let's try this so-called automation thing - now possible with updating title

let's try this so-called automation thing - now possible with updating title

https://preview.redd.it/d8b4pg9m7lud1.jpg?width=583&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=49c86b6b4694c75d443e61942f02fb8c31cfb84d

let's try this so-called automation thing - now possible with updating title

ILoveLanguages! is a YouTube channel with around 250k followers, which has been uploading since 2020, although apparently the channel contains reuploads of videos from 2017 from the now-deleted I Love Languages! (with spaces). ILoveLanguages! has garnered scrutiny from this sub before, and is mostly known and memed for its stock collection of samples (numbers, the Lord's Prayer, the UDHR, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, "The Wren") and its cartoon avatars representing speakers of various languages. (They're supposed to be waving hello, but the lack of arms may appear disconcerting to some.)

The channel appears to be entirely run by "Andy", who is Filipino, and his mates. (Several videos are said to be assembled by the "ILoveLanguages! team" - a "team" implies multiple people.) From the sound of the voice, Andy is almost certainly a Zoomer. The channel may or may not be a major source of his income. Andy admits in the comments section of this video that he has no formal linguistics education, and is just fascinated by the diversity of languages and cultures.

As the linked posts from 2021 mention, the channel seems to prioritise quantity over quality, with anyone able to send the creator recordings, which appear not to get vetted for accuracy, which has led to situations like completely unattested/undeciphered languages (e.g. Cumbric, Minoan) and conlangs passed off as historical languages (e.g. a North African Romance language) being presented. At that time, Andy would not approve comments or respond to emails critical of his methodology. Pronunciation inaccuracies (mostly for ancient/minor languages) -- either by the recorder, or Andy himself -- are also pointed out.

The sample texts used have also been critiqued - e.g. the use of Bible passages from the New Testament to demonstrate languages spoken by Muslim- or Jewish-majority populations. As well as not being the most culturally relevant, Bible passages (and the UDHR) are usually not representative of how the language is actually spoken/used, being in high-register language. This has led to suspicions that Andy is proselytising, but I would cut him some slack; the Bible is the most translated text in the world and is therefore the only easily accessible documentation for some languages out there, and is thus useful for purposes of vocabulary comparison/demonstration. Besides, the Lord's Prayer is a short, well-known text containing a good number of basic vocabulary items, making it useful for vocab comparison. But of course it can get annoying/repetitive.

The current situation

ILoveLanguages! underwent a revamp in 2022, with some information about the background of each language prior to the samples themselves. The info, however, is mostly taken straight off Wikipedia. Comparison videos are dominating, but I guess that's due to a paucity of new recordings being sent his way.

Andy seems to be making baby steps towards improving – he's taken down many of the earlier 'questionable' videos, including the ones linked in the r/badlinguistics posts above, Cumbric, Minoan, and the North African Romance language. Nevertheless, some inaccuracies remain up, such as "Goetish" (a pan-Wu conlang, apparently). In early June, he published a video on the "Cherry Komi" language, a supposed Uralic language spoken by a single village specialising in cherry cultivation/harvesting, with a buck-wild phonology (including ejectives, apparently - I didn't watch the full video). The video was taken down within 24 hours following the abundance of comments pointing out that it was most probably not a real language. There is also currently a video about a purported reconstruction of Burgundian whose word for "squirrel" is very similar to the English word (which is a French loanword) and which has a word for "raccoon".

A few months ago, Andy made video comparing various "Altaic" languages, albeit titled "ALTAIC LANGUAGES???", so he seems to be aware that it is not a widely accepted classification, but it's not even something remotely up for debate. He's also had a number of videos comparing pairs of 'Altaic' languages from different valid language families (albeit without the assertion that the languages are 'Altaic'). I guess the point of the question marks, and the pairwise comparison videos, is "Is Altaic a possible classification? Watch and make up your mind!" He has also put out compilations of "Nilo-Saharan" and "Niger-Congo" languages, which I understand are highly controversial groupings, the former more so. His video on "Nilo-Saharan" languages does include the caveat that "not all linguists accept this classification" -- the understatement of the century.

