Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

en.wikipedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 157 posts

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

#101

Post by matthewrudy »

peteretep wrote: post #32
matthewrudy wrote: post #19

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 ")

On a tangent, Thai lacks "yes" and "no", and in theory one signals assent by repeating the verb or adjective, with or without a negative modifier. "Hungry, or?" - "Not hungry" "Take, no?" - "Take" In practice, people will often grunt for yes, and shake their head and break eye contact for no.

Chinese is the same, actually.

"Do you want an ice cream?" "want"

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

#102

Post by im_dario »

shdon wrote: post #73
chippy wrote: post #29

I have spent an entire week writing everything in E-prime. All texts, all IRC chats, all postings, every email. I also spent the following week trying to speak in E-Prime. This proved very difficult but worth it. I had a notepad with me with several useful phrases in it. Even simple things like ordering from a coffee shop made me stumble. But I would try my best to speak in E-prime. I failed several times! Writing ap…

How do you introduce yourself? I find it difficult to find a replacement for: - I'm Steven - Hi, my name is Steven - I'm named|called Steven The only thing I could come up with "Hi, Steven, nice to meet you" sounds rather forced. The grammatical rules of English make it more difficult to use this compared to some other languages. E-prime seems very stinted, especially when asking questions: Is "less objective" really…

Borrowed from Spanish and similar languages:

- They call me Steven.

Probably it sounds wrong for native English speakers.

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

#104

Post by niccaluim »

untothebreach wrote: post #71
pmontra wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Spanish, as well: "Te llamas $NAME" = "You call yourself $NAME", "Me llamo $NAME" = "I call myself $NAME"

Also German. Ich heiße Bob / I am called Bob; wie heißt du / how are you called?

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

#105

Post by d0gbyt3 »

Grue3 wrote: post #57
desdiv wrote: post #25

Sometimes I use E-Prime as sort of a verbose flag for English. Instead of: "Mount Everest is almost 8 km tall." A verbose E-Prime version would sound something like: "I recall having read an Wikipedia article that reported the height of Mount Everest as almost 8 km." Notice all the extra verbs in there. "Recall"? Could I have mis-recalled? "Read"? Could I have misread? "Reported"? Could Wikipedia have misreported it,…

You could say "Mount Everest rises to almost 8km [above sea level]".

No, none of you make a very strong argument, since it reaches nearly 9km in height.

(damn this IS hard)

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

#106

Post by gliese1337 »

jballanc wrote: post #95

The Turkish language has no "to be" verb at all. In addition, Turkish has an extra verb tense not present in other languages which distinguishes between things that the speaker has observed directly from those they are only relaying 2nd hand.

Turkish lacks a explicit free morpheme (i.e., a separate word) for "to be", but it most definitely has translational equivalents, most notably the "zero copula" used for predicate adjectives and nouns in the simple present tense, declarative mood. All other situations involve an explicit inflectional marker (either a suffix or a clitic) that translates "is/are/were".

This is not unusual; lots of languages work that way. And in my experience, it does reduce the use of copula constructions compared to English, but not by much.

Incidentally, the "extra verb tense" you refer to is formally called "evidentiality", and is not considered the same thing as a" tense" by linguists. That's also fairly common in many languages, though it may seem exotic to English speakers.

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

#107

Post by panglott »

shdon wrote: post #73
chippy wrote: post #29

I have spent an entire week writing everything in E-prime. All texts, all IRC chats, all postings, every email. I also spent the following week trying to speak in E-Prime. This proved very difficult but worth it. I had a notepad with me with several useful phrases in it. Even simple things like ordering from a coffee shop made me stumble. But I would try my best to speak in E-prime. I failed several times! Writing ap…

How do you introduce yourself? I find it difficult to find a replacement for: - I'm Steven - Hi, my name is Steven - I'm named|called Steven The only thing I could come up with "Hi, Steven, nice to meet you" sounds rather forced. The grammatical rules of English make it more difficult to use this compared to some other languages. E-prime seems very stinted, especially when asking questions: Is "less objective" really…

Hello. Call me Ishmael.

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

#108

Post by rdancer »

shdon wrote: post #73
chippy wrote: post #29

I have spent an entire week writing everything in E-prime. All texts, all IRC chats, all postings, every email. I also spent the following week trying to speak in E-Prime. This proved very difficult but worth it. I had a notepad with me with several useful phrases in it. Even simple things like ordering from a coffee shop made me stumble. But I would try my best to speak in E-prime. I failed several times! Writing ap…

How do you introduce yourself? I find it difficult to find a replacement for: - I'm Steven - Hi, my name is Steven - I'm named|called Steven The only thing I could come up with "Hi, Steven, nice to meet you" sounds rather forced. The grammatical rules of English make it more difficult to use this compared to some other languages. E-prime seems very stinted, especially when asking questions: Is "less objective" really…

"My friends call me Steven. You will address me as Mr Seagal."

One of the advantages of this restriction on speech is that it forces you to think about relationships between things. In this case, what does it mean to have a name?

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

#109

Post by empath75 »

desdiv wrote: post #25

Sometimes I use E-Prime as sort of a verbose flag for English. Instead of: "Mount Everest is almost 8 km tall." A verbose E-Prime version would sound something like: "I recall having read an Wikipedia article that reported the height of Mount Everest as almost 8 km." Notice all the extra verbs in there. "Recall"? Could I have mis-recalled? "Read"? Could I have misread? "Reported"? Could Wikipedia have misreported it,…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidentiality

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

#110

Post by mitchty »

chippy wrote: post #30
desdiv wrote: post #25

Sometimes I use E-Prime as sort of a verbose flag for English. Instead of: "Mount Everest is almost 8 km tall." A verbose E-Prime version would sound something like: "I recall having read an Wikipedia article that reported the height of Mount Everest as almost 8 km." Notice all the extra verbs in there. "Recall"? Could I have mis-recalled? "Read"? Could I have misread? "Reported"? Could Wikipedia have misreported it,…

"Mount Everest has a height of 8km" Although, I do like your example as it gives a better indication of observer and subjectivity.

Mount Everest measures 8km?
Post reply on HN