English speakers of the fedi.

[donutage@mastodon.social]

@eltonfc Interesting question! I can't say I'd ever really thought about the grammatical tense/mood of menu items before, but my gut says they read as imperatives (also, we call them "commands", right?). I know German, on the other hand, renders them as infinitives (although I guess those could also be interpreted as formal imperatives).

[leonardof@bertha.social]

@eltonfc Já vi esses verbos descritos como sendo imperativos (em diretriz de interface gráfica, provavelmente do GNOME, provavelmente não a atual), mas na minha cabeça é infinitivo. Infinitivo para eles seria "to make", não "make"

[leonardof@bertha.social]

@eltonfc quer resposta em português também??

[hugu@masto.donte.com.br]

@eltonfc o infinitivo em inglês seria "to close", certo?

[dcporter@better.boston]

@jleedev @eltonfc The intention of these menus and button titles was definitely imperative. I'm surprised that there's the two options are so close – and I'm extra surprised and very intrigued that ESL folks are reporting 2x in favor of infinitive.

[malcontato@bolha.one]

@eltonfc @jjj “infinitive and imperative forms are identical” apenas nas flexões verbais em que acontece o bare infinitive, não? Que é quando precedido de verbos modais ou alguns verbos específicos. Eu aprendi que exceto esses casos a flexão infinitiva exige preposição “to”

[jleedev@mastodon.sdf.org]

@dcporter @eltonfc It makes me wonder, outside the computer what verb form is used for a to-do list in various languages.

[eltonfc@bertha.social]

@leonardof arrgh limitação do Moshidon que não mostra o idioma, só o botão para mudar

[eltonfc@bertha.social]

@jjj my point is that the same string "Close" is translated to Swedish in the imperative form and to Portuguese in the infinitive form. I'm curious how it's done in other languages.

[leonardof@bertha.social]

@eltonfc 😅

[wordshaper@weatherishappening.network]

@eltonfc tbh as a native english speaker I've gotten to the point where I see those words in menus as *nouns* rather than verbs. (I may have been computering too long, that's a valid observation)

[jjj@functional.cafe]

@eltonfc Ok, I understand now, I think.

The results of your polls are very interesting and surprising to me. I didn't know of this difference.

[drahardja@sfba.social]

@eltonfc I think most verbs in menus are intended to be imperative, with whatever is selected being the noun (eg copy *this*).

[penguin42@mastodon.org.uk]

@eltonfc I don't think in either imperative or infinitive etc - as a native speaker, I just think in terms of knowing the thing I want to do is if I click on the option with that name.

[quixoticgeek@social.v.st]

@eltonfc needs an option "native speaker, doesn't understand the question"

[dveditz@infosec.exchange]

@lritter @eltonfc

fair point. in English those items use the imperative followed by "..." (an incomplete command?). An infinitive would make sense in that context and I could imagine a "To Print" or similar menu, but I've never seen one. The English form used is imperative.

[zygous@toot.community]

@mattdm @virtulis @eltonfc

To me, a Brit, it’s [I want to] Rename File. I had to ponder this, though, because I genuinely wasn’t sure how I think about it, at first. Perhaps with a GUI I’m hoping to do something, whereas with a CLI I can be more confident and use the imperative 😆

[zygous@toot.community]

@Klara @eltonfc
This strikes me as a good example. “Compose“ couldn’t be the imperative because the computer won’t be composing the message: the user will. So by using it you’re expressing a desire not issuing a command.

[witewulf@cyberplace.social]

@eltonfc I’m a native English speaker and I’ve always read them as an infinitive, like “this is the button you press to save”, not as a command/instruction to the computer telling it to save.

[firefly@frogs.lgbt]

@eltonfc this is interesting, I answered (imperative, imperative) but that seems to be in the minority

that said, I think for quite a lot of cases (any ending in -a I think, which is quite common) there'd be a similar ambiguity in Swedish