On Wed, 25 Mar 2020 13:09:45 -0700 Keith Lofstrom <[email protected]> dijo:
>Online, I made a hypothetical comment including "you would" >(which should have been phrased as "one would"), which was >interpreted by the just-prior-speaker as a disparaging >personal comment, leading to brief upset. Your difficulty here was due to the pathetic nature of English inflections. We really have just one word to use in addressing someone - 'you.' Latin had 12, and present day Spanish has expanded it to 16. Worse, English has what linguists call 'the indefinite you,' where we use 'you' without referring to anyone in particular, which is what you were trying to say. Rather than blame yourself for the miscommunication, you should blame the vagaries of English syntax and usage. _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
