re: was/were ... It's something called the subjunctive mood (or sometimes subjunctive tense, though it's not really a tense). Specifically, this example is a "counterfactual conditional".
I agree that it's stupid and confusing, but not using it will make you sound less "edumacated"
Stupid English. The good (or bad) part is that it is a very dynamic language. I theorize that in 100 years time "u" will be an accepted form of "you" ;)
Short forms like 'sat' in spoken language are used to reduce slips of the ear and to convey meaning faster and with lesser effort for the speaker.
yes, hopefully in the future we will have much shorter words. english already has pretty short words compared to other languages. but for example the word "before" could be reduced to just two letters: b4. there are tons of words that could be made shorter.
i found this comment on utube, the guy is pretty angry, but it has many good examples of short words:
"ur a fat fuk hed man u r a big fukn nerd hu has no life and wants to sit on ur ass all day and nite and do nuthin wit ur life ur a fuk hed and r u having a shower ur an idiot fuk hed and hu cares f they dont hav mario that is 4 NINTENDO dik hed not microsoft"
this comment would be much longer if the words were written correctly. the lack of punctuation makes it a little hard to read though.
Because it used to be 'addictive'.
re: anything nfq said
Shorter words are not better. Like I said, lazy people deserve whatever they get. If it's ridicule for not spelling their words correctly, I couldn't care less. The only 2 reasons we have textspeak/whatever-you-want-to-call-it are laziness and SMS length limits.
Often acronyms are made of words that are very quick to type, such as the amazing 'WTF', the acronym form of which takes longer to say than the original words. Amazing, huh.
Also, just as an aside, there are some words (in English) which are short to say, but long(ish) to type, such as 'slough' and 'wrench'.
Embracing textspeak as the natural progression of English is a massive step backward in communication legibility. The only thing the comment you quoted communicates is that the poster does not know how to communicate effectively. Or does not want to (why post in the first place), or can't be bothered to (lazy, deserve what they get, etc.)
But I think that writing it the correct way (dying) is also annoying, because it makes no sense. It's more intuitive to write "dieing".
Seeing the wrong form bothers me. It's ugly. It looks like "dieieieieieing".
How do you even pronounce "dieing"? My impression is that you would pronounce it something like [daiain'].
From a logical point of view "dying" actually makes more sense when you think about how it would be pronounced. Assuming "dy" is pronounced like [dai], then "dying" would be something like [dai'in], which is close to correct.
Warp wrote:
Wrong: "I would do it if it was possible, but it isn't."
I think this sounds best, so I would probably write like that even if it was wrong.
"Sounds best" is not always equivalent to "correct". :P
Some things that bother me...
1) Incorrect use of "take" and "bring". You bring things to where you are, and you take things to where you aren't. You might bring something here, but you'll take something there. Come and go work similarly.
2) Using comparative/superlative incorrectly. Especially latter and former. In a list of three or more items, the one that comes at the end of the list is the last item, not the latter, and similarly, the one at the beginning is the first, not the former. Additionally, "superior" is a comparative. "Supreme" is the superlative.
3) Fewer and less. They're really not that hard. Fewer is used with plural nouns, and less with singular ones. Same goes for fewest and least (though make sure you're not making mistake 2) and much and more. Yet so many people get it wrong.
I could probably go on for quite a while about these, so I'll just link to this.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheBigListOfBooboosAndBlunders
Seeing the wrong form bothers me. It's ugly. It looks like "dieieieieieing".
Warp wrote:
"Sounds best" is not always equivalent to "correct". :P
Perceiving a word form to be ugly also doesn't. However, in this case you have a point because 'iei' is an unusual combination.
Warp wrote:
How do you even pronounce "dieing"? My impression is that you would pronounce it something like [daiain'].
From a logical point of view "dying" actually makes more sense when you think about how it would be pronounced. Assuming "dy" is pronounced like [dai], then "dying" would be something like [dai'in], which is close to correct.
And assuming "die" is proncounced like [dai], then dieing would be something like [dai'in] too. Though the ' would indicate that the second syllable is stressed which it isn't. In fact it's usually pronounced one-syllabic as [daiŋ] or even [dain].
[URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti]English spelling doesn't make much sense anyway. [/URL]
This comment coupled together with "short words = better" is lovely ironic, since I've never seen a language with longer and more convulted words then finnish.
English already suffers (in text-form) with lots of homonyms that the badly educated (apparently) can't tell apart. If you shorten words with a strict "pronuncation = proper spelling" model, you'll end up having to reread sentences just to understand how the words fit together.
The best example of this would probably be newnorwegian, which is a new official language in Norway that attempts to "simplify" the language by removing silent and/or redundant letters. However, almost any norwegian I've spoken to (and I hardly mingle with the literary elite) detests it because it's a pain to read. According to what I've heard and read, words are read by interprenting the "image" the word creates, not the actual letters. Thus, trying to shorten words will make it harder to read, since all "word images" will start to look terribly similar when so few letters are involved.
