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Perhaps you mean that 'apple' has a different meaning in the United States than, say, in Wales, because its web of implications looks different in one place than another. Following that thought, though, the same would be true of two American speakers, who surely have their own idiosyncratic webs. It's an interesting idea. But are words not 'synonyms' that have the same referent, only because two speakers have different relationships to that referent? Is a word partly its evocation? Or can we look at its evocation separately from a stricter 'meaning' it shares between speakers? (Surely it shares something, or language would lose its point.)

Incidentally, synonym is not the word to be nullifying here. A synonym is a like word, something that may equal the original but usually differs in degree, amount, tone, allusion, or other effect. Anyone using a thesaurus without a dictionary is sure to embarrass themselves sooner or later: differences in meaning between like words are common, and it is no revelation to say that one speaker will have different associations with a word than another, particularly if they come from different cultures.

I think an article on German compounds would have been worthwhile on its own. To develop interest in it, however, the author has found it necessary--as many others have--to write of one language's richness as a factor of another's lack. English is actually quite pithy on some of the concepts he claims "require a mouthful when translated" from the German: "that which is in the process of becoming" (das Werdende) is (with varying nuance) nascent, incipient, inchoate, germinal, budding, springing, arising, dawning, crepuscular, in embryo, in the bud, in the gristle, forming, fashioning, styling, or becoming. To give rise to a noun to describe that thing which is nascent, incipient, etc., does not require the ham-fisted (there's a good, playful compound!) stroke which Duncan has used: he's playing it up! If you want a single word for it, bud, germ, etc., have their figurative uses as well. And if he wanted a dictionary definition for das Werdende, he could have dropped the relative pronoun and two prepositions and written, "a nascent thing." (In actual writing, thing would usually be replaced by a more precise identifier, and the phrase would be the richer for it.) There are some rare words, like inchoant, which also do the trick, and whose inception (or kick-off, throw-off, lift-off) looks rather like that of das Werdende.

No one is in a position to "confirm" this statement or prove it irrecusably wrong. More or less tenable arguments may be made, more or less well. I think Hawking does well here, behind the poorer commentary, but I'm unwilling to engage in or let lie propaganda for any end, particularly on a forum on which we are to default to respect for others' ability to engage in thoughtful dialogue. The source for this article is not easily to be dismissed, but the article's title is misleading - a straight fib - and a misleading headline that suggests one reading over another while pretending to fact is propagandistic.

One of the greatest impediments to these systems was that, while pronunciation may be picked up from spelling in a so-called phonemic system (assuming a bog-standard means of determining stress, which English doesn't have), spelling does not always follow from pronunciation - not unless you happen to speak precisely the English that the standards body prefers. English phonology, particularly when it comes to vowels, varies so wildly from place to place that any new, purportedly simpler system will be met with resistance from the majority of speakers to whom the system seems to be wrong, messy, and arbitrary. As a simple and common example, that of 'Mary, merry, and marry': do you collapse these three vowels, as many English speakers do, thus frustrating those who would like to make the distinction in print; or do you retain the three and in doing so create three new arbitrary-seeming spellings for words that to many speakers are homophones? Do you, as in Shavian, retain an R at the ends of "star" and "mother," or do you bow to common British pronunciations and excise these in spelling as in speech - something another phonetician, Henry Sweet[2], would have recommended?

(We see something similar in the promotion of and resistance to new programming languages: fixing some problems is not always enough to attract adopters away from a language which is at least doing the job. Imperfections stand out in novel tools, even if other improvements have been made and the imperfections are nothing new.)

Shorthand authors were well aware of the difficulties in teaching a "phonography," or phoneme-based system, to a duplicitous student body. This is one of the reasons that many English shorthand systems do away with almost all vowels, except perhaps to indicate where the vowel occurs and what broad family of like sounds it belongs to. Of course, eliminating vowels is one of the best ways to promote speed in writing; but there was also the problem that, where writing a vowel was desired (e.g. to differentiate 'tarp' from 'trap'), not all students will agree on which symbol ought to be used for each vowel sound - the sound varying from person to person, even within the same county or town. These shorthand systems were left ambiguous on purpose, so that teaching speed might be improved alongside writing speed. No need for a student to learn whether the first vowel in 'father' is indeed the same as the one in 'bought' - and from whose mouth, anyway?

It is possible that in an IPA-based system, English spelling may differ from person to person as widely as pronunciation does. Surely, however, that would make things more difficult for second-language learners than having to contend with one standard that happens to be riddled with inconsistencies? (Or perhaps not?)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavian_alphabet [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Sweet

This is an interview with NPR, not an academic paper. You may as well question whether the correlation exists at all as hone in on this one point.

Going by your time scale, WWII was still on three days ago. Then again, there are people who might come onto this forum and in all honesty say that 1943 was only yesterday to them, and that you mistakenly said that this morning was yesterday afternoon. Do we revise our comments yet again, in light of this fact?

By many measures, 24 years are scarcely any. Which measure do you want to make use of, and what consequences does it have? You haven't said anything.

