Minor things that bother you

[SSOWorld]

The Gen Z use of the verb "to ship" bugs me, to tell the truth.

OK Zoomer.

When the made-up word "tryna" is used instead of the correct "trying to."

RIP the English Language!

Excuse me, sir. Seeing as how the V.P. is such a V.I.P., shouldn't we keep the P.C. on the Q.T.? 'Cause if it leaks to the V.C. he could end up M.I.A., and then we'd all be put on K.P.

You've been listening to the "G.I. Jive"?

Somebody hasn't seen Good Morning Vietnam

[kernals12]

This may not qualify as "minor", but it's really disappointing to me that humanity went with a base 10 number system instead of base 12. Base 10 only has 2 divisors, 2 and 5, and it can only represent the extremely common fraction of ⅓ as a repeating decimal. Base 12 otoh is divisible by 2,3,4 and 6, which is why we settled on a day that has 24 hours rather than 20 (imagine entering timesheets for a workday that was 6.666666 hours long) and a year with 12 months instead of 10 (imagine if accountants had to base quarterly financial statements on the results of a 2 and a half month period). Under a Base 12 system, converting a monthly figure to an annual one would only require moving the decimal point over. It would also make teaching math easier. Alas, the fact that we have 10 fingers means we went with the system that could easily be counted on our hands and changing over would probably be impossible.

[kkt]

Many workplaces convert the minutes part of time worked (or time on leave) to decimal fractions of an hour.  Now there are computers that do that, before it was worth having a computer to do it, anyone who recording time sheets had a table at their desk of decimal of an hour equivalents.

[SEWIGuy]

Too bad we weren't born with 12 fingers.

[thspfc]

Many workplaces convert the minutes part of time worked (or time on leave) to decimal fractions of an hour.  Now there are computers that do that, before it was worth having a computer to do it, anyone who recording time sheets had a table at their desk of decimal of an hour equivalents.

At one of my college jobs, which was not long ago, we had to put the decimal into a computer system to log the work we did. They developed a system to make employees attribute every minute of paid work, yet couldn't make that system automatically convert minutes to decimals.

[kernals12]

But there are 2 other bothersome things that we probably can change.
1. Calendars: There's no need for your any day of the year to fall on a different day of the week every year. We could divide the year into 4 quarters of 91 days for a total of 364 days. The extra day we could have as a leap day at the beginning of the year. Only snag: many holidays would now permanently fall in the middle of the week meaning fewer 3 day weekends
2. Spelling: The idea of spelling books and spelling bees are foreign to children in non-English speaking countries. In their languages, every distinct sound or phoneme is associated with 1 letter or digraph, meaning that if you can speak the language, you can easily write it. That's not the case for English. We have 250 different ways to spell the 40 sounds that make up the American dialect of English (British English has 44 sounds), egregious examples being how "gh" makes a different sound in the words "tough", "though", "thought", "through", and "throughout" and the inconsistency of the "i before e except after c" rule. The result is lots of time wasted in classrooms and terrifyingly high levels of illiteracy. We can fix this however; numerous countries have conducted spelling reforms for similar reasons, Turkey in fact switched from Arabic script to the Latin alphabet in 1928. Let's māk Ēnglish ēzē tū understand fōr everēone!

[1995hoo]

^^^^^

Idea #1 has been suggested but faces some extremely serious opposition from various religious groups who object to the idea of what's sometimes called a "blank day" not assigned to any weekday. (If you've read The Lord of the Rings, you might recall that the Shire Calendar did that—Midyear's Day, and in leap years the Overlithe, had no weekday name.) Of course anyone can disagree that there is any inherent significance to a seven-day week; all I'm saying is that you shouldn't underestimate the influence of such lobbying regardless of how strongly you think it's a good idea.

Most "fixed calendar" proposals also strive to even out the months' length. I've sometimes wondered how that would translate for people like me—I was born on the 31st of the month, a date that would no longer exist. I've never spent a lot of time thinking about it, though, because I doubt any consensus for calendar reform will happen in what's left of my lifetime.

[Big John]

^^ I've seen a proposal of 13 months of 28 days each (totaling 364) plus 1 or 2 blank days at the end of the year.

[DTComposer]

But there are 2 other bothersome things that we probably can change.
1. Calendars: There's no need for your any day of the year to fall on a different day of the week every year. We could divide the year into 4 quarters of 91 days for a total of 364 days. The extra day we could have as a leap day at the beginning of the year. Only snag: many holidays would now permanently fall in the middle of the week meaning fewer 3 day weekends

Any holiday that is not tied to a historical event (i.e. July 4) is arbitrary - just re-assign them to another day. Even Christmas is arbitrary (Jesus likely was born in March, not December, but early Christian powers tied Christmas to pagan winter solstice celebrations).

