
E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be' - thameera
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime
======
re
I didn't notice at first, but, like with some other Wikipedia articles, the
editors of this one have enforced the E-Prime constraint on the article
itself. After the possibility occurred to me and I went back to the page to
check, I only found it particularly unnatural in the initial sentence, since
almost every other article begins with the sentence "[subject] is [concise
definition]."

For a similar example, the "Plot Summary" section of the page about "A Void"
also conforms to its subject's constraint--in that case, avoiding the letter
"e":
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void#Plot_summary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void#Plot_summary)

It surprises me that avoiding forms of "to be" presents such a challenge for
me--particularly with this sentence. I feel that it makes my writing sound
more repetitive, since I end up replacing "X is" with wordy alternatives like
"I find X" or "X seems"; while I'm used to forms of "to be" appearing dozens
of times in a paragraph, my replacements stand out more when overused.

~~~
chrisseaton
Actually the first sentence shows a loop-hole doesn't it?

> E-Prime, a prescriptive version of the English language, excludes all forms
> of the verb to be.

Doesn't the part parenthesised in commas have a kind of implicit 'is'?

For example E' is supposed to stop me saying things like 'Terminator is a good
film and is 2 hours long', but I can say 'Terminator, a good film, lasts for 2
hours'.

~~~
jdmichal
It does. Specifically, it is carrying an implicit "which is":

> E-Prime, [which is] a prescriptive version of the English language, ...

That sentence should instead be written:

> E-Prime prescribes a version of the English language which excludes all
> forms of the verb "to be".

~~~
conceit
s/prescribes/is

Prescribe seems out of place there, anyhow.

~~~
jdmichal
Prescribe is a linguistic jargon. [0] It is exactly the correct word. And the
whole point of E' is to remove _is_ in such cases, because it carries an
overloaded value which could change from person to person. In this case, a
linguist would likely understand that it is prescribing a form of English, but
not everyone would share that interpretation.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription)

~~~
conceit
He, my bad then. English is very contextual. Point in case, prescriptive could
also mean a speaker of E' must speak prescriptive. As foreign speaker, i then
figured it means descriptive, which would've made some sort of sense to me,
but is actually the opposite in linguistic terms.

Now I get down into semantics, can E-Prime prescribe something or is it the
name of a rule-set that can be prescribed? I lean to the latter, hence my
remark is still valid?

On another note, I find the recursion mentioned by OP quite interesting in a
broader context. Choice of grammar has meaning itself.

Edit: Ultimately though, language is inherently underspecified, I heard, and I
suppose in linguistic context it means a lack of definite distinction. You
could go on subdividing prescription into negative and positive, i.e.
prohibitive and, say, constructive. You could divide that ad infinitum. No?

------
chippy
I have spent an entire week writing everything in E-prime. All texts, all IRC
chats, all postings, every email.

I also spent the following week trying to speak in E-Prime. This proved very
difficult but worth it. I had a notepad with me with several useful phrases in
it. Even simple things like ordering from a coffee shop made me stumble. But I
would try my best to speak in E-prime. I failed several times!

Writing appeared much much easier. It made emails and other postings less
personal, less objective and more subjective and relative. I believe "Non
Violent Communication" has many similarities to E-Prime.

Robert Anton Wilson wrote a very good introductory text explaining E-Prime.
[http://www.nobeliefs.com/eprime.htm](http://www.nobeliefs.com/eprime.htm) I
suggest you all check it out!

~~~
shdon
How do you introduce yourself? I find it difficult to find a replacement for:

\- I'm Steven

\- Hi, my name is Steven

\- I'm named|called Steven

The only thing I could come up with "Hi, Steven, nice to meet you" sounds
rather forced.

The grammatical rules of English make it more difficult to use this compared
to some other languages. E-prime seems very stinted, especially when asking
questions:

    
    
       Is "less objective" really an advantage over "more subjective" for a hacker?
    

And let me ask that example question as well. As somebody working in IT, I
strive to come across as (nay, to be!) as objective and as precise as
possible.

~~~
rdancer
"My friends call me Steven. You will address me as Mr Seagal."

One of the advantages of this restriction on speech is that it forces you to
think about relationships between things. In this case, _what does it mean to
have a name_?

~~~
DanitaBaires
In other languages the construction for "My name is Steve" is something like
"They call me Steve" (Russian) or "I call myself Steve" (Spanish).

