Completely unimportant language misuses that bug you

[Aedilred]

I do my best to always split infinitives.

Then you're as bad as the people who never split them, if not worse.

[Jay R]

I believe the "never split infinitives" fake rule comes from Latinophiles who insisted English should be more like Latin - which literally can't split infinitives the way English can.

Honestly, any "rule" in English that seems counterintuitive is probably due to 18th century nerds trying to turn English into Latin.

That's actually correct, if a little over-simplified. Latin grammar was one of the seven liberal arts which any educated person had studied. It takes little more to convince you that it must be "correct" grammar, and try to enforce rules like not ending sentences with prepositions and not splitting infinitives, which cannot be done in Latin.

If they instead the German language had studied, then like this they perhaps the English language to be structured would have insisted.

[Peelee]

Then you're as bad as the people who never split them, if not worse.

[Citation needed]

[Bohandas]

That's actually correct, if a little over-simplified. Latin grammar was one of the seven liberal arts which any educated person had studied. It takes little more to convince you that it must be "correct" grammar, and try to enforce rules like not ending sentences with prepositions and not splitting infinitives, which cannot be done in Latin.

If they instead the German language had studied, then like this they perhaps the English language to be structured would have insisted.

And IIRC a period of French influence was the source of most weird british spellings like "colour" and "theatre"

[Bohandas]

What isn't how you pluralize a compound noun? See: passers-by and sisters-in-law. Compound nouns where the "noun" part is the first word get the plural part affixed to the first word; compound nouns where the noun is that last word get the plural affixed to the last word. To many people (including the poster you were responding to) the latter intuitively sounds right in all cases, even if the reasoning for why the former case exists makes logical sense.

What intuitively sounds right to most English speakers is correct English

Also, what's so fatuous about intellectual property? You have no more inherent right to claim you own something you can hold in your hand than you do to claim you own an idea you came up with. "Actual property that you can hold in your hand" is just as much a social construct as intellectual property - ideas are nouns too, you know, and if you can own one type of noun, why (theoretically, at any rate) can't you own another (apart from moral reasons)?

But it is immoral, it's a form of artificial scarecity.

Imagine if food or water could be replicated as trivially as an mpeg of Fantasia but the government said you weren't allowed to because they wanted to prop up the supermarkets and restaurants.

Actually, I should stop. I find it both insulting and angering that you called intellectual property fatuous. That's like calling human rights fatuous. They are both social constructs, after all, and they both have high importance to a civilized society that values things I value, like individuality and creativity.

How is stifling creativity and culture good for society? There are no truly original ideas, they don't come out of thin air, everything is developed upon things prior. The more of those prior things that are legally usable the more enriched our culture will become.

Plus, wouldn't you like to see the x-men in a movie with the rest of the marvel comics universe again

[Jormengand]

Not actually a misuse, but:
I hate that the pluralization of "attorney general" is "attorneys general," instead of "attorney generals" or "attorneys generals." I understand why it is the way it is, but it still sounds weird to me.

Honestly, "Knight templars" makes me cringe.

But it is immoral, it's a form of artificial scarecity.

Imagine if food or water could be replicated as trivially as an mpeg of Fantasia but the government said you weren't allowed to because they wanted to prop up the supermarkets and restaurants.

I do hear that farmers and filmmakers both enjoy money, living, and related things.

But more to the point, food is a necessity. Videos are not. Restricting access to videos to those willing to support the makers makes sense. Restricting access to food to people willing to support the makers doesn't make the same kind of sense in the same way.

[Bohandas]

I do hear that farmers and filmmakers both enjoy money, living, and related things.

So do lamplighters, swordsmiths, and candlemakers.

[Green Elf]

"Pronounciaton" is annoying. Especially when people say it. It's "proNUNciation".

[Vinyadan]

That's actually correct, if a little over-simplified. Latin grammar was one of the seven liberal arts which any educated person had studied. It takes little more to convince you that it must be "correct" grammar, and try to enforce rules like not ending sentences with prepositions and not splitting infinitives, which cannot be done in Latin.

If they instead the German language had studied, then like this they perhaps the English language to be structured would have insisted.

What is weird is that the liberal art was actually called "grammar", and "grammar" meant "Latin language". People were fully aware of the fact that it followed different rules from the everyday language. Dante wrote a book containing reflections about this stuff around 1304.

[Citation needed]

"Whoever wins, we lose".

