Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language

How might I remember the meaning of Subject (grammar)?

The subject does a verb to the object. I have no difficulty remembering object; I might think "a person is not an object", and then I've established which one is the subject, the doer, by elimination. (Never mind that the grammatical object might be a person. They can have honorary inanimate status for the duration of the sentence.)

But I'd rather have a way to remember subject directly. Usually I rely on etymology to remember word meanings, but in this case object is "against-thrown", which is fine, but subject is "below-placed", which doesn't help at all. (I wish the word was ejector instead, then it would be clear. Or factor I guess.) Worse, wikt:subject has a two etymologies, the first coming through French, including the sense in which the subject of a ruler is subjected to outrageous impositions, that is, things are done to the subject. This also is sometimes the case with the more Latin-y derivation, as in "test subject" or "subject area", where the subject is at least looked at, if not controlled.

Is there any sense of subject outside of grammar in which the subject is primarily an agent? On second thoughts, that might not help. Wiktionary mentions the phrase "the subjects and objects of power" but that confuses me just as much as the grammatical terms do. They sound to my ear like the same thing, not opposites. So is there another strategy I could use? Subjective and objective in the philosophical sense are clear in my mind, if that helps, but those terms don't seem to map to the grammatical sense, since the subject of a sentence interacts with objective reality, while the object has a subjective experience.  Card Zero  (talk) 06:47, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

If you're not confused between subjective and objective then I don't see how subject vs object can be hard for you. The subject is who's doing the thing, and the object is whom it's being done to. The subjective perspective is the doer's, the objective perspective is not. Nardog (talk) 08:17, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Well, in philosophy, the subject is thinking about the thing, and the object is the thing. So for instance if a rock falls on me, I'm the subject having the subjective experience, and the rock is the object out in objective reality. (Though of course if I kick the rock, I'm still the subject.)  Card Zero  (talk) 08:25, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

You are confusing two different actions, the rock (subject) falling (verb) on you (object), and you (subject) thinking (verb) about the rock (object). You cannot combine (English) grammar and philosophy into some unified theory – they have different sets of 'rules' which need not correspond, even though they sometimes do. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-76101-8 (talk) 11:39, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Yes, but that's the problem, you see. The philosophy that I can remember won't help my memory for grammar. The act of having this discussion might help me remember, though.  Card Zero  (talk) 12:58, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

You may find the etymology of "subject" useful. Apparently it has to do with the "nominative" case. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:36, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Casus nominativus. So the ancients thought it was to do with naming. What's the idea there?  Card Zero  (talk) 12:55, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

It usually involves an actual name, or a pronoun. "Charles is going to the store" or "I am going to the store", as examples. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:19, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

I think it's about Latin (and Greek) word endings. If Maria hides Ursula, it's Maria Ursulam célat, with the subject Maria's name unchanged from the default form, and hence in the nominative, as opposed to the other way around, Mariam Ursula célat. (This is according to my only Latin textbook.)  Card Zero  (talk) 13:28, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Could be. I'm curious, though: What is your native language? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:30, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Would you believe English?  Card Zero  (talk) 13:32, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Did you struggle with grammar in school? To me, it's always been subject-verb-object, and it didn't seem like a weird concept, it just is what it is. But students have individual strengths and weaknesses. Like if you asked me to write the simple song "Chopsticks" on a standard music sheet I would be totally lost. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:35, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Do you know how to play it on a piano, though? (That was how I was taught Chopsticks, before I learned to read music; I don't think I've ever even seen Chopsticks written down, and I think it would look rather strange). 😅 ~2026-13001-64 (talk) 12:53, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

Well, arbitrary things are my nemesis. Clockwise, for instance. Or that rhyme that goes forty days hath November. So what's to stop me remembering it as object-verb-subject (with object meaning subject and subject meaning object)?  Card Zero  (talk) 13:43, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

By deciding to do so. Ya know, lots of things on this earth are arbitrary. That's why I've never been any good at cards. "In this game, this card means this." Makes no sense to me. But subject-verb-object makes sense. Maybe because it's consistent. The shapes of the numerals are arbitrary, but they're also consistent. If you decided that 2 was 5 and 5 was 2, you'd have a hard time buying stuff. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:12, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Forty days? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:13, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

I'm hoping that was a joke. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:16, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

True. Well, "SVO" is compact and punchy, at least, so this is a good thought.  Card Zero  (talk) 14:20, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

If six was nine. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-76101-8 (talk) 19:13, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Etymology is not that helpful. The Latin grammar term subiectum is a calque of Ancient Greek ὑποκείμενον (hupokeímenon), literally "that which is lying under", figuratively "that which has been put under our eyes", used for a topic under discussion or investigation. Since the subject of a sentence is often (but certainly not always) its semantic topic, Ancient Greek grammarians reused the term for the grammatical notion of "subject". In English SVO sentences you can substitute "I" or "we" for the subject, possibly while adjusting the form of the verb. The result of this subject substitution may semantically become nonsense but remains a grammatical sentence:

