I

A videogame by Jason Nelson that simply puts "You" against "I" with a barrage of backgrounds of websites as "levels."

"I" is a first-person singular pronoun meant to refer to oneself, typically the individual that is speaking. However, "I" has been used in myriad ways by cultural pioneers wishing to use it to convey a different meaning. The word "I" is an English translation of the singular first-person, which is also present and widely used in virtually every extant language, according to greasy male japanophiles on reddit. It has nearly infinite definitions as its meaning is mutable dependant on the context in which it is used. Each unique person who utters a translatio of the word "I" has created a new definition, and as humans are never stagnant creatures, so neither is the definintio of the word "I." The word "I" featured prominently as a heretical word in Ayn Rand's Anthem, in which a highly collectivist society has replaced "I" with the plural "we," and the main character must grapple with his understanding of what he terms "Ego," a latin word meaning "I."

Uses

“It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.” - To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

“I cannot but conclude that the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.” - Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

“I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me.” - Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

“And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.” - The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

셋샤 (拙者)

Ich liebe dich. - 나는 너를 사랑한다.

Rufen Sie mich an. - 저에게 전화하세요. (anrufen(전화하다)은 4격 지배동사. 한국어와 독일어의 격을 비슷하게 맞춰서 번역하자면 '저를 전화로 불러 주세요.')

Gib mir das Buch. - 그 책 나에게 줘.

Du hilfst ihm. - 너는 그를 돕는다. (helfen(돕다)은 3격 지배동사. 역시 격을 비슷하게 맞춰 번역하면 '너는 그에게 도움을 준다.')

Er arbeitet statt meiner.

Je m'appelle La Salope.

The Greasy Men

02-07-2004, 02:40 AM a related issue: Does anybody here know Japanese? (I sure don't!) . But I once heard that in Japanese it is considered impolite to use the word "I". Instead of saying "I drove the car", Japanese uses the passive "the car was driven by me"

This was in some article I once read about the difficulties American businessmen had with Japanese culture. The point was that the Japanese value polite cooperation, not competition-while Amercans are the opposite. Even their language stresses the un-importance of the individual as a passive observer, not active do-er.

But even if it is true, it doesnt account for the Jap's long history of ferocity in combat from the Samurai through WWII. So I doubt if human nature is much affected by any specific language,where use of the first person may or may not be considered "egotism" excaudate 02-07-2004, 02:53 AM linguists*

anyway i thinkt he sapir-whorf thesis said something about humn nature and language. this is more of a bump than anything. gluteus maximus 02-07-2004, 02:59 AM Japanese has several forms of the first person pronoun; watashi (standard 'I'), watakutashi (formal 'I'), atashi (feminine 'I'), boku (masculine 'I'), ore (vulgar 'I'), and temae (humble 'I'), but in spoken Japanese, it is common to omit pronouns, except when necessary for clarity.

More info... (http://www.cic.sfu.ca/tqj/GettingRight/pronouns.html)

Be careful about applying psychological/sociological/cultural assumptions to differences in language. Sometimes, that's just how we/they say it.

It's common in Japanese to omit the subject of a sentence, whether it's a proper name, pronoun, or common noun, if the subject is obvious to the listener. gluteus maximus 02-07-2004, 04:38 AM As for the OP's question...

I've been Googling, but so far haven't come across any references to human languages without first-person pronouns.

If there is/were such a language, though, how does/would a speaker refer to itself?

One way would be, uh, 'Gollum-speak', perhaps, but one could argue that 'my Precious' is really a first-person pronoun.

One could always use 'one' in place of the missing 'I'... rather vague, though.

The speaker could merely use their own name instead of a first-person pronoun.

English: I want to hold your hand. Japanese: Want to hold hands. Gollum-speak: My Precious wants to hold its handsesesessss. Vaguelish: One wants to hold another one's hand. NoEgolese: gluteus maximus wants to hold (Name's) hand.

Of course, in translation, we'd adjust everything to make sense from our own linguistic point of view, so we'd probably just insert 'I', where necessary. xejkh 02-07-2004, 10:31 AM a related issue: Does anybody here know Japanese? (I sure don't!) . But I once heard that in Japanese it is considered impolite to use the word "I". Instead of saying "I drove the car", Japanese uses the passive "the car was driven by me"

Never heard of Japanese using the passive for the sake of politeness. (I studied Japanese) If there was the need to be polite the Japanese would use either the "humble" forms of verbs and nouns, when referring to themselves and their actions (eg mairu instead of kuru, come), or the honorific for the actions of other people (eg irassharu for iku go, kuru come, iru be). coffeecat 02-07-2004, 11:07 AM What do you use ore for? I'm imagining something like, "Hey dude! Ivulgar may be a ho, but yourvulgar mama's a bigger ho!" gluteus maximus 02-07-2004, 11:21 AM Well, that's not too far off, semantically.

