Re: Fast UTF-8 strlen function

T.M. Sommers wrote:
> Sevag Krikorian wrote:
> > T.M. Sommers wrote:
> >> English also has 3 genders, but that is nothing.
> >
> > That's not exactly the same. We have only one form of "the" and we
> > stick that on every noun. The man, the dog, the pencil. German has 3
> > forms: das, der, die. Which one you use depends on the 'gender' of the
> > object.
>
> English has lost most of its inflections, and the genders are
> mostly natural, but they are still there, and we still do things
> like call ships 'she'.

In fact, generally speaking, English is the "oddball" language here...it's
the one that's "odd" and "strange" in having given up "grammatical gender"
(the way I see it, English just doesn't really have "grammatical gender" at
all..."he", "she" and "it" are references to _actual_ gender in English
usage...and calling ships "she" is just a quaint "custom" / "tradition":
Men "personifying" their ship and choosing female gender because, naturally
enough, the heterosexual tendency would be to prefer feminine gender (so
that the ship is "endearing" to them)...this "custom" is sometimes
reversed, though, and some women call their car "he" or something
instead...this, to my mind, though, is a case of "personification", NOT
actual formal "grammatical gender"...for example, if you said "it" or even
"he" for a ship instead, then there is actually not the slightest thing
"wrong" grammatically with that: "the ship sailed into harbour and it was
battleship grey in colour"...this is perfectly correct...in fact,
grammatically, this _IS_ the correct form, really...it's an object, so "it"
is the grammatically correct usage...and saying "she sailed into port" is
really a "poetical" kind of usage, not a "grammar" thing...what might be
most surprising is that English doesn't deem either to really be "right" or
"wrong"...in other words, English has no "grammatical gender" anymore at
all...so, it does not deem either "wrong" because it has long since "given
up" giving the slightest crap about "grammatical gender"...there is, of
course, _actual gender_ to differentiate men from women from inanimate
objects ...and things can be poetically "personified" with a gender but
regards formal _grammatical_ gender: It's just not there...English has
basically abandoned that idea entirely..."he", "she" and "it" now solely
refer to actual gender alone...the "exceptions" are rather "poetical"
personifications...cultural customs...NOT actually any real "formal" part
of English grammar itself...indeed, perhaps rather sad, the "she" custom on
ships (which would include spaceships like the Space Shuttle too,
technically, as the "custom" is to treat these entirely by _naval_
conventions - even if sometimes, it seems more of an "air force" thing -
because the "ranks" usually follow naval ranks and they are called
"ships"...and, in the sci-fi world, this is taken even further: It's
"U.S.S. Enterprise" (this has always amused me because Star Trek is
supposed to have this "federation of planets" and Earth is, apparently, all
"united" and there are no "nations" like that anymore...so, why is it
"United States Spaceship"? I guess to "get around" this, the Trekkies will
claim that "U.S.S." here stands for something different to "U.S.S." on
American naval ships but I don't buy it...Gene Roddenbury just screwed up
there and wasn't thinking straight...also, they have "captains" and
"admirals"..."starboard" and "port" Buzzard
collectors...blah-blah-blah...all "metaphors" taken from the navy, not the
air force) and cars and trains and other vehicles is actually tending to
"die out"...increasingly, people say "it" on these things too, ignoring the
"custom" to "personify"...though, I don't think it's "political
correctness" to blame this time but rather too many "landlubbers" having no
idea of these customs and when it's not kept up, things "default" to
_grammatical gender_, which would be "it" rather than "she")...

Note though that English was Germanic but "lost it" over time...some words
reveal this: "were" is in the "subjunctive tone"...it's the only word that
remains from that (once, all verbs would have had their "subjunctive tone"
variants) but it's there...you say "I was"...but, when in a "condition", it
becomes "if I were"...another one to note is that in the older texts -
Shakespeare, the Bible, etc. - you can see some distinctly Germanic word
endings: "Thou art", "Thy Kingdom Come", "doth / doest", etc....so, they
were there originally but slowly "disappeared"...