[factotum]

And IIRC a period of French influence was the source of most weird british spellings like "colour" and "theatre"

Those spellings came to English from Latin, via Old French. The reason the US uses a different spelling is largely down to Webster's attempts to simplify English spelling in his 1828 dictionary.

[Fiery Diamond]

What intuitively sounds right to most English speakers is correct English




But it is immoral, it's a form of artificial scarecity.

Imagine if food or water could be replicated as trivially as an mpeg of Fantasia but the government said you weren't allowed to because they wanted to prop up the supermarkets and restaurants.



How is stifling creativity and culture good for society? There are no truly original ideas, they don't come out of thin air, everything is developed upon things prior. The more of those prior things that are legally usable the more enriched our culture will become.

Plus, wouldn't you like to see the x-men in a movie with the rest of the marvel comics universe again

You have a very backwards view of creativity if you think IP stifles rather than enhances it. What one owns, one cares about. I'd much rather pay to partake of the fruits of someone else's labors than have others steal the fruits of mine. Now, do I think that corporations and estates should have limitless access to IP rights? No, because I think the purpose of IP is to protect the property of people, and (legal interpretations notwithstanding) corporations are not people and inherited rights shouldn't be indefinite for anything.

Also, the idea that artificial scarcity is automatically a bad thing no matter what we're talking about is laughable. Needs and wants are not the same thing.

Edit: For what it's worth though, I don't like the way our copyright laws are written. Creative Commons is much better.

[Peelee]

"Whoever wins, we lose".

If I ever advocated that others do it as well, you may have a point. As it is, i don't, and you don't.

[Xuc Xac]

Those spellings came to English from Latin, via Old French. The reason the US uses a different spelling is largely down to Webster's attempts to simplify English spelling in his 1828 dictionary.

Those spellings came from Anglo-French, who added the extra "u" to a lot of Latin words because they pronounced them differently. "Colour" is just "color" in Latin.

[Quoxis]

I didn't read all 20 pages of this thread (out of fear my eyeballs might explode), but did anyone bring up "their/they're/there" yet?

"I like kensai monks because their the best at using there favorite weapons, but they're are other cool classes i guess."




Also: darn english and its genderless nouns! I made a fool of myself years ago when i wrongly assigned a gender to the word "player", referring to my girlfriend as one, therefore calling her "he" - in my native language it makes sense, in english it made me involuntarily gay.

[factotum]

Also: darn english and its genderless nouns! I made a fool of myself years ago when i wrongly assigned a gender to the word "player", referring to my girlfriend as one, therefore calling her "he" - in my native language it makes sense, in english it made me involuntarily gay.

As you say, English nouns are genderless, so referring to your girlfriend using a word like "player" doesn't imply anything about her gender?

[Vinyadan]

As you say, English nouns are genderless, so referring to your girlfriend using a word like "player" doesn't imply anything about her gender?

Argh, this is hard to explain in English... let's put it this way:

if I correctly understood what the poster meant:

he, she, it are pronouns. This means that they substitute nouns, and they must take the gender of the noun they are referring to.

English however doesn't have many nouns with implicit gender, and they always refer to the gender of the person they are referring to. So the pronoun will always have the gender of the person, and ignore the gender of the noun.

In German and Italian and likely many other languages, common nouns have an implicit gender that doesn't need to match up with the person's gender. The typical example is the German word for "girl", which is neutrum: the fact that it refers to a female person is contained in its meaning, but not in its grammatical gender. So if you say "I like that girl, because she's very kind", in German you say "I like that girl, because it's very kind". But, if the girl's name had been Julia and you had used her name, you would have said "I like Julia, because she's very kind", no "it", because "it" is the pronoun representing "girl", while "she" is the pronoun representing "Julia", which is a feminine noun.

So if "player" is masculine in German, the poster likely mixed up and said something like "Of course I know that player, I'm in a relationship with him", because he was using "him" to refer to the noun "player" and thus using the grammatical gender of "player", instead to that of that person's name. While he could have instead said, "Of course I know Julia, I'm in a relationship with her."

[veti]

Also: darn english and its genderless nouns! I made a fool of myself years ago when i wrongly assigned a gender to the word "player", referring to my girlfriend as one, therefore calling her "he" - in my native language it makes sense, in english it made me involuntarily gay.

So... you mistakenly assigned a gender to a noun, and you're blaming that on the one language concerned that doesn't force you to do that? Hmm.

[Bohandas]

So... you mistakenly assigned a gender to a noun, and you're blaming that on the one language concerned that doesn't force you to do that? Hmm.

Yeah. That's like the one place where English actually makes sense.

