PHP is worth learning and using

Re:PHP is worth learning and using by tasty_freeze on Thursday November 18, 2021 @02:35AM (#29263018)

No doubt there are people reading this message who speak Japanese who will correct me, but ... 30 years ago I studied Japanese a little bit. One interesting feature of the language was that once a subject was introduced, there was no need to restate the subject if it hadn't changed, resulting in paragraphs like the one which intrigued you.

"I have used PHP for years." The first sentence establishes the subject is "I".

"Like it." etc Because this sentence doesn't have an explicit subject, it is implicitly the same one, "I".

As I recall, "wa" and "ga" were the Japanese particles which established new subjects. Say you wanted to talk about Bob's new car, you'd say something akin to "About Bob's new car, is expensive. Arrived last week. Has poor gas economy."

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Re:PHP is worth learning and using by CrazyStat on Thursday November 18, 2021 @08:39AM (#29265204)

This is called pronoun dropping [1] and happens in quite a few languages, including Japanese as noted.

I had a friend in college who would always point it out (in English, where it's not very common). I still notice it often years later and I'm pretty sure it's thanks to her making me aware of it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-drop_language

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Re:PHP is worth learning and using by hellojesus on Thursday November 18, 2021 @02:26PM (#29269333)

Interesting. The Chinese examples on the wiki page sounded completely natural to me and are in accordance with how I speak/interpret the language, but I never realized I was dropping pronouns due to their inference.

Thanks for the insight!

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