zompist bboard

For me have to is /ˈ(h)æftu/ [ˈ(h)ɛftʲʉ̯u(ː)]~/ˈ(h)æftə/ [ˈ(h)ɛftə(ː)], which contrasts with have two /ˈ(h)ævˈtu/ [ˈ(h)ɛːfˈtʲʰʉ̯u(ː)].

Had to does not have anything special going on with it, being /ˈ(h)ædtu/ [ˈ(h)ɛːtʲːʉ̯u(ː)]~/ˈ(h)ædtə/ [ˈ(h)ɛːtːə(ː)]. This contrasts with had two /ˈ(h)ædˈtu/ [ˈ(h)ɛːtʲˈtʲʰʉ̯u(ː)] only because of the stress difference and its effect on aspiration. Note that /dt/ is distinguished from /tt/ by a lack of preglottalization and a long preceding vowel.

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Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

Apologies if this has been posted before, but it's new to me. There's a site, n-gate.com, which provides an extremely snarky weekly digest of discussions at Hacker News. And they've come up with a hilarious metonymy: for "a <site> user" they just write "<site>".

What's "bikeshed"?

"discuss", I suppose.

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The conlanger formerly known as “the conlanger formerly known as Pole, the”.

If we don't study the mistakes of the future we're doomed to repeat them for the first time.

More specific than that: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshed

A West Virginian senator on CNN keeps saying "I take it serious" instead of using the adverb "seriously." Is this characteristic of Appalachian English?

He also just said "the goodest country in the world."

It's interesting listening to this guy.

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Falgwian and Falgwia!!

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.

Not just Appalachian English; Southern accents in general, including the use of "good" where one would expect "well" (e.g., "Y'all done good" instead of "You did well"). Adjective-for-adverb substitution is a feature I've observed to stick around in Southern English even in registers that are otherwise closer to standard, however.

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"But if of ships I now should sing, what ship would come to me,
What ship would bear me ever back across so wide a Sea?”

It's also (afaict) becoming commonplace in England; I've noticed it in the speech of my younger brother and his friends.

I could probably find similar examples from my own casual speech.

Adjective/adverb replacement is common in my own speech. I often catch myself saying 'good' for 'well' or 'bad' for 'badly.' But I don't think I've ever extended it to other adjectives such as 'serious.' Is there a limit to the replacement? Can it be done for long adverbs? For example, "He did it different than you'd think".*

*Ok, now I am really unsure that this is truly marked for me. While this sentence appears marked to me, I'd likely say "He made it separate from the others" where 'separate' replaces 'separately.'

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Falgwian and Falgwia!!

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.

Can't think of one

Yep.

Did Old English take the adverb ending -līce from Old Norse? And now Modern English is dropping this Old Norse innovation?

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Falgwian and Falgwia!!

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.

Nah, I think it just happened to be a development that was similar to Old Norse (although I'm no expert on the history of English).

As for why people would merge adverbs and adjectives, well, IIRC it's cross-linguistically more unusual for a language to have adverbs than to have adjectives (and more unusual to have those than just nouns and verbs).

Really Vik, sometimes you should just Google :).


JAL

I did, actually. I didn't expect etymonline would have -ly in their database so it didn't occur to me to look there.

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Falgwian and Falgwia!!

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.

Yeah, etymonline has common prefixes and suffixes as well. Quite handy!


JAL

As does Wiktionary.

The development of adverbial marking in Germanic is interesting. There seems to be a certain correlation between loss of adjective inflection and the spread of explicitly adverbial suffixes. The latter were rare in Standard German until very recently, for instance.


There are fixed phrases or collocations where it would strike me as odd, to say the least.

To my surprise, though, "won it handy" (which I would consider one of these) gets more Ghits than "won it handily". So I may be in the minority here.

ETA: Is there anyone here who would accept "I speak English fluent"?

Heh, is Southern American basically becoming the Afrikaans of English?

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The conlanger formerly known as “the conlanger formerly known as Pole, the”.

If we don't study the mistakes of the future we're doomed to repeat them for the first time.

An English adverb that is identical in form to an adjective, rather than an adjective + the "ly" suffix, can be called a "flat" adverb. As others have mentioned, flat adverbs are common in speech, especially colloquial speech, in many areas and my understanding is that they've had some use continuously since before adverbs and adjectives were differentiated, so the existence of adverbs with this form is not exactly innovative. Some uses for some words are considered standard.

I don't know of any native-spoken variety of English where "ly" adverbs seem to be on a clear path to disappearing entirely. I don't think I've ever heard "it's entire different" for "it's entirely different," for example. I can't think of the exact conditions right now, but I think there's something like adverbs modifying predicative adjectives are unlikely to be able to be flat, while adverbs modifying verbs/verb phrases are more likely to be able to be flat. Certainly it depends in part on the specific word; "real" is usable as an adverb in any position ("it's real good" is certainly possible and common colloquially).

Not real.

Hmm, yeah, I guess "real" is actually pretty much restricted to modifying adjectives, like "very".

On the other hand, "for real(s)" is ubiquitous.

I could see a fellow South'ner saying that, but I imagine them putting "real" before "fluent." Maybe I could imagine them saying it without "real" if they were being indignant about it, like if they were getting defensive about their accent/dialect.

As is "for serious". Okay, maybe not ubiquitous, but still pretty common.

It feels real, though.

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The conlanger formerly known as “the conlanger formerly known as Pole, the”.

If we don't study the mistakes of the future we're doomed to repeat them for the first time.