141–150 of 157 posts
I bemoan rather than beatify prescriptionists who bequeath their own bespoke English upon the world, befuddled when the rest of us find it somewhere between befouling and beleaguering rather than bewitching. Belike I belabor the point; I can begrudgingly believe avoiding "to be" might bestow a little clarity, sometimes. But betwixt you and I, in excess it bewilders me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly what I thought when I read the article. The proponents wanted to ban a class of semantics but instead chose to ban a relevant but totally different class of syntax . (can't help rewriting to follow the style)
I have trouble imagining how to answer "What's E-Prime; I've never heard of it." without using the semantics of "to be". And answering that seems to me the primary goal of an encyclopedic article. If the article starts with "E-Prime prescribes..." I still don't know what E-Prime _is_. Is it a committee? Is it a style guide? (Right now the article says it's a version of English, which, if superficially, at least answe…
You get the idea now? The very form of the question affects your understanding of the answer. Through the description you receive, you begin to understand what E-Prime means to those that came up with it. In E-Prime, you literally can't state what it is to anyone else because that would go against E-Prime's rules.
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Actually the first sentence shows a loop-hole doesn't it? > E-Prime, a prescriptive version of the English language, excludes all forms of the verb to be. Doesn't the part parenthesised in commas have a kind of implicit 'is'? For example E' is supposed to stop me saying things like 'Terminator is a good film and is 2 hours long', but I can say 'Terminator, a good film, lasts for 2 hours'.
Yeah. And aren't there other verbs that have the same god-like implication as "is"? I was thinking of "to do". If you say something like "X does Y", you're making the same kind of assertion E-Prime seems to want to avoid. Seems to me like another loophole.
While avoiding 'to do' additionally aides in specificity, I believe avoiding 'to be' has a bigger impact, and avoiding both near impossible.
This helps achieve the objective in general semantics of 'silence on the objective level.' In other words, that none of us have access to reality unfiltered by our senses and our linguistic programs, so it is best to not make statements that assume we do.
That sounds like a statement about "reality unfiltered by our senses and our linguistic programs".
It's not uncontroversial either, as lots of people have in fact claimed to have just such access.
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…
Speaking in E-prime can't be separated from the other person's speech in conversation, and its rules need to deal with this situation.
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https://youtu.be/sxoda3pLdN0?t=1m24s This is basic standard Thai used by all central Thais.
All I can say is that day to day, you must be speaking to different Thais than I am. Chai/mai-chai are only used - again, I must stress, by the 10-50 Thais I speak to in Thai each day - to mean "correct" or "incorrect". Where in Thailand do you live, and what level of Thai fluency do you have that you're running in to frequent counter-examples?
I gave two references to standard Thai, a dictionary and a video teaching basic Thai by native Thai speakers. Both show the Thai words for "yes" and "no". If you have an reference of any kind that indicates there are no words for "yes" and "no" in the Thai language please link to it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have trouble imagining how to answer "What's E-Prime; I've never heard of it." without using the semantics of "to be". And answering that seems to me the primary goal of an encyclopedic article. If the article starts with "E-Prime prescribes..." I still don't know what E-Prime _is_. Is it a committee? Is it a style guide? (Right now the article says it's a version of English, which, if superficially, at least answe…
You can't ask "What is E-Prime?" if you are not allowed to use the word is.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ?