Amazon and DRM changes

[Quoth]

Some aspects of English are automatic to native English speakers, but hard to learn. I hardest the adjective order. The dress.

long
red
bright

There is only one right order.

Surely any American seeing calibre would realise like centre and center it's pronounced the same as caliber. Webster decided on the -er for all the -re words.

[mitra1]

There is also an european english where Calibre is pronounced Calibre not caliber because inahbitans speak romance languages like italian french or spanish.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by mitra1

There is also an european english where Calibre is pronounced Calibre not caliber because inahbitans speak romance languages like italian french or spanish.

European spelling?

[Ma'am-I-Am]

All this arguing about Calibre/calibre is pointless because it is the name of a product (also applies to company names). It only matters when one is writing about the projectile of a firearm and which country the writer or reading audience is in.

[Ma'am-I-Am]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

In Estonian all pronouns are neutral, non-gendered. On one hand it makes it easy to speak about someone in third person, on the other hand it can be difficult to understand whom the speaker meant.

Difficult to translate as well, sometimes. I recall a mystery where an important plot point was a kid saying "She did it". It was clear the kid meant a woman. Impossible to convey that meaning in Estonian, where he/she is genderless.

This is fascinating! Surely, there are words that *imply* sex/gender - outside of pronouns - such as "Mother"? Are there equivalents to Mr/Mrs? Is it expected that a speaker establish the sex or gender of a third, nonpresent person before using a pronoun, i.e. "my brother" ? Is the use of neutral, non-gendered pronouns a recent change or has it always been a feature of the language?

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Ma'am-I-Am

This is fascinating! Surely, there are words that *imply* sex/gender - outside of pronouns - such as "Mother"? Are there equivalents to Mr/Mrs? Is it expected that a speaker establish the sex or gender of a third, nonpresent person before using a pronoun, i.e. "my brother" ? Is the use of neutral, non-gendered pronouns a recent change or has it always been a feature of the language?

1. Some, yes, of course, like Father, Mother, Brother, Sister, Son, Daughter and so on.
   
2. Yes - Härra and Proua, respectively. Preili for Miss. Those are old German loans.
   
3. It's usually expected when the listeners don't know the person spoken about. Mostly the gender can also be deduced from the person's first name, if it's known.
   
4. It has always been a feature. The Finnish language, which is closely related, has the same feature.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Some aspects of English are automatic to native English speakers, but hard to learn. I hardest the adjective order. The dress.

long
red
bright

There is only one right order.

Surely any American seeing calibre would realise like centre and center it's pronounced the same as caliber. Webster decided on the -er for all the -re words.

If the color of the dress is something similiar to scarlet, the correct order would be long bright red dress. Unless you have something else in mind?

And, possibly, any American that learns by listening and talking before reading and writing would know that calibre is pronounced same as caliber. It is a hard ask though as I have met quite a few adults here in the US that have no idea of proper spelling or grammar. Especially punctuation seems hard. It is rare for me to hear a new word before I get to read it. That new word is likely to be mispronounced by me until I look it up or hear somebody else say it.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Some aspects of English are automatic to native English speakers, but hard to learn. I hardest the adjective order. The dress.

long
red
bright

There is only one right order.

Surely any American seeing calibre would realise like centre and center it's pronounced the same as caliber. Webster decided on the -er for all the -re words.

Long cool woman in a... wait, it's black... and probably not bright at all...

[lkmiller]

Originally Posted by DNSB

As far as I have seen, text book companies are about the only companies using the Adobe hardened DRM. I've seen 3 maybe 4 consumer fiction books that have used the hardened DRM.

I remembered later and edited my reply post. It was library service ProQuest.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

In Estonian all pronouns are neutral, non-gendered. On one hand it makes it easy to speak about someone in third person, on the other hand it can be difficult to understand whom the speaker meant.

Difficult to translate as well, sometimes. I recall a mystery where an important plot point was a kid saying "She did it". It was clear the kid meant a woman. Impossible to convey that meaning in Estonian, where he/she is genderless.

Can the information be conveyed in other ways? In Hindi/Panjabi/Urdu, all pronouns are ungendered, but gender information is carried by the verb conjugation.

[alee]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

In Estonian all pronouns are neutral, non-gendered. On one hand it makes it easy to speak about someone in third person, on the other hand it can be difficult to understand whom the speaker meant.

Difficult to translate as well, sometimes. I recall a mystery where an important plot point was a kid saying "She did it". It was clear the kid meant a woman. Impossible to convey that meaning in Estonian, where he/she is genderless.

In Chinese, at least in Mandarin, there is only one spoken third person pronoun, but separate written forms corresponding to "he", "she", and "it" were created as a result of Western influence, it seems in the late 19th to early 20th centuries.

There's an essay by "William Satire" (Douglas Hofstadter) where he mocks having separate nouns for males and females by writing from the point of view of someone in an alternate reality where English has separate nouns for white and black people.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by DNSB

As far as I have seen, text book companies are about the only companies using the Adobe hardened DRM. I've seen 3 maybe 4 consumer fiction books that have used the hardened DRM.

Do you recall what books they were? I'm curious.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

Can the information be conveyed in other ways? In Hindi/Panjabi/Urdu, all pronouns are ungendered, but gender information is carried by the verb conjugation.

No. If you say "I saw him" or "She sat down" in Estonian, there is no way to convey the gender of the person you saw or the person who sat down. You must specify that separately, if it's necessary, or not use the third-person pronoun at all. For example, there often are dialogues between a man and a woman in English-language books where only pronouns are used to indicate who spoke (He said - She said). Can't do that in Estonian, as there is only one gender-neutral third person pronoun. So you must use other methods, like in a dialogue between two men or two women, to indicate the speaker (Martin said, the nurse said, the girl said and so on).

[haertig]

Is English widely used in Estonia? I ask, because your written English is perfect.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by haertig

Is English widely used in Estonia? I ask, because your written English is perfect.

Thank you. Among younger generations it's pretty widely used; in the 60+ age group (who grew up and were educated in the late Soviet Union), not really. I fall somewhere between the two, being 51, and there are both good English speakers and those who don't know much English in my age group, depending on the person's profession and lifestyle.

Older people here generally know Russian pretty well, younger people not so much anymore (unless they're native Russian speakers, of course). My Russian is regrettably terribly rusty by now.