"I need a software that allows me 2 post short messages 2 the web n allows people 2 follow certain people to keep up with it."
Haha, nice one.
I need a software that ....
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Re: I need a software that ....
#42A native speaker of english from the west would never use this phrasing — software is abstract rather than individual. Your usage stands out as south asian as much as "do the needful" would. "I need software that…" or "I need a program that…" would both be correct.
When I first read that title I thought that the post was making fun of that wording, and that there would be poorly-thought out examples from non-technical people.
Re: I need a software that ....
#43Could be interesting, however I think only software engineers reason this way. Normal people want solutions to their problems, and usually don't realize software could be this solution.
Re: I need a software that ....
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
The depressing part is that when you fix the query to "I need software that...", you get almost exactly the same list of responses. There's simply nobody using it correctly.
That's because many of the top results are referring to this story. If you scroll further down the results for that query, most results just have those words, not necessarily in that order.
It was the actual query results (page 3+) I was talking about. You still get "I need a software that helps me with my finances" results, just without the "a" in bold any more.
There are depressingly few hits in there that actually use the phrase "I need software" without the bad English.
Re: I need a software that ....
#45I have a saved search for "software sucks" and another for "program sucks", they can be pretty insightful. A lot of people really hate CD/DVD Burning software and manufacturer's printer software.
Add in the manufacturers software driver for my Netgear Wifi dongle! NEVER connects to my Wifi network (have to manually connect each time, tried a lot of settings and nothing works). I have to have it installed so the dongle is operable, but the software itself is crap.
Re: I need a software that ....
#46A native speaker of english from the west would never use this phrasing — software is abstract rather than individual. Your usage stands out as south asian as much as "do the needful" would. "I need software that…" or "I need a program that…" would both be correct.
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Re: I need a software that ....
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are certain terms (like "a software") that are never used by people who's first language is English. IANAL (I am not a linguist), but I'd consider myself a "descriptivist" when it comes to defining a language. I think that a living language is defined by its usage by native speakers. Forms that are never used by native speakers can be defined as "incorrect". Of course, languages change (especially English), so…
I guess by your argument and the prevalence of usage by native speakers, who's is correct as well.
I don't think he is saying native speakers never make mistakes though.
A better example might be people using if when they should be using whether.
Re: I need a software that ....
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
My point was that it is hard to say when something is 'simply bad' in the sprawling and multifarious carnival that is the English language. I vaguely recollect from reading the blog Language Hat that modern linguists sometimes decide which variant of a class (for instance, 'software' vs 'a software' vs 'softwares') is more correct by counting how many Google search results each variant returns. No doubt they need to…
There are certain terms (like "a software") that are never used by people who's first language is English. IANAL (I am not a linguist), but I'd consider myself a "descriptivist" when it comes to defining a language. I think that a living language is defined by its usage by native speakers. Forms that are never used by native speakers can be defined as "incorrect". Of course, languages change (especially English), so…
"I think that a living language is defined by its usage by native speakers."
First, I think there are degrees of nativeness in language acquisition. Cutting out the entire class of strictly non-native speakers is a bit of an extreme step.
Second, what about differences in usage of the same language over two classes of native speaker?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_Eng... was once considered to be "incorrect" English.
Re: I need a software that ....
#49Interesting idea, but the results are pretty empty...
The first page looks like it's full of people retweeting this. And the rest looks like job ads.
All this just confirms the signal-to-noise ratio on Twitter is incredibly low. Too bad, because poorly phrased or not, the question was interesting.
Re: I need a software that ....
#50A native speaker of english from the west would never use this phrasing — software is abstract rather than individual. Your usage stands out as south asian as much as "do the needful" would. "I need software that…" or "I need a program that…" would both be correct.
Geeks, always dissecting everything :) . English is in fact my third language. But, yes, I agree with what would be the correct phrases.
What on earth is a 'third language'? I was under the impression that anything that's not your native tongue is your 'second language', isn't that true?