Should of ...

[Pogo]

As far as should of, I think you're both right.

Except in his theory, the mind would have to make the leap to change 've into of. Hard to make that leap when it's right in front of you on the page.

Not to make a big deal of a small point but this is going to necessarily be a picky thread. The most spirited, passionate, screaming near-violent arguments I've ever been involved in have been in newspaper editorial meetings.

I believe he meant the same thing you did but did not express it as concisely as you did. It has to do with the contraction and how it sounds when we express it verbally. Should've sounds like should of. So you are both right. You both meant the same thing.

I see what cher sayin'.

 

[Pogo]

Whom: It is archaic because it isn't used, but it does have a grammatical purpose.

Not using the apostrophe in Halloween is one of those things that, to me, is okay because of language evolution: writing it without an apostrophe is common and accepted usage; therefore, it is one of those things to just accept. Writing it with an apostrophe is archiac. And I don't think what's archaic is personal style or opinion: it is something that has fallen out of use.

If we say something has fallen out of use, are we not we saying it's archaic?
I call it personal style because in the case of Hallowe'en or agrestic I know it's archaic and choose to use it anyway for stylistic purposes. It's like appending the ME -eth on a verb, or using thou and thine; archaic but still understood.

Which brings up the observation that we use archaisms to express a certain gravitas, particularly in the bible. Translating the bible into contemporary vernacular seems to strip some of its power (read: mystery) away. That's curious.

Not unrelated: the phenomenon of visual medium science fiction villains embellishing their villiainity by using British accents... or at least syntax.

I don't think we are disagreeing that something is archaic because it has fallen out of use. However, when you use whom instead of who, you are signaling something grammatically. It isn't done just to impress people. It has a grammatical purpose. It is a pronoun that signals the objective case, and, therefore, has a purposeful role grammatically. Not really any different than using him and he or her and she. But because who and whom sound almost exactly alike, and because people don’t understand the grammatical purpose of whom, it has fallen out of use, as has the dangling preposition: people just can’t be bothered—they don’t think it is important.

I understand that it's objective, but there does come some point where it's unemployed to such an extent that the nominative who serves all cases and whom is effectively put out to pasture as therefore redundant. At that point the recall of the objective whom becomes, by comparison with the common vernacular, an affectation. Or at least heard that way. Of course, where that threshold is is a personal choice. For me we've passed it. And that has mostly to do with the settings in which one hears it.

As far as the dangling prep, AFAIK that comes from trying to shoehorn Latin syntax into English, for which there's no justifiable basis, since we're a Germanic language. As I just noted to HjMick in a PM, up with that we don't need to put.

 

[Pogo]

As far as should of, I think you're both right.

Except in his theory, the mind would have to make the leap to change 've into of. Hard to make that leap when it's right in front of you on the page.

Not to make a big deal of a small point but this is going to necessarily be a picky thread. The most spirited, passionate, screaming near-violent arguments I've ever been involved in have been in newspaper editorial meetings.

I could scream over some of the ignorant shit I have read or seen on TV from "news" agencies' use of grammar. It's pathetic.

"A couple" also comes to mind (in contrast to "a couple of")

"They scored a couple runs"

 

[Synthaholic]

While I'm against the total bastardization of the English language(like ebonics).
I dont really care if you make a few mistakes,as long as you get your point across.

I'm sure someone can tell me how many mistakes I made in this post. Feel free to do so.....

Corrected:

While I'm against the total bastardization of the English language (like Ebonics), I dont really care if you make a few mistakes as long as you get your point across.

I'm sure someone can tell me how many mistakes I made in this post. Feel free to do so...

Languages aren't capitalized. The English people speak english.

https://www.google.com/search?q=ebo...:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=fflb

 

[Pogo]

Corrected:

While I'm against the total bastardization of the English language (like Ebonics), I dont really care if you make a few mistakes as long as you get your point across.

I'm sure someone can tell me how many mistakes I made in this post. Feel free to do so...

Languages aren't capitalized. The English people speak english.

https://www.google.com/search?q=ebo...:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=fflb

?

Are you making the case that ebonics should not be capitalized? I don't know if that's your point or not.

It's a fair question though, since ebonics comes from ebony and not a proper-name place, there's that case. On the other hand it is the name of a dialect. Do we capitalize Cockney? Scouse? Southern? I think we do.

Thoughts... ?

 

[Synthaholic]

Should of...

