Tips & Tricks: singular They
As many people may have noticed, in English They can be used as a neutral form to refer to somebody that has been just mentioned in a sentence, but without specifying the name or gender, so it is not clear wether to add he or she. It's called Singular They.
It applies to any derivative form of they, such as them, their and so on.
Let's see some examples:
They told me that an employee is already waiting for me. I'll ask them as I arrive
Somebody has forgotten their book here. Let us put on a shelf where it's visibile.
A professional should never share their information like this.
Being English a language that changes with time, like any other, this use has been criticized in the past, as it rose. But here it is useful to make a distinction between prescriptive and descriptive grammar.
When a language changes, it is because people start using different words that are incorrect for classic grammar, when they are not neologisms at all. Linguists of course have a fundamental function to remember rules and prevent oversimplification of the language, that would mean a pauperization. However, this role can be interpreted in a more or less conservative way.
Descriptive grammar refers to an observation of the language itself, leaving to the linguist just the minimal function as above. Prescriptive grammar is more bound to the rules. They are not separated worlds of course, so in the same environment I can be more conservative about a rule and less about others, with different motivation. This enriches the debate over the language.
Some rules, often taught in foreign schools such as Italian, has brought to some funny aspects.
For example the word "good-bye". People in England very very rarely use it to say "bye bye" or "see you". It sounds more like a farewell.
It's not incorrect, but without being used to listen to real conversation for a long time, living in an English-speaking country, it's better to avoid to say so: it would be felt as overused and heavy.
Much and many: as we have been taught, they are to be used in negative or interrogative sentence only. Said like this, it is complete bullshit. First the are used with positive sentences normally, especially many. There are other rules that can be searched, even if in most websites they are reported wrongly. Not being the purpose of this post I'll leave it for a another occasion, however always be wary when applying some rules that have been learnt at school and never more heard of.
Another one is never split an infinitive. I prefer not to do so, but it's not really a rule. Even Star Trek mission was "to boldly go where no-one has been before" who are we to contradict them? :approved:
Is English still a German Language or not really anymore?
English is a very peculiar language. It has without a doubt a German root, but the simplification over the centuries (no more declinations, one way to form plural only, with a few exceptions...) and especially the influence from Ecclesiastical Latin and French, made it actually a language with an ever-debated nature.
There are many points of view on the matter, but after reading different sources and arguments, I personally think that it is definitely a German language.
Let's see the arguments in favour of a half-latin language first:
- Half or more words in the dictionaries are Latin-rooted.
- After year 1066, French dominion over British Isles (Great Britain and Ireland, but never call them British Isles if there is an Irishman around! :asd: ) brought many changes to English language and an injection of new words.
However, this thesis is overly simplified. Let's take the Dictionaries for example.
All dictionaries, Oxford and Cambridge to name the top-notch of the category, have a broad part dedicated to latin-origin words.
This is undeniably true, but we need to watch better what this difference is made of.
Dictionaries must sell of course. One huge first feature that the average buyer watches is the number of words. It's not the best parameter, but it's all that most people have to judge.
Not all words should be appropriately be put in a dictionary. Let us just consider areas like Medicine, Science, Astronomy. They rely heavily on latin words, since even neologisms are created starting from Latin or greek
Of course, no one has a doubt that a very specialistic word, the name o a new molecule, of a new star, should not reside in a Dictionary. On the other hand, words like Betelgeuse (a star) or Stethoscope are so common to be put in.
Most others should stay in a Dictionary for technical terms. The shadowy area between the first and the latter is a grey area where publishers like to play with, pushing new words and have more overall terms in their dictionary. Who wouldn't buy a dictionary rather than another if one has 120.000 terms and the other 95.000, and no further criteria to judge?
Letting aside this, we must consider how often Latin-origin words are actually used by in everyday non-formal situations. 95% of the hundred of most common-used words are German, so Anglo-Saxon. Same for 85% of the most common thousand words:
Door, Father, House, Mother (the latter resembles to Mater, but we must consider that German and Neolatin languages are both Indo-European and many similarities are due to their common origin, not to later influences), spoon, chicken, horse are Anglo-Saxon, therefore Germanic.
The history of French conquer of England has made so, that a huge number or French people entered Britain and ruled it, but they were and remained aristocrats, pretty much separated from the common folks.
So, in modern English words about power, boureocracy, high fashion, state administration, often have a Latin root, typical of the aristocracy. On the other hand everyday words as seen, have a stong and steady German origin.
Even more important, every matter about grammar and syntax has always remained deeply Germanic.
The way that plurals, passive forms, verbs conjugation are built have nothing to do with a latin language. As all Germanic language, it has only two verb tenses, present and past, while future is always a composite form. This is one of the strongest objections to English as a half-neolatin language in my opinion.
It is certainly true that somewhere along the shift between Old English (spoken between VI and XI century) and Middle English, in a brief period anyway, English got simplified and lost downdrifts and all but one ways to form plural. It has not to be taken as a poor language by the way; the richness of English is made of idiomatic and phrasal verbs and expressions. There are also lots of synonims for most words. When reaching an advanced level, one of the best exercises to improve your own "vocabulary" is picking a word, and try to recall as many synonims as possible, noticing the different shades of meaning that one has respect to another.
If I should suggest three books to someone who wants to learn a good English, I would suggest a small grammar, a good Dictionary, and a huge phrasal and idiomatic terms textbook.
Even normal forms are not always used. I will and I'll have the same meaning, but saying I'll help you or I will help you is very different.
English is full of potential and has a musicality that makes it really fit to music, poetry and evocative writing, way more than Italian because it's more fluid (NB: notice this more fluid: it's a language with loooots of exceptions for any meaning that we want to highlight ;) ).
In Italian, great song writers such as Guccini, must sacrifice a lot of musicality and harmony in order to give lyrics a priority. In English it is much easier. This is what makes English so preferable to me :)
Tips about English and computer
Internet is a neverending source to improve one's English. There are countless texts of any kind to be read and translated.
However, without the right tools, it can be daunting to switch tab or window, go to google translate, check and go back to the text searching where you arrived.
Even tools like google translate are often heavy, when you just want the translation of one single word without losing track of where you were and thus interrupting the reading.
A multibrowser extension that has changed a lot the way I use English text is ImTranslator.
It's maybe one of the many available, when I installed it there were a few that did it though. By installing and setting one time the output language as Italian, it will be just a matter of double-clicking on that word to see a small pop-up window with the most common translations like in a dictionary and not only one, that is typical of google translate.
This latter can be used to translate whole pages, as well as ImTranslator but I prefer Google translate.
I have no clue of the current availability of other extension, but I strongly advise to find one like ImTranslator, that lets you have a translation while reading, without changing page or tab. I opens brand new ways for English reading and learning.