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Why Grammar Matters: A Place To Discuss Matters Of Grammar

candall

By candall
in Everything Else

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Dimity
Dimity
nokat
nokat

I thought this belonged here. We need the occasional laugh.  

Browncoat
Browncoat

I just had a contractor reschedule an appointment for the second time.  They apologized for any "incontinence" that the rescheduling might cause.  🤣🤣

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GHScorpiosRule

GHScorpiosRule

18 hours ago, Bastet said:

I don't hear it, but I go ape shit when I see it written.

Can I sit with you? You know that this also drives me batshit crazy and I've posted previously the others that make me want to bash my head into a wall: typing "your" when they obviously mean "you're" as in you are. NOT the possessive!

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annzeepark914

annzeepark914

10 hours ago, Quof said:

I recently heard a person say "Valentimes Day".   I thought I misheard, but she said it 2 more times.  

I wanted to ask "How do you spell that?  When you see greeting cards in the store, do you wonder why Hallmark made a spelling mistake?"  

In my husband's home town, he heard people say, "assalete" instead of athlete. I think this is another example of immigrants from countries that do not pronounce "th" trying to use an English word. 

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EtheltoTillie

EtheltoTillie

(edited)
3 hours ago, SweetieDarling said:

Read this headline today:

"MDTA maintenance crew picking up litter alongside I-95 injured in tractor-trailer crash"

The litter was injured in the crash? or was I-95 Injured? I'm not quite sure.

 

Also: I can't find the other grammar thread. Does anyone know what happened to it?

 

I don’t know of another grammar thread unless it was one of the TV threads?  
That’s a great copy editor nerd joke.  We used to laugh at those when I was a copy editor. 

Edited by EtheltoTillie
Bastet

Bastet

(edited)
7 hours ago, SoMuchTV said:

The one on grammar in tv shows? I think it got merged into this one.

Yes, shortly after this one was created that one was merged into it, which is why it's so large -- it has the newer thread's title and the older thread's start date, with all the posts from both.

Edited by Bastet
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supposebly

supposebly

Since I'm a linguist by trade, I have to add a correction as the beleaguered minority. Descriptivist linguists don't think teaching grammar is useless. There is nothing I would love to see more of in schools is grammar teaching. Just not, you know, teaching kids that having prepositions at the end of a sentence is wrong and similar nonsense.

I love teaching my students that English is quite interesting in that it allows such a thing under certain circumstances. THAT is grammar teaching from a descriptivist's perspective. That formal language has certain conventions and spoken language has other conventions. That there are instances where you can leave the preposition at the end but probably wouldn't in formal writing and there are instances where you HAVE to leave it at the end, regardless of the style of writing.

Where you have to leave it: I wish I remembered where she was FROM.

Most speakers would be unlikely to say: I wish I remembered FROM where she was.

Where you cannot leave it behind: I can tell you IN what order the words go.

But not for most variants of English: I can tell you what order the words go IN.

I don't know what kind of descriptivists this person talks about, but maybe it's better to talk to a linguist instead.

There is teaching grammar as a part of human language and there is teaching the tools of grammar to write. These are very different things. And they have very little to do with the difference between prescription and description. English majors and educators tend to confuse the two. And often make students worry so much about this grammar monster, they forget that they have grammar that they use every day. Language doesn't exist without a rule system. 

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shapeshifter

shapeshifter

Here's a gift link to an opinion piece in yesterday's NYT:
“‘Little Women’ and the Art of Breaking Grammatical Rules”
nytimes.com/2024/04/04/opinion/little-women-grammar-rules.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ik0.cwHC.YJzs6bqKrXr0&smid=url-share

He echos a lot of what has been said here.
He also suggests this 2024 book by linguist Anne Curzan:
“Says Who? A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words”

It's available from Amazon:

And also from your local library:
(scroll down the linked pages to see your local libraries that have the book)

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EtheltoTillie

EtheltoTillie

On 4/7/2024 at 2:13 AM, shapeshifter said:

Here's a gift link to an opinion piece in yesterday's NYT:
“‘Little Women’ and the Art of Breaking Grammatical Rules”
nytimes.com/2024/04/04/opinion/little-women-grammar-rules.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ik0.cwHC.YJzs6bqKrXr0&smid=url-share

He echos a lot of what has been said here.
He also suggests this 2024 book by linguist Anne Curzan:
“Says Who? A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words”

It's available from Amazon:

And also from your local library:
(scroll down the linked pages to see your local libraries that have the book)

This ties in with the most recent episode of Young Sheldon.  Subtitled "Georgie Learns Grammar."

EtheltoTillie

EtheltoTillie

(edited)

If anyone can stand one more thing about feel badly:  feel is a verb in both instances, but they mean two different things.  The folks who say they feel badly about an emotion are doing that hypercorrecting thing, i.e., it’s a verb so it must need “ly” at the end. Like those who say between you and I. 🤦‍♀️
That is all. 