------
logicchains
The argument for forbidding "to be" seems a little like the argument for
forbidding "is a" (inheritance) relationships in programming: that any "is a"
can be expressed more precisely as a "has a" and/or "does _".

I think it's interesting to take the argument even further, to argue for
structural types (like interfaces in Go and Typescript, and objects in OCaml)
over nominal types (like Java interfaces and Haskell typeclasses). The former
just says "if Bar is an interface with method Blaz(int, int, bool), and Foo
has a method Blaz(int, int, bool), then Foo is a Bar", while the latter
require the programmer to explicitly specify that Foo is a (implements) bar.

~~~
lisivka
I have suspect that naive architecture of a program is heavily affected by
native language of the programmer. My native language is easy to parse (14kb
parser can parse 98% of technical language, while 200Kb parser can also fix
errors), logical and composable, which may be the reason why there is so high
rate of good developers from my country: not because we are smarter than
average, but because we are taught from birth to think logically.

~~~
bbayer
Can you tell what your native language is? Finnish?

~~~
murbard2
My money is on Ukrainian based on the handle. (Slovak would be a candidate too
but less of a fit for "many programmers, etc")

~~~
lisivka
You are right, I am Ukrainian. Ukrainian language is easy to parse: in most
cases, just chop largest matching prefixes and suffixes from a word until word
root will be left. Then suffixes can be used to understand sentence structure,
while roots and prefixes can be used to understand meaning.

------
desdiv
Sometimes I use E-Prime as sort of a verbose flag for English.

Instead of: "Mount Everest is almost 8 km tall."

A verbose E-Prime version would sound something like: "I recall having read an
Wikipedia article that reported the height of Mount Everest as almost 8 km."

Notice all the extra verbs in there.

"Recall"? Could I have mis-recalled?

"Read"? Could I have misread?

"Reported"? Could Wikipedia have misreported it, intentionally or
unintentionally?

~~~
nlawalker
"Mt. Everest _stands_ 8km tall." In many cases, it's all about moving away
from declaring a property of a subject ("X is Y") to using the verb that
causes the subject to exhibit the property.

I'm familiar with this concept but this is the first time I've heard of it
formalized with a name, or used outside of creative/narrative writing. When I
was in high school, a writing teacher made my class perform an exercise to
memorize a superset of the "to be" verbs. The rationale was that, while these
verbs are direct and objective, they are "flat" and fail to engage a reader.

In the case of descriptors/properties that simply require too much wrangling
to find an appropriate verb - the case of color came up elsewhere in these
comments, as in "the barn is blue" \- the guiding rule is that those
descriptors shouldn't be the focus of a sentence in the first place. "The barn
was blue" is not interesting enough to stand on its own as a sentence and
something else needs to take the verb. "The blue barn loomed over the
landscape" or "The blue barn dominated his thoughts."

Writing a Wikipedia article in this style is certainly an interesting
exercise, but given the goal of a Wikipedia article I don't think it's a good
fit. An encyclopedia entry is not narrative and needs to be direct and
objective.

As an aside, her exercise proved to be oddly effective, as I can still recite
the list from memory: am, is, are, was, were, have, has, had, be, been, being,
do, does, did, can, could, shall, should, will, would, may, might, must. :)

~~~
jdmichal
> ... can, could, shall, should, will, would, may, might, must.

I wonder what the reason for removing these are. They are basically
evidentiality and epistemic markers [0], and don't really mean anything in and
of themselves. Then again, perhaps that was the point?

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidentiality#Evidentiality_an...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidentiality#Evidentiality_and_epistemic_modality)

------
bediger4000
E-Prime has two very practical uses:

1\. Code documentation. If you write your comments and docs in E-Prime, you
will find it a little more difficult to write ambiguous docs. In comments,
E-Prime helps you avoid using "is" to describe a variable's contents and type
with the same phrasing, which can confuse later readers.

2\. ET speech in Sci-Fi movies or Tee Vee shows. If you write, say, a Vulcan's
lines in E-Prime, you almost always end up with a slightly foreign, or
"scientific" sounding prose.

------
defenestration
This _is_ an interesting version of the English language. It _is_ clarifying
thinking and strengthening writing.

Or should I say: I find this version of the English language interesting. It
clarifies my thinking and strengthens my writing.

------
d4nt
Having read 1984, I find the desire to remove undesirable language from our
vocabulary quite unnerving.

