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October 4

Leiten vs. führen

Can a native German speaker clarify what, if anything, is the difference between these two verbs, or their noun forms? Could it be that as a noun, Führer has some negative connotations compared to Leiter? If I'm leading a discussion group, what noun would you recommend?

Danke! --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 03:26, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not a native speaker, but I am a fluent speaker. Führer only has negative connotations because that's what Hitler called himself, but the word is still used in some contexts. For example, a driver's license is called Führerschein. Still, I would use Leiter or Moderator for someone leading a discussion group. Angr (talk) 05:42, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Leiten is cognate with lead, I think. It has many of the same connotations. Leitung can also mean pipe. As far as differences in nuances go, as a native speaker I'd like to point out that Führer, for the reasons Angr gave quite correctly, is both negatively connoted as something to do with Hitler and driver (of car or person). I would put it with the stick in the saying about carrot and stick, while leader is somewhat more of a carrot word. Unless you are not participating in the discussion I would not use moderator though. --Abracus (talk) 07:35, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The lead section of the article Führer explains it quite well. Using the noun you would say "Ich bin Leiter einer Diskussionsrunde". The stigma of the noun "Führer" is hardly present in the verb. So you can say "Ich führe eine Diskussionsrunde" or "Ich leite eine Diskussionsrunde". Also possible: "Ich leite einen Gesprächskreis". If your discussion group is online you might say "Ich bin Moderator eines Diskussionsforums". --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 09:40, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Man, I love this place -- post a query before bedtime, wake up next morning to three good answers!

Thanks, all. --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 13:43, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Führer also has no negative connotations in compounds like Geschäftsführer (executive manager of a company). Angr (talk) 18:35, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

...or if used in the meaning of guide (e.g. Fremdenführer). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:21, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How do you pronounce "th" in Indian names?

How do you pronounce "th" in Indian (personal) names? Do you pronounce it like /θ/, /t/, or /ð/ in English? Or something else? Thanks. --72.94.148.76 (talk) 12:13, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Say "cat house" quickly, so they run together to "cathouse". The "th" in Indian names is pronounced like the "th" in "cathouse". -- Q Chris (talk) 12:16, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it is an aspirated 't'. Try putting a piece of paper (about the size of a credit card) in front of your mouth and saying 't'. The paper will move a bit. Then say 't' again, but with a bit more breathing. It will move more. This will get you close to the Indian (I assume Hindi here) 'th'. Also, move your tongue a bit closer to your front teeth, as this sound is a dental aspirate. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 12:37, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, the pronunciation is not the same as cat house in most varieties of American or British English, because in these varieties, a final /t/ is realized as a glottal stop or unreleased stop. The pronunciation of /th/ in Indian languages is actually much closer to the /t/ in English tip, since, in most varieties of English, initial /t/ is (lightly) aspirated. Compare the /t/ in English stop, which is not aspirated. Indian /th/ is usually a bit more heavily aspirated than initial /t/ in English. Marco polo (talk) 14:30, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So maybe "lighthouse" could do as a rough English equivalent? The /t/ is no longer a final /t/ in this example (I think not just orthographically). At WP:IPA for Hindi and Urdu, "art-historian" is listed as an approximate analogue. --Theurgist (talk) 15:17, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think those examples are closer approximations than cat house, but how close depends on your variety of English. Oddly enough, I think that for some speakers of American English, the /t/ /h/ combination in art historian actually gets you fairly close to the pronunciation of the aspirated voiceless retroflex plosive, or /ṭh/. Marco polo (talk) 17:55, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It also depends on which Indian language the name comes from. In the Indo-Aryan languages, th usually represents either /t̪ʰ/ or /ʈʰ/ (Devanagari थ or ठ), but the Dravidian languages don't have aspirated stops, and there th is sometimes used to represent /t̪/ to distinguish it from /ʈ/. For example, I knew a Tamil woman who spelled her name Vaijayanthi; the same name would be spelled Vaijayanti in northern India. Angr (talk) 20:33, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have worked with several Indians who had a "th" in the middle of their name. To my ears it did indeed sound like "t-h". Yet they told me I was saying it wrong. I pronounced it like a soft "th", and I said it didn't sound like how they say it, yet they said that was closer to being right, to their ears. Go figure. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:42, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Marco polo is 100% correct. Simply pronounce it like a fully articulated initial /t/ in English. English (and Deutscher) initial /t/ is aspirated, if not strongly so. If you speak Spanish or French fluently, the difference between Indian "t" and "th" is the same as that between initial Spanish/French "t" and the English initial "t". The second has as much stronger subsequent puff of air. μηδείς (talk) 05:36, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, who should I believe - you, or my Indian colleagues? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:22, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As Angr pointed out, non-scientific transcriptions of South Indian languages, that do not have aspirated consonants, commonly use th for the dental /t̪/ (this holds true at least for Tamil, Malayalam and Sinhala, it does not seem to be common in Telugu and Kannada). In fact, this is quite helpful, since it makes it possible to distinguish dental /t̪/ and retroflex /ʈ/ (a distinction that is way more important in Dravidian than in most Indo-Aryan languages). And it's a perfectly logical choice, since English th /θ/ will be realized as [t̪] by speakers of those languages. At least in Tamil, th may also be used for the voiced allophone, which intervocalically approximates to [ð]. --BishkekRocks (talk) 10:45, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