• Cats eat fish → We eat fish
• She reads a book → I read a book

If you do this with the object the result becomes grammatically obnoxious:

• Cats eat fish → *Cats eat we
• She reads a book → *She reads I

 ​‑‑Lambiam 15:19, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

In your latin example Maria is the Person that does something, she is named while Ursula is the cause (casus accusativus < accuso < ad causam) for this action. In English you use a more or less strict word order to accomplish this: I don't carry the baggage. Cf. German: Ich trage den Koffer nicht. or you can say: Den Koffer trage ich nicht. Sentence 2 stresses the word bagage but the meaning is the same. Or to quote Schiller: "Den Dank, Dame, begehr ich nicht." The knight makes it very clear that he (subject) doesn't want the gratitude (object) that the dame offers him thus the object is put at the beginning of the sentence, a word by word translation would be: the gratitude, Madame, desire I not. The case indicates the part of the sentence: den Dank = accusative case (the cause for the desire, that is negated), ich = nominative case (the named agent who is doing something). Just like in your latin example the subject is in the nominative case while the object is in the accusative case (or in another case, depends on the verb, preposition etc., cf. the incomplete article Case government that only deals with prepositions).

@Lambiam You didn't substitue objects for objects but subjects for objects. "I" is a subject not an object, cf. German "ich". The substitutions would be:

• Cats eat fish → *Cats eat us.
• She reads a book → *She reads me.

Your examples would work however if you used nouns.--~2026-13008-38 (talk) 15:52, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Substituting subjects for objects (using examples where in English the two are not the same word) was the point of Lambiam's comment, to show that it doesn't work. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-76101-8 (talk) 19:17, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

What about English The baggage do not I carry? This would emphasize that it is the baggage that the person does not carry, not some other thing. Or Carry I the baggage which makes clear that the person is really carrying the baggage, despite that some would believe that he would not carry it. --40bus (talk) 19:30, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Neither of those sentences work in English.

Because English mostly dropped word inflections centuries ago, word order is crucial to convey meanings. Changing their order does not change mere emphasis as it does in, for example, Latin, it changes or even destroys the entire meaning of the sentence.

For the meanings you suggest, the sentences would be:

(i) I do not carry the baggage (voice emphasis on 'the baggage' and indicating a general state of affairs – for the current situation only it would be I am not carrying the baggage (but something else instead));

(ii) I do carry the baggage (baggage in general, indicating this is an ongoing occupation) or I am carrying the baggage (referring to specific baggage at the present moment). Carry I the baggage? is grammatically possible as a question, but very unusual, suggestive of very archaic speech or a non-native speaker (and meaning that the questioner doesn't know if he is carrying, or will carry, the baggage or not).

{The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-76101-8 (talk) 03:50, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

But note the occasional occurrence of phrases like "gladly the cross I’ll bear".  ​‑‑Lambiam 06:13, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Like Dutch, English dropped its cases except for personal pronouns, but unlike Dutch, English got a pretty fixed SVO word order. As long as either the subject or the object is a personal pronoun other than you, which is very common, swapping subject and object doesn't cause any ambiguity. Yet sentences like “him bites the dog” aren't very standard in English. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:16, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Manchester UK accent?

Video of someone just elected to Parliament from Manchester, England (across the Atlantic Sea). Does Manchester have a regional accent and is it exhibited in the video? From my US perspective she sounds kind of Scottish.

Also (not exactly a language question) someone on reddit pointed out that she is dressed up in the colors of a watermelon, and that "watermelon" is an old political slur against the Green party ("green on the outside, red on the inside"). So the idea is that she chose on those colors on purpose to signal a left-wing stance. Not saying that's good or bad, but just asking whether that interpretation makes sense and is plausible.

Also wondering if "plasterer" is a trade in the UK. I don't think we have them here in the US. There are drywall hangers but I don't think doing that requires special training or apprencticeship like becoming a plumber does. Anyway I've never seen a plumber that glamorous either. They do things with more style there than here, I guess. ~2026-12900-12 (talk) 02:22, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Yes, it does and yes, it is. As a cross-check, seek out videos of members of the Manchester band Oasis speaking. From my perspective as an Englishman who has lived in Scotland (and, briefly, Manchester), Hannah Spencer (and the Manchester accent) does not sound remotely Scottish.

I have no idea whether she deliberately dressed as a watermelon (not all that common, or a trope, in the UK) and cannot speculate on her motivation if she did: the idea would not have occurred to me. Note that in the UK the Green Party is openly 'left of centre' (and our 'centre' is considerably left of that in the USA, for example) so there is no contradiction between having a green agenda and being 'red' in the sense of being broadly socialist.

