Questionable Content 12: Artificial Unintelligence

[Wraith]

Assuming Jeph remembers Penelope exists.

But not Cosette or Raven, apparently. I mean, I know the latter comes in and out depending on her schooling, but it might be nice if they were asked if they wanted more hours too.

[Vinyadan]

I only recognized Emily. Jeff's always had something of a same-face problem (I think that saying that Dora and Marten looked similar was a joke about it), but this is more like "let's change proportions yeeeeaaaaaaaa", and Dora doesn't have any easily identifiable trait beyond her tattoo, so... Although I like Dale's neck in panel 2.

[Traab]

They did the same anime "battle" thing for I think marten and angus on their first meeting. I think it turned into a joking slap fight.

[Morquard]

Shouldn't Penelope be the one handling staffing duties, though?

Quite possible that Penelope handles the day-to-day business of managing the actual schedule for each day, but Dora still makes the overall decision of who works how many hours.

[AvatarVecna]

Quite possible that Penelope handles the day-to-day business of managing the actual schedule for each day, but Dora still makes the overall decision of who works how many hours.

Yeah, who knows, maybe Penelope will make an appearance soon as part of whatever arc this is gonna be. Maybe Will will get an appearance too! And hey, since Jeff remembered that Dale existed, maybe we'll get something about Marigold too! Maybe how she reacts to Hannalore being gone?

[Cikomyr]

Why people spell it Hannalore?!

[Max_Killjoy]

Why people spell it Hannalore?!

Probably extending the typical spelling of "Hannah".

(Without looking, it's actually Hannelore, right?)

[Wraith]

They did the same anime "battle" thing for I think marten and angus on their first meeting. I think it turned into a joking slap fight.

It was Padma's joke to begin with, wasn't it? She and... I think Dora...? ...Did it one of the times that they met in the street.

Padma did it to Faye, too, but it didn't work out. "You were supposed to block it!"

[Vinyadan]

Yea, it almost looks like some sort of answer to the BWW reviewer, who wanted someone to punch Faye's face. Which is odd, since the punch came years before the review. Some careful reading the must have done.


http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1857
http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2043

[The Glyphstone]

Introducing three new characters in a single comic is excessive even by Jeph standards.

[masterjoda99]

But not Cosette or Raven, apparently. I mean, I know the latter comes in and out depending on her schooling, but it might be nice if they were asked if they wanted more hours too.

I thought Raven went off back to college out of state or something like that.

[Cikomyr]

Probably extending the typical spelling of "Hannah".

(Without looking, it's actually Hannelore, right?)

Yup

Introducing three new characters in a single comic is excessive even by Jeph standards.

Damn you, i wanted to make that joke since this morning

[Wraith]

I thought Raven went off back to college out of state or something like that.

She's been and gone a few times; the last thing I remember was when Faye was fired, Raven was stated as being too busy to take up more hours, which implied that she had some still. I may be wrong, but at that point even Dora had forgotten that she was still there so... *shrugs*

[Traab]

She's been and gone a few times; the last thing I remember was when Faye was fired, Raven was stated as being too busy to take up more hours, which implied that she had some still. I may be wrong, but at that point even Dora had forgotten that she was still there so... *shrugs*

Its also possible that dora treats raven as kind of a backup employee. She doesnt work there anymore, but if dora needs someone to come in to cover a few shifts, she calls her up and asks for a favor. Pay her under the table, the week ends, things go back to normal. Raven must be too busy building her submacoptor trying to get it completed before the military can steal the idea.

[John Campbell]

I think those are two different kinds of 'ye'.

Interestingly, it looks like you are correct: at some point, 'ye' and 'you' were the plural forms of 'thee' and 'thou', before 'you' superseded all of them. The roots are...different? I think? I'm not reading clearly right now. Someone who actually knows middle and early modern English could talk about this properly.

The 2nd-person pronoun in Old English was declined like so:

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	ðu	ge
Accusative	ðec	eowic
Dative	ðe	eow
Genitive	ðin	eower

By Early Modern English, these became:

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	thou	ye
Objective	thee	you
Genitive	thy, thine	your

For comparison, the 1st-person pronoun goes like so:

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	I	we
Objective	me	us
Genitive	my	our

Also during this period, English, influenced by Norman French, began using the singular only as a familiar form, and the plural as formal singular. And then the use of the familiar form faded away entirely, so in Present-Day English we're left with only:

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	you	you
Objective	you	you
Genitive	your	your

But it turns out that we actually need singular and plural forms, so we're using the plural as singular and inventing new forms, like "y'all", to use as plural.

