Re: should we ship iceweasel (firefox) on the first cd?
søndag 4. mars 2007, 15:11, skrev Herman Robak:
> 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
I frequently watch The National Geographic Channel, and not so long ago they
used to run a short video sequence (in the commercial context) saying
something along the line of: (from memory)
"Rsenet sduites of the hmaun brinas way to porecss wirtten txet sohws taht it
deos not matetr waht odrer the letetrs in a wrod is put, as lnog as the
nmuber of cahratecrs is crorect and the frist and the lsat lteter is pclaed
crorectly. Tihs is beuacse the hmaun barin raeds wrods as a wohle and not the
idnuviidal cactharers of ecah wrod.
Tnhik agian!"
I kind of like that anecdote ...
:)
Gjermund Skogstad
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