The word should be more properly transliterated as shvayg rather than shvag; it is a direct cognate of the German schweig. However, transliteration from Yiddish is always a difficult matter because different Yiddish dialects do have different vowels and other alterations of pronunciation. My instinct is to go with shvyg, but I’m no expert. Shaenon may have misspelled, but she might also have had a source that used the spelling in the comic, which matches some regional pronunciation.
While I have seen schweig translated as “shut up”, my Yiddish dictionary entry for “שװײג” gives “silence”, which suggests that it isn’t as inherently rude as “shut up”. There could be different nuances or connotations of meaning between Yiddish and German, of course, or between different dialects of German.
There’s a famous quote from Ludwig Wittgenstein, which suggests a more formal usage: Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
Given reasonable limits, it might have been more than possible for the filter to contain every known swear word in every language. But more importantly, tears would stick to your face in zero G! I think we need a strip just to clear that up for people. I don’t care if it’s not actually relevant to this comic. And contrary to the impression given by the movie Braveheart, Mel Gibson did not live in the 13th century.
I find that incredibly unreasonable,Consider the filter is a part of Nick and Despite the fact you can store Numerical values up to 255 with eight bits and It is safe assumption that The filter has a significantly higher capacity . A quick glance at urban dictionary Immediately makes is unfeasible.The system will have to store all these words, combinations of words Etc. eventually it’s going to run out of room,And either old stuff will have to be pushed out or new stuff will not be put in, Then he will be free to Curse as much as he likes. Just need some Patience and continuous effort, but it is feasible. Option two is that the data for the filter is stored off-site somewhere in which case he should sic my sweetheart on Them.
Not necessarily. There’s also the theory that swear words are stored in a different part of the brain than other words, so the language filter could just block every word coming from that portion of the brain.
I’m in no way a neurobiologist, though, so my info may be wrong.
Given that Nick’s technology is supposed to be retrofitted Mad Science, I find this discussion of ‘reasonable’ baffling. To quote Walske, “Love the hidebound worldview! So eleventh century!”
I’d argue that at the end of the day Mad Science is still science. That does mean that, like “magic with rivets” it still has to follow it’s own rules even if those rules aren’t the regular ones. That means that they can be hacked and discerned (Possibly even in that order?) by scientists, engineers and programmers who are reasonably sane. Eventually. It’s the figuring things out and whether it can be done in time that ultimately makes things interesting. ^_~
More likely, considering that when the filter was installed it was meant to curb his immediate swearing problem and not a well thought out curb all swearing, they only programmed his primary language (English) into it.
The question is: from the filter’s standpoint, does it matter? I’m pretty sure that if he switches to swearing in another language he’d actually be furthering the filter’s goals.
It’s certainly possible to imagine an explanation, and my complaint was somewhat tongue in cheek. But given that the OED contains 400,000 words and phrases, of which perhaps one or two percent are curses, so even counting 100 languages times 4,000 curses apiece you wouldn’t approach a fraction of the limits of even an obsolete computer. Urbandictionary com is actually a perfect example of my point — 7 million definitions, including 40 definitions of Futurama, but even if the entries were unique, at 4 bytes per word or phrase (enough to generate false positives only 1 time in 4 billion in a probabilistic hash) you’d be at 1 percent of the capacity of an ordinary smartphone, and the time to run the check ought to be on the order of a microsecond. Obviously compounding languages like German make the task harder, but it’s not hopeless (breaking words down into roots is hardly future technology) and I’m sure if you went through all languages that exist you’d find some really weird constructs that make the task particularly difficult, but searching through a dictionary of millions of words was no big deal 15 years ago.
One issue you’d naturally face is what to do when an utterance has 50 possible meanings, of which just one is a curse, in a particular dialect of Urdu. This being Nick, you can bet that if the word does not otherwise fit the context, he’s probably cursing. That certainly makes the flagging harder, because then the filter has to concern itself with semantics. If it flagged every utterance that qualifies as a curse in some language, Nick couldn’t even talk.
You INSTALLED the profanity filter Virginia! If you are jus’ going to help him get around it – why not uninstall it huh? I’ll bet he will be willing to go under the knife again so he can cuss in l33t again.
Even if he did think it was worth more brain surgery, does she even have the resources to do it without Anasigma? She isn’t a Mad Scientist with her own lab, she works for someone else.
Life hacks! Here’s where I get mine! Bathe in their infinite wisdom:
http://www.shortpacked.com/index.php?id=1911
Something tells me Nick won’t be bothering with number 3 on that list…
Something like “shut up, ya bastard”.
So, what’s the Yiddish for “life-hack”?
Pogrom.
Gah!
That’s either incredibly racist or A Literal Translation.
You really need to relax a little. Why not let us decide what’s offensive to us for a change?
You’re the boss, So I’ll take it As a literal translation
I meant it as a sardonic comment. Yiddish is a language steeped in the pain and discrimination faced by the Ashkenazi Diaspora.
That said, my life partner, who is Ashkenazi, also found it offensive. So I’m calling this as only being smart in my head.
I’m Jewish and I found it hilarious.
Jews aren’t a race, and that’s gallows humor. She’s not advocating pogroms.
The word should be more properly transliterated as shvayg rather than shvag; it is a direct cognate of the German schweig. However, transliteration from Yiddish is always a difficult matter because different Yiddish dialects do have different vowels and other alterations of pronunciation. My instinct is to go with shvyg, but I’m no expert. Shaenon may have misspelled, but she might also have had a source that used the spelling in the comic, which matches some regional pronunciation.
