English Is Impossible 13 members · 0 stories
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The Definition of Impossible
As brought to us by The Free Dictionary. Ahem.

1. Incapable of having existence or of occurring.

An introduction of the English language is actually taught as a 300-level college course in the United States. Three years into college and perhaps you can be introduced to the history of the development of the English language. You know, if you apply yourself and such.

2. Not capable of being accomplished.

One somewhat accomplished writer, three pre-readers, and one editor. All five of them missed that egregious, cringe-worthy grammatical error.

3. Unacceptable, intolerable.

Now we're getting somewhere. Finally:

4. Extremely difficult to deal with or tolerate.

Look at the silver lining. It could be worse. We only have to deal with gendered pronouns.

1056532

It could be worse. We only have to deal with gendered pronouns.

Indeed. In French, all dogs are male and all cats are female.*






*This is based on my hazy recollection of two years of high school French, which I took mumble years ago. I can translate "Michelle" by the Beatles and say a few things that will get me into trouble, but little else.

1060624 Lots of languages, particularly Latin-influenced ones, tend to have that gender-form thing going on. I don't know how they all survive. It's enough to make one look at the entirety of the European continent and simply worry.

1060684
Interesting. Your first post mentions US education, so I thought you were a fellow American. Now you're talking about actually paying attention to Europe, which most of us can't be bothered to do, so now I'm suspecting you're a Brit. :twilightsmile:

1060697 Europe is covered in Latin-influenced languages, so that's why I'm eyeing the globe this way. But--wait. So is the Americas! Spanish and Portuguese in the South, and of course English as you get farther and farther north. I heard somebody speaking traditional Yupik today, and he used a term from... oh no. It's still spreading. The call is coming from the inside of the house! It's made of people!

1060778
Damn Latin-speakers and their interfering ways. We ought to get a bunch of people together and go sack Rome...

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