The Official Funny Stuff Thread™
-
@Gąska said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
I was trying to determine using Google Ngram Viewer whether there could be a time period in which people would've used that idiom with "thy" instead of "your".
That would depend on who you are talking to. The term “thy” was the familiar version, used mostly to talk to family and friends, whereas “your” was the formal, polite version. Then the language switched to using the polite version everywhere except for in church texts (which were getting rather anachronistic at this point) so people started to think that “thy” was the polite form, which it absolutely ain't!
I'm a garbage dumpster for curious facts at times.
-
-
@El_Heffe Looks like Elk City birds are not known for their grammar either... "THERE BACK"
-
@dcon said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@El_Heffe Looks like Elk City birds are not known for their grammar either... "THERE BACK"
If you start a sentence with "drive thru" you might as well end it with "there back". Or include "fillup" for some extra fries and inconsistency.
-
-
-
@LaoC said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@dcon said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@El_Heffe Looks like Elk City birds are not known for their grammar either... "THERE BACK"
If you start a sentence with "drive thru" you might as well end it with "there back". Or include "fillup" for some extra fries and inconsistency.
Drive there thru back. Some sort of primitive wordplay. Or, more likely, for religious reasons.
-
@boomzilla It's Anu's first car!
-
-
-
@boomzilla said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
There was a job placement company here that used that, and even had the .com domain registered and shown on their billboards.
I've heard of lemon tart, custard tart, rhubarb tart, even chocolate tart, but that's a new one on me.
-
-
-
-
-
@dkf said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
The term “thy” was the
familiar versionsingular, used mostly to talk to family and friends, whereas “your” was the plural, also used as a formal, politeversionway to address someone. Then the language switched to using thepoliteplural version everywhere because Norns insisted to be always addressed thus.FTF
-
@acrow I'm not sure for English, but it seems that plural for formal address (either the second person when talking to someone, or first person when that person talks) was already used by the Romans (from a couple of web pages, first person use is attested in Cicero, and second person use is attributed to the late Empire, either the Tetrarchy or the Flaviuses (Honorius/Arcadius)).
But it doesn't mean this is the origin in all languages, it could have been independently "invented" by various other people (possibly loosely inspired by others).
-
@remi said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
But it doesn't mean this is the origin in all languages, it could have been independently "invented" by various other people (possibly loosely inspired by others).
Given its prevalence across many european languages (English is different but that's because it lost it), it may well be much older than Latin.
-
@dkf I wouldn't be surprised it were, yes, but at the same time the couple of searches I made never mentioned older roots, and always tried to pin it down to a specific time in Roman history. Which might just mean that whoever wrote the factoid page that popped up in my search didn't bother doing any actual research () and that other cultures did it before, or that it genuinely was a Roman invention (which isn't impossible, they contributed quite a lot to our cultures, even the non-latin ones -- see e.g. "czar").
-
@remi said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
the couple of searches I made never mentioned older roots, and always tried to pin it down to a specific time in Roman history
The fact that it's a basic language feature that also widespread in languages without a lot of Roman influence makes me suspect that it was older. Basic features tend to get conserved pretty well (even if pronunciation changes a lot) unlike more ephemeral things like names for things.
-
@remi said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
they contributed quite a lot to our cultures, even the non-latin ones -- see e.g. "czar"
Tsardom was semi-officially a continuation of Eastern Roman Empire after the fall of Constantinople, and competed with Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation for the claim to be the one true descendant of ancient Rome. The title of Czar was chosen by Ivan III specifically to highlight that, rather than emerging naturally from contemporary language like the many variants of Rex in western Europe.
-
@dkf Now you've nerd-snipped me.
A bit more searching pointed me to an academic article (in French) (so not a random factoid) about ancient Greek correspondance, which says that plural use was common by the time of Antiochus III (200 BC) but never in the Ptolemaic kingdom (from 300 BC). It also points out that by the time of the letters it studies (400-500 AD), there is still a complicated mix of singular/plural in all kind of social settings.
