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Count Roland posted:Yea yea yea. Election is almost a year away, but it's already over? I don't even know which direction you think it's over in.
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Jan 2, 2024 19:53
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:The real truth is that english is a baby language for dum dums. I'm sorry, I don't understand you because you didn't specify which gender the baby is. Grammatical gender is just a useless remnant of unnecessarily complex grammar back when Proto-Indo-European was spoken. I think we can all give thanks to the Vikings for having fixed all that garbage a while ago. I don't think anyone is seriously making the argument that English is not fit for complex, scientific usage because the word flask is not marked by a gendered prefix or suffix. Is Tok Pisin not a language because it began as a baby language for dum dums (slaves)?
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Jan 2, 2024 19:57
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OwlFancier posted:If all words have to have a gender then it's a property of a word, and an irrelevant property outside of cases where you use it to separate homonyms/homophones.
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Jan 2, 2024 19:57
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OwlFancier posted:I do agree that the things that make a language less functional as a communication tool can also be the things that make it fun to use, but if you want to make an argument for functionality then I still think genders are a bad way to do it. It'd be like recording the colour of every license plate on the rationale that if there's a duplicate number then maybe the plate will be a different colour. In this case the design of license plates was developed with color as one of the key factors in identification, and now somebody is asking to make all the license plates yellow because making them in multiple colors is wasteful and it doesn't matter if it's contrary to the whole system.
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Jan 2, 2024 19:59
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In order to get the maximum number of meanings per word, we clearly need to combine grammatical genders with that whole tonal thing they have going on in China. So the same word, with the same gender, will have vastly different meanings when its various syllables are each spoken with, say, a flat inflection vs. a low falling vs. a mid-rising glottalized. 
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Jan 2, 2024 20:13
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I'm going back to pointing and grunting.
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Jan 2, 2024 20:15
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Powered Descent posted:In order to get the maximum number of meanings per word, we clearly need to combine grammatical genders with that whole tonal thing they have going on in China. If you're good at a language you can communicate entirely in tonal grunts. E: ^ 
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Jan 2, 2024 20:16
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Darkest Auer posted:I'm sorry, I don't understand you because you didn't specify which gender the baby is. Umm, the Vikings didn't fix grammatical gender, most of Scandinavia still has it. Also if you want a perfectly efficient language, go learn C# or some neo esperanto poo poo, because all human languages have dumb poo poo as baggage. English can't even do negation without introducing a dummy verb. And Tol Pisin, the obviously superior language, has hella pronouns. First person exclusive dual, yeah, that's cool. Actually it's pretty cool, it means "me and one other person who is not you"
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Jan 2, 2024 21:27
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BonHair posted:Umm, the Vikings didn't fix grammatical gender, most of Scandinavia still has it. I think they're referring to the theory that the introduction of Norse (and then later, Norman French) into England was what caused English to lose grammatical gender, as the two languages were just barely on the edge of mutual intelligibility while completely disagreeing on the genders of basic nouns, so speakers in Northern England gradually homogenised into dropping grammatical gender altogether. That then spread into southern England which found it a useful strategy for dealing with the loanwords coming in from Norman French.
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Jan 2, 2024 21:54
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english should go back to law french and make that the standardquote:Richardson Chief Justice de Common Banc al assises de Salisbury in Summer 1631 fuit assault per prisoner la condemne pur felony, que puis son condemnation ject un brickbat a le dit justice, que narrowly mist, et pur ceo immediately fuit indictment drawn per Noy envers le prisoner et son dexter manus ampute et fix al gibbet, sur que luy mesme immediatement change in presence de Court.
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Jan 2, 2024 22:21
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Mister Olympus posted:english should go back to law french and make that the standard 1) No 2) Ew
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Jan 2, 2024 22:58
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Lemniscate Blue posted:1) No I'm going to ject a brickbat at this guy's head
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Jan 2, 2024 23:04
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Darkest Auer posted:I'm sorry, I don't understand you because you didn't specify which gender the baby is. So you’re in favour of dropping plurals i take it? And the extreme over usage of worthless “do” everywhere. And it’s fuckin dumb that we use cases, but only sometimes, instead of a smart language like russian. No more me or my or mine or myself, it all makes sense if we just say I. Beep boop. Map, electoral, unrelated:  81% baby, freedom rings Edgar Allen Ho fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Jan 2, 2024 |
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Jan 2, 2024 23:39
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:So you’re in favour of dropping plurals i take it? Edgar Allen Ho posted:And the extreme over usage of worthless “do” everywhere.
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Jan 2, 2024 23:52
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Plurals are fine if you keep it to "add s to the end to indicate more than 1" But yeah you could make it optional, if you use other words in the sentence to indicate multiples you can ignore the plural, or use the plural and drop the other words.
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Jan 2, 2024 23:55
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Mister Olympus posted:english should go back to law french and make that the standard Die.
