What on earth did I just read?
— Donald Knuth, Teach Calculus via O Notation (https://shreevatsa.wordpress.com/2014/03/13/big-o-notation-a... or http://micromath.wordpress.com/2008/04/14/donald-knuth-calcu...)
For example with the element symbol you can do
let x \in R a real number
and you also can do let U \subset R, U \ni 0 a neighborhood around 0
Which you can't do with the type of symbol. I'm probably more picky about the notations following the sound in my head than the rest, but I still think that an asymmetric typeof symbol would be a net win.That’s just me spitballing though, I definitely can’t read that character or understand the language. I’m just assuming that your translation is accurate and following the context clues to their logical conclusion.
1. identity: "He is John"
2. membership: "He is engineer"
3. inclusion: "Wolves are carnivores"
For the non-symmetric membership and inclusion relationships, in natural languages the order of the words does not really matter, because a speaker will recognize which of the 2 words connected by "to be" corresponds to a bigger set, of which the other word may be a member or a subset, so "he is engineer" and "engineer is he" will be understood to mean the same, even when one alternative sounds weird (i.e. Yoda speech).
This is why, unlike for the agent and patient of a transitive verb, which need special markers, e.g. the nominative and accusative case markers, in the languages that do not have a fixed word order, for the subject and the nominal predicate that are connected by "to be" no distinct markers are required, they can use the same case (e.g. nominative), because they can always be recognized regardless of their order.
"To be" can also express other relationships, like position in space or time, qualities or quantities and so on, all of which are also distinguished by the kinds of words that are connected by "to be".
In an unambiguous language, like in formal mathematics or in programming, each kind of relationship should use a different notation.
Were you around for the thread about if LLMs “know” things? It would have benefited from more precise language.
In English, it's words like "is", "was", "are" or the verb "be". It follows the rules of linguistics, not mathematics, so there shouldn't be pressing need to stress its non-commutativity.
This Japanese lesson starts with the assumption that part of the "だ" hiragana looks like "=", which I already don't agree with! Even the dakuten (゛) on the character looks more like an equals than the swooshy bowl they're comparing to "=".
It then says that だ is comparable to equality and mathematical equations, rather than like the lingual is/are/be, and then has to qualify that the equality is non-commutative. They could've saved time by not making that comparison, and instead comparing with is/are/be, which English speakers already understand is not commutative. "John will be early" != "Early will be John" (unless Yoda, you are)
Which is whatever - if you want to use some analogies that make sense to you, go for it - just don't pretend that this is what Japanese really is like.
(There is an element of truth to it, namely that Japanese works rather differently in most respects that European languages including English. But also, there are 6-7000 languages in the world and many things that happen in Japanese have analogues in other languages, even if the specifics play out somewhat differently.)
In the case of だ the much more mundane understanding is that it's the (nonpast, plain form) copula. Yes, there are some rules about when you can/should leave it off and when not, but those IMO belong to the realm of pragmatics not semantics.
I have no skin in this game, but I wouldn't be surprised that someone with a brilliant mind would also have, to put it bluntly, "a bunch of weird shit."
Cure Dolly has _some_ connection to this group which, to me, just adds even more mystique to an already fascinating story[1]
Then there's the oral history someone posted on Something Awful some years ago [2] -- from someone who may have accidentally indirectly derailed the entire movement.
[1] https://aristasia.guide [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20230817170434/https://forums.so...
https://www.youtube.com/@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 "Organic Japanese with Cure Dolly"
https://www.youtube.com/@organicjapanesewithcuredol49/playli...
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOF... "Japanese from scratch: the game-changing course in organic Japanese" (93 videos)
Like Cure Dolly writes, no one tells you what you really need to know when you're learning Japanese (all languages?)
greybox•7mo ago
This looks like it took a lot of effort to transcribe with all her helpful graphics too.
Thank you for doing this!
R.I.P Cure Dolly