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Wait wait, Will European Life be the preferred term?
by interestica 3y ago
Wait wait,
Will European Life be the preferred term?
- agrippa 3y agoShould be “Europan” since “European” modifies “Europe” not “Europa”
- beAbU 3y agoWell, in some languages "Europa" is how it's called.
- shiroiushi 3y agoIf "Europa" is modified with an 'n' to form the demonym "Europan", is the star Vega properly modified the same way with an appended 'n' to form the demonym "Vegan"?
- kazinator 3y agoYes and it has appeared that way in sci fi.
- murkt 3y agoFor more confusion, let’s call some star “Vegetary”.
- amarant 3y agoOh! Now I want to try some Vegan meat! Not to be confused with vegan meat, much less Vegan vegan meat!
- pc86 3y agoI can't articulate why but I feel like "vegan Vegan meat" is more grammatically correct than "Vegan vegan meat."
- DiggyJohnson 3y agoYour intuitions are correct. We follow modifier ordering in English. Most aren’t aware of it. You can start here: https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/grammar/english-grammar-reference/adjective-order https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/grammar/english-gram...
- shiroiushi 3y agoIt's amazing: I only learned about that when I when I was middle-aged, reading some internet article. But as a native English speaker, I subconsciously already knew this rule, somehow, like it's hard-wired somehow. They never taught this to us in school.
- DiggyJohnson 3y agoThey don’t need to teach you this. I don’t see why that’s an oversight. There’s much to being fluent in a language like this that we take for granted.
- shiroiushi 3y agoThat's what I mean: you just learn it by being immersed in the language and hearing it every day and only knowing that language, so you learn to use it the way everyone around you uses it. So there's actual rules to the language that, as a native speaker, you're not even aware are rules. It probably took some ESL person to notice this rule even existed, and to figure out how it actually worked and write it down.
- interestica 3y agoYeah. But same spelling, different sound when spoken. Like Dominican/Dominican. (The Dominican Republic and Dominica share the same demonym when written, but it tends to have a different prononciation).
- bee_rider 3y agoYou might be grammatically correct but it is much more confusing and funny to speculate about the possibility of European life.
- soco 3y agoEuropean life: "am I a joke to you?"
- samplatt 3y agoI mean... Barring some pretty big catastrophes occurring, Europa is likely to outlast Europe by several orders of magnitude. If the moon is happy to wait, they'll inherit the name regardless.