Magic pronouns considered harmful
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STOP OPPRESSING ME! MOD ABUSE
<valid body
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since he apparently didn't do a good job raising them
What I truly fail to understand is just what it is that you get out of presenting as such a massive, willfully ignorant dick.
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What I truly fail to understand is just what it is that you get out of presenting as such a massive, willfully ignorant dick.
Then you know exactly which pronoun to use!Sorry, I'll try to be a better Outer Party Member in the future.
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Why do you not care about her wishes regarding her gender? As recently as April 30th, 2015, he was asking to be a he. So when I laugh at self appointed workers and the Ministry of Information who imitate their Orwellian counterparts doing something that makes no sense and seems to violate the wishes of the person...yeah, I'm a massive dick.
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I'm not oppressed.
Ima bookmark this post for the next time you bring your white man is the nigger of the world bullshit.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said:
These may have a basis in the longer history of English, but they still feel, well, wrong when I read them.
ESL? Or just odd?
The singular 'them' and 'their' are considered normal and polite, and definitely preferable to 'it'; it may sound odd to some, but it's how it's done ;)
EMT, actually. (English as Mother Tongue.) I'm English ffs.(1) (Really English, not the fake "English" that I heard from a lot of Americans in the 80s when they meant "British", you know, when I lived over there.)(1) Yes, I'm aware that these days it doesn't automatically follow that someone born in England to parents also born in England would speak EMT. I was born half a century ago, before the Rivers of Blood speech. Looking at the mess that is contemporary Britain, I'd say that he was more right than most people, then or now, would want to give him credit for. Soapbox OFF.
And when I were a lad (as it were), no, it wasn't done like that. "They" etc. were plural pronouns, and even now, when abused to hide our ignorance of the dual function of "he" etc., they are still plural pronouns or, more precisely, they take plural forms, so one would be forgiven for thinking of them as plural. You wouldn't, when saying "they" to mean "that person that I don't want to mention the sex of", say "they is ..." or "they walks". Well, I hope you wouldn't, anyway. These days, who can tell?
And it's surprisingly common for people to use "they" etc. when talking about a specific person whose sex is known to all participants in the conversation.
Then again, in the 13th Century Middle English manuscript of Havelok the Dane, the 3rd person plural subject pronoun was spelled "he", just like the singular-masculine one.
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The order of words in sentence, for example.
The word order in German is, in the first place, absurd.
Besides, when learning English one also learns that the word order is fixed and can't be tweaked arbitrarily, but when you start with people talking you quickly find it does not anybody from changing it stop.
The second part tries to German word order mimic.
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"They" etc. were plural pronouns, and even now, when abused to hide our ignorance of the dual function of "he" etc., they are still plural pronouns or, more precisely, they take plural forms, so one would be forgiven for thinking of them as plural. You wouldn't, when saying "they" to mean "that person that I don't want to mention the sex of", say "they is ..." or "they walks".
So do 'you', 'your', etc, even when I'm talking to you, specifically and individually.
And for that matter, 'I' does, with the exception of one or two irregular verbs.
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when learning English one also learns that the word order is fixed and can't be tweaked arbitrarily
It's not that you can't tweak the word order, but rather that if you do so, you run the risk of radically changing the meaning of the sentence. Does that mean that any change to the order will cause problems? No. But some will, and you might not spot them when you're learning, causing confusion, amusement, embarrassment and sometimes even outright offence. (Compare “work to live” and “live to work” for a simple, obvious example.)
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@Steve_The_Cynic said:
"They" etc. were plural pronouns, and even now, when abused to hide our ignorance of the dual function of "he" etc., they are still plural pronouns or, more precisely, they take plural forms, so one would be forgiven for thinking of them as plural. You wouldn't, when saying "they" to mean "that person that I don't want to mention the sex of", say "they is ..." or "they walks".
So do 'you', 'your', etc, even when I'm talking to you, specifically and individually.
And for that matter, 'I' does, with the exception of one or two irregular verbs.
