Gentoo bans AI-created contributions

Posted Apr 22, 2024 10:29 UTC (Mon) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183)
In reply to: Gentoo bans AI-created contributions by Wol
Parent article: Gentoo bans AI-created contributions

This is one of the classic mistakes Dutch people with poor English make.

The phrase "ik ga naar school" in Dutch can mean either "I go to school" or "I am going to school (now)" depending on the context. For some reason Dutch people often throw in the "am" when it is unnecessary, but other Dutch don't pick up the problem either. Once you point it out to them it usually corrects fairly quickly, but it's fascinating that the same type of error keeps popping up.

Gentoo bans AI-created contributions

Posted Apr 22, 2024 11:00 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (2 responses)

I'm confused, how is the am in "I am going to school" unnecessary in English? "I go to school" in English - at least in most of the Celtic Isles - would sound a little foreign. Indeed, it sounds... Dutch. ;)

Also (and ICBW, I've never really had native /adult/ dutch, and it's been a long time since I had native child's dutch), but could a dutch person not be more precise with "Ik ga nu naar school" for "I am going to school now"? Also, "Ik ga zo naar school" for "I am going to school shortly"? Part of the problem with dutch is it has become very terse, and dropped a lot of constructs - even in my lifetime AFAIK. (??).

Gentoo bans AI-created contributions

Posted Apr 22, 2024 11:45 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> I'm confused, how is the am in "I am going to school" unnecessary in English? "I go to school" in English - at least in most of the Celtic Isles - would sound a little foreign. Indeed, it sounds... Dutch. ;)

My daughter goes to school - and she's 40. She's a deputy head :-)

The "am" is WRONG (not unnecessary, wrong) if it's school holidays :-) "I go to school" typically means "I am a student", while "I am going to school" means I'm on my way right now.

Cheers,
Wol

Gentoo bans AI-created contributions

Posted Apr 22, 2024 21:04 UTC (Mon) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]

Yeah, I guess I'm not explaining myself very well. It's not that the "am" is unnecessary in general, but that most of the time they mean the variant without. So you get conversations like:

A: What do you do during the day?
B: I am working.
A: (confused) Clearly you are sitting here having a drink? Oh you mean "I work".

It's not that some languages cannot express certain tenses, given enough words you can express any tense in any (sufficiently advanced) language. It's whether certain tenses have a special status in the grammer of a language. Generally similar concepts in different languages are linked in different ways which leads to people learning the language using words in ways a native speaker finds confusing.

But yes, this is a post about Gentoo, so better leave it at that.

Gentoo bans AI-created contributions

Posted Apr 22, 2024 13:48 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

> Once you point it out to them it usually corrects fairly quickly, but it's fascinating that the same type of error keeps popping up.

What's fascinating about that? You are using less flexible language and are forcing someone to pick between two choice that to him (or her) are almost undistinguishable. Of course there would be mistakes!

It's like an attempt of someone to write perl program for the first time. Learning when should you use `$` and when should you use `@` with arrays names is non-trivial, to say the least.