Via Mark Liberman at the Log, a deeply bizarre problem: How a glitch in an online survey replaced the word ‘yes’ with ‘forks’. I’ll let you visit the links for the details of the problem; this user comment will give you the idea:
“Please review [the] answer choices. Every ‘yes’ answer for me was listed as ‘forks’ for some reason. I.e. instead of yes/no it was forks/no.”
The interesting thing is the reason that “Google translate still thinks that ‘yes’ in Spanish means ‘forks’ in English”; in Mark’s words:
That may be puzzling until you realize that ye as the name of the letter ‘Y’ in Spanish can be used to mean a fork in the road, i.e. a Y-junction.
I wonder how long it would have taken me to figure that out.
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