Hacker News Reader

This shows a problem with the English language: the same sentence can be understood in at least two ways: "the server can now work as a phone", or "the phone is now my server". It is to solve this kind of issue that many languages have markers to specify what each noun means in the sentence.

View on HN

This is nothing specific to English in general. Though English do offer high latitude of introducing ambiguities. For example stacking nominal groups with mere juxtaposition where for example French is more found of prepositions or adjective whose form is distinct from their equivalent noun/verb/adverb.

It's a problem with all natural language. That's why we don't program in English and in programming languages that are formally defined and can never be ambiguous.

This type of problem doesn't happen in all languages. Many languages are more precise than english and will avoid exactly this type of ambiguity.

> will avoid exactly this type of ambiguity.

Sure but they will have other types of ambiguity

Reply on news.ycombinator.com