More German synonyms

The question above made me think of another one. Can someone explain the difference between jetzt and nun for "now", and between derzeit and zur Zeit for "at present". Many thanks, --Viennese Waltz 13:48, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

jetzt and nun are synonyms, derzeit and zur Zeit (spelled zurzeit in the German orthography reform of 1996) are synonymous in their common meaning "at present", whereas "zur Zeit" followed by a genitive means "at the time of" ("zur Zeit König Arthurs" translates as "at the time of king Arthur"). --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 15:31, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wiener Walzer, I'm assuming you're aware of the usage of "nun" as an interjection, which is very rarely done quite the same way with "jetzt". There are subtle differences in usage which is why I wouldn't say they're completely synonymous, even if they both can often be translated with "now" in English. Since I'm lazy and also too chicken to phrase an authoritative answer, I'll refer you to Bruce C. Donaldson:

"The word for 'now' in the sense of 'at this very moment' is jetzt, e.g. Was machen wir jetzt? 'What are we going to do (right) now?'. Nun renders both a not so immediate 'now' as well as a non-temporal 'now, i.e. the exclamation similar in meaning to 'well', e.g. Nun, was machen wir jetzt? 'Now/well, what are we going to do now?', Was machen wir nun? 'What'll we do now?', Was nun?' 'What now?', A: Warum hat er das getan? B: Es gibt nun verschiedene Gründe dafür 'A:Why did he do that? B: Now, there are various reasons for it'."

Mastering German Vocabulary: A Practical Guide to Troublesome Words, page 100, Routledge, 2004, ISBN 9780415261142. ---Sluzzelin talk 02:40, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting that they are closer than yet and now or еще and ныне. μηδείς (talk) 05:26, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Derzeit" and "zurzeit" are both contractions of "zu der/dieser Zeit" (at the/that time), "nun" (cognate of "now") dates from Indoeuropean times, whereas "jetzt" is a German invention of the 12th century. Near synonyms in a language often result from regional variants or from replacing an old word by a new one. I cannot determine which is the case for "jetzt" and "nun", only tell that in my dialect belonging to West Central German "jetzt" is used exclusively and "nun" is understood, but not used. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 08:07, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Spanish Audio for learning

So, I have an internship and I drive about 45 minutes each way one day a week. And in the summer, it will be 5 days a week. I'm trying to find a good way to use this time. One thought I had is I could learn some Spanish. Do any of you have any good recommendations for Spanish CDs I could play in my car and learn Spanish, ones that come at a reasonable price. I have more than 100 hours of car time in all this, so I could learn quite a bit with good CDs. Thanks. StatisticsMan (talk) 14:01, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there is this website which contains courses for many languages (including Spanish). They were developed by the US Foreign Service and are in the public domain. The problems with these are they are a bit long in the tooth and you would have to burn the audio tracks to CD to play in the car. The big advantage is, it's free.

