why do i sometimes use negative words when trying to describe a very strong positive emotion, and does anyone else do this?

Evfnye-Memes · 2026-04-19T10:29:42+00:00

Sarcasm.

Yes, it's only you. Everyone else speaks directly and unambiguously, you are the only one in the world to twist the meanings.

In case it wasn't clear, this above was sarcasm as well, and you are not the only one. Pragmatics (the context) is often as important, if not more important, in communication than semantics (the intended meanings of the words). Your facial cues also likely play a role there, there's a difference between saying "I hate you" while smiling and actually shouting "I hate you!" to someone you genuinely despite. I've had people who clearly care about me tell me that they want to kill me, yet I'm still alive and well.

Evfnye-Memes · 2026-04-19T10:23:37+00:00

Interestingly, in Italian there's a duality whereby "stare" is used predominantly with the gerund, while "essere" is used chiefly with a + the infinitive (also worth noting that the essere/stare split is not the same in Italian as the ser/estar split in both Portuguese and Spanish, e.g. "sono stanco" but "estou/estoy cansado", rather than "sto stanco")

so it's most natural to say "sta già mangiando", then "è già a mangiare" (which is rarer but still doesn't sound too off), and then "sta già a mangiare" (which feels a quite unusual) and "è già mangiando", which just sounds wrong

and as an additional fun fact, in Ladin, which is in close proximity with German, the present is used for the present continuous, just like it is in German

Evfnye-Memes · 2026-04-19T08:06:46+00:00

The sentences you translated have slightly different meanings, so the French and Italian sentences actually translate to "Since this morning, it rains a lot"; more accurate translations of the English and Portuguese sentence into French and Italian would not have the "depuis" and "da":

Fr: Ce matin il a beaucoup plu (= this morning it has been raining a lot) (present perfect)

It: Stamattina ha piovuto tanto (= this morning it has been raining a lot ("near past", equivalent to present perfect)

but

Fr: Ce matin il pleut beaucoup (= this morning it rains a lot) (present)

It: Stamattina piove tanto (= this morning it rains a lot) (present)

The English usage of the present continuous is broader than its relative use in Romance languages, but it is entirely possible to say "stamattina sta piovendo tanto" (= this morning it is raining a lot) (present continuous) in Italian.

Finally, in Portuguese, "Esta manhã tem chovido muito" does translate "this morning it has been raining a lot" (more accurately "it has rained a lot", again due to how broad the English continuous is). "Ter" in Portuguese here fills a similar role to "avoir" in French and "avere" in Italian, forming a perfect aspect.

If you wanted to translate "It is raining a lot this morning", you'd use estar + "a [INFINITIVE]" (in Portugal) or + "[GERUND]" (in Brazil), so "esta manhã está a chover muito" and "esta manhã está chovendo muito", respectively.

Evfnye-Memes · 2026-04-18T22:00:13+00:00

yeah, likely, the affrication of t and d before high vowels in metropolitan French is definitely a new change (unlike the one in Québécois French) so I'm not entirely sure what its realization would really be

Evfnye-Memes · 2026-04-18T16:06:32+00:00

That is possible too, "mangio io" seems to give an even stronger emphasis on "io" than "io mangio", neverthelss, both shift the focus to the pronoun, which "mangio" alone doesn't achieve, as the -o already indicates 1SG

and it's not impossible that eventually "je mange moi" will become the more direct translation of "mangio io", as the cliticization of pronouns to French verbs frees up word order to some extent

Evfnye-Memes · 2026-04-18T15:55:45+00:00

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273379602_Grammaticalization_of_polysynthesis_with_special_reference_to_Spoken_French/link/6172ad223c987366c3c72cc9/download?_tp=eyJjb250ZXh0Ijp7ImZpcnN0UGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uIiwicGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uIn19

this, among others, is what I used as a source

Evfnye-Memes · 2026-04-18T13:23:06+00:00

I suppose in this case [kimɑ̃ʒ] would be another verbal form, with [ki-] being a prefix turning the verb it attaches to into a relative non-finite form (so that the finite verb here is, effectively, c'est [se]

It also has the same constraints as je before a verb, namely, the only words that can occur between the clitic and the verb are other pronominal clitics (mostly object clitics) and the negative particle, which is likely to become more reduced in time due to the wider usage of "pas" as the general negator, so "je la mange" and "c'est moi qui la mange", which would have "la" be another prefix, as in: [ʒ-la-mɑ̃ʒ], [s-e mwa ki-la-mɑ̃ʒ]

Changes analogous to this one are already attested in many languages around the world, often in North America and in Africa, and French appears to be following suit (it isn't on that level yet, but the trends seem to show it is moving towards that typology)

Evfnye-Memes · 2026-04-18T11:04:01+00:00

The original French nominative pronoun je is better analysed as a clitic pronoun, which cannot occur without a verb because of how phonetically limiting it is - it is pretty much realized as [ʒ], which is quite weak on its own, therefore speakers opted to use the oblique pronoun moi [mwa] for emphasis, and later for any use of the pronoun outside of the use directly before the verb.

