Tim J

@stux@mstdn.social Just noting that your example link isn't one that uses "?v=", which could conceivably confuse someone. (Hopefully it won't, but there are a surprising number of ways in which people can be confused.)

@linguistgoneforeign@mastodon.social I've remembered this one! It only works in #Swedish, not Norwegian or Danish. It means "the underground" if -an is an ending, or "tunnel banana" if it's the last two letters of "banan". (In Norwegian or Danish the ending would be -en and break the pun.) #language #puns #Swedish

@_elena@mastodon.social The fun begins when you start comparing the output of the Translate button with the structure of the original sentence and realising that it's missed important-looking words like "nicht" out . . . I think once you know the tiniest bit of the grammar of the language you're learning, it's time to start applying it, even if most of the vocabulary is unfamiliar.

@linguistgoneforeign@mastodon.social Another Norwegian one. Å trette and tretten mean "to tire" and "thirteen" respectively. To make an ordinal number, you mostly add -te,-de, or the last few letters of -ende to the cardinal one. And to make a present participle, you add -ende to the verb stem. So we've got • trett + -ende = trettende = tiring/tiresome • tretten + -de = trettende = thirteenth. So maybe *every* Friday is "den trettende".

@linguistgoneforeign@mastodon.social I was introduced the other day to a Norwegian children's song full of Norwegian puns involving the word "brilleslange" (spectacled cobra, but also a playground taunt for glasses-wearers). But at one point it also *possibly* mentions the singing of "billesanger", thereby implying a sort of cross-language pun: • bille = beetle • sanger = songs and therefore • billesanger = Beetles songs (But it might just be a mistake in someone's transcription of the song words.)

@linguistgoneforeign@mastodon.social (The song advises the spectacle-wearer to become a big and dangerous brilleslange, and not various other possibilities like a sykkelslange (bicycle inner tube)).

@stuartdrunsfield@mastodon.social @fesshole@mastodon.social Maybe SAE here means "self addressed envelope" rather than "stamped addressed envelope"?

@crisps@mastodon.social @flq@freiburg.social @Natasha_Jay@tech.lgbt It's a 3½" diskette. Usually 1.44 MB capacity. The upper white rectangle is the paper label for writing on. The lower one is a sliding metal shutter, with an oval opening through which the read/write heads access the disk when it's inserted in the drive.

@drmobs It's just seen another one who it likes the look of on the other side of the road, that's all.

@JeffGrigg@mastodon.social @crisps@mastodon.social @flq@freiburg.social @Natasha_Jay@tech.lgbt Certainly is! I've still got a few 5¼" ones too, but nothing which can read them . . . Come to think, I *have* got a 5¼" drive, left over from a dimly remembered upgrade to 3½". But it's not actually in a computer.

@rperezrosario@mastodon.social However, the link only appears if the language set for the post isn't your own. So if someone has accidentally set their post to your language but written in their own, there'll be no Translate link. So the language setting still matters.

@Natasha_Jay@tech.lgbt And I don't really think of diskettes as floppy disks, either! 5¼" ones were the last properly floppy ones . . . (However, I never used 7" ones,which I assume may well have been even floppier . . . )

@maxleibman@beige.party That's superb.

@programmablecat@post.lurk.org Definitely ridiculous. Christmas is still weeks away! 😉

@SMPress@socel.net @Nightworldlove@mastodon.art @feditips@mstdn.social I think it's just so screen readers know how to break the hashtag up when reading it and don't do weird pronunciations.

@ohno Well at least nobody's going to get successfully sued for libel for anything printed in that! Imagine trying to convince a jury of what it says . . .

cc @lottaboheme@mstdn.social

@rothko@beige.party Well, now I'll have to look it up! ;-) My immediate thought is that an alarmingly long time ago I noticed that the disk sizes were the same as tape reel sizes,¹ which meant *back then* that they were easy to remember. But was 7" a reel size? Not sure now . . . _____ ¹ for ¼" audio tape.

@kadin@mastodon.sdf.org It's certainly got plenty of typos . . . (Well, two obvious ones that jumped out. Which probably means there are more that didn't.) NB that doesn't negate the other stuff. It just means I now feel I really *ought* to tell them, but don't have the energy to bother and anyway if they want it proofreading properly I'd prefer that they paid . . .

@stux@mstdn.social I wonder if that's part of the issue. A shortened link that's that long doesn't look shortened, just different. So people are even more unsure about what can be safely cut out.

@forestfae@wandering.shop @ajsadauskas@aus.social I actually use them! But then forget they're there and have to go searching again. But give me time—I've only been on there 14 years, and that's nowhere near long enough to understand why the design is as it is. It's also horrifying how few people there know there's a chronological view, so they're not even able to see the tweets they want to.