E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
en.wikipedia.org
E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
1–10 of 157 posts
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#2This is an interesting version of the English language.
It is clarifying thinking and strengthening writing.
Or should I say: I find this version of the English language interesting. It clarifies my thinking and strengthens my writing.
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#3I find this article really interesting. I am a native speaker of Spanish and the verb 'to be' is usually one of the first lessons we learn when we study English.
Spanish has to different verbs to depict the meaning(s) of 'to be' -> ser (exist) and estar (stay). I always thought merging those meanings into a single verb did not help to express the richness of the English language.
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#4The argument for forbidding "to be" seems a little like the argument for forbidding "is a" (inheritance) relationships in programming: that any "is a" can be expressed more precisely as a "has a" and/or "does _".
I think it's interesting to take the argument even further, to argue for structural types (like interfaces in Go and Typescript, and objects in OCaml) over nominal types (like Java interfaces and Haskell typeclasses). The former just says "if Bar is an interface with method Blaz(int, int, bool), and Foo has a method Blaz(int, int, bool), then Foo is a Bar", while the latter require the programmer to explicitly specify that Foo is a (implements) bar.
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#5A quick scan through the text and, as far as I can tell, the whole article is written (modulo examples) in E-Prime.
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#6How 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"?
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#7If I'm not mistaken, Russian does not have the verb 'to be', right?
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#8How 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"?
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#9A quick scan through the text and, as far as I can tell, the whole article is written (modulo examples) in E-Prime.
Almost - I count at least five occurrences outside of examples or quotes. Admittedly not bad for an article of its size.
Re: E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
#10How 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.