[QUOTE=Mindfield]
Because “it” is a pronoun, so it follows the same rule all the other pronouns do. “It” also has the unique distinction of being the only generic pronoun, and is capable of being used in a contraction, so the distinction needs to be made to avoid confusion.
[/quote]
I appreciate you listened carefully in English lessons.
But why have such a complicated rule?
[QUOTE=Mindfield]
This “rule” has more exceptions than any other rule in the English language. The memory aid phrase is often cited with a second verse: “except when said ‘ay’ as in ‘neighbour’ and ‘weigh’.” This covers most of the rest of the exceptions, but some still exist. It doesn’t apply, for example, to pluralization of words ending in “-cy” (“fallacies,” “vacancies.”) It also doesn’t apply to foreign imports.
[/QUOTE]
Indeed.
This is indeed a quoted rule, in the same way that ‘no split infintives’ is. The question of who is an authority in English makes it hard to say whether something is a rule or not.
A rule with so many exceptions is not a good rule.
[QUOTE=glee]
This is indeed a quoted rule, in the same way that ‘no split infintives’ is. The question of who is an authority in English makes it hard to say whether something is a rule or not.
A rule with so many exceptions is not a good rule.
[/QUOTE]
But this is the thing, that phonetic rule is not a rule as in a law, it’s a rule as in a rule of thumb or a mnemonic.
[QUOTE=Cisco]
Another homophone that needs to be mercilessly crushed before it’s becomes a frontline issue:
. . . that doesn’t jive with what we already know.
There was a Sr. Vice President at my last company who found a way to fit this into almost every one of her emails, and all the parrots in the office subsequently started saying it in every conversation.
[/QUOTE]
Why is this wrong? It has now been common to say, “That does not jive with my understanding” and similar statements for most of my life. I recall hearing it that way back in the seventies. It might predate the seventies. You cannot halt the changing of language, especially a language like English.
Besides, I am a sailor and Jibe means
1 : to shift suddenly and forcibly from one side to the other — used of a fore-and-aft sail
2 : to change a vessel’s course when sailing with the wind so that as the stern passes through the eye of the wind the boom swings to the opposite side
Jibe as “To be in accord; agree:” is just an older slang. Please find its origin as the meaning you seem to want.
According to the Online Etymological Dictionary **Jibe ** “agree, fit,” 1813, of unknown origin, perhaps a figurative extension of earlier jib (v.) “shift a sail or boom” (see jib). OED, however, suggests a phonetic variant of chime, as if meaning “to chime in with, to be in harmony.”
[QUOTE=glee]
I appreciate you listened carefully in English lessons.
[/quote]
Bah. Yes, I have a habit of leaving “that” out from time to time. (Okay, a lot.) It’s my informal shorthand. It’s a word that can be left out of many sentences (not this one, of course) without any significant damage to comprehension, even though it should be left in.
And yes, I realize that this pushes me into descriptivist territory. I’m not militantly prescriptive.
English is a huge language – probably the biggest around. (It’s hard to quantify that, but being that it’s considered an international language with hundreds of thousands of words that readily absorbs new words from around the globe, it’s not an unreasonable assertion to make.) Big languages often need large sets of rules to govern usage, especially when the language is made up of a hodge-podge of other languages.
Mind you, Latin isn’t a very big language, but I understand that it’s one of the hardest to learn.
[QUOTE=Mindfield]
Mind you, Latin isn’t a very big language, but I understand that it’s one of the hardest to learn.
[/QUOTE]
What? Why? For whom? It is a dead language and its rules do not change. In its classic form, it has logical rules that make it far easier than English to learn. If you already speak a Romance Language, picking up Latin should be relatively simple.
Difficulty would have to be based on what language is your primary language. As English speakers, some of the Asian languages would be the most difficult. I think it is Korean where a very small shift in the sound of the word leads to very different meanings. That would be a good candidate for being the hardest to learn.
Russian and its Cyrillic alphabet are much harder to learn for English speakers than Latin. At least with Latin, you start to recognize the roots of a good part of English. I understand English with its mixed origin and crazy spelling and grammar rules is suppose to be one of the hardest languages to learn.
Jim {Where’s **Excalibre ** when we need him, he was always able to add a lot to these conversations.}
[QUOTE=What Exit?]
If you already speak a Romance Language, picking up Latin should be relatively simple.
