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Languages

Not sure whether that's true. Newspapers still have to be very careful about grammar or else they get hundreds of letters complaining, and there are still plenty of teachers and lecturers who quietly, even subconsciously notice these things when marking essays. It might not be such good advice just to disregard grammar rules at leisure, precisely because there are so many people who take them seriously.
 
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english as my first language, but bits of french spoken around the house because my mum spent alot of time in france when she was little. i speak a little bit of japanese, but mostly wapanese. (i'm not proud of it.) a very small bit of spanish (thanks dora the explorer and very enthosiastic children.)
 
With this issue concerning 'they'/'them', I tend to... well, yeah, I guess I use those. Except whenever I or somebody else does use them, I... notice? And, y'know, sort of muse it over in my head. I've been doing that a lot recently, actually thinking about English as a language and considering its occasionally odd (Or rather, eccentric) rules and such. I think too much.

As for 'one', I use it all the time in essays!... But in an almost jokelike way that I can't even explain. I tend to write essays like that, as if I'm... mocking my own writing style. I... Yeah, can't explain.

Basically, languages have been interesting me a lot recently!

(End useless post)
 
One time I got so exasperated with trying to decide which pronouns to use (it was maths coursework, of all things) that I gave up and wrote 5000 words of passive.

Let me tell you, guys: never again.
 
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I use 'they' as a genderless pronoun thing all the time, but I have to remember that when I'm taking the PSAT because that can screw you up.
 
... said:
Would that be like "That's a guest from outside, open it for him"?
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Literally translated, those were "There is a guest outside, open for him", "There is a person outside, open for her" and "There is people outside, open for it" ("people" is singular in Icelandic). "Það er" means "there is", "it is", etc.; "fyrir utan" means "outside" or "except for". "Úti" could also be used here and would also be "outside", but "fyrir utan" implies "right outside of here", whereas "úti" is more general about the location of what is outside (it could be anywhere that's not inside a building). [/Icelandic lesson]

"One" definitely doesn't work as a general-purpose gender-neutral pronoun; it's an explicitly general pronoun, used only to say "this applies to me and presumably everyone else reading". It's downright inappropriate to attempt to use it to refer to a specific third person.
 
Bachuru said:
Literally translated, those were "There is a guest outside, open for him", "There is a person outside, open for her" and "There is people outside, open for it" ("people" is singular in Icelandic). "Það er" means "there is", "it is", etc.; "fyrir utan" means "outside" or "except for". "Úti" could also be used here and would also be "outside", but "fyrir utan" implies "right outside of here", whereas "úti" is more general about the location of what is outside (it could be anywhere that's not inside a building). [/Icelandic lesson]
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It's these kinds of lessons that make me love language. 8D
Admittedly I tend to over-analyze languages to uncover their core.

There was something I recently saw on Dictionary.com...
Cellar door was considered to be the most beautiful English word. While "cellar door" has a negative connotation (to many), if the same sound was used but changed to (as said in the article) celladora, it made people think of beautiful things in nature.
It could make you wonder what in languages was carried over from another language and what words were created to describe something based on the sound of the word. This is mainly pertaining to what are now considered root languages.
 
Dear English,

I'm sorry about the cruel things I said about you earlier in this thread. I don't know what I was thinking. Hopefully, even though sometimes I go through phases with other languages, you will always know that I love you. ^^

Forgive me?
 
Zoltea said:
It's these kinds of lessons that make me love language. 8D
Admittedly I tend to over-analyze languages to uncover their core.

There was something I recently saw on Dictionary.com...
Cellar door was considered to be the most beautiful English word. While "cellar door" has a negative connotation (to many), if the same sound was used but changed to (as said in the article) celladora, it made people think of beautiful things in nature.
It could make you wonder what in languages was carried over from another language and what words were created to describe something based on the sound of the word. This is mainly pertaining to what are now considered root languages.
Click to expand...

But 'cellar door' is a phrase, not a word.
 
Zelador is a very cool Portuguese word. It means 'janitor', which just makes the Scrubs character that much neater.

Aleatório is another good one -- 'random'. I can't stand fome, 'hunger'. It sounds like someone with palsy trying to say 'form' or something.
 
Midnight said:
I can't stand fome, 'hunger'. It sounds like someone with palsy trying to say 'form' or something.
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Aww, I like it! I also like the French one for hunger, "faim".

Basically, when I lived with my aforementioned language-student housemates, if I was feeling both hungry and lazy, I'd follow them around the house saying "J'ai faim!" until they caved and cooked me something.
 
i studied Russian verb stems last night!

i'm probably going to get unlazy soon and study Swedish seriously, though.
 
In Portugal, iirc wrench is chave de fendas, which means... er. Crack key? Crack as in a crack in the pavement ok

Midnight said:
Zelador is a very cool Portuguese word. It means 'janitor', which just makes the Scrubs character that much neater.

Aleatório is another good one -- 'random'. I can't stand fome, 'hunger'. It sounds like someone with palsy trying to say 'form' or something.
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Zelador is a word I've never heard, but 'ter zelo' means being assiduous and stuff. Maybe it's a Brazilian word though?

I like 'trengo/a', which is a word from Porto that means 'silly'.
 
Midnight said:
Faca... ... wrench. [googles] Faca-chave-inglesa! ... Wait, 'wrench' is 'English key'? What is that supposed to signify about the English.
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Every morning when we leave the house we bolt the door shut and have to undo it with a wrench when we get home
...is that not how the rest of the world does it D:
 
hej grabbar. jag är riktigt lär mig Svenska nu! det är ganska jättebra. jävla älskar det. jag kunde använde en större vokabulär och min kunskap om Svensk grammatik är väldigt dålig, nå, hela tiden. men ... jo! ganska kul.

(jag hoppas att om någon kan tala Svenska, den ska tro inte att min Svenska är rolig ... )
 
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