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[Arx]

Xhosa has the worst counting I know of. Inye, zimbini, zintathu, zine, zintlanu, zinthandathu, isixhenxhe, sisibhozo, lithoba, lishuma.

But then you say "ten and...", so you have "lishumi elinesibini". Or for twenty, you say "two tens", which is "amashumi amabini", and twenty-six is thus "amashumi amabini elinesithandathu". It gets pretty bad. It's easy to derive the names, but they're so incredibly long.

Surely people shorten them when speaking colloquially? Finnish has slightly shorter numerals but they're still quite long: 26 is 'kaksikymmentäkuusi'. However, in a hurry, people just say 'kakskytkuus' or even 'kaakuu'.

I'm not sure. Most Xhosa speakers I know will actually work with English or Afrikaans numbers instead, because there's no obvious way to shorten it. I guess maybe 'bini 'dathu, for instance, but it's kinda complex because by truncating the prefixes like that you actually shear the phrase of grammar, including things like whether words are singular or plural. I'll have to ask someone about that some time.

[ein]

Makes me think if world tries to remove us just for our language.

polish orthography is a bit bizarre at first, but at least it's not an uralic language

i was only being half sarcastic when i called it sane and logical

[Kot]

Ahaha what the fuck I thought Russian and Polish language were like way more different, like I've read an old book starring Polish stamp hunters as main heroes, and what little bits of Polish language that was left untranslated really sounded different... wait, maybe they intentionally tried to leave only the weirdest-sounding words, to hide the similarities? Is there a world-wide translator's conspiracy to make people believe they can't understand each other's languages in order to keep their jobs? Aaaaaahhhh

Well, let's just say that the most popular Polish series about WWII, the Four Tankmen and a Dog includes a lot of Russians since main heroes are part of Polish First Army in the east and drive a goddamn T-34 around... none of the Russian parts are translated and nobody complains.

[Neonivek]

Yeah I think whenever I am trying to gauge the quality of a piece of fiction...

I think that it being a "Jerk World" setting should just give it an immediate -1

Not because I hate Jerk World Setting... it is just a time saver.

[Yoink]

On a page with multiple embedded Bandcamp players, I just tried to listen to one track but it refused to load, doing that irritating thing where it freezes with the "play" button displaying despite multiple clicks. Assuming it wasn't going to play for a while (and hoping it wouldn't start automatically), I started playing a rather good track by a different artist.

Now, somewhere along the line, that first song did begin to play, and paused the other one... and I didn't notice.
I'm not sure if the first song began with a sudden burst of noise, if it started while the other song was in a quiet part, or what, but it worked quite nicely. I went for eighteen minutes thinking I was enjoying a band called Funeral Mourning when in fact I was listening to Yhdarl.
I think both bands are excellent, but I'll have to listen to both tracks again (and separately!) to make sure.

[ChairmanPoo]

Today I stumbled upon a bizarre clinical history, which was dated from the 2th of April of 2027. Most puzzingly, the final line was "Next visit will be in december 2003".

I think I might just have met a time traveler.

[hector13]

Filling in the voluntary self-identification section of a job application online in 'murrica...

In a section entitled "diversity", the choice "white" covers the Middle East and North Africa, and Asian only covers the Far East + Indian subcontinent. Is this, like, regular? 'cause apparently you're not African if you're not black...

[overseer05-15]

Filling in the voluntary self-identification section of a job application online in 'murrica...

In a section entitled "diversity", the choice "white" covers the Middle East and North Africa, and Asian only covers the Far East + Indian subcontinent. Is this, like, regular? 'cause apparently you're not African if you're not black...

Yeah generally in 'murica white=not african. Which is, as we all know, wrong.

[Eric Blank]

Filling in the voluntary self-identification section of a job application online in 'murrica...

In a section entitled "diversity", the choice "white" covers the Middle East and North Africa, and Asian only covers the Far East + Indian subcontinent. Is this, like, regular? 'cause apparently you're not African if you're not black...

Yes. Americans basically think about race in terms of the ethnicities of skin color, not ancestral heritage. It admittedly does get kinda confusing when only 1/4 of the ancestors you know about came from the same background. You'd have to go through and say "well grandpa soandso was Sioux but grandma was German and great grandma soandwut was the great great granddaughter  of an African slave but we have no idea where she came from and... But I guess you can say I'm Latino cus everybody calls me a mexican so whatever?"

[Kot]

Fun little fact relating to Polish language discussion - note that this is something I only heard from Polish sources and can't find a thing about it in English, but here it goes anyway.
Back during Six Days War Israelis used a really weird and convuluted code that Egyptians coulnd't understand at all. It was weird, illogical language, described like rustling of leaves in Autumn or sound of paper. It was Polish. A lot of Israelis at the time knew Polish, a lot of senior officers even went to Polish military academies before the war. It turned out that the lower ranking ones don't have a problem with it too, since there was so much Polish Jews or Jews with Polish roots in there. It's like Navajo code-talkers level shit, except only what, ~150,000 people speak Navajo and much more speak Polish, but it works just as well BECAUSE NOBODY CAN UNDERSTAND A SHIT.

[martinuzz]

Today I stumbled upon a bizarre clinical history, which was dated from the 2th of April of 2027. Most puzzingly, the final line was "Next visit will be in december 2003".

I think I might just have met a time traveler.

Sounds like they use a program that only takes , 20YY, MM, DD input. The appointment likely was on the 27th of april 2002.

[overseer05-15]

Today I stumbled upon a bizarre clinical history, which was dated from the 2th of April of 2027. Most puzzingly, the final line was "Next visit will be in december 2003".

I think I might just have met a time traveler.

Sounds like they use a program that only takes , 20YY, MM, DD input. The appointment likely was on the 27th of april 2002.

Or, y'know, time-travel.

[Eric Blank]

Clearly they're just living backwards

[Loud Whispers]

Someone lit a fag under the roof as it was raining/snowing, an automated alert from an unknown location began blaring that this was a non-smoking area, to extinguish it immediately and that a staff member had been contacted. It is better to not be reminded how much surveillance blankets the rainy socialist island

[EnigmaticHat]

Filling in the voluntary self-identification section of a job application online in 'murrica...

In a section entitled "diversity", the choice "white" covers the Middle East and North Africa, and Asian only covers the Far East + Indian subcontinent. Is this, like, regular? 'cause apparently you're not African if you're not black...

Yeah generally in 'murica white=not african. Which is, as we all know, wrong.

What's really funny is most Americans use Hispanic as a race.  But the definition of Hispanic used by the US census bureau is something like "comes from a country or culture with that has historically been tied to Spain or Spanish culture."  So if I moved to Mexico, had kids, went local and learned Spanish, and then ten years later moved back to the US, I believe my kids would count as Hispanic even tho I'm white as sour cream.  But the other racial categories in the US don't work that way, which is why you sometimes see categories like "White-Hispanic" and "Black-Hispanic" on surveys that only have 6-8 options.

Edit: Also I've never seen "Asian-Hispanic" before even tho that seems not categorically different from the other options?