One very highly regarded language course is Rosetta Stone (software) but I think these are only audiovisual so not suitable for the car. --Viennese Waltz 14:27, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

From the link you gave, I found the Spanish Basic Course seems to have some audio that helps you learn, but it has no English to tell you what the words mean. I'm guessing you're looking at the English in a book while listening to this. So, this might be a helpful tool and I might use it some, but it's not exactly what I'm looking for. Thanks. StatisticsMan (talk) 16:20, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

True. but most language teaching is conducted 100% in the language you are learning. Go to a Spanish class in a language school, for example, and you won't hear a single word spoken in English. On that FSI thing there are manuals you can download which you can maybe read when you're at home. --Viennese Waltz 16:50, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The difference is I'm with someone, I see their expressions, I see what they're pointing at, I have all of my sense. If all I have is audio, it must have English and Spanish or all I'm learning is how to pronounce words that have no meaning. StatisticsMan (talk) 16:53, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would just add the caution that, in my experience, listening to audio recordings doesn't work well when dealing with rush-hour traffic. I've found that I miss a lot because I have to spend a lot of my time paying attention to the hazards around me. Then again, my experience is driving in the Boston metro area, where traffic is more intense than most places, and if your drive is on open rural highway, you may be just fine. Marco polo (talk) 17:59, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Switching between English and Malay(?)

I've noticed that some people, presumably from south-east Asia, tend to write in English by randomly switching to an Asian language (presumably Malay), sometimes in the middle of a sentence. See for example this blog. Why do they do this? Is it completely random or are there some rules to it? Do they even notice it or think that they are writing perfectly grammatical English all the time? JIP | Talk 17:59, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's called code-switching, and is by no means peculiar to any particular region. --Orange Mike | Talk 18:13, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have only noticed it in this magnitude with Malay speakers. I have seen many Finns try to write English sentences with Finnish grammar rules, but they don't write English like I would write my original question as:

I've noticed that jotkut ihmiset, varmaankin from south-east Asia, tend to write englanniksi sattumanvaraisesti vaihtaen to an Asian language (presumably Malay), sometimes in the middle of lausetta. Katso for example this blog. Why do they tekevät tätä? Onko se completely random or are there jotain sääntöjä to it? Do they even huomaa sitä vai think that they are kirjoittavat täydellistä grammatical English all the time?

which is what this language mixture looks to me. JIP | Talk 18:34, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Pardon my ignorance, but where exactly on the blog is the switch to Asian? I looked at it and it seemed to be (imperfect) English all the way. Inter change able|talk to me 18:42, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have found it in many places, but still the majority of the text seems to be in English. Take a look at this excerpt, for instance:

I even restraint myself from watching even 1 episode of Nora Elena, not even a trailer, despite having had to hear, read, breathe how romantika di tampoi, how handsome, adorable, considerate and all those so called perfect husband to be Seth Tan is, practically everywhere. My sister can't stop talkingg about Seth and so did my friends at office. Seth practically wins every woman's heart, no matter which age group they belongs to. Bukan kekwat taknak follow okay. I have this things with series drama. I am loyal viewers, too loyal most of the time to the point of addictive. Once they got into me, into my mind, it will took over my life there's no stopping to it until the final episode. I will even skip my meal, even change my sleeping pattern if have to kah kah kah. JIP | Talk 18:48, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I can't answer your question, but my guess is that it's just bilingualism. For example, euskaldun zaharra people —those who speak Basque as a mother tongue, since most of today's Basque speakers are euskaldun berri, or those who learned the language as adults— speak their native Basque with Spanish words now and then. I've heard two people speaking like this: "- En fin, [Basque words], ¿sabes?. -Ah, vale. [Basque words again]. -Bai, bai. (these are the only two Basque words I understood) [More Basque]". Also, Basque speakers in sixteenth-seventeenth century Spanish literature were mocked by the way they tried to speak Spanish —using Spanish words with Basque grammar was a very funny but unintelligible mess. --Belchman (talk) 19:40, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