Both English and German reverse "noun verb" to "verb noun" to form a
question: "I do" -> "Do I?"...older English texts, as forementioned, not
only show Germanic "word endings" here and there but also even
Germanic-like word order...indeed, a "trick" to make something "sound old"
and "Shakespearean" is to partially "write German using English
words"...alas, hath one somewhat the game revealed, by doing so! ;)

English is the "oddball" here, in fact...because it "gave up" this kind of
thing, where most languages still retain it...even English had such forms
and grammar originally...indeed, one likely reason for English losing such
things was that having multiple "source languages" (Germanic here, French
there, Vikings dragging other bits in over there, etc.), none of them ever
"agreed" on "grammatical gender"...hence, it couldn't be easily "resolved"
whether a word was "he" or "she" or "it"...indeed, in French, there is no
"it", only "he" and "she"...therefore, the natural enough "solution" that
ended up happening - because none of this was "by design" but "natural
evolution" - was simply to drop the "word endings" altogether...you know,
if they can't be "resolved" then the simplest solution is just to drop them
altogether...something that might have started with one or two words here
and there but, as it worked and made the whole thing much easier, it
eventually spread to the entire language...and, likely, as "gender" fell
off, so did different "word endings" for other things like "case"
too...ending up with what we have now, where English basically doesn't
bother with any such devices at all...

This "issue" is actually interesting in the programming context because
this is actually used all the time...you might not have noticed it...but,
well, think about the menus on your programs...you have "file" and "edit"
and "view"...now, is that "to file" (a verb) or "a file" (an object)...is
that "to edit" (a verb) or is it "an edit" (an object)? In English, it
could be either and it makes no difference...but with other languages, this
simple "convention" could very well cause "issues"...do we use the verb
form or the noun form for the menus? Here's another subtle one: In the edit
menu, we have "cut", "copy" and "paste"...right, if we assume these are
verbs because they are commands (well, it would naturally be "a cutting" or
"a pasting" in noun form, so it's probably the verbs we have here
:)...then, in other languages, verbs have word endings according to
"number", "person" and so forth...so, do we use "I cut", "you cut", "we
cut", "to cut" (the "infinitive")? There is really an argument that any of
these could actually make sense..."I cut" as in you're talking to
yourself..."you cut" in that you're ordering the machine to do it..."we
cut" as in it being a joint effort of human and machine...or - as, by the
way, is usually the case in these other languages - use the "infinitive"
version and avoid the isssue altogether...BUT, there is an argument that
the "infinitive" really "doesn't sound right"..."to cut" doesn't sound like
you're issuing a command, it sounds like a "distant" description of
something happening elsewhere...well, if you know what I mean...which also
brings up whether this should be in the imperative, as that's the usual
"order giving" tone of voice...

See? It's a minefield of grammatical confusions...you never notice this in
the English versions of things, though, because, of course, English simply
doesn't give a crap and the word is often absolutely no different as verb,
noun, imperative, case, person or anything like that...if you just put
"file" then it can "metaphorisize" into whatever makes sense...you can
think of it as "a file" and then it's a menu that relates to "the file"
which you are editing...or "to file" in that these are file-related verbs
or commands...or even "file!" in the imperative, that you're telling the
machine that it should "file" something for you...

> > I'm just wondering who decides the gender of new inventions?
>
> I think German tends to make words by forming compounds, unlike
> English,

Not totally unlike English...English _DOES_ have "compound nouns" and
"compound verbs" all over the place - just as much as German - but what it
does differently to German is that it does not physically put the parts of
the compound together...there is no "formal" stick-the-words-together
"visual clue" that this is going on, like German...

For instance, "Run up", "run down", "run out"...or "shut up", "shut down",
"shut in" or "shut out"...or "turn up", "turn out", "turn in", "turn
down"...and so forth...these are all "compound verbs" and the "up" / "down"
/ "in" / "out" stuff _DOES_ alter their meaning...in German, what would
usually happen is that it would be the other way around and the two are
stuck together: "outrun" (ausrennen), "inshut" (einschliessen) or
whatever...BUT, note that even in German, certain contexts forces the two
apart and, yes - you guessed it - it's effectively the same structure as
English ("run...out" or "rennen ... aus")...

Though, the German, as usual, is more complicated because of its continual
insistance on putting the most important word (the verb or the "out" / "in"
part of the compound, which provides the actual context :) right at the end
of the sentence somewhere...so, you've got to have a good memory with
German, as you listen to the whole sentence but only comprehend it when
that last word is uttered...it's almost like constantly listening to a
stand-up comedian: There's a long "tension" then - BANG! - along comes the
"punchline", where you finally "get" the joke...eventually...