I seen ...

They make me shudder.

However, our language is a living thing. We add new words and we spell the old one differently. Its been that way from the beginning.

Poor enunciation bothers me just as much. Listen to our so-called journalists and talking heads. They can't pronounce their own language.

We need to fight against the right's calling education "elitism" and rewarding stupidity by running and electing true idiots like Bachmann, Gohmert, Santorum and others. Don't blame me for calling them dumb. Santorum and Jindal did that for us.

Seriously, you RWs need to demand that your politicians be educated and intelligent. And, yes, I know - if they are educated, they will be Dems.

Democrats seem to say more stupid things than Republicans do.
I have never heard any Republican running for the Presidency say we have 57 states or a Representative on the floor of the house say, if everyone stands on one end of an Island that it will sink.
Schools not teaching our young, effect everyone in this country not just the left or right.

Here's Peach174 bringing the stupid and the hyper-partisanship to yet another thread.

We also didn't have a president besides W. to make up words like "misunderestimated" and say things like "Putting food on their families".

Anytime you want to compare Obama's one or two verbal gaffes with Bush's litany, I'm game.

 

[Pogo]

Should of...

I seen ...

They make me shudder.

However, our language is a living thing. We add new words and we spell the old one differently. Its been that way from the beginning.

Poor enunciation bothers me just as much. Listen to our so-called journalists and talking heads. They can't pronounce their own language.

We need to fight against the right's calling education "elitism" and rewarding stupidity by running and electing true idiots like Bachmann, Gohmert, Santorum and others. Don't blame me for calling them dumb. Santorum and Jindal did that for us.

Seriously, you RWs need to demand that your politicians be educated and intelligent. And, yes, I know - if they are educated, they will be Dems.

Democrats seem to say more stupid things than Republicans do.
I have never heard any Republican running for the Presidency say we have 57 states or a Representative on the floor of the house say, if everyone stands on one end of an Island that it will sink.
Schools not teaching our young, effect everyone in this country not just the left or right.

Here's Peach174 bringing the stupid and the hyper-partisanship to yet another thread.

We also didn't have a president besides W. to make up words like "misunderestimated" and say things like "Putting food on their families".

Anytime you want to compare Obama's one or two verbal gaffes with Bush's litany, I'm game.

OK look, Luddly brought it in first, and it has no place here. They're both wrong.
We've got a nice discussion of vital real-world import that directly affects people's lives; let's not sully it by devolving into something as trite, trivial and meaningless as politics.

 

[Unkotare]

Whom: It is archaic because it isn't used...

It is used quite often by even moderately educated people. It is not archaic.

 

[Esmeralda]

If we say something has fallen out of use, are we not we saying it's archaic?
I call it personal style because in the case of Hallowe'en or agrestic I know it's archaic and choose to use it anyway for stylistic purposes. It's like appending the ME -eth on a verb, or using thou and thine; archaic but still understood.

Which brings up the observation that we use archaisms to express a certain gravitas, particularly in the bible. Translating the bible into contemporary vernacular seems to strip some of its power (read: mystery) away. That's curious.

Not unrelated: the phenomenon of visual medium science fiction villains embellishing their villiainity by using British accents... or at least syntax.

I don't think we are disagreeing that something is archaic because it has fallen out of use. However, when you use whom instead of who, you are signaling something grammatically. It isn't done just to impress people. It has a grammatical purpose. It is a pronoun that signals the objective case, and, therefore, has a purposeful role grammatically. Not really any different than using him and he or her and she. But because who and whom sound almost exactly alike, and because people don’t understand the grammatical purpose of whom, it has fallen out of use, as has the dangling preposition: people just can’t be bothered—they don’t think it is important.

I understand that it's objective, but there does come some point where it's unemployed to such an extent that the nominative who serves all cases and whom is effectively put out to pasture as therefore redundant. At that point the recall of the objective whom becomes, by comparison with the common vernacular, an affectation. Or at least heard that way. Of course, where that threshold is is a personal choice. For me we've passed it. And that has mostly to do with the settings in which one hears it.

As far as the dangling prep, AFAIK that comes from trying to shoehorn Latin syntax into English, for which there's no justifiable basis, since we're a Germanic language. As I just noted to HjMick in a PM, up with that we don't need to put.

