Results 31 to 50 of 50
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2014-12-13, 11:55 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2010
- Location
- Toledo, Ohio
- Gender
Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?
You're not quite correct here. "þe" was the original form of "the", and was replaced with "Ye" for a while after the thorn was eliminated (to make mechanical typing easier) until slight changes in pronunciation caused the digraph "th" to be pronounced identically to "þ". The pronunciation was always "the". "Ye" has only ever been a replacement for "þe" in phrases such as "Ye Olde Shoppe" or "Ye Mill", never in ones such as "Get ye hence."
Ye (pronounced /jiː/), was the second-person plural counterpart to thou/thee/thy/thine (all forms of the same word) with the modern "you" being formed as a formal variant of thou. It was never spelled with a thorn.
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2014-12-14, 12:00 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2004
- Location
- Chicago!
- Gender
Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?
you speak of the time period of Middle English to Early Modern English.
Hello world. . .
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2014-12-14, 12:18 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2011
- Location
- The last place you look
- Gender
Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?
Þþ
And you're sort of right. Þou is cognate to du, and ye is cognate to ihr. Thou and you actually are completely different words. And for sake of completeness:
Thou- Singular informal subject
Thee- Singular informal object
Ye- Plural and/or formal subject
You- Plural and/or formal object
By a completely different process, we get "Ye olde". "The" was originally spelled "þe". But we got our printing presses from overseas, where they didn't use thorn (þ). So printers would use y instead, because in script they look similar. Thus, "Þe Olde" would be written "Ye Olde". But again, it's a completely different process than the etymology of thou v you.
Also, it's Early Modern English. Old English is Anglo-Saxon like "Hwæt! we gar-Dena in ġear-dagum / Þeodcyninga þrym ellen fremedon".
Also, also, fun fact. Þ is a key on my keyboard.Avatar by Venetian Mask. It's of an NPC from a campaign I may yet run (possibly in PbP) who became a favorite of mine while planning.
I am a 10/14/11/15/12/14 LG Clr 2
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2014-12-14, 06:23 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2007
- Location
- Switzerland
- Gender
Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?
Are you Icelandic, then? I think that's the only language that still uses Thorn.
Resident Vancian Apologist
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2014-12-14, 06:41 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2009
- Location
- Lustria
- Gender
Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes. (W.Whitman)
Things that increase my self esteem:
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2014-12-14, 02:13 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2011
- Location
- The last place you look
- Gender
Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?
Avatar by Venetian Mask. It's of an NPC from a campaign I may yet run (possibly in PbP) who became a favorite of mine while planning.
I am a 10/14/11/15/12/14 LG Clr 2
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2014-12-14, 03:17 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2011
- Location
- Minnesota
- Gender
Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?
English has been changing drastically in recent years. This unexplainable phenomenon is known as "Snoope Dogg".
Last edited by Hiro Protagonest; 2014-12-14 at 03:36 PM.
Avatar of George the Dragon Slayer, from the upcoming Indivisible!
My Steam profile
Warriors and Wuxia, Callos_DeTerran's ToB setting
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2014-12-14, 04:30 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2013
Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?
How could I be offended if I'm not even a linguist? I've merely worked with a few before and believe that quite some participants here seem to have a really skewed impression of what that field actually encompasses.
I agree with this completely. What I disagree with, is the notion that linguistics falls into this category. Sure, there are linguists who don't work by the scientific method and I'm sure there are plenty. But there are also linguists who are dedicated to creating very precise and very formal models of languages and their approach doesn't really differ from that of a theoretical physicist (sometimes called "armchair linguists"). On the other hand, you have those who collect evidence from corpora of spoken and written language to falsify and motivate such models, i.e. the experimentalists.
How is that any different from a natural science except in the subject of the study? It even corresponds perfectly to the classic first two paradigms of science.Inuit avatar withcherrybanana on top by Yanisa
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2014-12-14, 07:06 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2009
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2014-12-15, 07:13 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2009
- Location
- Lustria
- Gender
Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes. (W.Whitman)
Things that increase my self esteem:
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2014-12-15, 07:24 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2007
- Location
- Switzerland
- Gender
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2014-12-15, 08:02 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2009
- Location
- Lustria
- Gender
Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes. (W.Whitman)
Things that increase my self esteem:
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2014-12-15, 11:32 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2010
- Location
- Dallas, TX
- Gender
Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?
