The Innovative Usage Thread

[Ser]

I just realized that in El Salvador, we youngsters use tri- as a prefix working as an augmentative for adjectives. O.O

¿La película esa? ¡'Tá tri-chiva vos! "That movie? It's so cool dude!"
¡El examen 'taba tri-yuca! "The exam was so hard!"
Entonces, para las ocho, se puso diunsolo tri-frío... "Then, getting closer to 8:00 p.m., it [the weather] became so cold suddenly..."

I've no idea if this is documented.

[Travis B.]

I think he means what could be written IMI, that is, in my idiolect.

[Nortaneous]

Could you clarify what you're referring to when you say "IMD"? I mean, have you observed this in others around you as well?

I ask because I don't think I live more than 5 miles from you when I'm home from university (given your high school, at least), but I certainly cannot have [d] in "isn't", nor do I recall having heard it from anyone else in the immediate area.

(I do agree with having [ɛ] in "catch" and modal "can", though)

Other people as in my father and his family, in this case, yes. I think I've picked up some phonological weirdness from them.

[Chuma]

But "isn't" is usually also described as having a schwa in it, so there's no difference there. Apparently in English unstressed vowels take less time and effort.

IMD it's usually just [ɪ(d)nː]

IMD, it's [ɪnʔ] or [ɪn].

Pah! No one speaks proper English anymore.

I'm all for "ain't" instead of the somewhat awkward "amn't", if it was used for that alone.

When you think about it, there's no reason to include the "I" at all, since it can't be any other person. The only problem then would be distinguishing between "I am not" and "am I not".

[Chargone]

But "isn't" is usually also described as having a schwa in it, so there's no difference there. Apparently in English unstressed vowels take less time and effort.

IMD it's usually just [ɪ(d)nː]

IMD, it's [ɪnʔ] or [ɪn].

Pah! No one speaks proper English anymore.

I'm all for "ain't" instead of the somewhat awkward "amn't", if it was used for that alone.

When you think about it, there's no reason to include the "I" at all, since it can't be any other person. The only problem then would be distinguishing between "I am not" and "am I not".

easy enough. the second one's a question. it gets different intonation.
mind you, i'm fairly sure telling the two apart is, in fact, a reason to include 'I'
also, really, if you object to 'amn't', would not 'isn't' be a more logical word to use there, seeing as it's 'aren't' with singular rather than plural agreement?

[maıráí]

(No IPA because, damn it.)
I assume this habit came from chatspeak; a few people pronounce acronyms as spelled around here.
As can be expected, lols, luls, and lulz are 'lohl', and omg is 'ohmg' or "omga".
EULA is yoola, HTML is hitmol, URL is yurle, ETC is ettic, and so on and so on.

[finlay]

I've heard 'lol' as a word, although I do usually want to strangle the person that says it. The others, no, they're always said as a sequence of letters. (I've maybe heard zomg said outloud as a word though, just not omg, which is always a really sarcarstically exaggerated "O----M----GEEEE!" It's funny to hear Stephen Fry saying it, incidentally...)

I have heard MMORPG as a word [məmɔ:pəgə] from Yahtzee Croshaw though.

And I always mentally say dot-ack-dot-uck for .ac.uk web addresses – despite it being dot-u-k at other times (eg dot-co-dot-u-k)... (incidentally, I tend to mentally pronounce .fr as [pwãɛfɛʁ] and .nl as [pʏntɛnɛl] – that's what a couple of months abroad watching trash on Dutch TV will do to you...)

[Viktor77]

Michiganders say Intersection as [I\nV`s3kS@n~] and Interstate as [I\nV`sdeI?]. We reduce <t>'s like nothing I've ever seen before. We're as bad as Cuban's with <s>.

Also, I don't know if the reduction is simply a disappearance or if it is replaced by a glottal stop. It's hard for me to distinguish the glottal stop.

[Civil War Bugle]

I was privy to a conversation in which 'pwn' was said more than once, but there was a strong undercurrent of mockery in its use.

[Travis B.]

Michiganders say Intersection as [I\nV`s3kS@n~] and Interstate as [I\nV`sdeI?]. We reduce <t>'s like nothing I've ever seen before. We're as bad as Cuban's with <s>.

Also, I don't know if the reduction is simply a disappearance or if it is replaced by a glottal stop. It's hard for me to distinguish the glottal stop.

These really are not atypical at all for modern North American English varieties, even as spoken by older people, Viktor...

[maıráí]

hadn't've

That is all.

[Travis B.]

hadn't've

That is all.

Again, that is actually pretty normal usage for present-day spoken North American English, in the very least (as in I do not know whether it is found outside NAE).

[maıráí]

It was kind of shocking seeing it in writing, esp. with me being the only person in my family who talks that way.

I'm glad though, I very like this new English.


Er. And I perhaps should add, is replacing "you" with the referee's name common? I noticed after studying Japanese that this is becoming common where I live, too. "You" is becoming a little endangered.

[faiuwle]

I'm not sure this counts as an innovation, but...

