Give examples of words that English is missing
Ignoring the peanut gallery and its trite comments about "y[ou] all" which has a long history of use in English, I note that no one mentioned the interesting dialectical form "youse guys" which is common in Canada and parts of the northern US.
What is interesting is that with the demise of any differentiation between 2nd person singular and plural in "standard English," many dialects have contrived to retain the distinction.
I think that must be an Eastern thing because I've never heard anyone in the Midwest say that.
=>We have it too. ;) <=
That was a reaction on 'hmm'.
Oh, lol. That makes sense...
Sander, doesn't "neef" mean "nephew" (which does *not* mean "male cousin"), and "nicht" mean "niece" (which also does not mean "female cousin"), though? Or can each of them be used for both meanings in Dutch?
Rick Johnson, if one were to reintroduce "thou"/"thee", wouldn't that also mean that would have to reintroduce the -"st" endings for second person plural as well, if one wanted to actually replicate their use in Early Modern English. But anyways, trying to reintroduce those would be unnecessary work considering that new second person plural forms have already been developed in many dialects, and already have far more currency than said forms would have in a Modern English context.
Travis,
A cousin is a child of a person's aunt or uncle right?
If that's so, then 'neef and nicht' are correct.
If by cousin you mean any person who is a child of a cousin of your mother or father.Then it's 'achterneef' and 'achternicht'.
Isn't a nephew though a son of one's sibling, and a niece a daughter of one's sibling, though? So then "neef" and "nicht" do *not* mean English "nephew" and "niece", respectively, despite the English-Dutch-English web dictionary I'm using right now saying that they do mean such? And yes, a cousin is a child of one's aunt or uncle.
No,strange actually..
My father has a brother who's got a son.That kid is my 'neef'.
My 'neef' has a son.He's my 'achterneef'.
Does anyone uses “you guys “in the UK or Australia? Or if they do ….is it considered an americanism ?
I cant imagine any British saying “you guys” or “Y’all”
English does not have a singular gender neutral pronoun.
Tuba Player, yes it does have one (I assume you mean a singular gender neutral third person pronoun), which is simply "they", despite what prescriptivists may happen to say. Around here at least, it is practically ubiquitous in actual spoken usage when referring to individuals whose gender one does not know, or whose individual identities do not matter in the given context. As for the prescriptivist position that one should use "he", at least in actual usage here, "he" *only* refers to specifically male people and higher animals, and is specifically not gender neutral whatsoever, so hence it is not suitable for such a role in practice at all.
Now I know a new word that English don´t have, it´s the word for 24 hours. InSwedish we call it "dygn"