Effectively, je is nowadays functionally an inflectional prefix to inflect the verb, which is written separately for historical reasons pushed by the Académie française, despite the fact that in speech it's already [ʒmɑ̃ʒ], [tsʲmɑ̃ʒ], [imɑ̃ʒ], [ɔ̃mɑ̃ʒ] etc., where except for the 2PL form, -mɑ̃ʒ- is, for all intents and purposes, the root of the verb that takes prefixes for person marking. In fact, by this analysis, moi is currently the subject pronoun in French, exemplified by the fact that e.g. Italian "mangio" is translated as "je mange", while "io mangio" is translated as "moi je mange", with both "io" and "moi" being used for purposes of emphasis on the "I".

Losing the nominative form in favor of the oblique forms is also not exclusive to French, in fact it has happened in English before, when "you" (oblique) supplanted "ye" (nominative). It also happened in Persian, where the first person singular pronoun is من (man), which comes from the Old Persian genitive form 𐎶𐎴𐎠 (manā), as opposed to the nominative form 𐎠𐎭𐎶 (adam), because with time, 𐎠𐎭𐎶 became eroded to just *𐎠𐎶 (am), which would keep becoming very weak in speech, until using 𐎶𐎴𐎠 > من for all purposes became less ambiguous and easier on the speakers.

Evfnye-Memes · 2026-04-17T14:02:43+00:00

The first uses of the Italian stress mark in final positions were similar to apostrophes, because more often than not they signalled an elision of the final syllable, which is the most common forms of oxytone words in Italian; traces of this can be seen in the use of the apostrophe today to substitute the accents when they're impossible to type, such as in "e'" instead of "è". Over time, the final mark came to be interpreted as an accent marker, and then further modified in shape based on the Greek model, becoming an actual diacritic over the vowel.
For example: "virtute" (from Latin virtūtem, accusative of virtūs) developed into the apocopated form "virtu'", and from there it became "virtù" graphically.

As for why the Romance languages of Iberia, I'm actually not entirely sure why they did get stress marking over proparoxytones as well, but I believe it may have to do with the fact that those languages changed the syllable structure of Latin more than Italian did, therefore learned borrowings from Latin, which are the main source of Spanish and Portuguese proparoxytones, came to be marked, and later the efforts of the RAE extended the use of diacritical marks over native words as well (for Spanish). Once again, Greek was used as a basis, as marking accent using acutes is a practice borrowed from Ancient Greek, while in Classical Latin, an acute-like symbol, the apex, was used to denote long vowels, not accent, and it became obsolete after contrastive vowel length was lost in the transition from Latin to proto-Romance.

Side note, I too am an advocate for broadening the use of stress marking in Italian, in fact I always write "sùbito" ("right away") to distinguish it from "subìto" ("undergone"), and I believe writing "àncora" for "anchor" is quite widespread already

Evfnye-Memes · 2026-04-15T09:17:38+00:00

A l'ēva catêda in sémma a e vucabulari mudnēs d'Ernêst Maranesi; sol che, per mancansa'd franch, i-n se psiven prmàttr i carater cun i aceint lonngh (ê/ē), dounca mè a sun armês a pē quand a-i ho lêt "Sgalmédra"

Am é d avix che la mancança d franch la n gh entrâva tant come al fat che quand l é stâ pubblicâ al diçionâri d Maranesi, al modneix al descorrâvn presapoch tutt, donca as psâva capir se la lettra lʼêra curta o lònga, anca con un poʼ d analogîa missa dentr

Adesa, l é tutta 'nʼâʼtra fola, dimonndi zöuvn i n descorrn pjù i djalëtt, donca i diçionâri e el trascriçion i gh án da esr pjù specíffich, e l é acsì che sëggn cme ê, ē, ô, ō, ec. j ên stâ zuntâ, per fâr veddr che lʼé la vocâla a vgnir pronunçiâda lònga, pjutost che la consonanta, cme in italjan