While I have seen schweig translated as “shut up”, my Yiddish dictionary entry for “שװײג” gives “silence”, which suggests that it isn’t as inherently rude as “shut up”. There could be different nuances or connotations of meaning between Yiddish and German, of course, or between different dialects of German.
There’s a famous quote from Ludwig Wittgenstein, which suggests a more formal usage:
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
Given reasonable limits, it might have been more than possible for the filter to contain every known swear word in every language. But more importantly, tears would stick to your face in zero G! I think we need a strip just to clear that up for people. I don’t care if it’s not actually relevant to this comic. And contrary to the impression given by the movie Braveheart, Mel Gibson did not live in the 13th century.
I find that incredibly unreasonable,Consider the filter is a part of Nick and Despite the fact you can store Numerical values up to 255 with eight bits and It is safe assumption that The filter has a significantly higher capacity . A quick glance at urban dictionary Immediately makes is unfeasible.The system will have to store all these words, combinations of words Etc. eventually it’s going to run out of room,And either old stuff will have to be pushed out or new stuff will not be put in, Then he will be free to Curse as much as he likes. Just need some Patience and continuous effort, but it is feasible. Option two is that the data for the filter is stored off-site somewhere in which case he should sic my sweetheart on Them.
Granted option two is very much out of next character, but it is a solution.
Granted option two is They must out of his Character,But it is a solution.
Granted that option two Is very Is very out of character for him, but it’s still a solution.
Not necessarily. There’s also the theory that swear words are stored in a different part of the brain than other words, so the language filter could just block every word coming from that portion of the brain.
I’m in no way a neurobiologist, though, so my info may be wrong.
Given that Nick’s technology is supposed to be retrofitted Mad Science, I find this discussion of ‘reasonable’ baffling. To quote Walske, “Love the hidebound worldview! So eleventh century!”
True. It might as well just measure how offended people are getting about what he’s saying at any given moment.
I’d argue that at the end of the day Mad Science is still science. That does mean that, like “magic with rivets” it still has to follow it’s own rules even if those rules aren’t the regular ones. That means that they can be hacked and discerned (Possibly even in that order?) by scientists, engineers and programmers who are reasonably sane. Eventually. It’s the figuring things out and whether it can be done in time that ultimately makes things interesting. ^_~
More likely, considering that when the filter was installed it was meant to curb his immediate swearing problem and not a well thought out curb all swearing, they only programmed his primary language (English) into it.
The question is: from the filter’s standpoint, does it matter? I’m pretty sure that if he switches to swearing in another language he’d actually be furthering the filter’s goals.
No, probably not, but that’s why it’s a learning filter. But it explains why all swear words aren’t immediately programmed into it.
It’s certainly possible to imagine an explanation, and my complaint was somewhat tongue in cheek. But given that the OED contains 400,000 words and phrases, of which perhaps one or two percent are curses, so even counting 100 languages times 4,000 curses apiece you wouldn’t approach a fraction of the limits of even an obsolete computer. Urbandictionary com is actually a perfect example of my point — 7 million definitions, including 40 definitions of Futurama, but even if the entries were unique, at 4 bytes per word or phrase (enough to generate false positives only 1 time in 4 billion in a probabilistic hash) you’d be at 1 percent of the capacity of an ordinary smartphone, and the time to run the check ought to be on the order of a microsecond. Obviously compounding languages like German make the task harder, but it’s not hopeless (breaking words down into roots is hardly future technology) and I’m sure if you went through all languages that exist you’d find some really weird constructs that make the task particularly difficult, but searching through a dictionary of millions of words was no big deal 15 years ago.
One issue you’d naturally face is what to do when an utterance has 50 possible meanings, of which just one is a curse, in a particular dialect of Urdu. This being Nick, you can bet that if the word does not otherwise fit the context, he’s probably cursing. That certainly makes the flagging harder, because then the filter has to concern itself with semantics. If it flagged every utterance that qualifies as a curse in some language, Nick couldn’t even talk.
There is evidence that he still lives in the 13th century.
Panel Number four is one the best puns I’ve heard in a while. Brilliant!
And under most circumstances, I seriously hate puns.
Judging from Tip’s reaction, the groaning from the rest of the team must be exquisite.
First time Virginia heard the term “life hack,” she thought it was something to do with rogue genetic engineers.
I suppose he could always use the Cartman Method for getting rid of the Cuss Filter… clog it ’till it busts…
Actually, Cartman didn’t overload the chip to break it, he did that to use it as an energy weapon after it broke.
I really don’t like the way they treat nick, how would they like it if they had a cuss filter? something to stop them expressing themselves?
They probably just react poorly to the idea of someone swearing and the “freedom of expression” angle never actually occurred to them. It happens.
Obscenity buffer overflow? This should be interesting.
Tip’s giving me flashbacks to the Emotional Intelligence workshop I just went to….[shudder /]
Found a Page with Yiddish swears, so I’m ready (I’m Latina, I didn’t even know Yiddish was a thing until the Internet)
You INSTALLED the profanity filter Virginia! If you are jus’ going to help him get around it – why not uninstall it huh? I’ll bet he will be willing to go under the knife again so he can cuss in l33t again.
She brought it up at the end of the last arc. I’m guessing he decided it wasn’t worth the extra brain surgery.
Even if he did think it was worth more brain surgery, does she even have the resources to do it without Anasigma? She isn’t a Mad Scientist with her own lab, she works for someone else.
I wonder if Nick considering it filtered has any effect on the filter program?