4 ms·

English speakers themselves are quite capable of sorting this kind of thing out for themselves without waiting for the deliberations of the appointed whose deci

English speakers themselves are quite capable of sorting this kind of thing out for themselves without waiting for the deliberations of the appointed whose decisions they'll probably ignore anyway - as do the French, one gathers. Life and English are both messy but we muddle through.

jcelerier 8y ago
> Life and English are both messy but we muddle through. As a french, it is not muddling that I want but reasoning.
- bryanrasmussen 8y ago
  muddling through, I have managed to deduce that by 'As a french,' you mean that you are French, am I correct?
- akdor1154 8y ago
  > As a french, it is not muddling that I want but reasoning. Huh I never noticed this peculiarity of English before. "I am an Italian/Australian/Canadian" - fine. "I am an English/French/Swedish" - hell no. Traditionally you'd say Frenchman, nowadays you'd avoid the gender and use "I am French" directly as an adjective. Anyone know why -an words can be used as a noun and -sh words can't?
  - seszett 8y ago
    -an words are initially nouns that have come to be used as adjectives, while -ish words are only adjectives. The English language readily makes adjectives from nouns, but not the other way round. Nominalized adjectives are used for collective groups at most (which is why you can say "the French") but rarely become regular nouns.
  - Retra 8y ago
    "As a french person" would be the typical genderless replacement, not restructuring the sentence entirely.
dorfsmay 8y ago
If you see biweekly somewhere, it is impossible to know what it means without more explanations, even context isn't enough. This has been like this for years and nobody's even tried to fix it. What is the point of having such confusion? Also, why having dictionaries at all? And who decides which one is right? Why not have a body made up of experts who make that decisions once and for all when natural evolution leads to bad results?
- umanwizard 8y ago
  > Also, why having dictionaries at all? Exactly the opposite of why you think we have them, apparently. In English-speaking countries, dictionaries document existing usage, they don’t try to influence it. No modern dictionary has any opinion on what usage is “correct”, and you can find a lot of extremely non-standard things in the most prestigious dictionaries.

jcelerier 8y ago

> Life and English are both messy but we muddle through. As a french, it is not muddling that I want but reasoning.

bryanrasmussen 8y ago
muddling through, I have managed to deduce that by 'As a french,' you mean that you are French, am I correct?
akdor1154 8y ago
> As a french, it is not muddling that I want but reasoning. Huh I never noticed this peculiarity of English before. "I am an Italian/Australian/Canadian" - fine. "I am an English/French/Swedish" - hell no. Traditionally you'd say Frenchman, nowadays you'd avoid the gender and use "I am French" directly as an adjective. Anyone know why -an words can be used as a noun and -sh words can't?
- seszett 8y ago
  -an words are initially nouns that have come to be used as adjectives, while -ish words are only adjectives. The English language readily makes adjectives from nouns, but not the other way round. Nominalized adjectives are used for collective groups at most (which is why you can say "the French") but rarely become regular nouns.
- Retra 8y ago
  "As a french person" would be the typical genderless replacement, not restructuring the sentence entirely.

dorfsmay 8y ago

If you see biweekly somewhere, it is impossible to know what it means without more explanations, even context isn't enough. This has been like this for years and nobody's even tried to fix it. What is the point of having such confusion? Also, why having dictionaries at all? And who decides which one is right? Why not have a body made up of experts who make that decisions once and for all when natural evolution leads to bad results?

umanwizard 8y ago
> Also, why having dictionaries at all? Exactly the opposite of why you think we have them, apparently. In English-speaking countries, dictionaries document existing usage, they don’t try to influence it. No modern dictionary has any opinion on what usage is “correct”, and you can find a lot of extremely non-standard things in the most prestigious dictionaries.