I think, therefore...wtf?
E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
51–60 of 157 posts
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#52I 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…
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'.
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Definitely, using "to be" seems more efficient and understandable for expressions like this, but a lot of other expressions become clearer and more active. I personally wouldn't force myself to only use E-Prime, but I can see the value in trying to avoid "to be" as much as possible, within reason.
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#54Chinese 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.
Well, "yes" and "no" are (or should be) only a part of a more (logically) complete answer that is usually implied and therefore not mentioned. Derived from your example:
"(Are you) hungry?" - "Yes(, I am hungry)!"/"No(, I am not hungry)!"
I assume that the adverbs "yes" and "no" initially occurred as optional parts of an answer (only to later cast their supplementary part of the answer as the optional one). Curious enough, now when I'm thinking about it, I remember utterances with the usage of "yes" in the questions themselves (especially on some immigrants) - like "Hungry, yes?" I wonder what will this evolve into down the road...
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#55So, instead of "X is Y", we now we have to say "the equality relation has member (X,Y)".
Very handy.
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#56I 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.
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#57Sometimes 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]".
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#58Having 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.
Perhaps, but that sounds more like a kneejerk reaction rather than a real critique.
The idea behind it is supposed to show that by removing the verb 'to be', you have to think more on how to properly convey what you actually mean.
So in a sense it even allows you to get your actual thought process out there rather than having it dismissed for sounding overly harsh for example.
Contrast that to Newspeak, whose design is to limit and shape people's thoughts by external means (Another person chosing what is ok and what not), where as here /you/ get to choose what you say, it is merely the form that changes.
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#59Having 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.
The irony being that Orwell discouraged using the passive voice in "Politics and The English Language"
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
All rules are there to be broken
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit...
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#60Having 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.
I'm not very sold on its intentions.
The people who wish to do this are labouring under a great many sceptical confusions and take saying ordinary things like "the pen is red" to be some god-like act. Ie. they wish to subjectivise everything.
It isn't god like at all, and we're not trapped within our own subjective nightmarish experiences for every doomed never to be talking about the world.
It's a very simple thing to make a claim about how the world is and for it to be true (eg. "the sun is aproximately 8 light minutes from earth"). Rewriting language on the basis of some mistaken sceptical pet-principle is the height of absurdity.
cf. http://blog.mjburgess.co.uk/2015/12/objectivity-and-humility...