Unless you mean the search bar?

  browser.search.suggest.enabled = false

  browser.search.suggest.enabled = true

On the top of Cummings, I have occasionally felt like I was faced with an incomplete set of instructions when reading certain of his poems. Of course, there's no particular reason to liken them to computer instructions; I've never seen anything in the poems to suggest a connection. Anything to link one art with another is a stretch—if we even accept that coding is an art.

(I think code can be, though it isn't as a rule. In the same way, writing can be artful but is typically workaday and unremarkable. This post, for an example.)

0: http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/cummings/caps.htm

In any case, English suffers quite a few more more overloaded consonants that C and G. Most occurrences of /z/ (a frequent sound in English) are marked with an S (codes), and a great many /t/ sounds are written D (typed).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J#History

Even if you agree with vim's approach to modal editing and object motions, there is plenty bad to be said about it in light of some of the tools we have available to us today. But humble origins do not always lead on to humble ends. There is no use in calling a book bad and giving as your reason that it was once pulp. It would be just as unhelpful to call the Lisps of today slow, and to use as your crutch the old adage that "LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing."[1] As GP said, "There's been some progress since the 1970s."

[1] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alan_Perlis#Epigrams_on_Progra...

This solution, meanwhile, is far from inelegant:

  nnoremap g gj
  nnoremap k gk

(I do agree that vim-pencil is unnecessary, at least if you're only going to use one scheme for wrapping.)

D'Nealian was one of the final blows to nibbed pens in the U.S., even wiping them out of most Catholic schools: it was ballpoint from then on, almost without question. With longhand in the workplace largely supplanted by typewriters (and soon by personal computers), the public at large moved toward writing implements that were "easier to pick up." After all, few people have need for an instrument whose finickiness is made up for only by ease of use in long sittings. Ballpoints are among the easiest writing tools to care for; you basically keep them out of the wash. No ink refilling, no cleaning out converters between colors and brands of ink, no ink drying out after two weeks in the drawer, no worry of the dreaded "baby bottom nib" of new fountain pens. Buy a Bic, get on with life. There's much to recommend them. If your writing is purely utilitarian and miscellaneous—lists, thank-you notes, reminders, memos, etc.—you probably don't want to bother with anything more complicated.

As it was taught to me, D'Nealian seemed to be designed for easy entry, plain and simple. Many other methods tend to concentrate on technique early, quite apart from letter formation. In D'Nealian, students are taught the proper manner in which to hold a pen, but little else. And ballpoint pens don't really allow for the old "proper" grips that are still often taught, as other commenters have touched on. You have to exert force downward onto the page to get a ballpoint to write, while the old, loose tripod grip that is still recommended was designed for nibs that only needed to glance the page. So D'Nealian is associated in the minds of many students with cramping exertion, and forcing the pen into practice.

Anyway, as soon as you can hold a pen, you start tracing and copying letters. You basically "draw" them; the letter is taught, not the movement. That's about all I can remember.

I'm not in education, so my recommendation of one over another shouldn't be sought. But I would easily believe that there were great things to say about a system that gets children writing as soon as possible. This is particularly true if the manner in which we make our letters by hand will have no bearing on our future prospects. Which, of course, it almost certainly won't.

Personally, I think D'Nealian looks childish. And if you aren't writing with a flowing technique, I see little point for joining all letters in a word. Not that cursive has always been written with streamlined, flowing, efficient, "full-arm" movement, as in the Palmer method and some of its relations. But from my point of view, why waste the extra ink or graphite needed to join letters just to encourage cramp?

I don't think D'Nealian killed cursive; Palmer or similar methodologies, which are hellish to learn if you go by the book, would likely have done even worse. More or less everything that we deal with today is in manuscript, unless your apartment complex happens to have cursive lettering on its awning or something, in the hopes of looking nice. Or maybe if you're digging through old relatives' things. So it's natural for children not to care about it, and even resent the drills needed to learn it.

I think the argument that ballpoints killed cursive is naturally overstated. If ballpoints hadn't become popular around the same time that typewriters did, there may well still be need of different writing implements and quick cursive in the workplace. But certainly ballpoints do make cursive much more difficult.

Palmer descends from, but is assuredly not, Spencerian. Nor is it in any sense of the word fancy, except perhaps in comparison to blockletter print. It is a business hand designed for practical, quick, and legible business communications. It is not a coincidence that Palmer books begin with posture and movement exercises before students are even to lift a pen. It really is meant for everyday, injury-free use.

I don't strictly use the letterforms or all the best practices of the Palmer method—see the article for a link—but using a Palmer book as a guide, I managed to teach myself to write with a relaxed grip and no movement in the fingers or wrist, and I can go for hours now and walk away with no more discomfort than the stiffness of sitting without relief.

It is hard to write like this using most ballpoints because you do need to exert more force to get a consistent line out of the things. You don't need a fountain or dip pen, however—just a soft-leaded pencil (try an art supply shop), a good rollerball pen, or some gel pens. None of these write as effortlessly as a fountain pen, but neither do they require the kind of cramp-inducing force that a Bic pen does.

I've read mid-century materials on this topic before. My sense is that this isn't a new argument so much as a forgotten one.

