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What is the closest language to English?
Well, according to Geoff, "you guys" is an Americanism, not widespread English.
I'm sorry, I didn't understand "même si certains ont voulu lui ajouter cette horreur absolue : <écrivaine>... " ?
In all my many years in Britain I've never once heard anyone say 'you mates'.
I've never heard anyone say 'you guys' either, except perhaps as a joke (it sounds very American) It's true that men often call each other 'mate'. Women call each other, and men and women call each other, 'love', at least in my area.
And Americanisms in the mouths of British people sound VERY wrong, even to us ... especially in a British accent. Look at Nick in "Shaun of the Dead" -- I almost pissed myself every time he opened his mouth. (Of course, it was supposed to be funny!)
Uriel : Fr <écrivain> (grammatikalisches Maskulinum, sondern semantisches Fastneuter = Maskulinim + Femininum) = Al <Schriftsteller(in)> und Fr <écrivaine> (grammatikalisches und semantisches Femininum) = Al <Schriftstellerin>.
Ich habe greschrieben, daß Fr <écrivaine> eine reine Abscheu ist, weil dieses Kunstwort die Ignoranz von seinen Erschaffern beweist. Guest : les possessifs français s'accordent en genre et en nombre avec le nom qu'ils déterminent, pas avec le possesseur. C'est aussi simple que ça.
Oh, no, greg, German is more incomprehensible to me than French! (Don't let it fool you that German was my original first language -- I remember none of it now!)
Repite in espanol, por favor? I might have better luck.
Uriel, I must get round to watching 'Shaun of the Dead' to see what you mean (I've had the DVD for months)
The other way round- there's an episode of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer" where Spike, the English vampire, makes a robot of Buffy, who then says some really typically British things, like 'he's bloody stupid'. This also sounds really funny!
Oh, you have to see it, Candy -- it's a riot!
And on the subject of accents in movies, the Dawn of the Dead remake starred a British actor perpetrating an American accent, which I did not notice one bit while I was watching it (I had no idea he was British and was not paying attention). Once I DID know, on subsequent viewings I WAS able to pick out a few signs of his original accent -- which just goes to show that we Americans aren't very sensitive to the whole accent identification thing! You also need to check in back at Langcafe -- you're up for a vote in a poll, and loic has resurfaced and started up that whole Ashes thing.
Sheesh, I'd forgotten all about langcafe!!
Yeah, I saw a few days ago that I'm up for lady of langcafe or something -had no idea that andre would put ME up for nomination!! Anyway, have to go now but I'll try to check in tomorrow. (got to post on the Ashes!)
<<And Americanisms in the mouths of British people sound VERY wrong, even to us ... especially in a British accent. Look at Nick in "Shaun of the Dead" -- I almost pissed myself every time he opened his mouth. (Of course, it was supposed to be funny!)>>
Ha ha, I agree. I just saw that movie for the first time a couple weeks ago on HBO. :-) One thing that I found funny in "Shaun of the Dead" is how one of the young employees at Shaun's workplace says he is "seven'een" [sEv@n?in]. I hadn't thought that the use of glottal stops in Estuary could be so extensive.
But his penance for dropping the t is to be turned into a zombie shopping-cart-gatherer at the end, so ...
... Uh-oh, where does that leave US, Lazar? We abuse the t's as well....
Uriel : attention, ceci est un copier-coller mental (traduction littérale).
Fr <écrivain> (masculino grammatical perro quasi-neutro semantico = masculino + feminino) = Es <escribidor(a)> y Fr <écrivaine> (feminino grammatical y semantico tambien) = Es <escribidora>. Hay escribito que Fr <écrivaine> es una monstruosidad absoluda por que esta palabra inventada es una proba de la ignorancia de sus autodores. Guest : los posesivos frances se accuerdan (genero y numbre) con el substantivo que determinan y no se accuerdan con el posesor. No es complicado. Désolé pour cet ersatz d'espagnol : je ne peux faire mieux (à part utiliser Babelfish ou Reverso...).
>>Sander:
Pfft. To quote myself again: "The fact that these genders pretty well correspond to 'natural gender' makes them no less grammatical in function."<< For more on grammatical gender: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender And the is what natural gender is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gender Natural gender corresponds, in most cases at least, biological sex, as with third person singular pronouns and some words with certain suffexes like -"ess" in English. On the other hand, grammatical gender itself has nothing to do with biological sex. Similarly, grammatical gender tends to be associated with things like noun-adjective-determiner agreement schemes, whereas such things are not necessarily associated with natural gender, even though will probably exist in languages which already have grammatical gender in addition to natural gender.
Third time's a charm, greg -- thank you so much for bearing with me!
Travis -- I agree. (And grammatical gender is a pain in the ass! Why? Why? Why? And why can't I ever get them right?) |