What has happened is that English adopts the "separate words" structure
_always_ (at some point in the past, it probably didn't but this has
disappeared over time, just like word endings)...so, you say "run up", not
"uprun" or "runup"...because these are two separated words then a native
English speaker can _VERY EASILY_ not even notice that what they have is a
"compound verb" and the two words are intimately bound together..."turn" by
itself is a different set of semantics to "turn down" or "turn in" or "turn
up" (indeed, that last has more than one possible semantic: "turn up the
radio", "she turned up at the party" ;)...

Note that there _ARE_ also instances where English _DOES_ put the compound
together: "outrun"...and sometimes you can spot a "compound noun" by the
fact that these often start as two separate words, then become hyphenated
then become a true compound: "Space shuttle" -> "space-shuttle" ->
"spaceshuttle"..."Electronic mail" -> "Eletronic-mail" (or E-mail) ->
"Electronicmail" (Email)...though, granted, it's harder spotting "compound
nouns" in English because the distinction between just a simple "adjective
noun" and "compound noun" is a "fuzzy" thing at best ("a black hat" would
not really be a "compound", just a plain "adjective noun")...as noted,
though, if it becomes hyphenated then the hyphen drops off and the two bang
themselves together, then it _was_ a "compound noun" all along, in
fact...finally, people actually start to acknowledge that and the two
increasingly move together until they form a Germanic-style compound
noun...

Oh, in many ways, the "lineage" of English is glaringly obvious...it does
have all these same "compounds" as German does...BUT due to the simpler way
of writing it that does not actually visually or physically acknowledge the
relationship of the words in the "compound", it's really, really easily to
"overlook" that this is actually happening...

You know, a native English speaker doesn't notice at all that "turn down"
is changed semantically from "turn" and "down" separately (well, indeed,
that's why there are "two sense" to this: "turn down the radio" is actually
literal..."turn" and "down" retain their separate usual meanings...while
"she turned down his offer" is using the "compound" sense of refusal, not
actually literally grabbing his offer and rotating it to point
downwards...but with the dial on the radio, that _IS_ truly what it means
;)...

BUT, trust me, the non-native English speaker _certainly_ notices these
"compound verbs" and "compound nouns" when learning because they are, in
fact, very much like "idiomatic speech", in that they don't always
literally mean what the separate words would suggest they do...you would
notice these things as a non-native English speaker because it'll likely
cause confusions from time to time :)...

Also, German "compounds" can become increasingly silly because, you know,
the process can be applied "iteratively"...so, a "compound" itself can be
compounded with another compound...and, hey presto, we get those absurdly
long German words: "Unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen" (but once you recognise
the "bits" involved, mentally separate them and it's actually not difficult
at all: "unabhaengigkeits erklaerungen"..."un-ab-haeng-ig-keits
er-klaer-ungen"...and note that English's infamous "long words" are
_EXACTLY THE SAME FORMULATION_:
"antidisestablishmentarianism"..."anti-dis-establish-ment-arian-ism"...and
the same process to unravel its meaning :)...

It's a "deep irony"...many native English speakers complain about the
"complexity" of German and how everyone should speak English because it's
"so simple"...yet, the closest language out there to English? German...and
that's because English very much retains an awful lot of its original
Germanic "connections"...

English is only "simple" in the sense that those "word endings" vanished
and various "cases" and "tones of voices" disappeared too...so, there's
less "stuff to learn"...BUT, on the other hand, that's a double edged
sword...because, in its place, English relies on an awful lot more "work it
out by context"...and when it comes to "phonetics"? Oh, don't even go
there...I think it's probably safe to say that English is the _LEAST_
phonetic language on the face of planet Earth...

And, technically, ideographic language has been demonstrated as being far
more efficient...the "one symbol per word" methodology has been put to the
scientific test and it does produce faster reading...the brain can "skip"
one of the extra processes it needs to do for alphabetical languages (that
of putting letters together into "words")...the major "drawback" of
ideography, of course, is the fact that you have to learn every ideograph
separately one-by-one as you encounter them (no real means to "work it
out")...and, as there are so many, then the differences between
ideographs - which can have completely different semantics - become harder
to see, to an "untrained eye"...BUT, once a person comprehends the
ideographs, science has demonstrated that it's the more efficient method...

