Odd sayings we still use that might not make sense...
- Thread starter Warped9
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That's it in a nutshell. Any native English speaker with a sixth-grade education should know how to use the auxiliary verb have, and that could've, would've, should've, etc. are contractions of could have, would have, should have, etc. But people write words the way they sound, rather than what they learned in school umpteen years ago.Anecdotal evidence, but I remember teachers having to correct kids in my elementary school class for writing "could of" way back in the days of TNG's first run. There is a certain poster around here who insists on writing it that way, because "that's what it sounds like."
"A whole 'nother (thing)" is a humorous colloquialism. It's like saying "If you think (such-and-such), well, you've got another think coming!" Or "If I had my druthers, I druther . . . " as a humorous take on "I'd rather."
There's a place for formal and precise language, and then there's a place for just having fun with words.
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^and there is a also a shocking number of native speakers who are unable to distinguish between there, there're and their, his and he's, hangar and hanger.
What I find most irritating is that there are many writers - even famous ones! - have trouble with the correct use of "may". "He hinted at X that he may be wrong" is exactly that (wrong, that is). It's supposed to be: "he hinted at X that he might be wrong".
Not to mention treating irregular verbs as regular ones. (He lighted a cigarette instead of he lit a cigarette / he sleeped instead of he slept).
However, all that seems to be no recent development. After all, Shaw already made fun of that phenomenon in Pygmalion when one of his characters says something like: "she must be a foreigner - no englishwoman speaks such perfect English".
What I find most irritating is that there are many writers - even famous ones! - have trouble with the correct use of "may". "He hinted at X that he may be wrong" is exactly that (wrong, that is). It's supposed to be: "he hinted at X that he might be wrong".
Not to mention treating irregular verbs as regular ones. (He lighted a cigarette instead of he lit a cigarette / he sleeped instead of he slept).
However, all that seems to be no recent development. After all, Shaw already made fun of that phenomenon in Pygmalion when one of his characters says something like: "she must be a foreigner - no englishwoman speaks such perfect English".
Just to use your example: "historic" and "history" come to the English language via the French histoire, in which the h is silent. Though it does not carry across all regional dialects, you may note that British English speakers using Received Pronunciation / BBC English / Oxbridge English often pronounce "history" with a silent h, therefore the use of "an" is perfectly correct.I get very tired of Ann the historian.
Seems like she is everywhere, these days.
"An historian...." "An historical... " Etc.
The h is not silent. It's not the sound of 'an iss'....
It sounds so awkward....and, 40 years ago when I was in grade school, this was quite basic and not difficult to learn.
In American English, the h is more commonly pronounced, but whether someone says "a historic" or "an 'istoric" is more a product of where they went to school and who their English teacher(s) happened to be than anything else.
Either way, it's not the sort of hill worth making a big show of dying on.
It's also a pronunciation quirk, and not an odd saying which today may seem nonsensical due to having lost its earlier context, and thus kind of out of place in this thread.
And in the musical adaptation My Fair Lady, Prof. Henry Higgins says: "There even are places where English completely disappears. In America they haven't used it for years!"
^interesting link. There are so many phrases who have a/-n history that is widely unknown. I can remember seemingly illogical phrases much better if I know the sttory behind them.
Speaking of which: am I right to assume that "way to go" is an abbreviation for "you had a long way to go to" (many obstacles to deal with) ?
Speaking of which: am I right to assume that "way to go" is an abbreviation for "you had a long way to go to" (many obstacles to deal with) ?
"Way to go" is an informal phrase of approval or encouragement. It's simply a shortened form of "That's the way to go!" (In other words, "You did right" or "You're doing right.")
Not sure how old you are, but I can say from experience that a crack in a record, in other words a "broken" record, would skip or repeat. A scratch would just sound like noise. A VERY deep scratch might cause a repeat or a skip, depending on the angle.
Talking about dialects and all that, it reminded me:
Linus Roache, an actor who is British IRL, played an assistant D.A. on Law & Order for a few years. He adopted a near-perfect New York accent for the role.
But I noticed a quirk: whenever he said a word which ended in a vowel, and followed it with another word which began with a vowel, he'd add a "rr" sound to the first word. For example, in one episode he was interviewing a witness named Emma and he kept calling her "Emmerr." Or in an episode preview he said something like "The law is more clear" but it came out as "The lawrr is..."
Is this a thing in British English? I've never heard any American talk like that..
Linus Roache, an actor who is British IRL, played an assistant D.A. on Law & Order for a few years. He adopted a near-perfect New York accent for the role.
But I noticed a quirk: whenever he said a word which ended in a vowel, and followed it with another word which began with a vowel, he'd add a "rr" sound to the first word. For example, in one episode he was interviewing a witness named Emma and he kept calling her "Emmerr." Or in an episode preview he said something like "The law is more clear" but it came out as "The lawrr is..."
Is this a thing in British English? I've never heard any American talk like that..
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You're close.
"The exception that proves the rule" means that because we state the exception, anything other than the exception(s) must follow the rule.
For example, "Killing another person is murder, except if it is accidental, in self-defense, or in defense of another." Because we have stated the possible exceptions, no other defense is available. In this case "proof" is somewhat archaic, but it means a tested standard, like "80 proof whiskey". If the exceptions were not specifically stated, then arguments abound.
This is very common in non-rhotic accents, I think it's called the "intrusive r." James Bond fans might remember Roger Moore and the villain "Scaramanger." President Kennedy said "Cubar" if followed by a vowel sound.
Many speakers of non-rhotic dialects, both British and American, use the so-called "intrusive R" or "linking R." It's the insertion of a R sound between a word that ends on an unstressed vowel and one that begins with a vowel, so that "Madonna and Child" sounds like "Madonner and Child" and "law of nature" sounds something like "lore of nature."
EDIT: Or, what J.T.B. said.
Ugh, that reminds me of the poster who was trying to make a dramatic-sounding entry with "Voila!" Except I guess he didn't know what the word actually was, and he rendered it phonetically as "walla". No exclamation point, either.
Way to go.
Way to go.
That was beautiful.Viola!
C
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"Pardon my French"
theres almost only swearing in France?? sacrebleau!
theres almost only swearing in France?? sacrebleau!
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