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[Frumple]

... you're saying all that like it's not something that already happens?

[nenjin]

This must be a really big deal actually. Space is at an absolute premium on submarines. Either you're halving the # of available units by making some gendered, or you double the amount of existing ones, and that doesn't come without removing something else. Even more changes are required if you think the sexes need separate bunks.

[lijacote]

And people think Europe is somehow already post-sexist.

[Digital Hellhound]

All the points usually raised against women serving with men would be moot with all-female crews. Okay, I imagine female-only crews would go against some principle (and I imagine finding full crews would be more difficult - as it stands, there'll be much more men for the job), but why not? No need for expensive changes or extra quarters.

[LordSlowpoke]

explain the point of such a solution

isn't this about being equal, not separate-but-equal?

[penguinofhonor]

This must be a really big deal actually. Space is at an absolute premium on submarines. Either you're halving the # of available units by making some gendered, or you double the amount of existing ones, and that doesn't come without removing something else.

Are you saying that a mixed gender crew would need twice the amount of bathrooms/beds as an all-male crew of the same size?

[Graknorke]

This must be a really big deal actually. Space is at an absolute premium on submarines. Either you're halving the # of available units by making some gendered, or you double the amount of existing ones, and that doesn't come without removing something else.

Are you saying that a mixed gender crew would need twice the amount of bathrooms/beds as an all-male crew of the same size?

Separate male and female facilities.

[penguinofhonor]

This must be a really big deal actually. Space is at an absolute premium on submarines. Either you're halving the # of available units by making some gendered, or you double the amount of existing ones, and that doesn't come without removing something else.

Are you saying that a mixed gender crew would need twice the amount of bathrooms/beds as an all-male crew of the same size?

Separate male and female facilities.

Yeah, but that doesn't mean you need more bathrooms. You just split the current amount between the genders. There is no need for a higher bathroom:crew ratio.

There could be a problem if a submarine is like 90% male, but hopefully they'd be able to balance the numbers by concentrating women on the submarines with female facilities, since those are going to be the minority of submarines for now. If they don't have enough women to fill a few of their submarines halfway, then they need to work on their recruiting.

I googled some submarine bathrooms and the vast majority seem single occupancy. I don't see a point in gendered ones unless they're installing urinals on submarines, which seems like a huge waste of money.

Also I missed this earlier:

Try translating yogic terms from Sanskrit into English without fudging the meanings. Prana for example is energy, breathe, air. If you translate it as energy you lose the air bit if you translate it as air you lose the energy bit.

Not that I'm in favor of a monolanguage, but I don't think this is actually a huge problem for English. We can just say Prana is a word that means energy, breathe, and air. Just like how English doesn't have a word for deja vu so we just use the French one. I believe this is why English is taking over other languages so effectively.

I actually think the loss (or weakening) of the ability to fluidly form new words out of old ones, like other Germanic languages do (and probably most other languages, but I'm sticking to what I know here), is one of the big faults of the English language. I hate how when I encounter a new word it's much less common that I immediately understand the concept from the word itself alone, simply because instead of being made (fully or partly) out of other English words, it has been taken wholesale from another language that I don't know.

It makes me feel dumb

Does that really help that much? I can see it working with certain things like "doghouse" but a lot of the time the compound words are still pretty arbitrary, like dreamcatcher or butterfly. If I saw those without knowing what they meant, I'd still have to look them up.

Are compound words more intuitive in other languages? The only one I know of is the German word for bat being something like "flapleather". This makes sense if you're pointing at a bat as you say it, but if I'm just encountering the word on its own I have no idea what it means.

And honestly, looking things up doesn't bother me at all. It's so easy nowadays with smartphones.

[XXSockXX]

Are compound words more intuitive in other languages? The only one I know of is the German word for bat being something like "flapleather". This makes sense if you're pointing at a bat as you say it, but if I'm just encountering the word on its own I have no idea what it means.

It depends. Of course it's intuitive because to a native speaker that is just how the language works, so you never think about it much. Some German compound words are pretty intuitive because they just specify things by describing them more precisely by adding words. Others not so much, like your example "Fledermaus" (actually "flittermouse", that's an English word too), since "Fleder-" has no other meaning or the original meaning is lost, it's not intuitive, it's just a name.

[Dutchling]

Is this a good time to mention that the Dutch word for tortoise literally means shieldtoad.

I think its is.

[XXSockXX]

Is this a good time to mention that the Dutch word for tortoise literally means shieldtoad.

I think its is.

Same in German. Also pretty intuitive I think.

[Digital Hellhound]

Is this a good time to mention that the Dutch word for tortoise literally means shieldtoad.

I think its is.

The Finnish word for dragon is 'salmon snake!' Out of all the things to name it... (Tortoise is also shieldtoad in Finnish, except the toad word - 'konna' - mainly means 'crook' or 'criminal'. Finnish tortoises have no respect for the law, let me tell you.)

[SirQuiamus]

I just realized that the Estonian word "nahkhiir" ('leathermouse') may be a mistaken loan translation from German. It's a pretty intuitive word for a bat, though – I've always liked it. 

[XXSockXX]

Actually how English forms new terms isn't that different from how German does, it's just that they don't become one word, so "machine gun fire" instead of "Maschinengewehrfeuer". Some English words are compound words exactly like in German though, like drawbridge ("Zugbrücke") or nightmare ("Nachtmahr", an antiquated word, where just like in English the last part has lost it's original meaning).

[Dutchling]

Why is it called a nightmare anyhow. I mean, it's called the same in Dutch (nachtmerrie) so you'd think those damn mares have something to do with it.