English used to have dual pronouns (what the article is a about), proper accusatives and genitives (she/her/hers, who/whom and the apostrophe-s genitive are survivors), formal/informal 2nd person pronouns (you / thou) and quite a few other things that come up when you learn French or Latin.
Yes/No and Yea/Nay used to mean different things too: "Is this correct?" could be answered "Yea, it is correct" whereas "Is this not a mistake?" could be answered "Yes, it is correct" (which you can also parse by taking the 'not' literally).
"Courts martial" and "secretaries general" are examples where the original noun-first word order remains.
psychoslave 2 hours ago [-]
My biggest side project is about grammatical gender in French, published as a research project on wikiversity[1].
It did made me go through many topics, like dual, exclusive/inclusive group person.
Still in a corner of my head, there is the idea to introduce some more pronouns to handle more subtilty about which first person we are expressing about[2]. The ego is not the present attention, nor they are that thing intertwined with the rest of the world without which nothing exists.
[2] The project does provide an homogenized extended set of pronouns with 6 more than the two regular ones found in any primary school book. And completing all cases for all nouns is the biggest chunk that need to be completed, though it’s already done by now for the most frequent paradigms.
eigenspace 2 hours ago [-]
I found this article quite interesting, and couldn't help but feel there's something that's emotionally lost when we got rid of the dual-forms. The example from Wulf and Eadwacer where "uncer giedd" was translated to "the song of the two of us".
Somehow that just doesn't land the same.
heresie-dabord 2 hours ago [-]
> Somehow that just doesn't land the same.
I fear that a modern colloquial rendering would disappoint yet further:
our besties tune
zukzuk 2 hours ago [-]
If you found this interesting, you might want to check out The History of the English Language podcast.
I’m surprised how much I’m enjoying it. And I can’t believe I have 195 episodes left.
LAC-Tech 1 hours ago [-]
If you are interested in Wulf and Eadwacer it is beautifully sung here:
Example usage: My editor is great. Vi expects you to say to vim `:q` and then vi closes vimself.
frogulis 3 hours ago [-]
Boy that unc/uncer looks tantalisingly close to modern German uns/unser. Wiktionary seems to have it descending from a different PIE root, n̥s vs n̥h -- I'm not at all familiar with PIE though.
pantalaimon 2 minutes ago [-]
Same with Ic - Ich
shakna 3 hours ago [-]
n̥ is just the "not" prefix. The "ero" is the real root. The prefix applies to the root first, and then the other pieces have their meanings, usually. (Its a reconstructed language. There are both exceptions and things we don't know.)
"n̥-s-ero-" is sort of < "not" next-is-plural "mine" >.
So, plural-(invert mine). Or roughly close to "we".
"n̥-h-ero-" is sort of < "not" next-is-inclusive-plural "mine" >.
So, plural-(group (invert mine)). Or roughly close to "us".
But both are pretty close to the same meaning. High German maintained a lot of PIE, and is very close in a lot of ways. Though... Welsh is closer.
z500 42 minutes ago [-]
I've never heard of it being based on that root before. Do you have a source?
2 hours ago [-]
eigenspace 3 hours ago [-]
That was my first thought too! So many things in old-english are very very close to modern German, so it's sometimes surprising to see these false-friends.
huijzer 2 hours ago [-]
Also sad is the fact that “you” is now used for “thee” and “thou” and such. The older variants could distinguish between “you” plural and “you” singular
ksherlock 2 hours ago [-]
W'all have got y'all for plural you.
madcaptenor 6 minutes ago [-]
Before I moved to the South I (a non-Southerner) did not feel comfortable saying "y'all". But "you guys" seemed sexist. I have since spent a decade in the South and I have not picked up much of the dialect, but I definitely say "y'all" now.
"W'all" would be nice to have. I guess it's not a thing because it sounds too much like the things that separate rooms.
thechao 2 hours ago [-]
You, y'all (small close group), y'all all (larger, further group), and "all y'all" — Southeast Texas (coastal) dialect form that showed up about 25 yrs ago. I suspect it might've been there all along, but only became acceptable at that point?
Another 100+ years, and this'll be some solid grammar.
gibspaulding 51 minutes ago [-]
Don’t forget you’uns or yinz!
