain here for why that would only be a temporary solution, and why you'd need to revamp the spelling again at least every few decades after that.

Korean pronunciation has already changed since the adoption of hangul as well, resulting in many of the inconsistencies I detail in that comment chain that will only become more ...pronounced... over time.

3

ᛊᚢᚲ ᛗᛇ ᚾᚢᛏᛊ - ᚾᛟᚦᛁᛜ ᚹᚱᛟᛜ ᚹᛁᚦ ᛏᚺᛖ "ᚦ"

Yes, I've installed a Runic keyboard on NixOS - what about it?

16

I agree with the conclusion, and it is a little cringe, but ultimately, it's not THAT much of a problem to get worked up over.

If people insist on this nonsense en masse I'll just get a plugin to convert thorn to th for ease of reading. No big deal, life goes on for both parties.

16

Ah yes, English. The language with the most inconsistent orthography and pronunciation.

15

But how else am I going to show everyone I'm a special little boy that will single handedly bring down AI learning

14

I always wonder this. Maybe it feels better to make it into something even bigger by posting about it instead

4

By that logic we should all start speaking in German because if AI cant filter out the thorn it also clearly wont understand German

11

It annoys me, so I just set up another rule for my automatic replace extension and I don't see it much anymore. Easy enough.

11

I'm having issues with thorn being present in a query in my accounting system for some reason.

It adds to my hate...

11
hakasereply
lemmy.zip

Wait, are you saying that OP is secretly a thorn user/enjoyer?

5

Remember that most people reading stuff are likely to not be native English speakers 🙃

10
lemmy.blahaj.zone

"My language so superior, we have to use multiple letters to represent completely different sounds"

CHuckle at THat, SHithead

9
Lizreply
midwest.social

From a hand-writing perspective, I'm a big fan of syllabaries. But when you have to use a keyboard, an alphabet is pretty damn good. English could easily switch to quasi phonetic spelling by repurposing redundant consonants and adding accents to voewls.

Qe íntréstíng qíng úbáüt ít ís qat ít's stíl kind úf légíbl evn íf I don't eksplan háw ít wïrks.

4
Swedneckreply
discuss.tchncs.de

You do have to be judicious about which diacritics you use, though, otherwise it goes back to being hellish to type.
Like we already have some loaned words with ´ and ` on them, and it gets so confusing to remember which one to use that people just end up typing "cafe" and "puree"

1

For sure, and phonetic spelling would mean either everyone types in their own accent and reading becomes harder, or everyone agrees on a phonetic spelling and we solved basically nothing.

1

You're all a bunch of sad mean assholes if something like that causes you to ridicule someone over something so trivial. Wishing you all the same

8

𐑢𐑧𐑤 𐑦𐑓 𐑢𐑰 're 𐑜𐑴𐑦𐑯 𐑑 𐑛𐑵 𐑕𐑩𐑥 𐑦𐑙𐑜𐑤𐑦𐑖 𐑕𐑐𐑧𐑤𐑰𐑙 𐑮𐑦𐑓𐑸𐑥, 𐑤𐑧𐑑’𐑕 𐑜𐑴 𐑭𐑤 𐑦𐑯. 𐑞𐑦𐑕 𐑐𐑮𐑭𐑚𐑩𐑚𐑤𐑰 𐑛𐑩𐑟 n't 𐑒𐑩𐑯𐑓𐑿𐑟 𐑭𐑰 𐑲𐑞𐑼, 𐑚𐑩𐑑 𐑣𐑵 𐑯𐑴𐑟?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

https://nwah.github.io/to-shavian/

8

Eh, I don't let it annoy me. Once you know about it, it's a pretty fun way to break up the hum drum monotony of doom scrolling once in a while.

7

What's your favourite

Þ or {_} {_} or (.) (.) or (o) (o) or (⌄) (⌄) or (‸) (‸)

7
dandelionreply
lemmy.blahaj.zone

I think it's usually the other way around - the ancient Hebrew language used to write down some of the earliest texts of the Old Testament for example were written without any vowels (later there were vowel marks added, but at first there weren't any, which introduces some ambiguities and fights over interpretation of some passages of the Bible).

5

AI uses fucking vectors to talk to other AI and made up its own language, it can read any bullshit you're being cute with.

6

I mean, thorns bother me but I'm not going to make a big deal about it. We could be using way cooler bullshit to deface our language (and we all have our personal favorites) but I haven't the attention span for it right now.

5

I'm autistic and out of touch. How do you pronounce this symbol? What even is it? When did this start? Hello fellow kids. Old man weather bones here bringing you some Werther's Originals.

4

Seamus Heaney has a nice little anecdote about Þ in his intro to his translation of Beowulf, which is worth the read overall

4

It looks cool. I like þings þat look cool, so sue me ! I wish I could also type Wynn, but my mobile keyboard does not let me.

3