Hixie English ============= Version: 1.0-pre43 Language Tag: en-GB-x-Hixie Introduction ------------ This is a normative reference to Hixie English. Hixie English is a variant of the language spoken by the majority of the residents of the United Kingdom (England) and the United States of America. Anything not explicitly stated in this reference is undefined. This opens up a large loophole, namely that since this reference doesn't fully define all the terms, grammar and so on that this reference uses itself, there is no way to prove anything in it. :-( So, when arguing anything about definition herein, all parties involved should first ensure they agree on the meaning of all constructs used in the definitions being argued. If they do not, said constructions should be added to a future version of this reference. In the absence of content in this document, the following site may be assumed to be a normative extension: http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/ Vocabulary ---------- ### Nouns "Annotation" -- a note or sign added to any form of content. For example, a comment written in the margin of a book, an underlined passage in a newspaper, or a speech bubble overlaid on a video. "Belief" -- the mental acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validity of something that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence. (Thus this term can be used specifically to refer to the act of holding a religious prejudice. q.v. faith) "Bluff" -- a statement intended to mislead, in the framework of a limited universe or other simulation or recreational system. For instance, stating that one has only $50 in a game of Monopoly, when one in fact owns $500. (Note that this bluff may also be a violation of game rules, depending on the set of house rules in effect.) "Bug" -- in software, an undesirable behaviour, or a lack of desirable behaviour. "Dishonesty" -- a set of behaviour patterns that includes, but is not limited to, telling lies (q.v.). "e-mail" -- a form of communication that uses the SMTP protocol or its successors to distribute messages in a manner that gives control over the recipient list to the sender, without requiring prior authorisation. "Faith" -- A belief in the truth, value, integrity, ability, or character of a person, idea, or thing, that is the result of religious prejudice. (c.f. trust; q.v. belief) "Lie" -- a statement that is known, by its proponent, to be incorrect, given in the primary universe of the proponent. For instance, stating that one owns an item, when one knows that one does not, is lying. Note that in the context of role-playing games, an incorrect statement made by a character who knows that the statement is incorrect, within the game world, is only a bluff from the perspective of the player, outside the game world. "Stylesheet" -- a resource that describes how to present another resource. "Testcase" -- a resource used to test something. "Today" -- the period of time starting when the speaker woke up and ending when the speaker next goes to sleep. "Tomorrow" -- the period of time starting when the speaker next wakes up and ending when the speaker first falls asleep after next waking up. "Trust" -- Firm reliance on the truth, value, integrity, ability, or character of a person, idea, or thing, based on optimism, logical proof, material evidence, or previous experience. (c.f. faith) "Yesterday" -- the 24 hour period of time extending back in time from the last occurance of midnight in the timezone of the speaker. I would like to find a noun (with a related verb form) that means "the provisional mental acceptance of the truth, actuality, or validity of something that rests entirely on logical proof or material evidence". (In contemporary American and British English, the word "belief" is often ambiguously used to mean both this and the definition of "belief" given above.) The best that anyone has suggested so far is "hold", as in, "I hold that masses are attracted to each other". ### Verbs "to seek" -- (1) to search for something. Past tense "sought". (2) To index into a resource, as in jumping to a time in a video file or a record in a data stream. Past tense "seeked". Grammar ------- * Companies Companies are their employees. Therefore the name of a company, when used as part of a sentence, is a plural noun. For instance, in the sentence "Microsoft have illegally extended their monopolies.", the word "Microsoft" is plural and represents the employees of the company. * "'s": Plurals and Possessives Plurals never end in "'s". To make a possessive of a word ending with an s, simply append an apostrophe. For example, "the apples' cores". The phrase "it is" may be shortened to "it's". The possessive "its" must not be replaced by "it's". (Future versions of Hixie English might change this by replacing "my", "your", "his", etc by "I's", "you's", "he's", etc.) * Plurals of words whose endings sound like "us" Any word whose singular ends with a *sound* like "us" or similar, pluralises to "ii". However, for historical reasons, alternative spellings more commonly used by English scholars (e.g. "viruses", "buses") are allowed as well. For example: Singular Correct Plural Alternative Plural ------------------------------------------------------ bus bii buses cactus cactii - canvas canvii canvases fetus fetii fetuses fuss fii fusses mattress mattrii mattresses octopus octopii octopuses penis penii penises radius radii - rhinoceros rhinocerii rhinoceroses status statii statuses thesaurus thesaurii thesauri, thesauruses virus virii viruses Exception: The pronoun "I" is singular, while "us" is plural. * Pronouns The pronouns of this language are as follows: Singular Plural ------------------------------------------ 1st person I We 2nd person You Y'all 3rd person He/She/It; They* They Notes: * In formal texts, it is customary to use "You" instead of "Y'all" and to use an uppercase "I" for the first person even when it is not used at the start of a sentence. * When referring to persons of uncertain sex, the pronoun "they" should be used instead of "he" or "she". This pronoun's grammar works like the third person plural pronoun. For example: "Who is that? I don't know, they just got here. They are new." Punctuation ----------- * Quoting Quote marks exactly contain the text being quoted, and not any trailing punctuation. When the text being quoted ends with a punctuation mark identical to that immediately following the close quote, the inner punctuation mark may be omitted if doing so does not reduce the accuracy of the statement. Quotation marks must be balanced; end quotation marks cannot be omitted or implied. e.g.: "Why is the title 'I Like Cats'?" is a question. "Hello Sir", said Blake, "I am glad to meet you". "How do you do?", replied Ian. The text was "Hello World.". There are three kinds of quote marks. Double quotes: Used to mark quoted text. Single quotes: Used to mark quoted text within quoted text and quoted keywords from CSS. Vertical bars: Used to mark quoted computer code. e.g. C++. * Bracketing There are four kinds of brackets. Only two are used in Hixie English. Round brackets (parentheses, "()"): Used to mark parenthetical remarks, clarifications, and the like. Square brackets ("[]"): Used within quotations to indicate paraphrasing. For instance, in the text "He said '[Bert] doesn't like it'.", the inner quote's original source could have been "He doesn't like it", which, when taken out of its initial context, might be ambiguous, requiring the word "He" to be replaced by a paraphrasing such as, in this case, "[Bert]". Curly brackets (braces, "{}"): Not used in Hixie English text. Angle brackets ("<>"): Not used in Hixie English text. When surrounding text with punctuation marks, they should be treated like quotes (although without affecting the actual quote nesting level, of course); if an entire sentence is a parenthetical remark, for instance, then the trailing period should be within the brackets. e.g.: (He said "good bye".) Spelling -------- Exact spellings are dependent on the geographical version of Hixie English used. en-GB-hixie | en-US-hixie | incorrect variants -------------------+-------------------+---------------------- colour | color | through | through | thru pluralised | pluralized | practice | practice | practise Conformance ----------- All sections of this specification should be considered normative except the examples. The words "must", "should", and "may" follow RFC2119 definitions. Acknowledgements ---------------- Edward Welbourne provided interesting insights and introduced the term "religious prejudice". -- end --