I realise it has the best of intentions, and nobody is proposing to remove 'to
be' from everything. But the discussion here about how adopting E-Prime forces
you to rethink what you mean to say, is eerily reminiscent of how Newspeak was
used to control people's thought process.

~~~
neikos
Perhaps, but that sounds more like a kneejerk reaction rather than a real
critique.

The idea behind it is supposed to show that by removing the verb 'to be', you
have to think more on how to properly convey what you actually mean.

So in a sense it even allows you to get your actual thought process out there
rather than having it dismissed for sounding overly harsh for example.

Contrast that to Newspeak, whose design is to limit and shape people's
thoughts by external means (Another person chosing what is ok and what not),
where as here /you/ get to choose what you say, it is merely the form that
changes.

~~~
d4nt
It's not an in-depth critique, you're right. But there are some interesting
themes here, and by mentioning 1984 I'm referencing some deep questions in
(what I hope is) a fairly shorthand way.

To be more explicit:

1\. Do people 'think in a particular language' such that limitations in
language limit their thought? This is something that psychologist have
considered. The other comments in this thread suggest to me that there might
be something in this.

2\. Is it dangerous to allow any kind of authority that tells people what they
can/can't say? If the answer to #1 is 'yes' then would such a group be too
powerful to be allowed to exist?

------
jefurii
When I was in high school my mom (a marriage and family therapist) cajoled me
into using something like E-Prime. I had to be really careful when making
generalizations around her, and the big no-no was to say that something or
someone "made me feel" a certain way. It was infuriating at the time but it
certainly made me take responsibility for own my feelings and opinions. This
experience probably influenced my decision to major in linguistics.

------
jballanc
The Turkish language has no "to be" verb at all. In addition, Turkish has an
extra verb tense not present in other languages which distinguishes between
things that the speaker has observed directly from those they are only
relaying 2nd hand.

~~~
gliese1337
Turkish lacks a explicit free morpheme (i.e., a separate word) for "to be",
but it most definitely has translational equivalents, most notably the "zero
copula" used for predicate adjectives and nouns in the simple present tense,
declarative mood. All other situations involve an explicit inflectional marker
(either a suffix or a clitic) that translates "is/are/were".

This is not unusual; lots of languages work that way. And in my experience, it
does reduce the use of copula constructions compared to English, but not by
much.

Incidentally, the "extra verb tense" you refer to is formally called
"evidentiality", and is not considered the same thing as a" tense" by
linguists. That's also fairly common in many languages, though it may seem
exotic to English speakers.

------
geromek
I find this article really interesting. I am a native speaker of Spanish and
the verb 'to be' is usually one of the first lessons we learn when we study
English.

Spanish has to different verbs to depict the meaning(s) of 'to be' -> ser
(exist) and estar (stay). I always thought merging those meanings into a
single verb did not help to express the richness of the English language.

~~~
chippy
Within E-Prime some people think that using the verb "to be" for expressing
stay, location etc should be allowed. For example: "The shop is over there" or
"the cat is on the map" should be allowed. However I think the majority of
E-Prime likers think that these should be excluded.

------
PaulAJ
17th Century language geeks thought that English should be more like Latin, so
they banned split infinitives.

21st Century language geeks think that English should be more like Klingon, so
they ban the verb "to be".

------
matthewrudy
Chinese uses "is" much more rarely than english. And that's something it takes
a while to get used to.

For example 中國很大 ("China is very big", literally "China very big")

But for a while you'll be tempted to add an "is" in there.

In fact you can use an "is" to change the emphasis.

Eg. "中國是很大的" (literally "China is very big _adjective modifier_ ")

~~~
peteretep
On a tangent, Thai lacks "yes" and "no", and _in theory_ one signals assent by
repeating the verb or adjective, with or without a negative modifier.

"Hungry, or?" \- "Not hungry" "Take, no?" \- "Take"

In practice, people will often grunt for yes, and shake their head and break
eye contact for no.

~~~
chippy
Irish also has no "yes" and "no" also (generally speaking) One has to answer
with an affirmative statement. "Do you like tea?" "I do"

"Has mary got the message?" "she has"

"ooh, it's wet outside today" "it is"

"Are you happy?" "I am"

~~~
plug
Anecdote warning, but this feels very common to me in "Hibernio-English" as
well. I do it a lot when a simple yes/no would suffice, and I notice other
people doing the same. I assume it's a construct that translated over from
Irish. I must start listening out for native English speakers of different
nationalities for comparison :)

------
legulere
How do you communicate someone's name then? You can't say "the name IS", or
"He/she IS called". The cognate to the word all the other Germanic languages
use has become archaic and even lacks a present tense form:

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hight#English](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hight#English)

Maybe: "One calls her/him"?