Using whom is not an affectation, only to those who don't know how and why to use it.
That's why is has become archaic, or almost so, because people don't understand how to use it. The dangling preposition can be a pain, and I have no problem with seeing them dangle. Consciously avoiding them can make the language sound stilted.

I'm not at all seriously concerned with any of this. I don't go around correcting people or worrying about the minutia of grammar issues. In fact, I actually find this type of discussion rather tedious. What is AFAIK? One thing I really can't stand is the over use of acronyms.

 

[Pennywise]

Languages aren't capitalized. The English people speak english.

https://www.google.com/search?q=ebo...:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=fflb

?

Are you making the case that ebonics should not be capitalized? I don't know if that's your point or not.

It's a fair question though, since ebonics comes from ebony and not a proper-name place, there's that case. On the other hand it is the name of a dialect. Do we capitalize Cockney? Scouse? Southern? I think we do.

Thoughts... ?

The proud heritage of Ebonics deserves it's place of recognition right along with Southern, fo shizzle, y'all. It's nice too when groups can further divide themselves from those unlike them, simply by speaking with forked tongues.

 

[Esmeralda]

Whom: It is archaic because it isn't used...

It is used quite often by even moderately educated people. It is not archaic.

LOL I've asked you twice to explain how one uses it, and you have failed to do so; thus, I must conclude you have no idea and are not one of those 'moderately educated people' who use it.

I work and have worked closely with very highly educated people for over 28 years. I rarely hear anyone using it.

You are so full of shit.

 

[Pogo]

I don't think we are disagreeing that something is archaic because it has fallen out of use. However, when you use whom instead of who, you are signaling something grammatically. It isn't done just to impress people. It has a grammatical purpose. It is a pronoun that signals the objective case, and, therefore, has a purposeful role grammatically. Not really any different than using him and he or her and she. But because who and whom sound almost exactly alike, and because people don’t understand the grammatical purpose of whom, it has fallen out of use, as has the dangling preposition: people just can’t be bothered—they don’t think it is important.

I understand that it's objective, but there does come some point where it's unemployed to such an extent that the nominative who serves all cases and whom is effectively put out to pasture as therefore redundant. At that point the recall of the objective whom becomes, by comparison with the common vernacular, an affectation. Or at least heard that way. Of course, where that threshold is is a personal choice. For me we've passed it. And that has mostly to do with the settings in which one hears it.

As far as the dangling prep, AFAIK that comes from trying to shoehorn Latin syntax into English, for which there's no justifiable basis, since we're a Germanic language. As I just noted to HjMick in a PM, up with that we don't need to put.

Using whom is not an affectation, only to those who don't know how and why to use it.
That's why is has become archaic, or almost so, because people don't understand how to use it. The dangling preposition can be a pain, and I have no problem with seeing them dangle. Consciously avoiding them can make the language sound stilted.

I'm not at all seriously concerned with any of this. I don't go around correcting people or worrying about the minutia of grammar issues. In fact, I actually find this type of discussion rather tedious. What is AFAIK? One thing I really can't stand is the over use of acronyms.

IDK, just something I PUed.
Sorry, internet shorthand for "as far as I know". IMHO.

Acronyms, like archaisms, I guess are another matter of personal style; they have to be universally understood, else they come off as ... well, affected.

As far as I knew AFAIK was SOP but if you think it should GTFO, well that's ..... OK.

 

[Unkotare]

Using whom is not an affectation...

For many people it is.

Many people try to use the term for precisely that reason. That's why so many people use it incorrectly.

 

[Esmeralda]

Using whom is not an affectation...

For many people it is.

Many people try to use the term for precisely that reason. That's why so many people use it incorrectly.

Including you and all your 'moderately educated' friends.

 

[Unkotare]

Whom: It is archaic because it isn't used...

It is used quite often by even moderately educated people. It is not archaic.

I've asked you twice to explain how one uses it, and you have failed to do so...

No, you asked to do so with the assurance that I not 'Google' it first. If I tell you how it is used you will then predictably claim that I did Google the term. If you honestly need me to teach you how it is used I will, but your little attempt at playing a game is not nearly as clever as you'd like to think.


And you might want to reconsider how "very highly educated" those people you work with really are.

 

[Derideo_Te]

There are way too many people in this thread with far better qualifications than I to decide what is and isn't proper usage, grammar and spelling.