I struggled with this when I was a school teacher. English lacks a good way to clarify you are addressing a group vs one person, which comes up a lot in a classroom. “Class, you…” is clunky, “You guys…” has obvious issues, and y’all or any other contraction is generally considered bad grammar. I generally went with y’all. Kids would laugh about it, but that seemed to help get their attention.
dfxm12 27 minutes ago [-]
Surely, you knew all of your students' names and if you were addressing one person, you could've used their name. Addressing the class as merely "class" seems adequate as well. I'm having a hard time thinking of a situation where you are forced to use "you" ambiguously.
madcaptenor 5 minutes ago [-]
What if you're addressing part of the class, though? Like "y'all in the back, you need to get back to your work".
AndrewKemendo 43 minutes ago [-]
That has to be more than 25 years
I grew up in Houston saying all that in the 80s
EvsCB 1 hours ago [-]
Forms of it persists in regional dialects, its not super common anymore but in Yorkshire I still here "dees" and "thas", "yous" also persist as another form of the plural you.
shrubby 9 minutes ago [-]
youtwo commit -m "Refactoring translations"
nhgiang 3 hours ago [-]
You two add
You two commit
You two push
u2git 1 hours ago [-]
u2 add
u2 commit
u2 push
postepowanieadm 1 hours ago [-]
Us3
markus_zhang 3 hours ago [-]
For anyone curious as me:
git means You two.
stoneman24 3 hours ago [-]
I wonder how it evolved into the modern British slang of “git”. To quote Wikipedia [0]
“modern British English slang, a git (/ɡɪt/) is a term of insult used to describe someone—usually a man—who is considered stupid, incompetent, annoying, unpleasant, or silly.“.
And
“ Git is a popular open-source software for version control created by Linus Torvalds. Torvalds jokingly named it "git" after the slang term, later defining it as "the stupid content tracker".”
Yes/No and Yea/Nay used to mean different things too: "Is this correct?" could be answered "Yea, it is correct" whereas "Is this not a mistake?" could be answered "Yes, it is correct" (which you can also parse by taking the 'not' literally).
"Courts martial" and "secretaries general" are examples where the original noun-first word order remains.
It did made me go through many topics, like dual, exclusive/inclusive group person.
Still in a corner of my head, there is the idea to introduce some more pronouns to handle more subtilty about which first person we are expressing about[2]. The ego is not the present attention, nor they are that thing intertwined with the rest of the world without which nothing exists.
[1] https://fr.wikiversity.org/wiki/Recherche:Sur_l%E2%80%99exte...
[2] The project does provide an homogenized extended set of pronouns with 6 more than the two regular ones found in any primary school book. And completing all cases for all nouns is the biggest chunk that need to be completed, though it’s already done by now for the most frequent paradigms.
Somehow that just doesn't land the same.
I fear that a modern colloquial rendering would disappoint yet further:
I’m surprised how much I’m enjoying it. And I can’t believe I have 195 episodes left.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6-QagSE7sFY
Example usage: My editor is great. Vi expects you to say to vim `:q` and then vi closes vimself.
"n̥-s-ero-" is sort of < "not" next-is-plural "mine" >.
So, plural-(invert mine). Or roughly close to "we".
"n̥-h-ero-" is sort of < "not" next-is-inclusive-plural "mine" >.
So, plural-(group (invert mine)). Or roughly close to "us".
But both are pretty close to the same meaning. High German maintained a lot of PIE, and is very close in a lot of ways. Though... Welsh is closer.
"W'all" would be nice to have. I guess it's not a thing because it sounds too much like the things that separate rooms.
Another 100+ years, and this'll be some solid grammar.
I struggled with this when I was a school teacher. English lacks a good way to clarify you are addressing a group vs one person, which comes up a lot in a classroom. “Class, you…” is clunky, “You guys…” has obvious issues, and y’all or any other contraction is generally considered bad grammar. I generally went with y’all. Kids would laugh about it, but that seemed to help get their attention.
I grew up in Houston saying all that in the 80s
You two commit
You two push
git means You two.
“modern British English slang, a git (/ɡɪt/) is a term of insult used to describe someone—usually a man—who is considered stupid, incompetent, annoying, unpleasant, or silly.“.
And “ Git is a popular open-source software for version control created by Linus Torvalds. Torvalds jokingly named it "git" after the slang term, later defining it as "the stupid content tracker".”
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_(slang)
I think the better Torvalds quote was when he said "I name all my projects after myself"
"Git should get a room!"
(To clarify this was in Hokkien, not Anglo-Saxon).
But if you think about it seems normal... "we went to the city" is not really mean.