~~~
pmontra
AFAIK Russian, which lost the present tense of "to be", just says "my name X"
(Меня зовут X).

Italian, which has the verb to be, nevertheless uses a different form:
literally "I call me X" (mi chiamo X). "I'm X" (io sono X) would be understood
but it's more the answer to who are you than to what's your name.

~~~
andrioni
The Russian phrase means "[They] call me X". "My name [is] X" would be "Моё
имя — X".

~~~
pmontra
My Russian is very very basic. Sorry.

------
theOnliest
Do we also lose the progressive tense, then? How would one express something
like "The car ran me over while I was walking to the store?"

I suppose "The car ran me over while walking to the store," but that's
ambiguous, since some sort of walking car could have run me over, when I
happened to be sitting on a bench outside the store.

------
Xophmeister
A quick scan through the text and, as far as I can tell, the whole article is
written (modulo examples) in E-Prime.

~~~
javawizard
Almost - I count at least five occurrences outside of examples or quotes.
Admittedly not bad for an article of its size.

------
muraiki
In High School, my English teacher had us write essays in a format that
incorporated E-Prime, but I had no idea that it was actually called "E-Prime".
In addition to not using forms of "to be," we followed the SEXI format. This
meant that every body paragraph was composed of four parts: Statement,
Explanation, eXample, and Interpretation (one web site lists this as
Importance). I think that in short essays each SEXI paragraph also had to be
four sentences long.

The combination of E-Prime and SEXI was a real challenge to write at first,
but with practice I found that it led to really solid papers with greater
clarity of thought. It was a tremendous help in writing my college senior
thesis.

Unlike the article, I didn't try to use either form in my comment. :)

~~~
function_seven
> Unlike the article, I didn't try to use either form in my comment. :)

I'll give it a shot. This proved harder than I thought it would, and might
read awkwardly. (Especially the "actually called 'E-Prime'" part. I can't
think of a way of rewording that that doesn't sound weird.)

\---

In High School, my English teacher had us write essays in a format that
incorporated these rules, but I had no idea that it had a name: "E-Prime". In
addition to not using forms of "to be," we followed the SEXI format. This
meant we composed every body paragraph from four parts: Statement,
Explanation, eXample, and Interpretation (one web site lists this as
Importance). I think that in short essays each SEXI paragraph also couldn't
number more than four sentences.

The combination of E-Prime and SEXI created a real challenge to write at
first, but with practice I found that it led to really solid papers with
greater clarity of thought. It tremendously helped in writing my college
senior thesis.

------
kriro
I haven't read the paper/books but from the wiki article I find it problematic
that "the code is red" is replaced with "we see the coat as red". Specifically
if I were forced to use E' it would be very hard to argue certain
philosophical positions. Objectivism vs. Subjectivism for example or to return
to the coat...there could be a philosophical difference between the redness of
the coat and the perception of it and not everyone wants to bundle those. Due
to this reason I find it rather curious that identity was picked as one of the
troublesome uses. Identity seems like one of the most important uses of is for
me.

Without thinking about it too deeply, formal logic would probably also be
rather funky.

~~~
logicchains
>Specifically if I were forced to use E' it would be very hard to argue
certain philosophical positions. Objectivism vs. Subjectivism for example

Some philosophers, e.g. early Wittgenstein, would argue that certain
philosophical positions only exist by sleight of tongue, being based upon some
form of incoherence that can only exist in imprecise language.

From his Tractatus (note that he sort of changed his mind in his later work):
"The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say
nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science--i.e.
something that has nothing to do with philosophy -- and then, whenever someone
else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had
failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions. Although it
would not be satisfying to the other person--he would not have the feeling
that we were teaching him philosophy--this method would be the only strictly
correct one.

~~~
geoleo
E' version...

Some philosophers, e.g. early Wittgenstein, would argue that certain
philosophical positions only exist by sleight of tongue because the
philosophers who held these positions based their theories upon some form of
incoherence that can only exist in imprecise language.

