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Author Topic: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.  (Read 20914 times)

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GendoIkari

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Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.
« on: December 13, 2011, 03:44:28 pm »
+12

I've been finding myself typing "man," a lot before I say stuff online now. I'm quite sure it's because of reading so many of Donald's posts and his use of the phrase.
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theory

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Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.
« Reply #1 on: December 13, 2011, 03:45:22 pm »
+2

Man, I was just about to comment on this.
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Lekkit

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Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.
« Reply #2 on: December 13, 2011, 04:25:55 pm »
0

I haven't had that problem. Maby it's because I'm not a native English speaker... Man...
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Davio

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Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.
« Reply #3 on: December 13, 2011, 05:05:55 pm »
+2

I haven't had that problem. Maby it's because I'm not a native English speaker... Man...
I'm also not a native English speaker (Dutch), but I see myself starting a lot of senteces with "Well, ...".
Also, I am starting a lot of sentences with words like 'but' and 'also' although my English teacher told me not to.  ;D
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jonts26

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Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.
« Reply #4 on: December 13, 2011, 05:10:19 pm »
0

Also, I am starting a lot of sentences with words like 'but' and 'also' although my English teacher told me not to.  ;D

Well then, your English teacher lied to you. There is nothing grammatically wrong with starting a sentence with a conjunction. Also, you can definitely start one with also.
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Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.
« Reply #5 on: December 23, 2011, 06:21:01 pm »
0

Also, I am starting a lot of sentences with words like 'but' and 'also' although my English teacher told me not to.  ;D

Well then, your English teacher lied to you. There is nothing grammatically wrong with starting a sentence with a conjunction. Also, you can definitely start one with also.
It is normally wrong to start a sentence with a conjunction. I don't know why, it just is. I was taught it in 5th grade.
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Donald X.

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Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.
« Reply #6 on: December 23, 2011, 07:16:15 pm »
+19

It is normally wrong to start a sentence with a conjunction. I don't know why, it just is. I was taught it in 5th grade.
The first thing is to learn what it means to be "wrong" in a language. It's only "wrong" if you are the only one doing it. If a bunch of people do it, it's a dialect, and if everyone does it it's the language. There's no person who gets to say, "I declare this to be bad English" and have it be so. It's all about usage.

A lot of people refuse to accept this and well so much for that. It makes no more sense to cling to "whom" than it does to cling to "ye." Turning "they" into a singular pronoun is just as foolish as turning "you" into a singular pronoun was. Etc. ad infinitum.

The next thing is, grade school English teachers teach false things because it works out for them. For example they will have lots of kids writing sentences like "because his dog was dead." So they teach, "you can't start a sentence with because," even though there's no actual problem with starting a sentence with "because." It's easier for them than explaining how exactly clauses work.

That is what happened with your English teacher. Conjunctions start sentences just fine.
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Donald X.

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Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.
« Reply #7 on: December 23, 2011, 07:18:22 pm »
+9

Oh man, sry about the prescriptivist language rules rant in the thread celebrating the way I talk.
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chwhite

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Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.
« Reply #8 on: December 24, 2011, 02:12:19 pm »
0

I'm not a hardcore prescriptivist or anything: I like to flagrantly split infinitives, and the singular gender-neutral "they" is a great innovation that I'm all in favor of.  However, there is definitely value in knowing the "real" rules and understanding the situations where it's okay to break them, and there are some things that instinctively make me cringe. 

For example, when people make plural's like this.
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werothegreat

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Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.
« Reply #9 on: December 24, 2011, 02:35:50 pm »
+1

Being extremely interested in linguistics (I'm currently translating Dominion cards into my own made-up language <.<), I'm well aware that prescriptivism is silly.  However, it offends my sensibilities when people just don't know how to spell or use punctuation correctly, even if everyone else is doing it.  Part of me feels it should be a federal offense.  But that's just me.  And I didn't notice any particular speech patterns on this forum, but the internet has made me actually say "LOL" in my head (pronounced "lawl") whenever I find something amusing.
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Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.
« Reply #10 on: December 24, 2011, 03:01:13 pm »
0

I agree that even though it is happening a lot, that's no excuse for horrible grammar. I mean, slightly off grammar like mine is probably fine, because it doesn't really present a comprehension problem. Also, siple spelling mistakes should not be taken so seriously, although when people replace all their s' with z's and stuff like that, it just makes them look stupid.
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Donald X.