Also interestingly a lot of uses of the plural can be explained by either the writer speaking in the name of his group (e.g. his city), or writing to a person as the head of a group (e.g. his family, or city). Which explains how the practice came to be, and is actually still a thing nowadays, like you might say in e.g. a postcard sent from your holidays "we went to <such and such place>..." where "we" is written by a single person (you holding the pen) but refers to the whole group... or maybe not, if e.g. not everyone actually went to that place (maybe the kids stayed at the pool etc.).
So it does exist in ancient Greek, but it's also something that developed at a point in time, not something that always existed.
The Koran apparently has Allah using "we" (but it's of course a much later work). But, conversely, in Hebrew some names (most prominently Elohim!) are plural names, but are used with singular forms, which means it's not using the full plural (as do more recent uses), and on the whole doesn't seem to use plural forms. I couldn't find any definitive reference to this use of plural in Ancient Egyptian or Sumerian or a couple of other ancient languages I bothered to search for.
All in all, for me this points to an old, but not that old origin, which cannot be pinned down to a specific point (not really surprising for anything language-related) but also cannot be said to have "always" existed, or be invented totally separately by all languages. I'd say it popped up organically (again, like all things language-related) around 300 BC-300 AD (very roughly), in the dominant languages of the Mediterranean basin (i.e. Greek and/or Latin) and spread from there.
Now if anyone knows for languages of totally different backgrounds (e.g. Chinese), I couldn't make any sensible search for those, not knowing much about them.
-
@Gąska I know that, but my point by mentioning it was to say that even though the Russian world never was under Roman control, or even strong influence, some meaningful words still permeated to it. To the point at hand about plural, this means that a use in non-Roman languages and cultures (be it Russian or Norse) can not rule out a Roman or Greek origin -- which I would now say seems to be the case, based on the other titbits I found.
-
-
@Gąska I
standsit corrected.I don't mind being nerd-sniped (though not not-nerd sniped...) but I'd rather not be snipped, nerd or not.
-
@remi said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
I don't mind being nerd-sniped (though not not-nerd sniped...) but I'd rather not be snipped, nerd or not.
So much negativity in this sentence.
-
@Gąska I don't see what you
don'tmean.
-
@remi is now Dr. No.
-
@remi said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
The Koran apparently has Allah using "we"
Interesting, because Christians always talk to god in singular—and it's in fact the only use where thee held out in English—even though being the holy trinity would even justify the plural as not just honorific.
-
@remi said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
Russian world never was under Roman control, or even strong influence
The Christianity thing is a pretty strong influence.
-
-
@DoctorJones dafuq happened to the ear?
-
@DoctorJones
: Can you cut my hair like this?
: Looked in the mirror lately?
-
-
@da-Doctah And how long did it take expertsexchange to change their domain name?
-
-
@topspin said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
Like eating a spoonful of vaseline a day.
Good lord, the ads...
-
@topspin this must be why old people always go on about the "good old days" 😳😳😳
-
-
@Bulb said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@remi said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
Russian world never was under Roman control, or even strong influence
The Christianity thing is a pretty strong influence.
That's Orthodoxy, not mackerel-snapping papism.
And, since it produces the most ornate vestments, it's the best Orthodoxy.
-
@DoctorJones said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@topspin this must be why old people always go on about the "good old days" 😳😳😳
Streets in the '50s were basically a slip n' slide.
Why Don't We Do It In The Road
was a call for reflection on chastity.
-
-
@boomzilla The TMI thread is .
-
@HardwareGeek said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@boomzilla The TMI thread is .
I think this counts as essential information.
I do have an item for that thread, tho. A hilarious new acquaintance made by aging, named "Snaily".
-
@topspin said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@topspin said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
Like eating a spoonful of vaseline a day.
Good lord, the ads...
*takes notes*
-
@Tsaukpaetra said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@topspin said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@topspin said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
Like eating a spoonful of vaseline a day.
Good lord, the ads...
*takes notes*
notes clipboard
-
-
@Tsaukpaetra said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@topspin said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@topspin said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
Like eating a spoonful of vaseline a day.
Good lord, the ads...
*takes notes*
*celebrates*
-
-