English questions

[/ˌnɐ.ˈɾɛn.dɚ.ˌduːd/]

"businessfolk" does sound rather weird to me.

Same here.

Huh, neat to know. Thanks for the responses, fellow Zbeebfolk!

certain words sound fine with "-folk", while others not so much. for example, "townsfolk" "kinsfolk" and "storyfolk" all sound fine to me, but words like "businessfolk" don't. I'd say it revolves around how formal the word "-folk" is attaching to is.

as a side note, good job being weird, Herra Ratatoskr! the world needs more people who don't follow the norms.

[Travis B.]

"businessfolk" does sound rather weird to me.

Same here.

Huh, neat to know. Thanks for the responses, fellow Zbeebfolk!

Sorry if you really liked the idea of calling people businessfolk.

[jal]

I could imagine some rustic farmer in some English detective series complaining about "all them businessfolk" that go there for the weekends :).


JAL

[Herra Ratatoskr]

Same here.

Huh, neat to know. Thanks for the responses, fellow Zbeebfolk!

Sorry if you really liked the idea of calling people businessfolk.

Eh, that's not even the oddest thing in my ideolect, tbh. I know when to standardize things and when to let my linguistic freak flag fly.

[Travis B.]

Huh, neat to know. Thanks for the responses, fellow Zbeebfolk!

Sorry if you really liked the idea of calling people businessfolk.

Eh, that's not even the oddest thing in my ideolect, tbh. I know when to standardize things and when to let my linguistic freak flag fly.

Of course, my own idiolect is plenty odd, as you all know.

[Lērisama]

I was reading this comment by Raphael, and it struck thoughts in me. I entirely missed Keenir's themming¹ of Malloc, I think because them is the most natural pronoun for me there, no matter who the person referred to is. So I ask the ZBB which third person singular pronoun do you use for animate referents² in which situations?

---

I think³ it makes most sence to call they my default third person singular animate pronoun⁴, even though it might not be my most common one. I think³ I tend to use he or she in the following situations and they elsewhere

1. Continuity: if a someone is already assigned a third person singular animate pronoun, I'll stick to it, even if it isn't what I would've assigned myself
2. Disambiguation: either there is one he-compatible and one she-compatible referent, or they is taken by a plural referent
3. In formal writing
4. Around particularly gendering language, including names, especially formal gendering language. It feels odd to call an actress anything but she, but an actor is most naturally they. After about a sentence, if the referent isn't already assigned a third person singular animate pronoun, they will be used

Together, these do make up a rather large chunk of third person singular animate pronoun utterances, especially 4), but trying to list instead the situations where I'd use they would get hard quickly, so I prefer this analysis. I'm not entirely sure though³, hence my asking the forum at large.

¹ 'Tis a word now. I decree it.
² Okay, I get why this is shortened to ‘pronouns’ generally, no matter how much it annoys my inner pedant.
³ Insert caveats about the perils of self-analysis.
⁴ Edit: Redacted. See below

[Raphael]

⁴ I'm getting bored of typing. I shall heronafter refer to third person singular animate pronouns as pronouns, and my inner pedant can get used to it.

My inner pedant would like to remind you that there's always copy-and-paste...

[bradrn]

I was reading this comment by Raphael, and it struck thoughts in me. I entirely missed Keenir's themming¹ of Malloc, I think because them is the most natural pronoun for me there, no matter who the person referred to is. So I ask the ZBB which third person singular pronoun do you use for animate referents² in which situations?

I was actually going to reply to that post by saying that ‘them’ is also the most neutral third-person singular English pronoun for me. I now use it whenever I can’t remember a person’s gender (which is often).

[Raphael]

I was actually going to reply to that post by saying that ‘them’ is also the most neutral third-person singular English pronoun for me. I now use it whenever I can’t remember a person’s gender (which is often).

Fair enough, but if someone is quoting a person's forum post, and the very signature of that forum post contains the person's preferred pronouns, there's no need to remember anything.

Anyway, if I were to design an IAL or something like that, I'd probably do it this way:

Nice opportunity to promote my pet idea that gender-based pronouns should be replaced by a system in which the first person, animal, or object in a sentence, paragraph, or short text would always be referred to by Pronoun No. 1, the second person, animal, or object in a sentence, paragraph, or short text would always be referred to by Pronoun No. 2, the third person, animal, or object in a sentence, paragraph, or short text would always be referred to by Pronoun No. 3, and so on.

As long as that hasn't happened yet, I mainly use "they" for "generic" people, and of course for people who have stated it's their preferred pronoun.

[Travis B.]

I was reading this comment by Raphael, and it struck thoughts in me. I entirely missed Keenir's themming¹ of Malloc, I think because them is the most natural pronoun for me there, no matter who the person referred to is. So I ask the ZBB which third person singular pronoun do you use for animate referents² in which situations?

I was actually going to reply to that post by saying that ‘them’ is also the most neutral third-person singular English pronoun for me. I now use it whenever I can’t remember a person’s gender (which is often).

I use they when referring to singular third persons in English whose gender I do not know or who prefer to be referred to with it, but I usually use he or she when referring to people whose gender I do know with some exceptions (e.g. if they have said they prefer they, and I very often use they to refer to random people on the phone even when I strongly suspect their gender).

