caivano Wrote:I knooooooooooooooooooooow

I knew your use of "final" was like how "literally" doesn't always mean it.

So, I'm thinking of starting to write "What's that mean?" to mean "What does that mean?" because I hear people say it that way. Is it ok to grammar curmudgeons here? How's that sound to you? Oh, should I say, "How does that sound to you?"

:$

magamo Wrote:So, I'm thinking of starting to write "What's that mean?" to mean "What does that mean?" because I hear people say it that way. Is it ok to grammar curmudgeons here? How's that sound to you? Oh, should I say, "How does that sound to you?"

That's ok because the apostrophe represents omitted letters (in this case "doe").

chair Wrote:That's ok because the apostrophe represents omitted letters (in this case "doe").

If you didn't know, it was a tongue in cheek comment. The standard contraction rule dictates that "what's" ought to be "what is" and can never be "what does." "How's" isn't accepted as any kind of contraction in the first place. I'm fully aware of this, and I know how they're prevalent in real life, hence the comment.

Hold on a sec. Did I just get trolled the exact same way as caivano did?! Holly shit! You're really good at it.

Oh, and "exact same" isn't correct to some people. They say it should be "exactly the same." But ***** it.

Okay, you know how I said people would think of you as dumb if you said "should of" instead of "should have" in a writing paper?

Well, I was speaking about professors and English degree holders and what not..

But if you wrote "what's that mean", even I would think that was pretty dumb... unless it was some kind of extremely informal setting like a chat messenger or something.

Maybe it's because of the forum setting but the 'formality' of this medium (koohii forum) seems to dictate that you should try a little harder to spell out what you mean instead of weird confusing grammatical errors and you know are incorrect and yet still insist to use just because 'that's how it sounds when I say it.'

I refer back to my argument about how we should spell fatigue "fahteeg" by that logic, and that we should type in constant run on sentences since that's how we speak.

yudantaiteki Wrote:"Have" isn't functioning as the verb meaning "to possess" anyway; it's just a grammatical marker.

I'm not sure what you mean by "grammatical marker." While it's true that the "have" here isn't the action verb rich_f was referring to, it is a verb of sorts, and I'm not sure why that distinction makes it any more or less eligible to be mutated into a completely separate word.

I understand that languages evolve over time, but I think we should resist letting pure ignorance guide the evolution of our language. People who use "should of" don't care enough about their native language understand how to form the present perfect tense correctly. They're the same people who don't bother to tell "their," "there," and "they're" apart. I'm sorry, but I refuse to be told I have to accept that usage because people can't be bothered to learn English correctly.

magamo Wrote:Hold on a sec. Did I just get trolled the exact same way as caivano did?! Holly shit! You're really good at it.

Wait...what? If anyone's being trolled, it's the rest of us.

zachandhobbes Wrote:what not..

"Whatnot" is a one-word (See Merriam-Webster).

You do not put two periods at the end of a sentence. Use either exactly one period or three if it is an ellipsis.

zachandhobbes Wrote:... 'formality'... 'that's how it sounds when I say it.'

Be consistent as to which quotation mark you use. You used double quotation marks in other places of the same post.

Because of the formality of this medium (koohii forum), I presume a person who adheres to such nonstandard English and makes three errors in one single short post, such as you, is dumb.

See? Didn't I sound dumb and annoying?

If you still don't get what I'm driving at, let me rephrase it:

You are dumb if you think a person must be dumb just because he gets marked off in his English paper.

zachandhobbes Wrote:by that logic

On a serious note, language isn't logical, so arguments which use "by that logic" like yours aren't convincing at all. Also, there isn't such a thing as the correct style you "should" follow. That auxiliary verb is something prescriptive grammarians tend to use very frequently. If you're serious about grammar and such, you might want to learn the concept of descriptive grammar.

zachandhobbes Wrote:But if you wrote "what's that mean", even I would think that was pretty dumb... unless it was some kind of extremely informal setting like a chat messenger or something.

Maybe it's because of the forum setting but the 'formality' of this medium (koohii forum) seems to dictate that you should try a little harder to spell out what you mean instead of weird confusing grammatical errors and you know are incorrect and yet still insist to use just because 'that's how it sounds when I say it.'

