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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.


"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?


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


How do you introduce yourself?

http://eprimedictionary.pbworks.com/My+name+is+Sally

Has some suggestions. All seem pretty awkward to me.


Borrowed from Spanish and similar languages:

- They call me Steven.

Probably it sounds wrong for native English speakers.


It's unusual ("exotic"), but the meaning is perfectly preserved, and it's grammatically and semantically valid.

It's the sort of phrase that James Bond might say.


Often the verb "to be" is implied when what's spoken is a reply to someone else's question, e.g. "My name? Steven." as a reply to "What's your name?"

Speaking in E-prime can't be separated from the other person's speech in conversation, and its rules need to deal with this situation.


Hello. Call me Ishmael.


In English, I think this form typically implies that Ishmael is not the speaker's usual name, but just a name that the speaker wants the listeners to use.

E-prime runs in communicative problems because of linguistic marked-ness.


> I'm named|called Steven

It is perfectly normal to use phrasing such as that in some languages apart from English. While not common in English, I think generally it makes more sense this way.


The point was that those are forbidden in E-prime, (they have "am" in them).


Bah. You can see it is ingrained in me.

I meant instead "I call myself ______ ", which is common in Spanish, for example, and other languages.


One could say "I call myself Stephen", but does make it sound like there's something a little weird going on upstairs.


Well, it would sound as if you are literally translating another language. And people may find you weird.




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