Well, I did along with whant. It was only later that I learnt that it should be want and doesn't. Why this need to make such a huge thing a simple misunderstanding?
If I stop posting out of the blue it probably is because my computer and the board won't cooperate and let me log in.!
This better have been a one/two-time writing error. How would someone be able to teach English if they literally did not know how to spell such basic words?
linguoboy wrote:"Barba faces a suspension hearing at her school today. Her father, Michael Barba, is calling her punishment “extensive” and is demanding she be allowed to return to school, that the suspension be erased and that she be allowed to submit the project as school work." [Source: http://www.care2.com/causes/take-action ... video.html]
Not sure if this is simply a malapropism or if "extensive" is actually moving into the territory covered by "excessive".
I have never heard of this; I took it to be a malapropism myself.
Jetboy wrote:I ran across <isn't> online recently, which I interpreted as indicating stress on the second syllable– except I can't imagine anyone saying /ɪ.ˈzn̩t/. I'm not sure whether that's some sort of formatting error, a writing convention, or actually reflective of a pronunciation.
If what you are referring to is the n't being bolded and not the is, that sounds like a formatting error. Normally if people want to stress like that, they instead use is not, where the not receives full stress.
Astraios wrote:
I'd expect /ɪ.ˈzn̩t/ if it was in the context of: "Did you say 'it is red'?" "No, I said 'it isn't red'", but not normally elsewhere.
The thing is, though, I'd still give <isn't> initial stress– stronger initial stress, but still initial stress. Or maybe "it's not"; that's not terribly likely (or maybe it is), but definitely sounds less awkward than the wholly uncontracted one.
"A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort."
–Herm Albright
Even better than a proto-conlang, it's the *kondn̥ǵʰwéh₂s
I've heard my parents use the -en ending for past participles of some verbs that normally don't have it; e.g., using "have boughten" instead of "have bought".
Eschatologist wrote:I've heard my parents use the -en ending for past participles of some verbs that normally don't have it; e.g., using "have boughten" instead of "have bought".
Tangentially, in the Little House on the Prairie series (and, i'm sure, in other books of the time), "boughten" was used as an adjective, denoting that something was bought in a store, rather than hand-made: A boughten shirt, a boughten hat, that sort of thing.
My teenage nephew use "a lettuce" today for "a piece of lettuce"
"A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort."
–Herm Albright
Even better than a proto-conlang, it's the *kondn̥ǵʰwéh₂s
Does anybody use the word "sensical" as a back formation from "nonsensical"? It seemed so natural to me until a few of my friends gave me puzzled looks when I used it. I've met some other people who had no problem with it, but a lot of people tell me it sounds wrong, and I was surprised to find out it's not really a widely accepted word.
Maulrus wrote:Does anybody use the word "sensical" as a back formation from "nonsensical"? It seemed so natural to me until a few of my friends gave me puzzled looks when I used it. I've met some other people who had no problem with it, but a lot of people tell me it sounds wrong, and I was surprised to find out it's not really a widely accepted word.
It's in the dictionary and I've seen it in academic writing, so...
Edit: Also it's arguably a derivation from 'sense' by analogy with nonsensical rather than necessarily a back-formation.
كان يا ما كان / يا صمت العشية / قمري هاجر في الصبح بعيدا / في العيون العسلية
KhúbrisInkálkjulabul wrote:Mein Gott. that's like saying "a scissors". it hurts my head.
Could be worse. He could invent the form "letti" as the plural of "lettuce".
"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."
Jetboy wrote:My teenage nephew use "a lettuce" today for "a piece of lettuce"
What? So "lettuce" isn't actually a count noun? (I almost never talk about such things in English anyway, but still... In my dialect of Spanish at least lechuga can be either a count noun or a mass noun.)
KhúbrisInkálkjulabul wrote:
Jetboy wrote:My teenage nephew use "a lettuce" today for "a piece of lettuce"
Mein Gott. that's like saying "a scissors". it hurts my head.
In my dialect of Spanish we do say una tijera... (Though I think it's more common across dialects to say tijeras, as in English, though I'm not sure.)
Jetboy wrote:My teenage nephew use "a lettuce" today for "a piece of lettuce"
What? So "lettuce" isn't actually a count noun? (I almost never talk about such things in English anyway, but still... In my dialect of Spanish at least lechuga can be either a count noun or a mass noun.)
Yes, lettuce is a mass noun; if one wants to use it like a count noun, one speaks of heads of lettuce and similar constructions (e.g. leaf of lettuce), which one can use in the singular as a head of lettuce (or the like).
Sinjana wrote:
KhúbrisInkálkjulabul wrote:
Jetboy wrote:My teenage nephew use "a lettuce" today for "a piece of lettuce"
Mein Gott. that's like saying "a scissors". it hurts my head.
In my dialect of Spanish we do say una tijera... (Though I think it's more common across dialects to say tijeras, as in English, though I'm not sure.)
In English one normally speaks of a pair of scissors if one wants to speak of a single object; for more than one, one still commonly speaks of pairs of scissors.
Jetboy wrote:My teenage nephew use "a lettuce" today for "a piece of lettuce"
What? So "lettuce" isn't actually a count noun? (I almost never talk about such things in English anyway, but still... In my dialect of Spanish at least lechuga can be either a count noun or a mass noun.)
Yes, lettuce is a mass noun; if one wants to use it like a count noun, one speaks of heads of lettuce and similar constructions (e.g. leaf of lettuce), which one can use in the singular as a head of lettuce (or the like).
In my dialect it can be either a mass noun or a count noun (and "head of lettuce" isn't used).
Travis B. wrote:Yes, lettuce is a mass noun; if one wants to use it like a count noun, one speaks of heads of lettuce and similar constructions (e.g. leaf of lettuce), which one can use in the singular as a head of lettuce (or the like).
or the usual "Different lettuces are used in different recipes" thing
I don't think saying "Can I have a lettuce?" is any worse than saying "Can I have a coffee?" It's just a mass noun turned into a count noun when the expected portion is obvious.
clawgrip wrote:I don't think saying "Can I have a lettuce?" is any worse than saying "Can I have a coffee?" It's just a mass noun turned into a count noun when the expected portion is obvious.
See, what I am used to is saying "Can I have some lettuce?", not *"Can I have a lettuce?", which is ungrammatical to my ears.