Uh... using "what's" as a contraction of "what does" is not a weird confusing grammatical error. It's a perfectly fine casual expression.

magamo Wrote:On a serious note, language isn't logical, so arguments which use "by that logic" like yours aren't convincing at all.

You mean that language evolution is not logical, yes? If language itself were not logical, communication would be impossible. Plus, I would be out of a job! I just spent two hours today teaching students how to use Venn diagrams to represent the logical content of linguistic statements. What a waste!

vileru Wrote:You mean that language evolution is not logical, yes? If language itself were not logical, communication would be impossible. Plus, I would be out of a job! I just spent two hours today teaching students how to use Venn diagrams to represent the logical content of linguistic statements. What a waste!

What I mean is that grammar, orthography, etc. aren't logical. For example, just because a word which is classified as a certain class is used in a particular way doesn't mean all other words of the same kind should behave the same way. What language expresses may or may not be logical; it all depends on who says what.

magamo Wrote:What I mean is that grammar, orthography, etc. aren't logical. For example, just because a word which is classified as a certain class is used in a particular way doesn't mean all other words of the same kind should behave the same way. What language expresses may or may not be logical; it all depends on who says what.

Sorry for making you clarify a hair-splitting distinction. Thanks to my poor writing skills, my sarcastic mockery of the pedantic atmosphere may have not been very clear. Nevertheless, your clarification is succinct and leaves little room for confusion, and therefore is not superfluous.

This thread would be so much better if Nest0r were here.

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:(Unfortunately for certainly earlier posters with pet peeves 'on accident' is more likely to survive

My mother has tried to stop me from saying "on accident" since I was a child and sadly, she has not succeeded.

JimmySeal:

Quote:i'm not sure what you mean by "grammatical marker." While it's true that the "have" here isn't the action verb rich_f was referring to, it is a verb of sorts, and I'm not sure why that distinction makes it any more or less eligible to be mutated into a completely separate word.

What I meant was that the auxiliary "have" isn't really the same thing as the verb "have" meaning "to possess", so there's really no reason why they should be spelled the same way (especially since even educated English speakers pronounce it as "of" or "uv" in many situations). I'm pretty sure that in my own dialect, I only fully pronounce the "have" when it's at the end of the sentence ("Oh yeah, I should have.") and even then it's often "should've".

(Although I use "shoulda" pretty often too)

Quote:I understand that languages evolve over time, but I think we should resist letting pure ignorance guide the evolution of our language.

There's nothing you can do about it, though. Language changes; you can say that any change is through "ignorance". The English we're using in this thread is full of things that once would have been considered mistakes.

Quote:People who use "should of" don't care enough about their native language understand how to form the present perfect tense correctly. They're the same people who don't bother to tell "their," "there," and "they're" apart. I'm sorry, but I refuse to be told I have to accept that usage because people can't be bothered to learn English correctly.

But this is all spelling conventions. Whether you misspell the auxiliary as "of" has nothing to do with whether you can form a present perfect. The fact that someone puts the "of" in there at all shows that they understand there's an auxiliary verb there to form the present perfect (as all native speakers of English do) -- they just don't know how to spell it. It's the same with their/there/they're; since they are identical or nearly identical in many people's speech, it's just a matter of learning the spelling convention.

Spelling, like writing in general, isn't something that changes naturally (or at least it changes naturally in very small, limited ways compared to speech). It's why we have such a crappy spelling system in English -- a combination of unwarranted tinkering by know-nothing "experts" (i.e. "debt" and "island") and the fact that many spellings reflect pronunciations of the 15th-16th centuries rather than today.

magamo Wrote:

zachandhobbes Wrote:what not..

"Whatnot" is a one-word (See Merriam-Webster).

You do not put two periods at the end of a sentence. Use either exactly one period or three if it is an ellipsis.

zachandhobbes Wrote:... 'formality'... 'that's how it sounds when I say it.'

Be consistent as to which quotation mark you use. You used double quotation marks in other places of the same post.

Because of the formality of this medium (koohii forum), I presume a person who adheres to such nonstandard English and makes three errors in one single short post, such as you, is dumb.

See? Didn't I sound dumb and annoying?

