Great/Interesting Finds

[Muirium]

I have lost my basic French skills over the years. Both French and German are complicated languages compared to English.

You should see Romanian, it's a pain I like German a lot, more than English. And French I've learned to be able to read French comics (BD)

Fortunate indeed are in the speak we the English, complexity compared favoured alternate speakings of the abroad simplicity!

(I can't even begin to understand cases and grammatical gender and such, thanks to never growing up with it.)

[kbdfr]

Compared to other common languages, English has fewer articles and declinations, that's all.
In English you don't have to bother whether a table is ♀, like in French, or ♂, like in German.
It makes English apparently simpler, which results in everybody feeling proficient and using it in a sort of "restricted mode",
which in turn contributes to impoverishing the language and everybody feeling even more proficient.
A good example for that is the universal use of "if" instead of "whether".
And what about the permanent mistaking of "it's" for "its" or "then" for "than"?

And oral English is a pain.
From how it's written there's no way to find out how a word is pronounced, you just have to know,
see the famous ghoti example.
or word pairs like floor and poor, or the different pronunciation in "I read" and "I have read".

Compared to that, French is a simple language
and German a very simple one

[Muirium]

Yeah, I'm no fan of English. Objectively, it's a hodge podge of lapsed rules and stolen imports with the craziest spelling rules imaginable. Cruel to inflict it on the world, but there you go! It also stunts your desire and capacity to learn a second language when it is your first.

Put yourself in the place of native English speakers. Foreign languages seem truly, maddeningly foreign. I still have no idea what accusative is, or desire to find out, despite and because of passing high school German! And the whole world speaks back in English at you anyway so why bother?

Its and it's isn't getting any better, now we're typing on glass. I'm constantly dismissing autocorrections for the wrong one, and I'm in the minority who knows the difference!

[seebart]

Yeah the longer I use softkeys on glass the more I hate it. But typing on glass in German is a disaster. I am a "fan" of the English language. Don't ask me why.

[Muirium]

Well, all right, I do like English, as I obviously understand it and use it incessantly! But I'm well aware of its thick catalogue of faults. Including our inability to agree on quite how to spell that.

Phonetic spelling: way of the future! Kinda like communism and international law.

[kbdfr]

[…] I still have no idea what accusative is […]

It is very similar to the French "complément d'objet direct",
if that is any help

[Muirium]

Fun fact: whenever English speakers burst into a smidge of French, it's because they want to speak in italic. Seems to be linguistic sauce.

[kbdfr]

Fun fact: whenever English speakers burst into a smidge of French, it's because they want to speak in italic. Seems to be linguistic sauce.

I suppose you mean native English speakers

[Muirium]

I implied it, by saying it already a few posts above. And if I were any posher I'd have some fancy French term to slap out and waggle around to prove it!

[derzemel]

This is linguistics talk is turning very interesting. Can we open a separate thread for it?

[dzhoou]

Dunno why, but I never make its/it's mistakes, nor I can understand that many people's tendency to...

[Muirium]

People learn by voice. They sound the same, so they type the same. Which is why English's loco woof-moo transcription rules are so dastardly bastardly.

(This is off-topic-Thority. Every thread gets to linguistics after a while, then recovers again. This one's long enough it's probably done so a few times before.)

[kbdfr]

Dunno why, but I never make its/it's mistakes, nor I can understand that many people's tendency to...

[cough…] Seems nobody is perfect

This is linguistics talk is turning very interesting. Can we open a separate thread for it?

Perhaps Muirium could cut those linguistics posts and paste them into a new thread in the off-topic section.

Edit: hadn't seen µ's previous post

[Muirium]

Never!

(I'd have to click buttons and stuff. Let's just keep derailing!)

[kbdfr]

People learn by voice. They sound the same, so they type the same. Which is why […]

I'm not quite sure.
I've never seen "Lachs"* written "Lax" or "Fuchs"** written "Fux" in German,
although in both cases it would be the exact same pronunciation.

Edit:
* salmon
** fox

[kbdfr]

And by the way, in French you sometimes have several words pronounced exactly the same, for example:
sot (dumb)
saut (jump)
seau (bucket)
sceau (seal)

[Muirium]

Ah, I see a pattern there. French was contrived by a humorist who wanted self writing aquatic animal training puns!

As with any language, some beating is required for successful acquisition. I remember well the huge fight I had with my teacher when they tried to make me believe the past tense of read is also spelled read, and not red. What did they think: I was thick? Come off it! This whole class is a sham!

[dzhoou]

People learn by voice. They sound the same, so they type the same. Which is why English's loco woof-moo transcription rules are so dastardly bastardly.

(This is off-topic-Thority. Every thread gets to linguistics after a while, then recovers again. This one's long enough it's probably done so a few times before.)

That's what I figured also.

Linguistics isn't off-topic. It's what all keyboards serve ultimately!

[XMIT]

Model F 122 key battleships
http://www.ebay.com/itm/261900604181
http://www.ebay.com/itm/251972402987

[jou]

Coming from a Chinese background, the very concept of cases and gendered nouns are completely foreign for me. Even after speaking German for more than two decades, I still get declension mostly wrong.

Fun fact: Mandarin has only around 1300 distinct syllables which makes puns with homophones very easy.

[HzFaq]

http://www.ebay.de/itm/Cherry-G80-1814- ... 1589453780

Kind of cool, if not a little beat up.

[scottc]

http://www.ebay.de/itm/Cherry-G80-1814- ... 1589453780

Kind of cool, if not a little beat up.

Ooh, nice! I've never seen a black DE 1800 with 1.5u mods, let alone one with MX clears before.

[shreebles]

Very cool, but not cheap! I wanted a WKL 1800 for the longest time, but not for that price...

[Khers]

If only it had been ANSI...

[ramnes]

The switches on this model are really smooth. Definitely worth it if you're a MX Clear lover.

[photekq]

Mmm.. 1991 clears..

Now if only I could get a NIB 1814..

68EUR for that shiny thing.. no thanks

[ramnes]

Now if only I could get a NIB 1814..

Tipro
http://www.ebay.de/itm/TIPRO-Kassentast ... 1904387170

Beige/brown space invaders
http://www.ebay.it/itm/Keyboard-HI-TEK- ... 1717548843

Olivetti Wyse-like?
http://www.ebay.it/itm/terminale-olivet ... 1974961211

[mr_a500]

I hope somebody here gets this and lets us know what switch it has (I suspect hall effect):

$_57.JPG

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Intel-MDS-his ... 1686616725
I'd get it if it wasn't in the UK.

I also wonder about this (probably Key Tronic):

$_58.JPG

http://www.ebay.com/itm/171800702433
Military spec!

[XMIT]

Oh man, it even has an XMIT mode indicator.

No more keyboards until more sales are completed!

[seebart]

damn those are nice mr_a500. I'll be watching those two in the UK. I have proxy options in the UK...