Plasterer is certainly a trade, a specialism within building and decorating. In the UK it is very common for interior walls (usually brick, breeze block or concrete slab) and ceilings to be covered in plaster. This is applied as a semi-liquid pastelike substance, and it requires considerable skill to create an even, and smooth or regularly patterned, surface. Drywall panels are also used but are not the norm in the UK. Most people, in my experience, look more fetching when they are not in their work clothes, military uniforms, or whatever. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-76101-8 (talk) 03:15, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

(after edit conflict) "Someone" is Hannah Spencer. Yes, Manchester, like everywhere in Britain, has a local accent, Spencer grew up in Bolton, which has it's own accent. She sounds like she's putting on her "telephone voice" in the video, as most people with strong accents do when they are talking to a more global or formal audience. She's been dressing like a hippy for years, here she is in 2013 (scroll down). I think she just went for colourful. As to plasterers, they are the ones who lay the wet plaster onto the walls and ceilings. We have an article plasterer where you can see one at work. It's a traditionally male trade. DuncanHill (talk) 03:22, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, yeah, I looked at the plasterer article and I think that occupation mostly doesn't exist in the US, certainly not as a trade. I'm not sure of nomenclature but I think of an occupation (whatever you do for work) as different from a "trade" (a class of occupations that have some formal entry requirements, like plumber or electrician). Almost all interior construction here uses drywall rather than lath and plaster and it's been like that for decades. Drywall hangers (people who install drywall) bring in sheets of it on hoists and install it with screws. It takes some training but it's more like being a painter (no license or anything needed) than like being a plumber (you must either have a license or work under the supervision of someone with a license). Interesting about Bolton since Annie Haslam is from there and I wouldn't have connected the two accents. I've listened to a number of interviews with Haslam. ~2026-12900-12 (talk) 03:47, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Haslam moved to Cornwall in the sixties, in her mid-teens presumably , and since then her environment has been wider and more global than Spencer's, so it's not surprising that her accent has been smoothened out quite a bit, even if she had a strong local accent to begin with. Still, her accent sounds distinctly northern to me. --Wrongfilter (talk) 08:16, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Politically, I'd say that today the watermelon mostly is used as a symbol representing support for Palestine, anyway, which presumably is controversial in certain circles. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:02, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

Have a look at Phonological history of English close back vowels#FOOT–STRUT split, that is not present here. In Northern English there is no distinction, it's the same vowel. In Scottish English the vowel in foot and strut does not sound the same. Listen how she pronounces words like "done", "under", "something": it's an /ʊ/. Furthermore her accent is non-rhotic while Scottish is mostly rhotic (have a look at Rhoticity in English) like most accents in American English, listen how she pronounces the word "hard".--~2026-13534-63 (talk) 14:01, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

We actually have an article on Manchester dialect. Listening to her speech, some distinctively Manchester elements are

• She drops the 'g' on '-ing' entirely: "I didn't grow up wantin to be a politician" (but not dropping her 't's - a Yorkshire person might say "I didn' grow up wan'in to be a politician". She does however pronounce "lot" as "loh"). Some Mancunians go the opposite way and pronounce the -g very hard (even in words like "finger" and "singer" - sadly she doesn't say of those words in the video), but I think that's more common in Scouse from nearby Liverpool.
• Her 'u' sounds are very round. As ~2026-13534-63 says, this the absence of the FOOT–STRUT split. "I'm a ploomber". (In the next sentence, you hear both of these when she pronounces "during" as "dyoorin".
• She lacks something called happy tensing, where "y" sounds at the end of words like "happy" are pronounced in a tense way. Instead, they sound looser. "I am no different from every single person here in this constituenc-IH" (although interestingly she tenses "every") or "Thank you to everybod-IH here". Something similar happens at the end of some words ending in -er: "side by side, should-UH to should-UH".
• She uses the "dark l" a lot, which sounds little bit a 'w' - "talk to anyone here, and they wiɫ teɫ you". I can't tell if she's using a dark l at the start of words in "line the pockets of billionaires" or "working hard should get you a nice life" - I don't think she is, although a Mancunian might.
• Her vowel sounds in general are a little different to RP - listen to "table" or "life" - but not so divergent as they would be in Scouse or Geordie.

