The Innovative Usage Thread

[linguoboy]

Does anyone know of a good account of the usage of "yeah no"? I find it an intriguing expression, but even though I use it regularly, I can't figure out how to describe the operative conditions.

isn't it just a polite way of saying "that's stupid and you're stupid for saying it"

Yeah, no.

[din]

Heard in the wild, just last night:

Tomorrow we might gonna want to open some windows.

When queried afterwards, she didn't understand what would be wrong with it. Of course this is someone who messes up grammatical things all the time, but normally she recognizes them as errors on her own or as soon as pointed out.

Austin, Texas native here - this wouldn't be out of place at all here, and would be even more expected as one heads east into the core of the South.

Being in regular contact with southerners (daily, if you count my husband), I'd have to agree: it doesn't sound terribly odd to me either

[gach]

Does anyone know of a good account of the usage of "yeah no"? I find it an intriguing expression, but even though I use it regularly, I can't figure out how to describe the operative conditions.

isn't it just a polite way of saying "that's stupid and you're stupid for saying it"

You mean it can't be used just to confirm a negative statement? The Finnish equivalent joo ei can be used in this way and doesn't have to convey a disapproving tone at all,

Pojat ei varmaan pärjää näissä kisoissa.
guy.PL no.3 POT make.do.CONNEG these.INE game.PL.INE
"I guess the guys wont do well in these games."

Joo ei.
yes no
"Yeah no." (= "Yeah, I'm pretty sure of that.")

Combining affirmatives with negatives is fun. We also have ei kyllä ("no yes") which functions as an emphatic and often contrastive negative and is available also in more literary registers.

[Yng]

I don't think it necessarily has to have a pejorative connotation - it depends on the intonation - but one of its main uses is what Nortaneous described. Sometimes I might say 'yeah, no' to show understanding of someone's reasons for thinking something even as I contradict them, or to soften the contradiction - this is more vacillation in response though probably than the more set-phrasey meaning of 'yeah, no' mentioned above.

[Ser]

I'm looking for a phone to buy for my mom, and I've found the word "phablet" being thrown around a lot. A phablet, presumably pronounced /fæblɪt/, is a phone with a screen so large it verges on being called a tablet.

[gach]

I'm looking for a phone to buy for my mom, and I've found the word "phablet" being thrown around a lot. A phablet, presumably pronounced /fæblɪt/, is a phone with a screen so large it verges on being called a tablet.

In other words it's a phone that's ergonomically not suited to be one, so a bit like mobile phones 10 or 15 years ago except thinner. I think it shows that you can feed people anything if you hype it enough.

You can see the word used even by reputable newspapers. It's especially ridiculous when people try to loan it into other languages from English.

[Cael]

The other day I used disgusting in place of sucks when I said it['s] disgusting

[linguoboy]

I'm looking for a phone to buy for my mom, and I've found the word "phablet" being thrown around a lot. A phablet, presumably pronounced /fæblɪt/, is a phone with a screen so large it verges on being called a tablet.

Via Language Log:

I'm not complaining, but not mentioned in this article is the addition of 'Phablet' – a word (and I use the term loosely) that Ben nominated for the 'Least Likely to Succeed' category at WOTY last year. My interest is that I am pretty sure that phablet (a portmanteau of phone and tablet) is my creation. It was never meant to become this beast that it has, and it was very much a joke. So many people were laughing at my new giant phone in 2010, that I created a name for it, and so phablets were born. Yes, it sounds horrendous, with far too much in common with phlegm for many people's tastes, but it was meant to also convey that my phablet was indeed (and I apologise) phabulous.

I am proud of the mark I have made on the English language whilst also being horrified that it is such a nasty mark. But it is mine. To disown phablet now would be like disowning a child because it was ugly.

I do, most humbly apologise though. Really, I do.

[äreo]

My sister and I were talking at a table today, and after getting up I told her to push her chair in. Her: "But I didn't unpush it."

[linguoboy]

"You don't remote. It's the same access."

[2+3 clusivity]

Not really innovation but my own selective ignorance. Through a combination of knowing Latin roots, my own ignorance, and the disuse of "high-end" words in conversation, I began to use both:

<subtle> ['sʌtl̩] (see http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/subtle);

. . . and (I pre-apologize to purists) . . .

<subtle/?> ['sʌbtl̩] (see http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/subtile). Which, in my mind, meant ['sʌtl̩] but with an underhandedness (and, in part, pronunciation) reminiscent of <subterfuge>.


. . . then, the holy hammer of old French/Norman sound changes caught up with me. Still, I think the distinction in meaning would be/is useful.

[roninbodhisattva]

I don't know if this counts for this thread, but I didn't want to start an entirely new thread for it.

Yesterday, while watching the finale of Breaking Bad, my girlfriend texted me "You done the show?" I responded with a "?" because that sentence means absolutely nothing to me. She says that the sentence is a shortening of "Are you done the show?" meaning "Are you done with the show?" or "Have/are you finished watching the show?" Now, I think "Are you done the show?" is batshit crazy, but apparently she thinks it's fine, and so does her brother. I was wondering if anybody here had the same judgement.

