Michal MěchuraIf you believe that “all languages have words for yes and no” or some poppycock like that, then this will shatter your naïveté. https://www.lexiconista.com/falsehoods-about-languages/
Baudouin Feildel@lexiconista very interesting, even though a lot of them reads like "native English speaker barely know other languages exist"
The Penguin of Evil@amdg2 @lexiconista One challenge in many English speaking countries is that there is almost no background presence of other languages. Go to Germany and you'll see chunks of escaped English everywhere. Go to the UK and you won't see any random German adverts amidst the English, or very much dubbed/subtitled stuff to learn from by immersion.
It's a shame because everyone should experience Star Trek TNG dubbed in German just for the hilarity.
@etchedpixels @amdg2 Except "Das Auto"!
@dingens@lexiconista very nice, cool!
I have an addition to the emojis. The fingers crossed emoji 🤞 is culture specific. In German you'd say "I push thumbs for you" ("ich drücke dir die Daumen") to wish someone luck.
@lexiconista Two other remarks:
• You could add an example like "Tengo galletas, ¿quieres una?" to further illustrate the oddities of Spanish punctuation. (I got cookies, want one)
• On sorting order: in German, ä (and ö/ü) isn't ordered after a, but as if it was ae. This is because if you don't have the Umlaut dots available, you'd replace them by an e. (Goethe is sort-of the same as Göthe.) So, München (Munich) appears in the dictionary after Mud but before Muf, as if it was written Muenchen.
• You could add an example like "Tengo galletas, ¿quieres una?" to further illustrate the oddities of Spanish punctuation. (I got cookies, want one)
• On sorting order: in German, ä (and ö/ü) isn't ordered after a, but as if it was ae. This is because if you don't have the Umlaut dots available, you'd replace them by an e. (Goethe is sort-of the same as Göthe.) So, München (Munich) appears in the dictionary after Mud but before Muf, as if it was written Muenchen.
@dingens Those are really good examples (and one correction), thanks a lot! I will include them in the article.
@lexiconista thank you, happy to hear that!
Language Tales@lexiconista @dingens There are multiple ways in which umlauts can be sorted: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabetische_Sortierung#Einsortierungsregeln_f%C3%BCr_weitere_Buchstaben
Transcripsi 
& 
@lexiconista Verbs and nouns, who cares, it's all spelled the same, and conjugation is the same except for 3rd person singular. Plural only needs an additional s at the end. What do you mean some nouns can be feminine/masculine/other and adjectives may vary depending on that?
@mlouise That's the spirit.
XocoLinguo@lexiconista Yes and no in Indo-European languages are actually a bit counter intuitive:
Aren't you going to the store? No.
This means "I'm not going," but most languages would give an answer of correct or incorrect to the statement, not a "no" to a negative question.
This is incredibly confusing to non-native speakers
@xocolatli Yes.
In fairness, some Indo-Euro languages have a third option, a word which means "it is not the case that not". German: "doch", French: "si". This is used to answer negatively worded questions positively.
@xocolatli @lexiconista Celtic ones generally use verb based responses
"Are you going out" "I am", "Will you be angry" "I will not". There is an emphatic yes (ie) and an emphatic no (actually a not-yes) (nage). Modern Welsh speakers use Ie/Nage a lot more than older ones.
Cornish is similar but even historically it seems to have been common to use ea/na rather than matching verb forms.
na also works more like !(expression) in C than a no.
@etchedpixels @lexiconista Chinese also repeats the verb for confirmation or negates the verb:
Aren't you going? (disagree), go/ (agree), not go
你不去嗎？ （對）,（我）不去。 （不對）, （我去）去。
Aren't you going? (disagree), go/ (agree), not go
你不去嗎？ （對）,（我）不去。 （不對）, （我去）去。
@etchedpixels @lexiconista
"na also works more like !(expression) in C than a no."
"No" and "not" are two entirely different things, even if they are both pronounced "no" in Spanish and other Latin languages
@lexiconista That was a nightmare for some of the earlier Welsh translations with dialogue boxes that were a standard yes/no box and similar.
OK buttons are as bad. Some languages really don't have a generic OK so you end up with translations that are akin to
Your database file is corrupt
[Cool]
Travis F W@lexiconista I was hoping for something on #Farsi, which I am learning. I am *not* a linguist and I could use the insight. Anyone? #i19 #internationalization
Jacob Ras@lexiconista nice! A couple of very interesting ones I didn't know yet (as someone very interested in languages 🤓)