One of the languages might not have an exact equivalent of a concept in the other. Asian languages have this problem more often than European languages when it comes to English. Closely related cultures will have similar vocabularies. Finnish, for example, probably has native words for apple, cheese, sheep, fur hat, castle, tundra, etc. But does it have equivalents of rambutan, nasi lemak, haloan, songkok, chaitya, bakawan, etc.? Neither does English, not completely accurate or familiar ones, anyway.
Jokes simply cease to be funny if translated. Some jokes actually become funnier if rendered in code-switching (often with deliberately mispronounced or exaggerated English).
A sentence, when rendered in either of the languages, is easier/quicker/politer/clearer/etc. English has a far more standardized vocabulary in comparison to other languages. In our country, English is the language used in virtually everything - from legal documents to teaching to road signs. Everything but everyday conversation.
How well you speak English is viewed as a mark of education/affluence. Hence it's more 'fashionable', especially in younger generations. This is usually ridiculed. In our country, at least, we have a term for them - coño. Comparable to, say... an American woman who adopts a French accent to sound more 'chic'.
And no. Like Orange Mike said, it's the same as code-switching in any other languages. It only looks more alien to you because Southeast Asian languages have fundamentally different grammatical structures, vocabulary, etc. And of course we know when we do it. That blog is aimed specifically at people who speak her native language, not English-speakers. -- Obsidi♠n Soul 20:30, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Basically what Obsidian Soul said. Further, I can't speak either Malay or Hokkien at all by itself, but use phrases from both in my spoken English quite often; it's just that some phrases don't have an exact equivalent (or at least, a word which has the same history or connotations). When speaking like that, it's only for an audience with a shared cultural background, and is richer for them (and a bit baffling to everyone else, which may well be the idea!) sonia♫ 20:54, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, Finnish doesn't have a native word for tundra. Although Finland is quite far north, most of the country has warm summers and vegetation that lasts all year round (except that the trees don't have leaves in the winter). I have only seen treeless areas in Finland when going right up to the extreme northern Lapland, which is pretty much right opposite where I live. We call tundra "tundra". But as for the other words, you're right: the corresponding words are omena, juusto, lammas, turkislakki and linna. As for the Asian words you mentioned, the only one that has a native Finnish equivalent is haloan, which is raitakäärmeenpää, meaning "striped serpent's head". I think this is only some invented name or a translation of a foreign name, it is extremely unlikely that someone would have encountered the fish in Finland natively. JIP | Talk 18:38, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Strangely enough, Filipino languages used to code-switch between Spanish and our own native Malay languages. It became so integrated that Spanish words have now become part of the languages and their native equivalents long forgotten. They're spelled differently and follow Filipino grammatical rules that Spanish speakers probably wouldn't recognize them, but they're Spanish in origin. I'm guessing it's the same case with Dutch, English, Chinese, and French in our neighboring Southeast Asian countries. -- Obsidi♠n Soul 22:05, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, I code-switch with my brother (who is bilingual as well), between English and Korean. We do it because we know we will be understood, and because one term (in one language) might be the better choice and have just the right nuances. There are some restrictions, which might be different from language pair to language pair, but in English-Korean, it's more of a syntax thing, rather than a morphology thing. An English-Spanish example would be I ate green tamales and I ate tamales verdes but not *I ate tamales green or *I ate verdes tamales. When we do code-switch we're fully aware that we're doing it. --Kjoonlee 04:56, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The worst is on the NYC subways. I was once tempted to scream "Just pick an effing code, would you" at some English-Spanish bi's. I was getting a headache. Held my tongue, though. μηδείς (talk) 05:20, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, it really is not specific to Malay or Asia. Conan Doyle, in his Sherlock Holmes series, used to quote Holmes using a phrase of 3 or 4 words (or even a whole sentence) of French or German in the middle of a paragraph in English. Holmes would do that whenever he thought that the concept or idea would be better expressed in that language. When your audience can undertand both languages, it is simply a question of using the phrase from the language that you find most expressive for that particular idea or concept. --Lgriot (talk) 08:05, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Holmes was doing something quite usual for a University-educated Englishman: quoting a phrase from a standard author in the original language. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:09, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I code switch all the time, it just feels natural to say some things in Czech because they were never or seldom a part of my life in England.. for example I started orienteering while in ČR and I wouldn't even know the used English words for say "vyvrat" or "krmelec". Or just because I prefer the Czech word linguistically. - filelake shoe 11:23, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Technical vocabularies often do that: it's amusing to see African-American or Hmong Milwaukeeans playing sheepshead and using terms like mauer, schmear and schneider without blinking, because in the old days nobody ever bothered to code-switch when teaching that game to their non-German friends. --Orange Mike | Talk 15:13, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cooks and musicians also use a lot of French and Italian words, without necessarily knowing the first thing about those languages. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 16:49, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My Indian colleagues, when talking in their native tongue, typically throw in English words, but they're nearly all nouns. The verbs are in their native language. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:44, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We include verbs. And it can become quite unrecognizable because in addition to prefixes and suffixes, we have infixes and reduplication.

