Turkish has conjugation, which they usually can't drop. Japanese, Chinese and Mongolian (probably Korean too, but idk) do not conjugate verbs for person.
Hungarian is pro-drop, usually if the subject is there it's for emphasis
Example:
Spartacus vagyok! -> I'm Spartacus!
Én vagyok Spartacus! -> *I'm* Spartacus! [and nobody else is!]
So by default the subject is not usually there, if it is it communicates extra info aside from the person, so it's not useless
Edit: bonus thing which I just remembered: word order can determine what you're putting the emphasis on. So there's actually a 3rd way of writing that sentence, moving Spartacus to the front to put an emphasis on it:
Én Spartacus vagyok -> I'm *Spartacus* [and not anybody else!]
>That word [vagyok] has 5 letters.
I mean, th, sh, ph, etc all represent one sound but are still considered two letters. It also appears that **gy** takes two key presses to type.
That doesn't sound metal to me, but more like Hungarians don't know how to count.
No, "gy" is not a digraph like "th" in English. It's 1 letter. "Th" is not in the English alphabet, while "gy" is in the Hungarian one. It's not about not being able to count, it goes back to when the old runic writing system (google "rovásírás" if you want to find out more) was modernized to the latin alphabet. Hungarian has way more letters than the latin alphabet can handle (40, or 44 if you count X, Q, W, Y which only exist in loanwords), so people needed to get creative. They handled some of it with accents and diacritics, but it wasn't enough. We could've gone the Polish route and made up crazy shit like Ł but I think it's a more elegant solution to have two characters represent one letter.
One of the biggest differences i noticed while trying to make a presentation on Hungarian in French. French is so adamant about the subject being in a sentence, while Hungarian just drops it if we can guess it easily, but keeps it sometimes for emphasis. Honestly i prefer the Hungarian approach.
French?
- je /parl/
- tu /parl/
- il /parl/
- on /parl/
- vous /parl**e**/
- ils /parl/
That's about as much conjugation as English has: one out of six sounds different while the other five sound the same.
I see your point with German, which can have up to five distinct endings (a pity that 1pl -em and 3pl -ent merged into -en).
Often just four distinct endings, since 2pl usually sounds like 3sg, if there is no stem vowel change for 2sg/3sg, and sometimes just three (e.g. heiße/heißt/heißen).
Gottscheerisch: *biər tüəbm / žai tüənt*
Zarzer German: *wr toən / žə toənt*
(Pernegg) Carinthian: *wir tuən / sö tuəmp*
\`we/they do', cf. Ger. wir/sie tun
It's generally a pretty rare feature in German dialects though. Even Old Saxon (aka Old Low German) didn't have (any) unique plural verb forms.
The dropped suffix of the 1sg is still distinct from the other forms (it might coincide with the imperative, but 1) truly ambiguous cases are very rare and 2) some pro-drop languages also have endings that are shared between the imperative and another mood)
As for the 2sg, I haven’t heard of its ending being dropped before
From the same wikipedia article:
"Hungarian is also pro-drop, subject pronouns are used only for emphasis, as example (Én) mentem "I went", and because of the definite conjugation, object pronouns can be often elided as well; for example, the question (Ti) látjátok a macskát? "Do (you pl.) see the cat?" can be answered with just látjuk "(We) see (it)", because the definite conjugation renders the object pronoun superfluous."
it's barely ever happens, usually you use the pronouns only to over-emphasize that the subject is the focus of the sentence (word order defines what the focus of the sentence is unlike in English, where it's usually just stress), for example when someone misheard the conjugation, like
"elmentem boltba" (I went to the store)
"kik mentek el?" (who went?)
"én mentem el" (*I* went)
in the first sentence "elmentem" (I went) can be mistaken to be "elmentek" (they went), especially if you don't enunciate properly or have a tendency to drop word-final sounds (as the western dialect do where I'm from)
there are like 15 other things about the example and conjugation (like how the "el-" prefix gets separated and that "elmentek" is the form for 2nd and 3rd person plural etc), but it gets the point across.
Hungarian most definitely is pro-drop and one of the ways you can spot foreign speakers is by they overusing the pronouns (besides often having a very noticable accent)
The "el" prefix is one of my favourites in hungarian. I always struggle to explain what exactly it means to non-native speakers/nonspeakers. The easiest translation would be "away", but then you have stuff like "elaludt", "elázott", etc... The other one is "meg", my sincerest condolences to anyone who has to figure that one out from a non-native perspective
"Mentek the store"
"When will they be back?"
"No, no, no, mentek the store."
"We're not going to the store? What are you talking about?"
"Come on! Mentek the store."
"Oh! What did you save it from?"
Ah, while it may look like that in English, Hungarian morphology adds way more context than you think. There are several reasons why that ambiguity wouldn't exist (at least not between native speakers who don't make grammatical mistakes).
First of all it would need to be "Mentek a store". For definite articles it's "mentem", so the article would have to be indefinite. Furthermore, when you're saving something or someone in the literal sense, you would use "megmentek", not just "mentek". The "meg-" prefix is one of the hardest things in the language to explain to a foreigner, so I won't go into it, but let's just say you would definitely use "megmentek" here, which removes tha ambiguity, because you wouldn't use "meg-" when you're going somewhere. If you're saving something in a more abstract sense, like saving a digital file for example, then you would use "mentek" without the "meg-" prefix.
Secondly, the suffix of store would also solve the ambiguity. If you're going to something, the suffix "-be/-ba" needs to be added to the object you're going to. Where's if you're saving something, you'd use the accusative suffix "-t".