If you still don't get what I'm driving at, let me rephrase it:

You are dumb if you think a person must be dumb just because he gets marked off in his English paper.

zachandhobbes Wrote:by that logic

On a serious note, language isn't logical, so arguments which use "by that logic" like yours aren't convincing at all. Also, there isn't such a thing as the correct style you "should" follow. That auxiliary verb is something prescriptive grammarians tend to use very frequently. If you're serious about grammar and such, you might want to learn the concept of descriptive grammar.

Arguing for the sake of arguing is idiotic and a waste of time. By formality I was referring to you purposely writing these that are unclear and incorrect yet 'grammatically correct in speech' such as "should of" vs "should have" and "What's that mean" vs "what does that mean", which work in speech but not in text and writing.

The way apostrophes and quotations are used are not even relevant to the topic of speech vs writing. It's clear to me that you are completely inflexible and will continue going on telling people to write "like da wey u speek it" because "dats da rite weigh"

And if you want to think that I'm dumb because I accidentally hit the period button twice, at least remember that I'm not doing it on purpose, unlike you, who is actively driving the incorrect way of writing things as if it is a goal of yours to make everyone change to your (incorrect) way.

I understand that 'evolution is natural' but that doesn't mean we should encourage mistakes.

Can I reiterate that just because it SOUNDS LIKE "should of" doesn't mean that it IS "should of" and that by writing "should of" you are not writing the equivalent of "should have" just like writing "Jamba's Cool" is not equivalent to writing "Jamba School" even though yes, admittedly, they sound similar when you say them?

@zachandhobbes

What are you talking about? We (or at least I) are trying to tell you that enforcing one particular writing style isn't a smart thing to do. As such, I nether encourage nor discourage any particular orthographic style.

Read what I've written until you understand what I said and stop putting words into my mouth. Maybe this line might be a good starting point:

magamo Wrote:Also, there isn't such a thing as the correct style you "should" follow.

or maybe

magamo Wrote:you might want to learn the concept of descriptive grammar.

In case you don't know what "descriptive grammar" means, here is a concise definition. You might especially want to read these lines:

Descriptive Grammar Wrote:Descriptive grammar does not deal with what is good or bad language use... ... It is a grammar based on the way a language actually is and not how some think it should be.

As you can see, we (or at least I) have been talking about this kind of idea, which is standard in linguistics. The kind of idea you seem to have is called "prescriptive," which, as far as I am aware, is hardly standard.

I'm sorry, but you seem to be continuously attacking a straw man. I recommend you stop fighting enemies that don't exist.

On a final note, it doesn't make you look extremely smart to ignore certain points, which some may think you did on purpose, e.g., not counter-arguing about your "what not." As I already said, I don't encourage or discourage your "what not" or any spelling style for that matter. I was saying you seem to be contradicting yourself by writing with the kind of English you yourself seem to be calling "incorrect." I don't think it's incorrect. But maybe you do.

Oh, I almost forgot. Do you not understand why the following argument doesn't make sense?

zachandhobbes Wrote:Can I reiterate that just because it SOUNDS LIKE "should of" doesn't mean that it IS "should of" and that by writing "should of" you are not writing the equivalent of "should have" just like writing "Jamba's Cool" is not equivalent to writing "Jamba School" even though yes, admittedly, they sound similar when you say them?

As I already said before in this thread, just because one rule seems to apply to one specific instance doesn't mean it should to every other similar case. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear in my previous posts. You get it now?

In case you don't, here is perhaps an easier explanation:

Rule A applies to words X and Y in phonological situation S. You find word Z similar to X and Y and see how it behaves in the same situation. It turns out that Z doesn't follow rule A unlike X and Y. Should this be considered wrong?

I don't think it is wrong or incorrect. English as it is has a lot of exceptions, and any set of grammar rules linguists have found has never fully explained the language's behavior. Hence, the fact that a certain rule does not universally apply to many similar cases does not make anything wrong or incorrect. In other words, "It's more logical this way!" doesn't make anything more right or correct.

This is the reason I believe your argument doesn't make much sense.

I must be missing something. How is it a spelling convention when people use "should of gone"? They are substituting an incorrect word. They don't write "I of gone". Seems more likely it hasn't registered that it's the same grammar as all other instances of "have" + past participle.

What you're describing (that they understand the grammar) would have them substituting "of" for "have" in every past participle combo, wouldn't it? But that doesn't happen. It wouldn't even work phonetically for other congugations of "have" ("he has gone" or "I had gone".) Are you suggesting they think it's a different grammar in those instances?