The English verb "dance" can become nagdance (danced), magdance (will dance), dinance/idinance (to be taken dancing), idance (to dance [with]), dumadancing/nagdadance/dumadance (in the process of dancing), pagdance (the method of dancing, while dancing), magdadancing (will be going dancing), dance-dance (doing dance-like gestures, mock-dancing), nakadance (have danced), ka-dance (dance partner), etc.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 01:49, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That doesn't sound like codeswitching anymore, that sounds like a straightforward loanword. Angr (talk) 06:25, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nope it's intra-word switching. It's certainly nonstandard as we have a perfectly acceptable native word for "dance" - sayaw. And it can be applied to almost any verb in English on the fly. It just looks uncommonly integrated because what would be separate words in English (have, was, will, etc.) are not separate in our languages. Most of the loanwords we have are nouns. e.g. airplane, truck, jeep, etc. -- Obsidi♠n Soul 20:05, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, they still looks a lot like intra-word loanwords to me. --Kjoonlee 03:28, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No, even code-switching has grammatical rules. Loanwords are primarily for exotic words that do not have equivalents in native languages (e.g. English hors d'oeuvre, Japanese sumātofon).

These, however, are certainly not exotic words. See Taglish for an example in Tagalog and English. The article's quite badly written, but I can vouch it's accurate. The problem with code-switching with unchanged English verbs that preserve their tenses is that the grammar is wrong. For example, the following example is wrong code-switching, and will get you laughed at if you say them:

English: I'm going to the mall to go shopping later. Have you talked yet? I haven't called him/her. I was talking to him/her and then he/she said he/she allegedly called my neighbor.

Wrong code-switching: Pupunta ako sa mall para shop later. Have talked na ba kayo? Hindi ko siya called. I was talking to him sa phone, and then sabi niya called niya daw neighbor ko.

To a native Filipino speaker, it's like hearing an English speaker saying the following:

What is sounds like: I will go to the mall for shop later. Have talked you yet? I did not him called. I was talking to him on the phone, and then he said called he allegedly my neighbor.

It's disjointed. The tenses don't agree. While it may work in Chinese-English code-switching (since Chinese does not have tenses in their words), it does not for our languages. The correct code-switching sentences for the previous would have been:

Correct code-switching: Pupunta ako sa mall para mag-shop later. Nag-talk na ba kayo? Hindi ko siya cinall. I was talking to him sa phone, and then sabi niya cinall niya daw neighbor ko.