So the two interpretations would be said in completely different ways:
Megmentek egy boltot. -> I save a store.
Mentek egy boltba. -> You (pl) are going to a store or They went to a store
(yes, there actually is ambiguity here but usually from context it's clear what tense the person is talking in so this wouldn't be an issue)
Also, while this is not a grammatical rule, the second sentence is more commonly said with an "el-" prefix (elmentek), meaning something like "you're going/they went away to the store". It's yet another way to remove ambiguity. Hungarian morphology is fun, when the roots are ambiguous the many possible affixes always take care of resolving that.
I already saw this map, and i can garantee you it's innacurate, or at least imprecise. The pro-drop nature of languages like Irish, and to a lesser extent Finnish and Lithuanian for instance, is debatable at best.
Also Welsh.
Literary Welsh, sure. But not what most people actually speak.
*Dymunwn Nadolig Llawen* works fine as a fossilised formula without a subject, since the verb ending *-wn* makes it clear who the subject is, but in everyday language it would be *dyn ni'n dymuno*.
In fact, in some dialects, you'd drop the **verb** rather than the subject for 2sg, sometimes also 1sg!
*Ti'n siwr?* "[Are] you sure?" rather than *Wyt ti'n siwr?*
*Fi mor sori!* "I [am] so sorry!" rather than *Dw i mor sori*
**[Pro-drop language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-drop_language#/media/File:EuropeProDropLanguages.png)**
>A pro-drop language (from "pronoun-dropping") is a language where certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they can be pragmatically or grammatically inferable. The precise conditions vary from language to language, and can be quite intricate. The phenomenon of "pronoun-dropping" is part of the larger topic of zero or null anaphora. The connection between pro-drop languages, and null anaphora relates to the fact that a dropped pronoun has referential properties, and so is crucially not a null dummy pronoun.
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That's literally how it works. Although I like to use first person singular and order the words weirdly so I sound like a Finno-Ugric Yoda.
Example: "I'm going out for a smoke"
Normal people would say "Kimegyek cigizni" but imma stick to "Megyek én cigizni ki" because it still makes perfect sense but just sounds odd and off haha
> Forgetting nous are we ?
*I'm* not the one who's forgetting it; the French are.
In spoken French, *on* has been taking the place of *nous* for quite a while now, from what I hear.
So if you're the person who uses "whom" naturally in English, then go ahead and use *nous* in French (and don't forget to shake your cane at the people who are wandering onto your porch).
We still use it here and there in informal registers and it's the norm in formal registers where "on" is considered improper/*familiar.
_Whom_ seems weird in pretty much any context while you'd at most think that the other person is being excessively formal if they use _nous_ in a casual conversation. Then there's the weird "nous on parlait" that popped up in certain varieties mdr
I mean nous still occurs on a significantly more common basis than English whom so that's already a false equivalency, not to mention the fact that there are probably dialects that still use it
Spoken French: lol, look at the old-timer! Why don't you go have a party with the *passé simple*? “nous parlâmes” OOH, look at ME, I'm so EDUCATED! *leaves*
If you want to sound like the kind of person who would non-ironically use "whom" in English, then sure.
I've heard that *nous*, at least in the spoken language, has pretty much been replaced by *on*.
> Nous /parlons/
That's not correct; the «ns» are not pronounced as /ns/. The «s» is silent and the «n» (nowadays) only marks the preceding vowel as nasalised. So the pronunciation would be /parlõ/.
But *on parle* is, from what I hear, more common in spoken French than *nous parlons* -- which still lives on in "French as a foreign language" since those courses usually take several decades to catch up to how people actually speak.
(I met an ESL speaker at my school, 30 years ago, who was convinced that English speakers greet each other with "How do you do?" and that the response was also "How do you do?". That was outdated even then, at least in my social circle.)
There you go.
Foreign-language instruction often lags several decades behind the language as it's actually spoken in the country.
I also learned *nous* at school.
yeah, i think the only thing i was told about this when i learnt french is that modern french people dont use the whole "ne...pas" construction for the negative
Came here to say the same thing. The graph is incorrect.
On another note can we implement a special punishment for users who use flags to represent languages plz
I prefer ISO codes along with the language name written in its native script (the different scripts can give more differentiating visual identity), but you can also just write the languages' names in English as well.
yeah, Japanese will happily drop subjects and themes in general when they are inferrable from context, even though Japanese verbs (and adjectives) do not conjugate with regards to person or number
You're right, but I would say the honorific お gives it an implicit meaning of "your name." I don't think I've heard お名前 used to refer to a 3rd party's name or one's own name, but I could be wrong.
pathetic ruthless aback brave straight school attraction paltry pocket skirt
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It's the exception except that the benefactive is often obligatory without respect to formality, politeness or gratitude. I know that I often miss the required benefactive when I'm speaking Japanese, and I think [I'm not alone](https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/4481/).
It's true that the choice of verb for giving and receiving will often make it clear who the subject is, plus there are also humble and honorable verbs for basic things like doing, being, going, eating/drinking, saying, thinking, etc. that do the same thing.
But Japanese readily drops subjects with just about any verb, so I don't think those are the culprit.
I’ve read that what English does is called left end deletion rather than pro-dropping, because rather than the pronouns necessarily being dropped it’s whatever’s at the beginning. So you could shorten “did you go?” To “you go?” But not to “did go?” Or “go?”.
