Quoting Russ Allbery (2024-04-17 19:53:06) > Jonas Smedegaard <d...@jones.dk> writes: > > Quoting Jonathan Dowland (2024-04-17 17:29:11) > >> On Wed Apr 17, 2024 at 10:39 AM BST, Jonas Smedegaard wrote: > > >>> Interesting: Can you elaborate on those examplary contributions of > >>> yours which highlighted a need for maintaining all Haskell packages in > >>> same git repo? > > >> My Haskell contributions (which I did not enumerate) are tangential to > >> the use of a monorepo. But it strikes me as an odd choice for you to > >> describe them as examplary. Paired with you seeming to file me on "the > >> opposing side", your mail reads to me as unnecessarily snarky. Please > >> do not CC me for listmail. > > > I can see why it might come across as snarky. It was not intended that > > way. > > > I just meant to write describe your contributions as examples, but I > > realize now that with your emphasizing it that I wrongly described them > > as extraordinary examples. > > I suspect (based on Jonas's domain) this is one of those subtle problems > when English isn't your first language. The English language is full of > weird connotation traps. > > For anyone else who may not be aware of this subtle shade of meaning, an > English dictionary will partly lie to you about the common meaning of > "exemplary" (which I assume is what Jonas meant by "examplary"). Yes, it > means "serving as an example," but it specifically means serving as an > *ideal* example: something that should be held up as being particularly > excellent or worthy of imitation. > > If you ask someone "could you elaborate on your exemplary contributions," > a native English speaker is going to assume you're being sarcastic about > 90% of the time. In common usage, that phrase usually carries a tone > closer to "please do enlighten us about your amazing contributions" than > what Jonas actually intended. > > I keep having to remind myself of this in Debian since many Debian > contributors have *excellent* written English skills (certainly massively > bettern than my language skills in any language other than English), so > it's easy to fall into the trap of assuming that they're completely > fluent, but English is full of problems like this that will trip up even > highly advanced non-native speakers.
Thanks for elaboring, Russ. To be fair, I _was_ upset (not with Jonathan, but) earlier in this thread, which makes it harder to err on the side of a mistake when I write something that can be read as being sarcastic. Sorry, Jonathan, for being difficult to read here. - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ * Sponsorship: https://ko-fi.com/drjones [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private
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