[2D8HP]

Yeah. That's like the one place where English actually makes sense.

That English lacks grammatical gender may be due to the Danelaw:

"Old English and Norse were also both Germanic languages, meaning the words’ roots were similar but the inflectional endings would be slightly different. It’s not far off to hypothesize that these inflectional endings dropped off as the two languages co-existed in the area (and eventually moved farther south)."

(source)

[factotum]

That English lacks grammatical gender may be due to the Danelaw:

"Old English and Norse were also both Germanic languages, meaning the words’ roots were similar but the inflectional endings would be slightly different. It’s not far off to hypothesize that these inflectional endings dropped off as the two languages co-existed in the area (and eventually moved farther south)."

(source)

I doubt it was any single thing like that which caused the shift. It might well be more after the Norman Conquest, where you had lots of Old Norse being spoken in the northern parts of the country where the Danelaw still held sway, Anglo-Saxon being spoken by peasants elsewhere, and Norman French by the new rulers--I'm guessing the gender assigned to particular objects in those three languages were different, so it caused less confusion to ignore the gender.

[Bohandas]

That English lacks grammatical gender may be due to the Danelaw:

"Old English and Norse were also both Germanic languages, meaning the words’ roots were similar but the inflectional endings would be slightly different. It’s not far off to hypothesize that these inflectional endings dropped off as the two languages co-existed in the area (and eventually moved farther south)."

(source)

The bigger question than why it left is where the heck it came from in the first place and why. I'm sure someone here probably has an answer for the where part but why is probably going to be harder

[Velaryon]

You have a very backwards view of creativity if you think IP stifles rather than enhances it. What one owns, one cares about. I'd much rather pay to partake of the fruits of someone else's labors than have others steal the fruits of mine. Now, do I think that corporations and estates should have limitless access to IP rights? No, because I think the purpose of IP is to protect the property of people, and (legal interpretations notwithstanding) corporations are not people and inherited rights shouldn't be indefinite for anything.

Also, the idea that artificial scarcity is automatically a bad thing no matter what we're talking about is laughable. Needs and wants are not the same thing.

Edit: For what it's worth though, I don't like the way our copyright laws are written. Creative Commons is much better.

I'd say it does both, due to the overly restrictive nature of modern copyright law and the ever-growing length of copyrights. I suspect you're aware of this given what you've said, but for the benefit of anyone who isn't:

Some concept of intellectual property is necessary in a capitalistic society. If there is going to be such a thing as a person who makes their living on creative pursuits (writing, making movies, designing video games, etc.), then there needs to be some legal protection against others taking the fruits of that creative labor and using it as their own. It's the same reason why we have laws against plagiarism.

The problem is that copyrights go on for so very, very long anymore (I believe in the US we are up to 70 years after the death of the creator), and that many copyrights are held by people and especially corporations with a lot of money and a vested interest in spending that money both in lobbying for even stronger copyright law, and for paying armies of lawyers to enforce said copyrights. That can indeed lead to an environment of stifling intellectual creativity, as creative works can easily take 100+ years to enter the public domain. Anyone could write a sequel to Uncle Tom's Cabin if they wanted to, but write a new Mickey Mouse story without Disney's permission and you'll lose every penny you own and then some.

But this is off-topic, so if it's even something that can be discussed within forum rules, it should probably have its own thread.

[Bohandas]

Can we at least all agree that the specific system we have is worse than nothing?

And getting back on topic, can anyone explain where europe's languages' grammarical genders came from? They seem to serve no purpose other than to needlessly complicate the languages.

[Gnoman]

Can we at least all agree that the specific system we have is worse than nothing?

And getting back on topic, can anyone explain where europe's languages' grammarical genders came from? They seem to serve no purpose other than to needlessly complicate the languages.

Grammatical genders appear to predate the Hittite language, which is probably the oldest language known today. The only people that could answer your question appear to have been dead for more then five thousand years.

[Quoxis]

Argh, this is hard to explain in English... let's put it this way:

if I correctly understood what the poster meant:

he, she, it are pronouns. This means that they substitute nouns, and they must take the gender of the noun they are referring to.

English however doesn't have many nouns with implicit gender, and they always refer to the gender of the person they are referring to. So the pronoun will always have the gender of the person, and ignore the gender of the noun.