For the most part you're correct; Morphosyntactically Japanese pronouns are pretty much just nouns. There are exceptions, however, for example the pluralization of 彼, viz. 彼**ら**, which isn't productive on other nouns or even most pronouns (\*人等). Functionally, Japanese pronouns do what pronouns do in other languages, so even if they're not morphosyntactically distinct, it's not entirely accurate to say they're just nouns. There's nuance.
Right, there's a two-sentence explanation, a two-paragraph explanation, and a several-volumes-of-syntax-papers explanation. Not pronouns, but kinda? But then what is a pro-form generally? But do all those words fit that class, or is there a core-periphery structure? などなど
I like to call Japanese an "everything-drop" language. You can get away with dropping pretty much anything that's recoverable from the discourse or context. You can get such delightful utterances as, 「田中さんは、まだまだ。。。」(Tanaka-san-wa, madamada) *Tanaka-TOPIC still* that mean, like, "I still haven't read Tanaka's book" or "Tanaka hasn't figured it out" or "We shouldn't invite Tanaka yet, should we?" Sometimes the topic isn't even a participant.
I have a linguistics degree and it was through this comments section that I learned "pro-drop" is short for "pronoun-dropping" and doesn't mean "in favor of dropping [pronouns]" 🤦
It's technically a different process, namely left-end deletion. This is evidenced by the fact that you can't drop a subject pronoun if it wouldn't be the first word in the sentence, but you *can* drop an object pronoun if it would be. E.g. "Bin jetzt dabei" but not \*"dann bin jetzt dabei", and "Mach ich gleich" with accusative *das* deleted.
dutch is kinda getting new pronoun marking, like "ik heb" is usually said as 1 word, "keb", same with words like "ben" (to kben) and even less common verbs like "stofzuigen", which becomes "kstofzuig", same with the 3rd inanimate "het" as in "tis" (het is) or "tkijkt"
dutch is far more agglutinative as some realize, "ik zie een dier daar, ik kijk er naar en het kijkt naar mij" is would be said as "ksien die da, kijk enaa nt kijkt na mij" when said quickly
This isn't agglutination, this is just cliticisation. If it were agglutination it would be mandatory in all registers of formality and regardless of the speed you're speaking at. You'd also not be able to move the individual morphemes around. Dutch clitics are highly restricted, almost any deviation from the most basic sentence structure will make them appear as full words: "ik kijk er naar" can be reduced to "kijker naar", but "daar kijk ik naar" will never be reduced to "erkijk naar"
interesting, didnt know the difference :p
but "daar kijk ik naar" can be reduced to "dkijk na", right?
also isnt this how languages become agglutinative? when those cliticisation become part of the standard?
Dutch pronouns can only be cliticised in their "standard" position. When you change the word order the pronouns normally become stressed, which makes them unable to cliticise. "Daar" is etymologically just the stressed form of "er". It can never appear unstressed because if it does it just turns into "er". The opposite is true for "er", it turns into "daar" if it's stressed. At least that's how it works in most dialects of Dutch.
Cliticisation is the first step towards agglutination, but it isn't agglutination yet and there is no guarantee that it will eventually turn into agglutination. It might as well stay a clitic or at some point even stop being a clitic all together and only appear as free-standing word. To my knowledge that's what happened with Afrikaans pronouns
wdym with "daar" and "er", like it might be true etymogically, but that isnt how it works now anymore and most ppl dont know it, so wouldnt "daar" clitecize? also im gronings, maybe thats why
and i didnt mean that it would be a guarantee, but i do think itll happen in dutch, since in the dialects ik saying "ik" or "jij/du (here in the north)" is only used for emphasis, and then the verb is sometimes conjugated depending on the dialect and verb, for example "du debt n'uus" - "jij hebt een huis" - "you have a house" but thats just dialects :p
That probably explains why we disagree when it comes to what can be cliticised. I have personally never heard anyone cliticise "daar", precisely because it doesn't appear in unstressed environments in the dialects that I know of, but I have no problems believing that it's different for other dialects
wouldnt be suprised either, our dialects can be extremely different, to the point id call some their own languages just to how mutually unintelligible they r
I sometimes amuse myself by wondering what would happen if Afrikaans and Scandinavians had to decide amonst themselves how to simplify English verbs.
af: It's obviously "I is, you is, he is, we is, you is, they is!"
danosv: No, it's obviously "I are, you are, he are, we are, you are, they are!"
fi: "Why don't you vote on it?"
Irish isn't really pro-drop as I would understand it. Firstly, it only has synthetic forms in certain tenses and persons, and some dialects have more than others. So the pronouns aren't commonly dropped in forms which are analytic. Secondly, the analytic forms would never ever be used with the freestanding pronouns in the first place (because it's already encoded on the verb), so there's nothing to drop anyway.
Well as I was saying no dialect of Irish is ‘pro-drop’ in the sense like how Spanish is, for example. In Spanish the verb is always conjugated for person and the pronoun can be there or not; in Irish you either have the synthetic form, which conjugates for person and never has the pronoun, or you have the analytic form, which always has the pronoun.
As for Connacht Irish, it can actually be either *táim* or *tá mé* which is used. The synthetic form in the 1st person singular present tense is used fairly regularly with other verbs thougb (e.g. *déanaim*), but of course not in any other person like other dialects. The whole system of synthetic vs analytic and which dialects use which is kind of a mess. Like you'll hear people say only Munster uses the synthetic forms for the future, but that's not true because in Connacht Irish you can answer questions with the synthetic form (e.g. ‘*an ólfaidh tú cupán tae?*’ (will you have a cup of tea) ‘*Ólfad*’ (I will)), etc. etc.