Note that it can be perfectly expressed using only native words, which makes them useless if they were loanwords. While 'mall' is a loanword, the rest can be said in Tagalog as the following:

In Tagalog with 'true' loanwords: Pupunta ako sa mall para mamili mamaya. Nag-usap na ba kayo? Hindi ko siya tinawagan. Nag-usap na kami sa telepono, at sabi niya tinawagan niya daw kapitbahay ko.

-- Obsidi♠n Soul 06:03, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's where our differences are. Loanwords don't have to be exotic at all in English or Korean. Must they be exotic in Malay/Filipino? Also, Korean has lots of loanwords that coexist with Korean counterparts. --Kjoonlee 07:35, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As I don't speak Korean nor Malay languages from outside the country, I can't really say for sure. But to a degree, yes. We define loanwords as words which are foreign in origin but have intrinsically become part of the language, usually because they do not have native equivalents (i.e. exotic) and have a long history of usage. There are a lot, as mentioned above - truck, T-shirt, bus, airplane, cellphone, jet, TV, drive, etc. from English; bapor (large [propeller-driven] boat), sapatos (shoes), bentana (window), baka (cow), karnero (sheep), benta (to sell), limos (to beg), intindi (to understand) etc. from Spanish. Words which are understandable even to people here who can not speak conversational English or Spanish. They are, for all intents and purposes, already native. In most cases, their pronunciations have already been 'nativized'.

Code-switching, on the other hand, can only be understood by people who are bilingual. While they may be similarly well-integrated into sentences as loanwords are, they are still considered foreign words, retain their original pronunciations (though they may be mangled a bit by affixes), and are only spoken when you are sure that the person you are speaking to can understand the second language.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 10:41, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Bit late to this discussion but as I grew up in Malaysia and can speak Malay I can confirm coding switching and simply throwing in words and phrases from other languages is fairly common in Malaysia. This is described to some extent at Manglish (which as with Tanglish isn't a great article). As the article mentions, it can include more then Malay words, sometimes words from one or more Chinese dialects (including Mandarin) and sometimes Tamil or some other South Asian language, although it depends significantly on the speaker and audience for obvious reasons. Malay is the national language and language of instruction at government secondary schools (and main government primary schools) and also a compulsory pass at the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia so most Malaysians can speak Malay. English is a compulsory subject although not a compulsory pass and is also usually considered the language of business so most urban Malaysians can speak it to some extent. So these 2 are generally guaranteed. Many Chinese can speak at least one Chinese dialect possibly more and many Indians can speak Tamil or possibly some other South Asian language. (There are more Chinese and they also have more prominence then Indians so you generally have more Chinese influence.) A distinction is often made with Bahasa Rojak which is Malay with foreign words (usually English) thrown in. But of course when you get to the extreme of codeswitching like [1] it's not so easy to give one language as a base language (although I'd still call that one in favour of English, and it is from a forum where English is I believe normally spoken). Nil Einne (talk) 19:48, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

On a somewhat related note, I have for several years been both slightly amused and slightly annoyed by how our company's flagship product hardly even tries to have its user interface consistent between Finnish and English. This reached its peak a few days ago when I found out that setting a Boolean option via its GUI displayed the options as "Kyllä" and "No". JIP | Talk 20:44, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

LOL. By the way, does Google also force Finnish on you based on IP? It does for us and it's extremely annoying. It's the default and resets every time the browser is closed. Our languages are simply ill-suited for anything technical, and Google often has to use extremely obscure native words in place of familiar English ones. -- Obsidi♠n Soul 21:12, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it does, even though I have my Fedora 12 Linux system set up in English. It doesn't bother me though, because the interface is consistently in Finnish and the terms it uses are relatively simple compared to our company's products, which makes it easier to get them translated correctly. JIP | Talk 21:20, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]