CONLANG Digest - 16 Jun 2000 to 17 Jun 2000 (#2000-166)

> From:    Oskar Gudlaugsson <hr_oskar@...>
> Subject: Old Norse (was Re: New to the list)
>
> I see this as the single most annoying, confusing, and intolerable part of
the
> language: failure to make a singular-plural distinction in the second
person
> pronouns. "You guys" can't always cover the plural, as it's very
colloquial
> and often inappropriate.
Unabbreviated "you all" is the regular form, or sometimes "all of you"
(inclusively).  "You all" appears, e.g., in the Bible.

> I've often heard English speakers say something
> like "you, and with you I mean all of you, as a nation, not you
> personally..." to me. One of those things I don't really understand how
they
> could happen
Ah, a second-person exclusive :)
I thought I was going to put that in a conlang somewhere, and I forget what
happened to it...

> From:    BP Jonsson <bpj@...>
> Subject: Beauty of Old Norse (was Re New to the list)
>
> >Many difficult clusters appear in
> >modern English as well, such as [NTs] in 'strengths'.
>
> Where the /Ts/ is normally realized as a dental [s]: [srE~s+]; what people
> think they say, what they say when reading a word-list and what they say
in
> normally-paced speech are three different things!
Well, I know for at least one of those different things I have [NgTs] or
[NkTs] in 'strengths'.

> From:    BP Jonsson <bpj@...>
> Subject: Re: OFF: Red Meat Stinkiness
>
> At 23:53 16.6.2000 -0500, Herman Miller wrote:
>
> >artificially grown "meat"
>
> What do you mean by that? Laboratorily or magically produced protein?
Animal 57 ?

> From:    BP Jonsson <bpj@...>
> Subject: Re: Old Norse (was Re: New to the list)
>
> I've also taken to use "they" as a gender-nonspecific singular
> pronoun.  Mainland Scandinavians can use _den_
> for that, fortunately.
Singular "they" is pretty much the only choice in some cases--"If anyone
calls for me, tell them I'm out"

Someone has a page in defense of "singular they" somewhere full of examples
and usage.  (I'm not online to find where atm, though).

> From:    BP Jonsson <bpj@...>
> Subject: Flag of England
>
> --=====================_33074537==_
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
>
> I think there should be a campaign for using the flag of England as a
> symbol for English-language versions of web pages, rather than the UK/US
> flag.  I've seen an inverted-colors version of the UK flag, but that isn't
> any better IMHO.
>
> Any comers?
Well, I suspect most people wouldn't recognize the flag of England (I
wouldn't).
Perhaps we should hire a vexillologist to design a flag for the language ;)

I could imagine a page differentiating between UK and US (both flags as
separate options) just to be picky.

That reminds me of part of a joke someone sent on differences in English
speakers...

  >> Americans:      Spell words differently, but still call it "English".
  >> Brits:          Pronounce their words differently, but still call it
  >>                 "English".
  >> Canadians:      Spell like the Brits, pronounce like Americans.
  >> Aussies:        Add "G'day", "mate" and a heavy accent to everything
  >>                 they say  in an attempt to get laid.

> From:    Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
> Subject: Re: Old Norse (was Re: New to the list)
>
> BP Jonsson wrote:
> > What about introducing the spelling _youl_?
>
> But it's not pronounced /jul/.  I sometimes just write "yall", no
> apostrophe.  A pet peeve of mine is the spelling "ya'll", which looks
> like "ya will".  :-)  Probably indicates that it's been re-analyzed as a
> single unanalyzable morpheme, so people know that there's supposed to be
> an apostrophe, but can't remember where it should go.
_Exactly_.

> > The apostrophe makes it look
> > colloquial, somehow.  What is the possessive, BTW?
>
> Y'all's.  I've also heard "y'all's's" (I guess that's how you'd spell
> it) for the whatever the word is, the function of "mine", "yours", etc.
I'd probably write it y'alls's, maybe on analogy of hers and its vs it's, or
maybe because _three_ apostrophes in a word is quite enough ;)  I think I
shall convert all y'alls to yalls too (yalls's?).

> I've never heard "y'allselves", tho.  :-)
Because, amazingly, "yourself"/"yourselves" is the only standard second
person singular/plural distinction. (Someone gave that as proof that 'you'
is polysemous regarding singular/plural, and not just number-unmarked.)

> From:    "Thomas R. Wier" <artabanos@...>
> Subject: Re: Old Norse (was Re: New to the list)
>
> > What about introducing the spelling _youl_?  The apostrophe makes it
look
> > colloquial, somehow.
>
> <youl>, to me, suggest the wrong vowel.  It's most definitely [a] (or [A]
> depending on where you are in the South).  If I were to change the usual
> spelling, I'd go with <yall>.
<yall>, <yawl>, and <yaul> keep the vowel, but <yall> keeps the etymology
so... :)

> > What is the possessive, BTW?
>
> That depends on dialect.  In Texas, in my experience it's usually
<y'all's>,
> but some people make the distinction in the nominative between <you>
> and <y'all>, but keep <your> for both in the possessive.  I don't really
> know if this is confined to regional dialects within the South;  the
possessive
> with <'s> might have (somewhat) lower class overtones.
>
> Nik, others that use it, what do y'all think?
I think I use "yalls's" --  "That's yalls's problem".

> From:    "Thomas R. Wier" <artabanos@...>
> Subject: Re: Old Norse (was Re: New to the list)
>
> Nik Taylor wrote:
>
> > Thomas R. Wier wrote:
> > > Nik, others that use it, what do y'all think?
> >
> > I use y'all's occasionally, probably less often than "y'all", but it
> > doesn't have any "lower-class connotations" to me.
>
> Oh, no.  Don't get me wrong.  I use it most of the time.  I was
> just giving reasons for why some people might not.  Language
> innovation is usually like that.
I think yall's problem (the word's, not you people's) is its dialectness,
not necessarily lowerclassness.

> > Y'all's's (/jAlzIz/)
> > (same function as yours, mine, etc. - what is that called?), on the
> > other hand, does sounds quite peculiar to me, even tho I've heard it a
> > few times (and I think I might've even used it a few times without
> > realizing it)
>
> Yeah, I've heard that once or twice.  I think there's some confusion
> on exactly where the morphological boundary lies for some people.
Not necessarily.
The singular forms are your - yours, so the plural form by analogy is
yalls - yalls's.

"Yalls's" can also be used as a more emphatic quality, though.


     *Muke!