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Jan 2, 2024 23:56
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Guavanaut posted:We manage it with deer, fish, sheep, cannon, grapefruit, hovercraft... Hoverscraft
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Jan 2, 2024 23:57
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I have had many grapesfruit, but this is the finest grapefruit I've had.
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Jan 3, 2024 00:03
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Svifflaugin mín er full af álum.
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Jan 3, 2024 00:04
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OwlFancier posted:Plurals are fine if you keep it to "add s to the end to indicate more than 1" There are languages that don’t use plurals at all, without needing other words. Why are plurals necessary but gender and cases are too complicated? Break free from the anglosphere, my gender-neutral dude *takes massive bong rip* I will make an argument for complicated grammar: russian is far more fun and expressive to write in, especially poetry, because three genders and numerous cases make for a lot more fuckery you can do to a sentence while still making sense. In you word strict gently caress english lose meaning as all order or is. Edgar Allen Ho fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Jan 3, 2024 |
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Jan 3, 2024 00:11
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Mister Olympus posted:english should go back to law french and make that the standard i think im having a stroke
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Jan 3, 2024 00:19
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Jan 3, 2024 00:25
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:And the extreme over usage of worthless “do” everywhere. as an ESL, please do
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Jan 3, 2024 00:25
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:There are languages that don’t use plurals at all, without needing other words. Why are plurals necessary but gender and cases are too complicated? Break free from the anglosphere, my gender-neutral dude *takes massive bong rip* I want you to know that until that last sentence I bore no ill will towards the Russian language
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Jan 3, 2024 00:33
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Meanwhile, you had me at "In you word strict gently caress english".
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Jan 3, 2024 01:04
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You can try to convince about the supposed superior qualities of the english language again when y'all fix the stupid spelling system. Why is the "ear" in hear, heard and heart pronounced differently when it's the part after it that changed?
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Jan 3, 2024 01:31
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Le couch? What the hell is le couch?
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Jan 3, 2024 01:31
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Minenfeld! posted:Le couch? What the hell is le couch? Burgendy? Edit: wow, this has some fascinating stuff. "passer dequoi around"? OddObserver fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Jan 3, 2024 |
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Jan 3, 2024 01:33
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Frionnel posted:You can try to convince about the supposed superior qualities of the english language again when y'all fix the stupid spelling system. Why is the "ear" in hear, heard and heart pronounced differently when it's the part after it that changed?
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Jan 3, 2024 01:41
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English spelling is absolutely hosed yes and you will hear no argument to the contrary from me. https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html
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Jan 3, 2024 01:51
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This is gold, even though its probably a joke. For those who don't know the ad is written in Chiac.
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Jan 3, 2024 02:01
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OddObserver posted:Burgendy? If you know what I mean...
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Jan 3, 2024 03:10
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This poem taught me, a native English speaker, a whole lot more about our linguistic fuckery. Ague not sounding like Plague, and being a whole syllable longer, had me shook.
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Jan 3, 2024 03:21
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I think some of it doesn't even work in english depending on your region.
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Jan 3, 2024 03:25
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Yeah in American English that poem is a bit of a mess
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Jan 3, 2024 03:39
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It struggles a bit in my part of the UK but some of that could also be the age, I assume stuff has drifted a bit. And also I don't imagine there are many people who would know how to pronounce "studding-sail"
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Jan 3, 2024 03:43
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The worst is that it’s largely down to bad luck, English went through a monumental change in pronunciation patterns known as the Great Vowel Shift starting pretty much right as the printing press was first coming into use, and then continuing and developing for a couple of centuries afterward. So spelling got standardised exactly in time for all our pronunciations to shift and make the standard spellings no longer fit. If the vowel shift had been just a century earlier, or not happened at all, English orthography would match its pronunciations much more closely. Or…at least, it would match the pronunciations of whichever prestige dialect was chosen to be the baseline. Which is the problem with standardising English spelling today—you’d have to decide who is right. My accent distinguishes horse and hoarse, where and were, uses different vowels for Mary marry and merry, has vowel length rules that lead to distinctions between crude and crewed and knead and kneed, but pronounces cot and caught identically. A lot of spelling reforms based on, say, Estuary English or General American would merge those pairs and spell them the same. But even between those two they’d disagree on some.
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Jan 3, 2024 04:18
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OwlFancier posted:It struggles a bit in my part of the UK but some of that could also be the age, I assume stuff has drifted a bit. See also: gunwale and forecastle. Nautical terminology seems to have a few of those.
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Jan 3, 2024 05:36
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I've been trying to use "yous" more and more. I know it's considered improper language and uncouth but it's not my fuckin problem that English doesn't have a nice second person plural
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Jan 3, 2024 05:43
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Every second person plural is considered not just wrong, but actively bad. However, a second person plural is something we need in daily speech. How can these two things be reconciled??
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Jan 3, 2024 05:46
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