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gjm

@gjm@mathstodon.xyz

Mathematician. Reader. Fiftysomething. Cruciverbalist. Not very good at thinking of witty things to put in short bios.

I wasn't on Twitter before that nice Mr Musk suggested that everyone go to Mastodon, and I don't expect to be very active here, but who knows?

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

SmudgeTheInsultCat , to random
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gjm ,
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@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?

gjm ,
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@hananc @llewelly @futurebird @SmudgeTheInsultCat The graph at https://flowingdata.com/2015/04/14/its-all-greek-or-chinese-or-spanish-or-to-me/ suggests that at least some Chinese speakers use English in their version of this idiom, which if I'm reading their graph correctly makes English -> Greek -> Chinese -> English a possible cycle.

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