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Weird English

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Re: Weird English

#91

Post by eesmith »

stickfigure wrote: post #77
eesmith wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What really matters is that there isn't a single simple "Cartesian" future tense with only {simple, perfect, continuous} forms. Here's an example where "will" cannot be substituted with "going to". "If you sit down then the movie will start." "If you sit down then the movie is going to start." In the earlier list, that's "will" because it's a prediction or statement of fact.

True, but also seems like a pretty minor mistake? I feel that I've heard worse offenses from native English speakers. Maybe I feel exceptionally tolerant having lived a year in eastern Kentucky. Also, "The movie will start when you sit down" is probably better form all 'round.

I'm not clear about the goal of your comments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_tense#English and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going-to_future are clear that there are differences between the uses of the different ways to express the future tense in English.

Quoting the latter link, "in some contexts the different constructions are interchangeable, while in others they carry somewhat different implications."

Do you disagree with that assessment? If so, why?

"Don't get close to the bomb, it will explode." implies the bomb will explode if someone gets close to it.

"Don't get close to the bomb, it's going to explode." implies it's going to explode (no matter what) and that people shouldn't be nearby.

Re: Weird English

#92

Post by archduck »

bagacrap wrote: post #74

My biggest English language peeve of the moment is the rise in prevalence of "have a nice rest of your day", which appears to be a mashup of "have a nice day" and "enjoy the rest of your day". No matter how much I hear it, it sounds disfluent due to the mismatched particle ("a rest of"). What seems like it started as an honest flub has taken root and is now used intentionally and extensively, especially by grocery ch…

It's no different from "a nice time in the islands," "a runty pick of the litter," etc.

What's probably tripping you up is that "rest" is usually a noun that takes predicative adjective rather than an attributive adjective. It's more common to hear "The rest of my day was nice," but less common to hear "the nice rest of my day."

But despite the ostensible grammaticality of the noun phrase here, frequency still plays a huge role in determining what we deem acceptable, so it's not sufficient to argue as a counterpoint e.g. "a nice rest of your day" is perfectly fine like these other analogously formed noun phrases, checkmate ... Language doesn't work like that.

I'd argue that your point is actually best articulated simply as "it just sounds weird," rather than calling it any kind of flub, grammatical or otherwise.

Re: Weird English

#93

Post by funnybeam »

onos wrote: post #78

Would like to “fix” the issue with the first few numbers after 10. They make it much harder to teach a young child the concept of base ten counting. Would be much easier if we would replace “ten” by “teny” then “eleven” -> “teny-one” etc.

Actually it should be "onety" and "onety-one". "ten" is as much of a problem as eleven and twelve.

Mind you, I've always had a soft spot for dozenal so could quite happily go the other way, but I guess that's a different discussion

Re: Weird English

#94

Post by funnybeam »

kergonath wrote: post #18
robin_reala wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swedish brought in a big corpus of words from French though (native English, passable Swedish, school French), due to diplomatic relations in the 1700s. So, e.g. Army: Danish hær, Norwegian hær, Swedish armé, French armée Ice-cream: Danish is, Norwegian is, Swedish glass, French glace Arm-chair: Danish lænestol, Norwegian lenestol, Swedish fåtölj, French fauteuil Window: Danish vindue, Norwegian vindu, Swedish fönste…

> And the pronunciation is not always obvious either with French loanwords. Or the spelling. I mean, I know how the letters are pronounced, so I can see that fåtölj is actually a good transcription, but visually it bears no resemblance whatsoever with fauteuil. I have found that French words that ended up in English were actually quite difficult to recognise in a conversation, even though they are written exactly as…

A lot of it is also due to French pronunciation changes. There are many "french" loan words where the english version is much closer to the original french than the modern french pronunciation is -oyster for example.