Andy has also made other comparisons between unrelated (or distantly-related) languages, mainly to showcase linguistic diversity within nation-states or broad "ethnic groups" (e.g. "East Asians" and "Native Americans"). The latter can be useful for demonstrating, "Hey, not all East Asians/Native Americans are the same!", which is quite valid. Oddly, he has a video comparing Greenlandic and Icelandic -- while Greenland and Iceland are relatively close geographically speaking, they aren't part of the same nation-state, and the peoples who speak these languages aren't particularly culturally/genetically similar. He's also compared Russian and Prussian (while related, he probably did the comparison mainly because the names rhyme), Basque and Burushaski (probably because they alliterate and are both language isolates - TBF, the video doesn't attempt to assert they are related), and Manx and Sicilian (this is especially bizarre - is it because the flags both have triskelions on them?).

Other unusual (though somewhat understandable) choices are translating the Lord's Prayer into Middle Egyptian and Phoenician (when these languages went extinct before Christianity existed/took a foothold in those parts of the world) for purposes of comparison with modern languages. He's also made a comparison between Classical (Ancient) Greek and Mycenaean Greek with a translation of the Iliad into the latter. (IIRC, no Mycenaean Greek "running text" is known, it's all inventories/religious formulae.) For these scenarios, I'd suggest comparing individual basic vocabulary items, or new sentences containing basic vocabulary items.

Andy has received criticism for comparing "the same language under different names" - e.g. Hindi vs Urdu, and Serbian vs Croatian.

My opinion

Andy is probably not proselytising or intentionally misrepresenting linguistic diversity; he's just an enthusiastic, well-meaning, but not-super-knowledgable layperson. He appears to have a childlike (that is, innocent and wide-eyed) approach to "oh look, how wonderful it is that there are so many languages and traditional costumes out there :D". I don't know about the Philippines, but based on my experience studying in Vietnam and Singapore, we're taught about the diversity of the world's cultures/languages in a rather "tokenistic" way, mainly just "other countries/cultures exist, they've got different languages/costumes/food/etc., isn't that nifty?" without much attention to respectfully portraying said cultures. The vetting process (or lack thereof) of ILoveLanguages seems to be a consequence of such an education.

Andy's lack of putting up critical comments/response to critical emails may stem from not wanting to ruin the "good vibes" of the channel, or perhaps a lack of the maturity (or willingness to read material using lots of technical terms) needed to deal with the feedback. This, I am more concerned about, but hopefully his perusal of Wikipedia being a bigger part in making his videos should give him more insight about which languages and language classifications are valid.

This appears to be Andy's DeviantArt account. There's quite some crank-y stuff on there (but it seems to be mostly background for his original fiction), but it all dates to before he began uploading to ILoveLanguages!. So it's difficult to say whether he still believes in much of it. The stuff about the "root races", despite appearances, probably doesn't indicate he is/was racist. In the Vietnamese national curriculum, students learn about about the "three races" -- Europoid, Mongoloid and Negroid-Australoid -- with physical descriptions of "typical physical traits" for each "race", as part of secondary school Geography curricula. (It's just things like the skin, hair, eyes and stature -- nothing about intelligence, savagery, etc.) There is no indication of intrinisic superiority/inferiority of any of the races above others -- the "races" are just portrayed as an aspect of variation in human population. (I didn't study secondary school under the Vietnamese national curriculum, but my cousins do.) I don't know if students in the Philippines learn something similar, but if they do, perhaps Andy just thought of the "races" as "cool, an example of how diverse the world is, isn't it lovely! :-D" and latched on to it.

ILoveLanguages is a good concept for a channel. The avatars are actually pretty cute and seem to be the main thing drawing people in. I have hopes that Andy matures and is receptive to critical feedback, as well as takes it upon himself to find out more about valid languages and language classifications. Since Andy does not speak the vast majority of the languages he presents information about and likely doesn't know anyone who does, verification of recordings he's sent may be somewhat challenging - but perhaps he could email linguists/experts in these languages. Culturally appropriate sample texts employed more often would also be nice. But if Andy is still a 'hippie racialist mystic' as in his DeviantArt, and this outlook still underpins his videos (presenting "the diversity of the world" for the sake of it without much regard to accuracy), then... we've got a bigger problem.

let's try this so-called automation thing - now possible with updating title

let's try this so-called automation thing - now possible with updating title

let's try this so-called automation thing - now possible with updating title

let's try this so-called automation thing - now possible with updating title

let's try this so-called automation thing - now possible with updating title

let's try this so-called automation thing - now possible with updating title

let's try this so-called automation thing - now possible with updating title

let's try this so-called automation thing - now possible with updating title

let's try this so-called automation thing - now possible with updating title

let's try this so-called automation thing - now possible with updating title

https://www.reddit.com/r/Spanish/comments/184dbkz/the_lack_of_english_u_bugs_me/

let's try this so-called automation thing - now possible with updating title

Approved members can now make posts. This has actually been true for a while, but it wasn't announced because I was going to wait until I posted the new rules. I should probably just announce it though.

