The French and the Chinese

Okay I just found out that French has this weird pronunciation rule for making the "ent" suffix in verbs (and only verbs) silent, and it seems different languages have different prerogatives. Here's what it looks like in my knowledge, how different language express combinations of gender and plurality for the third person.

 

English differentiates between male and female when singular, but not when plural. The plural is just its own pronoun with its own subject-verb agreement rules.

Male Singular : He eats rice

Female Singular : She eats rice

Male Plural  : They eat rice

Female Plural  :They eat rice

To refer to a person in the singular, you are forced to reveal the gender. And in contrast, when referring to persons in the plural, you are forced to hide the group's gender. 

Japanese differentiates between male and female when both singular and plural, but when in the plural the is the option of not differentiating.There are no subject-verb agreement rules in Japanese.

Male Singular : 彼はご飯を食べる

Female Singular : 彼女はご飯を食べる

Male Plural  : 彼らはご飯を食べる

Female Plural  :彼らはご飯を食べる or 彼女らはご飯を食べる

While the pronoun forces you to reveal the third person's gender in the singular, one has the option of using the cultural convention of using the non-gendered honorary suffix "-san" with the surname. When referring to persons in the plural form, one has the option of revealing the group's gender only when it is female since the male plural is the default.

Chinese differentiates between male and female when both singular and plural, but when in the plural the is the option of not differentiating (same as Japanese), except that when spoken, the male and female pronouns sound exactly the same. There are no subject-verb agreement rules in Japanese.

Male Singular : 他吃饭

Female Singular : 她吃饭 (pronounced the same as 他吃饭)

Male Plural  : 他们吃米饭

Female Plural  :他们吃米饭 or 她们吃米饭 (pronounced the same as 他们吃米饭)

In speech you can only differentiate between plurality, not gender - you are forced to hide the party's gender whether singular or plural.

Hebrew differentiates between male and female in the singular and plural, both when spoken and written. Subject verb agreement rules apply for each of the four combinations.

    הוא אוכ  אורז Male Singular

היא אוכלת אורז Female Singular

הם אוכלים אורז Male Plural

הן אוכלת אריז Female Plural

Basically you're forced to reveal both gender and plurality all the time.


French Same as Hebrew, except that when spoken, the singular and plural pronouns and verb conjugations sound exactly the same. Subject verb agreement rules apply for each of the four combinations.

Male Singular : Il mange du riz

Female Singular : Elle mange du riz

Male Plural  : Ils mangent du riz (pronounced the same as Il mange du riz)

Female Plural  :Elles mangent du riz (pronounced the same as Elle mange du riz)

 

In speech you can only differentiate between gender, not plurality, so you are forced to reveal the gender of the party both when singular and plural, but you are forced to hide the number of persons you are referring to!

 

So, when you want to hide a person's gender, speak Chinese. When you want to hide your party's number, speak French!

 

Question: Do you know a language that allows you to hide both gender and plurality?

怪我する時考える事

①どんなトレーニングをしとけば今回の怪我が避けられたのか。

②早く治したいから休もう。

③無理しない範囲で今の体でどんな動きができるのか。

How to fix systems in 5 steps

How to fix systems in 5 steps

If it happens to one person all the time, fix the user

If it happens to some people some of the time, fix the engineering

If it happens to some people all the time, fix the requirements

If it happens to everybody some of the time, fix the management

If it happens to everybody all the time, fix the corruption

一二回あった人の顔次会う時誰なのかわかるのが普通かな？何回もあってないと会ったことあるかどうかすら分からない。軽度の相貌失認かも？

いつも待ち合わせで相手の顔分からないのが心配で、目が合う時にホットする。仕事も名刺交換すべきか以前あったことがあるお客さんか分からず、曖昧な話の流れでごまかしている。以前あったよねと言われる時正直ピンと来ないけど、はい、はい、で笑って流す。

人の真ん中にいたい気持ちがあるのに、これは難題だ、、、髪型ひとつ変えることで誰なのか分からなくなる時もあるし、名前覚えるのが苦手以前に顔が苦手だな

Most UI metaphors are nowadays derived from actions we find physically familiar. But think about the mouse - we can click just about anything in a computer, but we pretty much click nothing else in the physical world - the click is a metaphor unto itself!

What if when you tap on the screen and (yes actually) make the sound "bing" to nudge something to the left it's called binging, and when you do that with the sound "bong" to nudge right it's called bonging, and if you tap and say bing-bong to select it it'scalled bing-bonging? I find "tap and hold" anti-intuitive; what if you bing-bong instead of doing that tap and hold that can accidentally deleted apps from the phone?

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results isn't stupidity; it's passion. Doing the same thing and expecting the same results in a changing world is more difficult than you think!

What if the most important question in AI is not whether AI can replace the creation of value in society (ie jobs), but whether an economy can be built around value created AND consumed by AI? If so, can the human state live off taxes paid by AI? Or will the rich and powerful finally conclude that only use of the poor is functioning as a gene farm?

みんなと同じ空気を吸っていたいけど、焦ったりもするけど、できるのはこの体この感性で作る自分のパルクールしかありません。

What would happen if climate change went into the extreme and all human life is wiped out from the planet? Would all life on earth go "oh ok" and simply move on, or would there be some kind of imbalance in the system?

Love n. The state of dependence on somebody or something when one's identity or perception of reality is modified to depend criticality on that person or thing.

Almost like a glove

I rather like this feeling
Of my weight gently stacked
Over my feet, spread from
The heels to the balls, and to
The toes; I can feel
Every inch of ground
Touching the skin of my feet
Pushing back at me, in a conversation
Between my being and the ground for now I occupy.

My head balanced on my neck,
Over my shoulders sitting
On my chest like a bird perched on a branch, my arms swaying like aerial roots
Effortlessly hanging from a tree;
I rather like this feeling of ease
When I gently rock myself
Between my toes and my heels;
I like the way the knees and the ankles so slightly bend and straighten
While the upper and lower body muscles tighten and relax in continuous dialog; I like the feeling
Breathing into a body
In touch with itself,
Wearing a skin that fits
Almost like a glove.

In one moment, there is no place I'd rather more be
Than inside the reality of my physical being, my most intimate companion till death,
Now embracing me
Painless, and breathing free.

In programming, colons are used like commas, semi-colons are used like periods, periods are used like hyphens, and parenthesis do not contain comments. But the great thing is that there is no such thing as an Oxford comma - it's rather the "and" that is redundant!

Trust is taking a calculated risk, faith is taking an unquantifiable risk, danger is deciding to ignore known risks. 

What if consumer tax for luxury goods were income-adjusted?

What if Uber were a legal requirement - that all car owners must offer at least one ride a month?

パルクールってストリートアートみたいなもんだ。その街のそこらへんでできたものは、そこにあるから素敵。値段をつけた売れるバスキアもあるけど、街をもっと豊かにしてくれるカルチャーは、それ以上の財産だ。

Religious people are living crap. Non religious people are living crap. Everybody is a precious piece of living crap, a bag of potential awesome until we become dead crap.

Every time you walk into a world you've never experienced, struggle with difficulties you've never imagined, and get excited over something that used to seem ordinary, you become young again.

Maybe if we stop treating AI as a slave but rather as a mirror, there is an end game where we become more relevant than ever. 

The truth behind the lies is never a simple negation of falsehoods.