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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'

#41

Post by morganvachon »

level3 wrote: post #38
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 few more options: He goes by the name Jack. He bears the name Jack. He answers to the name of Jack. Everyone calls him Jack. His parents named him Jack.

...all of which seems circuitous, as if one is being dishonest or misleading. That's the biggest issue I have with E-Prime; speaking in it constantly makes one seem as if they are trying to hide something.

For example: I hear "He goes by the name Jack" and I think, "okay, but what is his real name?" Or: "Everyone calls him Jack" implies once again that "Jack" is not his real name. "His parents named him Jack" implies that he now goes by another name, not his given name.

E-Prime is an interesting thought experiment, but it's simply not practical for real world, everyday speaking. I will grant that it can be effective in writing, but it still seems as if it's only trying to prove a point, and aggressively at that.

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

#42

Post by geomark »

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.

"Yes" is ใช่่ , romanized as chai [1]

"No" is ไม่ , ไม่ใช่ , or เปล่า (mai, mai chai, bplao)

There are many other words that also mean yes/no but those are the direct translations that are used extensively in everyday conversation.

[1] http://www.thai2english.com/dictionary/yes.html [2] http://www.thai2english.com/dictionary/no.html

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

#43

Post by infimum »

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,…

good example, but in an everyday environment couldn't this all be inferred from context? when you say "Mount Everest is almost 8 km tall." I'll understand that you don't mean literally 8000.00m and that you somehow have gotten that information from some more or less reliable source etc.

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

#44

Post by d4nt »

Having read 1984, I find the desire to remove undesirable language from our vocabulary quite unnerving.

I realise it has the best of intentions, and nobody is proposing to remove 'to be' from everything. But the discussion here about how adopting E-Prime forces you to rethink what you mean to say, is eerily reminiscent of how Newspeak was used to control people's thought process.

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

#45

Post by nshepperd »

kriro wrote: post #36

I haven't read the paper/books but from the wiki article I find it problematic that "the code is red" is replaced with "we see the coat as red". Specifically if I were forced to use E' it would be very hard to argue certain philosophical positions. Objectivism vs. Subjectivism for example or to return to the coat...there could be a philosophical difference between the redness of the coat and the perception of it and…

A charitable interpretation would suggest that you can replace "the coat is red" with "we see the coat as red" or "the coat reflects mostly in the 620-750 nm spectrum" depending on the context (whether the subject is psychological perception or physical properties).

But certainly it seems to be a theme with these "logical" languages, to embed questionable philosophical assumptions that don't hold up under more careful analysis...

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

#46

Post by plug »

chippy wrote: post #35
peteretep wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Irish also has no "yes" and "no" also (generally speaking) One has to answer with an affirmative statement. "Do you like tea?" "I do" "Has mary got the message?" "she has" "ooh, it's wet outside today" "it is" "Are you happy?" "I am"

Anecdote warning, but this feels very common to me in "Hibernio-English" as well. I do it a lot when a simple yes/no would suffice, and I notice other people doing the same. I assume it's a construct that translated over from Irish. I must start listening out for native English speakers of different nationalities for comparison :)

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

#49

Post by vacri »

level3 wrote: post #38
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 few more options: He goes by the name Jack. He bears the name Jack. He answers to the name of Jack. Everyone calls him Jack. His parents named him Jack.

Those all sound to me like they're approaching purple prose, particularly in a verbal context.

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

#50

Post by paulddraper »

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…

Nice
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