A science is a study based on experiment and observation, of hypothesis forming and testing. The study of ESP is a science when they look at data and test their hypothesis to form a conclusion. The study of physics is not a science when they ignore the data and don't test their hypothesis.
Oh, got it. It's not like physics because it has a Heisenberg principle.
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2014-12-15, 01:59 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2009
- Location
- Lustria
- Gender
Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?
Sadly, geology is based a lot on guesses and estimations...
For example, a terrain is composed by a variable percentage of sand, silt, and so on. These can change metween few meters, so, even with field (or laboratory) tests, you can only give a general esteem of geotechnical values.
Engineers hate it.Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes. (W.Whitman)
Things that increase my self esteem:
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2014-12-15, 05:20 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2007
- Location
- Switzerland
- Gender
Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?
Heh. That reminds me of that lecture I once saw where engineers were given a short taste of biochemistry. The lecturer started with (paraphrased):
"Know how you spent the last half year computing machines with two or three interacting parts? Well, biochemists are working with pathways of hundreds of parts, which interact with each other, have feedback loops and are sometimes unknown or vanish in the middle of the reaction."Resident Vancian Apologist
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2014-12-16, 01:16 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2010
- Location
- The Great PNW
- Gender
Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?
I like to call things like geology (and ecology and evolution, which is the field I'm most familiar with) "squishy science". Hard science is like poking an iron cube with a pool cue. It's fairly easy to figure out ahead of time what your hypothesis predicts and match it to observations. Squishy science is like poking a jello mold with a pool cube. There are so many variables that just figuring out what your hypothesis predicts is hard, and matching it to data will require a whole bunch of measurements and probably supercomputers.
Author of The Auspician's Handbook and The Tempestarian's Handbook for Spheres of Power.Greenman by Bradakhan/Spring Greenman by Comissar/Autumn Greenman by Sgt. Pepper/Winter Greenman by gurgleflep
Ask me (or the other authors) anything.
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2014-12-16, 07:01 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2009
- Location
- Lustria
- Gender
Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?
Yeah, pretty much. Nice analogy, btw...
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes. (W.Whitman)
Things that increase my self esteem:
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2014-12-16, 07:13 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2007
- Location
- Switzerland
- Gender
Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?
Love the term. I'll go around introducing myself as a "Squishy Scientist", now.
Resident Vancian Apologist
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2014-12-18, 10:44 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2005
- Location
- Ēast Seaxna rīc
- Gender
Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?
Yes we kind of do.
Made slightly more complicated by the fact that they continued to learn and speak French and French was the most spoken language among the nobility even in places the French had never conquered.
There's no such thing as Ancient Greek. The Classical Greeks spoke three main languages; Ionic, Doric and Aeolic, each with various dialects. The Greek of the New Testament (and various other Roman writers) was a standardised literary form invented later after the rise and fall of Macedonia.
Modern Greek underwent some form of classicisation, but may not actually be what any individual modern Greek actually speaks. Most modern languages like Italian, French, Greek and German are made up standardisations that went against the laws of how languages develop naturally, while English is slightly more feral.
Modern Greek dialects may be closer to ancient Greek dialects than modern British English is to Shakespearean English."that nighted, penguin-fringed abyss" - At The Mountains of Madness, H.P. Lovecraft
When a man decides another's future behind his back, it is a conspiracy. When a god does it, it's destiny.
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2014-12-18, 02:13 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2012
- Gender
Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?
English doesn't really have a native prefix, root, suffix model of constructing words, I don't think. Sometimes we follow the German model of stringing words together, but it seems to me that a lot of words only have their meaning from context. Those are the ones we invent/adopt/re-purpose for pointing and grunting with words. But I am not a linguist, and my brain may be broken from having a go at learning Lojban.