English speakers of the fedi.

[trbutler@mastodon.faithtree.social]

@eltonfc @santi It's funny, if you made me just answer quickly, I'd say imperative is the closer of the two. But, thinking of infinitives as “verbal nouns," that noun-ish sense is probably how I think of it. I suspect that's a shift over decades from “I'm telling the computer to do this" to “This is the place where certain things are done.”

[santi@gone.lema.org]

@eltonfc Interesting yet unsurprising results already. I suspect the reason translations at least in Latin languages went for the infinitive is because they just wouldn’t know what form/person to use.

French would look weird in imperative:
(Tu)   Enregistre
(Vous) Enregistrez

Recently French online shops decided to go with « Je confirme » or « Je commande », as in present tense for “I confirm” , “I order” for actions.

Anyways as always when it gets too complicated latin languages settle down on infinitive (Enregistrer).

[virtulis@loud.computer]

@eltonfc oh, that's an interesting question. I never really thought about it and I think it... explains some things?

Do I understand correctly, the question is whether I interpret "close" as "i want (the computer) to close the file" versus "computer, close the file"?

Because now I realize i've never ever talked to a computer the way people talk to chatbots and maybe that's one of the reasons it feels really weird. Well, in addition to all those other reasons.

So yeah, infinitive in every case and every language for me. I'm communicating a desire for a thing to be done, not giving orders.

Edit: and yeah, at least in Latvian and Russian it is and always was infinitive. Saglabāt, сохранить, etc. Never even crossed my mind it's completely ambiguous in English.

[johannes@front-end.social]

@eltonfc Second language here.

In Norwegian the menu item verbs are imperative, and it never occurred to me that the English menu items weren't.

[virtulis@loud.computer]

@eltonfc and for some verbs imperative makes no sense to me at all.

Surely, when I click "rename file" the actual command is "present me with an input field to enter a new name"? I'm the one doing the renaming. The stupid piece of metal is just logging my actions to the best of its ability.

[btw@kolektiva.social]

@eltonfc In Portuguese, verbs are infinitives, so “edit” if translated literally would be “edite” (imperative), but since I had used software in Portuguese before and knew the translation patterns, I always ended up associating ‘edit’ with “editar” (infinitive).

[corb_the_lesser@mastodon.social]

@eltonfc I'm not sure I think of them as words of any form, but rather as labels on a button/menu to be activated (clicking or pressing a key) to initiate an action.

[mattdm@hachyderm.io]

@virtulis @eltonfc

To me:

"Rename file [to a name I will provide]."

I wonder how much this has to do with growing up with command-line interfaces vs graphical ones.

[mattdm@hachyderm.io]

@brad @eltonfc

Oh, that's very true. Or not even verbs. The "File" menu is a collection of commands which relate to file handling (open, close, etc.), not a command _to file_.

(Although it occurs to me that reading Edit as a verb may be how "Preferences" got stuck there in some standards, even though it doesn't have much to do with other Edit operations cut/copy/paste.)

[virtulis@loud.computer]

@mattdm @eltonfc hmm perhaps, but then a follow up question: what about writing a todo list for yourself?

[klara@drupal.community]

@eltonfc Looking at my mail software right now, the "Compose" button is translated as "Opstellen" which would translate back as "to compose".

[jleedev@mastodon.sdf.org]

@mattdm @virtulis @eltonfc That's what the ellipsis is for, "Rename…"

[jonm@hachyderm.io]

@eltonfc Native speaker. I had a hard time answering this as neither seemed to fit quite right. If I am *reading* the menu, then infinitive seems closest if I know what I want to do and am just trying to find the right option to click. “I want to save”. If I am browsing the menu to see what’s available, “I can save” or “I am able to save”. When I click on the menu item, though, it is first person present tense: “I am saving”.

[krusynth@mastodon.publicinterest.town]

@eltonfc Native English speaker here, I consider them imperative because they historically are also called *commands* in this context. Less common examples are more illustrative of them being imperative, e.g. "Paste and go" in a browser, "to paste and to go" would not make sense.