Hence, your case for English as the "one language" is tenuous...Mandarin
Chinese is spoken by the majority of people on Earth...it employs an
"efficient" ideographic system...China - delayed until now - is embracing
industrialisation and Capitalism (at least, Capitalist dealings _OUTSIDE_
China...still politically Communist but have decided that the "market" is
different and that _does_ work better "Capitalist"...well, they don't want
to repeat the Soviets' mistakes, yes? ;)...if this continues as expected,
soon, China will become a worthy "superpower" and one that does have the
"potential", at least, to "eclipse" all the others...if that potential is
met, then the "balance" in this world may very well change, that one should
not get too used to the idea that things remain the same forever...trust
me, they don't...us Brits used to "own" a large chunk of the entire
world...where are we now? Things _CAN_ change in the blink of an eye (at
least, in relative terms to the eyes of "all of history", it's just a blink
of an eye)...they do have a third of all the human beings that exist in
that country and they are still internally Communist that, you know, if the
government wants you to do something, then you're effectively "slave
labour" to them...and then they sell it all to us rest of the world in a
fully "anything goes" Capitalist manner..._IF_ that "potential" there was
fully exploited, the simple truth is that none of us could really
"compete"...

As one website I read puts it: "When the Sun sets over the Pacific region,
the most spoken language in the world is English but when it sets over the
Atlantic region, the most spoken language is Mandarin"...they both - when
native and non-native are combined - break the one billion barrier and, in
a sense, it's NOT "clear cut" English but a "battle" that one of these two
will "win" (either that or the status quo of "Babel" remains)...

> and there are rules for fixing the gender of a compound
> (if I remember high-school German correctly, the compound takes
> the gender of the last part). There are also rules for when you
> add endings such as '-chen' (which explains why girls are
> neuter). As for other kinds of new words, I don't know, although
> Germans being German, I expect there are rules there, too.

Oh, yeah...you betcha...

An example of Germans and their "rules" and "efficiency": In July 1996, all
the German-speaking nations signed a declaration to change the spellings of
words (most of the changes are to de-compound some rather long words and to
work their way towards obliterating the special "double s" character -
looks like a squiggly "B", sort of - by officially making words with it
have "ss" rather than that character)...effective from that date...

The notion of such a thing happening with English is absurd and
out-of-the-question, really...to suddenly declare broad changes to a
language, effective from a set date and that people would actually abide by
this...if you tried that in America, Britain, Australia, the Phillipines
and so forth, then it would fall on deaf ears, no-one would pay the
slightest bit of attention and, indeed, the entire notion would be laughed
at and "screw you!" the response...but, well, to the Germans, "authority"
carries weight...generally, if you stick up a "sign" or "make a
declaration", people actually abide by it..."rules" are usually thoroughly
respected, "authority" always listened to and so forth...it would be
"inefficient" to do otherwise, you see...

That, indeed, is certainly where the German- and English-based cultures see
a wide "gap"...the typical American / British / Aussie response to most
such things is a resounding "piss off and mind your own business!"...or
"who the frack do you think you are telling me what to do?"...and that kind
of thing...and perhaps even more so in Britain than America...and even more
so in Oz than Britain (the Aussies _DELIGHT_ in their abuse of language and
each other! Bonza! ;)...

Of course, I make no "bias" here...German-like "efficiency" and
English-like "no respect for authority" both have their good and bad points
at different times...

> >> Kivunjo, a Bantu language, has 16.
> >
> > Nutty.
>
> 'Things that are nutty' may well be one of those genders.

16?!? Then, in a sense, it's certainly _grammatical gender_, not actual
gender...in a sense, it's perhaps a bit deceptive to use the same word
"gender" for both, because - as you can tell from a concept like "16
genders" - grammatical gender can have absolutely NOTHING to do with actual
gender...such cases seem to suggest it might make more sense to call it
something else, as the "connection" to "actual gender" is tenuous at
best...I suppose that's the one good aspect of English in that it's
effectively dropped "grammatical gender" and it's all just actual gender,
really...you say "he" when it's male, "she" when it's female and "it" for
everything else...all very simple...

Beth :)


.

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