Mesaĝoj: 42
Lingvo: English
Farikos (Montri la profilon) 2009-januaro-13 23:54:06
God, I thought for the longest time that the word "Teil" (part) was feminine, and I just learned that it is masculine. It was absolutely heartbreaking.
But not really. I have a touch for the dramatic. =)
Oŝo-Jabe (Montri la profilon) 2009-januaro-14 00:27:24
Rogir:English speakers should simply restart using thou and thee, and use you only for plural.The reason they stopped being used in the first place, is quite a story. 'You' was used for plural, and (as is common in other languages) formal singular. 'Thou' was singular informal (and used to talk to underlings, and people you're familiar with). The problem is that 'thou' became too informal, so that is was actually extremely rude to use it to refer to anyone, and it fell out of use.
I think if 'thou' ever becomes a used word again, it should be only in denotation, without any of the connotation that got it thrown out of the language in the first place.
Spanglanese (Montri la profilon) 2009-januaro-14 04:01:25
As a side note, It seems to me that 'one' has been accepted among most speakers. Maybe I feel this way because I live in Canada and we are exposed to French here all the time. We are accustomed to the French pronoun 'on'.I would agree that I do hear 'one' creeping back into spoken American English as well. But, I hear it mostly among people in academia; there's a huge push to remove 'you,' which is (I think often wrongly) deemed too familiar.
Your point about the French influence is very interesting to me. I wouldn't have guessed it quite so strong. My observation is that, in spite of the 'se' (one) construction in Spanish, Spanish speakers learning English still use 'you' in speech.
vejktoro (Montri la profilon) 2009-januaro-14 06:57:03
Oŝo-Jabe:Didn`t know that.Rogir:English speakers should simply restart using thou and thee, and use you only for plural.The reason they stopped being used in the first place, is quite a story. 'You' was used for plural, and (as is common in other languages) formal singular. 'Thou' was singular informal (and used to talk to underlings, and people you're familiar with). The problem is that 'thou' became too informal, so that is was actually extremely rude to use it to refer to anyone, and it fell out of use.
I think if 'thou' ever becomes a used word again, it should be only in denotation, without any of the connotation that got it thrown out of the language in the first place.
Where`d ya read that?
Seems odd to me as there are still a few real old guys in real old towns here who say "dee" or "'ee"... which is "thee"
How could the word be so bad to the entire world of English speakers and nobody here ever noticed?
And, of course, the ever popular King James Bible is full of the insulting little word. Oddly enough, in a plural kinda way!
Spanglanese: It`s just that the french word looks so much like the English word that tries to do the same job.
ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2009-januaro-14 09:21:56
(unless they say it like the dracula, in which case.........).And why have a spelling reform when you can have a 'speaking' reform? That's right, let's start pronouncing English the way it was when the last spelling reform happened...
for example (as you would write in Esperanto, double letters = long vowels, ' = glottal stops)
"Heloo mii friends, huu ar yuu al? Mii naame is kristian, and iim ŭriiting this toniĥt!"
vs:
"H'loo maj frends, haŭ aa yuu uŭ? Maj nejm iz krisĉin, an ajm raj'ing this tunaj'!"
(translation: Hello my friends, how are you all? My name is Christian and I'm writing this tonight!)
If we all spoke like the top one, then our language would be much easier
orthohawk (Montri la profilon) 2009-januaro-14 17:46:30
enwilson:I can kind of see Alex's point, but we've gone too far in the other direction to go back now. It'd be easier to revoke "party" as a verb...Nah. just need to get people to start using "Quakerese": "thee" used with the he/she/it form of the verb.
I used it when I was an Old Order Brethren church, but not so much now since I left. Maybe I'll start it up again.
ssweeney (Montri la profilon) 2009-januaro-14 19:59:41
Thanks!
Rogir (Montri la profilon) 2009-januaro-14 23:21:22
ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2009-januaro-15 16:20:07
I speake
Thou speakest
He/She speaketh
We speaken
You speaken
They speaken
I am
Thou art
He/She are
We are
You are
They are
etc? (I'm not sure how right I am because the only dictionary I have shows all the different spelling systems of the middle ages combined
)Because going back to conjugation (or at least teaching kids in school how it used to work) I think could improve literacy in older English texts and in other languages.
Combine that with teaching kids about 'one vs you' and 'yez/youse/y'all' and the old pronunciation etc in primary school (elementary school) and I think things would really start to fall together for some kids. Because ultimately I think half the reason literacy is falling amongst some weeins is because they don't understand how we got to the point we are at today, and no one's bothering with teaching them so they just assume that English is some magically hard language that was and always has been strange.
alexbeard (Montri la profilon) 2009-januaro-15 21:23:23
ssweeney:I don't speak Esperanto, but I work for a company that makes language learning products, and I am looking for an Esperanto linguist to do some proofreading for me. Please send me a message if you have at least 5 years of experience with the Esperanto language, are fluent in English, and you have experience proofreading or translating.Lol. That was so random.
Thanks!