Author Topic: Grammar that makes you cringe  (Read 835064 times)

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5425 on: 07 November, 2019, 09:20:35 am »
As pub is short for public house, I guess it's a multifunction place. At least potentially.
On similar lines, go to the pub, go to hospital, go to Australia, but go to home. Why?
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5426 on: 07 November, 2019, 09:31:32 am »
There ain't no why, it just growed. That's why it's called idiom.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5427 on: 07 November, 2019, 09:56:31 am »
A few years ago, I think it was in Language Lab, someone claimed that Australians now use bush in the same way. "He's gone bush" rather than "He's gone to the bush". The examples they gave made it seem more like an adverb though.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5428 on: 07 November, 2019, 12:06:47 pm »
Response to email to colleague:
"I am out of office. I will be back on <date>"
Could you not have typed "the", colleague?

As a native speaker of Leftpondese, I would agree with "out of the office" as 'normal.'  But, then again we say that someone is "in the hospital" versus "in hospital" over here.

Oh!

I thought the 'the' was missing from between "back on" and "<date>"   :facepalm:


FWIW, I read "out of office" as business jargon for state of telecoms-unresponsiveness only loosely related to one's physical location, and more to do with whether one is officially working or not.  "Out of the office" is either referring to a person's actual physical location, or someone getting the jargon wrong.

Consider "Ian's phone is DND" (or 'off-hook' for analogue jibblers).

ian

Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5429 on: 07 November, 2019, 12:14:29 pm »
ian's office phone has never rung, true fact. In fact, it's never been used.

I think I say I'm Out of Office, it's a compounded sense of not-being-there or simply I've turned it on because I'm not going to respond and really shouldn't get your hopes up. So I may not literally be out of the office, I am existentially Out of Office.

Of course, out-of-office messages should run like 'I've been abducted. By aliens. Send help."

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5430 on: 07 November, 2019, 12:21:19 pm »
I accidentally DNDed my phone the other day[1].  I know this because "DND active" had appeared on the screen.  On closer investigation, there didn't appear to be any form of tabletop roleplaying game in progress.  I concluded that this was probably a way of rejecting SIP INVITEs so you don't get disturbed by rude telephonic people, and had to resort to RTFMing[2] to work out how to turn it off...


[1] Subsequent investigation revealed that this was probably an unintended consequence of wiping off the tomato soup I'd accidentally sneezed onto the keypad the previous evening.  It's a good thing I don't work in a nuclear bunker, isn't it?
[2] Since this is the grammar thread, should that be "RingTFM"?  I sincerely hope not.

Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5431 on: 07 November, 2019, 12:45:22 pm »
As pub is short for public house, I guess it's a multifunction place. At least potentially.
On similar lines, go to the pub, go to hospital, go to Australia, but go to home. Why?

Not just going home, going upstairs, or going anywhere, in fact ('adverbs of place' apparently)

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5432 on: 07 November, 2019, 12:45:38 pm »
You know the women/female thing that annoys some people? Well, some like to hedge their bets:
Quote
We've also hired some female external women into important roles across the region.
He is, of course, boasting. And let's not look to closely at the adjective order. But he's also from the southern hemisphere, they do things differently there.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5433 on: 07 November, 2019, 12:47:06 pm »
[2] Since this is the grammar thread, should that be "RingTFM"?  I sincerely hope not.[/sub]
Ring the fucking manual? That's probably something that happens in Rogerzilla's office!
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5434 on: 07 November, 2019, 12:48:11 pm »
As pub is short for public house, I guess it's a multifunction place. At least potentially.
On similar lines, go to the pub, go to hospital, go to Australia, but go to home. Why?

Not just going home, going upstairs, or going anywhere, in fact ('adverbs of place' apparently)
Of course, home is an adverb there, not a noun. Just like bush, in fact. D'oh on me for thinking of it as a noun!
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Pingu

  • Put away those fiery biscuits!
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    • the Igloo
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5435 on: 07 November, 2019, 12:56:12 pm »
You know the women/female thing that annoys some people? Well, some like to hedge their bets:
Quote
We've also hired some female external women into important roles across the region.
He is, of course, boasting. And let's not look to closely at the adjective order. But he's also from the southern hemisphere, they do things differently there.

Ahem!

 ;)

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5436 on: 07 November, 2019, 01:15:04 pm »
From now on I'm folowing minimalist speling. Elimination of al double leters.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5437 on: 07 November, 2019, 02:48:04 pm »
There's exclusivity, and then there's having the diaeresis over the 'wrong' letter in your name.


Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5438 on: 08 November, 2019, 09:41:11 pm »
Didn't domain names used to be backwards and wasn't there something horrid were you had to somehow wrangle an address through nfs.net or something strange (and there was a dog called fido), and much of the internet was based around vibrating strings, and not the eleven-dimensional sort, oh no, real wet string.
Not that I can think of, but I may be missing something. Unless you're remembering X.400 email addresses, such as:

G=Georg; S=Hansen; O=sintef; OU=delab; PRMD=uninett; ADMD=uninett; C=no

Back around 1990, I was working for a place that supplied information-service providers (we and others supplied the databases, and they built them into an overall technical information service that was bought by major research companies and so on). They were mostly accessed by dial-up packet-switching networks such as Telenet and Tymnet (before X.25 and the Internet, this!) In time, each provider introduced a closed email system that allowed us, as suppliers, to communicate with staff from that provider and its customers. We also used Compuserve, but again as a closed system allowing email with other Compuserve users.

Gradually, these systems began to open up with interconnections to customers' private systems and so on. To communicate between systems, we used to build X.400 addresses with our bare hands from directories. They worked at least 30% of the time.

SMTP was a revelation :thumbsup: We quickly moved most of our email to the provider who was first to adopt it. Then, a year or two later, the nascent Internet was opened up beyond academia to the likes of us, who were not academic but provided services to academia.

We celebrated by launching our first Gopher server, which we duly closed down months later after our first Web site launched.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5439 on: 08 November, 2019, 11:12:39 pm »
UUCP addresses were big-endian, weren't they?

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5440 on: 09 November, 2019, 01:04:08 am »
Aaaaaah, bang paths...
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5441 on: 09 November, 2019, 08:29:33 am »
Just read this. Sounds fun.

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5442 on: 09 November, 2019, 09:27:03 am »
Takes me back to the 70s when another bloke & I were debugging coms protocols in adjoining machine rooms and bellowing ACK & NAK* back and forth as stuff got through or fell down the timeout hole.

* A nak is a female yak.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

Zipperhead

  • The cyclist formerly known as Big Helga
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5443 on: 09 November, 2019, 05:24:23 pm »
Aaaaaah, bang paths...

I think I can still remember my path from ucbvax.

Obvs. although old I'm not yet demented.
Won't somebody think of the hamsters!

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5444 on: 09 November, 2019, 09:27:56 pm »
https://theconversation.com/five-common-words-were-all-using-incorrectly-125781

Number 4 is well known, as is the process of number 5 though I wasn't aware it applied to this word. For number 1, I'd think there's another factor they haven't mentioned, which is the k<>t shift, as in all those Italian words that have "tt" where English and French have "ct" and Spanish has "c", or little>likkle, or omitting the c from words like tractor (especially tractor!) in some dialects.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5445 on: 12 November, 2019, 06:16:07 pm »
My knowledge of Scots Gaelic is zero but I'm guessing from this combination of headline and photo:
Tuil a' toirt buaidh air loidhne rèile

that the Gaelic for ice is similar to the Polish, lód. Which is unexpected.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/naidheachdan/50388106

Edit: The English headline says flooding, so it's probably nothing to do with ice, though it does look like ice on that photo.
Flooding affects railway in Highlands and A75 in South
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-50389244
So, the Gaelic for flooding is nothing like the Polish. Which is not unexpected.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5446 on: 13 November, 2019, 10:06:12 am »
Quote
Shoppers will no longer be able to find Grolsch lager bottles in Tesco and Asda supermarkets.

The Dutch beer is recognisable by its distinctive green glass bottles and swig-top lids.
Tobago!
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Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5447 on: 18 November, 2019, 05:11:47 pm »
What do you call a drive-through liquor store? A question from some weird quiz my son is doing (he's meant to be doing his homework!) One of the options is "a brew-through", which I think is rather a good term. Or would be if we had such things here, which I'm glad we don't. (The others were brew barn, party barn and bootlegger.)
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Steph

  • Fast. Fast and bulbous. But fluffy.
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5448 on: 18 November, 2019, 05:21:27 pm »
My knowledge of Scots Gaelic is zero but I'm guessing from this combination of headline and photo:
Tuil a' toirt buaidh air loidhne rèile

that the Gaelic for ice is similar to the Polish, lód. Which is unexpected.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/naidheachdan/50388106

Edit: The English headline says flooding, so it's probably nothing to do with ice, though it does look like ice on that photo.
Flooding affects railway in Highlands and A75 in South
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-50389244
So, the Gaelic for flooding is nothing like the Polish. Which is not unexpected.

The Gaelic words in question can be read/pronounced almost exactly as "Line Rail", if that helps. Or in English, Railway Line.
Mae angen arnaf i byw, a fe fydda'i

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Grammar that makes you cringe
« Reply #5449 on: 18 November, 2019, 05:35:18 pm »
Yeah, already worked out that it's nothing to do with ice.  :facepalm: But not that it was "line".  :thumbsup:
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.