Activity for Moshi
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Question | — |
Should translation questions be considered off-topic? I realize that we don't have an official stance on translation questions, so I am looking for community feedback. Should translation questions of words/phrases be considered off-topic? (more) |
— | 10 months ago |
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Effectiveness of input-only learning While learning a language, there are a surprising (to me at least) number of people who say that you should never output until fluent - that is, as long as you get enough input, you will eventually become able to output fluently. Basically, learning the way children acquire their first language. They... (more) |
— | 12 months ago |
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Why is the third person singular conjugation different in the past tense? Generally speaking, German verbs inflect with the following table | Person | Inflection | Example | |-|-|-| | ich | -e | sage, arbeite | | du | -(e)st | sagst, arbeitest | | er/sie/es | -(e)t | sagt, arbeitet | | wir | -en | sagen, arbeiten | | ihr | -(e)t | sagt, arbeitet | | sie (Plural) ... (more) |
— | over 1 year ago |
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Plural agreement with a syntactically singular subject Many quantity words trigger agreement with their object rather than themselves. For instance, syntactically, "a lot, "a bunch", "an amount" seem to all be singular. However, as a native speaker, "There are a lot of people", with the plural form of the verb "are", seems just as grammatical as "There i... (more) |
— | over 1 year ago |
| Question | — |
Possessive vs accusative case for nominalized clauses Consider the following sentences: 1. "She was against his joining the team." 2. "She was against his joining of the team." 3. "She was against him joining the team." Instinctively, the first just sounds wrong to me. Thinking deeper about it though, I can't tell why it sounds wrong to me; "joi... (more) |
— | almost 2 years ago |
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Why "me too" and not "I too"? I've been studying German lately, and came across something that sparked my curiosity: The way to say "me too" in German is "ich auch" - that is, "I too". A shallow glance at other Germanic languages gives me the impression that this formation is common in those. (Dutch: "Ik ook", Swedish: "Jag också... (more) |
— | almost 2 years ago |
| Question | — |
Where, here, and there: What is the origin, and can it be generalized? I recently stumbled upon this wikipedia page and it got me thinking. Take a look at the following table (terms are lifted from the Wikipedia page) | W (interrogative) | H (proximal) | T (medial) | |-------------------|--------------|------------| | what | ? | that |... (more) |
— | almost 2 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Can I ask for resources? There isn't an established procedure, but I personally would ask either on Meta for visibility (asking for the creation of a post seems Meta-y) and/or create the resource post itself, even if empty. (more) |
— | almost 2 years ago |
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A: Reactions are here! Suggestions? This has been implemented [Citation needed] As a more academically focused site, it might be useful to mark answers as lacking sufficient citations to back the answer up authoritatively. This gives a way for users to express skepticisms without the baggage of downvotes, which would imply an... (more) |
— | almost 2 years ago |
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Policy Poll: "Did you try Googling"? A certain question has twice now been hit by the dreaded "You can find this information by Google" I've noticed this has occurred quite frequently, especially link-only answers which I delete as a "this should be a comment" policy. I am leaning towards deleting pure copy paste answers along th... (more) |
— | about 2 years ago |
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A: How can we grow this community? I think the answer is a lack of a clear scope. I mentioned this in various comments in the past, but are we a linguistics site (like Linguistics SE), a language learning site (Like English Language Learners SE), a language study site (Like English Language & Usage SE), or all of the above? Some us... (more) |
— | over 2 years ago |
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Reactions are here! Suggestions? Reactions are officially here! Reactions are another way for the community to give feedback on a post; for more information, see this Meta post. I've disabled the default "Works for me", "Outdated", and "Dangerous" reactions for now, since I don't feel like they work well for this community. Th... (more) |
— | over 2 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Which phrase is correct? (Is using plural form for singular object make sense?) (Does using plural form for singular object make sense?) Do Support Let's see exactly where the sentence comes from. There are two processes going on here, "do support" and "inversion". The full, standard non-question sentence is, of course, "Using the plural form for a singular object makes sense." In "title-ese", of course, we tend to drop such thi... (more) |
— | over 2 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Does using plural form for singular object make sense? One misconception: They/them has not been strictly plural for quite a long time. Even Shakespeare used it. > There's not a man I meet but doth salute me / as if I were their well-acquainted friend (From Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, written sometime around the late sixteenth century) U... (more) |
— | over 2 years ago |
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A: What should I use instead of `have` in present perfect tense? It's built just like the normal present perfect. > I have had it. > Have you had it? (more) |