As for the spelling of "have", I can imagine looking up the history of the grammar to see where "have" came from and determining how the spelling could have ended up different. But I think partially substituting a word into a grammar structure today based on sound can be distinguished from arbitrary word spelling conventions. (debtor, etc.)

More generally, the idea that all writing is merely a phonetic representation of spoken words without any morphosyntactical (if that's a word) significance doesn't hold. Form can convey meaning.

yudantaiteki Wrote:What I meant was that the auxiliary "have" isn't really the same thing as the verb "have" meaning "to possess", so there's really no reason why they should be spelled the same way (especially since even educated English speakers pronounce it as "of" or "uv" in many situations).

Well, it actually is the same word. It's just that the "have" in perfect tenses is being used in an abstract sense. Just look at French, Italian, and (to some degree) Spanish for proof of this. And even were that not the case, I think it's bizarre to consider replacing it with a completely separate word in some limited instances.

Quote:you can say that any change is through "ignorance".

I wouldn't say that. Expressions can be knowingly shortened and streamlined. But typing "have" as "of" accomplishes nothing except looking ridiculous. "Should've" is just as easy to type and truer to the original expression.

Quote:The fact that someone puts the "of" in there at all shows that they understand there's an auxiliary verb there to form the present perfect (as all native speakers of English do)

Obviously not. I can't imagine how anyone would honestly think "of" is a verb unless they had no idea what a verb was.

Saying "English has exceptions" doesn't mean "the wrong things are right."

Wrong things are wrong. Exceptions are the right way to do thing, in a way that you wouldn't expect in context of the way you do the rest of things.

Smelling comes from smell, running comes from run. One adds -ing, the other adds -ning. They are different ways to make the same type of verb change to another kind of verb.

Does that mean we should do smellling and runing, because "English has exceptions?" That makes no sense whatsoever, and that is exactly what I am reading your post as.

Hey, zachandhobbes. Do you even know what prescriptive grammar means and how it has very negative connotations outside your English class such as in linguistics and real life in general?

I hate to say it, but saying something like "This grammar/word usage/spelling/whatever is right, and yours is wrong" is, in a sense, similar to saying, "Whites are humans. Blacks and yellows aren't normal humans." You might want to know what your idea sounds like to the rest of the world... Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, of course. But maybe, just maybe, not everyone is happy about your idea.

Prescriptive grammar does have merits, albeit they're limited. And regular orthography is good in many ways. But maybe it's a good idea for you to adopt the standard way of thinking in linguistics (and real life in general when being very serious). Neither induction nor generalization is accepted when arguing over grammar, spelling, and so on. If you can't understand why, sad to be you, I guess. How many times should I say just because there is a rule which applies to a certain thing doesn't mean it should apply to other instances? This isn't all about exceptions. It's because what you're doing is induction and generalization when the assumption that they work does not hold.

[Edit2] Edited out the stupid comment. I'm sorry. I wasn't in a good mood.

[Edit]

zachandhobbes Wrote:Does that mean we should do smellling and runing

If you're not familiar with logic, this is an example of bad induction/generalization, which, I think, is one of the reasons you don't understand my posts.

Here's a case where you took what I said, turned it into something totally different, and then ignored what I actually said completely.

All I am trying to say here is, how 'wrong' is 'wrong' to you, and how 'wrong' is right?

The point of my argument is this: "should of" instead of "should have" is about as correct as saying "discussed" instead of saying "disgust" (when what you mean is disgust), and just because they sound similar in speech doesn't mean that "should of" is an accepted way of writing "should have" just like if you wrote "discussed" instead of "disgust", you should not really expect anyone to just know that you meant disgust.

I don't really see why my point is hard for you to grasp. I'm not saying that everyone shouldn't have their own opinions on grammar, but does that mean you can go around just changing all the rules and saying that you're right, and that if I happen to disagree with your "opinions on grammar", I'm giving out negative connotations and that I should shut up and get out? Sorry highness, I should of listened to you and just agreed.