And "blazing fast" is definitely a relative term. I remember the feeling of liberation when we got rid of dial-up, but there were still plenty of seconds-long load times just to see the main content--only to find it scrunched between two fixed-width sidebars (arranged in a table). And it was quite possible that the page would do its utmost to slow your browser down with custom scrollbars and cursors.

Image maps for site navigation, font size=1, and precious little free hosting of user content without ads pasted at the top and bottom of the page, more prominent than ever.

Until then, under chrome/userContent.css in my Firefox profile folder, I will keep:

    @-moz-document domain(netflix.com) {
    
        .slider .agMovieSetSlider {
            position: relative !important;
            width: 100% !important;
        }
    
        .slider {
            overflow: auto !important;
            height: auto !important;
        }
    }

Granted, I think Ford expanded the domain of his question a little further than he needed to, for the sake of what looks to be fun. And I think he occasionally picks a piece of jargon where a clearer, more ordinary word would have done just as well—though I'm not in the mood to dive back into the article to find a case.

Suffice it to say that breadth of vocabulary is a poor rubric for evaluating literary works, almost without exception. For Hemingway and many others, it is better to have the words at hand than forcibly to use them. For a reader, it is worth reflecting on why a writer chose the words they did, rather than assuming they could have done no differently. Much of the history of high-brow English literature consists of taking old forms and making them more nearly vulgar. More than a century before Hemingway, Wordsworth made a name for himself for his vernacular—to pick an example out of a hat. Closer to Hemingway's time, Mark Twain famously cut down James Fenimore Cooper for failing to "[e]schew surplusage" or "[e]mploy a simple and straightforward style"[1], adages that Hemingway can be said to have written by, at least in his best-remembered works. Hemingway fulfilled—or continued to work toward—one of the stronger and more common impetuses in English literature and criticism: to write using ordinary language, and to do so exactly.

I would add that it is useful in the study of literature and literary criticism to dislike something, particularly if it is an entrenched part of whatever canon you find yourself surrounded by. It means you have something to think about, concerning the work, yourself, and others. Which are the three most important things with regard to art—not in any particular order.

[1] http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/projects/rissetto/offense.html

You could say the exposure is necessary for the idea to be held. With marketing this is, of course, true. And in other aspects of life, certainly none of us comes into the world every morning with a blank slate of a mind. But would removing every expression of an idea, remove that idea? Perhaps in a generation's time? (It can't be done, but it's an interesting question to ask, all the same.) We do know that there was a time when certain hates--homophobia, for instance, to use an example from upthread--did not exist, at least not in a human mind. Yet they're here today. Did they require public fora?

I can be exposed to an idea or an advertisement and subsequently walk away from it, having rejected its worth or its relevance to me. Without having done so, I cannot claim any agency in my thinking. Whether this kind of agency is worth protecting is another question altogether. The liberal ideas of free speech assume that it is.

Do they? Where did the ideas come from in the first place, then, and how have they ever been rejected? I don't know enough about you personally to make any inferences in this case, but usually when a sentence like the above is spoken, it sounds like it was bowdlerized: the word "other" was clearly intended in front of the word "people."

If oppressive speech is to be suppressed--even in a post-revolutionary society--which platforms are to be policed? And with what resources? I'm reminded of John Milton's well-known metaphor, from "Areopagitica," of "that gallant man who thought to pound up the crows by shutting his park gate." To use another metaphor, ideas spread by every channel. Do you suppose we could dam them all?

Reflexive political correctness on HN and other forums, meanwhile, is not preemptive. It is in response to the overwhelming amount of belligerence, innuendo, and offhand sexism that runs rampant when there is no such moderation. If you think it implausible that sexism is more noticeable and notable online than in schools or workplaces, I have to wonder how much time you've spent on BBS, IRC, etc., over the years. Or else whether you just don't notice it. This wouldn't be unusual; sexism is so embedded in most parts of the world that it takes either a great amount of reflection or a small amount of finding yourself on the wrong end of it to notice. (We are, after all, communicating in a language in which "gratify me, a man, sexually" is among the stronger insults.)

(Note that I've never seen sama or anyone else attack someone for "why would I use your lib over sqlite?")

I would not expect anyone to feel as strongly about libraries as they do about how other people are treated; in fact, I'd be glad not to know them if they did.

In any case, feedback is not the only deterrent, nor is it the most powerful. A lifetime of insinuations and flat-out statements from the vocal majority of your peers and teachers that x is not your domain--before you've even had a chance to think that it might be--does much to shape a person.

But probably some of your downvotes are coming because you're discounting how much louder and more open sexism tends to be online than in the office.

I've written and edited plenty of runtime configuration files, but there is this to say for GUI preference panes: you don't need to bother with learning a new language, even a simple one, for every other program. Set it up, and then use it. Maybe occasionally define a new text snippet.

I know many heavy users of editors and IDEs who are by no means power users, with their dotfiles on version control and everything. There is a distinct difference. In all honesty, I don't think either group is more productive than the other except on a very micro scale.

As for your remarks upthread about broken families: I'm sorry you, or anyone, should have to live at the extreme end of that curve.