— | almost 3 years ago |
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A: Translation Golf - Welcome! Japanese, 20 characters > コディダクトの語学コミュニティにようこそ！ I'm not actually sure how "Codidact" would be converted into katakana, since nobody told me how to pronounce it. (more) |
— | about 3 years ago |
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Translation Golf - Welcome! In an effort to drum up activity (given we haven't had any in over a week), I present the first translation golf! Before entering, please read the ground rules. The aim of the game is to translate a given text using as few characters as possible. The first text is quite simple, it's the we... (more) |
— | about 3 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Translation Golf (draft stage) I've drafted sample translation-golf challenge post, and am planning on posting it on Saturday (if no one objects). Feel free to suggest any changes you might want to make. In an effort to drum up activity (given we haven't had any in over a week), I present the first translation golf! ... (more) |
— | about 3 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Translation Golf (draft stage) Ground Rules (draft) This is loosely based off of the original translation golf on StackExchange, but modified to fit a wider range of languages. Goal: Translate a given text using the minimum number of characters 1. The translation must be accurate 2. Unless otherwise stated, the transla... (more) |
— | about 3 years ago |
| Question | — |
"Us neither" - Is it valid? Recently, I read the phrase "Us neither", and for some reason it irked me. I don't know why though, since I can't immediately say what exactly is wrong with it. Logically, "Me neither" and "Neither have I" are equivalent, so why would "Us neither" not be similar to "Neither have we"? No matter how I ... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Question | — |
Wiki posts are here; do we want to use them? We now have a "Wiki" post type Essentially, wiki posts are articles, but with a lower bar for editing; > Unlike with other post types, anybody with the Participate Everywhere privilege can edit the post directly, rather than having to go through suggested edits. My question to the community... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Question | — |
Styling language tags (Continued discussion of a specific idea from What tag hierarchy and ontology should Linguistics use?) As you've probably noticed, we have the ability to put style tags differently. For example, the discussion, feature-request, support, and bug tags have a different color scheme from the other tag... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
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A: Does Japanese have pronouns? > What arguments are used to answer this question? Does it stem from a lack of agreement over how to define a pronoun? Essentially, yes. Even your own Wikipedia quote has the infamous [citation needed]: (reproduced here for emphasis) > Strictly speaking, pronouns do not take modifiers[citation ... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
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A: Who should the temporary moderators be? I nominate Jirka Hanika, because they're (relatively) active and have good answers here. (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
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Crowdsourced font stack for Languages & Linguistics A continuation of my previous post. Crowdsourced font stack for Languages & Linguistics I am currently working on crafting font stacks for each script; see the draft pull request here: https://github.com/codidact/qpixel/pull/290. Since I am by no means familiar with all the various typograph... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
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We now have (basic) language support As of the most recent deploy, users now have the ability to mark text as a certain language! Users can now add `lang` attributes to html. For example, this is inline Hebrew ``` > This is עִברִית (Hebrew)! ``` > This is עִברִית (Hebrew)! and this is a quote in Japanese. ``` 日本語（にほ... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Why do certain Hebrew letters have alternate final forms? The final forms of `ך`, `ן`, `ף`, and `ץ` are the original forms. From a Quora answer to What's the origin of the final (sofit) forms for some of the Hebrew alphabet? > Four of the five “sofit” letters in Hebrew are actually older than their non-sofit counterparts: ך ן ף ץ, which all descend b... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: What tag hierarchy and ontology should Linguistics use? > So what is the proposed ontology for the Languages & Linguistics site? I foresee a category for each language and then, eventually, subcategories for the rest. Just so we're on the same page, we don't have subcategories. Categories are what are listed here, i.e. Q&A, Resources, and Meta. I assum... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
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A: What does "unused root" mean? From ariel.org > What is meant by “unused” root is that though the root of the word has a specific meaning, you will not find that root meaning in literature. Only its derived meanings will be found. (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Why are there different suffixes for people of different countries in English? tl;dr, English just borrowed other languages' suffixes I shouldn't really come as too much of a surprise to know that the irregularity comes from borrowing endings from multiple different languages at different times. From this article on linglish.net, these are the origins of the primary suffixes... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: ～ません versus ～ないです After researching a bit more, I found this StackExchange answer. Their answer is very informative, and includes a partial translation of a Japanese research paper (which I'm sadly not at the level of being able to read). It concludes > ～ません and ～ないです are semantically equivalent, but ～ないです is softe... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Question | — |
