That_Damn_Frank
LadyFluffyOrcaMeanwhile in Edinburgh
Pascale Petit@weaniejeanie53 perfect! Owl shower house
ArchaeoIain@pascalepoet @weaniejeanie53 Anyone got mail?
kateyay@weaniejeanie53 oh! Welcome home, shower owl! 💜
dzamie 
Eljay@weaniejeanie53 that's amazing 😂 Whereabouts in Edinburgh?
@eljay no idea it was just posted in a Facebook group I belong to.
@weaniejeanie53 ah well. Thanks for sharing it, cheered up my morning
@eljay someone thinks it’s been photoshopped? Maybe but it made me smile.
@weaniejeanie53 Sometimes that's all you need!
@eljay absolutely, there’s so little to smile about in this godforsaken country
@weaniejeanie53 I did a wee dive (I'm autistic, I get like that) and the TV channel Dave posted it last August as their "favourite sign from the Edinburgh Fringe". No attribution alas. I don't think it's photoshopped though
@eljay well done! I had a quick Google too but couldn’t find anything.
Laura Langdon@eljay @weaniejeanie53 "I did a wee dive (I'm autistic, I get like that)"
Oh hi, I think our brains are friends!
@eljay absolutely, there’s so little to smile about in this godforsaken country
Edwin Lyons@weaniejeanie53 Sorry to be a spoil sport but this looks like it has been photoshopped. The text is perfectly straight on to the camera - put a ruler over it - but the paper’s edges are wonky.
@edwin possibly you can’t believe anything you see on the internet! I use my phone for everything so it probably wouldn’t show on a small screen. It’s funny though.
@edwin possibly you can’t believe anything you see on the internet! I use my phone for everything so it probably wouldn’t show on a small screen. It’s funny though.
@weaniejeanie53 Absolutely - love the idea! 😉
Ray N. Franklin 🇺🇸@edwin @weaniejeanie53
When you mentioned the edges, I noted that the paper is not square; top is wider than bottom. The text seems skewed relative to the page. It does look faked, and it remains quite funny!
When you mentioned the edges, I noted that the paper is not square; top is wider than bottom. The text seems skewed relative to the page. It does look faked, and it remains quite funny!
@rnf @weaniejeanie53 I think it’s fascinating that people write these sorts of things as a form of creative writing. It’s clearly a good way to get attention on social media. People want it to be true so they trust it and re-share it. At least in this case it’s quite harmless to share it!
Andy Stubbings@weaniejeanie53 what a hoot
Kay 
@weaniejeanie53 that's good although if they don't want to disturb the owl they won't have sex checked them.
A female owl may be more likely to adopt an obscure home if she is brooding owlets. Why does management always refer to "He" ?
Keith_RWhy not?
It's a *very* long-standing convention (which began in British jurisprudence) that in the absence of specific information as to sex, references to "he" can be construed to include "she".
It's just a traditional shorthand, nothing more.
@keithreeder @Kay yes I tend to do it if I don’t know the gender of an animal apart from with cats who I tend to assume are female.
@weaniejeanie53 @keithreeder misgendering people, animals and other entities annoys me. Like the Godzilla movies where they refer to Godzilla as He, even after finding the eggs She has laid
" Like the Godzilla movies where they refer to Godzilla as He, even after finding the eggs She has laid"
The WHOLE - AND VERY CLEAR - POINT of that was to emphasise the "otherness" (specifically the asexual/hermaphroditic reproduction) of the creature - do YOU know he's not laying clones?
Not to mention the wantonly violent city-trashing - a pretty "alpha male" way to behave.
Get a bloody grip, and stop wasting your life away looking for things to be offended by.
Colonial history is or should be outdated. NZ jurisprudence is based on Westminster/ British law but has moved on to plain language and nongendered terms in most instances, and even recently started honouring treaty with indigenous people Māori on observance of law. Isn't it time for UK authorities to modernize too?
Coulda, woulda, shoulda. It is a *fact* that people talk this way; you don't get to decide how the world works; and it would behove you to bear in mind that it won't change just because you choose to take arbitrary, unnecessary offence at an innocent and entirely guileless turn of phrase.
@keithreeder @Kay don’t hold your breath!
Till@keithreeder @Kay @weaniejeanie53 I'm not that far in to learning Japanese, but as far as I can tell, it easily allows to refer to stuff without assigning any gender at all. In (most? all?) European languages, this is simply not possible. Could this be a lazy translation?
