It is kind of odd (and I fully expect some nerd to post a relevant article in the reply) that English has the pronoun (fuck, I just triggered some right winger) “one” which is gender neutral, singular, and has an extreme variety of uses because of that.
(Please forgive me) I took what I would classify as “too many” French courses in my life and it definitely seeped its way into my brain. I ended up functionally literate in it, although don’t ask me to try to speak it. I got laughed at by a young guy from Gabon or Guinea (honestly can’t remember) for trying to speak to him once I realized French was a language he was more comfortable with. That didn’t go so great and my life lesson was “give up. Never try.” Lol. Anyway, in my somewhat limited exposure to French I found they use their equivalent (although I’m not sure that it’s also directly equivalent) pronoun “on” to the English “one” (the pronoun, not the number). If you’ve ever looked at French writing it’s on this and on that. It’s even basically the sound English speakers (and others possibly) use to mock French speakers. That nasally “on hon hon.” Everyone knows what I mean, I assume. Just pretend you’re mocking a French guy and you’ll get it quickly.
Anyway, that was a long way of noting that French uses “one” all the time (more than English in my, again, limited exposure. I will not accept corrections on this from Canadians, btw) while English seems to reserve it for more academic or at least carefully crafted writing where we want to be very precise and removed from the situation. “Myself” starts turning into “oneself” and “I” into “one.” I find myself (one finds oneself… ok I’ll stop) using it when making arguments that definitely apply to me personally, but I want to appear removed from the situation. I have to imagine it’s just not used much in writing because it’s not used much in speech (in the US anyway) and writing came to emulate speech. I dunno. I always found it fascinating because I’m a fucking nerd.
I was doing Duolingo recently and I felt pretty confused when for quite a few translations for German “man” (which means one, not man, man is written with an extra n, Mann) and they always translated as “you” instead of one, which just doesn’t feel right for me since it is too ambiguous and made me think that maybe English speakers don’t use it too much.
You would never expect that. / One would never expect that.
They have completely different meaning IMO and it’s something I would never interchange in Spanish for example.
If I understand what you’re saying here, then yes, “one” in English is rather ambiguous. You just displayed it actually by using it as an equivalent to “you.” In which, also yes, I would personally find that sentence very strange to come upon in the wild.
However, the less ambiguous usage, in the third person usage, as a replacement for he/she/they(singular)/it sounds more natural. It’s still ambiguous to a degree though because a writer can shift between third person and first and even second person all using the same pronoun. Actually this is beginning to sound problematic and perhaps explains things…
I think it’s basically relegated to usage in rhetorical writing (rarely speech I imagine. I would literally never say the pronoun one unless I was quoting something) where you’re meant to be speaking not as yourself and not about actual people but rather a hypothetical you or hypothetical third person… if that makes sense. That’s the way it’s used as far as I can tell anyway. Academic papers where one wants to appear lofty and above the fray, so to speak. See, even there you can substitute in first person “I” (I want) or second person “you” (you want) or third person “they” (they want). It’s too ambiguous to use for any other purpose than when you are intentionally being ambiguous, such as academic papers, rhetoric, stuff like that. Using it in a pithy quote, like the OP, might be good too.
English is weird because it gets all these relics that aren’t used but exist and can be used. A weird confusing language even for native speakers…
What if it’s a woman anger?
“women hold up half the anger”
It is obviously and old quote when “he” was used as a general term for “one”.
It is kind of odd (and I fully expect some nerd to post a relevant article in the reply) that English has the pronoun (fuck, I just triggered some right winger) “one” which is gender neutral, singular, and has an extreme variety of uses because of that.
(Please forgive me) I took what I would classify as “too many” French courses in my life and it definitely seeped its way into my brain. I ended up functionally literate in it, although don’t ask me to try to speak it. I got laughed at by a young guy from Gabon or Guinea (honestly can’t remember) for trying to speak to him once I realized French was a language he was more comfortable with. That didn’t go so great and my life lesson was “give up. Never try.” Lol. Anyway, in my somewhat limited exposure to French I found they use their equivalent (although I’m not sure that it’s also directly equivalent) pronoun “on” to the English “one” (the pronoun, not the number). If you’ve ever looked at French writing it’s on this and on that. It’s even basically the sound English speakers (and others possibly) use to mock French speakers. That nasally “on hon hon.” Everyone knows what I mean, I assume. Just pretend you’re mocking a French guy and you’ll get it quickly.
Anyway, that was a long way of noting that French uses “one” all the time (more than English in my, again, limited exposure. I will not accept corrections on this from Canadians, btw) while English seems to reserve it for more academic or at least carefully crafted writing where we want to be very precise and removed from the situation. “Myself” starts turning into “oneself” and “I” into “one.” I find myself (one finds oneself… ok I’ll stop) using it when making arguments that definitely apply to me personally, but I want to appear removed from the situation. I have to imagine it’s just not used much in writing because it’s not used much in speech (in the US anyway) and writing came to emulate speech. I dunno. I always found it fascinating because I’m a fucking nerd.
I was doing Duolingo recently and I felt pretty confused when for quite a few translations for German “man” (which means one, not man, man is written with an extra n, Mann) and they always translated as “you” instead of one, which just doesn’t feel right for me since it is too ambiguous and made me think that maybe English speakers don’t use it too much.
You would never expect that. / One would never expect that.
They have completely different meaning IMO and it’s something I would never interchange in Spanish for example.
If I understand what you’re saying here, then yes, “one” in English is rather ambiguous. You just displayed it actually by using it as an equivalent to “you.” In which, also yes, I would personally find that sentence very strange to come upon in the wild.
However, the less ambiguous usage, in the third person usage, as a replacement for he/she/they(singular)/it sounds more natural. It’s still ambiguous to a degree though because a writer can shift between third person and first and even second person all using the same pronoun. Actually this is beginning to sound problematic and perhaps explains things…
I think it’s basically relegated to usage in rhetorical writing (rarely speech I imagine. I would literally never say the pronoun one unless I was quoting something) where you’re meant to be speaking not as yourself and not about actual people but rather a hypothetical you or hypothetical third person… if that makes sense. That’s the way it’s used as far as I can tell anyway. Academic papers where one wants to appear lofty and above the fray, so to speak. See, even there you can substitute in first person “I” (I want) or second person “you” (you want) or third person “they” (they want). It’s too ambiguous to use for any other purpose than when you are intentionally being ambiguous, such as academic papers, rhetoric, stuff like that. Using it in a pithy quote, like the OP, might be good too.
English is weird because it gets all these relics that aren’t used but exist and can be used. A weird confusing language even for native speakers…