Latest comment:18 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Why is the pronoun I always capitalized? When did that start and why? Thanks
It was shortened fromic/ich toi by AD 1137 in northern England, and then it began to be written as a capital around AD 1250 to mark it as a distinct word and to avoid misreading in manuscripts, since little or no space was given between words in formal manuscripts of that era.—Stephen10:33, 1 April 2006 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:18 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Can someone with a Bangla keyboard driver add the Bangla word of I?By the way, the Romanized version is "ami".Thanks in advance.Ko e aeetlrsk01:40, 9 July 2006 (UTC)Reply
It used to, but no longer does. The reason it did is historic - originally the first letter of all entries on Wikipedia was a capital letter (as it still is on Wikipedia). Later (early 2006?) this automatic capitalisation of the first letter was turned off on all wiktionaries, apparently following a request for this to happen on the Dutch (and possibly other) language editions that was allegedly misunderstood by the developers to be a request for all Wiktionaries (I was not active on Wiktionary at the time, and have not looked into it myself, so I can only go by what I have heard from those who were). As part of the transition, all pages were moved to titles starting with lowercase (I presume the reason is that more are supposed to start with a lowercase letter than with an uppercase letter) - i.e.I andTalk:I were moved toi andTalk:i, with redirects left behind as is standard for the MediaWiki software. Where a word was meant to start with an uppercase letter, the page was manually moved back. However it seems that not all the talk pages were moved back at the same time, and these generally remain until an admin notices, or someone brings it to the attention of an admin.Thryduulf16:24, 2 September 2007 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Is there any agreement on the etymology here? There are two different one's listed and I've never heard of the French etymology, though it's listed first.
The first etymology is for the abbreviation (I.). The French etymology is the second one, and it is for the letter of the alphabet (the letter I). The third etymology is the Germanic first-person pronounI. Which one are you concerned about?—Stephen05:06, 9 November 2007 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:16 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I've got a question... why do you have to go all the way down to the third etymology before you get "personal pronoun"? Shouldn't that be first?76.104.192.19400:09, 3 June 2008 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:15 years ago6 comments4 people in discussion
I didn't see a mention of it here, and am wondering if what I was taught is incorrect:
In school, we learned that when politely speaking, it was proper to refer to the recipient(s) before one's self, as in the statement "My friends and I are going to see a movie.", is this correct? --Cbf53607:23, 15 October 2009 (UTC)Reply
Yes, but it has nothing to do with being polite. "I and my friends" just sounds wrong - and don't even think of saying "Myself and my friends are going to see a movie"!SemperBlotto07:27, 15 October 2009 (UTC)Reply
That's what I was thinking, but it is the subject pronoun and it's often used at the beginning of sentences where there is no accompaniment (though I supposemy friends and I would be the subject here ...). Are these rules also applied in other languages? If it's strictly English, perhaps it should be noted. I couldn't find another reason for this construction to be incorrect besides not being in widespread use. --Cbf53607:34, 15 October 2009 (UTC)Reply
It should sound wrong in English (as SB notes,and isn't politenessper se). "My friends and I" or (being less correct and more informal) "me and my friends" (can be either way 'round). "Me, myself, and I!" (helpful way to remember an acceptable order ;-) for example "The participants were A, B, C, myself, and several others." (;-)Robert Ullmann11:09, 22 October 2009 (UTC)Reply
I asked some natives what they use: According to them, Spanish uses that of English, Dutch uses the same in a polite sense (but both are feasible). Swedish uses the inverse (Jag ochminkompis). It doesn't seem to be a syntactical trait of Germanic/Indo-European languages, so should it be noted for the languages which use/don't use it? --Cbf53600:17, 17 October 2009 (UTC)Reply
Rfd-sense: "(computing, programming) interface (as a prefix on the name of an entity)".
Sure, the letter I is used in this way, and this sense is probably citable; but is this a "term" or lexical element that we should include in a dictionary? I don't think so. It's a slippery slope - do we want to be including allw:Hungarian notation prefixes? They're probably citable too, given the number of books written about programming, but I don't think they are "terms"...This, that and the other (talk)10:16, 22 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
Shouldn't it beI- (ori-) for this definition, as it's a prefix? CFI says prefixes should be kept, but then it mentions "i-" specifically in the "attestation vs. slippery slope" section. However, it looks like the mention of "i-" in the slippery slope section is not referring to this prefix, but to words generated with the prefix "i-", and probably the definition pertaining to Apple products. Based on that,move and keep.14:25, 22 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
I would saydelete because programming code words are used in programming languages and not in English. Wiktionary covers only human languages. —CodeCat14:31, 22 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
I don't know, but if it's not used in English then it shouldn't be kept as English. In fact (though CFI sadly doesn't mention it) 'all words in all languages' refers to human languages not computer languages. Furthermore, it's my understanding that computer languages don't have words.Renard Migrant (talk)17:52, 24 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
I created this and can see why it might be deletion-worthy; the point about Hungarian prefixes is a good one, and e.g.C is also sometimes used as a class prefix. (We shifted the APL symbols to an appendix, for example, and we don't have entries for programmingkeywords unless they have entered English, e.g.bless,enum.) It does raise questions about the acceptability of some other programming-language items, like++.Equinox◑23:03, 25 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
Delete, since "I" is neither a word nor a morpheme in a language. It is an item used to form identifiers, and identifiers themselves (e.g. "JOptionPane") are not words in a language, despite often being composed from English words. If we were including attested identifiers used in programming languages as words (three independent uses in source code?), then we could be includingI as an item resembling a word used in a closed compound (in natural language, "head" in "headache") orI- as a prefix.--Dan Polansky (talk)07:47, 29 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
@Ranníocóir:You're taller than I isn't an example ofI as the complement of the verbto be, because it's an ellipsis ofYou're taller than I am, whereI is the subject ofam, not the complement. I feel, however, that this example should be included somehow; I'm not sure how. —Eru·tuon00:19, 28 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
The objective pronouns work as emphatics by nature not understanding
Latest comment:4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
This word has no true weak form in Received Pronunciation, though in rapid casual speech it may become monophthongala. In General American it is sometimes weakened toə.LPD