[Lethologica]

Thanks. Odd that the vowels were reversed - thou : ye :: thee : you.

[Kato]

The 2nd-person pronoun in Old English was declined like so:

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	ðu	ge
Accusative	ðec	eowic
Dative	ðe	eow
Genitive	ðin	eower

Ah... interesting to see how similar thit is to (current) German, making some assunptions about pronunciation...

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	du	ihr
Accusative	dich	euch
Dative	dir	euch
Genitive	dein	euer

It's a shame we have no tapes from back then... I'm sure linguists would celebrate that.

[Wraith]

Ah... interesting to see how similar this is to (current) German

It's not a big surprise. There's no such thing as "English", just really, really bad Gaelic as spoken by a French man who is pretending to have a really bad German accent.

[The Glyphstone]

It's not a big surprise. There's no such thing as "English", just really, really bad Gaelic as spoken by a French man who is pretending to have a really bad German accent.

English, a language invented by Norman soldiers attempting to seduce Saxon barmaids.

[Traab]

English, a language invented by Norman soldiers attempting to seduce Saxon barmaids.

English was created by a series of drunken men wandering europe declaring that this slang or that slang is totally awesome and needs to be "borrowed" by them right away.

"Artillery sounds badass, im taking that."

"Rucksack? Yeah, that rolls off the tongue. Its mine now. Glad the krauts had something useful to contribute."

"I love being called macho. This trip to spain was worth every pence."

"I admit boycott sounds like those irishmen have questionable tastes, but I like the actual meaning so im claiming it."

[Max_Killjoy]

To paraphrase James Nicoll:

"English doesn't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle through their pockets for new vocabulary."

[Kato]

Well, we Germans can hardly complain as we are now taking everything English has to offer and mutilate it to fit our grammar.

Well, I guess I can admit to occasionally imagining certain shows existing but not media formats. I don't recall ever even seeing a laser disc. I wonder if in fifty years we will still have similar problems. "remember mp3s?!"

[Wraith]

I have to say, I like Dale's new-ish look. He looks a lot healthier now that he's shaved and turned off his google-glasses. Although I remember him being the tallest person in the comic after Elliot, and here he's the same height as Emily?

Well, I guess I can admit to occasionally imagining certain shows existing but not media formats. I don't recall ever even seeing a laser disc. I wonder if in fifty years we will still have similar problems. "remember mp3s?!"

I remember laserdiscs - they came and went so quickly that between the time they were released on the market and the time they were formally discontinued, I never even saw a player for them in real life, let alone bought and/or used one

Although, what you are suggesting is almost certainly happening. My first car was built in 2002 and I learned to drive in 2011; the cassette player that was built into the dashboard was a quaint and unrelatable mystery to my then-20 year old friend....

Well, we Germans can hardly complain as we are now taking everything English has to offer and mutilate it to fit our grammar.

In our defence it's hardly out fault that, if English is a mongrel dog with questionable parentage from across the entire continent, then German was apparently dropped onto the continent from space. For example, the word: Hospital.

In English? Hospital.
French? Hôpital.
Spanish? Hospital (but with an accent).
Italian? Ospedale.
German? Krankenhaus.

[Eldan]

In English? Hospital.
French? Hôpital.
Spanish? Hospital (but with an accent).
Italian? Ospedale.
German? Krankenhaus.

To be fair, the word "Spital" is accepted in at least Swiss German. Also, those are all Romance languages. IF we include a few more Germanic languages as per Google Translate:

Norwegian: Sykehus
Dutch: Ziekenhuis
Swedish: Sjukhus

Things become more interesting. Especially if you consider that Sick House is probably understandable in English and I wouldn't be surprised if something similar was in Old English. And we have Siechenhaus in older German as well.

[Kato]

I have to say, I like Dale's new-ish look. He looks a lot healthier now that he's shaved and turned off his google-glasses. Although I remember him being the tallest person in the comic after Elliot, and here he's the same height as Emily?



