Mark Hovila | Re: [LFN] el
I lived in Buffalo for a year in the mid-'70s and I remember hearing people occasionally say "youse." But, like "y'all" in the South, it seems to be thought of as slang, or even bad English. Too bad.
Mark
On Mar 19, 2013, at 10:18 AM, Mark Hovila wrote:
> Paul,
>
> But English does have a plural of "you." Y'all, youse, you-uns. :)
>
> Mark
>
> On Mar 19, 2013, at 5:53 AM, Paul Bartlett wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 19 Mar 2013 03:37:07 -0400, mkhovila <alivoh@...> wrote:
>>
>>> Why is "el" used for both "he/him" and "she/her"? How do you translate a
>>> sentence like:
>>>
>>> "El dona la gato a el."
>>>
>>> How do you know if it means "He gives the cat to her" or "She gives the
>>> cat to him"?
>>
>> You might ask in Finland. To the best of my information, the Finns are a
>> sophisticated, cultured, educated people, but the Finnish language does
>> not have any he/she/it distinction. For that matter, many language users
>> cannot understand how English has an indifferent "they" for third person
>> plural pronouns. They males? They females? They neuters? They mixed sex?
>> How can English possibly get along in the universe without making all
>> these careful distinctions? How can English possibly get along without
>> distinguishing between "we including you to whom I am speaking" and "we
>> not including you to whom I am speaking," as do some languages? Ever since
>> "thou" and "ye" dropped out, English has only the indifferent "you" for
>> both singular and plural, a difference which users of some languages
>> consider absolutely crucial, but we get along without it. What is familiar
>> to us in our native language is not necessarily Writ Large In The Nature
>> Of The Cosmos. Should we have the six verbal moods of ancient Greek?
>>
>> --
>> Paul Bartlett
>>
>
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