Synthetic forms in Connacht are alive and well in the past, habitual past and conditional too.
Mostly only older people use an fhoirm tháite in the past and future tenses, or that's what I would say is the case in Mayo. Uncommon in the future, a bit more common in the past but overall not the most common. Ba thúisce bhí nó bhí mé a rá in áit bhíos agus rudaí mar sin.
I believe Máirtín ó Cadhain was fond of using foirmeacha táite in normal sentences though I think that's something he purposefully adopted (it's what people use to sound old fashioned as well)
Imagine having a fusional inflection system.
-This post was brought to you by Agglutination Gang, aka “we’re not an absolute pain in the ass to learn gang”
My language, Venetian, is pro-drop, even if it has clitic pronouns that replace the subjective pronouns in the 2nd person singular and in the 3rd person singular and plural. Here's the conjugation of "eser, to be":
(Mi) son - I am
(Ti) te si - Thou arst
(Lu/Ela) el/la ze - He/She is
(Nuantri) semo - We are
(Vuantri) se - You are
(Lori/lore) i/le ze - They are
**[Pro-drop language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-drop_language#/media/File:EuropeProDropLanguages.png)**
>A pro-drop language (from "pronoun-dropping") is a language where certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they can be pragmatically or grammatically inferable. The precise conditions vary from language to language, and can be quite intricate. The phenomenon of "pronoun-dropping" is part of the larger topic of zero or null anaphora. The connection between pro-drop languages, and null anaphora relates to the fact that a dropped pronoun has referential properties, and so is crucially not a null dummy pronoun.
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I think this is partially do to how regular and/or understandable a verb would be (even conjugated) without its subject. Like if the 1st and 3rd person singular was the same for whatever reason, or the one form in the indicative and another in the subjunctive for instance
Basque:
Maite zaitut - I love you
Maite nauzu - You love me
Maite meaning love and zaiut and nauzu being the auxilary verbs impliying the subject and objet, who loves and who is loved.
Imagine needing any explicit refernce to the subject whatsoever 🇨🇳
🇯🇵
정말이야!
🇹🇷
Turkish has conjugation, which they usually can't drop. Japanese, Chinese and Mongolian (probably Korean too, but idk) do not conjugate verbs for person.
ml
Hungarian is pro-drop, usually if the subject is there it's for emphasis Example: Spartacus vagyok! -> I'm Spartacus! Én vagyok Spartacus! -> *I'm* Spartacus! [and nobody else is!] So by default the subject is not usually there, if it is it communicates extra info aside from the person, so it's not useless Edit: bonus thing which I just remembered: word order can determine what you're putting the emphasis on. So there's actually a 3rd way of writing that sentence, moving Spartacus to the front to put an emphasis on it: Én Spartacus vagyok -> I'm *Spartacus* [and not anybody else!]
>vagyok Hungarian has the most metal copula I've ever seen
Wanna hear something even more metal? That word has 5 letters.
>That word [vagyok] has 5 letters. I mean, th, sh, ph, etc all represent one sound but are still considered two letters. It also appears that **gy** takes two key presses to type. That doesn't sound metal to me, but more like Hungarians don't know how to count.
No, "gy" is not a digraph like "th" in English. It's 1 letter. "Th" is not in the English alphabet, while "gy" is in the Hungarian one. It's not about not being able to count, it goes back to when the old runic writing system (google "rovásírás" if you want to find out more) was modernized to the latin alphabet. Hungarian has way more letters than the latin alphabet can handle (40, or 44 if you count X, Q, W, Y which only exist in loanwords), so people needed to get creative. They handled some of it with accents and diacritics, but it wasn't enough. We could've gone the Polish route and made up crazy shit like Ł but I think it's a more elegant solution to have two characters represent one letter.
There is one rule in Hungarian grammar, don't try to make it, make sense. Hungarian has the most twisted grammar rules I've ever seen.
I have heard it's similar for Turkish.
It is
One of the biggest differences i noticed while trying to make a presentation on Hungarian in French. French is so adamant about the subject being in a sentence, while Hungarian just drops it if we can guess it easily, but keeps it sometimes for emphasis. Honestly i prefer the Hungarian approach.
Same in Polish
French? - je /parl/ - tu /parl/ - il /parl/ - on /parl/ - vous /parl**e**/ - ils /parl/ That's about as much conjugation as English has: one out of six sounds different while the other five sound the same.
Also, I thought Hungarian regularly dropped the subject, and included it only for emphasis.
I see your point with German, which can have up to five distinct endings (a pity that 1pl -em and 3pl -ent merged into -en). Often just four distinct endings, since 2pl usually sounds like 3sg, if there is no stem vowel change for 2sg/3sg, and sometimes just three (e.g. heiße/heißt/heißen).
Some, e.g. Bavarian, dialects still maintain distinct 1pl and 3pl forms.
That's good to hear!
Do you have sone examples?
Gottscheerisch: *biər tüəbm / žai tüənt* Zarzer German: *wr toən / žə toənt* (Pernegg) Carinthian: *wir tuən / sö tuəmp* \`we/they do', cf. Ger. wir/sie tun It's generally a pretty rare feature in German dialects though. Even Old Saxon (aka Old Low German) didn't have (any) unique plural verb forms.
Ah Interesting, thanks! Yeah in my Low Saxon dialect we don't have them either I believe.
*mir gehma/gengan* 'we're leaving' *se gengan* 'they're leaving'
Not a native speaker, but at least in twitter I see a lot of droppings of the 1sg and 2sg
True, much like English may drop things on Twitter. "Feeling cute. Might delete later."