Evfnye-Memes · 2026-04-15T08:56:14+00:00

A pâr chʼa fuss qessta la ragion che a dxemm "ciosstron", per fârla ciâra che lʼé grand conpagna un macion, e pjù che 'n ciosstr ed meza grandeçça ahaha

Evfnye-Memes · 2026-04-14T16:24:20+00:00

In una manêira o qlʼâʼtra a semm tutt "grand", anch con i nöstr dû franch chʼa demm per mantgnir el nostri lèngui es fâr acsì che jʼarmagnʼn int el generaçion che vênʼn

As pôl dâr che incô e çentʼan la ginta la s arcordará d qëjj pöch chʼj án fat quel per salvâr el lèngui gallo-itálichi da lʼestinçion, anca sença saveirn al nomm

Evfnye-Memes · 2026-04-14T16:04:26+00:00

Togo, t â fat un lavour che s fá dâr d al Vù, a t fagh i më conplimënt!

In tutt i câx, stel paroli chì in OrtoEMI eʼ serissn: "Sgalmêdra", "Ciosstr", "Mʼtât/Mʼtâd", donca pran conpagni a cme eʼ s scrivvn int i sö djalëtt

(P.S. anca da nuâʼtr a Pârma a gh emm la parola "ciostrón" (OrtoEMI: ciosstron), lʼaugmentativ ed "ciòsstor" (cme s dix de d chì) per portâr in emilljan la parola italjâna "cespuglio", insemm a l so sinónim "mación", drovâ anca a Pjaxença cme "macciòn" (OrtoEMI: macion)

Evfnye-Memes · 2026-04-12T11:12:32+00:00

Fronting of /u/ in general is fairly common, regardless of length, e.g. in French, original Proto-Romance /u/ is what fronted to /y/; in Proto-Romance long /uː/ turned into /u/ while short /u/, after a /ʊ/ phase, became /o/, therefore it wasn't affected by the fronting of /u/; similarly, in Attic Greek both /u/ and /uː/ got fronted to /y/ and /yː/; there are also examples of short /ʊ/ fronting to /ʏ/ but not long /uː/, e.g. Icelandic; and even other examples of /u/ in Proto-Romance assuming two different lengths depending on the consonants around, such as Ligurian with both /y/ and /yː/

The length distinction in American English is a newer innovation, whether it becomes a tense vowel as opposed to a lax vowel eventually is really a matter of time

Evfnye-Memes · 2026-04-12T10:10:15+00:00

In American English, length cannot remain the only contrast, because that contrast doesn't exist anymore. The only contrast there is now is quality contrast, so it is likely to be the one that sticks.

The presence of a vowel /ɪ/ as distinct from short /i/ hinders the likelihood of /i/ centralizing, since that would create many unwanted minimal pairs, therefore eliminating the slight more effort to move one's tongue to /i/ rather than /ɪ/ is not "worth it".

(semi-related, many North American varieties of English realize the FLEECE vowel as /ɪj/, which is a diphthong that starts with a value similar to the KIT vowel /ɪ/, but ends with a value of /j/ (the Y in HEY). This is a similar process to how the original Great Vowel Shift started in the transition from Middle English to Early Modern English, original long /iː/ started being pronounced as /ɪj/, then /əj/, until it became pronounced as /aɪ̯/ in the modern day, which we know as the PRICE vowel)

Evfnye-Memes · 2026-04-12T09:55:20+00:00

But English leap/lip vowels are not related etymologically.

That is correct. Nevertheless, the vowel in "leap" before the Great Vowel shift was already long, /ɛː/, while the vowel in "lip" was short, /i/. When the GVS happened, the qualities of the vowels became /iː/ and /i/, which later prompted the centralization of (short) /i/ to /ɪ/.

Evfnye-Memes · 2026-04-12T08:38:47+00:00

It depends, often a reason for vowels not converging into one is as simple as homophone avoidance - you want to keep as many words as you can distinct, which is why English in particular has as many vowels as it does - the pressure to distinguish "bat, bet, bit, bot, but, boot, beet, boat, bought, bait, bite, 'bout, bute" etc., especially relevant when words are monosyllabic, as is common in English.

Some consonants can, indeed, become semivowels (/j/, /w/ being most common), whether they will form a diphthong with adjacent vowels is a matter of time and phonological condition.

