nope. as one of the resident eastern europeans, i say sink or swim. let’s introduce articles into russian. we could just use existing swears.
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Bing gives me results for tank man. Google, yahoo, duck duck go as well.
Seems like Tank Man is the takeaway image from Tienanmen Square, which is a bit misleading and way in favor of the Chinese government. It’s like the tank stopped to not run someone over, but do people know that maybe a couple thousand people were killed?
That’s new for Bing/DDG/Yahoo.
Image search on those sites were definitely saying “no results found” 6 hours ago.
No.
“I have [a] few problems with this” is the example that I hear most often. The meaning is close to the opposite when you drop the article.
How about we just drop all declensions and conjugations from other languages instead? 
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If you translate “few” and " a few" into a number, how different will they be? If they turn out to be similar then this will mean that the difference in meaning is arbitrary.
It is arbitrary, but it is also implicitly understood by most native speakers.
As Louis pointed out, the meanings really aren’t that different in a vacuum. It’s just that in that specific sentence, they are. I’m sure we can come up with other examples in which their meanings are pretty much the same.
Even in that specific example, their literal meanings are not that different, but the sentences imply very different things.
You can retire phrases like “a few” if it makes the language easier overall. They are not an argument that articles are indispensable. Most languages are a complete mess because they evolved in a completely unorganized manner.
Sure. I don’t really disagree with that in a hypothetical sense. There is just not a practical way to “retire phrases”.
My point was that even though the difference in those two interpretations is arbitrary, it still does exist.
Yes, and there is not really a good way to stop that evolution.
“beg the question” has mostly lost its original meaning. It can be done. Stopping the evolution might be impossible but in can be guided by how we teach a language in schools or guidelines for official government documents. Over time this will become the accepted correct way of speaking and writing.
I wonder what the economic impact is of literally having thousands of languages in the world. I think it’s also one of the things that divides us. Somebody speaking a different language is an “other”. It’s not (at least right now) possible but creating a common world language from the ground up could be a giant step forward for humanity.
I think Esperanto was an attempt at that. I think it worked just about as well as we would have guessed. I also think it got rid of some articles.
“Beg the question” is an interesting example since it is not losing it’s meaning because of “how we teach language in schools” or official guidelines. It’s losing it’s meaning precisely because of the “unorganized” evolution that causes so much weirdness in the first place.
You going to land or world?
I’m going to assume you’re going to DisneyLAND. Here’s what I did when I planned my family’s trip (2 adults, 1 kid).
We stayed at Stovalls Best Western and it was both reasonable and close enough to walk to the park (about 10-15 minutes. Feels a lot longer at the end of the day though):
I managed to get park tickets at a discount but I don’t remember how or why. I think I just caught them at the right time when they were running a discount for 3 day passes.
I used this site extensively to plan our trips in the parks:
Basically, you plan your entire days. Which rides you want to ride, where you want to eat. where you might take breaks, and then optimize the thing and it makes sure you aren’t walking back and forth across the park all day. It also manages things and adjusts things as it gathers more information about wait times at the rides in real time. So, joint it, plan your trip, and reoptimize throughout the day for any adjustments it finds. We managed to ride everything we want, plus some, and it never felt we were waiting in lines for long.
For food costs - we ate breakfast at the free breakfast at the hotel, we packed in sandwiches for lunch, and ate one meal in the park. I was actually surprised at the cost of food in the park. I had heard horror stories of costs but a burger was like $12 which isn’t a whole lot different from what I pay at home at a sit-down restaurant.
If you have a long enough trip, I recommend taking a break in the middle and skip the parks for a day and go to the beach or hang out at the pool. I think we walked about 18 miles the first day, only did the parks for half the second day and hung out at the pool at the hotel, and then did about 15 miles the third day.
If you’re like me, you’re probably thinking you’re going to be miserable the whole time - I was certain of it. But once I rode the first ride I had a great time all the way through. Disney really does a good job.
EDIT: Make sure you pay extra for the fastpass or maxpass or whatever they call it now. Here’s the first optimization of our first day at Disney from touringplans.com. Some rides we skipped and updated it as we did and it reoptimized stuff for us. Really, get it. It’s worth it.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xpSdoFSwgEJZicC2WkWxC8Db3j2uurxy/view?usp=sharing
We ended up spending about $2000 for the 3 of us for 5 days in Cali and 3 days in the parks, with food and car.
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This is crucial and totally worth the $10-15 per person if you want to ride more than 5 or 6 rides a day. I’ve never used that touringplan website because my wife and I know the park layouts pretty well but also a great tip to plan your rides based on where they are in the parks so you don’t waste time walking and waiting all day.
Pretty sure it’s World. He lives much closer to World and I think he posted World somewhere.
Ah. Regardless, that trip planning website it worth it for either place.
Well if it makes you feel better, I found it useful. We’ll probably be heading there next year.
Last time we went, we got some sort of costco deal which included room at one of the Disney Hotels. That was helpful when the kids were younger and couldn’t really even last a half day without a break. We may stay off the resort next time.
Disneyland/world sounds like an absolute nightmare.
Maybe it’s just because I don’t have kids, but I’m shocked at how many people spend their limited time and money there.
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