What if English Were 100% Germanic?

[Menuhin]

The word "轴/軸" is also confusing for me because during machine-aided back-translation, some Chinese sellers start to use the word 'Shaft' to refer to these key switches. The key switches are not torque mechanical devices. And it took me a while to understand they mean switches when they talk about 'Shaft'. The word 'Shaft' can be more suitable to refer to the central stem piece of a switch, but then it is still not so accurate.

Well, the popularity of the term can be due to the fact that it is easy to pronounce 1 syllable to refer to switch than to pronounce a few syllables. For example in German, Z.O.B. is pronounced as 'Zob', Kurfürstendamm in Berlin is pronounced as Ku-Damm.

[Mr.Nobody]

Then you have "轴", which I can see is the same word as "軸". See, alps.tw is most likely Taiwanese, so he uses "軸" the same as the Japanese do. In context here, I can guess that "轴" is the same character, but not otherwise.

When trying to machine-translate to and from Chinese, I have to try to determine whether to send back the Chinese text in simplified or traditional based on where I think the person is (for example, Himake are Taiwanese but their factory is in China and the staff there might all be Chinese), or what they seem to have written, and I can't yet tell by looking at it whether someone's written in simplified or traditional Chinese.

Any arguments in favour of language change are only valid for me if they lead to better machine translation.

Yes, 轴 and 軸 means the same thing, the former is in Simplified Chinese, the latter in traditional. Gernerally speaking, traditional Chinese characters have more strokes for each character, used by Taiwanese and Hongkongers, in fact, in Mainland China we don't call it "Traditioanl Chinese", we call it "Sophisticaed Chinese",compare these two words, you will have an inkling of the difference : 論壇(traditional) 论坛(simplified), means "forum", Mainlanders have never been taught to read or write Traditional Chinese, however, somehow, all of us know how to read it but almost none of us know how to write in Traditional Chinese, Chinese characters are like faces, you don't need to know every stroke to recognize a character when reading, but you do need to know every stroke to write, and there is a certain order/sequence for every stroke, which one follows which one has all been fixed up. Traditional Characters have too many strokes,we simplified it to enhance the efficiency of writing and to reduce the incidence of mistakes, after all, life is already troublesome enough, why not make things as simple as humanly possible?

As to better machine translation, we don't need to improve the language, let's improve the machine. For human users, Phonetically, I wish English could be more like spanish, with regard to grammar, I wish it could be more like Chinese, which have no plurals, no gender, no definite article, no conjugation, you put "更" in front of all adjectives to form comparatives, and "最" in front of adjectives to form superlatives, a single rule solves them all...easy.

[Mr.Nobody]

The word "轴/軸" is also confusing for me because during machine-aided back-translation, some Chinese sellers start to use the word 'Shaft' to refer to these key switches. The key switches are not torque mechanical devices. And it took me a while to understand they mean switches when they talk about 'Shaft'. The word 'Shaft' can be more suitable to refer to the central stem piece of a switch, but then it is still not so accurate.

Well, the popularity of the term can be due to the fact that it is easy to pronounce 1 syllable to refer to switch than to pronounce a few syllables. For example in German, Z.O.B. is pronounced as 'Zob', Kurfürstendamm in Berlin is pronounced as Ku-Damm.

You are right the popularity of "轴" is partly due to the simplicity, and "微动开关" is too technical, this word makes you sound like you were an engineer of some sort. The term "shaft" used by Chinese sellers is due to poor/pathetic machine translation, because 99% of Chinese sellers don't know basic English, for instance,"干花" means "dry flower" or "dried flower", but you might get the word translated into "fuck flower" if you rely on machine translation, which is exasperating and hilarious at the same time,only because "干" means "to fuck" in colloquial Chinese...so, fuck machine translation, let's learn the Languages and it couldn't be better if languages could be optimised for the sake of humanity.

PS:
BTW,轴/軸 could mean axis or shaft in Chinese, depends on the context it's used in.

[ideus]

Interestingly, this thread was proposed to discuss English and German and ends up being on Chinese. How come?

[Mr.Nobody]

Interestingly, this thread was proposed to discuss English and German and ends up being on Chinese. How come?

That's why we also call this forum offtopic-thority

[ideus]

First time I heard it, but well, if people benefited from it, let's be it.

[wobbled]

First time I heard it, but well, if people benefited from it, let's be it.

No one benefits from his cancerous threads

[ideus]

First time I heard it, but well, if people benefited from it, let's be it.

No one benefits from his cancerous threads

I just became aware that the same guy that changed the topic on the fly is the OP,

[Mr.Nobody]

First time I heard it, but well, if people benefited from it, let's be it.

No one benefits from his cancerous threads

Creatures of low IQ can barely get any benefit from knowledge.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

You are right the popularity of "轴" is partly due to the simplicity …

I was referring to traditional vs simplified Chinese there.

The term "shaft" used by Chinese sellers is due to poor/pathetic machine translation …

PS:
BTW,轴/軸 could mean axis or shaft in Chinese, depends on the context it's used in.