I have no idea what you're trying to say here. It sounds like you are saying that I can use "I" in the singular or in the plural, or something. And there is exactly one verb in English which has distinct forms for each of the distinct person/number combinations: "to be", in the present tense. (I am/you are/he-she-it is/we are/they are. Plural "you" isn't distinct from singular "you" in 20th/21st Century English.)All other verbs have at most three conjugated forms: walk / walks / walked, plus two participles: walking / walked. ("Can" is defective(1), and has only two forms: "can" and "could", but "could" is used for both imperfect and conditional. This marks it as unusual, as it has a form for imperfect and a form for conditional. Most verbs require auxiliary verbs for both of these tenses, the exception being "to be" which has an imperfect form, used as the auxiliary for the "periphrastic" imperfect tense of other verbs.)
(1) Grammar jargon: a defective verb is one that lacks some of the otherwise valid conjugations. Some of the best examples are verbs like falloir in French, which has only third person singular masculine forms.
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Plural "you" isn't distinct from singular "you" in 20th/21st Century English.
There's “thee”/“thou” but it's really only used in very limited situations, mostly to make the user of it think they're talking “ye olde worlde” style but actually to show them up as a silly fool.
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Compare “work to live” and “live to work” for a simple, obvious example.
For obvious reasons, in almost any language, the preposition must stay with the word it applies to, so you should be comparing "work to live" with "to live work". It is still different, but not as much.
By the way, English obviously relies on word order more than German, because German has some flexing, while English has none.
My first thought was Yoda.
If like Yoda sound you want, speak like this you must. If you want
tolike German to sound, it is more like this.
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If you want to like German sound, it is more like this.
More like "If you to like German sound want". Shoving all kinds of things between subject and predicate is the norm here.
Of course, you can't adequately display it in English because infinitive and indicative look the same except for third person singular.
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Hm, the bit of German I managed to learn at high school is already pretty rusty. I remember the verb phrase is often split with the adverbs going between, but I forgot the actual rules what goes where when.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said:
Plural "you" isn't distinct from singular "you" in 20th/21st Century English.
There's “thee”/“thou” but it's really only used in very limited situations, mostly to make the user of it think they're talking “ye olde worlde” style but actually to show them up as a silly fool.
That's mostly because it is now so archaic that nobody knows how to use it correctly. "Thou" was originally the singular counterpart to the plural "ye", second person subject pronouns. "Thee" was, in the same way, the singular of "you" - second person object pronouns. Using "you" as a subject/object pronoun as we do today is a bit like as if we also used "him" for subject. "Did you see John today?" "Yes, him was under the big bridge."Later, like in so many other IndoEuropean languages, "thou" came to be a familiar form, like the tu/vous distinction in French, but also Du/sie in German. And it was used in various English-language Bible translations when talking to God, and acquired a more formal voice as a result...
So how do we use it? Badly...
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sie in German
Note, that Sie in German is actually third person plural pronoun (re-purposed for formal second person, both singular and plural).
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@Bulb said:
If you want to like German sound, it is more like this.
More like "*If you to like German sound want". Shoving all kinds of things between subject and predicate is the norm here.
Of course, you can't adequately display it in English because infinitive and indicative look the same except for third person singular.No. "If you want like German to sound." The conjugated verb in German declarative sentences goes in the notionally second position (not second word, but second entity, see below), and an associated infinite verb goes at the end.
Where it gets weird, a bit, is phrases like "um zu", "in order to". The "um" corresponds to the "in order", and "zu" to "to." So the German word order form of "I bought it in order to have a blue one" would resemble "I bought it in order a blue one to have."
This second entity thing means that if I want to say "Because I am here, I will buy it", you say it as "Because I am here, will buy I it", where the entities are: the subordinate clause, the verb, the subject, and the object. ("will buy" is a single word, the future tense of "buy", in German.)
And, of course, the classic one: the difference between "Der Hund beisst den Briefträger" (the dog bites the postman) and "Den Hund beisst der Briefträger" (the postman bites the dog). "Der" and "den" are forms of the masculine singular definite article - "der" is nominative, and indicates that its noun is the subject, while "den" is accusative, for a direct object. You can, because of this case marking, write German sentences in an object-verb-subject order, although this is not so common...
