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Cake day: July 10th, 2024

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  • In German I deliberately write the word “Standard” (same meaning as the English “standard”) with “t” at the end: “Standart”. Likewise all words that have it as a stem, such as “standartmäßig” or “Standartabweichung” (“according to standard”, “standard deviation”).

    The reason:
    Etymologically (although contested), “Standard” developed from the Old Low Franconian (Old Dutch) compound “standhard” just as in “stand + hard”, meaning “standing firm” or “steadfast” (like your morning wood :D ).
    The other, contesting, etymology derives it from the Old French “estendre”: such as in “extend”.

    However, while the particle “hard” became “hart” in modern German, officially, “Standard” still has to be written with the “d”. Thus, writing “Standart” with “t” is my silent rebellion against logical inconsistencies in languages.

    In English I don’t care, because “hard” is still written with “d”, therefore “standard” is absolutely fine for me here.

    Funnily, some dictionaries, e.g. DWDS, declare “Standart” a common orthographic mistake.

    But I will keep writing “Standart”, until “Standart” becomes the new ‘Standart’. ;)

    Edit:
    I just remembered a second reason:
    In German “Standard” is usually even pronounced with the harder “t”. Nobody says “Standard” with the soft “d” as it is usual in English. Same thing with “hart”. So even more reason to update the German ‘Standard’ to ‘Standart’.


  • Although this looks like a clever approach, a kind of stochastic key, I do not see how this guarantees to distinguish text written by big babble machines versus humans. Humans also have a certain pattern of writing, a given distribution of how some words are more likely to appear than others. How can one tell them really apart?

    As an indicator, yeah, might be usable. But I wouldn’t read too much into it before seeing results of a study that runs actual tests.