Feature request: Ruby text As a Japanese learner, I think it would be really helpful if posts could contain ruby text. While I would use it mostly for Japanese, it's not something specific to it. I can see it being used for other languages as well, where currently I see people adding romanizations after the text, eg. here. ... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Question | — |
～ません versus ～ないです As far as my knowledge of Japanese goes, there are two ways to form polite negative forms of verbs, the direct conjugation ～ません and the plain negative conjugation ～ない with です added. Take for instance everyone's favorite word, 食べる (eat). This can be conjugated as: Negative, Plain: 食べない Negati... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Primary clause uses singular, subordinate co-reference is plural, what verb to use in English? > The general rule I learned is to ignore subordinate clauses when resolving cases like this. The "outer" sentence, which contains the verb, is "The oath he swore (verb) just fluff to him", and so the correct verb is "was". That is correct, "was" is the grammatically correct choice in your example... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Question | — |
Do we want capitalized tags? So, the general consensus on Should we allow capitalized tags? seems to be yes. The obvious next questions is, do we, the Language community, want them? Since we've recently gotten the [Thai] tag, we now have language tags both capitalized and lowercase. For the sake of consistency, I think we sho... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
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Is it really true that all Chinese words have one syllable? I'm sure a lot of people have heard it before: the statement "All Chinese words are one syllable (or character)." And because someone is going to ask, no, this is not just a Western thought - my Mandarin teacher (who is from Taiwan) also said this to me. Personally, I find the whole argument point... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
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When do you use 'whom'? I have two basic questions about the usage of 'whom': 1. When and how do you use the word 'whom'? 2. Can I just... not? Even after looking it up, I'm confused. I've never found an example given where replacing 'whom' with 'who' will make the sentence sound wrong. Have I internalized something ... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
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How do Chinese people give their names in Japanese? (And vice versa) So, I have a Chinese name. (Specifically, Mandarin, if that makes a difference). What are the common ways to give this name in Japanese? Should I approximate the Chinese reading, use the on'yomi reading of the characters, or something else? Also, out of curiosity, how does the reverse situation wo... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
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A: How should we customize the Resources category? Proposed tagline > Community resources about language and languages Proposed help text > ### Posting Tips: > > - Break different topics up into paragraphs. Multiple paragraphs are easier to read than a wall of text. > - Use clear, simple language. Be specific. > - Add links for any online ... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
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A: Is posting links to commercial content as part of a resource post allowed? You should probably refer to the promotional content guidelines. Reproduced here: > You must explicitly state your affiliation. If you're linking your dragon-riding place, please just include a disclaimer that clearly states how you're connected with it. Something as simple as "This place is r... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Question | — |
Has Japanese always had the polite "masu" form? Japanese has what is known as the "polite form"/"masu form" and the "plain form". Notably, the two forms have completely different conjugations despite having the same meaning, differing only in politeness. My question is, has this grammatical politeness always existed? And if not, when and how did t... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Article | — |
Chinese Dictionaries Character and word dictionaries for Chinese Online/Web MDBG - An extensive online dictionary, primarily for Mandarin but also has entries for Cantonese. It runs the open source CC-CEDICT project. CC-Canto - An open-source Cantonese dictionary, run by Pleco. Mobile Apps Pleco (iOS, ... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Question | — |
Mixed fonts within a sentence (and proposed fixes) The problem Currently, there are no fonts listed for languages other than English. This leads to an issue I see a lot - mixed fonts. (looking at you, Google Translate) Take a simple Japanese sentence, for instance: 日本語が分かりません This is what it looks like on my machine: rendering example It... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
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A: Why is it "pronunciation" and not "pronounciation"? A quick search gives a regular pattern in the form of trisyllabic laxing > Trisyllabic laxing, or trisyllabic shortening, is any of three processes in English in which tense vowels (long vowels or diphthongs) become lax (short monophthongs) if they are followed by two syllables the first of which ... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |