The Foreign Language That Changed My Teenage Son’s Life (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[-] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Paywall

[-] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

Archive link.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

I don’t speak that language.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

💰🪙💴💵💶💷💸💳

[+] [email protected] -6 points 4 months ago

Okay. What conversation do you expect to come from this one-word comment?

[-] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Okay, this may be your first day on the modern internet.

Congratulations, it is terrible.

You see, online articles are often put behind a "paywall", it is a way to force readers to pay to read the article, sounds resonable right?

Yeah, it is reasonable to pay someone for their work, however when posting a link to the article in a discussion forum, other readers are forced to pay to read the article, or can't participate in the discussion.

Posting a comment like "Paywall." is a common way to alert the OP that "Hey, we can't access the article, so please post a summary of the article in the comments."

I hope this clears you your confusion.

[-] [email protected] -5 points 4 months ago

That does not answer my question.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

This paragraph does answer it quite well:

Posting a comment like "Paywall." is a common way to alert the OP that "Hey, we can't access the article, so please post a summary of the article in the comments."

Since you are new to the modern web, I have a hint for you, it helps to read the entire post/comment before answering, that way you don't need to ask for information that was provided .

[-] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

[Speaking as a mod]

I'm aware of the issue of paywalls, and I'm going to address this. Hopefully in a way that appeases both sides, given that

some users have moral concerns against sharing archive links
your argument is valid regardless, those paywalls screw with discussion

For now: if you guys find convenient, tag me and I'll try my best to provide an archive link, like I did here.

I'd also ask both you and @[email protected] to scale down a wee bit on this discussion. What both of you are saying is fine, but the tone is getting abrasive.

[-] [email protected] -3 points 4 months ago

I am not new and your answer was inadequate. It is perfectly fine for me to want to talk about a book without giving you a free copy of the book: you can just move on and not talk about it if you are unwilling to buy it. I can talk about movies without buying you a ticket or a foreign place without buying you a plane ride. You are not owed a free copy of someone else's work and "paywall" is an entitled non-comment that does not add to discussion. If you can't even be bothered to use a complete sentence, you definitely do epitomize a certain approach on the modern web. You will have to deal with the fact that some things cost money.

[-] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

I never asked about a copy of the book or article, I asked about a summary.

Once again you are arguing against something I never did.

[-] [email protected] -2 points 4 months ago

If you want to post a top-level comment, you should read the article first. If you don't want to read the article, then you don't have to comment here. The goal of posting this article is to discuss this article, not what you made of someone else's summary of an article or general thoughts about the sorts of themes that could be present in an article you didn't read or whatever: that is not productive or useful conversation. If there's a thread on a topic where you don't know about the topic, you can choose to skip it. You also can read this article and claiming that you can't is just disingenuous. You don't want to pay what it costs, which is fine, but it's not like it's unreadable to you: you're choosing to not read it.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

If you want to have a discussion about a topic it is your responsibility to provide a quick summary of the topic in order to set expectations about the subject.

You failed to do so, I tried to read the article, got hit by a paywall and notified you about the issue in a common manner, others provided context and you decided to throw a hissy fit, derailing the original discussion.

I suggest including a summary of the article next time.

And if the goal of the post was to discuss the article then post the article without the paywall.

But eh, I see that you are a .ml user, so I guess I should expect this dumb response, however I will make no appology for remaining hopeful

[-] [email protected] -1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

If you want to have a discussion about a topic it is your responsibility to provide a quick summary of the topic in order to set expectations about the subject.

It is not.

you decided to throw a hissy fit

I did not.

post the article without the paywall

I will not.

appology

apology

[-] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Language is a great way to discover oneself. It is not just about interacting with different people, although this is on itself huge; it's also the mental freedom that it gives you, as it enables you to work around the difficulties that one language might impose.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

“Is there meat from horses?” he asked in Russian.

Nyet, the waiter replied.

“But is there horse’s meat?” Max went on. “Meat of horse?”

Nyet.

“What is this meat here?” Max indicated the dark oval.

“Konina,” the waiter answered. It was a word Max didn’t know, so he nodded, and then after the waiter left, borrowed my phone to look it up in Google Translate.

“Horse meat,” the phone reported.

I would love to know what was going on here, linguistically. Are they really not thinking of konina as being horse meat? Is it similar to beef vs cow, with a special word for the meat? That latter seems strange, because at least in English, if someone said "is there cow meat in this" and I had served them beef, I'd definitely say yes.

Anyway, thanks for sharing. That was a really beautiful story to read.

this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2025

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Linguistics

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