I have a less ominous version of this tale. When studying for quals I put all of the theorems in analysis I might need to prove in a little hand-written booklet (about 5x8cm) so I could quiz myself on the subway. These theorems became my whole world. I was staring at a proof when a man, puzzled by my state of concentration, asked “are those… your prayers?”
I was disoriented by the interruption. But on a moment’s swift reflection I could only answer: “Yes.”
@futurebird@SmudgeTheInsultCat once, when I was in college, I was doing differential equations homework on the bus, and I was asked if I was writing in Hebrew. Which was hugely baffling, because differential equations do not look at all like Hebrew. (At least, not to me.) When I said so, he replied "How do you know?". At that point, I started laughing helplessly, which did't help. Conveniently, at that point the bus approached my stop.
@llewelly@SmudgeTheInsultCat geeeeez Well be thankful you weren’t studying the cardinality of infinite sets ℵ0 and ℵ1 and all that. How could you ever have explained that??
@futurebird@SmudgeTheInsultCat
yeah - since we did cover aleph numbers and cardinality of infinite sets in at least one of my other math classes, it was more or less luck that it wasn't that. But then, I think I probably did far more differential equations homework sets.
@llewelly@SmudgeTheInsultCat Mathematics gobbles alphabets. Makes capitals and lower case different symbols. It swallowed greek whole. Munched on gothic letters. It took a little nibble of Hebrew and will be back for more later I expect.
@futurebird@llewelly@SmudgeTheInsultCat Mathematicians have a traditional aversion to multi-character symbols, except for a few things like important functions. When you do that you have to expand your character set massively. Computer languages were usually initially restricted to tiny Latin-based character sets and had to bite that bullet, though there were a few like APL that still refused.
@futurebird@llewelly@SmudgeTheInsultCat it's appetite is without limit and when it has consumed the last Alphabet it will index them all over and over again.
I found a map of Europe with the "strange language" of each country. Chinese wins. Surprisingly, Hebrew is the "strange language" of Finland and Iceland.
@hananc@llewelly@futurebird@SmudgeTheInsultCat I have heard it claimed that in China they say something like "it is the language of heaven". I don't know whether that's true (it seems a bit too much like the sort of thing someone not-Chinese might think the Chinese would say).
Relatedly, I wonder whether the graph is acyclic. That is, does it ever happen that country A regards country B's language as stereotypically incomprehensible, and country B thinks the same about country C, etc., until eventually we end up back with A again?
@futurebird@SmudgeTheInsultCat Simone Weil actually has things to say about this! i mean, concentrating on a math proof hard enough isn't THAT dissimular from many forms of prayer