The Linguistic Evolution of ‘Like’

Re:The Linguistic Evolution of ‘Like’ by bbctol on Monday November 28, 2016 @12:00PM (#13056690)

I use this a lot, but I think it's a reasonable addition to the language. There's a suffix in Korean, "~는데," that's usually used between clauses to mean something like "although": I did Y even though X happened and stuff like that. But you can also use it at the end of the sentence, and I think the trailing "so..." is the closest English has to an equivalent of what that means.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Linguistic Evolution of ‘Like’ by yongjik on Monday November 28, 2016 @01:58PM (#13057541)

What a coincidence. I'm Korean and I also use "...so" a lot!

* Korean has a handful of useful verb forms that can signal, let's say, the role a sentence should serve inside the dialogue: do you want to tell something the listener should know, or something that they're not expected to know, or to reassert something already said, or say something expecting an answer? In English, such distinctions usually disappear, unless you want to be really explicit, in which case you say stuff like "I mean"/"I can see that"/"Did you notice"/etc. However, when I want to make such a distinction I'm already halfway into a sentence, so it's too late for me to go back in time and attach the "proper" English phrase to the beginning.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Linguistic Evolution of ‘Like’ by titanix2 on Monday November 28, 2016 @02:54PM (#13057877)

This also exists in Japanese as が (ga) for the same exact thing ie connect two clauses and usually carrying "but" meaning; and also can be used without a second close, effectively ending the whole sentence.

This is not surprising given how close the grammar is said to be for this pair of languages and it's a nice feature for people learning both.

[ Parent | on HN ]