I vaguely remember a discussion here (or somewhere else, maybe?) about how "there is"/"there's" getting used for plural things too, and the suggestion that it was getting lexicalized into an unmarkable existential particle, and all the native English-speakers were like, "no, I never use it that way, it's totally wrong". However, I've been listening to my casual usage lately, and I constantly say "there is" (often without the contraction) to refer to plural things that definitely aren't mass nouns: "Well, if there's too many cookies [my aunt] will be stuck with them.", "Is there more cookies [to be baked]?" "If there is any bagels with no hole, eat those ones first."* "How many more pictures is there?" It still sounds and looks bad in writing, but it sounds fine colloquially and no one else here seems to have noticed it. Maybe it's just ideolect, though; I haven't really been listening for it from other people.

* We are making mobius bagels tomorrow, which require large holes to be very neat-looking.

[Nortaneous]

I vaguely remember a discussion here (or somewhere else, maybe?) about how "there is"/"there's" getting used for plural things too, and the suggestion that it was getting lexicalized into an unmarkable existential particle, and all the native English-speakers were like, "no, I never use it that way, it's totally wrong". However, I've been listening to my casual usage lately, and I constantly say "there is" (often without the contraction) to refer to plural things that definitely aren't mass nouns: "Well, if there's too many cookies [my aunt] will be stuck with them.", "Is there more cookies [to be baked]?" "If there is any bagels with no hole, eat those ones first."* "How many more pictures is there?" It still sounds and looks bad in writing, but it sounds fine colloquially and no one else here seems to have noticed it. Maybe it's just ideolect, though; I haven't really been listening for it from other people.

I think I mentioned this a while back, probably in another thread. I have "there's" for plurals, but I don't use noncontracted forms there, so only the first example (not sure what's wrong with the bagel one, but I don't think I'd have that) is grammatical IMI.

[faiuwle]

It looks bad to me, too, (here) but I keep using it that way, with too great a frequency for it to be a speech error, and it doesn't feel wrong enough to me to correct it while I'm talking. I've probably been using a more casual register than usual lately, because of being with family; I think I probably would correct it if I were speaking to a professor, or an acquaintance.

[Yng]

I'm not sure this counts as an innovation, but...

We had a discussion like that on Unilang I think. I doubt it's unique though, it's pretty common. I agree - only the contracted form 'there's' is grammatical for me in that position though. 'There is' sounds awkward, although I might accept it in speech (there are a number of things I accept in speech which scream 'UNGRAMMATICAL YOU'D NEVER SAY THAT' in writing, like 'if you would have').

[Travis B.]

What one must remember at this point is to not assume that something is necessarily an innovation, just because it is not in a proper standard variety and one oneself has taken note of it. Many things that would seem to be recent innovations actually are not at all.

[Travis B.]

Oh, and even for things that are new, one must take into account that said newness is frequently still a matter of already being generations old. You know that /t d n nt nd/ elision that I mention all the time? At least for the /t d n/ component, that has to be a good few generations old already, as from listening to older working class people in Milwaukee speak, they already have that. It may very well be "new" only in the sense that the likes of Labov have had yet to really take note of it and systematically describe it.

(On that note, from listening carefully to my parents at home over the last two breaks, it seems that they have /t d/ elision between vowels where the following is unstressed very frequently, far moreso than I remembered, and at least my mother also very frequently elides them when preceded by a vowel and /r/ and followed by an unstressed vowel. They seem to also elide intervocalic /n/ at times, such as in the -onna clitic and at the end of can before a vowel, but not nearly as frequently as I, most white working-class Milwaukeeans I have paid attention to the speech of, or even many younger people I hear out here in Maryland do. Also, I have not noticed any elision of /nt/ and /nd/ of the sort I have, and at least many younger Inland Northerners I have heard have, in their speech. And yes, all the stuff with vowel length and pitch accentuation does apply to their speech, from listening to them.)

[faiuwle]

I was reading back through the non-Eddy venting thread, and found this:

I drive a 2002 Buick myself, with over 100 kilomiles on it.

I am fully in favor of using metric prefixes with non-metric units. Kilodollars would probably be useful in many contexts, too.

[finlay]

"grand"

[faiuwle]

I don't know exactly what the distribution of "grand" is, but I do remember using it to mean "thousand dollars" after learning it somewhere and getting weird looks. Apparently you can't really use it for things like the prices of houses or cars, for some reason. OTOH, I have heard things like "50K" for fifty thousand dollars, etc.

[TomHChappell]

In speaking of salaries "grand" is also used to mean "thousands of dollars per year", at least in the US of America.

[Bristel]

Could you clarify what you're referring to when you say "IMD"? I mean, have you observed this in others around you as well?

I ask because I don't think I live more than 5 miles from you when I'm home from university (given your high school, at least), but I certainly cannot have [d] in "isn't", nor do I recall having heard it from anyone else in the immediate area.

(I do agree with having [ɛ] in "catch" and modal "can", though)

Other people as in my father and his family, in this case, yes. I think I've picked up some phonological weirdness from them.

I also have [ɛ] in "catch" and "can", but I can only think of those two words. I usually pronounce [ɛ] in "catch", but usually [æ] in "can" if I am stressing that particular word.

[Yng]

In speaking of salaries "grand" is also used to mean "thousands of dollars per year", at least in the US of America.

'Grand' means 'thousand', particularly in monetary terms, here as well.