I guess I should have typed 'rough' or 'rude' or 'unrefined' instead of 'vulgar', since 'vulgar' in English is a bit different than 'vulgar' in Japanese.

Let's put it this way; ore is used between men in manly situations...

A Japanese man isn't likely to say ore when speaking to a woman, but he'll say ore when he wants to appear tough when speaking to a man. emekthian 02-07-2004, 11:35 AM Do you count constructed languages? If so, see Elkaril (http://www.zompist.com/elkaril.htm#Assignment).

There are probably real-world languages without "I", but I can't think of any. Johanna 02-07-2004, 05:09 PM In Korean, somehow they leave out both the subject pronoun and the object pronoun, and just say the verb alone.

For example, to say "I love you," Koreans would just say Sarang haeyo. This is nothing but the verb 'love' in the active present tense, meaning (somebody) loves (somebody). Korean verbs, like Japanese verbs, are not conjugated for person or number. How the Koreans are supposed to understand that Sarang haeyo means specifically 'I love you" instead of "Fibber McGee loves Molly" is a mystery to me.

Korean does have first and second person pronouns, but for some reason they prefer not to use them. You could put them into the example sentence to make it say explicitly "I love you" : Nae-ga no-rul sarang haeyo. In which na means 'I' and no means 'you'. Although this sentence is correct according to the rules of Korean grammar, for some reason they don't talk like this.

In Malay they have lots of different personal pronouns for the 1st and 2nd person, but they don't use them as much. Instead, they substitute words that tell the position or relationship of the speaker and the addressee. For example, a child speaking to a parent will substitute his name for 'I' and "Mom" or "Dad" for 'you'. A parent speaking to a child will say "Mom" or "Dad" instead of "I" and use the child's name instead of "you." A student speaking to a professor will say "student" instead of "I" and "Professor" instead of "you." And so on. Since the verbs are not inflected for person or number, it works the same either way. ShibbOleth 02-07-2004, 05:31 PM In spoken Thai the first person is often omitted. And they don't really use auxillary verbs much, anyway (in spoken form). So "I am going shopping" just becomes "going shopping". "I am hungry" is just "hungry". But it's not something you can't do in the language, it's just not really spoken that way since it's apparent it's the speaker who is going shopping or who is hungry. If it were a question, "Are you hungry?" there is a question word added so that there is no doubt, sort of like "Hungry, no?" Broomstick 02-07-2004, 06:57 PM Samuel R. Delany in the novel Babel-17 used an artificial language with no first-person as an important plot device (the language being "Babel-17"). But I've never heard of an actual language, natural or artificial, entirely omitting the first person robo99 02-08-2004, 12:28 AM In spoken Thai the first person is often omitted. And they don't really use auxillary verbs much, anyway (in spoken form). So "I am going shopping" just becomes "going shopping". "I am hungry" is just "hungry". But it's not something you can't do in the language, it's just not really spoken that way since it's apparent it's the speaker who is going shopping or who is hungry. If it were a question, "Are you hungry?" there is a question word added so that there is no doubt, sort of like "Hungry, no?"

Well English is kinda like this now. People will say "I'm going shopping" but the "I'm" part can nearly disappear depending on how it's said so that you really only hear "going shopping". There's only a little vowel inflection before "going". jovan 02-08-2004, 03:17 AM Never heard of Japanese using the passive for the sake of politeness. The passive form is used more often in polite speech. For instance, "Mr. Tanaka came" can be said: Tanaka-san ni koraremashita. Here, "koraremashita" is the passive form of "kuru" (to come). It's more polite than simply: Tanaka-san ga kimashita.

The various personal pronouns in Japanese are like clothes. You wear different ones for different occasions. I disagree that "ore" wouldn't be used by someone talking to a woman - I hear (and use) it all the time. It is, however, rough and masculine. You use "ore" when you want to avoid either the boyish undertones of "boku", the relative formality of "watashi", or when you don't want to pass for an old fart with "washi". It certainly doesn't need to be vulgar like coffecat's example.

One of the most classic examples of personal pronouns in Japanese is the title of Soseki Natsume's masterpiece: "Wagahai wa neko dearu". In English this is, and can only be, translated as: "I am a cat". This translation completely fails to convey the ridiculously pompous undertones of "wagahai".

In languages like Japanese, the very concept of "person" does not make as much sense as in English. In English's basic SVO structure, the relationship of the subject to the speaker is very important. However, the structure of Japanese is theme-complement-verb. (At least according to followers of Akira Mikami.) Subject is relegated to mere complement and is not of central importance. As such, the concept of "person" is not very important, or useful when talking about Japanese grammar.

One of my Japanese teachers remarked that in French, it's not uncommon for people to specify three times the subject in a sentence. "Moi je mange du sushi." "I eat sushi." "I" is specified by the pronoun "je", emphasized by the addition of "moi" and further indicated by the conjugation of the verb "manger". In Japanese, you'd just say "sushi wo taberu."