Entries tagged with language

I found something amusing on Wikipeida today: A warning about there being IPA symbols on an article about Blissymbol.

The International Phonetic Alphabet is for the representation of verbal communication. Blissymbols have no verbal equivalent, which is kind of their point. Blissymbols is a augmentative and alternative communication strategy, which is are mostly used by people and those around them who have various kinds of disorders that make it difficult or impossible to communicate by traditional spoken, written, or signed languages. Like, for instance, aphasia where brain can't really grasp natural language, or ALS and Parkinson's where the person has increasing difficulties in the fine motor control needed for speech.

Anyway, the phonetic symbol part can't be edited out, as it's hardcoded into the infobox about the language.

Also, the abctajpu is very, very useful.

I've been thinking on why it's "You're" instead of "you's" when when one is just addressing a singular you.

I was flipping though a book in a bookstore that was a series of small essays on English and other languages, and there was a section on informal and formal you, and it's singular and plural forms.

Apparenlty, there was singular thou and plural ye in (Middle or Old) English - this then moved to singular thee and pluarl you. Then somewhere along the line, thee got dropped.

So the reason why it's "you're" with a contraction plural of a "to be" is because you is considered to be in the plural, so the "to be" has to be plural to agree with the plural subject.

Yes, it's geeky, but it's fun, dammit! And way better than ranting on why you should be able to split infinitives in English.

(no subject)

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