@keithreeder @Kay @till it sounds a nightmare tbh! https://www.kanpai-japan.com/learn-japanese/personal-pronouns
Personal Pronouns in Japanese - Subjects pronouns: I, you, he/she, we, you, they
Personal pronouns do exist in Japanese, although their use is quite different from English. Native Japanese speakers choose pronouns according to the context, their gender and age, but also to whom they are...
@weaniejeanie53 @Kay @keithreeder
It#s always hard to break up the way of thinking and learn to see the world from a different perspective. But it is also very good for the brain.
And it's very interesting to see, how different languages and cultures deal with gender. E.g. in German and in Russian, job titles always have a gender. In Germany, it is considered impolite to refer to someone with the wrong gender. You refer to a medical doctor as "Arzt" if they are male and "Ärztin" if they are female. There is a huge debate going on about this, because older texts often only use the male form and this is considered to put women into the role of second class workers. I don't want to go into details of the debate here. What I find interesting about this is, that in Russia, it's the other way around. You always use the male form, because it is considered the default. If you use the female form, you suggest, that the gender is relevant for how they do their job.
And then I start to learn Japanese with it's own very different take on gender and it's role in language and society.
And yes, in the beginning Japanese is really hard, because there are so many ways of addressing and talking about people and they basically translate all to the same few phrases in English. But it is also quite a lot of fun and interesting and all. It's definitively worth it.
It#s always hard to break up the way of thinking and learn to see the world from a different perspective. But it is also very good for the brain.
And it's very interesting to see, how different languages and cultures deal with gender. E.g. in German and in Russian, job titles always have a gender. In Germany, it is considered impolite to refer to someone with the wrong gender. You refer to a medical doctor as "Arzt" if they are male and "Ärztin" if they are female. There is a huge debate going on about this, because older texts often only use the male form and this is considered to put women into the role of second class workers. I don't want to go into details of the debate here. What I find interesting about this is, that in Russia, it's the other way around. You always use the male form, because it is considered the default. If you use the female form, you suggest, that the gender is relevant for how they do their job.
And then I start to learn Japanese with it's own very different take on gender and it's role in language and society.
And yes, in the beginning Japanese is really hard, because there are so many ways of addressing and talking about people and they basically translate all to the same few phrases in English. But it is also quite a lot of fun and interesting and all. It's definitively worth it.
@weaniejeanie53 @Kay @keithreeder Absolutely. As a non native speaker, I can tell you, that English was (so far) the easiest language I've learned. And to my knowledge, it is considered one of the easiest languages there are.
@till @keithreeder @Kay I think it’s a lot of the weird and duplicate spellings that trip people up, tenses are fairly regular etc. I’ve always thought giving a gender to objects is so unnecessary, it’s so much easier to have just the one word as in English!
@weaniejeanie53 @Kay @keithreeder Yes, in Russian an German, there are a lot of words, where you just have to know the gender. So you constantly mix them up, especially, if you already know one of them and start to learn the other. Because they often assign different genders. It's far easier, if either every object is per definition neutral (as in English) or if the word itself contains the gender. E.g. in Latin, everything that ends in -us is male, -a is female, -um is neutral. There are some additional endings, but they are relatively unambiguous, too.
@Kay @till @keithreeder how many languages do you know?! I’m typically English in that I’m not that good at languages, I was quite good at German and not bad at French but if you don’t use them you forget a lot, I’m better at them written than spoken. So many other nationalities speaking English makes us lazy!
@weaniejeanie53 @Kay @keithreeder I'm a native german speaker and as a software developer I have to know English. I also had some lessons in Russian and Latin, but was never good enough to have a conversation or read a text without having a dictionary at hand (and looking up most of the words). I also know some basic holiday stuff (like yes, no, hello, ...) in French, Polish and Danish (you know, our neighbors ;) ). Well, and now I started with Japanese on Duolingo. A great way to learn new languages by the way.
@weaniejeanie53 @Kay @keithreeder Oh, and I totally feel you with the laziness. Knowing English does that to you, even if you aren't a native speaker.
@till @Kay @keithreeder Japanese isn’t easy I think! Good luck with it. I did start having lessons in Italian some years ago but sadly didn’t keep it up, I’ll have to check out Duolingo.
@till in 50 years we’ll be writing everything in emojis? They’re definitely handy sometimes but I can’t see them replacing writing 🤔
@weaniejeanie53 Well, half of it is humour, obviously. But the way we write has already become more pictographic through emojis.