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So I remembered it almost correctly…
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@Steve_The_Cynic said:
sie in German
Note, that Sie in German is actually third person plural pronoun (re-purposed for formal second person, both singular and plural).
Indeed. Something similar happens in Spanish - the 2nd person formal pronouns usted and ustedes take the 3rd person form of the verb.
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No. "If you want like German to sound." The conjugated verb in German declarative sentences goes in the notionally second position (not second word, but second entity, see below), and an associated infinite verb goes at the end.
It starts with if => it's not a standalone sentence. Ergo, the verb is at the end.
I left out the stuff after the comma.This second entity thing means that if I want to say "Because I am here, I will buy it", you say it as "Because I am here, will buy I it", where the entities are: the subordinate clause, the verb, the subject, and the object.
It would be "Because I here am, will I it buy." (Weil ich hier bin, werde ich es kaufen)
Of course, many people don't use future tense and just use present tense - "Because I here am, buy I it." (Weil ich hier bin, kaufe ich es)("will buy" is a single word, the future tense of "buy", in German.)
"will buy" a single word? What kid of German is that?
The German future is auxiliary verb + indicative.
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I have no idea what you're trying to say here. It sounds like you are saying that I can use "I" in the singular or in the plural, or something.
No, I'm saying that you use the plural forms of verbs with I. 'I go', not 'I goes', even though I is a singular pronoun.
Likewise 'you', which in modern English is singular or plural - the same as 'they' - always takes the plural forms even when you are only speaking to a single person.
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The word order in German is, in the first place, absurd.
Maybe, but it's pretty much fixed.Besides, when learning English one also learns that the word order is fixed and can't be tweaked arbitrarily, but when you start with people talking you quickly find it does not anybody from changing it stop.
Probably. But it isn't as bad as in Polish. I'll take a sentence "when you start with people talking you quickly find it does not anybody from changing it stop", translate it to Polish and make all the possible word swaps that don't change the maning or sound odd.
Kiedy zaczniesz rozmawiać z ludźmi, szybko odkryjesz że to nie przeszkadza ludziom zamieniać słów.
Kiedy zaczniesz rozmawiać z ludźmi, szybko odkryjesz że nie przeszkadza to ludziom zamieniać słów.
Kiedy zaczniesz rozmawiać z ludźmi, szybko odkryjesz że ludziom to nie przeszkadza zamieniać słów.
Kiedy zaczniesz rozmawiać z ludźmi, odkryjesz szybko że to nie przeszkadza ludziom zamieniać słów.
Kiedy zaczniesz z ludźmi rozmawiać, szybko odkryjesz że to nie przeszkadza ludziom zamieniać słów.
Szybko odkryjesz że to nie przeszkadza ludziom zamieniać słów kiedy zaczniesz rozmawiać z ludźmi.
Kiedy zaczniesz rozmawiać z ludźmi, szybko odkryjesz że zamieniać słów to ludziom nie przeszkadza.
Also combinations of the above. Some more word swaps are legal, but they do sound very poetic, so in normal speech, they would come out as wrong. You can't do half of these swaps in English without it becoming gibberish.
Polish language is so flexible in this matter that Yoda doesn't sound weird if you don't know beforehand he's supposed to.
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No, I'm saying that you use the plural forms of verbs with I. 'I go', not 'I goes', even though I is a singular pronoun.
It helps if you pick a regular verb in the first place.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said:
("will buy" is a single word, the future tense of "buy", in German.)
"will buy" a single word? What kid of German is that?
The German future is auxiliary verb + indicative.
Whoops, that's thirty years of not studying or using German speaking, combined with using in daily life a language with a much more comprehensive system of conjugated tenses (French), where "future" is a simple non-compound tense. But on the other hand, there are three different ways to construct the pluperfect ("I had bought") tense in French...For the curious: in speech, imperfect of the auxiliary plus past participle (J'avais acheté), but in writing you can use the past historic of the auxiliary (J'eus acheté), or the passé composé of the auxiliary (J'ai eu achetè). They all mean more or less the same thing, and yes, that last one is a double-compound construction.
