This is a “dummy pronoun” and I only know this because this popped up as a TIL earlier this week.
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Submitted 1 day ago by s0larfl4re@sh.itjust.works to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
667@lemmy.radio 1 day ago
XeroxCool@lemmy.world 1 day ago
My introduction was Xkcd when they hired a mathematician for the weather forecast, then replaced him with a linguist [rollover: and then a software dev]
grue@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The rollover text should’ve ended with a link to www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Possibly because this exact question was posted by someone else, and that was a response.
DrMoronicAcid@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The weather… is raining?
s0larfl4re@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
thanks!
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day 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 1 day ago
In French it’s “il pleut”, which literally translates to “it rains”
slaneesh_is_right@lemmy.org 1 day ago
Wow you guys must have so much chemistry when you can’t even communicate
Jikiya@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It is the sky. The sky is raining. Or the clouds, the clouds are raining. Either of those two would be a great answer to what “it” is.
Windex007@lemmy.world 1 day ago
In this and other similar contexts, when “it” isn’t really referring to anything specific, you can kind of consider it to be “The General State of Existence”.
It’s raining.
It’s cold.
It is what it is.
Make the best of it.
It’s Thursday.
It’s Friday.
Friday.
Gotta get down on Friday.
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 1 day ago
There’s a surprising amount of people here that don’t know the sky is a genderless noun.
“It’s raining”
“(The sky) is raining.”
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
I don’t think that’s what’s going on though.
If you say it’s hot or it’s cold or it’s windy you’re not referring tp the sky.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 1 day ago
I’m a native English speaker and did very well in English class and I don’t even know what “it” is in this example. I just understand it to be what we say and that it means that rain is falling from the sky right now.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Me fail english? Thats unpossible!
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’m a native English speaker and did very well in English class and I don’t even know what “it” is in this example.
The status (or state) of the weather.
Weslee@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’ve never really thought about it, but my first instinct is to say it’s referring to the time “it is raining right now” shortened to “it’s raining”?
hikeandbike@midwest.social 1 day ago
“It” would be the subject. Time, or tense would be gleaned from the verb conjugation.
E.g. “it is raining” versus “it was raining,” where “is” and “was” are two conjugations of “being.”
The question is more in reference to the subject, “it.” In which case, as partial_accumen describes, “it” is a pronoun representing “the status of the weather.”
iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
“it” is the general state of the weather.
yarr@feddit.nl 1 day ago
“It” is the state of the outdoors
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
🏅
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
It’s sunny. It’s windy.
ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
“It” is the weather, and the state of “it” is raining.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Wait until you FINALLY get the concept across, and he understsnds, and THEN he hears the song “It’s raining men”.
Then he’ll REALLY be confused!
rumba@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Interesting,
If it’s raining outside and it’s raining men come from the same base concept… “It” has a definition closer to the current state of the environment around me. Though admittedly the still breaks slightly for it’s raining men.
Ledericas@lemm.ee 1 day ago
its condensation of dihydrogen monoxide in the atmosphere that gains enough mass and volume to fall to the earth due to gravity.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 day ago
A good comment from back when Reddit was good:
It’s what’s called a dummy pronoun, a pronoun that carries no semantic information and is only used to fulfill a syntactic requirement. More generally that’s called a syntactic expletive, although that page says that there’s some argument about whether this particular use of a dummy pronoun falls under that category.
This is a common construction in languages that don’t allow dropping pronouns (non-“pro-drop” languages). German has “es regnet”, French (the only Romance language that isn’t pro-drop, IIRC) has “il pleut”, but in Italian it’s simply “piove”.
throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
You write a poem to describe the exact meaning behind the phrase…
Thine mother, nature, hath once more shed tears anew;
For mankind hath yet again besmirched the Earth;
Her Thunderous Tempests resound with profound dismay toward her progeny;
Who, having vexed her, now do so for the final occasion.DrownedRats@lemmy.world 1 day ago
That reads to me like someones about to get smote by a lightning bolt lol
spittingimage@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’m sure I recognise that cadence. Is that iambic pentameter? (Being the only one I can name.)
harrys_balzac@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
What is his native language?
ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
It sounds like a similar condition I had learning Spanish. In enough, I’d say “It’s hot”. In Spanish, that’s “Hace calor”, which translated literally means “makes heat”. And it was strange to me because I wanted to know what was meant to be making this heat
nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
does he not know what rain is
slazer2au@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It’s not his fault that he was taken away from his mum by his dad to avoid being inducted into a cult and brought to Greenstone where it never rains in the city.
Hiphophorrah@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Am I the only the one who thought this was a horny call?
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
Jesus Christ, again? Are you reposting this question with another account because you didn’t like the answers before, or is this honestly a new person?
s0larfl4re@sh.itjust.works 20 hours ago
this was a post before?
caboose2006@lemm.ee 22 hours ago
Tell him to work on the context. Where does it usually rain? What usually makes rain? when we use “it” in this context in English we mean the most likely thing “it” could be (and usually that’s like a 90%+ likelihood). If it were raining in the bedroom, that would require a qualifier, like I had to include.
jagged_circle@feddit.nl 23 hours ago
Take a picture and send it
tanisnikana@lemmy.world 1 day ago
In English, in order to form a valid sentence, there needs to be at least one noun. While you can say “what’s the weather?” “raining,” as a reply, if there’s no implied subject, an empty noun must be established first. English would use “it” as a pure empty noun for the sake of the sentence.
LeninsOvaries@lemmy.cafe 1 day ago
Is “Hello.” a valid sentence?
Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee 1 day ago
Hmmm, at least my native language also typically uses an undefined pronoun to express the act of raining
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 1 day ago
es regnet, il pleut …
Drbreen@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
If you’re in Australia you could try saying, “It’s pissing down.”
relation_anon4238@thelemmy.club 1 day ago
“It’s raining outside”, or just explain it in his native language.
sevon@lemmy.kde.social 1 day ago
What is raining outside?
executivechimp@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
The trees. What do you think?
s0larfl4re@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
«идёт дождь»
Darleys_Brew@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
Water is falling from the sky?
scytale@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Maybe send the rain emoji to help: 🌧️
GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Seriously where on earth is your boyfriend from that he doesn’t know rain? That seems absurd, I’m sure even old school desert bedouins are familiar with the concept.
Karl@programming.dev 1 day ago
He probably knows what “raining” is. I think he is just confused by the phrase “It’s raining”. Or … He is just messing with her.
FactualPerson@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The sky is crying?
lemmyng@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
“It is [verb]ing” (as in “it is raining”) can be reinterpreted as “[noun] is happening” (“rain is happening”).
fubbernuckin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
This is how I’d explain it. More specifically this is an example of a concept called a “dummy pronoun” in English. Phrases like “it is clear that…” Or “it is raining” are using “it” as a dummy pronoun. They’re used to express a verb without expressing a subject. in other words, [verb] is happening.
reattach@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Uh oh - a linguistics Wikipedia article.
And here I was, planning to work.
andrewta@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I like this. Explains it fairly well
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
French too: il pleut. What is the il pointing to?!?
stormdelay@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
The (local) universe