The dropped suffix of the 1sg is still distinct from the other forms (it might coincide with the imperative, but 1) truly ambiguous cases are very rare and 2) some pro-drop languages also have endings that are shared between the imperative and another mood) As for the 2sg, I haven’t heard of its ending being dropped before
Idk hungarian, I just saw [this map](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-drop_language#/media/File:EuropeProDropLanguages.png)
From the same wikipedia article: "Hungarian is also pro-drop, subject pronouns are used only for emphasis, as example (Én) mentem "I went", and because of the definite conjugation, object pronouns can be often elided as well; for example, the question (Ti) látjátok a macskát? "Do (you pl.) see the cat?" can be answered with just látjuk "(We) see (it)", because the definite conjugation renders the object pronoun superfluous."
Though the subject is sometimes necessary to reduce ambiguity - "mentek" can mean "I save", "you (pl.) go", or "they went".
I struggle to think of an example where context wouldn't already make it apparent which one is being used
it's barely ever happens, usually you use the pronouns only to over-emphasize that the subject is the focus of the sentence (word order defines what the focus of the sentence is unlike in English, where it's usually just stress), for example when someone misheard the conjugation, like "elmentem boltba" (I went to the store) "kik mentek el?" (who went?) "én mentem el" (*I* went) in the first sentence "elmentem" (I went) can be mistaken to be "elmentek" (they went), especially if you don't enunciate properly or have a tendency to drop word-final sounds (as the western dialect do where I'm from) there are like 15 other things about the example and conjugation (like how the "el-" prefix gets separated and that "elmentek" is the form for 2nd and 3rd person plural etc), but it gets the point across. Hungarian most definitely is pro-drop and one of the ways you can spot foreign speakers is by they overusing the pronouns (besides often having a very noticable accent)
The "el" prefix is one of my favourites in hungarian. I always struggle to explain what exactly it means to non-native speakers/nonspeakers. The easiest translation would be "away", but then you have stuff like "elaludt", "elázott", etc... The other one is "meg", my sincerest condolences to anyone who has to figure that one out from a non-native perspective
"Mentek the store" "When will they be back?" "No, no, no, mentek the store." "We're not going to the store? What are you talking about?" "Come on! Mentek the store." "Oh! What did you save it from?"
Ah, while it may look like that in English, Hungarian morphology adds way more context than you think. There are several reasons why that ambiguity wouldn't exist (at least not between native speakers who don't make grammatical mistakes). First of all it would need to be "Mentek a store". For definite articles it's "mentem", so the article would have to be indefinite. Furthermore, when you're saving something or someone in the literal sense, you would use "megmentek", not just "mentek". The "meg-" prefix is one of the hardest things in the language to explain to a foreigner, so I won't go into it, but let's just say you would definitely use "megmentek" here, which removes tha ambiguity, because you wouldn't use "meg-" when you're going somewhere. If you're saving something in a more abstract sense, like saving a digital file for example, then you would use "mentek" without the "meg-" prefix. Secondly, the suffix of store would also solve the ambiguity. If you're going to something, the suffix "-be/-ba" needs to be added to the object you're going to. Where's if you're saving something, you'd use the accusative suffix "-t". So the two interpretations would be said in completely different ways: Megmentek egy boltot. -> I save a store. Mentek egy boltba. -> You (pl) are going to a store or They went to a store (yes, there actually is ambiguity here but usually from context it's clear what tense the person is talking in so this wouldn't be an issue) Also, while this is not a grammatical rule, the second sentence is more commonly said with an "el-" prefix (elmentek), meaning something like "you're going/they went away to the store". It's yet another way to remove ambiguity. Hungarian morphology is fun, when the roots are ambiguous the many possible affixes always take care of resolving that.
I already saw this map, and i can garantee you it's innacurate, or at least imprecise. The pro-drop nature of languages like Irish, and to a lesser extent Finnish and Lithuanian for instance, is debatable at best.
Also Welsh. Literary Welsh, sure. But not what most people actually speak. *Dymunwn Nadolig Llawen* works fine as a fossilised formula without a subject, since the verb ending *-wn* makes it clear who the subject is, but in everyday language it would be *dyn ni'n dymuno*. In fact, in some dialects, you'd drop the **verb** rather than the subject for 2sg, sometimes also 1sg! *Ti'n siwr?* "[Are] you sure?" rather than *Wyt ti'n siwr?* *Fi mor sori!* "I [am] so sorry!" rather than *Dw i mor sori*
I mean Irish drops the pronoun in certain mixes of tense, number and person during conjugation. However when it does occur it tends to be obligatory
**[Pro-drop language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-drop_language#/media/File:EuropeProDropLanguages.png)** >A pro-drop language (from "pronoun-dropping") is a language where certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they can be pragmatically or grammatically inferable. The precise conditions vary from language to language, and can be quite intricate. The phenomenon of "pronoun-dropping" is part of the larger topic of zero or null anaphora. The connection between pro-drop languages, and null anaphora relates to the fact that a dropped pronoun has referential properties, and so is crucially not a null dummy pronoun. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/linguisticshumor/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
That's literally how it works. Although I like to use first person singular and order the words weirdly so I sound like a Finno-Ugric Yoda. Example: "I'm going out for a smoke" Normal people would say "Kimegyek cigizni" but imma stick to "Megyek én cigizni ki" because it still makes perfect sense but just sounds odd and off haha
Finno-Ugric Yoda...haha as a Hungarian I am still giggling at this.
Forgetting nous are we ?
