Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 162 posts

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#41

Post by jasonlotito »

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?

Depends on how it's used.

"Not many people read the whole thing because HN."

Now, you could add the "of" and just leave it at that, and take it literally. But the implication is so much more than just saying "because of HN."

"People are so fat here because 'merica."

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#42

Post by humanrebar »

colinwd wrote: post #33
humanrebar wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 la…

Interesting that "mental laziness" is the association you have with this construction. It certainly signals a sort of casual tone, but it's easy to fall into the trap of "different than the way I speak" -> "wrong". Certainly not helped by the fact that young people are the ones who generate and adopt language changes at a vastly higher rate. "Laziness" in language change generally follows the principle of least effor…

I have nothing against brevity. And I don't think it's lazy because I don't speak that way.

To clarify my thoughts, I think it's one thing to use a prepositional because when referring to oneself. However, it's another thing to criticize someone else with a five syllable simplification. It's impossible to do justice to someone else's thoughts and feelings that way. That lack of understanding and empathy is what I find to be lazy.

Now, a full-length column in the New York Times or a bit on Fox News certainly is not necessarily a fair and coherent argument. But, leaving room for exceptions, pithy "because X" clauses are not fair to third-party subjects.

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#43

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#44

Post by a-priori »

powertower wrote: post #23
HCIdivision17 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Lossy compression always uses heuristics to guide compression and decompression. In this case, the heuristic is 'my brain works similarly; why would I have written this?'

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#45

Post by saraid216 »

Mindless2112 wrote: post #29

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 ga…

Yes. It's an invocation, rather than an explanation. That's one of the interesting things about it; it's effectively a reversal of the original meaning of the word "because".

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#46

Post by chc »

It's not really a new preposition, per se. It's a type of joke. Every occurrence cited here is using it in a jokey fashion. It seems to me you may as well say potatoes are a common topic of conversation on the Internet because of Latvian jokes.

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#47

Post by blader »

powertower wrote: post #23
HCIdivision17 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Same way you do when you look at a jpg.

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#48

Post by benched »

dnautics wrote: post #25

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.

"Cause fuck him, that's why" is from Good Will Hunting. 1997.

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#49

Post by humanrebar »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #40
humanrebar wrote: post #16

Maybe it's just me, but the "prepositional because" is usually deprecative of the subject. The article details the implications of the prepositional because: "It conveys focus... It conveys brevity... But it also conveys a certain universality." People use it when they're busy, drunk, or absent-minded to be self-deprecative. As in: "Maxed out my credit card because too much beer!" But people also use it to disparage…

> In fact, I'm having a hard time coming up with an example of a "because X" clause that has complimentary implications. I added bacon to my milkshake because delicious. I don't normally like superhero movies, but I went to see the Avengers, because Joss Whedon.

This is close to being complimentary, but it comes across as more of a compliment to Joss Whedon than the subject. At best, it's a neutral expression of fandom. At worst, it's an admission of fanboy (or fangirl) proclivities. Some sort of context is needed to clarify which one.

Re: English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet

#50

Post by wubbfindel »

ante_annum wrote: post #20
wubbfindel wrote: post #2

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

I thought this was a good article until I re-read it to cite all the sources. It cites a single blog post by one linguist and twitter and image macros. That hardly constitutes linguists . It hardly constitutes linguist . This feature was longer than the original post.

Good point... I guess I just liked the idea a bit too much.

(I find the evolution of languages quite interesting, especially when technology seems to be involved.)

Post reply on HN