Grammatically correct verbiage that just sounds wrong…

January 09, 2022, 08:13 PM

David Lee

quote:
Originally posted by Leeann:
Except for the part when ‘anymore’ is used when they mean ‘any more.’

We don’t shoot that ammo much any more. Not we don’t shoot that ammo much anymore.

My personal huge pet peeve is ‘I could of done that.’

Well, no you couldn’t, because there is no such thing as ‘could of.’ There is could have or could’ve, but not could of. Or would of or should of.

Don’t get me started on your or you’re, its or it’s, etc.

I read this in a lot of posts here. Should of or could of. Yes, should or could have. Never point it out due to having my own issues spelling..

. Kinda red necky.

January 09, 2022, 08:16 PM

Il Cattivo

I blame the English. Just enough Britishisms creep into popular culture to occasionally throw people out of whack.

In the UK, you stand on line (or are queuing or whatever). In the US, you stand in line unless you're in prison or the military, in which case you stand on the line.

In the UK, Metallica are coming (it's a group of individuals, right?). In the US, Metallica is coming (it's a single, particular group of people).

January 09, 2022, 08:47 PM

FishOn

quote:
Originally posted by Il Cattivo:
I blame the English. Just enough Britishisms creep into popular culture to occasionally throw people out of whack.

In the UK, you stand on line (or are queuing or whatever). In the US, you stand in line unless you're in prison or the military, in which case you stand on the line.
he
In the UK, Metallica are coming (it's a group of individuals, right?). In the US, Metallica is coming (it's a single, particular group of people).

I wonder if the Brits would say "The Herd are coming"? Or, "The Who are coming to town"?

I would say the herd is coming, and The Who is coming, but The Rolling Stones are coming. Spitting hairs.

January 09, 2022, 09:26 PM

Oat_Action_Man

quote:
Originally posted by imadat:
Pedantic point of order!

According to:

https://www.lexico.com/grammar...es-with-prepositions

Which apparently is connected to a small University in England called Oxford...

https://www.lexico.com/grammar...es-with-prepositions

There’s no necessity to ban prepositions from the end of sentences. Ending a sentence with a preposition is a perfectly natural part of the structure of modern English.

Learn more about prepositions, their relationship with other elements, and other grammar tips on thesaurus.com.

And Webster...

https://www.merriam-webster.co...ding-a-sentence-with

And others...

You may end a sentence with a preposition.

Here endeth the pedantry.

Best,

Jake
BS Engineering
Sometimes just BS

Indeed. As a Germanic language, prepositions at the end of English sentences is entirely expected. By way of comparison, German has "separable-prefix verbs" wherein the prepositional prefix of a verb is broken off and stood at the end of a sentence (unless the whole verb is moved to the end because of a modal). For example: "Kommst du mit?" rather than "Mitkommst du?" We can do the exact same thing in English: "You coming with?" That's a very colloquial English example, of course.

The whole idea of the incorrectness of ending a sentence with a prefix is a product of style manuals, not actual descriptive grammar.

Same thing with split infinitives, which are 100% fine in English. The stylists (e.g. Strunk and White) were working off a Latinate model where, indeed, an infinitive can't be split, since it's a bound morpheme attached to a verbal lexeme, rather than a collocation of a preposition and a verbal lexeme. Of course, English isn't a Latin language, so many of these style choices are moot. The "don't end a sentence with a preposition" also comes from incorrect comparison to Latin.

January 10, 2022, 12:26 AM

wishfull thinker

quote:
Originally posted by Oat_Action_Man:
quote:
Originally posted by imadat:
Pedantic point of order!

According to:

https://www.lexico.com/grammar...es-with-prepositions

Which apparently is connected to a small University in England called Oxford...

https://www.lexico.com/grammar...es-with-prepositions

There’s no necessity to ban prepositions from the end of sentences. Ending a sentence with a preposition is a perfectly natural part of the structure of modern English.

Learn more about prepositions, their relationship with other elements, and other grammar tips on thesaurus.com.

And Webster...

https://www.merriam-webster.co...ding-a-sentence-with

And others...

You may end a sentence with a preposition.

Here endeth the pedantry.

Best,

Jake
BS Engineering
Sometimes just BS

Indeed. As a Germanic language, prepositions at the end of English sentences is entirely expected. By way of comparison, German has "separable-prefix verbs" wherein the prepositional prefix of a verb is broken off and stood at the end of a sentence (unless the whole verb is moved to the end because of a modal). For example: "Kommst du mit?" rather than "Mitkommst du?" We can do the exact same thing in English: "You coming with?" That's a very colloquial English example, of course.

The whole idea of the incorrectness of ending a sentence with a prefix is a product of style manuals, not actual descriptive grammar.

Same thing with split infinitives, which are 100% fine in English. The stylists (e.g. Strunk and White) were working off a Latinate model where, indeed, an infinitive can't be split, since it's a bound morpheme attached to a verbal lexeme, rather than a collocation of a preposition and a verbal lexeme. Of course, English isn't a Latin language, so many of these style choices are moot. The "don't end a sentence with a preposition" also comes from incorrect comparison to Latin.

Thank you, I think.

January 10, 2022, 12:53 AM

iron chef

quote:
Originally posted by FishOn:
quote:
Originally posted by kkina:
Going by the thread title, interrogative pronouns used objectively. If you ask, "You shot whom?" it sounds overly punctilious if not downright ungrammatical, but it is correct. Most people would say, "You shot who?"

People frequently mix up who and whom and I and me.

So few ppl know how to use whom correctly that it's safer to stick to who. Instead, when I see whom used incorrectly, it comes off as pretentious. E.g.,

"You may hand them out to whomever asks for one."
Sorry, no, it should be whoever in that case. No one will ever criticize you for using who in place of whom, unless you work for the Oxford University Press.