So it's "pathetic" to translate "軸" to "shaft" when that's what it actually means?

Why not just use 开关? We know here what "switch" means in context; we even use "switch" for solid state devices that don't involve physical switching, such as Hall effect and magnetic valve pushbuttons.

I don't understand why anyone would use "shaft" instead of "switch" in the first place.

[wobbled]

First time I heard it, but well, if people benefited from it, let's be it.

No one benefits from his cancerous threads

Creatures of low IQ can barely get any benefit from knowledge.

Creatures of high IQ don't rely on YouTube videos to gain knowledge.

[Mr.Nobody]

@Daniel Beardsmore
If only the fad had started in China not Japan, we wouldn't have the word "轴" to refer to switch, it would have been "开关" from the very beginning. In fact, when I saw for the first time the word "轴(shaft)" used to refer to keyboard switches, I was shocked as well. "Obviously, it's a switch why you guys keep calling it a shaft?" I wondered. Then I realized, as I said, it's borrowed from Japanese, maybe in Japanese "轴" means "switch" not “shaft”, maybe in Japanese they don't have the word "开关" if they had, they would have used "开关" in the first place, we need to find a Japanese-speaking member to clear it up. But in Chinese "开关” always means “switch” and "轴" had always referred to "axis or shaft" until the mechanical keyboard gained popularity. When a non-English-speaking Chinese seller tries to list his keyboards in English, unfortunately, he uses the machine translation to do the job, and the result is"keyboard with Cherry blue shaft."

@wobbled
Does the title or video of this thread somehow confuse you again?

This thread is all about languages, so are you here to talk about something relevant or just want to brag about the length of your penis in a racist manner like you did in another thread of mine? Or, maybe you just want to repeat the childish OCD thing that KBDFR used to do, namely, “I hate Mr.Nobody, I will stalk him and shit in all of his threads no matter what the topic is.”

Why are you so against Youtube videos? Some videos on Youtube are rather informative and are good sources of knowledge if you know where to look, isn't the first one in this thread a good example? And don't you watch Chyros' videos on Youtube to know more about keyboards? People of high IQ can take advantage of all forms of media to gain knowledge, no matter it's a book or a video, well, creatures of low IQ can't, obviously.

[wobbled]

I watch chyros's videos because I enjoy them, not because I feel the need to learn anything from him. Youtube videos are filled with biased opinions and incorrect information a lot of the time, only an idiot such as yourself spend the majority of their free time watching them
"I'm back guys, have been really busy recently and spending most of my spare time bad-mouthing Indians on Youtube"

Confirmed mad little Asian with nothing better to do than blame Muslims, Indians, and anyone else he doesn't like for the worlds problems.

Anyone that spends 'most of their spare time' watching youtube videos and bad mouthing people are not worth my time.

Bye bye slit eye

[Mr.Nobody]

I watch chyros's videos because I enjoy them, not because I feel the need to learn anything from him. Youtube videos are filled with biased opinions and incorrect information a lot of the time, only an idiot such as yourself spend the majority of their free time watching them
"I'm back guys, have been really busy recently and spending most of my spare time bad-mouthing Indians on Youtube"

Confirmed mad little Asian with nothing better to do than blame Muslims, Indians, and anyone else he doesn't like for the worlds problems.

Anyone that spends 'most of their spare time' watching youtube videos and bad mouthing people are not worth my time.

Bye bye slit eye

Since when "Indians" equals to "Muslims", most of them are Hindu you idiot, (well, this doesn't surprise me) and India is having a conflict with China on border issues now, there might be war, that's why I have been "badmothing" them( regardless of religion) on Youtube to support my country.

I've no problem admitting that I have learned a lot from Chyros' videos with regard to keyboards, not like you an arrogant ignorant ungrateful convert who doesn't feel the need to learn from anyone on anything that's why you are so ignorant, if you can ditch your previous God for the current one just to make a living, you surely can do that again, people like you have no real faith, to you, religion is merely a means to make life easier, I am wondering how worthy can a guy like you could be? BTW, and I am also wondering what's the next thing you'd like to convert to make life even easier? SEX? Become a woman? Then you will forfeit your right of bragging about the length of your penis forever.

[kbdfr]

[…] @wobbled
[…] Or, maybe you just want to repeat the childish OCD thing that KBDFR used to do, namely, “I hate Mr.Nobody, I will stalk him and shit in all of his threads no matter what the topic is.” […]

1. You will have noticed that I have not yet posted in this thread, but obviously you can't leave it at that.
2. Your quotation marks make it look as if I ever had posted that. Of course I never did.

[Mr.Nobody]

@KBDFR
Long time no see.
The content within quotation marks doesn't refer to what you had SAID, nay, you had never said those words; but it refers to what you had DONE, you did stalk me and shit every thread from me regardless of the topics for a while. however, the behavior stopped for some unknown reason since you called me Mr.Trump and I called you Mrs. Trump. Never mind, nice to see you, I hope everything goes well with you, my best frenemy. I gotta go for dinner, TTYL.