FishFace
@FishFace@piefed.social
- Comment on Auto update 1 hour ago:
What?
- Comment on Why joining the local library is the best thing you can do in 2026 3 hours ago:
Part of our library has an access barrier that you need a library card to get in. I scanned my card but it had been deactivated because I hadn’t been in like 10 years :(
- Comment on I felt so betrayed when I found out Germany isn't called Germany in Germany 4 hours ago:
Oh, it’s all interesting IMO!
- Comment on I felt so betrayed when I found out Germany isn't called Germany in Germany 4 hours ago:
I mean it’s mostly a criticism of whoever suggested this map as a way to see country names in the language of the country, rather than just English.
I don’t really understand. I asked how you would pick better names but you’re not saying how.
Maybe I would understand if you gave an example. I look at a country you might be thinking of, Nigeria, say, the official language of Nigeria is English, so this surely should not be an example because English is the language of the country. (Both by official status and by number of speakers).
English of course is not an indigenous native language of Nigeria - a description you seem to use interchangeably with “language of the country” - but there are over 500 of those, so if you don’t think the map is suitable due to featuring non-indigenous names, which of them should it pick?
Trying to answer the question I asked on your behalf (always prone to error) maybe you would prefer a map which names countries according to the most widely spoken indigenous language in each country? It would be interesting to have a map which labelled the USA *Wááshindoon bikéyah ałhidadiidzooígíí*, and Britain as *Prydain*, but I suspect the original reply would have expected those countries to be labelled in English, not in indigenous minority languages.
- Comment on Right to protest is under attack in England and Wales, reports warn 5 hours ago:
The PCSC act was a real chunk out of the right to protest and it’s been biting lately. But with Palestine Action, it was the Terrorism Act, whose abuse was predicted at the time but few people cared about, which was abused to arrest over a thousand innocent, peaceful people. I hope this is taken seriously and learnt from when warnings about breaches of fundamental rights to free speech and other freedoms are raised now.
- Comment on I felt so betrayed when I found out Germany isn't called Germany in Germany 7 hours ago:
How would you pick along multiple official names in different languages?
- Comment on I felt so betrayed when I found out Germany isn't called Germany in Germany 7 hours ago:
I’ll answer your question if you answer the questions I already asked about Wales, England, Germany and Switzerland. Though my position should be obvious.
Türkiye cannot in any reasonable sense be called “original” either - it’s the word naming the country in Turkish but like all words except those coined recently it has undergone etymological changes to become what it is today. Calling it “original” makes it sound like the Turks came up with a name they still use and the English got it wrong. That’s not what happened.
- Comment on I felt so betrayed when I found out Germany isn't called Germany in Germany 8 hours ago:
Countries aren’t people though. And depending on language and context, this does happen, and used to happen even more. Finns might refer to a David as Taavi in Finnish. John Cabot’s name in Italian was Giovanni.
- Comment on I felt so betrayed when I found out Germany isn't called Germany in Germany 8 hours ago:
They explain the methodology - where there is more than one official name, the name in the language with the most speakers in that country is used.
- Comment on I felt so betrayed when I found out Germany isn't called Germany in Germany 17 hours ago:
OK, but most native speakers of a language have feelings towards their own language, and want to continue to speak it as they learnt it. Why should the speakers of a one language have any say over how the speakers of another language speak? What if I feel that Germans should stop using the word “Stuhl” and start using the word “chair” instead? My feelings are irrelevant because it’s not my language and have no rights or interests in the matter.
What happens in multilingual countries? Should the English-speaking majority of Wales be able to dictate to the Welsh-speaking minority that the country is called Wales rather than Cymru*? Should the English-speaking majority of England be able to dictate to Welsh-speaking Welsh residents of England that they should stop using the name *Lloegr*? Or vice-versa? Shall we call Switzerland *Die Schweiz or La Suisse or Svizzera or Svizra? Do you think the German people - or perhaps the German government - should go and tell speakers of Sorbian that they have to stop calling Germany Nimska and must instead use a different word? Do you like where this is going? I mean there were never any problems in Germany before that smell similar to this.
No, this is all rubbish and nonsense. Let people speak their languages. Literally nothing bad happens if you do, and if you go the other way it opens a massive can of ethnically-oppressive worms where one ethnic group gets to tell others what to do.
- Comment on I felt so betrayed when I found out Germany isn't called Germany in Germany 21 hours ago:
- Comment on I felt so betrayed when I found out Germany isn't called Germany in Germany 22 hours ago:
Why not use the German name for “chair”? Words are arbitrary. Why would you use the local inhabitants’ name for it?
What about when a country has more than one ethnic group with more than one language, which have different names for the country? This is the case in many places. You could pick one, of course, but that’s just another arbitrary choice.
The historical reason is that names for countries (which often develop from names for peoples) don’t always come from the a common source.
- Comment on I felt so betrayed when I found out Germany isn't called Germany in Germany 1 day ago:
Yeah true, then it works.
