Another linguistics note:

Has anyone else noticed how eliding the subject (in this case "I") seems to have become more and more acceptable in English over the last 10 years?

Wonder if anyone has written about this trend.

Interestingly, Latin and its closest descendants (Italian, Portuguese, Spanish) make the subject pronoun optional because the conjugation of the verb makes it obvious. In French, which is also quite close to Latin, or English, which borrows ~80% of its words from Latin, pronouns have been non-optional until this trend

There’s actually academic research on this: “The theory of pronoun-drop effect posits that languages that allow their speakers to drop subject pronouns in verbal communication would lead their speakers to create collectivistic culture”

Aviator, diver, Etherean, nexialist, PhD in aviation ∩ climate science | Host of /diving /ethfinance /eth-staker /geopolitics /science /singapore /thomas

Also, the use of pronoun drop (pro-drop) is more frequent in high-contact English speakers (i.e. those natively exposed to a second language), which is the case of Elon growing up in the (British) schooling system in South Africa; relative to low-contact speakers like British or Americans - see

Also, the use of pronoun drop (pro-drop) is more frequent in high-contact English speakers (i.e. those natively exposed to a second language), which is the case of Elon growing up in the (British) schooling system in South Africa; relative to low-contact speakers like British or Americans - see https://doi.org/knd2

There’s actually academic research on this: “The theory of pronoun-drop effect posits that languages that allow their speakers to drop subject pronouns in verbal communication would lead their speakers to create collectivistic culture” https://doi.org/kndz

Got it - I don’t speak Japanese, so cannot comment. Though in Elon’s English case above, does it mean that “Am lifting weights” is not subject elision because “Am” is necessarily first person, whereas “Don’t have time” is true subject elision because the subject could be either “I” or “You”?

I don't really count Latin descendants as "real" subject elision because as you say the pronoun is still there in the verb ending. But Japanese on the other hand...