241
this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
241 points (90.8% liked)
Ask Lemmy
27240 readers
2212 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
“Now I know MY A, B, Cs”
According to this, Brits also use pronouns for it. Not America specific
I don't just mean the alphabet song, which originates from the US BTW. I mean the linguistic phenomenon which I cannot find the name for because I cannot put together a search query that isn’t too generic. The most obvious occurence is know one’s stuff or know one’s [general subject of study] but it occurs with other verbs too. The 8-Bit Guy recently said “here are your cursor keys” when describing the odd layout of an ‘80s keyboard that nobody is using nowadays so the pronoun “your” seems inappropriate. I complained to linguists and they didn't take me too seriously (presumably they just let the language evolve without considering if it makes sense, which I guess will eventually result in “your” being officially recognized as an alternative spelling of “you’re” – a mistake almost only Americans make).
And yes, I guess Brits say “know your ...” too but I associate that with Americans. And note that phrases like “know your place” or “know your neighbor” are exempt for obvious reasons.
Oh I can kind of answer this.
Take "your keys" vs "the keys". In both cases you have a determiner and a noun. Now because European languages are not topic prominent they mostly attach some kind of a determiner to nouns. Now most language in Romance and Germanic family over several century pick "the noun of noun" while English went with more "adj noun". This results in English using articles less then other languages.
Neither of these is more logical then the other. IT just each language need some way to specify the scale of nouns. I am talking about all keys everywhere, no I am talking arrow keys. In a lot of langues I wouldn't even use the word "the" when talking about them because many languages just don't have a word for the.
Sounds like a language issue you're having with English in general since as much as I like to mock the Yanks bastardised English, what you're describing above sounds fine to me as an Englishman.
Maybe in Czech (guessing from your username) they don't use possessives nearly as much? To me it sounds absolutely fine. In your example it could be seen as him showing you the keyboard (like your boss showing you your cubicle or whatnot). Funnily enough, in my native Spanish we also use possessives a ton in pretty much the exact same way, so in English it seems normal.
I mean, it's my cubicle but not my keyboard...