Comment on [deleted]
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 3 days ago
There have been a few explanations of “dummy pronoun” already. What’s going on is that English doesn’t allow sentences without a subject, so an “it” needs to be added even though it doesn’t refer to anything. In other languages, especially pro-drop ones, you can say just “is raining” or “is cold”, ungrammatical in English (also eg German, French).
Witchfire@lemmy.world 3 days ago
In French it’s “il pleut”, which literally translates to “it rains”
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 2 days ago
Technically “he rains”
Witchfire@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Il is both he/it.
“Où est mon chapeau?” / “Il est là-bas”
twice_hatch@midwest.social 2 days ago
Except when it is female for some odd reason
Valmond@lemmy.world 2 days ago
And det regnar, same in swedish.
theTarrasque@lemmy.world 2 days ago
And „es regnet“ in German, also same
thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 2 days ago
These to are grammatically equivalent to the English version though, because we use the “er/et”-ending in the verb instead of the English “is”. Without a subject it would just be “regner/regnet”.