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How to use repetition (2017)
- memming 3y agoLong cat is long.
- zfxfr 3y agoI wonder if this kind of thing is found in other languages. for example i can't think of any in French (i am French) even "it is what it is" which I would translate by " C'est comme ça" (it is like this)
- yamrzou 3y agoI can think of the following sentence used in Maghrebi Arabic dialect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maghrebi_Arabic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maghrebi_Arabic): إِلِّي صَارْ صَارْ Which translates to: "Whatever happened, happened."
- aspenmayer 3y agoC'est la vie.
- firstbabylonian 3y agoIn Russian, you do hear people say «что будет, то будет» — literally ”what will be will be”. The formal rules of the language discourage tautology though. It's considered ineloquent, so it's not very common.
- TacticalCoder 3y agoThe last in TFA with the "drink drink" is definitely done all the time in french too. Something like the following repetition is ultra common: "C'etait bien ?" (What is good?) "Oui c'etait bien. Enfin, pas 'bien bien' mais... Bien". (Yes, it was good. Well, not "good good" but... Good). The "x is x" is ultra common too, say to a kid, when it really needs to go to bed: "J'avais dit dodo et dodo c'est dodo!" (even if it's not proper french, it's a typical way to talk to kids: "I said bedtime and bedtime is bedtime"). Even with french "verlan": *"Il etait relou. Pas relou-relou mais quand meme un peu relou!". Also I'm sure I hear this one all the time: "Quand faut y aller, faut y aller!". It's everywhere in french.
- djhn 3y agoI like how you use the pronoun "it" for the child. Somewhat in line with French parenting philosophy, or is that reading too much into it?
- cultureswitch 3y agoDefinitely reading too much into her
- adhesive_wombat 3y agoShikata ga nai in Japanese (famously fictionally adopted by the First 100 in Red Mars when they encountered difficulties when colonising Mars), as well as mei ban fa (没办法) in Chinese.
- jameshart 3y agoI think French uses repetitions in a different way. I mean, it's attained the status of just a word particle in its own right in French, but Est ce que c'est - Est ce que ce est - "is it that it is" seems like a repetition embedded deep in a part of the language. Are the circumstances such that the circumstances are... And then qu'est-ce que c'est takes it to another level - what is this, that this is?
- BiteCode_dev 3y agoA bit unrelated since the article is more about stylistic repetition, but I had a hard time using repetition in my writings after decades of school drilling into my that it was a bad thing. Yet in teaching, repetition is not just acceptable, it's necessary. You need to say the same thing over and over again for it to stick. And still, you'll note people will have missed half of it. So it turns out repetition is like everything: whether it's good or bad is highly contextual. The hard part is making repetition not boring.
- kqr 3y ago> after decades of school drilling into my that it was a bad thing. I'd argue that's just school teaching bad style. They're doing it because they are optimising for something else: exposing students to wider vocabulary. To write well, call a spade a spade. To show off how many words you know, call it a spade the first time, shovel the next, digging device the third time, then earth moving tool, substrate projector, historic agricultural staple, etc. School optimises for the latter. If you feel like your vocabulary is sufficient, forget everything school taught you. Write simply. A spade is a spade.
- cultureswitch 3y agoI would never call a shovel a spade due to the potential for confusion (unless that's what I'm going for).
- quickthrower2 3y agoThe tautologies are there straighten out the confusion that was in someones mind. Like invoking modus ponens.
- Mindwipe 3y agoI am somewhat disappointed that the thread below this one is not also called "How to use repetition (2017)."
- CodesInChaos 3y agoIn the puzzle game "Baba is you", three word sentences define the rules of the game. For example the phrase in the title means that the character/object "baba" is controlled by the player. You can use phrases of the form "<noun> is <other noun>" to transmute objects. But of there is the phrase "<noun> is <same noun>" on the board, then it becomes immutable, matching the use or repetition described in the article. For example https://i.postimg.cc/Z0kqQxXY/image.png https://i.postimg.cc/Z0kqQxXY/image.png It's a fun game BTW. https://store.steampowered.com/app/736260/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/736260/ or https://hempuli.itch.io/baba https://hempuli.itch.io/baba
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bikenaga 3y agoA haiku by Kobayashi Issa, supposedly written after the death of one of his children: The world of dew Is a world of dew And yet ... and yet ...
- kazinator 3y ago"It is what it is" isn't a tautology. It's a condensed way of saying that "it is what is seems to be, and nothing more or less; in particular, it is not something else we might wish it to be."
- xwowsersx 3y agoRight. A tautology would be "it is ∨ ¬it is"
- kazinator 3y agoIf we remove the nuanced semantics, a logical tautology can be discerned in the syntax "it is what it is", namely: (it = what?) ∧ (it = what?) The left expression says that "it is what?": it binds the meta-variable what? to the it object. The right expression has the binding of what? in scope already, and just redundantly asserts it; the two what?s unify. The right side is saying "it is what; and as for what that is, see the left side". It's basically a more elaborate form of the P ∧ P tautology. BTW: I just intuited that I can get ∧ using Japanese IME by typing "ando" (あんど); it appears as one of the replacements. Japanese IME is useful not just for Japanese. Need ohms? Just "omega" (おめが) and there it is.
- jameshart 3y agoWell none of the other example repetition usages are simple tautologies either. The entire post is about how repetitions that appear to be simple tautologies are actually communicating some meaning.
- xwowsersx 3y agoIf he dies, he dies.