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This is a forum to discuss the gray areas of the English language for which you would not find answers easily in dictionaries or other reference books.
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More and more lately I’ve been hearing and seeing a change in the prepositions used in common phrases.
I’ve already commented on PITE about the use of “deal to” instead of “deal with” in NZ, and of course we have the age old debate about “different from/to”.
Recently I noticed some others creeping in:-
“what do you make to....” instead of “what do you make make of .....”
“I have no intention on.......” instead of “I have no intention of......”.
I’m sure there are others.
While there may be nothing grammatically wrong in this, it does sound a little strange and raises the question of why and how such usage arises.
Does it stem from a desire to be different just for the sake of being different?
Is it down to some kind of narcissism?
. when saying “what reading
In his entry on ‘try and do’, Fowler calls it “an idiom that should not be discountenanced, but used when it comes natural”.
What interested me was his use of ‘natural’ as an adverb. Oxford Online gives the example ‘keep walking—just act natural’, which sounds OK to me, if idiomatic.
There are examples from Dickens and Walter Scott of ‘comes natural’ in dialogues, where ‘natural’ is being used as an adverb, but Fowler’s use here sounds strange to me. Any thoughts?
Will words like fæces, archæologist, fœtus disappear from our language or should they be preserved?
When I was brought up in England we used to say things like “it’s the put-er-on-er-er” for the brush used to put the polish on, and the “taker-off-er-er”. Or later, the “mover-out-er-er” for the spouse who must move out.
Is this “real” English? Why don’t we use it in writing? Why are there two “er” at the end? Is there any description of this in any grammar? How widespread is this construction?
I should probably count myself fortunate that I almost reached my allotted three score and ten without having come across this dreadful word.
But alas my belief that a mentor has a protégé has now been cruelly shattered.
A) Must we have fish for dinner again?
B) Shall we have to have fish for dinner again?
C) Will we have to have fish for dinner again?
D) Do we have to have fish for dinner again?
Accepting that (D) is by far the commonest utterance and would express annoyance or lament. roughly the same as “I wish we weren’t having fish again”, my concern is with the other options, particularly (B) which looks “grammatical” but just sounds odd to me. (A) is less common today but seems to go back a long way whereas “have to” is relatively modern, so which sound “normal” to you?
Two scenarios:
- You are an antipodean cricket commentator and during a broadcast you realise that your Indian co-commentator is pronouncing some words/names differently from you.
- You are at a social gathering and notice that everyone else pronounces words/names differently from you.
The words/names in question could be for or example:
- Tendulkar with a soft ‘oo’ sound as opposed to your hard ‘u’ (as in dull).
- Nepal with “paul” as opposed to your ‘pal’.
- Debut as ‘dehbyew’ as opposed to your ‘dayboo’.
In each situation how do you react?
Recently seen on a standardized assessment for elementary students: “Which fraction of the fruit are apples?” Shouldn’t it read: “Which fraction of the fruit is apples?” Doesn’t the subject verb-agreement rule dictate “is” apples since fraction (singular) is the question’s subject?
I have noticed recently that the phrase “admits to” keeps popping up in contexts where the “to” is obviously redundant.
“He admits to the offence”
“He admitted to the charge”
Is this a new fad or has it been going on for some time?
When you Google “What does curb your dog mean?”, you find three different answers.
- Control your dog.
- Pick up dog poop.
- Take the dog to the curb to pee or poo.
I always understood it to mean #2, so even when I saw a sign that said “Curb your dog,” I would let my dog poo there but I picked it up afterward. I figured the person who put the sign there would be satisfied with that. But if #3 is what is meant by the sign, s/he would not be happy.
What is confusing is the word “curb” itself. It can mean “control” or “edge of street” which are two completely different definitions, and I would assume that they came from completely unrelated etymological roots. The expression is so vague and confusing that it is ineffective.
The only one that actually makes sense is #1 as “curb” means to control.
#2 doesn’t really make sense. The word “curb” has no definition that means to pick up after something, although it can indirectly imply cleaning up after the misbehavior of your own dog. (i.e., Since dogs cannot control themselves, you need to control the aftermath for them.) It’s too vague. You should just say, “Pick up after your dog.”
#3 is problematic for two reasons. Firstly, “curb” in this context should be used as a noun. I seriously doubt that “take your dog to the curb” was what was meant when the signs first started appearing in public. If you are the first person ever to create this sign, and if you meant to say, “take your dog to the curb”, then you would not write “Curb your dog.” You could not expect other people to understand what you meant by that, as there was no such use of the word “curb” in a verb form. You would have written: “Take your dog to the curb.” My second problem with #3 is that it implies it’s fine to leave the poo as long as you take the dog to the curb.
My theory is that “Curb your dog” originally had only one definition: “Control your dog.” And, the sign originally was introduced because many dogs were not kept on leash, and would cause trouble, like attacking kids, starting a fight with other dogs, barking uncontrollably, and running into the traffic. Ideally, they wanted to say, “Keep your dog on leash”, but at the time, this probably felt too extreme, so they just wanted to ask dog owners to responsibly control their dogs’ behavior. Then, in big cities like New York, some people started interpreting the word “curb” to mean the edge of the street/sidewalk, although it’s a bit of a stretch, given that “curb” in this case should not be used as a verb.
This is my theory of how the expression was originally introduced and evolved to include all three definitions. What do you think?
