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February 5

Use of pronouns like adjectives

Personal pronouns are sometimes used to describe nouns in a way similar to how adjectives do. Consider the following examples.

We Three Kings
”Are we keeping you people from your supper?” (from Nadine Gordimer’s 1956 story Which New Era Would That Be?)
Some Heartbroken Game Over screens in Yandere Simulator involve the player character being called a creep or monster, with such nouns being directly preceded by “you.”
I’m not sure if the title I, Robot fully counts as an example.

What rules, if any, exist for which pronouns can/can’t be used like this and when? Primal Groudon (talk) 02:35, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think that might be determiners rather than adjectives. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 02:52, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That is how Wiktionary classifies this use, giving these examples:

Have you gentlemen come to see the lady who fell backwards off a bus?
You idiot!

Wiktionary also recognizes we as a determiner:

We Canadians like to think of ourselves as different.
We the undersigned wish to express our disapproval.

There is also the nonstandard use of them as a determiner:

Gimme two of them yellow ones.

‑‑Lambiam 06:34, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Huh, I would have thought these were considered subjects with appositives. Nardog (talk) 07:15, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Note that while apposition can generally be applied to third-person subjects, this is problematic when the subject is a pronoun. Take these sentences, which are just fine:

An Arizona man lost his miniature pinscher in Oklahoma eight years ago. On Jan. 15, he received calls and texts saying his dog Damian had been found.^[1]

Dog owner Paul Guilbeault lost his miniature pinscher in Oklahoma eight years ago. On Jan. 15, he received calls and texts saying his dog had been found.

These variations are less acceptable:

^✶Today, an Arizona man is happy. He Paul Guilbeault lost his miniature pinscher in Oklahoma eight years ago. On Jan. 15, he received calls and texts saying his dog had been found.

^✶Paul Guilbeault lost his miniature pinscher in Oklahoma eight years ago. On Jan. 15, Mr. Guilbeault received calls and texts saying he Damian had been found.

‑‑Lambiam 19:28, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What's wrong with them? They're perfectly fine to me as long as they're interpreted as nonrestrictive (which in orthography is typically represented by commas). Nardog (talk) 09:24, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As a card-carrying member of the punctuation police, I find a lack of commas to offset nonrestrictive appositions objectionable. But while I have no problem with a commaless "Can I get you folks some drinks?", I must object to "Can I get you, folks, some drinks?" So this is a different phenomenon. ‑‑Lambiam 16:19, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There is no punctuation in speech. What indicates it's a different phenomenon aside from writing? Nardog (talk) 23:38, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The presence or absence of an audible pause. In normal speech there is no pause after the pronouns in "we Canadians" or "you gentlemen", and a pause is not needed before the appositions in "his dog Damian" and "dog owner Paul Guilbeault". But, at least to me, "he Paul Guilbeault" and "he Damian" would sound strange and even incomprehensible in the sentences above unless the appositions are set off with pauses. ‑‑Lambiam 07:38, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"We Three Kings" is not an example of what you're talking about if you're referring to the Christmas song. There it's simply anastrophe, where "We three kings of Orient are" is a poetic rearrangement of "We are three kings of Orient", in part so that it will rhyme with the following line. Deor (talk) 03:31, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nicely explained. I was in college before I found out that, yes, there is a comma after the fourth word (not the third) in "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen", and it's supposed to be there, and if you don't put it there you're misinterpreting it. Also, it's incorrect to put "Ye" in place of "You", because it's the object of "Rest" and therefore takes the objective case. --Trovatore (talk) 03:42, 5 February 2025 (UTC) [reply]

I recall a cartoon caption in A Certain Magazine which punctuated it "God! Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen!" The picture depicted several men, in evening dress and their cups, and an over-exerted, err, hostess. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.7.205.116 (talk) 03:51, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nice zeugma. Yes, I had to look it up. Someday I'll get used to ChatGPT or what may come thereafter. --Trovatore (talk) 05:52, 5 February 2025 (UTC) [reply]

Cyrillic alphabets

What Cyrillic alphabet has the most kinds of letter-sized shapes?

i.e. Slovak has 46 letters (45ish phonemes) but only 26 unique letter-sized shapes 27 in uppercase (Ch's the only uppercase letter with an h symbol but not the only one with a C glyph). If Slovak had Ç uppercase would have 28 cause the diacritic's part of the shape).

Majuscule forms (also called uppercase or capital letters)
A	Á	Ä	B	C	Č	D	Ď	DZ	DŽ	E	É	F	G	H	Ch	I	Í	J	K	L	Ĺ	Ľ
M	N	Ň	O	Ó	Ô	P	Q	R	Ŕ	S	Š	T	Ť	U	Ú	V	W	X	Y	Ý	Z	Ž
Minuscule forms (also called lowercase or small letters)
a	á	ä	b	c	č	d	ď	dz	dž	e	é	f	g	h	ch	i	í	j	k	l	ĺ	ľ
m	n	ň	o	ó	ô	p	q	r	ŕ	s	š	t	ť	u	ú	v	w	x	y	ý	z	ž

Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 23:48, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See Cyrillic alphabets and List of Cyrillic letters.

By the way, it's not exactly that the uppercase 'Ch' has 'h'. That glyph can be capitalized as well: for example the word for 'bread' is spelled CHLIEB in uppercase, Chlieb in titlecase, and chlieb in lowercase. Same with the other two digraphs, dz and dž. --Theurgist (talk) 01:08, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Slovak alphabet is not a Cyrillic alphabet but a Latin-script alphabet. The two types are easy to distinguish. If you see an R, the alphabet is of the Latin type. If you see a Я, the alphabet is of the Cyrillic type (except in

and faux Cyrillic as in TETЯIS). Another give-away pair is N versus И. Alphabets of either type are used for writing Slavic and non-Slavic languages. ‑‑Lambiam 06:24, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I knew it's Latin they look very different. I put Slovak cause it's the highest on maps that color European countries by letter count but only used diacritics+multigraphs to get to 46 while say Kazakh just added 9 letters to the alphabet they got the Cyrillic from (Russian) so they could write both languages' sounds. Though the longest Cyrillic alphabet I could find has so many phonemic distinctions they also have many multigraphs. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:33, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Early_Cyrillic alphabet has forty-something letters without considering diacritics, depending exactly how you count. --Amble (talk) 21:24, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]