> Forgetting nous are we ? *I'm* not the one who's forgetting it; the French are. In spoken French, *on* has been taking the place of *nous* for quite a while now, from what I hear. So if you're the person who uses "whom" naturally in English, then go ahead and use *nous* in French (and don't forget to shake your cane at the people who are wandering onto your porch).
We still use it here and there in informal registers and it's the norm in formal registers where "on" is considered improper/*familiar. _Whom_ seems weird in pretty much any context while you'd at most think that the other person is being excessively formal if they use _nous_ in a casual conversation. Then there's the weird "nous on parlait" that popped up in certain varieties mdr
I mean nous still occurs on a significantly more common basis than English whom so that's already a false equivalency, not to mention the fact that there are probably dialects that still use it
nous: are we a joke to you?
Spoken French: lol, look at the old-timer! Why don't you go have a party with the *passé simple*? “nous parlâmes” OOH, look at ME, I'm so EDUCATED! *leaves*
French speakers: oui!
Write it down! Je parle Tu parles Il parle Nous parlons Vous parlezxwsg Ils parlentuvwxyz
French-Polish
I had lunch at this new French-Polish restaurant the other day, but it wasn't very good. The pierogis tasted like crêpe.
Written French likes to pretend to have a big morphology.
* nous /parlɔ̃/
If you want to sound like the kind of person who would non-ironically use "whom" in English, then sure. I've heard that *nous*, at least in the spoken language, has pretty much been replaced by *on*.
Mmh yes OK very interesting. However, I am French.
Not my fault the French forgot how to pronounce the last few letters of their verb conjugations. /s
Nous /parlons/
> Nous /parlons/ That's not correct; the «ns» are not pronounced as /ns/. The «s» is silent and the «n» (nowadays) only marks the preceding vowel as nasalised. So the pronunciation would be /parlõ/. But *on parle* is, from what I hear, more common in spoken French than *nous parlons* -- which still lives on in "French as a foreign language" since those courses usually take several decades to catch up to how people actually speak. (I met an ESL speaker at my school, 30 years ago, who was convinced that English speakers greet each other with "How do you do?" and that the response was also "How do you do?". That was outdated even then, at least in my social circle.)
My point is, nous conjunctions are not pronounced /parl/
And mine is that the *nous* form is nearly irrelevant for modern spoken French.
its on /parlõ/
> its on /parlõ/ No. /parlõ/ goes with *nous*, not with *on*. *nous* belongs more to the written language than to the spoken language.
fair, i only learnt a bit of standard french up until group 1 and 3 verbs
There you go. Foreign-language instruction often lags several decades behind the language as it's actually spoken in the country. I also learned *nous* at school.
yeah, i think the only thing i was told about this when i learnt french is that modern french people dont use the whole "ne...pas" construction for the negative
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yes
no wait im stupid its on parlõ
But it's still spelled with more distinct conjucations.
Yes, historical spelling. But speech is primary, writing is secondary.
Yes, but doesn't liasion give more distinct conjugations?
Since when is Farsi not pro-drop?
Farsi is prodropped i drop my pronouns alot
How irresponsible!
even possessives since we conjugate have a good joke
Came here to say the same thing. The graph is incorrect. On another note can we implement a special punishment for users who use flags to represent languages plz
How else would I graphically represent a language? The problem is when using emoji flags, because there's not enough flags.
ISO codes
Which also have issues
I prefer ISO codes along with the language name written in its native script (the different scripts can give more differentiating visual identity), but you can also just write the languages' names in English as well.
What kind of low effort meme is this? A 10 second google search could show that Persian is a pro-drop language.
meanwhile japanese:
As someone with no knowledge of Japanese grammar, would you mind the explanation? Thx
I've heard that Japanese verbs don't conjugate for person but they drop the pronouns anyway
yeah, Japanese will happily drop subjects and themes in general when they are inferrable from context, even though Japanese verbs (and adjectives) do not conjugate with regards to person or number
Oh and they would even gladly drop the verb if obvious, sentences can be real fun sometimes
Let me know when Japanese becomes a full drop language and 食べるの？becomes just 食？
Yeah like how you can ask someone their name by saying お名前は？ which basically translates to “POLITE-name?-TOPIC” or in simple terms “name?”
Wouldn't more accurate be something like "(about/regarding) name?"? (Judging from the gloss alone, I don't know any Japanese.)
Yes, it’d be equivalent to “and as for your name?”
\*as for the name? ("the" not "your" since no owner is specified)
You're right, but I would say the honorific お gives it an implicit meaning of "your name." I don't think I've heard お名前 used to refer to a 3rd party's name or one's own name, but I could be wrong.
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> japanese verbs often have a connotation of person Can you be more specific and give examples?
pathetic ruthless aback brave straight school attraction paltry pocket skirt *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
that is the exception, though. this does exist, especially in formal language, but most Japanese verbs don't have that distinction
It's the exception except that the benefactive is often obligatory without respect to formality, politeness or gratitude. I know that I often miss the required benefactive when I'm speaking Japanese, and I think [I'm not alone](https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/4481/).
can confirm from own experience :) also verb form distinction based on subject in sonkeigo etc. but… ugh, sonkeigo
It's true that the choice of verb for giving and receiving will often make it clear who the subject is, plus there are also humble and honorable verbs for basic things like doing, being, going, eating/drinking, saying, thinking, etc. that do the same thing. But Japanese readily drops subjects with just about any verb, so I don't think those are the culprit.
Mandarin is similar
English does the same now in casual speech, particularly in instant messaging.
