Timeline for English versus French grammar
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
16 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jul 31, 2021 at 16:34 | history | edited | Michael Harvey | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
edited body; edited title
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| Aug 1, 2015 at 9:55 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | @WS2 True, but that one is rather invariable. At least I have never seen a man referred to as né something. One of the places where historical gender bias hasn't really been undone yet—I also don't know what I'd call the male equivalent of a maiden name, even though it's not that uncommon these days for a man to take his spouse’s last name (perhaps bachelor name?). | |
| Aug 1, 2015 at 9:18 | comment | added | WS2 | @JanusBahsJacquet Another word which has always been used in Britain to indicate a woman's surname at birth is née (meaning born). I find that even specialist genealogical software, written in America, does not understand this word. | |
| Aug 1, 2015 at 0:03 | comment | added | Dan Bron | @WS2 The connection was your views of English admit big change but resist small change, and the evangelicals' view of evolution admit small change but resist big change. Both of those philosophical approaches baffle me. | |
| Jul 31, 2015 at 23:43 | comment | added | WS2 | @DanBron I'm not quite sure what it was I said which bears upon evolution, Adam & Eve, etc. Hope I didn't give away my mother's maiden name as well. | |
| Jul 31, 2015 at 19:19 | comment | added | Dan Bron | @Janus I never write diacritics, mostly because I'm never sure how I should. And funny, the "fiance" (one e) must be a UK thing. We only have fiancee (two es) here in the US. | |
| Jul 31, 2015 at 19:18 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | @DanBron What constitutes “not English” is a very vague notion, but to me, words like naïve, café, and fiancé(e) (which I’m guessing is probably the word the asker was talking about here) are quite English, even though I write them with diacritics. | |
| Jul 31, 2015 at 16:46 | comment | added | Dan Bron | @WS2 I can't quite grasp that you can use the term "the history of the English language", and even say you respect it, and are therefore aware that it changes, and yet not accept that it changes. Here in the US there's a certain type of evangelical, fundamentalist Christian who denies the reality of evolution (they believe in a literal Adam & Eve). The weirdest part is they accept what they (erroneously) term microevolution, while simultaneously denying that small changes add up. Makes no sense at all. | |
| Jul 31, 2015 at 16:29 | comment | added | WS2 | @DanBron I entirely respect the history of the English language. But what I have said is another thing altogether to making repeated incorrect use of English and then claiming that because someone has said it enough times it must be accepted. My argument is the corollary of the etymological fallacy. Most laws have corollaries. Indeed the position I took on diagnose is reinforced by the way it is used in other European languages. That is my whole point. English needs to respect the European traditions on which it is founded. | |
| Jul 31, 2015 at 16:26 | vote | accept | Morella Almånd | ||
| Jul 31, 2015 at 16:23 | history | edited | Morella Almånd | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 1 character in body; deleted 4 characters in body
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| Jul 31, 2015 at 16:20 | comment | added | Dan Bron | @WS2 "English ... was not something handed down from Heaven intact" is a strange position to take for a man who stumps for the term "Received English" and rails against people who use diagnose in a way which wasn't common in 1950s England... | |
| Jul 31, 2015 at 16:15 | answer | added | deadrat | timeline score: 3 | |
| Jul 31, 2015 at 16:08 | comment | added | WS2 | My own belief is that we should not look upon English as a discrete entity. It was not something that was handed down from heaven intact with unique rules of its own. It is a product of the Indo-European family of languages. So in any analysis of English we should always have regard to what happens in related languages, especially French from which Norman form much of English derives. So if opportunities arise to add elegance to our writing or speech I think we should always be ready to employ French forms - if they are clearly French by all means use italics. | |
| Jul 31, 2015 at 16:07 | comment | added | Dan Bron | Nouns are genderless in English. And we don't use diacritics (which is what I take you meant by "make the second to last have an acute"), unless we're consciously employing a word we recognize as not English (some style guides require that we use italics when we do that). | |
| Jul 31, 2015 at 16:01 | history | asked | Morella Almånd | CC BY-SA 3.0 |