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Rules (lemmy.world)
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[-] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 35 points 2 days ago
[-] Gork@sopuli.xyz 14 points 2 days ago

This is why we don't have to conjugate our verbs, we make up for it with this very strict word order.

It's also probably why English as a Second Language is so difficult aside from the inconsistencies and exceptions.

[-] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Pronouns are the last bastion of inflection in English, and it's fun to see English-speakers being perpetually confused about them. Namely about ‘I’/‘me’ and ‘who’/‘whom’. Since the word order and particles already handle the meaning of sentences, people don't quite know why they need to modify the pronouns too. And don't have the vocabulary for the rules, as grammatical cases are long forgotten.

[-] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago

Pronouns are the last bastion of inflection in English

Plurals and the few gendered nouns we have left (actor/actress), also count as declension

[-] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Well, the plurals are simple, just slap an apostrophe and ‘s’ in there.

[-] spacesatan@leminal.space 5 points 2 days ago

I feel like most of this can be flexible, especially origin or if you want to emphasize something.

You could have a little Italian green knife. Or a copper French knife.

[-] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

That immediately sounds like ‘green knife’ and ‘French knife’ are some special kinds of knives, not just what they look like and where they're from.

[-] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 days ago

The category order is generally more rigid toward the right half of the adjective list. So you could have an old thin bread knife or a thin old bread knife, but not an old bread thin knife.

[-] Apeman42@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

Ehh... I like the spirit of this, but it's not quite as immalleable as they say. You can have green great dragons if "great dragons" are a distinct thing from simply dragons. Like how in Game of Thrones, you'd say Ghost is a "white dire wolf", not a "dire white wolf".

[-] mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 23 points 2 days ago

in that case, "great dragon" is the noun, and is consistent with the proposed rule

[-] exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 2 days ago

Yeah, that's just an open compound word, like "emperor penguin" or "hammerhead shark." We have open compounds where the component words are separated by a space, hyphenated compounds (not super common with animals but can be seen in words like "mother-in-law") where the words are separated by a hyphen, and closed compounds that just stick the two words together ("kingfisher," "anteater").

this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2026
865 points (100.0% liked)

Microblog Memes

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A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.

Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.

RULES:

  1. Your post must be a screen capture of a microblog-type post that includes the UI of the site it came from, preferably also including the avatar and username of the original poster. Including relevant comments made to the original post is encouraged.
  2. Your post, included comments, or your title/comment should include some kind of commentary or remark on the subject of the screen capture. Your title must include at least one word relevant to your post.
  3. You are encouraged to provide a link back to the source of your screen capture in the body of your post.
  4. Current politics and news are allowed, but discouraged. There MUST be some kind of human commentary/reaction included (either by the original poster or you). Just news articles or headlines will be deleted.
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