Verity Stob and the super subjunction Just downloaded the beta version of English V3.31, and I have to say I am very excited about it. This is definitely going to be a feather in the cap of Anglophones everywhere, and way better than the notorious V2.99 release of French (or the 'deux point neufty-neuf' as it has become known). There's a ton of new features to talk …
Winston Churchill was belittling the rule that sentences should not end with a preposition, such as "That is a load of rubbish, which I will not put up with."
Of course, he could have said "I will not put up with that load of rubbish" but that wouldn't have got him into the dictonaries of quotations.
It was, so it is said, because the Latin infinitive could not be split that they decided the English one should not be. Thereby inconsistent seeming, they the word order English unchanged oddly left.
*Latin English - a tango danced with bells on your knees and flowers on your hat, while waving hankies.
My currently most hated phrase (see above). I get it when I enter a shop or a pub and the only correct answer, which I have on occasion given, is "No, I am certainly not alright. I am waiting for you to serve me when you have finished discussing boyfriends/babies/botox with your colleague."
What happened to "Can I help you?" or "What can I do for you?"?
You see what I did there with the question marks?
Mine is the one with Gower's "Complete Plain Words" in the pocket.
The icon 'cos something I wrote above reminded me of beer.....
At the other end of the transaction you get "There you go.". No I don't. I'll go when I'm ready and I'm definitely not going over there.
"If you would like to remove your card"
What happened to the rest of the sentence? Why do I have to like removing my card? If I don't like removing it, does it make any difference?
..is a customer in a restaurant ordering their food by prefixing the item with "Can I get ...?", to which the response from the waiter/waitress should be "No, I get it, you just tell me what you want."
Both my (grown up) children use this, and it makes me cringe each time I hear it.
@Frederick - Not sure what word you were after, but "anisotropic" probably isn't it (unless you mean that its properties are different in different directions).
@Verity - You probably meant "hordes", not "hoards" (unless you have got lots of them stashed away somewhere).
English is only at 3.31. If Linux can get to 3.0 after just twenty years I would expect English with a thousand years under its belt to do a bit better than that. Admittedly, it took several hundred years for Shakespeare to single-handedly bring it up to 1.0 standard but then he only had a quill and assorted pieces of parchment - haven't things sped up a little since then.
In fact the first several hundred version releases were labelled using a bizarre legacy system, the origins of which remain shrouded in the mists of time, ending around the time of the Crusades with DCLXVI. Numbering systems based on stoats, goats and groats followed, later incorporating fractions and becoming increasingly unwieldy until version stoat with groat over double goat was thankfully redesignated version 1.0 with the arrival of decimalisation in February 1971. The first point version came later the same year when Slade hit number one with Coz I Luv You and 2.0 was defiantly announced in 1984 to celebrate the non-arrival of Newspeak. That's what I learnt at school last week anyway.
Can I suggest that English v3.5 allows for the omissions of both the definite and indefinite article. This mode of speech was pioneered by Apple, for example:
Buy (an) iPhone. Worship (the) iPhone. (The) iPhone has self-immolated.
Surely such a reduction in verbosity (and unbearable level of cutesiness) is to be welcomed to the language.
Good point.
"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is a brilliant science fiction story (1966 Robert Heinlein) which does not use "the" except in the title.
According to Wikipedia, this was to reflect the impact on language from the large number of Russian deportees to the moon. "the" does not exist in most Slavic languagues.
It makes proof-reading my wife's formal documents before they are sent off a real pain. She has absolutely no idea of when to use "the" as opposed to "a", or even if either is to be used. The difference between "until" and "by" is a complete mystery to her, as well.
Regardless, her English is still better than my ability to talk in her national version of the Slavic noise.
Following successful trials in sports journalism, we are pleased to announce the adoption of "question mark" as the preferred form of the noun "question".
Old: There's certainly a question about the ...
New: There's certainly a question mark about the..
The new form is a drop-in replacement, with no need to modify surrounding sentence structure. Also, as an added security feature, use of this form will reduce the chance of accidentally disseminating sensitive information, as speakers are unlikely to reach the end of their sentences before listener-driven high momentum fist/face interfacing renders them incapable of further speech.
I recently read a <a href="http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/split-infinitives.aspx">blog post</a> that makes a case for the "Never Split Inifinitives" rule being a myth. Although the post does conclude that it is such a pervasive myth that you should not split infinitives willy nilly, if it could upset people.
All in all, a nice post.
I can't miss a rare opportunity to get a linguistic bugbear dancing. People in shops, call centres and the like have a strong aversion to the second person pronoun, and will say things like "Is everything all right for yourself?", or "We will send the form to yourself for signature."
It may be fanciful, but I think this is the related to the mysterious force that eradicated "thou" in English and gave rise to "tu-vous", "du-Sie", and the even odder "tu-Lei-voi". It's apparently found in all Indo-European languages.
Paints and "multi-grade" car lubricating oils have this property.
Stiff and resistant to motion at low speeds (IE dripping down a wall) but easy to move when move at high speed.
The English equivalent would be something that *seems* to make perfect sense spoken (at normal speed) but is actually rubbish when read.
"...hoards of peevish academics" I suppose /could/ be correct as written, but I'm almost certain that what the otherwise impeccable Ms Stob meant to type was "...hordes of peevish etc." Although I grant that the concept of thousands of academics, gallumphing towards one across a convenient steppe, waving laser pointers and clad in their trademark battle tweed is such an unlikely image that perhaps, after all, the image of a large, hidden cellar full of dusty desks is more reasonable.
What's that? Tired? Oh well, that's completely understandable.
(And I always treasured pTerry's assertion that the use of multiple exclamation marks is a sign of a sick mind.)
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