Comment by optionalsquid

Comment by optionalsquid 3 days ago

19 replies

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This is an interesting idea.

But, besides not being able to use your site due to the errors mentioned by other posters, both the examples on your website give me pause:

The example input "Kan you hjelmpe mig {yesterday}?" reads to me as "Can you help me yesterday?", but that's just a nonsense sentence and an odd choice for an example. The word for "help" is also misspelled, but presumably that would get corrected.

And the suggestion of "Jeg vil gerne handle i morgen" for "Jeg vil gerne go shopping i morgen", instead reads to me as "I would like to act tomorrow". A more idiomatic translation would be "Jeg vil gerne købe ind i morgen".

lil_csom 3 days ago

Hey, thank you for your input! I definitely have to improve the example texts and make sure that the way the tool should be used is better understood!

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delusional 2 days ago

> And the suggestion of "Jeg vil gerne handle i morgen" for "Jeg vil gerne go shopping i morgen", instead reads to me as "I would like to act tomorrow". A more idiomatic translation would be "Jeg vil gerne købe ind i morgen".

It's a little better, but I would never expect anyone to translate "shopping" to "købe ind". "købe ind" is about getting groceries for the week, shopping is about walking the strip and dreaming of buying random clothing. As a native speaker I'd be less surprised if the you just used the borrowed word "shopping" directly. Basically "Jeg vil gerne shoppe i morgen".

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  • Blahah 2 days ago

    In British english at least, 'going shopping' is a normal way to say 'getting groceries for the week'.

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    • klipt 2 days ago

      Yeah groceries is "shopping"

      "walking the strip and dreaming of buying random clothing" is "window shopping"

      Reply View 2 replies
      • poly2it 2 days ago

        In Swedish, shopping has been loaned to mean window shopping. Buying groceries is commonly called att handla.

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        • ragazzina a day ago

          I think "go/do shopping" is the same in French, Spanish, Italian and German, as opposed to faire les courses / ir de compras / fare la spesa / einkaufen.

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    • SoftTalker a day ago

      In US english (at least as I speak/understand it) "shopping" is any act of browsing/looking at/selecting something for purchase. It can be groceries, clothes, a car, anything really and it can be online or in person at a store.

      "I'm going shopping" with no other specifics would normally mean "for groceries" or other general household supplies, though.

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  • shermantanktop 2 days ago

    If a European language gained a new everyday word in the last fifty years, there’s a solid chance that it’s a loan word from English. A little odd to learn a “foreign” language filled with that stuff.

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    • dmoy 2 days ago

      > European

      It's not restricted to European languages. 贝果 is bagel, just sounded out phonetically, and 三明治 is sandwich.

      Idk if there's anything super odd about it.

      Of course, English is the worst offender of loan words. As someone else said somewhere, "[English doesn't] just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

      Gung ho, monsoon, filibuster, herbivore, vacation, etc etc etc. Thousands upon thousands of loanwords.

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      • dionian a day ago

        Fun fact, 99% of words ending in -tion are the exact same in French. Every English speaker has a head start of hundreds of word vocabulary in French.

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    • piva00 2 days ago

      With Scandinavian languages it went full circle, there are lots of everyday English words stemming from old Norse :)

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      • DataDaoDe 2 days ago

        yes, a lot indeed. Even some very rare adoptions that almost never happen in languages (like the pronoun they). My most favorite has to be window though from the Old Norse vindauga (vind = wind, auga = eye).

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      • liotier a day ago

        Same in French. When my colleagues tell me about "le repository Git", I love to answer about "le repositoire git" - sounds mightily quaint but that French word is actually the one through which the Latin repositorium percolated to English.

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      • BurningFrog 2 days ago

        As a Swede, I can recognize the norse root of most English word for things that existed 1000 years ago.

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