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   Mignon Fogarty (grammargirl@zirk.us)'s status on Sunday, 12-Mar-2023 00:29:05 JST Mignon Fogarty

   Finnish grammar foils pro-Russia trolls

   Trolls trying to write the sentence "Nato cannot save Finland" in Finnish failed because the language has two different words for 'save,' with two completely different meanings.

   https://yle.fi/a/74-20018878

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     Z80 Inside (raynerlucas@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 12-Mar-2023 00:29:07 JST Z80 Inside

     in reply to

     @grammargirl

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     Rachel Rawlings (linuxandyarn@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 12-Mar-2023 00:29:08 JST Rachel Rawlings

     in reply to

     @grammargirl

     Russia: Nato cannot save Finland!

     Finland: На устройстве нет свободного места

     ("No space left on device," according to Google Translate, which is probably just as bad as what the trolls used, because I didn't ask a Russian to copy-edit.)

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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Sunday, 12-Mar-2023 14:08:44 JST clacke

     in reply to

     • :thisisfine:
     @0xb4dc0d3d @grammargirl Yes. It's a semantic mistake, not a grammar mistake.
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     :thisisfine: (0xb4dc0d3d@chaos.social)'s status on Sunday, 12-Mar-2023 14:08:53 JST :thisisfine:

     in reply to

     @grammargirl

     It's not a grammar mistake. It didn't happen due to wrong flexion, sentence misplacement, etc, it was the contextless translation of a source word into the wrong target word among multiple choices. A frequent thing to happen, but for all challenges Finnish grammar may have for non-Finno-Ugric speakers, this isn't one of them.

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     HAMMER SMASHED FILESYSTEM ?? (lkundrak@octodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 12-Mar-2023 14:13:01 JST HAMMER SMASHED FILESYSTEM ??

     in reply to

     @grammargirl there's a trick of similar utility with Czech language. While most of the grammar is fairly similar, use of reflexive pronouns differs. The lack of reflexive pronouns typically gives away a troll with a dictionary.

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     xmlns="Dan" (divclassbutton@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 12-Mar-2023 14:17:49 JST xmlns="Dan"

     in reply to

     https://thegeekygaeilgeoir.wordpress.com/2017/09/06/even-racists-got-the-blues/

     Same thing happens when people try to do 1-1 mappings of English to Irish. ?

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     Roni Laukkarinen (rolle@mementomori.social)'s status on Sunday, 12-Mar-2023 14:37:27 JST Roni Laukkarinen

     in reply to

     @grammargirl This is old news for us, but there are a lot of funny memes still circulating around about it.

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