Mardy (Entratas super linguas)

On Richard Stallman and people who cannot read

Alberto Mardegan — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 16:38:26 GMT

We live in strange times. People are so filled with hatred and prejudices that their brain becomes unable to parse the simplest sentences. I take this issue to heart, because it could happen to anyone — it has happened to me before (luckily, only in private online conversations), where an acquaintance of mine accused me of saying things I never said. And it happens to famous people all the time. Guys, just because you hate person X, you should not skip over parts of their speech or suppress context in order to make it look like they said something terrible or stupid, when they didn't.

Now it happend to Richard Stallman, with a whole wave of hateful people accusing him of saying something that he didn't say. Let's start with the VICE article, titled "Famed Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Described Epstein Victims As 'Entirely Willing'", which insists in quoting only two words out of Stallman's sentence:

Early in the thread, Stallman insists that the “most plausible scenario” is that Epstein’s underage victims were “entirely willing” while being trafficked.

Except that he didn't say that. Why not quote the whole sentence? It's not such a long sentence, really! Just follow the link to the source, which provides a complete excerpt of Stallman's words:

We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates.

Now, English is not my native language, but I read it well enough to understand that “to present oneself as” and “to be” are different expressions having very different meanings (and, in most context, actually opposite ones!). You don't need to be Shakespeare to understand that. You only need to either stop hating or, if you really cannot help it, at least stop projecting your prejudices onto the people you hate. Hate makes you blind.

It's sad to see otherwise intelligent people take stupid decisions because of such misunderstandings.

I for one, stand in solidarity with Richard Stallman and with the English language.

(please note that this is not an endorsement of everything Stallman might have said in the past; I don't follow him that closely, and it may be that he also happened to say terrible things in this very thread. I'm only commenting this very specific issue, and I know that in this very specific issue he's being wrongly accused)

Cammino quindi penso - 2018-11-10 - Di Maio, figuroni con l'inglese!

Alberto Mardegan — Sat, 10 Nov 2018 16:48:00 GMT

Prendo alcuni spezzoni dall'incontro di Luigi Di Maio con la stampa estera in cui - a mio parere - la lingua inglese l'ha fatta un po' troppo da padrone. Per sorridere un po'.

Un coincidentia curiose

Alberto Mardegan — Sun, 15 May 2016 10:03:00 GMT

Illes qui cognosce plus que un lingua ha probabilemente habite le occasion de comparar parolas de duo linguas differente, e de observar similaritates in le construction del parolas. Pro exemplo, si on considera le parola perdonar e su equivalente anglese to forgive, on observa que iste parolas es componite per duo partes, traducibile perfectemente:

Interlingua		Anglese
perdonar	=	forgive
=		=
per	=	for
+		+
donar	=	give

(iste exemplo es ancora plus interessante, perque on pote argumentar que le traduction de "per" esseva errate, viste que le "per" in "perdonar" esseva originarimente "iper") Iste phenomeno es appellate “calco morphologic” e es plus frequente de lo que on pote imaginar; ma non sempre illo es facile a recognoscer. Lo que me surprendeva, esseva trovar un situation simile anque inter le linguas romance e le russo, que es un lingua multo distante del linguas romance. Isto reguarda le parola coincider:

Interlingua		Russo
coincider	=	совпадать
=		=
co (con)	=	co (c)
+		+
in	=	в
+		+
cider (cader)	=	падать

Le etimologia del parola romance es con (insimul) + incider (evenir; vide "incidente"), e incider es in su turno componite per in + cader. Io non sape si isto es vermente un calco, o si le parola se formava independentemente in le duo gruppos linguistic romance e slavic; ma anque in le seconde caso, illo esserea un coincidentia amusante, nonne?