I remember laserdiscs - they came and went so quickly that between the time they were released on the market and the time they were formally discontinued, I never even saw a player for them in real life, let alone bought and/or used one

Although, what you are suggesting is almost certainly happening. My first car was built in 2002 and I learned to drive in 2011; the cassette player that was built into the dashboard was a quaint and unrelatable mystery to my then-20 year old friend....



In our defence it's hardly out fault that, if English is a mongrel dog with questionable parentage from across the entire continent, then German was apparently dropped onto the continent from space. For example, the word: Hospital.

Emily always has been the tallest girl, too, iirc. But yeah, I would have guessed he's taller than her, too.

It's really staggering to me what kind of things I grew up with kids now don't even recognize. Okay, not staggering, but surprising. Even if you never used a casette, you surely... recognize it? Maybe? Apparently not. Technology really is racing forward....


Well, as Eldan explained, we kind of use Hospital, but Krankenhaus is just way more common. I guess it accomodates our urge to make compound words and "sick (people) house" at least tells you right away what you get yourself into. Opposed to some English inventions like what the heck is a pine apple supposed to be? Geez, get in line with the rest of the world and call it Ananas already

[Vinyadan]

Where German really decided to be different was with scientific names. Sauerstoff, Wasserstoff, Blutkörperchen... They are literal translations of names from other languages (oxygen, hydrogen, blood cells), but I can't believe there wasn't a deliberate effort to Germanize them.

[Wraith]

Opposed to some English inventions like what the heck is a pine apple supposed to be? Geez, get in line with the rest of the world and call it Ananas already

This one always confused me - not because the answer lacks logic, but because it's a very German sort of logic, which Germany itself does not employ.

German words aren't abstract names like the rest of Europe uses, more that they are literal descriptions. Like krankenhaus - the sick house. Or like flammenwerfer - it's something that werfs my flammen. Or fuBgangerzone - the foot-person-area. Likewise, a pineapple is a piece of fruit (like an apple) which is spiky (like a pine tree). It is an "apple of the pine".
It just strikes me as being a very German way of naming something, y'know?

[Morquard]

In English? Hospital.
French? Hôpital.
Spanish? Hospital (but with an accent).
Italian? Ospedale.
German? Krankenhaus.

Well to be fair, French, Spanish and Italian are pretty much the same language (Latin) with a few hundred years of drift between them, so them using similar words isn't surprising. While German has a completely different origin (since Germany was never fully occupied by the Romans).
And where English gets it's words has been established already.

[Traab]

I have to say, I like Dale's new-ish look. He looks a lot healthier now that he's shaved and turned off his google-glasses. Although I remember him being the tallest person in the comic after Elliot, and here he's the same height as Emily?



I remember laserdiscs - they came and went so quickly that between the time they were released on the market and the time they were formally discontinued, I never even saw a player for them in real life, let alone bought and/or used one

Although, what you are suggesting is almost certainly happening. My first car was built in 2002 and I learned to drive in 2011; the cassette player that was built into the dashboard was a quaint and unrelatable mystery to my then-20 year old friend....



In our defence it's hardly out fault that, if English is a mongrel dog with questionable parentage from across the entire continent, then German was apparently dropped onto the continent from space. For example, the word: Hospital.

In English? Hospital.
French? Hôpital.
Spanish? Hospital (but with an accent).
Italian? Ospedale.
German? Krankenhaus.

Laser discs only seemed to be useful to my archery range. We did this thing called techno hunting where we put blunt tips on our bows, and they did a laser disc projection on a screen of hunting scenes and we would shoot the animal and it would tell us where we hit, how fast our arrow was going, that sort of thing. The leagues were a lot of fun really. You got points depending on how good a shot it was.

[Iruka]

In our defence it's hardly out fault that, if English is a mongrel dog with questionable parentage from across the entire continent, then German was apparently dropped onto the continent from space. For example, the word: Hospital.

In English? Hospital.
French? Hôpital.
Spanish? Hospital (but with an accent).
Italian? Ospedale.
German? Krankenhaus.

In our defence it's hardly out fault that, if German is a mongrel dog with questionable parentage from across the entire continent, then English was apparently dropped onto the continent from space. For example, the word: Fenster.

In German? Fenster.
French? Fenêtre.
Spanish? Ventana.
Italian? Finestra.
English? Window.

Apparently dropped from the pocket of some norse raider while he was busy looting. Quite fascinating to track where languages got their words from and to speculate on the reasons why people prefered one possibility over the other.