User talk:Lysdexia

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Category

If you're going to change Category:SLASHTHEM to Category:SlashTHEM, please ensure the new category actually exists first. Pinkbeast (talk) 21:33, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

There's nothing written on that page but category pages still work. Why don't you move the old one? Lysdexia (talk) 21:35, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

Language use

Hi,

I've been noticing you engaging in a lot of "corrections" directed at various users.

There are two issues with this, really, so let me address each separately:

Factual accuracy – some of the changes you are making are not actually correcting mistakes, and I'd argue actually making things harder to read. Arguably, some of your corrections change the meaning of what is being said; replacing a third-person pronoun ("they"/"their") with an indefinite pronoun ("one") when a specific entity has already been named implies the pronoun refers to a yet unspecified entity. ("They" specifically is widely accepted in everyday modern use as a gender-neutral third-person pronoun, for the record.)

To give another example, the distinction you made between "would" and "should" is not quite reflecting accepted real-world use of contemporary English.

Additionally, you've been making some suggestions about word choice that are counter-productive – to quote; "homosexual -> idemsexual; asexual -> insexual" – as the mixed-origin forms of these terms are well-established. You wouldn't call an "automobile" an "ipsemobile" or "autokineton" if you wanted people to understand what you are talking about, either.

However, having said all this, the more concerning issue to me is the tone in which you present your objections; it comes off as condescending, which is particularly jarring in cases where these objections are actually problematic per the above. I hope that isn't your intent, although it can be hard to tell from written words alone sometimes. This is a wiki, a collaborative platform. I have to ask you to at least try to approach other users politely; suggestions are welcome, dismissive comments generally aren't. Please remember we're (hopefully) all on the same page here in trying to provide the best NetHack resource we can.

—bcode ^{talk | mail} 13:57, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

If you know the names I use on the internet and my activity you'd know I argue how wrong the world is. So populism can't support itself for propriety. issue means "gone out"; you mean problem. Sometimes there are problems when there are nonissues and no problems when there are issues. I do distinguish between indefinite and definite. Tell me where I used one correspondent to the. If a they corresponded to a, that'd be improper definiteness besides number. Gender-neutral means neuter, neither gender; the third-person singular definite neuter is it. You mean gender-communal or common; the relative pronoun already works as the third-person definite singular [or plural] common which is why I use/enforce it.

You'd also know there is no contemporary English, as English died 1000 years ago sith Norman Conquest and everyone talks in "Einglish" now with loanwords and slang. The distinction between should and would still sometimes shows up, like in the recent edit where should is in the conditional. But contemporary usage is self-unaware and thus self-contradictory. Sometimes I use hybrid barbarisms, reluctantly, but not if their stems contradict other stems. Homo refers to the genus for humans and a- is short for ad- or ab-. Unless you know the languages the world steals its stems from, you don't know what it does wrong.

hard:soft -> touh:easy. What kind of dismissive comments aren't welcome? (if pinging here works: User:bcode) Lysdexia (talk) 22:31, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

I do mean issue, which also means problem.

"populism can't support itself for propriety" – correctness in language depends on what is widely accepted as correct and proper. (There's a decent writeup about prescriptive vs descriptive ways to approach language, if you're interested.)

"Gender-neutral means neuter, neither gender" – no; "neuter" in English grammar refers to a third linguistic gender, the "it" to go with "he" and "she". The term "gender-neutral pronoun" is clearly understood to mean a pronoun that does not imply a real-world individual's gender without the dehumanization generally associated with the neuter forms of English which are typically reserved for objects and other non-person things. "Gender-communal", your suggestion, has not been widely used for this meaning. I'm afraid established usage disagrees with you, which effectively means you are wrong here.

"If a they corresponded to a, that'd be improper definiteness besides number." Again, you seem confused. If I say "A woman gave birth. She is now a mother", "a" is an indefinite article introducing an entity – "a woman" – who is now known, and has to be referred to by definite pronouns (such as "she"); using an indefinite pronoun would normally imply the referent is unknown. I think most native speakers would agree that my example sentence sounds more proper than "A woman gave birth. One is now a mother", for the sake of argument.

As for agreement in number for singular-meaning "they", I'm afraid that is a debate that has been had over and over by people (yet somehow, people don't mind using the plural-form "you" in a singular meaning, but I digress…) – Merriam-Webster's online dictionary has an article on use of singular they, and although it primarily refers to a specific modern use to refer to individuals neither male nor female, it does acknowledge the widely accepted gender-neutral use of the pronoun. (I acknowledge that certain style guides advise against its use. Ours does not, and I would recommend against following third-party style guides without understanding the underlying reasoning behind the rules.)

"Homo refers to the genus for humans and a- is short for ad- or ab-." In Latin, yes; not in (Ancient) Greek. You may dislike the fact that the English terms "homosexual" and "asexual" combine parts of different languages. Your personal dissatisfaction with language and its use does not mean, however, that it is wrong.

"Unless you know the languages the world steals its stems from, you don't know what it does wrong." Even if it were misusing morphemes by the source languages' standards, that is of no concern here. English is not Latin or Ancient Greek. I acknowledge that it can be odd to see English take bits and pieces from other languages and use them in ways that do not match the source language – "kindergarten" being one such example that can be confusing to people familiar with the subtly different meaning in German – but that is how language works. (For the record, I am familiar with Latin, as well as (to a much smaller degree) Ancient Greek. I'm afraid this does not make me think of English as being "wrong", either.)

"You'd also know there is no contemporary English, as English died 1000 years ago sith Norman Conquest and everyone talks in "Einglish" now with loanwords and slang." Nonsense; language evolves. You don't get to pick and choose some arbitrary point at which you start to become dissatisfied with the evolution of language, and proclaim that anything from that point on is no longer that language. Medieval Latin differed significantly from Old or even Classical Latin as well, yet it did not stop being Latin. This wiki uses English as it is used today, not as it was used 1000 years ago.

"What kind of dismissive comments aren't welcome?" To quote:

• "I hope I used the simple words you understand."
• "The post-classic (tho the proper calque is metaclassic) world introduced the first dumb improper changes you learnt."

I can accept your odd views on language, even if I disagree, as long as you don't apply them to the wiki without consensus. However, talking down to people as you did there and framing your view as the only correct one, implying any different view is "dumb" and "improper", isn't something we can tolerate on this wiki. We are here to work together, not to have shouting matches.

—bcode ^{talk | mail} 03:48, 9 March 2020 (UTC)