The announcement: If you've been approved, it's fine to make posts now.

The explanation, in case you missed the discussion - or just forgot it because it's been a while: Anyone can comment, but only approved members can make posts. The main reasons for this are (a) it reduces the amount of garbage posts the mods have to reject or remove, reducing moderation work in the long term, and (b) we can try being more lenient about the types of post we allow, specifically self-posts and image posts.

As of right now, I started by approving members who commented (reasonably) on the protest posts. I figured that if you were engaged enough to comment reasonably on a meta post, you probably know what we're about.

I'll be approving more members in the future. If you're not approved, you can still comment and share bad linguistics on the monthly small posts thread. When applications for approval open up, approval will be based mostly on prior comment history here. There's no specific number or type of comment that I'll be looking for; it's mainly just a check to see if you seem to know what we're about. I've already approved people who explained that they're mostly lurkers, for example. Just interact like you normally do.

let's try this so-called automation thing - now possible with updating title

let's try this so-called automation thing - now possible with updating title

let's try this so-called automation thing - now possible with updating title

let's try this so-called automation thing - now possible with updating title

It is I, the landed gentry.

As you might have heard, Reddit's response to the protest has been dismal. Behind the scenes, the king's functionaries have made some promises of compromise, but the king himself has been threatening to lop off all our heads if we don't do what he wants. He frames this as democracy; his will is the people's, after all.

We need to decide on the future of this subreddit.

I want to rule out two courses of action, and outline one that I'm considering in order to get your feedback. I'm also open to other ideas. I'm not doing a poll because I'm mostly interested in the opinions of regular contributors, and at our size, any poll would be very easy to manipulate with brigading from outsiders. This way I can check user histories for activity (not that I don't recognize a lot of your names).

So here's what we can't do:

(a) Return to business as usual. Not only do I want to continue to protest in some form, there are some ongoing issues with the subreddit that some downtime could be used to address.

(b) "Working to rule" or taking an action that would result in Reddit installing whatever shitty mod would take over in this situation. Communities like this one can turn toxic incredibly fast without careful moderation, and I don't want that to happen.

I've been thinking about it, and here is my idea:

Restricted with post approval given to regular contributors. We're small enough that this is realistic to carry out; I can indeed manually check post histories even if it takes a bit.

Pros: After the initial approval process, this reduces moderation work, which Reddit does not value at all. We could also relax some rules about posting - in particular, we could allow images and probably self-posts. Regular contributors generally "get it" and if they don't, can be talked to individually about any issues with their posts, as it wouldn't be a constant game of whack-a-mole. This would solve some issues with people voting/commenting in linked posts (can't do that to an image) and people not being able to share prime bad linguistics content because they commented.

Cons: It does potentially reduce traffic if it's not balanced by allowing more post types (which is actually a pro if we're protesting) and it does mean that we will have to think about approval processes for new members eventually, if this is an indefinite change.

Also, just to be upfront: If you propose an idea based on what other subreddits have done, I might share my thoughts on why I disagree with it. This doesn't mean that your contribution wasn't valuable, and my mind is open to be changed - but I'm aware of the Johns Oliver, the Touch Grass Tuesdays, and so on and have obviously come up with a different idea.

EDIT: While this post is active I'll be removing any "normal" posts. So if you have stuff to share, save it for later.

EDIT 2: I've officially received a threat that I must reopen the community or else, more than a day after I reopened the community and made this post. LOL

Tomorrow, June 12th, this subreddit will be going private to protest Reddit's plans to charge for the API, and will remain private until July 14th. Will this protest do anything, given that it's probably an intentional effort to destroy third party apps in advance of Reddit's IPO? Probably not. Will it annoy Reddit admin by making them deal with the bad PR? HOPEFULLY

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, there's more information in this post on r/Save3rdPartyApps.

Of particular concern beyond moderation, though, is that this change will deplatform many blind and visually impaired users, who rely on third party apps because Reddit has never prioritized accessibility either on the website or on their own app. r/blind might be shutting down permanently. Here is their post about this.

https://sarahelizabeez.medium.com/whatshername-1b7c3094ae39

https://www.iflscience.com/whats-the-oldest-language-still-spoken-today-69201