Edited by EtheltoTillie
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SweetieDarling

SweetieDarling

(edited)
1 hour ago, Quof said:

A simple way to remember - does your dog smell bad, or does he smell badly? 

 

1 hour ago, SoMuchTV said:

What if he stinks but doesn't realize it?  Would that be "both"?

 

I can't help but think of the Monty Python joke:

 

Person 1: My dog has no nose

Person 2: How does he smell?

Person 1: Awful

 

 

Edited by SweetieDarling
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Milburn Stone

Milburn Stone

18 hours ago, Quof said:

A simple way to remember - does your dog smell bad, or does he smell badly? 

The logic that I learned in the Pleistocene era is that some verbs, in some contexts, function as variants of the verb "to be."  (Is, was, am, et. al.)  A dog who smells bad to noses in the vicinity is a dog whose state of existence is that of an odoriferous dog. A man who feels unwell feels bad, not badly, because sickness is the state of existence he is in. A woman who feels sad feels bad because sadness is the state of existence she is in. The verb "to be" and its variants are not verbs that take adverbs.

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nokat

nokat

On 5/24/2024 at 11:11 AM, DXD526 said:

There's a diaper commercial (don't know which, I refuse to pay that much attention) that talks about how great it is, and that using it requires "way less diaper changes." 

That would be FEWER diaper changes. Or 'way less frequent' changes. But just saying 'way less' changes is like sandpaper on my eardrums. 

I see this so frequently on forums and just in use in general.  Less is for things you can't count, although I guess you could if really determined.  I think we lost that war, as well as the one for loose for lose,  and regime for regimen. My brain hurts when I see someone write "reign it in."

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EtheltoTillie

EtheltoTillie

I agree we've lost the battle on some of those, @nokat.  But I think the writers of commercials, for example, are aiming at a certain audience and don't want to sound pedantic or awkward.  Remember "Winston Tastes Good Like a Cigarette Should"?

Whereas going back to "feel badly," that was uttered by the WRITER of the show, who should know better, AND "feel bad" does NOT sound pedantic.  There's no good reason for this error, so it must be ignorance. 

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shapeshifter

shapeshifter

10 minutes ago, Quof said:

The scripts of Big Bang Theory often contained grammatical errors.  Given the pains they took regarding scientific facts, they certainly could have had a writer who used the English language properly.  You know Sheldon would not have said things like "between you and I". 

I read an article about people who misuse "between you and I" because they know they were reared in a home where imperfect grammar was spoken, and they're (incorrectly) overcompensating. The article said it was based on a fear of being thought uneducated.

Conversely, I had a coworker friend whose parents spoke English as a second language and who grew up a neighborhood in Chicago where her parents' first language was primarily spoken. My friend had a masters degree in English, but frequently said things in the format of "me and her are going…" 
I'm guessing grammar was not studied in graduate school, and MS Word corrected it for her so she never internalized it?
IDK.
Maybe she was just speaking casually because we were friends?

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EtheltoTillie

EtheltoTillie

(edited)

No matter how casually I was speaking, I could no more get the words "me and her" out of my mouth than I could fly!

I was also referencing the hypercorrecting thing you are mentioning, @shapeshifter. 

More on casual speech: 
I decided to read the Ron Howard/Clint Howard memoir/autobiography, which I am halfway through now.   (It's interesting, by the way.  The first part discusses their childhood acting experiences.  Their father was quite a remarkable person in how he coached the boys to play their parts yet at the same time imparted good life lessons.  Before the boys learned to read, their dad had to teach them the parts and also coach them on what was going on in the scene.)

I decided to watch a couple of Andy Griffith episodes that were mentioned, and I was surprised that Andy and Opie and Barney all said "ain't" quite a bit.  I hadn't remembered this at all. 

 

Edited by EtheltoTillie
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Browncoat

Browncoat

2 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

I decided to watch a couple of Andy Griffith episodes that were mentioned, and I was surprised that Andy and Opie and Barney all said "ain't" quite a bit.  I hadn't remembered this at all. 

In the episode where Elly the lady druggist is introduced, she gives Opie an ice cream cone on the condition that he promises not to say "ain't" anymore.  Opie tells his Pa that, and adds, "So I ain't gonna say 'ain't' no more."

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Mondrianyone

Mondrianyone

I just read that piece a couple days ago. The link was sent to me in a daily email called Pocket that I get from Firefox. Most of the points it covers are pretty standard errors that people make, but a couple of them I disagree with. One I won't mention, because it always starts a fight, but I thought that not ending a sentence with "I" was quite ridiculous. Sure, it's wrong if you're saying "This is just between you and I," but there are all kinds of perfectly correct ways to end a sentence with "I." I guess none of the editors who compiled the piece could come up with any. Nor can I. Oops!

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Bastet

Bastet

On 5/28/2024 at 4:55 PM, ethalfrida said:

Refresher just to prove you are correct…

Grammar

I have never come across this one:

Quote

 

23. Unthaw

Even though people use this word as a verb all the time, the best way to "un-thaw" something would be to put it in the freezer. Is freezing what you mean, or thawing?

 

 

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