Results 31 to 60 of 231
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2019-04-13, 10:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2007
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- Grognardia
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Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II
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.(Avatar by Cuthalion, who is great.)
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2019-04-13, 11:02 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2009
- Gender
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.
Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
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2019-04-13, 12:29 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2007
- Location
- Grognardia
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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.
(Avatar by Cuthalion, who is great.)
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2019-04-13, 03:32 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2010
Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II
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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2019-04-13, 04:06 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2009
- Location
- Birmingham, AL
- Gender
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2019-04-13, 08:26 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2006
- Location
- Watching the world go by
- Gender
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2019-04-13, 09:26 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2007
- Location
- Grognardia
- Gender
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2019-04-13, 09:27 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2009
- Location
- Birmingham, AL
- Gender
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2019-04-13, 09:32 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2007
- Location
- Grognardia
- Gender
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2019-04-13, 11:23 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2011
- Location
- Calgary, AB
- Gender
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2019-04-15, 12:54 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2017
- Location
- France
- Gender
Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II
Forum Wisdom
Mage avatar by smutmulch & linklele.
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2019-04-15, 01:12 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2007
- Location
- Manchester, UK
- Gender
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2019-04-15, 02:00 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2017
- Location
- France
- Gender
Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II
It is. Except for that random r.
Forum Wisdom
Mage avatar by smutmulch & linklele.
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2019-04-15, 01:00 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2006
- Location
- Bristol
- Gender
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).GITP Blood Bowl Manager Cup
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Spoiler: Previous Avatars(by Strawberries)
(by Rain Dragon)
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2019-04-15, 01:05 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2009
- Location
- Birmingham, AL
- Gender
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2019-04-15, 01:12 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2007
Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II
Interested in MitD? Join us in MitD's thread.There is a world of imagination
Deep in the corners of your mind
Where reality is an intruder
And myth and legend thrive
Ceterum autem censeo Hilgya malefica est
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2019-04-15, 03:57 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2006
- Location
- Bristol
- Gender
Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II
GITP Blood Bowl Manager Cup
Red Sabres - Season I Cup Champions, two-time Cup Semifinalists
Anlec Razors - Two-time Cup Semifinalists
Bad Badenhof Bats - Season VII Cup Champions
League Wiki
Spoiler: Previous Avatars(by Strawberries)
(by Rain Dragon)
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2019-04-15, 08:17 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2009
- Location
- Birmingham, AL
- Gender
Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II
Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.
Number of times Roland St. Jude has sworn revenge upon me: 2
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2019-04-15, 10:23 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2007
- Location
- France
- Gender
Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II
Huh. I've been calling it "lasagnas".
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2019-04-16, 08:02 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2009
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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2019-04-16, 08:21 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2009
- Gender
Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II
What does that mean? "Salted"?
Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
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2019-04-16, 09:13 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2013
- Location
- Bristol, UK
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2019-04-16, 09:24 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2009
- Location
- Birmingham, AL
- Gender
Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II
Sold out.
Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.
Number of times Roland St. Jude has sworn revenge upon me: 2
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2019-04-16, 09:42 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2006
- Location
- Mangholi Dask
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2019-04-16, 11:05 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2015
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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2019-04-18, 02:08 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2008
- Location
- Bristol, UK
Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II
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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2019-04-18, 02:16 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2015
Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II
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2019-04-18, 02:37 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2009
- Location
- Birmingham, AL
- Gender
Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II
Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.
Number of times Roland St. Jude has sworn revenge upon me: 2
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2019-04-18, 02:44 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2015
- Location
- Berlin
- Gender
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.
Right, right....Last edited by Florian; 2019-04-18 at 02:50 PM.
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2019-04-18, 02:58 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2009
- Location
- Birmingham, AL
- Gender
Re: Unimportant 'Language Missuses' 2: Mother May II
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.Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.
Number of times Roland St. Jude has sworn revenge upon me: 2