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Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.
« Reply #11 on: December 24, 2011, 04:55:52 pm »
+2

For example, when people make plural's like this.
It turns out apostrophes have been used for pluralization for as long as apostrophes have existed in English. They made plurals from day one. And some style guides still allow them today for pluralizing letters, and sometimes for pluralizing acronyms [citation needed].

Apostrophes (in English) originally always represented missing letters. For possessives, the missing letter is an "e."

Frank Zappa - Apostrophe
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Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.
« Reply #12 on: December 24, 2011, 05:36:57 pm »
0

This is slightly off topic, but I find it odd how Donald X has less "respect" than theory on this forum...
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Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.
« Reply #13 on: December 24, 2011, 06:54:29 pm »
0

This is slightly off topic, but I find it odd how Donald X has less "respect" than theory on this forum...
If you look at posts then respect and do posts/respect then you see that actually, Donald comes out with more respect. It is theory's posts that cause the extra respect.
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lympi

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Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.
« Reply #14 on: December 24, 2011, 10:47:13 pm »
+7

This is slightly off topic, but I find it odd how Donald X has less "respect" than theory on this forum...
If you look at posts then respect and do posts/respect then you see that actually, Donald comes out with more respect. It is theory's posts that cause the extra respect.

By that metric, I am better respected than theory! And only 3% less respected than Donald!

Well, after this post, more like 4%. Damn. I gotta stop posting. I'm losing respect.



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guided

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Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.
« Reply #15 on: December 25, 2011, 01:19:07 am »
0

Even hardcore prescriptivists allow that it's OK to start a sentence with a conjunction. Like, for example, the practice is specifically endorsed by the Chicago Manual of Style.
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Octo

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Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.
« Reply #16 on: January 02, 2012, 05:59:10 am »
+1

Of course language is a lot more fluid than hard-liners give it credit for, but then the flip-side can be slightly anarchic and needlessly cumbersome to interpret. My friends and I used to make up words all the time (I'm sure most people do), and it was our own sort language dialect, but was it really full English? Dunno. Sometimes things irk me, like use of the word Platina to mean Platinums (a word that is also made up basically), because often they're just needless and there's a perfectly good word for it already, but meh whatever. Most of the time people say these things tongue-in-cheek and it's just hard to tell in text. I find I might comment on it (I commented on a lack of comma in a book yesterday) just because I notice it, but I'm not thinking "that's wrong!", it's just a deviation, customisation, or usually an increasingly common modernisation of the rules.

(....man.)
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Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.
« Reply #17 on: January 02, 2012, 07:49:40 am »
+1

I'm currently translating Dominion cards into my own made-up language

That's gotta be the nerdiest thing I've read in a long time. Love it! :)
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Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.
« Reply #18 on: January 02, 2012, 07:52:01 am »
0

Of course language is a lot more fluid than hard-liners give it credit for, but then the flip-side can be slightly anarchic and needlessly cumbersome to interpret. My friends and I used to make up words all the time (I'm sure most people do), and it was our own sort language dialect, but was it really full English? Dunno. Sometimes things irk me, like use of the word Platina to mean Platinums (a word that is also made up basically), because often they're just needless and there's a perfectly good word for it already, but meh whatever. Most of the time people say these things tongue-in-cheek and it's just hard to tell in text. I find I might comment on it (I commented on a lack of comma in a book yesterday) just because I notice it,

but I'm not thinking "that's wrong!", it's just a deviation, customisation, or usually an increasingly common modernisation of the rules.

(....man.)

(I added the carriage returns before 'but' into the quote)
Totally love the last part of this, about noticing it as a deviation and whatnot. But I'm really amused at the first part, because, if I'm not mistaken, 'Platinums' is no more a word than 'Platina' is - 'accepted' pluralisation is 'Platinum'.
Of course, I might be mistaken.

guided

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Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.
« Reply #19 on: January 02, 2012, 11:05:18 am »
0

Well, in common speech "platinum" is basically never used as a count noun. I suppose you might pluralize it if you were talking about different shades of the color platinum? Though I'd expect "shades of platinum" for that.