If you type a lot and have a way to use less characters, you will probably take it. The natural conclusion is, that with the rise of virtual keyboards, the amount of standardised emojis will probably rise further. And we can actually see, that in some places text si replaced by emojis. The chances are good, that this trend will continue at least a little further, while younger generations grow up with and improve this stile of writing. I'm definitively not an expert, so I won't try to do an exact prognosis here, but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised, if this trend would go on at least a little bit longer. Though, we will probably not replace everything with emojis. I would expect more of a mix, where very common concepts are replaced with single pictographic letters (like emojis) while the rest is still written with the classic Latin alphabet and everybody still understands you, when you write only in the "classic" way.
Again, Japanese is a good example ;). They have two alphabets: Hiragana and Katakana. Katakana is the traditional set of signs. It developed over time in Japan and is rather complex. Signs can have completely different pronunciations depending in the context. Common words have their own sign. You can quickly get the meaning of any Japanese text that is written in Katakana (if you have learned it). But Katakana is closely connected with the Japanese language. There is a lot of stuff, you simply can't write in Katakana (and don't have to, if you only speak Japanese). So, when they started to have a relevant amount of contact with Europeans, they developed Hiragana.
Hiragana was developed to be able to write e.g. European names and can be mixed with Katakana. So if you write Japanese, you can completely use Hiragana or use Katakana and only use Hiragana for words, that can't be written in Katakana - or (especially if you are European and just lerning Japanese) you can use Katakana where you know the right signs and whenever you don't know the correct signs in Katakana, you can use Hiragana instead.
A little bit like those pictographic children's books:
If you type a lot and have a way to use less characters, you will probably take it. The natural conclusion is, that with the rise of virtual keyboards, the amount of standardised emojis will probably rise further. And we can actually see, that in some places text si replaced by emojis. The chances are good, that this trend will continue at least a little further, while younger generations grow up with and improve this stile of writing. I'm definitively not an expert, so I won't try to do an exact prognosis here, but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised, if this trend would go on at least a little bit longer. Though, we will probably not replace everything with emojis. I would expect more of a mix, where very common concepts are replaced with single pictographic letters (like emojis) while the rest is still written with the classic Latin alphabet and everybody still understands you, when you write only in the "classic" way.
Again, Japanese is a good example ;). They have two alphabets: Hiragana and Katakana. Katakana is the traditional set of signs. It developed over time in Japan and is rather complex. Signs can have completely different pronunciations depending in the context. Common words have their own sign. You can quickly get the meaning of any Japanese text that is written in Katakana (if you have learned it). But Katakana is closely connected with the Japanese language. There is a lot of stuff, you simply can't write in Katakana (and don't have to, if you only speak Japanese). So, when they started to have a relevant amount of contact with Europeans, they developed Hiragana.
Hiragana was developed to be able to write e.g. European names and can be mixed with Katakana. So if you write Japanese, you can completely use Hiragana or use Katakana and only use Hiragana for words, that can't be written in Katakana - or (especially if you are European and just lerning Japanese) you can use Katakana where you know the right signs and whenever you don't know the correct signs in Katakana, you can use Hiragana instead.
A little bit like those pictographic children's books:
@till I’m an ex telex operator and in that job you had to use as few characters as you could to keep the length of the call as short as possible, it’s a habit that’s stayed with me even now, I tend to have to make myself write things out properly. Japanese sounds a nightmare, most people in the west struggle with one alphabet let alone two!
@weaniejeanie53 It's still better than Chinese in this regard. They have over 100.000 signs. (You don't have to learn them all, though.)
And Japanese (Hiragana) signs have some internal rules, that makes it easier. Like adding a circle or to small lines in the upper right makes the consonant part of the syllable sound harder or softer. E.g. if you add two small lines to ki it becomes gi. And often, similar sounding signs also look kind of similar.
And Japanese (Hiragana) signs have some internal rules, that makes it easier. Like adding a circle or to small lines in the upper right makes the consonant part of the syllable sound harder or softer. E.g. if you add two small lines to ki it becomes gi. And often, similar sounding signs also look kind of similar.
Lohoris 🐗@Kay @weaniejeanie53 I would agree with this if we KNEW they did NOT sex check the owl. But we don't know that. Maybe they did, which is why they aren't using neutral.
Natur Liebe Kunst
Vincent Wanders Aimlessly@weaniejeanie53 sorry stinky, suck it up.
Barry Purcell@weaniejeanie53 "Somehow" indeed! We both know how an owl got in there.
Braw ☕🏳️🌈@weaniejeanie53 is it green? Does it yell in random languages?
Jesuis 
Jednička@brawaru @weaniejeanie53 in gàidhlig only
Cogito Ergo Disputo
CHENQUE@weaniejeanie53 So this is what they call a Showler!
Elkenumber1