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  1. - Top - End - #31
    Ettin in the Playground
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    Default Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?

    Quote Originally Posted by archon_huskie View Post

    Many people believe that you is the second person singular and the plural form fell out of usage. But it is really the other way around. You is the plural and Ye was the singular. Sort of. they were spelled with that TH letter instead of Y and the usage changed during the shift from Old to Middle English.
    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.

  2. - Top - End - #32
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    Default Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?

    you speak of the time period of Middle English to Early Modern English.
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  3. - Top - End - #33
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    Default Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?

    Quote Originally Posted by archon_huskie View Post
    There used to be a letter for TH. It looked like a d with a line through it much like a t or an f.

    Many people believe that you is the second person singular and the plural form fell out of usage. But it is really the other way around. You is the plural and Ye was the singular. Sort of. they were spelled with that TH letter instead of Y and the usage changed during the shift from Old to Middle English!
    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.
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  4. - Top - End - #34
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    Default Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?

    Are you Icelandic, then? I think that's the only language that still uses Thorn.
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  5. - Top - End - #35
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    Default Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?

    Quote Originally Posted by aspi View Post
    But it wasn't colloquial, it was just provocative since the added of sorts is simply wrong. In my experience, "most people" with this attiude are a clear (and way too large) subset of natural scientists. I can't recall a single instance where I talked to someone who had that attitude and wasn't in STEM. And honestly, it simply displays our ignorance and arrogance as natural scientists, which is completely unwarranted. I'm not sure how much historical merit there is to this bias, but if you look at some of the work that has been done in what is often referred to as "soft" science in the last century, the statement is utterly ridiculous.
    To be fair, there is a difference between exact science and other kind of science. The problem of demarcation between between science and "nonscience" is known since ancient times and is still subject to certain (and, most of all, futile) debates.
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  6. - Top - End - #36
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    Default Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    Are you Icelandic, then? I think that's the only language that still uses Thorn.
    US International Keyboard, altgr dead keys. I have copious amounts of non-English characters.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Razanir View Post
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  7. - Top - End - #37
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    Default 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.
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  8. - Top - End - #38
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    Default Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?

    Quote Originally Posted by Amidus Drexel View Post
    One could say the same about looking for ways to get offended on internet fora.
    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.

    Quote Originally Posted by Killer Angel View Post
    To be fair, there is a difference between exact science and other kind of science. The problem of demarcation between between science and "nonscience" is known since ancient times and is still subject to certain (and, most of all, futile) debates.
    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.
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    Default Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?

    Quote Originally Posted by Hiro Protagonest View Post
    English has been changing drastically in recent years. This unexplainable phenomenon is known as "Snoope Dogg".
    I beg your pardon! His name is Snoop Lion.

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    Default Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?

    Quote Originally Posted by aspi View Post
    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.
    Yep, there's not so much difference.
    And keep in mind that I'm a geologist, a field of study that is considered an... approximate science.
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  11. - Top - End - #41
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    Default Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanqol View Post
    I beg your pardon! His name is Snoop Lion.
    What a shift!

    Also, geology is not an exact science? Since when?
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    Default Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    Also, geology is not an exact science? Since when?
    Short version? because when you reproduce the geological and geotechnical model of a territory, the variables involved are immense, and you must use a degree of approximation, so the results will never be certain.
    Do I contradict myself?
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  13. - Top - End - #43
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    Default 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.

    Quote Originally Posted by Killer Angel View Post
    Short version? because when you reproduce the geological and geotechnical model of a territory, the variables involved are immense, and you must use a degree of approximation, so the results will never be certain.
    Oh, got it. It's not like physics because it has a Heisenberg principle.

  14. - Top - End - #44
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    Default Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jay R View Post
    Oh, got it. It's not like physics because it has a Heisenberg principle.


    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.
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  15. - Top - End - #45
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    Default 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."
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  16. - Top - End - #46
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    Default Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?

    Quote Originally Posted by Killer Angel View Post


    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.
    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.
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  17. - Top - End - #47
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    Default 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)


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    Default Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?

    Love the term. I'll go around introducing myself as a "Squishy Scientist", now.
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    Default Re: Is the English language undergoing a major shift?

    Quote Originally Posted by archon_huskie View Post
    BUT we also don't know why the French Nobles who had conquered England in 1066 decided to start speaking English instead of French.
    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.

    Quote Originally Posted by archon_huskie View Post
    English has changed greatly over the years. My Greek Professor claimed that Modern Greek is closer to Ancient Greek (2000BC) than Modern English is to Shakespearean English (1600AD)!
    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.
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  20. - Top - End - #50
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    Default 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.

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