[deleted]

Comments

• 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”).

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  • 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.

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    • reattach@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Uh oh - a linguistics Wikipedia article.

      And here I was, planning to work.

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  • andrewta@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I like this. Explains it fairly well

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  • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    French too: il pleut. What is the il pointing to?!?

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    • stormdelay@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      The (local) universe

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• 667@lemmy.radio ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  This is a “dummy pronoun” and I only know this because this popped up as a TIL earlier this week.

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  • 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]

    xkcd.com/1985/

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    • grue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      The rollover text should’ve ended with a link to www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY

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  • RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Possibly because this exact question was posted by someone else, and that was a response.

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• DrMoronicAcid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  The weather… is raining?

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  • s0larfl4re@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    thanks!

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  • Nemo@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I’d say “the sky” but either way.

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    • swordgeek@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      The Sky is Crying.

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• 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).

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  • Witchfire@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    In French it’s “il pleut”, which literally translates to “it rains”

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    • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Technically “he rains”

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    • Valmond@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      And det regnar, same in swedish.

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• slaneesh_is_right@lemmy.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Wow you guys must have so much chemistry when you can’t even communicate

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.”

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  • 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.

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• 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.

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  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Me fail english? Thats unpossible!

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  • 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.

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  • 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”?

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    • 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.”

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  • iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    “it” is the general state of the weather.

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• yarr@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  “It” is the state of the outdoors

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  • RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    🏅

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  • null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    It’s sunny. It’s windy.

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• ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  “It” is the weather, and the state of “it” is raining.

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• 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!

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  • 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.

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• 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.

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• 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”.

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• 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.

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  • DrownedRats@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    That reads to me like someones about to get smote by a lightning bolt lol

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  • spittingimage@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I’m sure I recognise that cadence. Is that iambic pentameter? (Being the only one I can name.)

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• harrys_balzac@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  What is his native language?

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• 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

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• nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  does he not know what rain is

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  • relation_anon4238@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    he doesn’t know what’s raining.

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    • nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      THE SKY. CLOUDS. FUCK

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  • 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.

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• Hiphophorrah@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Am I the only the one who thought this was a horny call?

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• 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?

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  • s0larfl4re@sh.itjust.works ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    this was a post before?

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• 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.

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• jagged_circle@feddit.nl ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Take a picture and send it

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• 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.

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  • LeninsOvaries@lemmy.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Is “Hello.” a valid sentence?

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• 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

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  • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    es regnet, il pleut …

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  • s0larfl4re@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    what’s your native?

    In Russian, we say «goes rain»

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    • jodanlime@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Where does it go?

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• Drbreen@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  If you’re in Australia you could try saying, “It’s pissing down.”

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• relation_anon4238@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  “It’s raining outside”, or just explain it in his native language.

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  • sevon@lemmy.kde.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    What is raining outside?

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    • executivechimp@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      The trees. What do you think?

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  • s0larfl4re@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    «идёт дождь»

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• Darleys_Brew@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Water is falling from the sky?

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• scytale@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Maybe send the rain emoji to help: 🌧️

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• 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.

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  • 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.

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• FactualPerson@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  The sky is crying?

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