@RDFozz It's relevant in general, but it wasn't relevant to answering that question.

The question already knew that Joseph had an intepreter because he was pretending to not know Hebrew.

@Jenayah They've had a couple of episodes where the main characters are watching YouTube videos of people from their town; and, two or three of the links they click give you that song.

So it's just a really long unnecessary parenthetical that destroys the sentence.

@RDFozz oh alright

@Alex You're talking to someone who's written sentences with nested parentheses going three or four deep....

@RDFozz I admire you for that.

@Alex Easy to say when you didn't have to read it.

@RDFozz as long as you don't fall into the Lisp side of the Force...

If you post a sample I'll read it.

To make up for the rickroll, here is a man with a duck on his head‌​.

Seriously, one of the things I've learned to do, over several years, at work is to write long emails that don't torture the reader.

@RDFozz Short emails are more torturous. They require five response before you can figure out what the point was,

@Alex The emails I may prefer to get are, for some reason, not what my superiors have often preferred to get.

And here is a cat not getting what it was expecting.

Although, to be fair, I am the sort of person who wants to qualify everything appropriately.

(which leads to nested parentheses (well, sometimes at least))

By the way, this is in review queue for whoever wants to delete it quick...

nested parentheses can be a nightmare (if improperly done (which I try to avoid (although sometimes (inevitably (we're human (at least some of us (or maybe "you" would be more accurate (yes I'm saying I'm not human (I'm a Maia)))))) I fail)))

@Mithrandir You just made me realize it's been years since I checked for new BOFH at theregister.co.uk

@RDFozz BOFH?

@Mithrandir Simon Travaglia's Bastard Operator from Hell. (I think I got the name right).

A computer guy who tends to run through managers and such about as fast as he runs through carpets, if you take my meaning.

Mhm.

A man who knows that the best way to ruin a day is to talk to a user.

I'll simply encourage y'all to check out the pranked cat above and head to sleep. *waves*

@Mithrandir At least I was all set with my cursor on the close button. Too bad - cat videos are far more fun that duck articles. Ah, well, I'll just have to go home and see the real thing (cats, that is).

@RDFozz oh right, the Scratching Shadow

And, check Mark Evanier's blog (newsfromme.com) for a bunch of videos labelled "100 things that are cuter than you" One of the early ones has a toucan trying to figure out how to use a faucet.

@Jenayah And Crouching Tigger, or course. Tigger managed to get his head in the handle of a half-full plastic bag last night. He couldn't figure out how to back out of it. I got him to come over to me so I could take it off his head - instead, once I had a hold of it, he just walked through it.

@Jenayah I significantly modified the answer. Thank you for prodding me.

@RDFozz ahahah, he just wanted you to serve him :)

as you once said...

(Among other things, Mark was Jack Kirby's assistant back in the early 1970s, and was in charge of both Garfield cartoon shows).

@Alex anytime

@Jenayah speak any other languages?

That Spanish you translated seems tough

@Jenayah Don't be so quick to offer. I have 455 answers on Mi Yodeya.

@Jenayah You would think - but, Tigger's the one who's kind of a doofus. I think he's like a big dinosaur, with a second brain near his butt - it would explain how he tries to brush up against you. He also wants you to pick him up without reaching your hands out to him.

@CorvoAttano I speak French (native language), English (rather fluent), Spanish (not as fluent as English but I could probably live in a Spanish-speaking country without being too lost). I can read and understand very basic Arabic (literary Arabic) and Russian, though I'd need to give both those languages some revision. I can read Greek but can't understand it.

@Jenayah wow.

And I can patch up an understanding of Italian (only understanding, not speaking), as it's quite close to both French and Spanish

@Jenayah Dutch? Didn't you spend the summer in the Netherlands? Or does everyone speak French there?

@Alex they all speak English. The words I picked up were stuff about renting a furnished room, and the insults the bitchy roommates were saying behind my back.

@Jenayah I feel humbled

Yo hablo un poco español y un poquito danés

And I can read kana in Japanese

I speak English (high enough level that I've been hired to do professional-level editing), Hebrew (well enough, considering that where I live it's... kinda necessary :P, although I'm more comfortable writing than speaking), and I can understand Aramaic.

And I speak internet. ;)

@Mithrandir Do you live in America?

How do you know Aramaic? Isn’t it ancient?

@CorvoAttano One of the most important Jewish books is written in Aramaic.

No, I don't live in the US, and haven't since I was... 8

@Alex Torah?

@CorvoAttano Talmud.

Torah's in Hebrew.

