863
Rules
(lemmy.world)
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.
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.
Pronouns are the last bastion of inflection in English
Plurals and the few gendered nouns we have left (actor/actress), also count as declension
Well, the plurals are simple, just slap an apostrophe and ‘s’ in there.
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.
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.
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.
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".
in that case, "great dragon" is the noun, and is consistent with the proposed rule
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").
Rhi fuckin nocerous
Ambi fuckin dexterous
Po fuckin tay fuckin toes
Whoa, these Po and Tay people sound wild if they're fucking each other while also fucking toes.
Rhino fuckin cerous
I didnt believe in the rule until you showed me it was true.
Unfuckingbelievable!
Here's Wiktionary's category for 3-syllable English words in case anyone wants to get creative.
Edit: I'd argue "adultery" is doable but difficult, because it almost inherently sounds like you're saying three words: "a fucking dultery".
Edit 2: "the pu-fucking-trescence" might be my new favorite way to describe a terrible odor. It's so extra.
I think there's some imposters on that list, else I'm stuck trying to work put how I'd pronounce "danger" with three syllables.
That's counting a claimed New Zealand pronunciation of "ˈdæ̝ɪn.d͡ʒə", which does split the first syllable in two. Can't attest to that particular one, but Wiktionary will try to capture different ways of pronouncing words across major variants.
Edit: Wait, that shouldn't create a new syllable. Now I'll need to investigate instead of just being confidently wrong.
That’s counting a claimed New Zealand pronunciation of “ˈdæ̝ɪn.d͡ʒə”,
I thought elvish was fake, but apparently they do actually use it in NZ
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Now I'll need to investigate instead of just being confidently wrong.
Oof! Hate it when that happens!
I'd argue putrescence is emphasized on the first syllable. But then I'm not a native speaker, so... But Putrescence sounds quite wrong to me.
Yeah, it comes from "putrescent" which has a stressed second syllable. "Quintessence" is a close sibling structurally if that one's less off-putting.
well - today I learned. I knew "putrescent", I'd just been saying it with stress on the wrong syllable. Thanks!
To be fair, from the linked pronunciation example, putrescent doesn't sound so wrong at all, while quintessence sounds really very very wrong :D We do have Quintessenz in German which is stressed on the first syllable, so that's probably why. Coming from two latin words, combined into one, I'd argue both languages got it wrong, because the first two syllables should both have equal stress.
When I started listening to lots of audiobooks and podcasts in English, I discovered that many words have the stress further than I've thought from reading them.
We spent a solid week talking about fucking infixation in morphology class back in undergrad.
I can assure you that the rule on the slide is absofuckinglutly wrong. English speakers are remarkably consistent about how they do fucking infixation. Somehow, they all understand prosodic feet better than a room full of linguistics majors that just spent a week learning about it.
There's actually a word for this!
Tmesis Tmesis is a rhetorical device where a word is split into two parts with another word inserted between them, often for emphasis or comic effect.
Un-fucking-believable breaks this.
Unbe-fucking-lievable
Ngl that still works
"Un-fucking-believable" is standard usage, but "unbe-fucking-lievable" still works as an alternate. That's when you're down to artistic judgment and choosing which form fits your case best. Mixing it up and using something unexpected is a good way to provide emphasis.
There’s a morpheme boundary here, probably has something to do with it. The examples in the post have no morpheme boundary before the main stress, or at least not one that’s transparent to English speakers (ab/solu/te/ly might hypothetically have been more transparent to a Latin speaker though)
I'd hypothesise that you can insert fucking either between the prefix and the root, or before a stressed vowel.
EDIT: Expletive infixation - Wikipedia https://share.google/broCNIxOgtnKUPvSv
Fanta fucking stic, ab fucking solutely, Philadel fucking phia
Fun fact: Eddie Izzard once came to Berlin and did comedy gigs in German language. My favourite creation of his: Ausgefuckingzeichnet!
Phil - Fuckin - Adelphia.
And Adelphia's dad just went to get his gun.
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in Spanish you have stressed qué/cómo and normal que/como etc. they are pronounced the same as the difference is in grammar (please don’t ask me for details)
in order to know whether is has the tilde (accent) on the vowel, you can use a similar rule:
if you can put cojones (literally balls, but translates to what the fuck/how the fuck) after it, then it’s with a tilde.
although it’s not a 100% reliable, more details here:
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FYI: Inserting a word in another word like this is known as "tmesis".
They should've named it something self-referential like "inwordsertion" but less lame.
As a philly boy i gotta say, iv never heard it prounounced that way.
So the syllable needs to be edging before the fucking insertion.
Abso-no-fucking-lutely way
Fanta Fucking Stic.
Hmm...
TA is the stressed syllable here. Fan fucking tastic This one is actually commonly said
I don't like this new Fanta flavor
that assumes you are speaking in iambic and I have issues with that assumption
Go Birds!
Phonology! My old friend!
Pho-fuckin-nology
Nah, phono-fuckin-logy sounds more correct
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this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2026
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