Endonyms often turn out to derive from “people” in some language or other, but exonyms could come from anything like “the people on the other side of the hill/river/swamp” or “the rich people” or “the people who herd sheep” or “the people who really like goat’s milk”. There’s an inherent asymmetry between naming the one group of “us” and all the groups of people who are not “us”!
- Comment on I felt so betrayed when I found out Germany isn't called Germany in Germany 1 day ago:
I believe the languages of some neighbouring countries such as Turkey resemble Magyarország more closely :)
- Comment on I felt so betrayed when I found out Germany isn't called Germany in Germany 1 day ago:
Wait till you find out that Germans have different words for all the other things we have words for, too!
Seriously though, the names of countries are just words. There’s no reason to expect them to be the same in different languages.
- Comment on I felt so betrayed when I found out Germany isn't called Germany in Germany 1 day ago:
The first time the inhabitants of what is now Germany and what is now Hungary met, there were no nations at all. People have been communicating and trading with those from far-off lands for longer than the concept of nation even existed, which is a major contributor to why these names are so different.
- Comment on If it fits... 1 day ago:
Huh. Certainly not where I am (though it’s advised against).
- Comment on If it fits... 1 day ago:
No worse than parking on the opposite side of the road though
- Comment on [deleted] 1 day ago:
This ain’t a shitpost
- Comment on Drivers over 70 to undergo eye tests every three years under plans to improve road safety | LBC 1 day ago:
Boy racers don’t “automatically resolve themselves” through gaining experience. Without intervention you have to rely on reckless drivers gaining maturity, which is far from guaranteed, or having an accident that kills them or scares some sense into them, neither of which is desirable. The interventions currently are things like police catching them, which again is not desirable if an intervention earlier could prevent it escalating to the point where police have to get involved.
But my point is really that there are options to improve safety of younger drivers. If you want to reduce road deaths by 100, shouldn’t you target the group that is causing the most accidents, and the most severe ones too?
Morbidly you could just as well argue that the elderly are going to die soon anyway so the issue “automatically resolves itself” in the majority of cases too.
- Comment on Drivers over 70 to undergo eye tests every three years under plans to improve road safety | LBC 2 days ago:
So, you want to discourage people from taking tests, which will result in: fewer people driving and, of those who do drive, more of them driving without a license? How do you plan on replacing the transport for those people who decide they aren’t going to drive - will that be improving public transport? How would that happen?
- Comment on Drivers over 70 to undergo eye tests every three years under plans to improve road safety | LBC 2 days ago:
But the statistics are per (billion) miles traveled, not per person.
- Comment on Drivers over 70 to undergo eye tests every three years under plans to improve road safety | LBC 2 days ago:
Sounds annoying to me, rather than dangerous - just like driving unnecessarily slowly.
- Comment on Drivers over 70 to undergo eye tests every three years under plans to improve road safety | LBC 2 days ago:
I’ve never seen a middle-lane hogger responsible for anything dangerous either - I’d put them firmly in the “annoying” category. Once in a while you see someone responding dangerously to someone driving in an annoying but otherwise basically safe way, and I also see this when the “annoying” way people are driving is driving at the speed limit, or waiting for a safe gap to pull into after overtaking, so I don’t feel like that can really be blamed on people hogging the middle lane.
- Comment on Drivers over 70 to undergo eye tests every three years under plans to improve road safety | LBC 2 days ago:
The accident statistics (I can help find them if you want) are that accident risk goes down steadily until (IIRC) mid 60s, and only increases above the risk of 20-30 year olds at a very advanced age in your 80s.
There are two things going on:
- Young people, especially young men are on average significantly more reckless than older people. This is a direct way in which age “grants you better driving capability” - you just become less of an idiot.
- Young people on average have less driving experience than older people. That’s not a direct result of age but it does correlate.
These are different processes but they can both be targeted for safety measures.
- Comment on Drivers over 70 to undergo eye tests every three years under plans to improve road safety | LBC 2 days ago:
🙃
- Comment on Drivers over 70 to undergo eye tests every three years under plans to improve road safety | LBC 2 days ago:
Doesn’t sound stupid, but it’s important to remember that old drivers are vastly safer than young drivers. If you can do something small like eye tests (which a lot of old people need and ought to be having anyway) then that’s sensible, but if you want to improve road safety it’s not the place to look.
Old drivers stick in people’s minds for some reason - maybe because they’ve been stuck behind them at 30mph on a national speed limit road for a few minutes - but the more regular dangerous occurrences slip by. The most common bit of dangerous driving I see is tailgating which is absolutely ubiquitous, followed by distraction leading to weaving - which I assume to be phone usage. Neither is the domain of the elderly.
- Comment on Drivers over 70 to undergo eye tests every three years under plans to improve road safety | LBC 2 days ago:
How are you going to recruit new examiners? (there is currently a shortage)
- Comment on Thumbs up 👍 3 days ago:
“shitter’s clogged”
- Comment on The Wagon 3 days ago:
No, it doesn’t seem abusive either way.