@Alex well, two languages are mandatory in French school system (up until the end of high school, at least), Greek comes from maths and a class I had to take not to end up in my neighbourhood's high school, Russian and Arabic I started last year. I've always wanted to learn at least some Arabic, as I grew up hearing it (lots of people with North Africa origins where I grew up) but never understanding it :) and Arabic sounds nice

@CorvoAttano how did you end up learning Danish? That's fairly unusual :)

Arabic seems like it should be relatively simple to learn, if I speak Hebrew, but I can't get past the script...

(Now I really should go to sleep.)

@Alex is the Talmud more or less important or about equal?

@Jenayah So I can ask you all my Arabic questions.

@Jenayah Curiousity/I know someone who speaks it

@CorvoAttano That's a little complicated.

@Alex given my level, you can ask, but don't expect quality answers

oh alright :)

@Jenayah Well one of the most important questions in Judaism depends on the meaning of an Arabic word.

Those northern Europe languages always seem overly complicated

@CorvoAttano The Talmud is like a commentary on a commentary of an oral history of an explanation of the Torah?

if that makes sense

@Jenayah Really simple grammar for English speakers

The Torah is supposed to be the word of God, while the Talmud is supposed to be the authoritative interpretation thereof.

Ok

@Mithrandir Any Yiddish?

a bissel

@CorvoAttano grammar maybe, but the words (for someone with a Latin native tongue) are really different

not really, only a few words here and there

Not bad.

@Alex What script was used then, the modern Hebrew kind?

There's at least one joke that works better in Yiddish than in English.

@CorvoAttano Assyrian

@CorvoAttano Depends what you mean by "the modern Hebrew kind"

yes, modern Hebrew uses the Assyrian script, and so did Aramaic. the Torah was originally written in the ancient Hebrew script which has since fallen out of use

@Jenayah how did you learn any Greek in math?

Did you have to read The Elements or something?

@CorvoAttano well you learn the symbols, the pronunciation that goes with it, and sometimes a teacher drops a comment about how to write/read Greek letter, etc

was this college level?

@CorvoAttano This is from the only complete manuscript of the Talmud:

Around 700 years old.

@Alex Do you speak Aramaic or Hebrew?

@CorvoAttano I read and write.

@Alex That’s cool

Is the grammar tough?

There aren't too many people with whom you could talk in Aramaic.

@CorvoAttano the maths? I think we started to use Greek letters on a regular basis after high school, yeah

@CorvoAttano Well Talmudic Aramaic barely has grammar.

@Alex but for Modern Hebrew?

@Alex what's the underlined word? Any particular reason it's underlined?

@Jenayah It's underlined because I grabbed the image from one of my answers in which I had underlined the word. The point was to show that the question was based on a censored text, so I underlined the relevant word in the manuscript.

@CorvoAttano It can be confusing. Pretty much every word is gendered, which gets annoying, especially when you use e.g. the feminine plural for multiple men and the masculine plural for women, but the masculine singular for a man and the feminine singular for a woman and there's no way to simplify this.

Like in this case:

Coming from English, where basically nothing is gendered anymore, that throws you.

Every noun has a gender - "table", "chair", "book", which affects what words you use in different contexts.

?

@Mithrandir is the gender easy-ish to tell (like Spanish-perrO/gatO)?

...not really

@Alex ooh, alright

at times it seems arbitrary

Sounds like a tough language

you get used to it after a while... sort of

@Jenayah I realize I didn't answer your first question. The underlined word is שמד or "shemad".

@CorvoAttano not so easy sometimes, take a look at thoughtco.com/words-that-break-the-gender-rule-3078133

@Alex meaning?

@Jenayah Wait, actually, I left out the first letter.

@Mithrandir kind of like Arabic, then

It should be השמד or "hashemad".

@Jenayah destroy

Literally means detroy/destructin.

oh, alright

so why was it censored?

@Alex that's be hashmed, no?

In context it's referring to organized governmental persecution of religion.

@Mithrandir It could be in a different context.

@Alex ouch

Anyway, I meant to go to sleep half an hour ago, and it's ~2AM now

@Jenayah Many things in the Talmud were censored by people who didn't like the implications.

@Mithrandir ahah, g'night

In fact, the word "Talmud" itself was censored.

@Jenayah I was asking about Hebrew

Anyway, @Jenayah do you know the Arabic word ithakad?

No idea if I spelled that correctly.

@Alex Which speaks to another problem — there are no vowels.

@Alex Ithica is an island in Greece

Can be spelled with a k

@CorvoAttano Yeah. This is something else, though.

@CorvoAttano just saying Spanish has its fair share of traps too :)

I speak literally know Arabic

@Alex nope

@Jenayah yeah

@Jenayah Oh well.

Google Translate offered no help

It translated it from Hindi to Ithakad, which is useless

And had nothing for Arabic

It might be Itakad, or something.

@Gallifreyan what is your profile picture of?

@Jenayah Precisely.

That's why I said above that one of the biggest questions hinges on it.