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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 3 weeks ago by s0larfl4re@sh.itjust.works to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
667@lemmy.radio 3 weeks ago
XeroxCool@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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 3 weeks ago
The rollover text should’ve ended with a link to www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Possibly because this exact question was posted by someone else, and that was a response.
DrMoronicAcid@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The weather… is raining?
s0larfl4re@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
thanks!
Nemo@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
I’d say “the sky” but either way.
swordgeek@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks 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 weeks ago
In French it’s “il pleut”, which literally translates to “it rains”
Windex007@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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.
slaneesh_is_right@lemmy.org 3 weeks ago
Wow you guys must have so much chemistry when you can’t even communicate
Kolanaki@pawb.social 3 weeks 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 3 weeks ago
Me fail english? Thats unpossible!
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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 3 weeks 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 3 weeks 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 3 weeks ago
“it” is the general state of the weather.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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 3 weeks 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.
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 3 weeks 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 3 weeks 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.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 3 weeks 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”.
Jikiya@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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.
yarr@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
“It” is the state of the outdoors
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
🏅
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
It’s sunny. It’s windy.
Ledericas@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
its condensation of dihydrogen monoxide in the atmosphere that gains enough mass and volume to fall to the earth due to gravity.
harrys_balzac@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
What is his native language?
throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks 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 3 weeks ago
That reads to me like someones about to get smote by a lightning bolt lol
spittingimage@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’m sure I recognise that cadence. Is that iambic pentameter? (Being the only one I can name.)
ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks 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 3 weeks ago
does he not know what rain is
slazer2au@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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.
ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
“It” is the weather, and the state of “it” is raining.
Hiphophorrah@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Am I the only the one who thought this was a horny call?
tanisnikana@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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 3 weeks ago
Is “Hello.” a valid sentence?
Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Hmmm, at least my native language also typically uses an undefined pronoun to express the act of raining
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
es regnet, il pleut …
Drbreen@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
If you’re in Australia you could try saying, “It’s pissing down.”
relation_anon4238@thelemmy.club 3 weeks ago
“It’s raining outside”, or just explain it in his native language.
sevon@lemmy.kde.social 3 weeks ago
What is raining outside?
executivechimp@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
The trees. What do you think?
s0larfl4re@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
«идёт дождь»
scytale@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Maybe send the rain emoji to help: 🌧️
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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 3 weeks ago
this was a post before?
caboose2006@lemm.ee 3 weeks 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 3 weeks ago
Take a picture and send it
thoughtfuldragon@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
You might also say “rain is falling” as an idiomatic alternative. Or feel free to warp the English grammar to something more comprehensible for him. The only point of language is to communicate after all.
Mac@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
I’d probably say that the state of the weather is ‘raining’.
FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 3 weeks ago
Weather is expressed in different ways in different languages. The fact that English, like many other European languages, uses a mysterious “it” as a subject to say what’s going on is actually the outlier. More languages use a formula more like “rain falls, snow falls, sun shines, etc.”
So you tell him the “it” stands for “the weather” although that isn’t true. You could more truthfully say it’s a convention and English sentences need a subject. And then you add that “is raining” also transports the idea that it is in the process of happening right now. Don’t question it, accept it.
Learn a bit of Russian. That language is full of colorful images, irregularities, and inexplicable grammar. More so than English, probably. So you can put him in his place when he complains. Like, dude, y’all don’t even know what blue is!
s0larfl4re@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
i’m from russia, so i do know it, but not as well as i used to since it’s been about 12 years.
lemmyng@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
“It is [verb]ing” (as in “it is raining”) can be reinterpreted as “[noun] is happening” (“rain is happening”).
fubbernuckin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks 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 3 weeks ago
Uh oh - a linguistics Wikipedia article.
And here I was, planning to work.
andrewta@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I like this. Explains it fairly well
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
French too: il pleut. What is the il pointing to?!?
stormdelay@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
The (local) universe