• cally [he/they]@pawb.socialEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    English word order is also pretty weird.

    “The man gave a bone to the dog”, “The dog was given a bone by the man”, “The bone was given by the man to the dog”, etc etc

    These are all valid sentences* expressing the same thing.

    *They may not be gramatically correct, I am not a grammar professional

    edit: I had forgotten that you can also do that in other languages

    • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
      7·
      1 year ago

      I don’t think that’s very specific to English, I could write the same subject swap in French, Spanish and maybe Japanese.

      • tiredofsametab@kbin.social
        2·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, we can do it in Japanese. Particles change. Passive voice and subjunctive mood can also be done without too much trouble.

    • Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de
      3·
      1 year ago

      If you task your male dogsitter to give your dog a treat while you are away and somebody asks you whether your pet is taken care of during your vacation, you can say: “Don’t worry. When I return, the bone will have been given by the man to the dog.”

    • Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com
      3·
      1 year ago

      It’s not like you can’t say that in french.

      They have almost a hundred ways to conjugate each verb too (even if there are about a hundred groups).

      English is a walk in the park compared to French IMO.