The weird & wonderful world of English grammar...

brittak · Pro player

The weird & wonderful world of English grammar...

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

goldfish wrote:
Thank you SC for this explanation - very interesting. I shall continue to wince and correct every time I hear different to or different than - it is inbuilt.

So how do you get apostrophes and inverted commas to appear on here - Ive tried a couple of times on my posts but they disappear.

Wince away! I realised that I was fighting a losing battle a long time ago & gave up, but every so often, I still snap... My last boss, whom I liked & respected for her immense technical knowledge, but whose English left something to be desired (she used to drive me mad when she used "consult" as a noun, à l'américaine, & misused the trendy phrase "row back"; she was also incapable of pronouncing "eligible" properly. However, she was aware of her failings & would often ask me to proof-read/"sense-check" stuff that was going to be submitted to the Treasury, parliamentary select committees, the Bank of England, the PRA or the FCA before it went in) once gave me a mug & a coaster bearing the legend "I am silently correcting your grammar" for Christmas! biggrin

As for apostrophes & inverted commas, I post from a laptop (one with a full keyboard), so all I have to do is select the relevant keys (with the shift key in the case of the latter). I presume that that's not going to help you at all. Sorry.

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

brittak wrote:
My pet hate :-

When did them replace those e.g. them players as opposed to those players?

I don't think it has, not in standard English anyway, though it nevetheless seems to be becoming increasingly widespread. It's colloquial usage/regional dialect. I would never dream of using "them", an object pronoun, in place of "those", a demonstrative pronoun.

christ · Futures qualifying

Stircrazy wrote:
...she used to drive me mad when she used "consult" as a noun,..

I hate it when people "surface" issues.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Elegant Point wrote:
CD:
However, I love the people who use 'whom' randomly, thinking it makes them sound posh smile.gif
-
Or one when talking about themselves.
My mum had a friend we nick named Pamela Pea- r- no because she was so posh (how she said piano), but she spoke about peasant shooting

I missed this one

love the 'pea-r-no' biggrin

And to the people above, I've never heard of 'different than' - really????

And to add the Bard's opinion:

William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors: This week he hath been heavy, sour, sad, / And much different from the man he was

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Coup Droit wrote:
And to the people above, I've never heard of 'different than' - really????
And to add the Bard's opinion:
William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors: This week he hath been heavy, sour, sad, / And much different from the man he was

"Different than" - yes, really, especially on yon side of the Pond, but the ubiquitousness of US TV etc means that it's gaining a hold here, more's the pity.

And as evidence that said Bard tended to blow with the wind in those days of Early Modern English, when the language was starting to become standardised:

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" (the opening line of Sonnet 18) wink

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

christ wrote:
Stircrazy wrote:
...she used to drive me mad when she used "consult" as a noun,..
I hate it when people "surface" issues.

Yikes! Not heard that one before!

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

Stircrazy wrote:
christ wrote:
Stircrazy wrote:
...she used to drive me mad when she used "consult" as a noun,..
I hate it when people "surface" issues.
Yikes! Not heard that one before!

I hear this one a lot, often used in business meetings, for sure. As in "let's bring all the issues to the surface" - I think we are talking deep sea diving or ship wreck territory here!!

indiana · Tennis legend

JonH comes home wrote:
Stircrazy wrote:
christ wrote:
Stircrazy wrote:
...she used to drive me mad when she used "consult" as a noun,..
I hate it when people "surface" issues.
Yikes! Not heard that one before!
I hear this one a lot, often used in business meetings, for sure. As in "let's bring all the issues to the surface" - I think we are talking deep sea diving or ship wreck territory here!!

Your example seems absolutely fine to me, Jon. I'm not sure that was quite what christ was referring to. More some of the uses of "surface" as a verb?

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

indiana wrote:
JonH comes home wrote:
Stircrazy wrote:
christ wrote:
Stircrazy wrote:
...she used to drive me mad when she used "consult" as a noun,..
I hate it when people "surface" issues.
Yikes! Not heard that one before!
I hear this one a lot, often used in business meetings, for sure. As in "let's bring all the issues to the surface" - I think we are talking deep sea diving or ship wreck territory here!!
Your example seems absolutely fine to me, Jon. I'm not sure that was quite what christ was referring to. More some of the uses of "surface" as a verb?

yeah, of course, understood - to surface something...it's just jargon and definitely a hate of mine also!

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

All the discussion yesterday & on Saturday about which preposition or conjunction should follow "different" reminded me of a phenomenon I've been noticing for some time now, namely the apparent change in the prepositions used following certain adjectives. Those that spring most readily to mind are "close with" & "bored of" in place of "close to" & "bored with". disbelief

Dare we leave the last word on the aforementioned "different" discussion to Merriam-Webster?

Should you need a guide for your differents that doesn't have quite so much 18th century [it comes at the end of a lengthy article which relies heavily on quotations from an American grammarian of whom I'd never heard, Robert Baker], here it is.

If you don't give a fig for what nitpickers think about your language use, proceed with different than or different from depending on how you feel.

If you give a fig, or part of a fig, use different from, except when beginning a clause, or when to do so would sound terrible.

If you are British, or would like people to think that you spent enough time in the United Kingdom for it to have influenced your approach to language, use different to whenever you feel like it.

Please bear in mind that Merriam-Webster is an American dictionary...

I was intrigued by a quotation in the article taken from Darwin's On the origin of the species (1859):

What can be more different than the immensely long spiral proboscis of a sphinx-moth, the curious folded one of a bee or bug, and the great jaws of a beetle?

Natural selection may modify and adapt the larva of an insect to a score of contingencies, wholly different from those which concern the mature insect.

I venture to suggest, however, that the "different" in the first sentence is performing a different function from the other examples we've been discussing. wink

Bob in Spain · Tennis legend

Inspired by the tennis player with 5 consecutive vowels in his name, it reminded me of a fact that somebody once told me. I have no idea if it is true but with the fountain of knowledge we have here, I am sure I am about to find out.

True or false ? There are only two words in the English language that have each of the five vowels appearing once each and in alphabetical order.

Facetious ...

... is definitely one of them. Can never remember the other.

Help.

Tanaqui · Intermediate Club Player

More than two, Bob en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_words_that_use_all_vowels_in_alphabetical_order

But the other one you may be thinking of which is a "common" word is abstemious.

Bob in Spain · Tennis legend

Tanaqui wrote:
More than two, Bob en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_words_that_use_all_vowels_in_alphabetical_order

But the other one you may be thinking of which is a "common" word is abstemious.

Yes. That may well be it. I was probably at primary school when I was given that fact so maybe the other more obscure words have all been added to the dictionary since then wink

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

For those who are interested, an amusing article by Adam Sage in today's Times about a new book by a French professor of lingistics, Bernard Cerquiglini, whose very title is a preposterous claim: La langue anglaise n'existe pas. C'est du français mal prononcé (translation in the article for those who don't read French).