Of all of those, I think the lack of "happy tensing" is the most distinctively Manchester trait and sets it apart from nearby accents like Scouse and Yorkshire. Smurrayinchester 09:13, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Unlike in finger (/ˈfɪŋɡə/), there is no /g/ in the Received Pronunciation of wanting (/ˈwɒntɪŋ/). Rather than dropping a /g/, the velar nasal /ŋ/ is replaced by the alveolar (or dental) /n/. According to the section English phonology § Velar nasal, pronouncing e.g. sung as as [sʌŋɡ] is a general feauture of the accents of the north-west Midlands of England.  ​‑‑Lambiam 09:39, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

IPA for Acehnese's S Sound

For a while, I've been debating on the IPA symbol for Acehnese's unique pronunciation of "s" on Wikipedia.

I've transcribed Acehnese /s/ as a voiceless denti-alveolar sibilant [s̻̪], a rough equivalent to what Durie described, quoting Catford:

"[S] is a sound for which there is no satisfactory IPA symbol. It is a laminal alveo-dental fricative with a wide channel area. [...] [S] can be approximated by holding the tongue tip in the position for English [θ] and then, without moving the tip, raising the back part of the blade until it forms a constriction against the alveolar ridge."

Durie, Mark (1984). A grammar of Acehnese (PhD thesis). Australian National University.

But, due to its closeness to /θ/, several papers regarding Acehnese has been describing it as such, either as plain /θ/ or describing it as "being similar to English's th"

"/s/ [...] are written thus for reasons of simplicity. [...] Originally they were transcribed by Snouck Hurgronje with tʰ because of their similarity to the Arabic and the English th in thin."

Cowan, H. K. J. (1981). "An Outline of Achehnese Phonology and Morphology". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies.

"[...] the typical Acehnese /s/, which sounds like the dental fricative [θ], [...]"

Zulfadli (2014). A Sociolinguistic Investigation of Acehnese with a Focus on West Acehnese: A Stigmatised Dialect (Bachelor of Education thesis). University of Adelaide.

"The alveolar fricative /s/ is pronounced as dental fricative /θ/ which is similar to English /th/ in the word /think/."

Muthalib, Kismullah (2017). Dialect features of Leupueng children: a study of dialect in post tsunami Aceh. Syiah Kuala University.

I've been considering writing Acehnese s as /θ/ for its broad transcription, as it's the closest approximation of the sound, considering /s/ doesn't necessarily fit right for it, and /s̻̪/ is too clunky and not many fonts support it, but most papers written about it simplifies it to just /s/ or make their own symbol for it.

Is it better to use /θ/ to transliterate Acehnese's S into broad IPA, or should it be kept as is? Zayn Kauthar (talk) 06:14, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

For representing phonemes, we just use whatever is common in literature. And unless the language has another phoneme represented by ⟨s⟩ or ⟨s⟩ + diacritic, there is no need to use the dental diacritic. Nardog (talk) 14:57, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

Since a lot of the papers uses θ or has been describing it as θ (not using IPA explicitly), would it be okay to use /θ/ as the phoneme symbol, as most dialects pronounce it as such or similar to it? Zayn Kauthar (talk) 07:32, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

If more sources use it as the phonemic representation (i.e. in slashes), yes. Nardog (talk) 10:07, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

Our own article Acehnese phonology uses /s/, as in sue and su. So does Wiktionary: see e.g. siseuëk.  ​‑‑Lambiam 09:28, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Should be noted that a big portion of the edits on Acehnese are by me (especially recent edits, not sisueek or su), considering not much people take great interest in improving its coverage it sadly. At the time I wasn't quite sure on using /s/ /s̻̪/ or /θ/, so I phonemised sue with /s/ as a temporary placeholder.

Other than that, I mostly asked the question because several sources use /s/ but mention it as a fricative rather than a sibilant like /s/, and how they decribed the /s/ to be pronounced similar and closer to [θ] as per above, and I thought of it as rather misleading to use /s/ which doesn't quite represent the unique Acehnese sound heard in Greater Aceh and North Aceh (which is the basis for Standard Aceh). Other sources use the non-IPA /S/ as well to distinguish it from regular /s/ but I'm not sure if that's allowed, the usage of IPA is rather all over the place for the coverage of Acehnese but I can't say much for it.

For now, I'll be using /s/ phonemically, but the pronunciation of it will be phoneticised as [s̻̪]. Zayn Kauthar (talk) 17:30, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Would these sentences be correct?

Would these sentences be correct?

1. In the forest live bears. In this sentence, in the forest is old information and bears is new information, whereas in sentence Bears live in the forest they would be other way around.
2. Was thought that it would be better. In this sentence, there is no dummy subject.
3. Bread I eat. In this sentence, bread is placed first to show that it is bread that the person eats, not some other thing.
4. It am I. In this sentence, it is a predicative and I is the subject, with a meaning same as in I am it. In Finnish it would be Se olen minä, with se being the predicative and minä the subject.
5. Jack am I. In this sentence, OSV word order emphasizes that just that person is called Jack, not some other one.
6. He is come. In this sentence, come is a predicative adjective and the sentence has a similar composition to e.g. He is young. --40bus (talk) 12:37, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

@40bus: From an British English speaker:

1. Yes. I don't understand the relevance of "old" and "new" information.

2. Written, no as there is no subject. Spoken, yes as an addition to something already said: "We decided to take another route. Was thought to be better."