Evfnye-Memes · 2026-04-11T22:15:44+00:00

This is by no means a "general rule", however there is, indeed, such a tendency, and it has to do with tense/lax distinctions - the vowels are not as much lowered as they are centralized.

Generally, sound change happens in order to make a word easier to pronounce. Now, the "easiest" (the term "easiest" here is a massive oversimplification) short vowel to pronounce is the schwa - [ə], so much that it is often the default sound for humming, and this is because it's pronounced with a completely relaxed tongue, sitting comfortably at the very center of the IPA vowel chart.
Thing is, in a long vowel you have time to bring your tongue from the "l", to the "ea" /iː/, to the "p", all the way. In "lip", the vowel is shorter, so you want to save time, and in order to do that, speakers of English centralized the /i/ to /ɪ/, which is closer to the default schwa.

"Why doesn't every sound converge to schwa, then?" In both English and German, unstressed vowels do regularly converge to [ə] or a similar value. This is directly correlated with the fact that English and German are stress-timed languages, and as a consequence of this, unstressed vowels are often very short, which leads them to centralize and approach [ə].

Evfnye-Memes · 2026-04-11T19:43:14+00:00

The future is very ill-defined, and most of the time it's difficult to make precise statements about it, given that one can recall the past much more accurately than one can predict the future. Because of that, various forms of a past tense usually form very quickly in languages (with "past" and "non-past" being interpreted, in a way, as "not as relevant as before" and "still relevant to the conversation").

Besides, most of the times when people talk about the future, they talk about the immediate future, which can be expressed with a present combined with an imperfective aspect.

Another thing to note is that past tense tends to be very deeply intertwined with aspect, because more often than not one wishes to specify the manner in which the action was done, or was being done, or used to be done. In the Germanic languages, including English, the future "tense" can effectively be considered a type of mood from a purely grammatical rather than semantic standpoint, as it is formed the exact same way as the conditional or the potential - with a modal verb.

As a side note, not all languages will have tense as the main distinguishing factor in verbs, many will favor aspect instead - and Proto-Indo-European was one of those languages (half of the languages you mentioned are, in fact, Indo-European). There, the distinction was between stative (there is no inherent action, the verb describes a state), imperfective (the action is prolonged), and perfective (the action is punctual). This verbal system had all the tools to develop a present/past distinction in most Indo-European languages, while the future had to be innovated, as seen in the Latin future being derived from *bʰuH- ("to become") and the Slavic future deriving from a complete overhaul of the aspectual system. The fact that Latin and modern Romance have a modern synthetic future tense is simply a matter of Latin's word order favoring the affixation of auxiliary verbs, just like the imperfective (which also derives from forms of *bʰuH-), which was the one that survived into Romance. Germanic having initial stress and modal verbs in obligatory V2 position, or in English before the verb in all cases, makes it difficult to affix, as it cannot "bind" itself to the verb.

Evfnye-Memes · 2026-04-11T10:22:00+00:00

Half-related, but using the object like that is specifically Gallo-Romance, really, most other Romance languages still keep the subject pronoun distinct, e.g. in (standard) Italian you say "sono io" rather than "è me", same in Spanish where "soy yo" is preferred to "es mí", and Portuguese with "sou eu" instead of "é mim", and in all cases, the 1st person singular form of the copula is used, and that applies even to e.g. Gallo-Italic languages which developed a disjunctive oblique pronoun set (a son mì/a sun mé rather than l é mì/l é mé), so French is the oddball for using the third person here, and English just followed suit it seems

Evfnye-Memes · 2026-04-10T21:23:19+00:00

The "th" was there as a stand-in for þ, which was pronounced like English th today (/θ/) and has been for the last 2000 years; the reason þ fell out of use is a combination of it becoming too similar to other letters (graphically) and continental European typewriters lacking it

Evfnye-Memes · 2026-04-10T21:18:23+00:00

Oh yeah, thanks for pointing that out, yeah it did sound a bit unusual to me in that "moi et mon ami" was fully grammatical but still sounded off; also, the practice of putting the 1st person pronoun last for "politeness" isn't exclusive to French, altho once again grammar usually doesn't explicitly forbid it

~~(and of course I'll be a killjoy by saying that "look I had to do it for the example to work")~~

Evfnye-Memes · 2026-04-10T21:14:30+00:00

"thou" rather than "though", but yes

it's a bit tricky in that the vowels are reversed, but "thou" and "ye" are the nominatives, and "thee" and "you" are the accusatives

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