Nick Nasev
nicknasev.bsky.social
Nick Nasev
@nicknasev.bsky.social
250 followers 160 following 950 posts
Chartered Linguist Macedonian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin into English Translator Australian English Expert Let's talk about Balkan and Aussie stuff! nicknasev.com
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People who say they’re experiencing AI psychosis beg the US Federal Trade Commission for help.

There have been complaints alleging AI caused people to experience incidents including severe delusions, paranoia and spiritual crises.
People Who Say They’re Experiencing AI Psychosis Beg the FTC for Help
The Federal Trade Commission received 200 complaints mentioning ChatGPT between November 2022 and August 2025. Several attributed delusions, paranoia, and spiritual crises to the chatbot.
www.wired.com
As the weather is all over the place at the moment, you'll probably hear Aussies say that "the bomb's got it wrong".
So what's this "bomb"?

The answer to this here...

#AustralianEnglish #AussieEnglish
Australian English: BOM
Aussies often mention
www.nicknasev.com
Has a war ever started over a stray dog?

Absolutely!

100 years ago, a brief border war occurred between Bulgaria and Greece in the Belasitsa mountains, and all because of a stray dog!
Incident at Petrich - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
So when I say that my family lives in the Perth Hills in the land of Oz, some Wizard of Oz and Wicked fans might have the wrong idea...
On this day 49 years ago, a full solar eclipse covered Australia in darkness.

Fun fact: I know someone who was born during this eclipse. When I tell astrologists this, they're so excited to do this person's birth chart.
Archive footage of the 1976 eclipse
YouTube video by ABC News (Australia)
youtu.be
I'm not much of a musical theatre person, but there are two musicals that I'll gladly see again and again – Chicago and Wicked. It's the latter tonight. And this time, Elphaba is someone I know!
Potential clients these days feel more emboldened to demand lower rates from translators, on grounds that AI supposedly can do the "exact" same job instantly and for free. In my case, these demands have ranged from passive-aggressive jibes to outright gaslighting ("Why do you want to rob me?")
Slavic false friends can get really crazy!

The latest I've discovered is "založnik"

In Slovenian, it means "publisher"

In Macedonian, Bulgarian and Russian, it means "hostage"

In Czech, it means "midfielder" or "reservist"
You've probably seen the optimistic claims that AI will save endangered languages. But will it really?

This report shows how AI, Wikipedia, woefully inadequate machine translation and a misguided sense of "helping" are actually sending these languages into a doom spiral.
How AI and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable languages into a doom spiral
Machine translators have made it easier than ever to create error-plagued Wikipedia articles in obscure languages. What happens when AI models get trained on junk pages?
www.technologyreview.com
But their customer service is very responsive
The Australian Macquarie Dictionary...

Love their dictionary!

Hate their website!
People from Kochani took to social media to complain about the election results, with many calling the local electorate 'stupid' for voting in favour of the established parties and officials, whose negligence and corruption resulted in the nightclub fire.
Local elections in Macedonia yesterday. The ruling centre-right party VMRO-DPMNE wins record number of municipalities.

Kochani was expected to punish VMRO post-Puls nightclub fire but it didn't happen – VMRO mayor candidate Grozdanov leads over independent Krstevski almost two to one.
Back from Australia with the latest on Aussie English in action.

Highlights include the welcome return of "drongo" and there's one debate with Australian terminology that always ends up messy – and it's to do with a common food paste/spread...

#AustralianEnglish #AussieEnglish
So what's the latest with Australian English?
Back from my Aussie trip. Here are some things about Aussie English I discovered this time.
www.nicknasev.com
Celebrate #Diwali just like these wonderful women I saw in Mauritius last week.
7 years ago today the Macedonian parliament scandalously voted to change the country's name to "North Macedonia", against the will of the people it represents.

No one clapped after the vote – just an awkward silence.

This supposedly was the final step for EU negotiations to start. Not true!
Back in London

Bravo to Kenya Airways. Apart from the first flight that involved a medical emergency (which was handled professionally), all flights left and arrived exactly on time. Check-in and cabin crew were all wonderful.
It was surreal to see Nairobi so muted. The number of people about in the evening was much reduced than normal
AI is saving endangered languages? Perhaps not
“Well-meaning” people are using machine translation to write Wikipedia articles in languages that they don’t speak themselves, accelerating the degeneration in quality of the web corpus for several languages with relatively few native speakers.

www.technologyreview.com/2025/09/25/1...
How AI and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable languages into a doom spiral
Machine translators have made it easier than ever to create error-plagued Wikipedia articles in obscure languages. What happens when AI models get trained on junk pages?
www.technologyreview.com
Unlike in Ethiopia, if a Mauritian mentions "Yugo", they're not talking about anything related to #Yugoslavia.

Yugo is the name of the main Uber-type rideshare and food delivery app in Mauritius.

In Addis Ababa, the former Yugo(slav) Club is now the You Go evangelical church.