Tag: language

Twenty five letters only

Here is my try on this tricky puzzle:

There are 26 letters in the English language, and we need every single one of them. Want proof? Choose a letter and write a blog post without using it. (Feeling really brave? Make it a vowel!)

You see, I only quoted the post for some context. There’s no problem, I think. More so, for someone who’s mother tongue is different.  I come from Russki territories. We use letters which were borrowed from Greece.  We just exploded them from twenty four to thirty three. Possibly, there is our lesson of unneeded letters.  We will survive with more.  We will survive with less. There is no problem.

I’m only trying things out here.  It looks like I might do this forever.

Now, going back.  It’s not difficult. You only need to word thoughts differently.  The use of tools like Internet (World Wide Web) or word lists might help.  Even with the vowels.  I should refer you to the letter frequency resource.  The letter I’m ignoring is the second most used.  (Much less so in this post.)  But I write just fine without it.  It is limiting, tricky even.  However one could get used to it.

Do you think it’s worth the try?  Try.  Let me know in the comments how it goes.

P.S.: The URLs of the links I do not control.

Mamihlapinatapai

Mamihlapinatapai

The word Mamihlapinatapai (sometimes spelled mamihlapinatapei) is derived from the Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego, listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the “most succinct word”, and is considered one of the hardest words to translate. It refers to “a look shared by two people, each wishing that the other will offer something that they both desire but are unwilling to suggest or offer themselves.” It is also cited in books and articles on game theory associated with the volunteer’s dilemma.

If you have the data, use it!

Spending quit a bit of time on the web, I’ve boosted my tolerance levels to bad design, horrible user interfaces, and twisted logic.  However, there are still things that annoy the crap out of me.  Among the two most frequent are these:

  1. Google throwing me into Greek language.  Yes, I do live in Cyprus, where Greek is an official language.  However, Google knows damn well, that I don’t speak it.  Every single time I was given a choice, I’ve switched back to English. I have automatic translation of Greek to English set in Gmail, Google Reader, Google Chrome and Google Nexus, all of which are linked and synced to my one Gmail account.  Why do I still see Greek as the default language every other week?  This is getting retarded.
  2. Facebook can’t figure out the gender-specific language.  Even though it knows the gender of the user to be female, it still sends me notifications like “Olga commented on his Wall post”.  English is not even my native language and I am getting annoyed by this.  How you guys can look at this every single time and not catch is beyond me.

The steam is out, I feel better now.