Good grammar instruction has fallen by the wayside in grade schools. Most people don't understand the difference between direct & indirect objects. It gets tricky when using am/are/is.

"Tell Cersei I want her to know it was me," should be, "...I want her to know it was I."

Yes, it sounds stilted & awkward, but I is the correct pronoun in that case.

"Whom are you going to call? Ghostbusters!" is also grammatically correct but painful to hear.

January 10, 2022, 09:52 AM

yanici

Throw me down the stairs my hat.

January 10, 2022, 11:10 AM

architect

quote:
Originally posted by Keystoner:
quote:
Originally posted by architect:
One regionalism that has always bothered me is dropping the "to be" from an expression like "the car needs to be washed." The first time I heard this out of my Pittsburgh PA-born wife I thought "how ignorant is that?" I now realize that there are a whole regional community of people who know no other way, but it still sounds backwoods to me.

"The car needs washed." Seriously, people say this?

From approximately Altoona to approximately Youngstown, you'll find no "to be" before a past participle. I'm sure including it sounds peculiar to them, like the speaker is putting on airs. Of course some will use the gerund rather than the past participle, e.g. "the house needs painting." That sounds vaguely wrong to me as well, but not nearly as bad as the Western PA formulation.

quote:
Throw me down the stairs my hat.

Ha! Freshman year at U. of Mich., sitting around the TV room at the dorm., One guy says to another "hey, I gotta split, throw me over my coat." The second guy, sure enough, picks up the first guy, and throws him over the couch on which his coat rested. He landed quite hard square on his butt. Most of the guys didn't get why until it was explained to them.

January 10, 2022, 01:15 PM

doublesharp

Is this grammatically correct?

6 cities that nearly landed an MLB team

https://www.mlb.com/news/citie...most-had-an-mlb-team

January 10, 2022, 01:51 PM

PASig

quote:
Originally posted by architect:

One regionalism that has always bothered me is dropping the "to be" from an expression like "the car needs to be washed." The first time I heard this out of my Pittsburgh PA-born wife I thought "how ignorant is that?" I now realize that there are a whole regional community of people who know no other way, but it still sounds backwoods to me.

I'm fairly certain that came out of the large majority of the original settlers there being from Ireland and Scotland, I recall reading how "yinz" (another western PA oddity) came from the Irish and Scots:

quote:

Yinz is the most recent derivation from the original Scots-Irish form you ones or "yous ones", a form of the second person plural commonly heard in parts of Ulster. When standard-English speakers talk in the first person or third person, they use different pronouns to distinguish between singular and plural. In the first person, for example, speakers use the singular I and the plural we. But when speaking in the second person, you performs double duty as both the singular form and the plural form. Crozier (1984) suggests that during the 19th century, when many Irish speakers switched to speaking English, they filled this gap with you ones, primarily because Irish has a singular second-person pronoun, tú, as well as a plural form, sibh. The following, therefore, is the most likely path from you ones to yinz: you ones [juː wʌnz] > you'uns [juːʌnz] > youns [juːnz] > yunz [jʌnz] > yinz [jɪ̈nz]. Because there are still speakers who use each form,[2] there is no stable second-person plural pronoun form in southwest or central Pennsylvania, which is why the pronoun is variably referred to or spelled as you'uns, y'ins, y'uns, yunz, yuns, yinz, yenz, yins or ynz.

Link

January 10, 2022, 01:52 PM

sigcrazy7

Here in the intermountain west, many people use past-perfect verbs when past-simple is appropriate.

"I seen it, I seen the whole thing."

January 10, 2022, 05:22 PM

V-Tail

quote:
Originally posted by sigcrazy7:

Here in the intermountain west, many people use past-perfect verbs when past-simple is appropriate.

"I seen it, I seen the whole thing."

Visitor on his first business trip to Boston, wanting to taste some of the fish that the area is known for, gets into a cab and asks the driver to take him someplace to get scrod.

Cab driver, a Harvard drop-out, says, "I have had that request numerous times, but never before in the past pluperfect subjunctive."

January 10, 2022, 06:18 PM

Keystoner

quote:
Originally posted by doublesharp:
Is this grammatically correct?

6 cities that nearly landed an MLB team

https://www.mlb.com/news/citie...most-had-an-mlb-team

I say yes. It's the title of an article so I think it's ok to be a fragment. My English teacher in high school said you shouldn't start a sentence with a numeral--that the number should be written out. Seems right, but again, in the title of an article, it seems ok.

January 10, 2022, 06:49 PM

kkina

quote:
Originally posted by doublesharp:
Is this grammatically correct?

6 cities that nearly landed an MLB team

https://www.mlb.com/news/citie...most-had-an-mlb-team

Strictly speaking, as mentioned, "6" should have been written out "Six", and most of the remaining words should have been capitalized as the title of an article.

However, I think this is also an example of faulty parallelism. 6 cities (plural) are mentioned, but only one team (singular). Were all cities trying to get the exact same team?

Maybe the author meant "Six Cities that Nearly Landed MLB Teams"?

January 10, 2022, 07:16 PM

Rey HRH

quote:
Originally posted by V-Tail:
A Texan went to Harvard. Not familiar with the layout, so he asked another Harvard dude, "Say, can y'all tell me where the library's at?"

Other Harvard dude replied, "My good man, at this university, we do not end a sentence with a preposition!"

Texan: "OK, where's it at, asshole?"

i've heard that joke before but it's still funny, it brought a smile to my face.

"It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must consist not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual." Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, 1946.