Similarly, the seven-day week is a Judeo-Christian construct. Go to a six-day week (bonus: the four-day workweek becomes standard).

(FWIW, I agree with above comments that this is very unlikely to become reality, and I don't endorse trying to make it so.)

[kernals12]

I'm surprised calendar reform is getting more discussion than spelling reform

[Roadgeekteen]

Bruh now we talking about calender reform? K12 are you a P13 sockpuppet?

[Max Rockatansky]

I had forgotten P13 was a calendar nut.  Didn't he have some sort of weird obsession with making a fictional holiday?

[1995hoo]

I'm surprised calendar reform is getting more discussion than spelling reform

In my case, I simply find calendar reform more interesting.

[1995hoo]

Any holiday that is not tied to a historical event (i.e. July 4) is arbitrary - just re-assign them to another day. Even Christmas is arbitrary (Jesus likely was born in March, not December, but early Christian powers tied Christmas to pagan winter solstice celebrations).

...

Dates can be "remapped" by calculating how the conversion works. That's what happened during the switch to the Gregorian calendar. George Washington was born on February 11, 1731, Old Style; after the conversion, it became February 22, 1732, New Style. Thomas Jefferson was born on April 2, 1743, Old Style, which became April 13 in New Style but he continued to observe his birthday on April 2. So there would be some way to figure out what day a given holiday "should" move to if the goal is to keep it on the same "day of the year" as it is now. I don't pretend to be savvy enough to figure out how that would work!

[SEWIGuy]

I'm surprised calendar reform is getting more discussion than spelling reform

"I'm surprised one thing that will never happen is being discussed more than another thing that will never happen."

[mgk920]

Convrt to hexadecimal numbers?

< DUCKS and RUNS! >

Mike

[thspfc]

Spelling reform is an interesting idea because it addresses the problem of difficulty memorizing spellings, by making everyone memorize new spellings for words they already memorized.

[1995hoo]

Convrt to hexadecimal numbers?

< DUCKS and RUNS! >

Mike

I remember one year in high school a teacher I disliked required us to keep a record tracking our grades on assignments and tests in her class, so to annoy her I kept mine in hexadecimal (the calculator I had at the time did the conversion).

[kernals12]

Spelling reform is an interesting idea because it addresses the problem of difficulty memorizing spellings, by making everyone memorize new spellings for words they already memorized.

Except under reformed spelling there is no memorizing. You can spell a word just based on how it sounds

[mgk920]

Spelling reform is an interesting idea because it addresses the problem of difficulty memorizing spellings, by making everyone memorize new spellings for words they already memorized.

Except under reformed spelling there is no memorizing. You can spell a word just based on how it sounds

¿Like in Spanish?

Mike

[kernals12]

Spelling reform is an interesting idea because it addresses the problem of difficulty memorizing spellings, by making everyone memorize new spellings for words they already memorized.

Except under reformed spelling there is no memorizing. You can spell a word just based on how it sounds

¿Like in Spanish?

Mike

More or less. Spanish is a very phonetic language with few exceptions (e.g. "ll" making a "y" sound in words like "tortilla")

[mgk920]

Convrt to hexadecimal numbers?

< DUCKS and RUNS! >

Mike

I remember one year in high school a teacher I disliked required us to keep a record tracking our grades on assignments and tests in her class, so to annoy her I kept mine in hexadecimal (the calculator I had at the time did the conversion).

That sounds like when I read a few years ago (I forgot where) about some guys who wrote everything in their notebooks (including notes to each other) in school in regular English *EXCEPT* that it was written phonetically using the Cyrillic alphabet (as used in Russian and several similar languages).

Mike

[hotdogPi]

Spanish is not 1:1. S makes the same sound as a soft c (except in certain dialects, but then c and z match). H is silent and can appear anywhere. X isn't consistent between words.

[JayhawkCO]

Spelling reform is an interesting idea because it addresses the problem of difficulty memorizing spellings, by making everyone memorize new spellings for words they already memorized.

Except under reformed spelling there is no memorizing. You can spell a word just based on how it sounds

¿Like in Spanish?

Mike

More or less. Spanish is a very phonetic language with few exceptions (e.g. "ll" making a "y" sound in words like "tortilla")

Not 100% the best example. 'll' is considered a single letter in the Spanish alphabet that makes the English 'y' sound. So it is actually phonetic. 'ch' is also a single letter.

[kernals12]

^^ I've seen a proposal of 13 months of 28 days each (totaling 364) plus 1 or 2 blank days at the end of the year.

Kodak used to have that. The most obvious problem with it is that 13 is an odd number not conducive to man's habit of dividing the year into halves and quarters.