All in all, it reminds me of this parody of "euro-english":
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".
In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy.
The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.
In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.
Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.
Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away. By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".
During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.
Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.
Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.
The silent e can't be dropped because it shows that a word is pronounced differently. Actually we simulate a vowel shift to arrive at the correct pronunciation while reading new words with a silent e at the end.
<at> - f.e. [æt]
<ate> - f.e. [æit]
So if you dropped the e you'd need to add something like an i in front. (in this case)
English spelling will have to change somewhen. Spoken language will continue to develop further and if spelling stays the same we'd maybe arrive at a point where you really have to learn the spelling and pronunciation of each word by heart. There'd be no point to using letters then.
Nice thread.
I do some writing, and one of the things that really gets on my nerves when other people critique my work is when they tell me that my grammar is wrong.
...inside of a quote.
Look. Fictional characters are allowed to misuse words, okay? OKAY? It's a great way to illustrate their personality. In fact, each person in a story should have a slightly different style of speech to help define their character. That, and it's realistic.
So next time I write 'I would do it if it was possible,' said Bob" I will smack you if you try to correct my grammar. As long as the narrator is using correct grammar, it's fine.
Another thing that grinds my nerves is when people try to tell me "Chris's shoes" is incorrect. Both "Chris'" and "Chris's" are technically allowable.
But that's all just me being defensive. If I had to pick one error of others that I hate the most, it would be "Beastiary".
The silent e can't be dropped because it shows that a word is pronounced differently. Actually we simulate a vowel shift to arrive at the correct pronunciation while reading new words with a silent e at the end.
<at> - f.e. [æt]
<ate> - f.e. [æit]
So if you drop the e you'd need to add something like an i in front. (in this case)
English spelling will have to change somewhen. Spoken language will continue to develop further and if spelling stays the same we'd maybe arrive at a point where you really have to learn the spelling and pronunciation of each word by heart. There'd be no point to using letters then.
It was a joke. :)
Edit: VVV That's true. I personally can't stand the use of shorthand 'textspeak' outside of sending text messages. Not only is it harder to read than normal words but saves maybe 3 seconds writing time per sentence.
I know it was a joke.
But it coul make people think that changing the spelling of words in ways like that would inevitably lead to huge problems when reading, which totally isn't the case. Sure, you would have to get used to it, but it's more difficult as it is.
According to what I've heard and read, words are read by interprenting the "image" the word creates, not the actual letters.
There have been serveal stdiues that come to the colisuncon that pepole can unsatdsrend words farily eaisly if they are julbmed eexcpt for the first two and last two letetrs.
Also:
CtrlAltDestroy wrote:
Both "Chris'" and "Chris's" are technically allowable.
The way I understood it, ONLY Chris's is correct. The ' at the end is only appropriate when the noun ends in an s and is plural. For example, if you were going to a house inhabited by the Smiths, it would be the Smiths' house. I could be wrong though :S
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA
How would you differentiate between the Smith family's dog, the dogs belonging to Smith family A and Smith family B, the Smiths family's dog, and the dogs of Smiths A and Smiths B?
Usually, the answers are Smith's, Smiths', Smiths's, and Smiths'.
This comment coupled together with "short words = better" is lovely ironic, since I've never seen a language with longer and more convulted words then finnish.
Well, the reason I think English is the "best" language is because it sounds best. It's also more fun to speak because of that. Finnish is logical but the downside is the long words. German and Chinese probably have the longest and most complex words, but Chinese has some useful things that are not present in other languages.
I was under the impression that Chinese had shorter words than a lot of languages. Especially if you consider each character a 'letter' of sorts, then they are very short indeed.
There's so such thing as proper grammar.
I use repetitive words to be true to how I thought the sentence in my head, which I feel to be more important than revision.
Oh, I just remembered another one that really gets on my nerves. And people do this one all the time.
Among and between. Among is for groups of three objects, between for groups of two. Actually, this kind of thing comes up a lot. Both and all, each and either, neither and none, that comparative/superlative thing I mentioned earlier, etc. You know, for a concept so common in the language, you think people could get it right.
People who say Pokemon. It's Pokémon dammit.
Not that I care in all honesty
Not everyone has that key on their keyboard. The best you can do is set it to autocorrect in MSWord when writing a fanfic or something... but seriously, who writes those?
And about that "Chirs' " thing... I might have actually been mixing up the singular/plural thing with the possessive thing. I know it was one of those where both are acceptable...
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Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
CtrlAltDestroy wrote:
AKA wrote:
People who say Pokemon. It's Pokémon dammit.
Not that I care in all honesty
Not everyone has that key on their keyboard. The best you can do is set it to autocorrect in MSWord when writing a fanfic or something... but seriously, who writes those?
AltGr+e. or Ctrl+Alt+e.
Result? é.
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
