It wouldn’t surprise me if this subject-dropping was introduced into English by non-native speakers? English is actually a bit peculiar as languages go in its wanting to put a subject in practically every sentence. It’s raining. It’s about time. What is the “it” here referring to? Linguists will tell you’re looking at a subject placeholder that doesn’t convey any special meaning but simply completes the grammar. And people learning English from other languages don’t need this fail to see the point. So they just start saying “About time we dropped that stupid it!” and then even native speakers start thinking yeah, why not ditch the subject if we don’t really need it?
foggy@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It’s a thing that happens in most languages that create rules about sentence structure.
Basically, really important or frequently used statements will break the rules to… Save time.
Can you imagine that scene from scene from half bake, instead of “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you’re cool, fuck you, I’m out!”
You’d get “I will fuck you, I will fuck you, I will fuck you, I will fuck you, I think that you are cool, I will fuck you, I will leave now.”
Something like ‘Im going to the store’ only becomes ‘going to the store!’ in contexts of urgency and familiarity, like yelling it on the way out the door to your spouse. You wouldn’t likely do that in your workplace.
youtube.com/shorts/5CceU7oR22s
This kids great if you like language nonsense.
TheRedSpade@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I always thought that “Fuck you” was a command (“You fuck you”).
samus12345@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It is, it means “Fuck yourself”.
tunetardis@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Yeah, one context in which a subject is not required even with proper English grammar is in imperatives, which makes sense given the implied urgency. If “Watch out!” had to be something more long-winded like “You must watch out!” you’d probably be dead.