2 Comments

Wonder how English might evolve to incorporate some of the Asian language features.

Thai doesn't bother gendering nouns and even pronouns, but does have a feature that indicates the gender of the speaker. While this doesn't always help ease the plight of the Thai trans community, it certainly speeds right over the "what are your pronouns?" phase of introductions as that is immediately telegraphed at "hello" depending on whether the speaker chooses to interject a "ka" or "crup" after every polite sentence.

There's even a somewhat androgenous "xa" form (though it's mostly used as slang)

Expand full comment

Pretty sure you have not talked way too long enough about any of these sections, each of which could occupy their own two-part Shelf Life article. But this whirlwind tour of English sentence structure leaves an impressive sense of whiplash from all those years of English classes in its own right.

Bravo!

Expand full comment