Then again several of the more obviously "french" words are drifting the other way as people assume they should be pronounced like modern french - valet is a great example here where most english people now drop the final 't'

Re: Weird English

#95

Post by eesmith »

JasonFruit wrote: post #50
eesmith wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used the term "snob" in quotes because that's the term used in the linked-to article. Here are the relevant parts: > Okrent mostly attributes English’s idiosyncrasies to the barbarians, the French, the printing press, and what she calls “the snobs.” ... > At other times, standardization was deliberate. Those whom Okrent labels “snobs,” primarily 18th-century linguists, publishers, and pedants addicted to “intention…

I don't know about the person who started this thread, but I find that confused, throat-clearing, "We messed up, but with the best of intentions" mess absolutely delightful. As a child, I got very into etymology, and my father loved bursting my bubble by doubting that anyone knew any of it for sure. I think we were both enjoying different sides of that fanciful, egotistical guesswork.

You might also like Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage.

Ad copy: "A handy guide to problems of confused or disputed usage based on the critically acclaimed Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage. Over 2,000 entries explain the background and basis of usage controversies and offer expert advice and recommendations."

A copy is available from archive.org: https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780877796336

(The full one might be too - I have a copy of the concise one so that's what I know about.)

Re: Weird English

#96

Post by yissp »

seanhunter wrote: post #85

Two of my favourites: - Why do we have guarantee and warrantee that mean essentially the same thing? (Because one word was imported into English from French at two different periods in history) - Why do we have child -> children, brother -> bretheren (obv archaic but still would be understood by most people) but no other plurals that work that way? You can't say one sister many sistren for example. Even though that w…

What about ox -> oxen?

Re: Weird English

#97

Post by yissp »

mbg721 wrote: post #86
seanhunter wrote: post #85

Two of my favourites: - Why do we have guarantee and warrantee that mean essentially the same thing? (Because one word was imported into English from French at two different periods in history) - Why do we have child -> children, brother -> bretheren (obv archaic but still would be understood by most people) but no other plurals that work that way? You can't say one sister many sistren for example. Even though that w…

I have heard, I think from a user on here, that crimes are often listed as a pair of synonyms (e.g. "aiding and abetting") because one word was Norman French and the other was English, and the law required both to be understood.

On a similar note, I've heard that the words for animals, like cow or pig, tend to be Germanic while the words for their meat, like beef or pork tend to be Latin.

Re: Weird English

#98

Post by ALittleLight »

onos wrote: post #78

Would like to “fix” the issue with the first few numbers after 10. They make it much harder to teach a young child the concept of base ten counting. Would be much easier if we would replace “ten” by “teny” then “eleven” -> “teny-one” etc.

One ten one, one ten two, etc is my preferred pronunciation for 11, 12...

Re: Weird English

#99

Post by saghm »

yorwba wrote: post #35
kergonath wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the pronunciation is not always obvious either with French loanwords. Or the spelling. I mean, I know how the letters are pronounced, so I can see that fåtölj is actually a good transcription, but visually it bears no resemblance whatsoever with fauteuil. I have found that French words that ended up in English were actually quite difficult to recognise in a conversation, even though they are written exactly as…

> Nothing that comes close to the utterly bizarre prononciation of the /r/ in /iron/. Compare English "iron" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/File:en-us-iron.ogg German "eiern" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/File:De-eiern.ogg French "ailler" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/File:LL-Q150_(fra)-Lepticed7-... None of the s is anything like [r].

Maybe I just pronounce it weird, but I tend to pronounce "iron" the same way as the phrase "I earn", just with less space between them. Obviously the "r" is closer to the "n" in my pronunciation, but it feels like a stretch to say that it's the "r" with the weird pronunciation. If anything, the vowels are what seem weird to me; the "i" is long, which does not seem obvious it would be the case from the spelling alone, and the "o" is just completely silent, which is the only case of that in English I can think of off the top of my head (although I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few others).

Re: Weird English

#100

Post by euroderf »

yissp wrote: post #96
seanhunter wrote: post #85

Two of my favourites: - Why do we have guarantee and warrantee that mean essentially the same thing? (Because one word was imported into English from French at two different periods in history) - Why do we have child -> children, brother -> bretheren (obv archaic but still would be understood by most people) but no other plurals that work that way? You can't say one sister many sistren for example. Even though that w…

What about ox -> oxen?

Not to mention VAX -> VAXen.
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