Discussion Forum
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.
Do You Have a Question?
Latest Posts
Is the term ‘foreigner’ still acceptable, if not (as I belive) do we have another word or phrase we can use to refer to people that don’t hail from the speakers home country?
This sounds highly ungrammatical to English ears, yet seems to be an increasingly common US usage (cf Br Eng “different from”, “different to”). If it is indeed considered correct, surely this makes the use of the word “than” in this context uniquely non-comparative - in all other cases that I can think of it has a comparative function - eg “faster than an eagle” or even “Icelanders are even more different from average Europeans than the Danish”. American speakers, any comments?
Go + noun? Is it an idiom or bad grammar?
There’s an old Finnish road movie parody about a Soviet accordion band (played by a Finnish group) that goes to the USA. The title of the movie is “Leningrad Cowboys Go America”.
In 1995, a yearly art happening was born in Helsinki, Finland, where small art exhibitions are put up in pubs and restaurants. The happening is called “Art Goes Kapakka” (‘kapakka’ = pub).
With Google you get about 8 000 results with search term “goes America”, and 25 000 with “go America”. In some of them America is the subject of the sentence, but in some of them it is used in the same way as in the Finnish slogans. What strikes me in the latter case is that so many of the net sites are Finnish or German.
Now is this structure just bad grammar from Finnish slogan-makers who didn’t do their homework at school, or is it an idiom used also in the Anglo-Saxon world? I know the expression ‘go crazy’. Can a noun be also used?
Lately I’ve been curious about some odd terms for describing American currency (even though I am an American myself).
1. Why is one thousand referred to as “grand” (i.e. one hundred grand)? And how did it degenerate into G (i.e. “5 G’s if you get this right”)?
2. Where did “bucks” come from? It seems to have no relation whatsoever to “dollars” and, although it’s easier to say, how the heck did it come to be?
I have this impression that American orthography started to differ slightly from the British spelling because the emigrants sort of started from a clean table in their writing, and spelling grew closer to pronunciation. Americans write ‘realize’, ‘organize’, ‘Elizabeth’, while Brits write ‘realise’, ‘organise’, ‘Elisabeth’: when said aloud, the words have a voiced sibilant, hence the ’z’ instead of ’s’.
Also vice versa. The clearly sounding ’r’ in American pronunciation in words like ’word’, ’bird’, ’are’, should, according to my knowledge, derive from the same liaison between speaking and writing: because it is written, it can also be heard. The audible ’r’ is a kind of relic that has worn off from the British pronunciation.
Is this so?
Does anyone knows what “V-cards” mean? I was at a Hotel reception in Spain and there were a bunch of American teenagers around. One of them just said to the other “Go race some V-cards” by which he surely meant “shut up” and it was supposed to be offensive. I asked two of my American friends the next day and they said they had no idea what that could have been. I’m almost sure I heard it correctly because there was a Spanish girl among those teenagers who asked “what’s V-cards” and one of the American girls explained to her in a low voice that I could not hear. Though the word “race” might’ve been “raise” or something like that!
On my way to work every morning I happen to pass a particular billboard expounding the services of a mortgage maid (or whatever the technical term happens to be... loan officer possibly?) On this billboard is a sad attempt at wit wherein the LO has her son standing next to her profile wearing what is presumably his Karate uniform.
Above them both, a caption reads “‘My mom is a black belt at mortgage!’”
My contention, beyond the obvious missing s from mortgage, is that “in” should replace “at”, so that it instead reads, “My mom is a black belt in mortgages!”
I realize if we somehow verbed the word mortgage (and yes, I realize verb itself isn’t a verb), we could use at in a classically technical sense. Consider “I am proficient at mortgaging” as an example. However, the idea of the classification “black belt” makes this null and void as far as I see it. Since we’re speaking of a particular class within an imagined range of expertise at a subject, then “in” becomes the default modifier regardless of a verb or noun ending.
To put it more concisely, since “black belt” is a particular class of status to the relative noun, then there is really no way to use “at” as the correct preposition.
Do I get the black belt IN grammar or am I clearly far too obsessed with this particular imagined injustice to be a well-developed individual.
Thank you in advance,
-Q
Does anybody know why the ‘n’ in the word ‘autumn’ is silent? May it be possible that the ‘n’ sound got lost somewhere at some point in the historical development of English? Or maybe our ancestors mispronounced this word and such is the case up to this day? Or is it just a matter of the English phonology system, which does not allow for pronouncing ‘mn’ clusters? Can any phonologist help?
For example: “a couple of things” vs “a couple things”
I know “a couple of things” is grammatically correct, but I also often hear couple used without the “of”, and by educated people.
Now I’m confused. Isn’t “couple things” wrong?
If I am writing someone’s name and the name is Lux, do I write Lux’ or Lux’s to show possesion?
