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submitted 9 months ago by mcc@mastodon.social to c/tails@lemmon.website

Image description: Google search for "extant languages"

Including results for [extinct languages]
Search only for [extant languages]


(Originally published on mastodon.social: 2024-02-17)

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[-] mcc@mastodon.social 4 points 9 months ago

@gila or they could have searched for "extant languages" when I searched for extant languages and searched for "live languages" when I searched for live languages

[-] gila@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago

If it did, then you’d still not get any relevant results, because again, those aren’t things. A list of extant languages would simply be a list of all languages throughout history that aren’t delineated as some kind of proto-language developed by early humans. Such specificity is not at all conveyed by the term “extant languages”. The search engine can’t reply, “under what circumstances are they extant? Are Klingon, C++, Heiroglyphs desired results? They’re extant!”

I would agree insofar as “live languages” should autocorrect to “living languages”, but it is getting pretty into the weeds linguistically

this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2024
154 points (100.0% liked)

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