Linguaphile wrote:As far as your quote that you think I want "for everyone to fully start seeing it the way I do, have no more questions and no longer have a perception and point of view of his own", my reason for not wanting to continue the discussion was actually the opposite of that
I don't understand.
Linguaphile wrote: [quote missing because Linguaphile deleted her post before I could finish my reply (something along the lines of "you called my phrases childlike")]
Something you say can sound
"childlike" etc. to me without offence to you, that's just a matter of fact and as far as I'm concerned we're simply discussing English - I don't see why you'd take offence at that.
Linguaphile wrote:We don't need to convince each other to think differently
I agree.
Linguaphile wrote:But it seemed to me like you were just trying to get me to agree (or argue?)
No, never. I don't do that. Any suggestions how I could have continued discussing those three expressions without making you feel that way?
Sometimes I have tried to convince when I've thought the other forum member hasn't gotten my point (e.g. when we were talking about whether languages should butcher foreign loans or keep the foreign spelling), but in this particular case I've only continued to talk to clarify the meaning and hear more about how those expressions sound to you, through informing you how they still sound
to me.
Linguaphile wrote:You dismissed my examples as irrelevant
Your examples are not irrelevant - especially when you're talking about your language, they're very interesting and appreciated. Your point is also interesting, but mine needs to continue to exist until all aspects of it are considered. You completely ignored the main point in my last post and focused on something else - it was a question: don't you think
dance this dance with me implies extra emphasis and something out of the ordinary, while normally an English speaking would prefer to skip the repetition? Maybe you answered halfway, but you focused on something else (and thought I was criticising your way of speaking, which hasn't even come to my mind).
Linguaphile wrote:and then went right back to asking me if my own phrases "sound normal and well-made" to me.
Those were mentioned as examples of what "people say" and not as your phrases and the way you speak. It keeps looking like you are trying to accuse me of all things, telling me how everything I've said about you could've been seen as an attack.
Linguaphile wrote:I would love to discuss Finnish here, or compare Finnish and English structures, but somehow we've moved off of that - I kept trying to connect the discussion back to Finnish
I don't think anyone here would have a problem with some discussion about English in the Finnish forum, as long as it originated in a post about Finnish - most of us are as interested in English as we are in Finnish.* However, our personal quarrels aren't of interest to anybody (or shouldn't be!)
Linguaphile wrote:the sort of thing that can't really have a resolution or endpoint aside from "let's just agree to disagree"
I never thought there was an argument in the first place! Until you told me you thought there was and from there the discussion shifted into something super long and complicated and completely unrelated to the topic.
Linguaphile wrote:we could analyze whether Finnish uses repetition like this all that often; in my experience, Finnish is just as likely to use parallelism where a synonym or near-synonym rather than the same stem is used, although with that I'm thinking more of poetry than ordinary speech (and it does tend to change the meaning, which is why it works best in the figurative language of poetry where we can be a bit looser with literal meanings).
Could you be more specific or give examples?
*btw comparisons with Estonian are also welcome and interesting. (I believe for everyone else here as well).
Linguaphile wrote: [quote missing because Linguaphile deleted her post before I could finish my reply]
Good, from now on I'm using
Minä esitän kysymyksen all the time, thank you very much! 😁
(Naava, what do you think - is that too formal?
Linguaphile wrote:is acceptable, so is changing it, if the repetition bothers you. On the other hand if you're changing these phrases because you think it bothers the listener, that's when I wouldn't worry
The point here is to make my speech as good as possible, so whether it bothers me or the listener is irrelevant. All kinds of people say all kinds of things - I need to make my pick.