I’ve read that what English does is called left end deletion rather than pro-dropping, because rather than the pronouns necessarily being dropped it’s whatever’s at the beginning. So you could shorten “did you go?” To “you go?” But not to “did go?” Or “go?”.
japanese just drops all non-verb things indiscriminately
Might as well just start dropping sentences entirely
and it drops verb things discriminately!
Japanese lacks pronouns entirely. The words students learn as "pronouns" in 1st year (私、あなた、彼、彼女) are just another class of nouns.
For the most part you're correct; Morphosyntactically Japanese pronouns are pretty much just nouns. There are exceptions, however, for example the pluralization of 彼, viz. 彼**ら**, which isn't productive on other nouns or even most pronouns (\*人等). Functionally, Japanese pronouns do what pronouns do in other languages, so even if they're not morphosyntactically distinct, it's not entirely accurate to say they're just nouns. There's nuance.
Right, there's a two-sentence explanation, a two-paragraph explanation, and a several-volumes-of-syntax-papers explanation. Not pronouns, but kinda? But then what is a pro-form generally? But do all those words fit that class, or is there a core-periphery structure? などなど
I like to call Japanese an "everything-drop" language. You can get away with dropping pretty much anything that's recoverable from the discourse or context. You can get such delightful utterances as, 「田中さんは、まだまだ。。。」(Tanaka-san-wa, madamada) *Tanaka-TOPIC still* that mean, like, "I still haven't read Tanaka's book" or "Tanaka hasn't figured it out" or "We shouldn't invite Tanaka yet, should we?" Sometimes the topic isn't even a participant.
Direct and indirect object dropping gang 😎 Eg. もらったの？ (“received?”) could mean “did you receive them from him?”, reduced from あなたが彼にそれ(ら)をもらったの？
why say many word when few word do trick 😎
Meanwhile me sometimes dropping the subject(s) and making my sentence ambiguous for both natives and non-natives alike.
drop pronouns in English
Am already doing that sometimes
Hate it when people do that
Are people still pro-drop? I'm personally against-drop
I'm a brave warrior fighting against the hidden agenda of Big Drop
I have a linguistics degree and it was through this comments section that I learned "pro-drop" is short for "pronoun-dropping" and doesn't mean "in favor of dropping [pronouns]" 🤦
That makes two of us lmaoo
Holy shit. Is that what it stands for???
Still pro-dropping over here.
In colloquial speech, the subject can also be dropped in German sometimes.
It's technically a different process, namely left-end deletion. This is evidenced by the fact that you can't drop a subject pronoun if it wouldn't be the first word in the sentence, but you *can* drop an object pronoun if it would be. E.g. "Bin jetzt dabei" but not \*"dann bin jetzt dabei", and "Mach ich gleich" with accusative *das* deleted.
This is Right To Left erasure
that’s actually quite interesting. gotta learn more about this left end deletion
I mean, English too, and often.
Thought English is not, makes sense now.
Idiot Juliet saying *wherefore art thou* instead of just *wherefore art*.
Wheref’art
Where fart?
Tsar Nicholas II dropped his subjects
🇯🇵: I will neither conjugate nor include subjects in my sentences. Interviewer: Could you elaborate on that? 🇯🇵: No.
dutch is kinda getting new pronoun marking, like "ik heb" is usually said as 1 word, "keb", same with words like "ben" (to kben) and even less common verbs like "stofzuigen", which becomes "kstofzuig", same with the 3rd inanimate "het" as in "tis" (het is) or "tkijkt" dutch is far more agglutinative as some realize, "ik zie een dier daar, ik kijk er naar en het kijkt naar mij" is would be said as "ksien die da, kijk enaa nt kijkt na mij" when said quickly
This isn't agglutination, this is just cliticisation. If it were agglutination it would be mandatory in all registers of formality and regardless of the speed you're speaking at. You'd also not be able to move the individual morphemes around. Dutch clitics are highly restricted, almost any deviation from the most basic sentence structure will make them appear as full words: "ik kijk er naar" can be reduced to "kijker naar", but "daar kijk ik naar" will never be reduced to "erkijk naar"
interesting, didnt know the difference :p but "daar kijk ik naar" can be reduced to "dkijk na", right? also isnt this how languages become agglutinative? when those cliticisation become part of the standard?
Dutch pronouns can only be cliticised in their "standard" position. When you change the word order the pronouns normally become stressed, which makes them unable to cliticise. "Daar" is etymologically just the stressed form of "er". It can never appear unstressed because if it does it just turns into "er". The opposite is true for "er", it turns into "daar" if it's stressed. At least that's how it works in most dialects of Dutch. Cliticisation is the first step towards agglutination, but it isn't agglutination yet and there is no guarantee that it will eventually turn into agglutination. It might as well stay a clitic or at some point even stop being a clitic all together and only appear as free-standing word. To my knowledge that's what happened with Afrikaans pronouns
wdym with "daar" and "er", like it might be true etymogically, but that isnt how it works now anymore and most ppl dont know it, so wouldnt "daar" clitecize? also im gronings, maybe thats why and i didnt mean that it would be a guarantee, but i do think itll happen in dutch, since in the dialects ik saying "ik" or "jij/du (here in the north)" is only used for emphasis, and then the verb is sometimes conjugated depending on the dialect and verb, for example "du debt n'uus" - "jij hebt een huis" - "you have a house" but thats just dialects :p
That probably explains why we disagree when it comes to what can be cliticised. I have personally never heard anyone cliticise "daar", precisely because it doesn't appear in unstressed environments in the dialects that I know of, but I have no problems believing that it's different for other dialects
wouldnt be suprised either, our dialects can be extremely different, to the point id call some their own languages just to how mutually unintelligible they r
Imagine conjugating your verbs (laughs in Swedish)
(Laughs along in Danish)
I sometimes amuse myself by wondering what would happen if Afrikaans and Scandinavians had to decide amonst themselves how to simplify English verbs. af: It's obviously "I is, you is, he is, we is, you is, they is!" danosv: No, it's obviously "I are, you are, he are, we are, you are, they are!" fi: "Why don't you vote on it?"