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@CarrieVS said:
No, I'm saying that you use the plural forms of verbs with I. 'I go', not 'I goes', even though I is a singular pronoun.
It helps if you pick a regular verb in the first place.
The reasoning is the same for regular verbs, and just as wrong-headed. Historically, in the late 13th Century, say, the plural forms were different from what we use now, and "They walk" would have been written something like "He walkent" while "He walks" would have been "He walkt" or some such. (My copy of Havelok the Dane is at home, so I can't give you more definitive examples, and it's complicated by the fact that at that time, they wrote in what Pratchett called "Old, before they invented spelling", although it would be more accurate to call the language of Havelok the Dane "Middle, before they invented spelling".) Overall, it's probably more accurate to say that the plural pronouns take singular forms.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said:
I have no idea what you're trying to say here. It sounds like you are saying that I can use "I" in the singular or in the plural, or something.
No, I'm saying that you use the plural forms of verbs with I. 'I go', not 'I goes', even though I is a singular pronoun.
No, you use a simplified version of the singular form of the verb. The 3rd-person plural forms, historically, if you go back far enough, like 13th Century Middle English, used the "-ent" endings that you find today in other Indo-European languages, and "we" had some similar complication.
Likewise 'you', which in modern English is singular or plural - the same as 'they' - always takes the plural forms even when you are only speaking to a single person.
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Contemporary English uses this. Modern English refers to the English in use since the end of the Middle Ages, and that used to use "they" as singular, but gradually dropped it. It has, in the last generation or so, come back, and sounds deeply ugly to my ear.
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And the pink posting style thing can, as ever, fuck the fucking fuck off.
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Ima bookmark this post for the next time you bring your white man is the nigger of the world bullshit.
"Next time." Was there a previous time?
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Probably. But it isn't as bad as in Polish.
My native language is Czech, which is not much different in this regard. But since we are talking in English on this forum, the implicit comparison is English and German is not less flexible than English.
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Ima bookmark this post for the next time you bring your white man is the nigger of the world bullshit.
I think you have me confused with someone else.
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Where it gets weird, a bit, is phrases like "um zu", "in order to". The "um" corresponds to the "in order", and "zu" to "to." So the German word order form of "I bought it in order to have a blue one" would resemble "I bought it in order a blue one to have."
I can't speak about German, but in Dutch, you'd probably switch tenses while translating.
I bought it in order to have a blue one.
Ik heb hem gekocht om een blauwe te hebben.
I have it bought in order a blue one to have.
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Compare “work to live” and “live to work” for a simple, obvious example.
For obvious reasons, in almost any language, the preposition must stay with the word it applies to, so you should be comparing "work to live" with "to live work". It is still different, but not as much.
Those aren't prepositions.
Kiedy zaczniesz rozmawiać z ludźmi, szybko odkryjesz że to nie przeszkadza ludziom zamieniać słów.
You can do this in Polish because of the declension (which is incredibly painful and hurts my brain daily!) that shows what is the subject, object, etc.English generally doesn't have visible declension but where it does you also get a bit more flexibility. I gave him the book vs I gave the book to him.
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which is incredibly painful and hurts my brain daily!
Declension is easy when you do it since the day you are born.English generally doesn't have visible declension but where it does you also get a bit more flexibility. I gave him the book vs I gave the book to him.
In English, you get very little flexibility, but still have some flexibility - I agree with that. But in practice, this minimal flexibility is still too much to formulate unambiguous statements in many situations.
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But in practice, this minimal flexibility is still too much to formulate unambiguous statements in many situations.
The ambiguity of English is not due to flexibility in word positions or such. It is mainly because it has many dialects (British, American, Canadian, Australian, Indian, etc.) with slight and sometimes not so slight differences in understanding of some words and phrases. And each country uses it's own standard for teaching and even those do not really have any kind of official status like e.g. "Hoch Deutsch" has in Germany. Though as far as I remember Austria did not follow the latests German spelling reform that abolished the ß, so there is no common standard for all German-speaking countries either.
