[Community Project] New English!

Polycarp · November 12, 2007, 03:31:31 PM

Quote from: Wensleydale1) Ye and thee have been around a lot longer, so your argument kinda fails there. :P

2) Y'all is a distinctly american slang word. I've never heard a non-american use it. Therefore, it is dialectal, not language-spanning. [/quote]

Of course it's dialectical, but it's also the only word I've seen to fill that gap. Do the English have a better word to mean 2nd-plural that they use? If so, I'd love to hear it. If not, y'all remains the best alternative.

beejazz · November 12, 2007, 04:06:13 PM

There needs to be a third second person pronoun for that weird vague sense of the word "you" that somehow manages to refer to EVERYONE. I guess technically "one" already exists, but... it just seems odd to say.

SDragon · November 12, 2007, 09:30:00 PM

Quote from: Mithy
Quote from: Wensleydale1) Ye and thee have been around a lot longer, so your argument kinda fails there. :P
2) Y'all is a distinctly american slang word. I've never heard a non-american use it. Therefore, it is dialectal, not language-spanning.

As far as I can tell, the superiority-through-seniority argument is just as good as the relevance-through-contemporary-use argument, which means that, to me, this issue falls upon the fact that one is strictly dialectical, whereas the other (during it's use) wasn't.

On the gender-neutral pronoun, I suddenly had the idea of using "skwi" (or "squee", but if we're going to use a phonetic alphabet...). After this idea, I realized that the singular pronouns would be me, he, she, thee, and skwi. I kinda like how that works.

Thought on the phonetic alphabet: the letter C, as-is, has three current uses, two of which are obsolete due to other letters (cat and nice), and the third requires a second letter (CH). As long as we're no longer using C for the first two sounds, why not make it the official CH letter for New English? As for other two-letter sounds, we can represent them in parentheses until we find a letter for them. (th)is is an eksampul.

Polycarp · November 12, 2007, 09:54:23 PM

Quote from: Sdragon1984As far as I can tell, the superiority-through-seniority argument is just as good as the relevance-through-contemporary-use argument, which means that, to me, this issue falls upon the fact that one is strictly dialectical, whereas the other (during it's use) wasn't.

is[/i] currently in use, even if it's geographically restricted? We could go back to Old English, or Norman French, or Migration-era Germanic, or back to Proto-Indo-European if we like; any word is equally irrelevant since they're all equally dead. What makes "ye" any different than the P.I.E. word for the second person plural, whatever that might have been? Is it that "ye" is only the most recently dead?

In a general sense, I think that languages should be left to evolve by themselves, as they have for thousands of years. "They" is becoming a common third person singular when the gender is unknown; I don't see any particular reason to oppose that shift. "Y'all" probably won't become common - not because it is dialectical, but because the specific dialect it is associated with often has the connotation of low education or "hickness" in the States.

Seraph · November 12, 2007, 10:15:27 PM

While I advocate the return of "thee" and "ye" (and thou, thy, etc.) this is scarily reminiscent of Newspeak.

beejazz · November 12, 2007, 10:27:00 PM

QuoteAs far as I can tell, the superiority-through-seniority argument is just as good as the relevance-through-contemporary-use argument, which means that, to me, this issue falls upon the fact that one is strictly dialectical, whereas the other (during it's use) wasn't.

On the gender-neutral pronoun, I suddenly had the idea of using "skwi" (or "squee", but if we're going to use a phonetic alphabet...). After this idea, I realized that the singular pronouns would be me, he, she, thee, and skwi. I kinda like how that works.

Thought on the phonetic alphabet: the letter C, as-is, has three current uses, two of which are obsolete due to other letters (cat and nice), and the third requires a second letter (CH). As long as we're no longer using C for the first two sounds, why not make it the official CH letter for New English? As for other two-letter sounds, we can represent them in parentheses until we find a letter for them. (th)is is an eksampul.

Like I've said, sh can be handled by the now-obsolete x. It might also be wise at this point to clarify vowels ("ee" can currently be handled by "i" or by "e" or even by "y", whereas "eh" gets only "e", "ih" gets only "i" and just about any old vowel can make that blunt vowel sometimes represented by an upside-down "e"... closest approximation I can type is "uh"). Ph can be gotten rid of altogether, instead using "f", and th? I haven't a clue. Do we have any more obsolete letters lying around? I suppose "q" could be approximated by "kw."

For pronouns, we need one for each combination of three factors.

1)First/Second/Third Person
2)Male/Female/Neutral (assume neutral in the case of plural or first person pronouns... one implies mixed company, while the other is self-evident)
3)Singular/Plural

This will make a total of 18 pronouns, minus those four excluded.

So what are our fourteen pronouns?

Wensleydale · November 13, 2007, 03:15:42 AM

Well, at present it'll be I, Me, Ye (or you, undecided), He, Him, She, Her, Skwi, Skwim? We, Us, Thou (or Y'all, undecided), They, Them.

SDragon · November 13, 2007, 08:27:29 AM

Mithy, I agree that languages should evolve on their own (and Seraphine, I would agree with your comparison of newspeak), but this isn't intended to be taken seriously. I think of this as a sort of contructed language (a la Klingon or Elven), more then I do as an actual revision of an existing language (Newspeak). This is, to me, little more then a communal linguistic sandbox, where we can toy around with a language and not expect to have any impact on it.

BBB, we can also assume neutral for second person pronouns, for the same reason as assuming it for first person pronouns. Let's see what we have so far:

I, we, Thee, ye, he, she, skwi, they, and that's 8 that I can think of. Am I missing anything, and if so, what?

Wensleydale · November 13, 2007, 11:26:51 AM

No, other than possibly (as I noted) an objective pronoun for 'skwi' (and maybe adopting 'you' as an objective pronoun for 'ye', I think that's where it comes from, though I might be drastically wrong). I, He, She, Us and They all have objective versions, but for some reason, 'you' does not.

beejazz · November 13, 2007, 04:04:33 PM

I'm thinking "skwi" spelled phonetically would be more like "skwe" but I'm considering ditching vowels altogether.

Stargate525 · November 13, 2007, 04:09:19 PM

How is THAT going to work?

Wensleydale · November 13, 2007, 05:23:20 PM

Quote from: Stargate525How is THAT going to work?

Yes. And which vowels are you planning to drop, exactly? Does this include vowels in other major languages, such as Y and W, things that serve as nouns in many english words?

Stargate525 · November 13, 2007, 05:45:17 PM

and what are you going to use for the first person singular pronoun?

Wensleydale · November 13, 2007, 05:46:16 PM

Quote from: Stargate525and what are you going to use for the first person singular pronoun?

Haha. I never thought of that.

Haphazzard · November 14, 2007, 01:24:26 AM

Not change a major language? Why not? God forbid we make it easier for us to communicate with each other.

As for getting rid of vowels: REALLY? We'd be grunting like neanderthals. And then what are horribly drunk people supposed to do? Talk WITH vowels?

Why don't we just make e "ee" and i "eye?" (replacing "x" with "th" sound) EX: xat way xings luk kind uv lik xis.

While we're at it, why not get rid of those pesky capital letters? replace them with...underline? line above? star in upper right corner? why create a whole new letter (I becomes "i " and R " r ")

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[Community Project] New English!

Polycarp

beejazz

SDragon

Polycarp

Seraph

beejazz

Wensleydale

SDragon

Wensleydale

beejazz

Stargate525

Wensleydale

Stargate525

Wensleydale

Haphazzard