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I really hate the english langauge

de alexbeard, 2009-januaro-11

Mesaĝoj: 42

Lingvo: English

alexbeard (Montri la profilon) 2009-januaro-12 00:50:14

Farikos:
alexbeard:A lot of people have this idea in their heads that if it doesn't exist in english, it doesn't exist in any other language and that other langauges are just different words word for word....
I see this all the time with other people as well. I hate it, but what can you expect? Their knowledge rests in other areas. My friends know nothing about languages; I know nothing about cars or sports.

Which I suppose makes me a stereotypical nerd, but I don't care. >.>
Welcome to learnu :] You're among friends

Farikos (Montri la profilon) 2009-januaro-12 21:59:46

alexbeard:
Farikos:
alexbeard:A lot of people have this idea in their heads that if it doesn't exist in english, it doesn't exist in any other language and that other langauges are just different words word for word....
I see this all the time with other people as well. I hate it, but what can you expect? Their knowledge rests in other areas. My friends know nothing about languages; I know nothing about cars or sports.

Which I suppose makes me a stereotypical nerd, but I don't care. >.>
Welcome to learnu :] You're among friends
I know. It's so wonderful.

*heart unfreezes*

alexbeard (Montri la profilon) 2009-januaro-12 23:35:13

Well, today I said "one should go to the office" to someone asking what to do at school...he called me a faggot

xD

My idea will never catch on

Mendacapote (Montri la profilon) 2009-januaro-13 00:33:18

Well, maybe all of you don’t realize now, but “you all” are witnessing the delayed but unavoidable birth of the plural you in English. “Y’all” would make much more sence than all the others from my point of view: yous, youse, yee, ee, and yinz sound terrible. But who am I to say not even being a native English speaker myself? Languages are living and evolving creatures of many fathers and mothers. We all sculpture our languages with our trends, idioms, slangs, pronunciations, jokes, misspellings, stressings, etc. The language of our grandparents is slightly (though noticeably) different from ours... in just a human life span!

erinja (Montri la profilon) 2009-januaro-13 00:47:33

The really interesting thing in this, which I don't think anyone has said much about, is that English HAD definite singular and plural forms of "you" in the past, but lost the singular! So essentially, usage in the past decided that we no longer needed the singular form. Perhaps now, usage is deciding that we need it after all. Or perhaps plural forms of "you" will remain only in dialects, and not be accepted in the "prestigious" written form of the language, which is how the situation stands today.

I have always found it possible to differentiate between singular and plural "you" in speech and writing, when necessary. It isn't so elegant as having a separate pronoun, but I am always able to say "all of you", or use someone's name and then say "you" ("John, what do you think?" vs "What do all of you think?").

I have experimented with using "one" in English, but you have to be careful with it or it sounds affected. As I guess you found out! You can sometimes use "someone", or else choose a noun rather than a pronoun.

For example, if you want to ask a friend, "What would one do if one's grades were bad", but you don't want to say "What would you do if your grades were bad?" (possibly implying that your friend has bad grades), you could say "What would a student do if their grades were bad?" Or turn it into passive voice, "What could be done in the case of bad grades?"

A skilled English speaker can find a workaround that sounds good and makes the meaning clear. Perhaps this is why a plural form of "you" hasn't made it out of regional dialects; the written form of the language has a heavy influence in modern times, and when writing, people have more time to think about how to word something, than when speaking.

Farikos (Montri la profilon) 2009-januaro-13 03:03:07

And somehow, our beautiful, bastard child of a language has done rather well for itself despite making absolutely no sense at times, and lacking features it would benefit from having.

I really love English for all of its faults. I think it's just such a wonderful language, but that could be the bias of it being my mother language. I'll come back in a few years with another language review.

vejktoro (Montri la profilon) 2009-januaro-13 07:20:53

Ah..

English has never lacked a plural second person. And we are not witnessing it`s birth. In my neck of the woods, where folks have been largely isolated since before Shakespeare`s day, people simply moved the subject form of the plural to handle singular subject and object, and kept the plural object form to handle both in the plural.

You=1
Ye=2 or more.

Obviously another mechanism happened up yeir way... but it happened. Probably immediately after the "you" moved to the singular.

I`m sure Mark Twain said "y`all" once or twice.

True language, the language studied by linguistics, is language the way we humans naturally use it, without the artificial value judgments of dictionary writers and school boards. Such learned prejudices are imposed. And they rarely last.

As with Latin, 'Vulgar English' is the real language... and the one that will survive.

ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2009-januaro-13 11:20:13

Oh no! Not 'y'all'!

It's 'yez' dammit lango.gif

Actually, in Scots 'yez' is an acceptable pronoun, well, more acceptable than in formal English. And yez/youse sounds better than 'y'all' IMHO because there's no drawn out 'aaaaa' sound ridulo.gif however, some speakers are known to draw out the 'ou' in 'youse'.

Personally, yez/youse makes more sense than 'y'all' when you consider 'you' is a singular personal pronoun, and 'you all' is almost an oxymoron (you = 2nd person singular, 'all implies more than one part) lango.gif

And - anyone noticed that Esperanto also using 'vi' for both singular and plural? Maybe 'v'all' can be the new plural pronoun ridego.gif

But anyway, I've never had a problem with 'you' as in 'one'. For instance, no one I know has ever had a case of ambiguity saying 'if you were to do...'... Possibly pronounciation is a factor? In some English dialects, 'you', 'to', and 'do' would all be pronounced the same, but in Australia it's more like:
f yu wer* t' du
(* er = long schwa as we are not rhotic-speakers!)
But anyway I see no case of ambiguity and therefore I have no problem ridulo.gif

And in regards to 'vulgar English', I would add '-es' to 'English' because the English spoken in Britain, the English spoken in the North American continent, the English spoken in Africa, the English spoken in Australia and the English spoken elsewhere (e.g. NZ, India, Malta) are all starting to diverge from each other, in particular in America, South Africa and Australia, where the vowel changes are probably chugging along quite nicely. And then there's things like 'th' in the U.S. being pronounced 'd' rarely vs. 'th' in Aus being pronounced 'v'/'f' quite commonly ('I'm going wiv me mates t'the Neverlands for free bucks' - actually a cockney convention).

mnlg (Montri la profilon) 2009-januaro-13 11:25:57

ceigered:And - anyone noticed that Esperanto also using 'vi' for both singular and plural?
Most of the times this is not a problem, but I think that, overall, the language would have profited by the presence of a singular pronoun. Not to mention that every personal pronoun ends with -i, and this is also not a great choice when your medium of communication is prone to interferences.
Maybe 'v'all' can be the new plural pronoun ridego.gif
As a joke, I like to use v'ĉiuj from time to time, but actually this is more to ape the English "y'all" ridulo.gif

Rogir (Montri la profilon) 2009-januaro-13 12:13:37

English speakers should simply restart using thou and thee, and use you only for plural.

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