3. No. English word order is subject (I), verb (eat), object (bread).

4. No. Again, word order requires "I am it." The related "It is I" is valid and used, for example, to confirm who is speaking: He said, "Who is there?" I replied, "It is I."

5. No, unless you're Yoda.

6. Yes, although I'd consider it archaic. Seen mostly in Christian religious propaganda around Easter. Bazza 7 (talk) 13:29, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

5. Or singing a song:

A pirate, a pirate, a pirate bold am I!
Where people shriek
On decks that reek
I'll swing my cutlass high!

to my mind this emphasizes "pirate".

6. "He is risen", the Paschal greeting. Maybe because Christ=bread?

The "old" and "new" information refers to which out of "forest" and "bears" is encountered first, and is thus the background information against which attention is drawn to the "new" information. (Though I think my mind would tend to dwell more on the bears either way round, because they're bears.) Number 3 is implicitly about dummy subjects again, I think, since a valid alternative is "it is bread (that) I eat".  Card Zero  (talk) 13:35, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

The Christ=bread thing is actually etymologically interesting, since bread is caused to rise by the action of yeast, which excretes CO₂ and alcohol: in bread the alcohol is driven off by baking, in beer it is retained.

Bread is of course ancient in origin, and for millennia no-one knew why it rose, so this was attributed to some unknown spirit, which in Germanic languages was called cognates of 'ghost' aka 'gheest' aka 'yeast'.

I leave it to others to draw out more details of the theological analogy. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-76101-8 (talk) 16:27, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

If the bread is risen it was not unleavened and so it is not kosher for Pesach.  ​‑‑Lambiam 21:57, 28 February 2026 (UTC)}

There are scholarly arguments that the "Last Supper" described in the Gospels was not a Passover/Pesach meal.

One is that the meal took place in 30CE on Wednesday evening, the day before the first day of Passover (a Sabbath) which in that year was Friday, actually beginning at dusk on Thursday: this was followed by the usual weekly Sabbath beginning at dusk on Friday. The two consecutive Sabbath days were why one Gospel in its earliest versions refers to Mary visiting the (temporary) tomb after the Sabbaths, plural. (Technically, she could have visited any time after dusk on Saturday, but given the location this would not have been safe for a lone woman or a small group of women.)

Another is that the Passover meal was (as it still is) a family occasion, not a gathering of mostly unrelated men and no women as described. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-76101-8 (talk) 01:38, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

You can also find archaic uses in the KJV and other Bible translations, such as, in 1 Peter 4:17, For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God. I think that "come" here is not an adjective but the past participle, and so is "risen" in Matthew 28:6, He is not here: for he is risen. The verb "is" is not a copula but an auxiliary to form a perfect tense with a static sense, something that has fallen into disuse in English but is still found in other Germanic languages: Denn die Zeit ist gekommen, da das Gericht beginnt, und zwar beim Haus Gottes; Er ist nicht hier; denn er ist auferstanden.  ​‑‑Lambiam 22:37, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Can participles like risen and come be used as adjectives like a risen person or a come person, and, likewise, risen people, come people? Would in a sentence He is come, come syntactically work same as young in He is young? --40bus (talk) 12:50, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

@40bus: (a) "Come" is a verb which does not have the equivalent of risen, so you can't have a come person. (b) In modern English, no. As I've already said, it's an archaic structure. Bazza 7 (talk) 14:07, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

Can all past participles in English be used as adjectives? In Finnish, all past participles, both active and passive ones, can. I have assumed that all past participles can be used as adjectives in English too. --40bus (talk) 15:08, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

For some reason, no. It's "the arrived guest has come", "the departed guest has gone", "the ⸻ guest has thought", and "the ⸻ guest has been". I don't even know what to do with the last two, or what (if anything) these awkward words have in common, besides all being irregular verbs. They're all reflexive too, I think. I notice "the fidgeted guest" is also invalid, an interesting regular example.