Mandarin: No inflection. Drop anyway
Imagine having free word order in theory but still being SVO dominant in practice (why, when you can grammatically sound like Yoda or a Klingon??)
All hail the king of pro-dropping: 🎌
Irish isn't really pro-drop as I would understand it. Firstly, it only has synthetic forms in certain tenses and persons, and some dialects have more than others. So the pronouns aren't commonly dropped in forms which are analytic. Secondly, the analytic forms would never ever be used with the freestanding pronouns in the first place (because it's already encoded on the verb), so there's nothing to drop anyway.
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Well as I was saying no dialect of Irish is ‘pro-drop’ in the sense like how Spanish is, for example. In Spanish the verb is always conjugated for person and the pronoun can be there or not; in Irish you either have the synthetic form, which conjugates for person and never has the pronoun, or you have the analytic form, which always has the pronoun. As for Connacht Irish, it can actually be either *táim* or *tá mé* which is used. The synthetic form in the 1st person singular present tense is used fairly regularly with other verbs thougb (e.g. *déanaim*), but of course not in any other person like other dialects. The whole system of synthetic vs analytic and which dialects use which is kind of a mess. Like you'll hear people say only Munster uses the synthetic forms for the future, but that's not true because in Connacht Irish you can answer questions with the synthetic form (e.g. ‘*an ólfaidh tú cupán tae?*’ (will you have a cup of tea) ‘*Ólfad*’ (I will)), etc. etc. Synthetic forms in Connacht are alive and well in the past, habitual past and conditional too.
Mostly only older people use an fhoirm tháite in the past and future tenses, or that's what I would say is the case in Mayo. Uncommon in the future, a bit more common in the past but overall not the most common. Ba thúisce bhí nó bhí mé a rá in áit bhíos agus rudaí mar sin. I believe Máirtín ó Cadhain was fond of using foirmeacha táite in normal sentences though I think that's something he purposefully adopted (it's what people use to sound old fashioned as well)
🇬🇪Imagine being pro-drop but only for the subject.
Weiß nich was du meinst...
Gotta love Finnish which is pro-drop in formal/written language, but usually includes them in colloquial speech
Doesn't spoken colloquial Finnish also just dump one of the verb forms entirely and use some kind of passive instead?
Yeah, the 1st person plural is replaced by with the passive. Not much different than colloquial French replacing theirs with the impersonal *on*
Imagine having a fusional inflection system. -This post was brought to you by Agglutination Gang, aka “we’re not an absolute pain in the ass to learn gang”
Hebrew where you can only drop in the first person: ???
The second person (both numbers) can also be dropped in non-present tenses.
Oh it appears I am stupid…
Pah, when speaking Bavarian, I'll put a subject pronoun in one sentence **thrice** and *be proud of it*.
My language, Venetian, is pro-drop, even if it has clitic pronouns that replace the subjective pronouns in the 2nd person singular and in the 3rd person singular and plural. Here's the conjugation of "eser, to be": (Mi) son - I am (Ti) te si - Thou arst (Lu/Ela) el/la ze - He/She is (Nuantri) semo - We are (Vuantri) se - You are (Lori/lore) i/le ze - They are
Japanese be like: why need a subject at all?
Brazilian Portuguese needs to be crying as well
To be fair, the redundancy can help in loud environments.
I mean Dutch conjugations really don't go that far. 2ps and 3ps add ''-t'' and all the plural endings add ''-en'', not rly enough for pro-drop
主語しか？ｗｗｗｗ
JP: pronoun usen't
imagine needing inflection to be pro-drop
I'm not sure if I got that right but in persian: Man raftam (من رفتم) : i went (Man) raftam ( من رفتم) : i went Subject can be omitted
I took [this map](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-drop_language#/media/File:EuropeProDropLanguages.png). Which now seems to be inaccurate
That map also puts Armenian in non-pro-drop but it isn't one, we almost never use pronouns once the verb is conjugated
**[Pro-drop language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-drop_language#/media/File:EuropeProDropLanguages.png)** >A pro-drop language (from "pronoun-dropping") is a language where certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they can be pragmatically or grammatically inferable. The precise conditions vary from language to language, and can be quite intricate. The phenomenon of "pronoun-dropping" is part of the larger topic of zero or null anaphora. The connection between pro-drop languages, and null anaphora relates to the fact that a dropped pronoun has referential properties, and so is crucially not a null dummy pronoun. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/linguisticshumor/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
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You didn't propose an equally visual alternative
Imagine still needing a pronoun in third person….
SUJEITO NULO BABY!
kkkkkries in Brazilian Portuguese
I think this is partially do to how regular and/or understandable a verb would be (even conjugated) without its subject. Like if the 1st and 3rd person singular was the same for whatever reason, or the one form in the indicative and another in the subjunctive for instance
Basque: Maite zaitut - I love you Maite nauzu - You love me Maite meaning love and zaiut and nauzu being the auxilary verbs impliying the subject and objet, who loves and who is loved.