It used to bug me that people in Boston and New York would use the term "yous" (as in yous guys) for the plural of you until I watched the PBS documentary "The Story of English" by Robert MacNeil (MacNeil Lehrer News Hour fame). Apparently the term yous comes from Ireland and since those cities are where a great many of the Irish settled it probably entered into American english usage from there.

So nowadays when I hear people use the term "axe" when they mean "ask" I wonder about the origin rather than getting irritated.

English has become the world's 2nd language by default. But that results in changes to the language as it acquires regional terms that eventually become common everyday terms. Going "commando" derives from the term used by the Afrikaaners to describe their hit and run tactics against the British during the Boer Wars. The term itself derives from Dutch, Spanish and originally Latin.

So we have a living language and I am cool with that. It beats a dead language.

 

[Esmeralda]

I understand that it's objective, but there does come some point where it's unemployed to such an extent that the nominative who serves all cases and whom is effectively put out to pasture as therefore redundant. At that point the recall of the objective whom becomes, by comparison with the common vernacular, an affectation. Or at least heard that way. Of course, where that threshold is is a personal choice. For me we've passed it. And that has mostly to do with the settings in which one hears it.

As far as the dangling prep, AFAIK that comes from trying to shoehorn Latin syntax into English, for which there's no justifiable basis, since we're a Germanic language. As I just noted to HjMick in a PM, up with that we don't need to put.

Using whom is not an affectation, only to those who don't know how and why to use it.
That's why is has become archaic, or almost so, because people don't understand how to use it. The dangling preposition can be a pain, and I have no problem with seeing them dangle. Consciously avoiding them can make the language sound stilted.

I'm not at all seriously concerned with any of this. I don't go around correcting people or worrying about the minutia of grammar issues. In fact, I actually find this type of discussion rather tedious. What is AFAIK? One thing I really can't stand is the over use of acronyms.

IDK, just something I PUed.
Sorry, internet shorthand for "as far as I know". IMHO.

Acronyms, like archaisms, I guess are another matter of personal style; they have to be universally understood, else they come off as ... well, affected.

As far as I knew AFAIK was SOP but if you think it should GTFO, well that's ..... OK.

JHC! Go sit in the corner.

 

[Unkotare]

Using whom is not an affectation...

For many people it is.

Many people try to use the term for precisely that reason. That's why so many people use it incorrectly.

Including you and all your 'moderately educated' friends.

If you could show me where I've used the word incorrectly, I would appreciate it. A quote or a link, perhaps?

 

[Pennywise]

Who uses the proper grammar when asking someone if they need assistance?

"May I help you?"

Yes, I am capable.

 

[Pogo]

There are way too many people in this thread with far better qualifications than I to decide what is and isn't proper usage, grammar and spelling.

It used to bug me that people in Boston and New York would use the term "yous" (as in yous guys) for the plural of you until I watched the PBS documentary "The Story of English" by Robert MacNeil (MacNeil Lehrer News Hour fame). Apparently the term yous comes from Ireland and since those cities are where a great many of the Irish settled it probably entered into American english usage from there.

So nowadays when I hear people use the term "axe" when they mean "ask" I wonder about the origin rather than getting irritated.

English has become the world's 2nd language by default. But that results in changes to the language as it acquires regional terms that eventually become common everyday terms. Going "commando" derives from the term used by the Afrikaaners to describe their hit and run tactics against the British during the Boer Wars. The term itself derives from Dutch, Spanish and originally Latin.

So we have a living language and I am cool with that. It beats a dead language.

I'm very familiar with youse from growing up in Philadelphia (area). The perception issue comes in with the fact that it's associated with the lower classes -- which is what we Irish were upon arrival.

Now I have a friend from New York who insists that Pennsylvanians have another you-plural term which is "yuns" (for "you ones"). I explain to her that that's western Pennsylvania, which as far as we're concerned is another state with another language. I drop both of them and use y'all from my Southern relatives as the most workable. We do after all have the deficiency of lacking a proper word singularly for you-plural. The beginning of the end on that was when we dropped the familiar thou and made formal you do double (triple) duty. That breeds chaos.

The terms will just have to fight it out until a winner emerges but for me the best candidate is y'all. Provided it's not used as a singular.



Related to yuns though, here in Appalachia I came across the contraction your'n (yours, that which belongs to you, from "your one").

"'At car's same color as your'n" my mechanic said.

Looking into derivations though, it turns out your'n has been around longer than yours (Middle English, 2nd half of the 14th century). Which begs the question of which one's "wrong".