It's not about intransitive verbs, either. (Or is it?) The flown guest, the grown guest, the moved guest are all OK, yet the ran guest isn't, I feel, and I don't know why. But then the ran program seems OK. That's a transitive "ran".  Card Zero  (talk) 16:22, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

4. I know of at least one use case of It am I, in Old English: in an Old English translation of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus says it to his disciples while he's walking across the water. In the KJV he says "It is I", and most modern speakers would say "It is me" (or "it's me"), and I think the question of which is correct is currently an unresolved dispute. (My own opinion is that if the verb is "is", then "me" is correct; "I" would only be correct if the verb were "am", but nobody in the present day would say "It am I".) ~2026-13527-14 (talk) 07:30, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

3 would only be correct in certain specific circumstances and would usually take a comma. For example, a person might declare "Bread, I eat!" to emphasize that they may or can or love to eat bread (in contrast with something else). But otherwise, no, that word order would not work. Matt Deres (talk) 14:32, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Like "Bread I eat. Meat I don't!"? -- ~2026-13284-75 (talk) 11:09, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

Exactly. Matt Deres (talk) 13:21, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

Bread I eat. Brussels sprouts I devour.  ​‑‑Lambiam 21:52, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

I could imagine most of these things possibly turning up in poetry, but not in normal conversation. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:05, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

@~2026-13527-14 Interesting view. But what if you use he? It is him or It is he? What about other constructions with the same form: Who is him? Where is him? As you can see "be" (and all its forms) governed the nominative case: Who is he? It's the same in German: "Wer ist er?" You can see that in German if you use nouns instead of personal pronouns: German "Er ist der Mann." but "Er fragt den Mann." In English this difference is gone. "He is the man". "He asks the man." It's only noticable when you use personal pronouns. Thus it used to be: "It is I." "It is me." is creating some kind of exception from this rule which is really interesting to know why this happens.--~2026-13534-63 (talk) 15:04, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

As an Ohioan who's lived in Pittsburgh for most of their life:

1. While I'm hardly an expert on the intricacies of English grammar rules, I don't think that newness of information has any bearing on the sentence. It certainly sounds odd, however. "Bears live in the forest" would seem much more natural. "In the forest there live bears" also sounds better, but not as good as "bears live in the forest".

2. I don't understand what this is saying, so I'm going to go with no.

3. Word order is fairly fixed in English; it doesn't matter if you want to emphasize that it's bread that you're eating, you'd still say "I eat bread" (or perhaps "I eat bread" or similar)

4. While it's an unusual sentence in the first place, I'm fairly sure it would be "I am it"

5. It sounds quite odd. In terms of 'correctness' it could come up -- it seems no more incorrect grammatically than Sam I am. And again, word order doesn't really imply emphasis. Maybe it does in Finnish, but in English the word order is fixed enough that emphasis is conveyed in other ways.

6. I can't quite decide if this sounds archaic ("Christ is risen!") or dialectical, but either way, it doesn't sound like the sort of thing you'd hear in a conversation between two 'standard' English speakers. It's not something that occurs in Midwestern English, at least, and I don't think it occurs in Pittsburghese (although to be honest I can count the number of people I know who unironically say "yinz" on one hand, so I'm not the best person to be asking about that.)

Ceratarges-etc (talk) 01:08, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

You can think of newness in terms of ignorance displayed in a question. If the question is, "OK, so there are bears in this country; where do they live?", the new information contained in an informative reply will reveal their habitat: "in the forest". Or this might be a correction to someone misinformedly stating that bears live in the desert; again new information. If, on the other hand, the question is, "What kind of animals dwell in the forest?", the new information consists of the identities of typical forest dwellers, which in some areas includes bears. While it is not ungrammatical to respond to "What kind of animals dwell in the forest?" by "Bears live in the forest", it would be a strange way, given the question, to formulate the information.  ​‑‑Lambiam 10:54, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

I was looking for an article to link to for further reading, but all our content on this stuff (topic and comment, focus (linguistics), functional sentence perspective, information structure) is not great. I suppose topic and comment is the least bad article, though I feel like it's giving preference to one specific view when it talks about how this works in English. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 11:28, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

I would say that 1, 3, 5, and 6 look archaic/poetic. Most people wouldn't talk like that in normal conversation, but if someone did use it, or if you saw it in a book, it would be understandable. Iapetus (talk) 15:15, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Further to 6. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter V, Tolkien has a distressed Legolas wail "Ai! Ai! A Balrog! A Balrog is come!"

Now, Tolkien was a professional expert in the English language, so this is doubtless grammatically permissable, but at the same time his speciality was Anglo-Saxon, and Legolas was both not a native speaker of Westron (the analogue for English in the text), and was about 3,000 years old, so Tolkien doubtless intended this to strike an exotic and archaic note. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-76101-8 (talk) 22:10, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Poetry / song, as in "Joy to the world, the Lord is come..." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:53, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Not so much poetic as the archaic use of is as an auxiliary verb with a past participle, like in the Biblical uses quoted above (and also seen in Middle English Sumer is icumen in).  ​‑‑Lambiam 08:25, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

