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by elgenie 440 days ago
Your understanding of how formality levels in English function is perhaps not entirely complete: native speakers of English convey usually convey the sentiment with as little as "Breakfast?" or "Hungry?" when talking with family. In the child's second language, would the maitre'd at the restaurant of a fine hotel ask a two word question, or rather bury those in respectful filler?

"Ow" and friends, by the way, are interjections to express sudden pain, functioning analogously to an adult's swearing. They're not full sentences about the pain and its source.

1 comments

> Your understanding of how formality levels in English function is perhaps not entirely complete: native speakers of English convey usually convey

It's kind of hilarious that you assume I'm not a native English speaker because I speak more languages... I'm a native English speaker who just happens to have grown up with 2 other languages and have a wife that speaks 4+ languages. On top of that I've taken a bunch of university level English courses.

Yes, I'm aware that people shorten sentences into statements when speaking to those they're familiar with. I do it as well.

Here's a thought experiment:

- If a toddler speaks in short statements it's "baby talk"

- If an immigrant speaks in short statements it's "broken English"

- If a native speaker speaks in short statements it's vernacular or slang

Or:

- If a toddler makes up words it's "baby talk"

- If an immigrant makes up words they're uneducated

- If a native speaker makes up words it's a dialect

Most of those incorrectly use the linguistic terminology (in particular, "dialect", "baby talk", "slang") but, yes, congratulations on discovering that context plays a role in communication.
Ah so you want to be snarky to try assert intellectual superiority but actually have nothing to say. Gotcha.