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  1. - Top - End - #31
    Archmage in the Playground Moderator
     
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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    Quote Originally Posted by georgie_leech View Post
    What can I say, I can accept that irregardless is now a word, even if I twitch a little every time I hear it
    The most interesting/irksome change I see happening within my own lifetime is the use of an apostrophe and an s -'s- to denote a plural. Ten years ago it was something I'd have made fun of someone for. Now I see it on memo from very well-respected executives and business leaders, and I'm starting to see it in actual marketing out in the real world.

    Drives me nuts. But I get it. Language changes. I just remind myself that, not that long ago, 'access' was something you had, not something you did. And that the number of times I split infinitives or end sentences with prepositions ("made fun of someone for") would have scandalized my elementary teachers.
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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    Does anyone know when people started writing English genitives with an apostrophe? I don't know other languages that do that.
    Quote Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
    I thought Tom Bombadil dreadful — but worse still was the announcer's preliminary remarks that Goldberry was his daughter (!), and that Willowman was an ally of Mordor (!!).

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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    As far as I know, it came into English from the way it's used in French to denote missing letters. And English at the time used -es as an ending to denote both plural and possession. Why the apostrophe came to be used for one and not the other, I don't know.
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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    Quote Originally Posted by Vinyadan View Post
    Does anyone know when people started writing English genitives with an apostrophe? I don't know other languages that do that.
    The apostrophe indicates missing letters such as in contractions like "can not --> can't". The genitives always have the apostrophe because we stopped using the fully expanded forms of the words: "doges collar --> dog's collar". It's not the only place where English stopped using the full forms of words. You can see "won't" every day, but you never see "woll not" anymore.

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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    Quote Originally Posted by Xuc Xac View Post
    You can see "won't" every day, but you never see "woll not" anymore.
    You only assume I willn't!
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  6. - Top - End - #36
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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
    You only assume I willn't!
    I'm fairly certain it should be "wiln't".
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    Rockphed said it well.
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  7. - Top - End - #37
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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    Quote Originally Posted by Xuc Xac View Post
    because we stopped using the fully expanded forms of the words: "doges collar --> dog's collar".
    That bit of grammar only survives now in phrases such as 'filthy Hobbitses' and 'hates Bagginses forever.'
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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    Quote Originally Posted by Rockphed View Post
    I'm fairly certain it should be "wiln't".
    That's the British version.
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  9. - Top - End - #39
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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
    That's the British version.
    I believe in England it's pronounced "innit."
    Last edited by truemane; 2019-04-13 at 09:33 PM.
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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    Quote Originally Posted by truemane View Post
    I believe in England it's pronounced "innit."
    That's a real sep'ret bit of slang now, innit?
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  11. - Top - End - #41
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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    Quote Originally Posted by lesser_minion View Post
    So, just responding to the last post Bohandas made last thread (and possibly embarassing myself):



    It's not a place name I've heard spoken aloud before, tbh, but the way I'd try to pronounce it "how it's spelled" comes out as something like 'ba-loan-ya', with the first syllable rhyming with the start of 'balloon' and the third syllable getting the same treatment as the 'gn' sequence in 'gnocchi', 'champignon', or the Spanish n-squiggle thing.

    There doesn't seem like that much drift from there to 'baloney'. Or indeed from where you'd get if you didn't pronounce the 'g' at all ('ba-loan-ah').
    So, should I ever want lasagna in an English-speaking diner, I would have to order some lasoney?
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  12. - Top - End - #42
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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    Quote Originally Posted by Fyraltari View Post
    So, should I ever want lasagna in an English-speaking diner, I would have to order some lasoney?
    Can't speak for lesser_minion but *I'd* pronounce that something like "lasarnya". No idea if that's even close to the original.

  13. - Top - End - #43
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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    It is. Except for that random r.
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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    With my pedant hat on, I should note that the Italians call it "lasagne" as, if we're being strict about it, should we. A "lasagna" is a single sheet of pasta. Since the dish contains multiple sheets, it's lasagne (or lasagne al forno if you want to be specific) in the same way as we have a plate of spaghetti, not spaghetto.

    With that said I'm not entirely sure that the English "lasagna" (which seems to be an American-only usage, ime) is directly derived from the singular Italian "lasagna" anyway or whether it is just rendering of the final vowel in "lasagne" in what sounds phonetically appropriate to an Anglophone ear (while apparently ignoring the phonetics of the rest of the word).
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  15. - Top - End - #45
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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    Quote Originally Posted by Aedilred View Post
    With that said I'm not entirely sure that the English "lasagna" (which seems to be an American-only usage, ime)
    What do you call it in the UK?
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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
    What do you call it in the UK?
    When I was there and ate it in restaurants, “lasagna”.

    Always served last of the whole table and boiling hot, which meant you couldn’t get started before everyone else was done.

