(no subject)

[wispfox]

I need more user icons. But I can't decide if I should wait to have more pics taken (preferred, but I'm lazy - and I need to get a pic of my cat!), or start wandering around in the random quotes icons. I like quotes. But I'm not sure they are all purpose enough to use an an icon. Especially not when I combine random things in a single, mostly useless entry. Kinda like this one.

And meow.

Just, meow. Meow is an all purpose word, you know.

(all porpoise? Do any porpoises meow?

For some reason that word looks very strange to me, today. I had to use dictionary.com to check its spelling)

I need to meet a porpoise. But first I need enough money and vacation time to go to place I posted a link I posted a bit ago: http://www.divinedolphin.com

I'm thinking about giving up on making it to Chile to visit my sister. Which is sad. But over a thousand dollars (US) just to get there and back just isn't something I can afford.

Which means I should have no problem affording the next APC.

It took until last week for the charge from the hotel from the last APC to arrive on my credit card bill. Very, very strange.

I use the word "y'all". I'm not from the south, either, although I spent a week in Alabama for Space Acadamy a long time ago. There is not a decent 'you' plural in the English language. This annoys me.

Then again, there is at least one word I know in Spanish which doesn't have (as far as I know) a true translation into English. (Hmm. Literally - the Spanish word is in dictionary.com with appropriate definition. Interesting.) Weirdness. 'machismo' if anyone cares.

(apologies if this posts twice - it seemed to ignore me the first few times I tried posting it. POST, damn you! Hmm. LJ hates my random post, apparently.)

Comments

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

English does have a decent second person plural, and you mentioned you already use it: y'all. (When I went to college in Texas, folks heard me say "y'all" and said, "Gee, we rubbed off on you pretty quick, huh?" I had to explain that "y'all" is something one hears in several counties of Maryland.)

The other ways I specify you-plural are:

• If the folks I'm speaking to will pick up on it, I shift to thee/thou for the singular and use 'you' or 'ye' for the plural.
• "You all" or "all of you" (just expanding the contraction)
• "You folks"

Obviously a couple of those are phrases rather than words, and thus don't quite count in your complaint, and the first garners funny looks if one uses it with the wrong crowd./ *shrug*

As for "machismo", English used to lack a word that meant that, but now apparently it has one: "machismo". Like any other concept that some other language has a word for and English lacks, eventually it becomes a loan-word, and some time later everyone forgets where it came from and it loses even its loan-word status and gets considered "just an English word". Like "ennui", which was already an English word (of French etymology) at least by the time my 1967 Webster's was put together. (But I still can't bring myself to pronounce it without that French "en" sound, even if it's considered an English word too, y'know?)

Then again, maybe "machismo" won't properly be an English word until that 'ch' sound gets anglicized...

Which inspires a tangent... According to http://www.shunsley.eril.net/armoore/lang/change.htm

There about 750,000 words in the English language. This number grows steadily, and is probably already out of date. [...]

(And it's still Not Enough Words, which is why we keep stealing 'em or inventing 'em.)

[...]Most borrowings from other languages occur in a given historical period. For example, the close relationship between India and Britain within the British Empire adds to the lexicon in the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries. Musical terms (from Italian) enter the language from the late 17th century and the 18th.

(and at http://www.shunsley.eril.net/armoore/lang/change.htm#16 they've got a couple lists of common words it's easy to forget started as loan-words.)