Re: should we ship iceweasel (firefox) on the first cd?
On Mon, 2007-03-05 at 01:50 +1300, Chris Bannister wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 02, 2007 at 08:31:31PM +0100, cobaco (aka Bart Cornelis) wrote:
> > No i'm not it's the exact same problem of paying more then something is
> ^^^^
> > worth in order to get a simple brand name.
>
> Sorry to be picky, but "then" should be than. I have noticed this
> before, is it due to the difficulty of the English language.
>
> I am interested in how this error in translation could occur.
> And this is an education list :-)
I think that, sadly, it is quite natural to aquire both slang
_and_ typos from a foreign language.
To my great dismay I have noticed that I more and more frequently
confuse then/than they're/there in my writing. I can't see why,
since they are not qwerty-related mistypings, and their Norwegian
translations are not confusable at all.
The most reasonable explanation I can come up with is
"contamination": Two similar words, either in spelling
or pronounciation 'collide' in our brain. They hash to
the same value, so to speak, and can be swapped without
getting noticed.
Contamination is unlikely if you transliterate while
you think. But it happens quite easily if you actually
think in English.
--
Herman Robak
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