From his Tractatus (note that he sort of changed his mind in his later work):
"The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say
nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science--i.e.
something that has nothing to do with philosophy -- and then, whenever someone
else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had
failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions. Although it
would not be satisfying to the other person--he would not have the feeling
that we were teaching him philosophy--this method would be the only strictly
correct one."

------
saalweachter
I bemoan rather than beatify prescriptionists who bequeath their own bespoke
English upon the world, befuddled when the rest of us find it somewhere
between _befouling_ and _beleaguering_ rather than bewitching. Belike I
belabor the point; I can begrudgingly believe avoiding "to be" might bestow a
little clarity, sometimes. But betwixt you and I, in excess it bewilders me.

~~~
nemoniac
"betwixt you and me"

~~~
saalweachter
More prescriptionism?

------
yongjik
Sounds more like a statistical misattribution to me.

1\. Many unclear English sentences have "to be".

2\. Therefore, let's disallow "to be" to make English clearer.

Well, the obvious alternate explanation is:

3\. Since "be" is an extremely common word, for most attribute X, a subset of
"English sentences with attribute X" will naturally have many sentences with
"to be".

I mean, in what way is "Mars is round" any less clear/objective/interesting
than "Mars orbits around the sun"?

~~~
function_seven
The point of E' is to provide a kind of mental exercise. By forcing yourself
to write this way, you discover clearer ways to make your point, or to convey
information.

Think of it like the weights baseball players put on their bats during
practice.
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_doughnut](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_doughnut))

~~~
yongjik
I understand that it can be an interesting mental exercise. I'm just objecting
to the underlying assumption that "be" makes sentences inherently unclear or
subjective. For exercise, you could instead have excluded, say, every five-
letter word, but (hopefully) nobody will claim that five-letter words make
English unclear.

It seems to me that E-prime works only because "be" is so common that you're
forced to rewrite almost every sentence, yet it carries so little "semantic
weight" that all such sentences can be rewritten with a bit of practice.

------
ashmud
This reminds me of how most people seem to use "hopefully." I very seldom hear
people say "I hope this works." Instead, almost every time I hear, "hopefully,
this works." It seems to have a "language smell" of wanting a way to weasel
out making a commitment to a particular stance or viewpoint.

------
oxplot
I have noticed an interesting effect where initially one is given the freedom
to use all tools available to achieve a task, and over time restricted to an
increasingly smaller subset. I find that this makes me optimize the process
and in case of writing computer code, makes for easier to understand and more
stable building blocks.

------
lubesGordi
This helps achieve the objective in general semantics of 'silence on the
objective level.' In other words, that none of us have access to reality
unfiltered by our senses and our linguistic programs, so it is best to not
make statements that assume we do.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" none of us have access to reality unfiltered by our senses and our
linguistic programs"_

That sounds like a statement about "reality unfiltered by our senses and our
linguistic programs".

It's not uncontroversial either, as lots of people have in fact claimed to
have just such access.

------
rasur
If I'm not mistaken, Russian does not have the verb 'to be', right?

~~~
pmontra
It's omitted only in the present tense.
[http://masterrussian.com/verbs/bit_pobit.htm](http://masterrussian.com/verbs/bit_pobit.htm)

~~~
rasur
Ah, nice. Thanks for clarifying. I learn something new every day :)

------
bubalus
As evidenced by some of these HN comments, E-prime encourages a voodoo-like
approach to writing, in which you can magically make bad writing better just
by doing a search-and-replace on a few words.

------
baldfat
Could we also change the number system. All teen numbers are switch to ten-#
as in Eleven is Ten-One, twelve is Ten-Two.

------
amelius
So, instead of "X is Y", we now we have to say "the equality relation has
member (X,Y)".

Very handy.

------
coldcode
Shakespeare would not have appreciated this. How do you say "to be or not to
be" in EPrime?

~~~
xnxn
The article gives this as an example.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime#Examples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime#Examples)

    
    
      To live or to die,
      I ask myself this.

~~~
coldcode
Almost a haiku but not sure as memorable.

------
Dr_tldr
This is unlikely to see widespread adoption. Boooom!

------
masterponomo
I think, therefore...wtf?

~~~
untothebreach
I think, therefore I exist.

~~~
masterponomo
I'll allow it:-)

------
jlebrech
an eprime linter?
[https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=eprime](https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=eprime)

~~~
Amorymeltzer
In particular is eprime-mode for emacs:
[https://github.com/AndrewHynes/eprime-
mode](https://github.com/AndrewHynes/eprime-mode)

