In light of Nexus Mods and Mod DB banning the No Pronouns mod for Starfield, I figured I would look around for alternative sources and collect them in one place for others’ convenience. This seems like a good place to put them.

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Caution Advised

  • Eggyhead@artemis.camp
    5·
    10 months ago

    I mean, the absurdity of your argument that a sci-fi space rpg can’t meet your standards of “reality” because of a mere ignorable, pre-existing and commonly used pronoun aside, I’m going to have to step in on this particularly low-hanging morsel…

    The rules of English grammar are objective.

    If English grammatical rules were objective, we’d all still be talking the way people did way before Shakespeare. Actually, Shakespeare’s writings wouldn’t exist today if English grammar wasn’t at all subjective because he flat out made up a ton of words and phrases we still use today. Also, you’ve heard of poetry, right?

    “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” (Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5)

    • firebreathingbunny@kbin.socialOP
      1·
      10 months ago

      Which grammar rule changed since Shakespeare’s time? The reason students can still read and understand Shakespeare’s works is that the grammar remains the same. Congratulations, you owned yourself.

      • stopthatgirl7@kbin.social
        4·
        10 months ago

        Ironically, one of the biggest changes from Shakespeare’s time and now concerned pronouns. We stopped using “thou/thee” as the informal 2nd person and began to only use what had been the formal 2nd person, “you,” and stopped using the verb conjugations for them.

        Meanwhile, the 3rd person singular “they” has been in use since Chaucer’s time.

          • stopthatgirl7@kbin.social
            3·
            10 months ago

            My brother in Christ; I’M AN ENGLISH TEACHER.

            If you don’t understand how “we lost an entire pronoun and the verb inflection that went with it” is in fact grammar, I don’t even know what to tell you.

            • firebreathingbunny@kbin.socialOP
              1·
              10 months ago

              I’M AN ENGLISH TEACHER.

              Apparently not a very good one, because:

              • You don’t know the difference between vocabulary and grammar.
              • You don’t know that appeal to authority is a logical fallacy.
              • You don’t know what being dismissed means.

              Bye.

      • Eggyhead@artemis.camp
        2·
        10 months ago

        Just off the top of my head: In some US dialects, rather than a single word changing between negative and positive form (e.g. “I didn’t take any pictures”), instead an entire sentence is shifted into a negative mode (“I didn’t take no pictures”). Traditional grammar rules would dictate that as a double negative, implying the speaker did in fact take pictures, but only an idiot would actually choose interpret it that way.

        Next, we have the impact of the internet. “lol” might occasionally be spoken aloud in many circumstances as a substitute for “that’s funny” or something similar. Colloquial written English is all over the place. We now not only use “lol”, but “fwiw,” “afaik,” and many others.

        Then there’s emoji. We’re basically using glyphs to express ideas, not unlike how kanji works, and traditional rules of grammar don’t always apply when you’re expressing an idea through pictures, though it’s interesting when it does. Animated GIFs and memes often butcher grammar rules without sacrificing any understanding of intent.

        A simple google search turns up many more examples than I could possibly be aware of.

        Now it’s your turn. Feel free to explain why you think using “they” as a singular pronoun applies as a grammar rule violation in the 21st century. If you can’t use more than a typical snarky one or two-liner, you should just consider this argument lost and rethink your life.

          • Eggyhead@artemis.camp
            2·
            10 months ago

            Dialects aren’t the actual language. They’re just wilful ignorance.

            Say everyone bakes a potato. If your neighbor baked theirs differently than you, would that mean they’re ignorant?

            And, again, vocabulary isn’t grammar.

            Good for you? No one said it was.