shads

Look we have had some issues with emergency service "000" calls not going through and there are some tenuous connections to devices purchased offshore. Not discounting that. However we have had more and worse problems due to lack of investment in maintenance by the Telcos and we haven't banned Telco C Suites yet. So... Yeah the game was rigged from the start. Knowing people who have worked near that level I know how little they actually DO. We could afford as a society to be without them.

Of course there is absolutely no chance this has been a situation which was overstated by Telcos that are salty about imports cutting into the profitability of their markets... Right! Right. Right?

Don't know which country the origin guy is from, but in Australia they have been blocking "grey import" phone IMEIs because they may not work with our emergency services phone protocols. If 1 person could die from a problem not caused by the Telcos then that means a whole class of devices need to be banned...

As an Australian, we are exactly the same. The next language I am going to put up is a lot more obscure, Tokelauan, apparently there are only approximately 4000 speakers. There are certainly no students from Tokelau in the class, but I know my friend will be excited by such a rare language being used, hope that flows through to her students as well. Thanks again, can’t express how much your help is appreciated.

So I went with “ô mossss, empilhascadêra fazenofavô?” and my friend told me the Brazilian students in her class “lit up!” They were so happy that they wrote a response: “Pó dexa, cumpadi” and apparently recorded a video together talking about how they came across their dialect in an English class at a little school in Australia. Thank you for making a bunch of people smile this morning!

Obrigado

Kiitos The lack of “Please” took me a moment to process, but I guess it’s just a linguistic niche that the language didn’t need to fill, and the use of “Thank You” made it redundant. Cool, thank you!

Thank you I appreciate the offer, I fear that even if the world wasn’t in the state it is I would not have the financial means to take a trip like that right now. I think this will be on my list for once the kids have left home, and hopefully the world has achieved some level of equilibrium by then.

I hope one day to visit your country. My wife has been a fan of Refika Birgül for several years and we have more than one of her recipes we prepare regularly. I have also got friends and family who have served with the Australian Defense Force who have visited as part of WW2 rememberance ceremonies and been really impressed by the country.

감사합니다 I am shamed to admit that after 5 years of Tae Kwon Do and Hapkido as a kid, all I remember is hana, dul, ses and dollida.

Cool, thank you for the clarification.

Tack (That is “Thank you” right?) I like being less rude. 😀

Grazie mille. Thanks for the interpretation as well, makes perfect sense. I will certainly use this soon.

ありがとう You answered 5 minutes before my sister in law. I am reasonably certain my friend has at least one Japanese student so I know this is one the class will be able to read.

多謝你 I was hoping for Cantonese, I’m almost certain there will be students in the class who will be able to read it, thank you for the translation and the interpretation.

Thank you, I should disclose that I am a Gen X Australian, we do self deprecation at a super advanced level. I absolutely get that language becomes so engrained that things just don’t sound/read as correct for reasons you would understand if you took the time to think about them, but you don’t really have to expend any effort to know it. I promise I’m not being too hard on myself just accepting there’s things I don’t know and haven’t earnt a shortcut to bypass learning to understand.

धन्यवाद This is exactly what I was after. Thank you. Other than being patient and careful any hints for writing Hindi or Punjabi on a whiteboard? If I make small mistakes am I likely to offend anyone? I would rather like to use Devanagari and Gurmukhi (I think those are the correct names for the scripts) if I can mange it.

And isn’t that amazing, a conciously constructed language having native speakers is just kind of amazing. So much of English is legacy cruft that has accumulated organically since it seperated from Old English, and so much of Old English was likewise accumulated from its antecedents. A language, any language with a clear dilineation has an opportunity to start with a clean slate that is informed but not slaved to the past. Things like vowel orders can be made as rules without having more exceptions than complying words. Brilliant.

You know the more I reflect on this the more sure I am that I am falling into a trap that I am sure a lot of English speakers fall into. I am trying to apply English rules to Spanish as there is a shared language root and a bunch of shared words and at some level syntax. I need to acknowledge that Spanish is a distinct mature language and trying to treat it as a different dialect of English is a wall I need to stop butting my head off. Really appreciate you stepping in to clarify for someone with my calcified language abilities, the lack of comprehension is entirely my own. I think I will go with “Por favor, apila las sillas al final del día. Gracias.” and save deeper understanding until I can devote more time and mental energy to understanding Spanish as Spanish. You rock!

Awesome, you actually answered all the questions I had bubbling away in my head but didn’t want to be too presumptive in asking. More decades ago than I care admit, I did a 25 hour Latin course. Very little of it stuck with me but it seems like Esperanto could fill a similar niche to the one I was trying to fill by learning latin, as a bridging language to be more capable in the Romance languages. I’m sure there are studies out there on language as sociology, as the largest con-lan I am aware of I wonder how deep that research runs? Another thing for me to read up on I guess. Thanks again!

I love that! I mentioned elsewhere, but this is a frivolous kind of request, I am so grateful for people willing to indulge it. But I didn’t realise the cultural context would be so enjoyable. Thanks again!

Dankon Esperanto seems like an interesting language to study, do you find my opportunities to use it?

Go raibh maith agat (I hope that’s even a little correct) I love it, my family is Scottish so if I were any sort of descendant I would know Scots Gaelic and I believe that sentence would look fairly familiar. Alas I am too slack to have learnt anything other than English. You rock!

Muito obrigado. I really like your informal suggestions, having some cultural context is awesome!

To everyone except me in this comment thread, I respect your superior knowledge, ability to translate between different languages and thank you for your time. I would love to devote the time to learning Spanish, but I am afraid that’s not practical for me right now. That being said I obviously need to learn a little more about how this works so I will do some further reading about “usted”. You all rock! Thanks again!

Tack Hope that’s correct.

Hard disagree, at some point investors are going to start asking these AI companies when they will be done burning cash and when the profits will start rolling in. Arguably OpenAI is already starting to see these concerns. If the US gets a new government at some stage there might be enough political will to draw a line in the sand with NVidia and tell them to stop manipulating markets. Finally there may be some pushback against datacenters literally killing the areas they are built in. What we are seeing is a fraud against the world originating from a group of hyper rich arseholes that may last a surprisingly long time, but eventually they will need to pay the piper. I did have someone tell me this has all the hallmarks of the space race. We are going to see enormous amounts of efforts and resources thrown into AI only for these pioneers to realise there is no clear way to monetise at which point all that energy will be redirected, until then China keeps on egging the US on to make them increasingly commit more and more of their economy to a concept that is going to be a lead anchor on the country left holding the bag.