In Swedish, there is an actual distinction between the forms of the supine and the past participle, as in Sommaren har kommit (The summer has come) Vs. Sommaren är kommen (The summer is come). The latter example is quite archaic, though. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:27, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Reminiscent of Sumer is icumen in - a song written in the 13th century in Middle English. Alansplodge (talk) 22:28, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

How do we know Legolas's age? —Antonissimo (talk) 19:59, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

User:Antonissimo, I don't believe that we do. I just consulted the essay on Silvan Elves and Silvan Elvish in The Nature of Middle-earth, but Tolkien's references there to Oropher and Thranduil say nothing about the latter's marriage or son. The same essay was excerpted for Unfinished Tales, but those excerpts also don't address this aspect of the chronology, referring only to geopolitical themes (e.g. the rise of Dol Guldur) and major domestic affairs (e.g. the delving of Thranduil's mini version of Menegroth) amidst its primary concern of the general culture and linguistics of the Silvan Elves. I can't think of anywhere else to look. Nyttend (talk) 21:11, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

OP

In the French film Rust and Bone Ali takes FWB Stephanie to a nightclub then races off with another woman and she is miffed. When they meet the following day she upbraids him for his tactlessness and he replies "Je suis OP". My knowledge of colloquial French begins and ends with "d'ac" so I'm curious. Doug butler (talk) 12:28, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Hmm, I found the word "opé" (operational, ready), but wouldn't know if that would fit in context. , . There's also the similar sounding "au pied" (to heel), but that might fit even worse. How do the subtitles translate the sentence? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:39, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

The sentence from the film is indeed "Je suis OP". See the meaning above (OP=opé. same pronunciation). If you can read French see the explanations/the context here []. - AldoSyrt (talk) 12:57, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Hmm, I might need to add some spoilers here, but the text mentions Stephanie having a wheelchair, and being "sexuellement opérationnelle" (sexually operational), so it might be related to her being "operational, functional", and having been 'surgically operated'. There's apparently a similar expression 'OP' / 'opé' in the French trans community for gender-affirming surgery, that might be related in context. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:08, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

"Je suis OP" is said by Ali who is not disabled, but he might make a reference (I did not see this movie). - AldoSyrt (talk) 14:25, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

You know, like Stephanie getting angry and jealous for beeing stood up for a walking/ non-disabled person (what's the terminology?), shouting out something like "I might have a wheelchair, but I can still have sex! Wanna try me?" which at least makes sense in a French dramatic film... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:14, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

So Ali is open ["opé" (operational, ready)] to deepen their FWB relationship. She's in love and he hasn't a clue, so it's significant that in the Sam crisis, she's the first person he rings. Thanks AldoSyrt, for the French language link — what a lovely resource. Doug butler (talk) 22:00, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Ah, oh yeah, sorry, I misinterpreted it, it's a more colloquial synonym for "Je suis prêt", basically. From what I can see, it's usually spelled opé unless in cellphone texting and similar. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 23:35, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Minimax/A+

Good afternoon. Can anyone translate the text in this video? https:(two haypens)youtu.be/_Pm7KoYfoac?t=152&si=K8Ej3b9wXwlDwFAv at 2:31. ~2026-24671-3 (talk) 16:49, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

For convenience, text reads:

Az A+ tévécsatornán most következő animációs filmek nem ajánlottak gyermekek számára, ezért a filmeket korhatár jelzéssel láttuk el. Kérjük, figyeljen a jelzésekre!

GalacticShoe (talk) 21:43, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Google Translate turns this into:

The following animated films on the A+ TV channel are not recommended for children, so the films have been marked with an age restriction. Please pay attention to the signs!

 ​‑‑Lambiam 22:27, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks! ~2026-24671-3 (talk) 18:20, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

A few questions

1. Can English suffixes -ic, -al, -ous and -ation be added to native Germanic English words, for example bookic, bookous, bookal and bookation? For example, can the suffix -ous pertaining to elements such as in words chlorous and sulfurous be added to element names such as gold, silver, copper, iron and tin?
2. Does English have equivalent of German Zustandspassiv (sein + past participle)? This form is used differently from normal Vorgangspassiv (werden + past participle in simple tenses, sein + past participle + worden in compound tenses).
3. Is There is he correct?
4. Which is the closest equivalent to Finnish kevättalvi? Late winter and early spring?
5. Can object pronouns be used in passive sentences in English? In Finnish, subject pronouns (usually) cannot.