[Lērisama]

⁴ I'm getting bored of typing. I shall heronafter refer to third person singular animate pronouns as pronouns, and my inner pedant can get used to it.

My inner pedant would like to remind you that there's always copy-and-paste...

Ooh, good point. I'll fix that now.

[Richard W]

Does anyone else's English dialects have phonemic contrasts between 'rhotic' vowels and sequences of non-'rhotic' vowels and /r/?

I'm not sure about dialect, but my generally non-rhotic idiolect has /rl/ and /rj/ sequences when the vowel following /r/ is syncopated or yodicised in squirreling and Aryan. For the latter, the simpler /ɛəjən‌/ remains an alternative. (/ɛə/ is a conventional transcription - the main contrast for me between /ɛə‌‌/ and /e/ is one of lenɡth, especially before /r/.) I may not be a standard enough human for your purposes - reading and writing are very important parts of my English language capability, and much of my vocabulary was acquired by reading.

[Richard W]

On that note, should it be regarded as a criterion for phonemicity that a hypothetical form should be able to be borrowed, coined, or created via onomatopoeia as long as it fits into a variety's phonotactics? This is a big part of why I presently am hesitant to regard things like vowel quantity and nasality as phonemic in my dialect because they cannot be created de novo but rather can only be derived from historical underlying forms, and borrowed and coined words behave like such historical underlying forms.

An elaborate enough set of phonotactics could capture whether something could have an underlying historical form. And such rules are probably useful in making sense of what is heard.

The processes of monosyllabicisation and tonogenesis in Thai and Lao have had similar effects. For Thai, which has been influenced by massive Chinese immigration, the effect is that the phonetic co-occurrences are highly non-random, and led Zsiga and Zsiga to give a theoretical analysis of Thai tone which explained the non-existence of several extant combinations, not just the oft-denied falling tone on short checked syllables. For Lao, Enfiled ended up claiming (but not explicitly) that in the Lao of ordinary L1 Lao speakers, every monosyllabic word fitted in the Gedney box. (For Thai and Lao, tone-splitting did not apply to words beginning with what are now unaspirated oral stops.) I thought he was being lazy, but perhaps the Lao do regularise the exceptions away. Certainly the Lao tone marks introduced to handle exceptions are extremely hard to find, though tone-marking does have a history of breaking down. By contrast, the similar marks in Thai are stable, perhaps due to the much stronger Chinese influence. Even in Thai, the marks are largely optional on loans from English.

[Raphael]

New question: Let's say you're writing something, and you want to make a series of points. So you write three sentences, which start with the words "First", "Second", and "Third". Since there, the ordinal numbers all start sentences, they're all capitalized. Then, you start your next sentences with "And Fourth". Do you capitalize "fourth"?

[zompist]

New question: Let's say you're writing something, and you want to make a series of points. So you write three sentences, which start with the words "First", "Second", and "Third". Since there, the ordinal numbers all start sentences, they're all capitalized. Then, you start your next sentences with "And Fourth". Do you capitalize "fourth"?

Nope. The rule that applies is that you capitalize the first letter of the sentence.

(If it bugs you though, leave out the "and"!)

[Raphael]

New question: Let's say you're writing something, and you want to make a series of points. So you write three sentences, which start with the words "First", "Second", and "Third". Since there, the ordinal numbers all start sentences, they're all capitalized. Then, you start your next sentences with "And Fourth". Do you capitalize "fourth"?

Nope. The rule that applies is that you capitalize the first letter of the sentence.

(If it bugs you though, leave out the "and"!)

Thank you!

[jal]

New question: Let's say you're writing something, and you want to make a series of points. So you write three sentences, which start with the words "First", "Second", and "Third".

I always like to write "secondly", "thirdly" and so on, but do you than start with "firstly"? Is "firstly" a word?


JAL

[Raphael]

New question: Let's say you're writing something, and you want to make a series of points. So you write three sentences, which start with the words "First", "Second", and "Third".

I always like to write "secondly", "thirdly" and so on, but do you than start with "firstly"? Is "firstly" a word?


JAL

Huh? I'd say the text "First, a lot of people like to eat bananas. Second, a lot of other people don't like to eat bananas." is clearly a lot more "correct" English than the text "Firstly, a lot of people like to eat bananas. Secondly, a lot of other people don't like to eat bananas."

[jal]

Huh? I'd say the text "First, a lot of people like to eat bananas. Second, a lot of other people don't like to eat bananas." is clearly a lot more "correct" English than the text "Firstly, a lot of people like to eat bananas. Secondly, a lot of other people don't like to eat bananas."

To me, "second, ..." sounds odd. Yes, "firstly" sounds odd as well, but "first, ... secondly, ..." also sounds a but odd, so that's why I asked.


JAL

[Travis B.]

New question: Let's say you're writing something, and you want to make a series of points. So you write three sentences, which start with the words "First", "Second", and "Third".

I always like to write "secondly", "thirdly" and so on, but do you than start with "firstly"? Is "firstly" a word?


JAL

Huh? I'd say the text "First, a lot of people like to eat bananas. Second, a lot of other people don't like to eat bananas." is clearly a lot more "correct" English than the text "Firstly, a lot of people like to eat bananas. Secondly, a lot of other people don't like to eat bananas."

You're right ─ it is Standard English to use first and second this way.