[/QUOTE]
I would think that depends to a great extent on how the brain is wired. Some people do very well with highly inflected synthetic languages like Latin or Sanskrit. Other people do much better with analytic languages like Chinese. The agglutinative languages like German are easier for others. English is sort of eclectic, I think. It has some synthesis, but not a lot. It is somewhat analytic, but not reliably or regularly so. And it is mildly agglutinative — you can combine some words, like “nowhere” but not others, like “no one”. But anyway, to the point Mindfield was making, Latin would be very hard for the person who has difficulty memorizing arbitrary lists that morph across arbitrary dimensions of arbitrary cases. It can be a bit daunting to put together your very first accusative feminine plural with your very first nominative masculine singular.
[QUOTE=Liberal]
I would think that depends to a great extent on how the brain is wired. Some people do very well with highly inflected synthetic languages like Latin or Sanskrit. Other people do much better with analytic languages like Chinese. The agglutinative languages like German are easier for others. English is sort of eclectic, I think. It has some synthesis, but not a lot. It is somewhat analytic, but not reliably or regularly so. And it is mildly agglutinative — you can combine some words, like “nowhere” but not others, like “no one”. But anyway, to the point Mindfield was making, Latin would be very hard for the person who has difficulty memorizing arbitrary lists that morph across arbitrary dimensions of arbitrary cases. It can be a bit daunting to put together your very first accusative feminine plural with your very first nominative masculine singular.
[/QUOTE]
I am over 20 years out of practice but I recall a fairly consistent set of lists that covered most verbs and sentence structure. Much more consistent that English and no more difficult than Spanish IIRC. Daunting sure, for me learning any other language was and is daunting. I am not very good at it.
I have heard that the mathematically inclined find Latin simpler to learn than those that are not mathematically inclined. I wonder if there is any truth to this.
Possibly. But just to be clear, consistent and arbitrary are not mutually exclusive. The lists still must be put to memory, and some people who may be otherwise quite brilliant simply aren’t good at that.
[QUOTE=Liberal]
Possibly. But just to be clear, consistent and arbitrary are not mutually exclusive. The lists still must be put to memory, and some people who may be otherwise quite brilliant simply aren’t good at that.
[/QUOTE]
I think I see the confusion I am having. I think of English as having arbitrary rules and Latin as being consistent so that it is not arbitrary. You seem to take it to a deeper level that the consistent list is arbitrary in the first place. Do I understand you correctly?
Russian and its Cyrillic alphabet are much harder to learn for English speakers than Latin. At least with Latin, you start to recognize the roots of a good part of English.
[/QUOTE]
Not so much. It doesn’t take that long to get used to the alphabet. Russian, by the way, is similar to Latin, I’m told. Seems if you want to master Russian declensions, previous education in Latin is helpful. For all that, I don’t recall many people struggling mightily in Russian classes.
Funny thing, though; the Cyrillic use of ‘c’ to represent ‘s’ has stuck with me to this day even though I don’t use the Russian much. I’ll sometimes find myself using ‘c’ instead of ‘s’ when writing words with ‘s’ in them! What was lots of fun was taking French along with Russian and finding myself writing French in Cyrillic Brain knew I was writing another language and decided to mux the two ip, I guess.
[QUOTE=What Exit?]
Why is this wrong? It has now been common to say, “That does not jive with my understanding” and similar statements for most of my life. I recall hearing it that way back in the seventies. It might predate the seventies. You cannot halt the changing of language, especially a language like English.
Jibe as “To be in accord; agree:” is just an older slang. Please find its origin as the meaning you seem to want.
According to the Online Etymological Dictionary **Jibe ** “agree, fit,” 1813, of unknown origin, perhaps a figurative extension of earlier jib (v.) “shift a sail or boom” (see jib). OED, however, suggests a phonetic variant of chime, as if meaning “to chime in with, to be in harmony.”
So be careful when you are being pedantic.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t get what point you’re trying to make, because the dictionary agrees with me. Do you have a cite that Jive means “to agree with” in any other form than someone who misheard “jibe” repeating it?
[QUOTE=Cisco]
I don’t get what point you’re trying to make, because the dictionary agrees with me. Do you have a cite that Jive means “to agree with” in any other form than someone who misheard “jibe” repeating it?
[/QUOTE]
The best I can do it show you some google hits of this common usage or misusage:
I think things are changing and jive is taking on the meaning of jibe in much the way that 200 years ago jibe did.
If I can throw into the mix my own pet peeve, I think anyone who speaks of “the tenants of the faith” or “the tenants of Conservatism” should be required to provide rent receipts.
[QUOTE=flight]
Which errors do you mean? You realize the author is British and that they have a somewhat different approach to punctuation don’t you?
[/QUOTE]
Um, yes, I do. But when the book came out I read a review–New Yorker maybe?–that outlined many, many errors in the book. The one I remember most is that she made up her own rules for semicolon usage. I don’t remember any other specifics, but the list was substantial.
Brain knew I was writing another language and decided to mux the two ip, I guess.