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    But really, the important lesson here is this: Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?
    Ceterum autem censeo Hilgya malefica est

  17. - Top - End - #47
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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
    What do you call it in the UK?
    Lasagne. Round my way at least.
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  18. - Top - End - #48
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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    Quote Originally Posted by Aedilred View Post
    Lasagne. Round my way at least.
    Y'all should use the English word for it instead of randomly slipping into Italian, then.
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  19. - Top - End - #49
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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    Huh. I've been calling it "lasagnas".

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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    A few weeks ago at the grocery store I asked if they had any more gluten-free cakes. The young lady replied that they were SALE-DID. I am extremely tempted to ask at the grocery store if this is a term that they use for selling items on sale.

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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    What does that mean? "Salted"?
    Quote Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
    I thought Tom Bombadil dreadful — but worse still was the announcer's preliminary remarks that Goldberry was his daughter (!), and that Willowman was an ally of Mordor (!!).

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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    Quote Originally Posted by darkrose50 View Post
    SALE-DID.
    Sold out?

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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    Sold out.
    Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.

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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
    Y'all should use the English word for it instead of randomly slipping into Italian, then.
    In the UK it's written "lasagne" but pronounced as the English word (with a final schwa) rather than the Italian word with /e/.

  25. - Top - End - #55
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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    The English word used to be "loseyns", but that was about 600 years ago, in the days before tomatoes.

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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    Quote Originally Posted by Fyraltari View Post
    So, should I ever want lasagna in an English-speaking diner, I would have to order some lasoney?
    Something like 'luh-zan-yuh' here. Which I'd also say just about qualifies as "how it's spelled", in that it's pretty intuitive as long as you know that it's not an English word (EDIT: unless you're feeling pedantic).

    To continue the theme of food-related language misuses, there's always pronouncing 'paella' as 'pie-ell-uh', although I'm half-expecting to be told that that's actually correct and that only clueless English people try to pronounce it as 'pie-ay-uh'.
    Last edited by lesser_minion; 2019-04-18 at 03:04 PM.

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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    Quote Originally Posted by lesser_minion View Post
    although I'm half-expecting to be told that that's actually correct and that only clueless English people try to pronounce it as 'pie-ay-uh'.
    Or, worse yet, "actually, we really just call it 'rice with ____', it's only the foreigners that call it paella, regardless of pronunciation." I can't think of the actual example, but something vaguely like that happened with me.

  28. - Top - End - #58
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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    Quote Originally Posted by lesser_minion View Post
    Something like 'luh-zan-yuh' here. Which I'd also say just about qualifies as "how it's spelled", in that it's pretty intuitive as long as you know that it's not an English word.
    But it is, vis-a-vis the English language's unchecked imperialism and laissez-faire approach to vocabulary.

    Fun fact, I used only English words in that sentence.
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  29. - Top - End - #59
    Ettin in the Playground
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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    Funny. Being a German-speaker comes along with the knowledge that we will pronounce stuff differently and we're simply unable to pronounce certain things phonetically right without practice. We're pretty aware how it sounds when we "localize" terms and that they're more or less unrecognizable after the fact, which is quite often the butt of jokes around here, so most of us try to actually learn to phrase stuff in their original language.

    As in, when talking amongst friends, family and acquaintances, we tend to use the "localized" terms when speaking about something like penne, spaghetti, lasagne and such, which will probably be pretty alien to outsiders, beyond that, we try to go for a proper pronunciation, mostly based on the "high" version of a language, else a commonly understood regional variant.

    A "reverse miss-use": My native dialect is Bavarian, which is a good mix of German, Italian and French, which doesn't posses any written form and has very opaque rules borrowed from the roots of three different languages. In short, you write as you think that the words might sound. We started to use bavarian in our company group chat - 12 out of 15 employees are now complaining that they cannot understand a thing and that they cannot follow our conversation, like, at all.

    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
    But it is, vis-a-vis the English language's unchecked imperialism and laissez-faire approach to vocabulary.

    Fun fact, I used only English words in that sentence.
    Right, right....
    Last edited by Florian; 2019-04-18 at 02:50 PM.

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    Default Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II

    Quote Originally Posted by Florian View Post
    Funny. Being a German-speaker comes along with the knowledge that we will pronounce stuff differently and we're simply unable to pronounce certain things phonetically right without practice. We're pretty aware how it sounds when we "localize" terms and that they're more or less unrecognizable after the fact, which is quite often the butt of jokes around here, so most of us try to actually learn to phrase stuff in their original language.
    An interaction between one of my cousin's SO and a waiter in an alpine restaurant sometime back in the early aughts:

    Cousin's SO: Spaetzle, bitte. (pronounced spehch-leh)

    Waiter: Spaetzle? (pronounces spaa-chl, IIRC)

    CSO: Spehchleh.

    W: Spaachl?

    CSO: *sigh* Spaachl.

    W: *goes off to put the order in*

    CSO, to me: ****ing tourists.
    German sounds fun.
    Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.

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