In German and Italian and likely many other languages, common nouns have an implicit gender that doesn't need to match up with the person's gender. The typical example is the German word for "girl", which is neutrum: the fact that it refers to a female person is contained in its meaning, but not in its grammatical gender. So if you say "I like that girl, because she's very kind", in German you say "I like that girl, because it's very kind". But, if the girl's name had been Julia and you had used her name, you would have said "I like Julia, because she's very kind", no "it", because "it" is the pronoun representing "girl", while "she" is the pronoun representing "Julia", which is a feminine noun.

So if "player" is masculine in German, the poster likely mixed up and said something like "Of course I know that player, I'm in a relationship with him", because he was using "him" to refer to the noun "player" and thus using the grammatical gender of "player", instead to that of that person's name. While he could have instead said, "Of course I know Julia, I'm in a relationship with her."

Couldn't have explained it better myself (or even as good). Thanks, mate.

So... you mistakenly assigned a gender to a noun, and you're blaming that on the one language concerned that doesn't force you to do that? Hmm.

Yes. I blame it for being possibly the only language that doesn't have gendered nouns. Italian, german, french, latin, spanish, probably even mandarin, every language uses that system. Ingrish, y u so genderless?

[factotum]

Yes. I blame it for being possibly the only language that doesn't have gendered nouns.

English *does* have gendered nouns for situations where gender is relevant--e.g. "man", "woman", "king", "queen" etc. Why is it necessary that, say, a table have a gender? If it's feminine do you have to cover up its legs to stop the men getting too excited around it?

[Xuc Xac]

Yes. I blame it for being possibly the only language that doesn't have gendered nouns. Italian, german, french, latin, spanish, probably even mandarin, every language uses that system. Ingrish, y u so genderless?

Only 25% of languages have grammatical gender. English is not the odd one here.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I try to stick to the yellow sauce rule when using language.

Someone ones asked me for the yellow sauce, I passed him the bright pink whisky cocktail sauce, that's the sauce he wanted.

So the rule is: if someone understood what you meant, you used language right.

It saves me a lot of correcting people, which I typically only try to do if they themselves keep correcting people. If I manage to correct someone on the same issue they keep nagging people about, or better yet correct a correction they made wrongly, those are epic victories I remember forever.

[Vinyadan]

English isn't genderless, as others have noticed. It just has a lot of names that can be both masculine and feminine depending on context. You still have waiter and waitress, steward and stewardess, and a few more words of this kind.
Some changes were recent, like nations not being a she, and I remember reading some texts in which animal species had grammatical gender (a nightingale was a she, for example, probably because of mythology; this is a fuzzy memory, however).

But you have a field in which there is a plethora of gendered names, and it's animal husbandry. This is true for English, too. Now, these names may be older than grammatical gender (to keep English, when you have cow and bull, you may as well have only one grammatical gender, because the words are different enough to separate male from female). However, there are a lot of animals out there which you don't raise yourself. They really are many. It's difficult to have a specialised name for male and female. How do you call the thrush that makes egg and sits on them, compared to the thrush that doesn't? (I didn't check thrush sitting behaviour, it's just a general guess). Or the bear that roams around with little bears and will kill you if you disturb them, compared to the male? Or the she-wolf?
It's all much easier, if you can just add a little tail to the word to determine that it's female. (this is just my theory btw).

Which is actually what English does in a periphrastic way with stuff like she-wolf. It's like verbs, English has more or less the same moods as other languages, but uses periphrasis, while others use endings. E.g. Italian mangerò = English "I will eat", with mang- being the root (eat), -er- the future ending (will), and -ò the first person singular form (I).

The big difference however is that grammatical gender has a life of its own. There are many reasons for this. Sometimes, the female form was used as a plural for the genderless form, as a collective singular (I guess that you can't suddenly have a female "broken ceramic piece", so you could say ostraka as plural of ostrakon without fear of being misunderstood). And, occasionally, this plural could become a word of its own. So you had a singular feminine that wasn't referring to a female creature. Other times you had meanings being transferred. Then you have whole name categories that take up feminine, like Latin action nouns: deditio, collisio, actio are all words built upon a verb by adding a female suffix to its past participle form. Then you have abstract nouns with feminine endings (eleutheria = freedom, juventus = youth). There probably are studies about why they chose feminine for these forms, but I currently don't know about them.

English essentially did away with these cases in which grammatical gender didn't match up with physical gender.

[factotum]

It's all much easier, if you can just add a little tail to the word to determine that it's female. (this is just my theory btw).

I don't really see that as being different to just adding an additional small word to correctly gender specify the following noun--for instance, the female thrush would generally be called the hen thrush, and I suspect the forum word filter will prevent me saying what the usual term for the male one would be.