[KathTheDragon]

I would parse 'You done the show?' as 'Have you done the show?', probably meaning that I have featured in or made a TV programme.

[roninbodhisattva]

I would parse 'You done the show?' as 'Have you done the show?', probably meaning that I have featured in or made a TV programme.

I definitely have this reading.

[linguoboy]

Yesterday, while watching the finale of Breaking Bad, my girlfriend texted me "You done the show?" I responded with a "?" because that sentence means absolutely nothing to me. She says that the sentence is a shortening of "Are you done the show?" meaning "Are you done with the show?" or "Have/are you finished watching the show?" Now, I think "Are you done the show?" is batshit crazy, but apparently she thinks it's fine, and so does her brother. I was wondering if anybody here had the same judgement.

I don't, but I have heard of this innovation before. I think I had some informants from BC tell me it was particularly common in Vancouver and environs, but I could be misremembering.

[Ser]

When reading roninbodhisattva's post, at first glance "You done the show?" didn't sound wrong or strange to me, and I interpreted it the same way his gf and pseudo-brother-in-law did without thinking about it... but then I read the rest and now I feel a bit weirded out by it. Huh. I would've thought the correct expansion was "[Have] you done the show?" though... It could be I've heard "to do [a show]" meaning "to catch up with/finish [a show]", but I just haven't thought about it, and now I've gotten meta on it, it seems weird.

Also, Firefox's spellchecker is underlining "weirded out". I thought this innovation, "to weird [sb] out", was more standard! At least it has an urbandictionary entry, for what it's worth... EDIT: Oh wait- Merriam-Webster says the earliest attestation of "to weird [sb] out" is from 1973.

[linguoboy]

Just came across an article describing a legislative deal as "shrouded in optimism". At the very least, that strikes me as some sort of horrendously mixed metaphor.

[Radius Solis]

Just came across an article describing a legislative deal as "shrouded in optimism". At the very least, that strikes me as some sort of horrendously mixed metaphor.

I would have liked to have seen that, but they must have corrected it already: neither "shrouded" nor "optimism" appear in the current text of the page you linked.

[linguoboy]

Just came across an article describing a legislative deal as "shrouded in optimism". At the very least, that strikes me as some sort of horrendously mixed metaphor.

I would have liked to have seen that, but they must have corrected it already: neither "shrouded" nor "optimism" appear in the current text of the page you linked.

Bastards! They completely rewrote the lede while I wasn't looking!

However that phrase gets about 1400 Ghits. There's even a blog with that title (though I suspect this might be an ironic choice).

[linguoboy]

"That night I was texting with a boy that my older brother had warned me about, but I didn't listen. Looking back, I wish I did."

[R.Rusanov]

I wish I done had listened.
I wish I had did listen.

[Nesescosac]

Does anyone know of a good account of the usage of "yeah no"? I find it an intriguing expression, but even though I use it regularly, I can't figure out how to describe the operative conditions.

isn't it just a polite way of saying "that's stupid and you're stupid for saying it"

You mean it can't be used just to confirm a negative statement? The Finnish equivalent joo ei can be used in this way and doesn't have to convey a disapproving tone at all,

Pojat ei varmaan pärjää näissä kisoissa.
guy.PL no.3 POT make.do.CONNEG these.INE game.PL.INE
"I guess the guys wont do well in these games."

Joo ei.
yes no
"Yeah no." (= "Yeah, I'm pretty sure of that.")

Combining affirmatives with negatives is fun. We also have ei kyllä ("no yes") which functions as an emphatic and often contrastive negative and is available also in more literary registers.

Interesting. Can you in Finnish also say something like "ei joo" to mean the opposite?

[gach]

Interesting. Can you in Finnish also say something like "ei joo" to mean the opposite?

Well I guess ei joo is something you might say when you acknowledge that you had something wrong and now know it correctly either on your own or being told by someone. It should be parsed so that the initial negative ei rejects a previous topical claim and the following affirmative joo shows agreement with the source of the new information or simply with the updated state of knowledge.

Ei joo, niin-hän se pitä-ä-kin teh-dä.
no yeah, that.way-DP it must-SG3-DP do-INF
"Yeah, you're right. That's how it should be done."
(DP = cliticised discourse particles irrelevant enough not to be glossed accurately)

Joo ei is a bit different in that joo shows agreement with the negative statement and ei just confirms the negation by repeating it. The disapproving use of this phrase is easily understood as a sarcastic reading of this. You could maybe see some parallels between this and the previous phrase but it's not terribly symmetric.

The phrase ei kyllä is yet different in that the standard affirmative kyllä simply acts as an intensifying adverb on the negative ei which can function either as a predicated negative verb or as a lone nonpredicated particle for giving short negative answers.

Tämä-n kaupa-n valikoima ei kyllä ole paras mahdollinen.
This-GEN shop-GEN selection no.SG3 yes be.CONNEG best possible
"The selection at this store isn't exactly the best possible."

[linguoboy]

I suppose since Palmgren didn’t have sex with Lisbeth though, or reinforce any of the white, heterosexual male norms you like to complain about, you decided to gleam over that character.

[gmalivuk]

To mean gloss over?