We don't need to get into stupid ad hominems and passive aggressive tones. You clearly have a decent grasp on the English language, more so than a lot of native speakers, so why even bother bringing that up? I think you're taking this way too personally and it's weird that you're bringing up something like that at all. I don't really see why you needed to insult not only my Japanese skill, but also my ability to see language analytically, just because I disagreed with you. I don't think the things you were implying were productive for conversation and debate whatsoever. I'm just thinking out loud right now, but maybe it's because of your previous friendliness with nest0r that you feel you need to be hostile against me, someone who didn't particularly take a liking to him? That's just one possibility, but considering how your posts are generally extremely constructive and positive outside of this one thread, I find it likely...

Perhaps I have bad examples, but it's not like you're really approaching my opinions with any more openness than you think I'm approaching yours.

zachandhobbes Wrote:We don't need to get into stupid ad hominems and passive aggressive tones.

I'm sorry. I was stupid and very rude to you. I'm another stupid human who makes idiotic mistakes when in a bad mood... Ah, and it has nothing to do with nest0r. I like his posts in general, but I'm also frustrated with him when he doesn't listen to others...

zachandhobbes Wrote:All I am trying to say here is, how 'wrong' is 'wrong' to you, and how 'wrong' is right?

It doesn't seem like we can reach agreement. I don't think anything is wrong per se. Some orthography/grammar/style/dialect/accent may be different from a standard, prestigious, or popular one. But I can't say it's wrong. I can argue how much one style deviates from another, but I can't be a judge, let alone call a person dumb because of his writing/speaking preference. Let me reiterate: I can't agree that a nonstandard spelling necessarily makes you look dumb.

Of course, it's not very smart to use "should of" in your English essay or formal writing. At least it's not an accepted form in formal situations yet. But I can't agree that this fact allows you to label anyone "dumb." And if this spelling catches on, I wouldn't oppose it. You might disagree, but I'm of the opinion that every user of the English language is equally in control of its evolution.

But yeah, I guess I'm not listening to you with openness. I admit if somehow you convince me that "should of" (or any other spelling for that matter) is wrong, probably I'll still be of the same opinion that no style is correct or wrong. I just can't say anything is wrong, especially when it's about native speakers' language usage... I'm sorry for the general rude attitude I had toward you. I didn't mean to offend you.

i think that if someone had that attitude towards learning japanese (that you can just make up your own grammar rules in the language) they wouldn't get very far

i suppose "should of" can be considered a common english mistake since i see it so often, or even slang in a sense, but if you try to publish it in a book in english the editors and your publisher definitely will not let you, and probably never will (unless it's a book about common grammar mistakes)

also the idea that every english user is equally a part of its evolution makes no sense to me. the evolution of a language is influenced most by people in authority or people who are widely read -- shakespeare had more influence on english's evolution than some random peasant from the same era, because so many people read him his influence was much greater

and seldom do grammar mistakes become normalized in grammar -- "ain't" has been used for a very long time and still isn't considered good grammar, and probably won't ever be

that said i agree that we should not enforce proper grammar on forums or assume that someone doesn't know them if they don't use them (e.g. i like to type without capitalization since it's more aesthetically appealing to me and because it's quicker to type that way on a keyboard (i get 120wpm vs 90wpm when i compare the two), not because i don't know the rules of capitalization)

I still think it's important to recognize the difference between a spelling mistake and a dialect difference. Many people, across many dialects, educated and not, pronounce the auxiliary "have" as something close to "of". This has nothing to do with any sort of ignorance or language change or anything; it's just a feature of normal pronunciation in speech. It's not the same thing as the use of a dialect feature like "ain't". It's much easier to speak of a "mistake" in spelling because spelling is something most people explicitly learn and it's much easier to point to a codified standard (although there are small areas of variation).

Now, if you actually *write* "should of", it shows an ignorance of standard spelling conventions, and nothing more. (It may mean that the person lacks the *overt* knowledge of auxiliary verbs (though their internal grammar has to include them), but I would argue that even many people who write "should have" probably can't explain them very well either.)

@yudan

I think I'm completely in agreement with what you just said. Plenty of people pronounce "have" exactly the same as "of" and this is entirely legitimate. The only distinction I'd like to make is that as much as it sounds the same, they are not actually saying "of," but rather a phonetically scrunched version of "have." This is true even if they think the word they're saying is "of."

From now on I'm going to purposefully start using 'should of,' as opposed to 'should have' and 'should've.' People will think I'm saying 'should've' but I won't be. And it might be grammatically incorrect, but that wont even matter, cause everyone will think I'm saying 'should've.'