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john-aj

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In German you need to have that noun info upfront, otherwise you might not get the grammar correct!

In reality, (1) people rarely change their mind about what noun they're going to use such that the gender is different, and (2) when it needs to be done, speakers of German either ignore it or just go back and repair what they said, changing the forms of the determiner and adjective. Germans speak with no more planning than English speakers.

One might say the same thing about certain English grammatical phenomena. When asking a question, you have to consider whether the subject is going to be singular or plural: Is/are the dog/dogs hungry? This isn't needed in languages without subject-verb agreement, such as Swedish. But it makes very little difference to native speakers.

Chiming in from theoretical linguistics: it is impossible for natural languages to "count", i.e. make reference to numbers other than 0, 1 or infinity.

As an example, there are languages where prenominal genitives are impossible (0).

Then, there are languages, such as German, where only one prenominal genitive is possible (1):

Annas Haus

*Annas Hunds Haus

Finally, there are languages, such as English, where an infinite number of prenominal genitives are possible (infinity).

Anna's house

Anna's dog's house

Anna's mother's dog's house

Anna's mother's sister's ... dog's house

But there are no languages where only two or three prenominal genitives are possible.

This property is taken to be part of Universal Grammar, i.e. the genetic/biological/mental system that makes human language possible.

That only speaks for the 1800s, though. There were a lot of incorrect beliefs among scientists during that time that weren't commonplace before; race biology comes to mind.

Soap has been around for a long time, and thousand-year-old religions have rules about cleaning oneself. My impression was that doctors actually stopped believing in disinfection during the rise of modern science, as they began see these beliefs as unscientific superstitions. I don't currently have a source for this, though.

In statistics, one usually differentiates between

- nominal scales (e.g. man/woman),

- ordinal scales (elementary school/middle school/high school),

- interval scales (degrees Celsius) and

- ratio scales (human height, degrees Kelvin).

Only ratio scales may be multiplied and divided. Interval scales may be subtracted and added. Ordinal scales may only be compared (less/greater/equal). Nominal scales may only be compared in terms of (in)equality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_measurement

Learning about phonetics absolutely helps. It provides an accurate way of precisely describing how sounds are pronounced.

Do keep in mind, though, that the IPA classifications that you find on Wikipedia are sometimes rough estimates. With particularly difficult sounds, it may be a good idea to look at multiple phonetic descriptions.

Begin with the sounds of your own native language, which you already know how to pronounce, and try to describe them phonetically. A tip for learning to feel where your tongue is, is to pronounce the sounds without tone, i.e. whisper them, or even without air, i.e. simply mouth them.

When translating Russian, both are usually translated as blue. Синий is used about dark blue things, like the sea, and голубой about light blue things, like the sky.

But translating it to "dark/light blue" would be incorrect, as the lightness is not an important part of the words. It is just that Russian speakers are forced to specify the lightness, similarly to how German speakers are forced to specify the sex of their neighbor (Nachbar/Nachbarin). In most cases, Nachbarin should simply be translated to "neighbor".

Exactly. I'd guess that a majority of VS Code users are relatively new to programming. Not to say that there aren't experienced people who have switched, especially among the TextMate/Sublime Text crowd, but the incredible growth in users? I think that's largely a result of new programmers choosing the same editor, not old programmers switching.

Yeah, I think it is more likely that it is related to German "(be)schließen", Swedish "(be)sluta" etc. which originally means "close, shut, join together, lock up" etc.

OTOH, that verb usually corresponds to Dutch "sluiten". "(be)slissen" seems to mean the same as "(be)sluiten", but with a different etymology. I'm not sure whether it fits chronologically, but perhaps it is a loan from German or a development, atypical for Dutch, but similar to that in German?

Yeah, it is pretty incredible how there can be multiple free/open-source operating system kernels, not controlled by corporations, but hardly a single web browser engine like that. Are web browsers really that complex?

I think the sign-up is fine, but the password requirements should be done away with. They don't even seem to work. Neither periods or colons count as special symbols. Generally, there shouldn't be any requirements. I use a diceware password, which is very safe, but doesn't fit the requirements.

Hi, also from Sweden. Yes, in högstadiet/high school I think it is rare to offer classical Greek or Latin. Even Italian is rare. But there are definitely Latin and Greek courses at universities. I studied 7,5 points of Latin last semester. I know Uppsala University offers a 30 point course. I'd recommend looking at antagning.se, if you want to make it more than a fun side project :-)