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E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'

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Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'

#11

Post by veridies »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #8
legulere wrote: post #6

How do you communicate someone's name then? You can't say "the name IS", or "He/she IS called". The cognate to the word all the other Germanic languages use has become archaic and even lacks a present tense form: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hight#English Maybe: "One calls her/him"?

"He/she calls himself/herself X"?

This is what Spanish and Italian do normally. "Mi chiamo" and "me llamo" both translate to "I call myself."

Other languages probably do the same, but I'm not qualified to speak about anything else.

Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'

#13

Post by TeMPOraL »

veridies wrote: post #11
TeMPOraL wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"He/she calls himself/herself X"?

This is what Spanish and Italian do normally. "Mi chiamo" and "me llamo" both translate to "I call myself." Other languages probably do the same, but I'm not qualified to speak about anything else.

In Polish we use either "mam na imię X" ("I have the name X") or "nazywam się X" ("I call myself X"). Honestly, I only just realized that the latter form is literally what we're talking about - for my whole life I just had it stored in my head as a phrase meaning "me.name == X".

Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'

#14

Post by re »

I didn't notice at first, but, like with some other Wikipedia articles, the editors of this one have enforced the E-Prime constraint on the article itself. After the possibility occurred to me and I went back to the page to check, I only found it particularly unnatural in the initial sentence, since almost every other article begins with the sentence "[subject] is [concise definition]."

For a similar example, the "Plot Summary" section of the page about "A Void" also conforms to its subject's constraint--in that case, avoiding the letter "e": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void#Plot_summary

It surprises me that avoiding forms of "to be" presents such a challenge for me--particularly with this sentence. I feel that it makes my writing sound more repetitive, since I end up replacing "X is" with wordy alternatives like "I find X" or "X seems"; while I'm used to forms of "to be" appearing dozens of times in a paragraph, my replacements stand out more when overused.

Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'

#15

Post by Semiapies »

legulere wrote: post #6

How do you communicate someone's name then? You can't say "the name IS", or "He/she IS called". The cognate to the word all the other Germanic languages use has become archaic and even lacks a present tense form: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hight#English Maybe: "One calls her/him"?

Two ways occur to me.

In passing: This guy walking up, Jake, handles our servers.

Imperative: Call me Ishmael.

Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'

#16

Post by oxplot »

re wrote: post #14

I didn't notice at first, but, like with some other Wikipedia articles, the editors of this one have enforced the E-Prime constraint on the article itself. After the possibility occurred to me and I went back to the page to check, I only found it particularly unnatural in the initial sentence, since almost every other article begins with the sentence "[subject] is [concise definition]." For a similar example, the "Pl…

"my replacements stand out more when overused" - I have a different experience where repetition of "to be" derivatives equally stand out. As my first editing task after writing a paragraph, I eliminate such repetitions.

Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'

#17

Post by andrioni »

pmontra wrote: post #10
legulere wrote: post #6

How do you communicate someone's name then? You can't say "the name IS", or "He/she IS called". The cognate to the word all the other Germanic languages use has become archaic and even lacks a present tense form: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hight#English Maybe: "One calls her/him"?

AFAIK Russian, which lost the present tense of "to be", just says "my name X" (Меня зовут X). Italian, which has the verb to be, nevertheless uses a different form: literally "I call me X" (mi chiamo X). "I'm X" (io sono X) would be understood but it's more the answer to who are you than to what's your name.

The Russian phrase means "[They] call me X". "My name [is] X" would be "Моё имя — X".

Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'

#18

Post by oxplot »

I have noticed an interesting effect where initially one is given the freedom to use all tools available to achieve a task, and over time restricted to an increasingly smaller subset. I find that this makes me optimize the process and in case of writing computer code, makes for easier to understand and more stable building blocks.

Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'

#19

Post by matthewrudy »

Chinese uses "is" much more rarely than english. And that's something it takes a while to get used to.

For example 中國很大 ("China is very big", literally "China very big")

But for a while you'll be tempted to add an "is" in there.

In fact you can use an "is" to change the emphasis.

Eg. "中國是很大的" (literally "China is very big adjective modifier")

Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'

#20

Post by ghshephard »

legulere wrote: post #6

How do you communicate someone's name then? You can't say "the name IS", or "He/she IS called". The cognate to the word all the other Germanic languages use has become archaic and even lacks a present tense form: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hight#English Maybe: "One calls her/him"?

A not uncommon phrase is "They prefer to be called xxxx".
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