a lot of conservatives use sentences like
“I love country, I love government”
instead of
“I love the country, I love the government”
is it just to appeal to the large percentage of Americans who are illiterate or something…? idk why but it really pisses me off
I think it is to reinforce American exceptionalism, America is so great it doesn’t even need adjectives.
OK this is the second time someone in this thread has called ‘the’ an adjective, what’s the deal with that?
I couldn’t remember what the term for a word like “the” is, and I saw that other comment and just assumed it was correct and didn’t check it. I guess it’s an adverb? Or a conditional word or something? I don’t know, I probably need to go back to primary school.
It’s an article, which is not exactly information that most people need to live their daily lives nor have good politics, but does feel like the kind of thing that someone should know if they’re specifically commenting on grammar.
If I was going to write an essay or a paragraph actively dissecting what they say and why, yeah it’s a good idea to make sure I know all the relevant information, but a random internet comment just sharing my initial thoughts on something I don’t think I really need to spend 5 minutes struggling with the disaster that Google has become in order to figure out what the type of word “the” is.
Now that I think about it, maybe this is why conservatives don’t use the word.
I looked it up on DDG and got the correct answer in fewer than 30 seconds. Also, I don’t think it’s good to use google enshittifying as a justification for not seeking out new information, nor do I think short comments should be exempt from factuality.
I don’t understand why you’re being so hostile about this, I was wrong and you called it out, and that’s fine, now I know. That’s where this should’ve started and ended.
But the specifics of what kind of word “the” is wasn’t relevant to the initial question. I can talk about cats without having perfect knowledge of their taxonomic classification.
And maybe I should’ve been clearer with the google thing, I use a fork so I can search without literally needing to use google, but it goes off of google results, and this sometimes results in it just flat out giving me completely irrelevant nonsense, which is what was happening yesterday, I was getting things like lists of hotels in Romania, not anything relevant at all, I suppose I could’ve used a different search engine, but I do not have infinite time at my disposal, and I saw another comment stating that it was an “adjective” and thought that was close enough. Was I wrong, yes, I’m not saying I wasn’t. But I didn’t know that at the time, that’s kind of how being incorrect about something works.
I just think it’s important for people to remember the limits of their knowledge. Sometimes misconceptions that spread online are trivial BS that doesn’t matter in the vast majority of situations, like what kind of word ‘the’ is — but if you go around saying “eh, this other comment says this, which is probably close enough, I’m not going to bother checking, it’s just a single-sentence comment on the Internet, anyways” enough times… one of those times the misconception is going to be something important, and you might not even realize it before that misconception spreads to yet another person. This is why it’s important to be vigilant and not be too confident in what you know. I just don’t think it’s good that so many people feel entitled to “play expert” in whatever field they want nowadays, so I think it’s best to just nip that sort of thinking in the bud whenever even a hint of it shows up, before it can take root.
So yes, you can answer the original question without knowing what kind of word ‘the’ is, and you can talk about cats without knowing their taxonomy. But you also don’t randomly bring up cats’ taxonomy when it’s irrelevant and something you’re unsure of, just as you shouldn’t randomly bring up what kind of word ‘the’ is if it’s irrelevant and something you’re unsure of, just as you shouldn’t bring up anything irrelevant that you’re unsure of in any situation. And if you have to bring up something you’re unsure of, then you should always make it clear that you’re unsure of it, and ask for confirmation. Am I being a hard-ass, annoying pedant about this? Yes. But I think this is an important point.
Yeah, you’re right, I wasn’t really trying to speak from a position of expertise or understanding on the topic, just navel-gazing, but that doesn’t mean others aren’t interpreting it that way. I’ll try and be more careful in the future, even if it is only to avoid pedantry like this.