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English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

theatlantic.com

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Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#21

Post by diminoten »

powertower wrote: post #8

That seems to dumb down the language, rather than improve or evolve it. > Skipping lunch today because sleep. What is that supposed to mean? You need to take a nap during lunch; you got too much sleep the night before and are groggy, etc. Why not add a few more words to make the sentence understandable (in this case non-ambiguous).

It means the nature of sleep necessitates the skipping of lunch. This isn't actually true however, as we are all well aware. Sleep and lunch are not at odds with one another.

It's a poor use of the new word, as you've demonstrated. It doesn't mean the new word is therefore universally unclear.

But of course we're going to get into a pedantic and possibly violent argument over such a small and insignificant part of both our lives, because Internet.

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#22

Post by greyfade »

fosap wrote: post #6
wubbfindel wrote: post #2

Excellent article, worth the read. Not many comments here, because short attention spans!

I'm not a native speaker. If i add a "of", ("because of short attention spans!") that sounds if it was correct in the past aswell, so I'm confused. For me that seems just leaving out the "of", or is there more?

That's one aspect to it. The article summarizes it well at the end:

> "It means something like 'I'm so busy being totally absorbed by X that I don’t need to explain further, and you should know about this because it's a completely valid incredibly important thing to be doing'"

Because brevity and wit.

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#23

Post by powertower »

HCIdivision17 wrote: post #14
powertower wrote: post #8

That seems to dumb down the language, rather than improve or evolve it. > Skipping lunch today because sleep. What is that supposed to mean? You need to take a nap during lunch; you got too much sleep the night before and are groggy, etc. Why not add a few more words to make the sentence understandable (in this case non-ambiguous).

It means sleep was the cause of lunch being missed. No more details are provided or implied. Off the record, one could guess that the speaker didn't want to remark on oversleeping due to the negative connotations, and is instead leaving the answer vague in the hopes of don't-ask-don't-tell. Depending on the audience, this may also be exactly enough information to be unambiguous with the fewest number of words; a frie…

How are you pulling original data out of a lossy compression method?

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#24

Post by humanrebar »

alex_c wrote: post #10

What's fascinating to me is that, unlike so many other language "changes", this isn't caused by laziness or carelessness. This seems to be a rare case where removing words adds information, rather than removing it: "The talks failed because of politics" means roughly what it says, while "The talks failed because politics" means roughly "The talks failed because of politics, which is the kind of thing that always happ…

> this isn't caused by laziness or carelessness

Some of this might be caused by increased use of smartphones for posting on the Facebook, tweeting, and texting. I'm not sure laziness is the right word, but conservation of characters is certainly a goal.

As far as laziness, I'll disagree with you. Hardly ever is a "because X" clause well thought out or witty. I think it's safe to assume there is some serious mental laziness happening when you see a "prepositional because" being used.

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#25

Post by dnautics »

My suspicion is that this evolved from the phrase "because f-ck you, that's why", which is pretty old (~5-10 years).

Edit: Oldest usage, as found by google:

http://www.dkvine.com/games/dkl3/ (2001), line 807 in the source; this is probably not the first usage in all of english.

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#26

Post by [deleted] »

thejteam wrote: post #13
fosap wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a native speaker. If i add a "of", ("because of short attention spans!") that sounds if it was correct in the past aswell, so I'm confused. For me that seems just leaving out the "of", or is there more?

You're exactly right. This is just leaving out the "of". The article interprets this to mean that the word "because" has become a new preposition used in place of the proposition "of". Another interpretation is that "because" retains its grammatical usage but a new sentence structure has become acceptable. I personally interpret it the second way. Each domain has its own grammatical structure.

[deleted]

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#27

Post by dnautics »

fosap wrote: post #6
wubbfindel wrote: post #2

Excellent article, worth the read. Not many comments here, because short attention spans!

I'm not a native speaker. If i add a "of", ("because of short attention spans!") that sounds if it was correct in the past aswell, so I'm confused. For me that seems just leaving out the "of", or is there more?

no, there is more. Take "because yay!". Doesn't necessarily make sense if you put an "of" in there. Yet there is something in common between "because yay!" and "because math" that is not there between "because yay!" and "because of math".

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#28

Post by erbo »

There's other ways of expanding the "because-noun" construction. I've occasionally posted a link to Facebook with a comment like "This is incredibly awesome and you should read this, because SPACE." In this case, the construct expands to something like "...because it has to do with space, which I consider to be inherently awesome."

"Because-noun," it would appear, can be construed multiple ways, and a lot of the meaning is contextual.

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#29

Post by Mindless2112 »

On one hand, this doesn't bother me much because it's mostly just a mutation of "because of" which I already avoid using. You can usually rework "because of " into "because " and produce a sentence that, in my experience, better expresses what the speaker actually intends.

On the other hand, "because " is extremely inexact:

> English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

What about the Internet caused English to gain a new preposition? Unless you already understand, "because " adds little, if any, explanation. I can see its use as a handy short-hand when your audience does already understand though.

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#30

Post by humanrebar »

fosap wrote: post #6
wubbfindel wrote: post #2

Excellent article, worth the read. Not many comments here, because short attention spans!

I'm not a native speaker. If i add a "of", ("because of short attention spans!") that sounds if it was correct in the past aswell, so I'm confused. For me that seems just leaving out the "of", or is there more?

Even "because of short attention spans" is leaving out information... which (or whose) attention spans are we talking about. There is a qualifier or article missing somewhere. A "his", "their", "some" or something.

As I said in another comment, to me it implies the subject is dumb or hasty or something. As in a little bit of caveman speak maybe ("He hit own head because stupid").

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