4 ms·

I was surprised to see that the Ya part meant “Yet another”. I mean, I’ve seen it before in many acronyms. But it’s pretty tongue in cheek of them to do that he

I was surprised to see that the Ya part meant “Yet another”. I mean, I’ve seen it before in many acronyms. But it’s pretty tongue in cheek of them to do that here since one would expect it was just because it was made by Yandex.

mikrl 2y ago
I was expecting it to be a Russian acronym starting with the letter Я which is pronounced Ya. It acquired its backward R glyph when it was changed from an old Slavic letter I cannot draw.
- deaddodo 2y ago
  What do you mean that you "cannot draw" them? This is a digital medium and both (well one, the other is half supported) variants are valid Unicode glyphs: ꙗ / Ѧ Or do you mean you literally can't draw them?
  - Tade0 2y ago
    It's an idiomatic expression in slavic languages, indicating that the shape is particularly complex.
    - deaddodo 2y ago
      I'm pretty sure that it's an idiomatic phrase in any language for that.
  - mikrl 2y ago
    I could not reproduce it by hand without a reference nor do I have a keyboard installed which offers it as a symbol, nor was I going to look it up to add the spice to a shower thought tier HN comment. I see you have provided it, making it more accessible for my future use, at least on the timeframe of this thread being in my recent HN activity.
shadow28 2y ago
Doesn't Yandex itself come from "Yet Another Indexer"?
- codetrotter 2y ago
  Ah, so it does as well! I only knew that it was a portmanteau of “Я” and “index”. As in “I index”. Which it also is.
  - alexey-salmin 2y ago
    There's a third explanation of "Яndex" being "языковой индекс" i.e. "language-aware index". Russian language have complicated morphology with three genders and six grammatical cases, somewhat similar to Latin. Searching by an exact word-match almost never gives good results, and neither Yahoo nor AltaVista could offer any better in 1997 -- hence Yandex was built.
    - aristus 2y ago
      You mean, Yet Another Human-Organized Ontology?

mikrl 2y ago

I was expecting it to be a Russian acronym starting with the letter Я which is pronounced Ya. It acquired its backward R glyph when it was changed from an old Slavic letter I cannot draw.

deaddodo 2y ago
What do you mean that you "cannot draw" them? This is a digital medium and both (well one, the other is half supported) variants are valid Unicode glyphs: ꙗ / Ѧ Or do you mean you literally can't draw them?
- Tade0 2y ago
  It's an idiomatic expression in slavic languages, indicating that the shape is particularly complex.
  - deaddodo 2y ago
    I'm pretty sure that it's an idiomatic phrase in any language for that.
- mikrl 2y ago
  I could not reproduce it by hand without a reference nor do I have a keyboard installed which offers it as a symbol, nor was I going to look it up to add the spice to a shower thought tier HN comment. I see you have provided it, making it more accessible for my future use, at least on the timeframe of this thread being in my recent HN activity.

shadow28 2y ago

Doesn't Yandex itself come from "Yet Another Indexer"?

codetrotter 2y ago
Ah, so it does as well! I only knew that it was a portmanteau of “Я” and “index”. As in “I index”. Which it also is.
- alexey-salmin 2y ago
  There's a third explanation of "Яndex" being "языковой индекс" i.e. "language-aware index". Russian language have complicated morphology with three genders and six grammatical cases, somewhat similar to Latin. Searching by an exact word-match almost never gives good results, and neither Yahoo nor AltaVista could offer any better in 1997 -- hence Yandex was built.
  - aristus 2y ago
    You mean, Yet Another Human-Organized Ontology?