some people who i talk to say that, like my russian friends
English is a subjective language, as spoken in the US.
There are many regional dialects, and everyone will tell you that theirs is the correct one.
can you say “what it means?” as proper english?
Submitted 10 months ago by s0larfl4re@sh.itjust.works to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
Geodad@lemm.ee 10 months ago
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 10 months ago
not as a full sentence, certainly as a subclause: “can you tell me what it means?”
H1jAcK@lemm.ee 10 months ago
As in asking for the meaning of something? It would be more correct to phrase it as, “What does that mean?” But especially if English clearly isn’t your first language, “What it means?” will probably get the point across well enough
s0larfl4re@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
that makes sense, thank you!!
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 10 months ago
The technical term you’re looking for is this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do-support
English is somewhat weird in how to form questions and negations, most other languages don’t do this kind of thing.
bstix@feddit.dk 10 months ago
The correct sentence is “what does it mean?”
As far as I know, Russian doesn’t use the auxillary verb “do/does”.
In many languages, the “do” is often a included in the case itself, meaning that it will be part of the word “mean”, as also suggested by the usage of “means” instead of “does mean”.
I suppose another construction could be “It means what?”
s0larfl4re@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
yeah! in Russia, it’s said as «что это значит?» or directly “what it means?”