--40bus (talk) 06:27, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

1. Lackadaisic(al), Icelandic, helleboric, murderous, groundation. Adding -ous to vernacular names of what are now known to be elemental substances is not conventionally done, but it is not an unlawful activity.  ​‑‑Lambiam 09:08, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

Filmic, also vampiric (Slavic) and ergotic (Gallic?); withdrawal, wintrous, and beration. And wikt:copperous ... from Latin cuprum, from Cyprus (that's where copper comes from). I'm not allowing your helleboric, it's pretty much Ancient Greek.  Card Zero  (talk) 09:33, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

2. You can say, this plate is broken and the author is known, but this is usually analyzed as a past participle having turned into an adjective. While not that usual, you can find phrases though like the bottle was opened  with a stative sense where the bottle was open is more common.  ​‑‑Lambiam 09:44, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

3. You could say "There is he", but it would sound weird. Normally you would say "There he is." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:39, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

"Werewolf?" "There, wolf. There castle." {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-76101-8 (talk) 23:04, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

"Walk this way..." (A visual joke that goes back a lot farther than 1974.) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:32, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Blucher! MinorProphet (talk) 17:19, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

4. As it approaches the vernal equinox, it is "late winter". Shortly after the vernal equinox, it is "early spring". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:42, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

There is no standard term in English for the period comprising both late winter and early spring, but "late winter/early spring" (or some typographical variant such as "late winter–early spring") is fairly common. However, unlike the Finnish approach, this can be used for the transition between any two subsequent seasons – or months, for that matter.  ​‑‑Lambiam 23:11, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

This reminds me that I need to book my Yasujiro Ozu tickets at the local film club. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:28, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Though having religious connotations, the terms Eastertide and Lententide also roughly correspond to this period. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-76101-8 (talk) 16:04, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

I think I've seen "thaw" used as a name for the intermediate season between winter and spring. — Kpalion^(talk) 01:16, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

Note that there are two definitions of the seasons in use; meteorological seasons (which use calendar months) and astronomical seasons (which work from the equinoxes and solstices). See The difference between meteorological and astronomical seasons. Alansplodge (talk) 18:02, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

1. We have bookish but none of your suggestions are English words. We also have golden, silvery, coppery and tinny. For resembling iron, probably "iron-like" as irony is something completely different. Alansplodge (talk) 22:19, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

'Ferrous' would be used for iron. 'Ironous' would be erroneous. ~2026-15582-65 (talk) 16:02, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

If I recall correctly, 'irony' meaning 'something like iron' was used as a joke in the 'Uxbridge English Dictionary' segment of an episode of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-76101-8 (talk) 22:01, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Megg Rayara Gomes de Oliveira's last name

What is Megg Rayara Gomes de Oliveira's last name? Some websites that sell books by her (Amazon) use "Gomes de Oliveira, Megg Rayara", some websites (Black Women Radicals) use "Oliveira, Megg Rayara Gomes de", some (Race and Equality dot org) use "de Oliveira, Megg Rayara Gomes". Is one of these more standard or common? Olivevert (talk) 02:04, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Here's an old Portuguese book that treats Gomes de Oliveira as a surname. In the index it lists

Gomes de Oliveira António.
Gomes de Oliveira Manoel.

 Card Zero  (talk) 09:58, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Presentations of the form "last name, preceding names", commonly used for collation purposes, are suitable for English names and commonly used in the Anglosphere, but may be less suitable for other naming customs.

The typical pattern of a complete Portuguese name is:

personal name(s) + mother's surname + father's surname,

in which only the last of each of the parent's two surnames is copied. However, this is not always strictly followed, and name bearers do often not use (and are not knoen by) their full names. Miguel Arraes de Alencar was the son of Maria Benigna Arraes and José Almino de Alencar e Silva; the part "e Silva" of his father's surname was dropped; he was known as Miguel Arraes, with only his mother's surname. And the full name of his daughter Ana Lúcia Arraes de Alencar does not include part of her mother's name, Célia de Sousa Leão, but copies both of her father's parental surnames. In any case, Rayara seems to be a personal (given) name, and by far the most likely is that Gomes is Megg Rayara's mother's surname and de Oliveira her father's.

Different systems of collation in the Anglosphere may have different rules for what they consider to be the "last" name of Portuguese names in presentations of the form "last name, preceding names". Perhaps the most common is to use the father's surname, which would give "de Oliveira, Megg Rayara Gomes", with the variation "Oliveira, Megg Rayara Gomes de" if the rule is used that particles like "de" are disregarded in collation. So there is no one correct answer; it depends on rules that lack a common standard. One issue in formulating such rules is that one needs to be able to distinguish surnames from given names and that one needs to know the parents' names – for the full name of Ana Arraes it should be "Arraes de Alencar, Ana Lúcia" and definitely not "Alencar, Ana Lúcia Arraes de". (For Megg Rayara, a further complicating factor is that this is commonly used as her name, also by herself, as if Rayara is a surname.) Also, one needs to know that the name is Portuguese; for Spanish names the rules are very different.  ​‑‑Lambiam 11:57, 10 March 2026 (UTC)