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did not follow the latests German spelling reform that abolished the ß
The ß is alive and well in German German. It is used a lot less with the "new" rules, yes. But it still very much exists. Heck, they even invented a capital version recentlyish.Switzerland doesn't have it, though.
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Whatever, I never cared enough about German to know the details. I know they replaced it with double-s in many places and Austrians mostly did not.
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It is mainly because it has many dialects (British, American, Canadian, Australian, Indian, etc.) with slight and sometimes not so slight differences in understanding of some words and phrases.
It's not the presence of the dialects, so much as the fact that English is defined to be the language spoken by the English speakers. (Yes, it's a circular definition.) Since people also have a bit of a tendency to “borrow” words from other languages (there was a large empire to borrow from), and since similes, metaphors and various sorts of allusions to obscure historical things are popular, English has ended up with a vast number of obscure almost-synonyms for things. This makes the language really difficult to reach the top level of fluency in.
Getting to the level of being understood by others is much easier. Non-native speakers are mostly cut plenty of slack. But to natives, you can tell almost as much about life history and social status from someone talking as native Italians can for speakers in that language. (It's almost like there's no such thing as Italian, but rather a different Italian for each town…
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English generally doesn't have visible declension but where it does you also get a bit more flexibility. I gave him the book vs I gave the book to him.
No, actually. That's just the fact that English has two ways of expressing the objects of a verb with a direct object and an indirect object.- Subject verb indirect-object direct-object (I gave him the book. "him" is dative, "the book" is accusative.)
- Subject verb direct-object to indirect-object (I gave the book to him. "him" is still dative, and "the book" is still accusative.)
The word order in each of these is basically fixed: you wouldn't say "I gave to him the book". Well, I hope you wouldn't, anyway.
Of course, the dative "him" and accusative "him" (found in e.g. "I saw him.") are spelled the same and pronounced the same in modern English, but in languages where pronouns (and nouns) are better marked for the case they are in English, you can tell them apart, and you get the possibility of the language allowing (a) removal of prepositions, and/or (b) flexibility of word order.
Yes, prepositions, as separate words, are not necessary. Basque doesn't have any prepositions, but in return, it has something like 20 different cases.
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The word order in each of these is basically fixed: you wouldn't say "I gave to him the book". Well, I hope you wouldn't, anyway.
Only to force a particular meter and foot or a rhyme. But poetry has its own "rules."
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@Steve_The_Cynic said:
The word order in each of these is basically fixed: you wouldn't say "I gave to him the book". Well, I hope you wouldn't, anyway.
Only to force a particular meter and foot or a rhyme. But poetry has its own "rules."
OK, I'll let you have it for purposes of poetry.However, for rules in poetry, look up cynghanedd some time. It is a devilishly complicated system of alliteration, consonance, and so on that is well suited to writing specific types of Welsh-language poetry, and badly suited to writing poetry in just about any other language. (That said, certain individuals have succeeded in bringing it to English-language poetry, but the results are very much more contrived-sounding than they would be in Welsh.)
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@Buddy said:
Ima bookmark this post for the next time you bring your white man is the nigger of the world bullshit.
"Next time." Was there a previous time?
@Buddy said:
Ima bookmark this post for the next time you bring your white man is the nigger of the world bullshit.
I think you have me confused with someone else.
idk, this
http://what.thedailywtf.com/t/the-funny-stuff-thread/2628/2360
is one post I specifically remember, but I'm pretty sure there's other things @frostcat's said where it seems like he thinks discrimination against white dudes is a real problem in the world.
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it seems like he thinks discrimination against white dudes is a real problem in the world.
Oh, so you're one of those racists, who think it's impossible to be racist against white people. Right, thanks for the self-identification.
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Look, are you oppressed our not? Will you give me a fucking straight answer already.
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So much grammar. So much pendantry. Badgers for everyone!
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Look, are you oppressed our not? Will you give me a fucking straight answer already.
I'm certainly feeling oppressed, reading your post.
