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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   37167 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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As someone who uses "y'all" and someone who believes in making language more effective, yes, I'd be in strong favor of people starting to say "thou" again.

Fair enough. How far would you take this? We could introduce distinctions between reflexive and non-reflexive possessive pronouns, so that in the expression "John spoke to his brother and his wife", we would know whether the wife belongs to John or his brother. What about clusivity? Or reintroducing noun classes/genders for easier referent-tracking? There's no shortage of cool features we could add if we were really interested in making language "as effective as possible".

That wouldn't make English more effective, it'd just make it easier to learn.

Removing obvious redundancy in most cases would count as making something at the very least more efficient, if not more effective outright. It certainly wouldn't make it any less effective, but it would enrage those same prescriptivists who claim to care primarily about efficacy of language.

Fair enough. How far would you take this? We could introduce distinctions between reflexive and non-reflexive possessive pronouns, so that in the expression "John spoke to his brother and his wife", we would know whether the wife belongs to John or his brother. What about clusivity? Or reintroducing noun classes/genders for easier referent-tracking? There's no shortage of cool features we could add if we were really interested in making language "as effective as possible".

Omg, I would love a way to distinguish between reflexive and non-reflexive possessive pronouns. I really face that problem all the time when I'm trying to write extremely succinct reports of technical details to senior leadership. And the only way around the problem is to make it wordy-er. And in the worst, case, you didn't even think to distinguish up front, and you realize after the email was sent that it's confusing or could have multiple meanings.

I'm generally in favor of useful features.

Well, I'll at least say your the first consistent prescriptivist I've come across!

Omg, I would love a way to distinguish between reflexive and non-reflexive possessive pronouns.

If you ever find yourself in the unlikely position of having to pick up a Nordic language, you'll have that to look forward to.

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