In Dominion I'd be strongly inclined to use "Platinums" to refer to multiple instances of the "Platinum" card, as a shorthand for the probably less controversial "instances of Platinum" or "copies of Platinum". You could ask "How much Platinum do you have in your deck?" but that doesn't sit well with me since we're really talking about a count rather than an amount of a mass noun. Certainly I would feel wrong responding with "I have 5 Platinum" - 5 is a count!
« Last Edit: January 02, 2012, 11:07:35 am by guided »
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.
« Reply #20 on: January 02, 2012, 11:20:38 am »
0

Well, in common speech "platinum" is basically never used as a count noun. I suppose you might pluralize it if you were talking about different shades of the color platinum? Though I'd expect "shades of platinum" for that.

In Dominion I'd be strongly inclined to use "Platinums" to refer to multiple instances of the "Platinum" card, as a shorthand for the probably less controversial "instances of Platinum" or "copies of Platinum". You could ask "How much Platinum do you have in your deck?" but that doesn't sit well with me since we're really talking about a count rather than an amount of a mass noun. Certainly I would feel wrong responding with "I have 5 Platinum" - 5 is a count!
I'd say 'how many platinum do you have' because many goes with count while much does not. Other than that, I don't see the issue with 'How many platinum are in your deck?'
Comparison - 'How many moose are blocking the road?'

Thisisnotasmile

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Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.
« Reply #21 on: January 02, 2012, 11:27:52 am »
0

Well, in common speech "platinum" is basically never used as a count noun. I suppose you might pluralize it if you were talking about different shades of the color platinum? Though I'd expect "shades of platinum" for that.

In Dominion I'd be strongly inclined to use "Platinums" to refer to multiple instances of the "Platinum" card, as a shorthand for the probably less controversial "instances of Platinum" or "copies of Platinum". You could ask "How much Platinum do you have in your deck?" but that doesn't sit well with me since we're really talking about a count rather than an amount of a mass noun. Certainly I would feel wrong responding with "I have 5 Platinum" - 5 is a count!
I'd say 'how many platinum do you have' because many goes with count while much does not. Other than that, I don't see the issue with 'How many platinum are in your deck?'
Comparison - 'How many moose are blocking the road?'

In this case, "moose" is the plural (See: How many cows are blocking the road?), in which case, you are implying that Platinum is the plural of Platinum. Now, I don't really care whether Platinum or Platinums is the plural form of the word, however I must say Platina is stupid.
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guided

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Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.
« Reply #22 on: January 02, 2012, 11:34:34 am »
0

The difference is that "moose" is a count noun whose plural really is "moose". You wouldn't say, "How many goose are blocking the road?" You'd use the actual plural: "geese". "Platinum", on the other hand, is a mass noun in common speech and AFAIK doesn't have an accepted plural.

Any time you're using a count noun in the plural, you need to use the plural form. Since "platinum" doesn't normally have a plural, in a technical context (like Dominion) where we might want to use it as a count noun, I'd expect to pluralize it in the standard way: by adding an "s". Same way you'd pluralize another proper noun from outside standard usage, like a surname. But those wishing to avoid offending any stodgy grammarians anywhere might be advised to use something like "copies of Platinum".
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.
« Reply #23 on: January 02, 2012, 11:36:46 am »
0

Quote from: Thisisnotasmile
Well, in common speech "platinum" is basically never used as a count noun. I suppose you might pluralize it if you were talking about different shades of the color platinum? Though I'd expect "shades of platinum" for that.

In Dominion I'd be strongly inclined to use "Platinums" to refer to multiple instances of the "Platinum" card, as a shorthand for the probably less controversial "instances of Platinum" or "copies of Platinum". You could ask "How much Platinum do you have in your deck?" but that doesn't sit well with me since we're really talking about a count rather than an amount of a mass noun. Certainly I would feel wrong responding with "I have 5 Platinum" - 5 is a count!
I'd say 'how many platinum do you have' because many goes with count while much does not. Other than that, I don't see the issue with 'How many platinum are in your deck?'
Comparison - 'How many moose are blocking the road?'

In this case, "moose" is the plural (See: How many cows are blocking the road?), in which case, you are implying that Platinum is the plural of Platinum. Now, I don't really care whether Platinum or Platinums is the plural form of the word, however I must say Platina is stupid.
Please read reply #18.

DStu

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Re: Man, this forum is changing my speech patterns.
« Reply #24 on: January 02, 2012, 11:39:06 am »
0

But those wishing to avoid offending any stodgy grammarians anywhere might be advised to use something like "copies of Platinum".

Which, on the other hand, is also not really correct because you are only talking about a card that symbolizes a Platinum...
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