Forum: Author Hangout

The only language I've learned with a writing system as bad as English is Japanese. Even Mandarin isn't nearly this bad — high learning overhead, but otherwise straightforward.

You cannot write modern Japanese with kanji alone — all particles and conjugation are written in hiragana, which means always blending at least two writing systems. Katakana is typically used much like English uses italics, both for transliterating foreign words and for emphasis, so it can routinely mix in too. Foreign names are as often as not given in romaji, or this Latin alphabet you're reading now. (The digits of numbers can be written in three different systems, Arabic numerals and either the common or "banker's" kanji.)

But none of these are the big problem. The big problem is that most kanji have at least two (commonly more) utterly unrelated readings, one the native Japanese word with the same meaning as the original Chinese hanzi and one the Japanese approximation of the Chinese word (at the time it was borrowed, so thanks to language drift there can be a couple Chinese-ish readings — plus a couple Japanese synonyms for that character). Which reading to use is as complicated to figure out as which pronunciation of ough to use in cough, enough, bough, though, and through.

UK & US forms

As weird as this next phrase might seem to som, I speak and write both, and switch depending on context.

I drive my spell checker and grammar checker nuts because it demands I pick one or the other, and I can't be bothered to switch.

Example — when discussing F1, I write 'tyre', when discussing IndyCar, I write 'tire'.

I also tend to blend both dialects in speech. And toss in a bit of Subcontinent dialect (I love the word 'preponed').

My family goes waaaay back in the Boeing aircraft corporation. Duraluminum is a term used for the particular Aluminum alloy used in Aircraft and certain other military and naval equipment from the 1920's to the 1960's, but is rarely used anymore.

If I had to write this I would use 'neither', because in German I would say "Ich auch nicht". Because its sense is a negation I expected 'neither'.

I would also use 'neither' for that reason, but English is like a greased pig — so slippery in the vernacular that it's difficult to catch and tie down.

'Who' versus 'whom' is important for me, but most people do not decline 'who' in the objective case. Pronouns and articles are the few remaining parts of speech we decline (other than for pliural or possessive), and even that is dying out.

'Who' versus 'whom' is important for me, but most people do not decline 'who' in the objective case.

I'm usually one of the 'most people' unless, in the context, 'who' sounds wrong eg 'To who it may concern'. However I have never used 'whomever' and I probably never will. (Unless someone were to grease my palm with a million pounds.)

AJ

However I have never used 'whomever' and I probably never will. (Unless someone were to grease my palm with a million pounds.)

I have used 'whomever' 174 times across my corpus on SOL. I believe all of them correctly, but you never know! :-)

I have used 'whomever' 174 times across my corpus on SOL.

Crikey Carruthers!

ETA over 1000 SOL stories contain 'whomever'. From a small sample, very few appear to be obviously wrong - most are obviously the object of a verb or follow a preposition.

AJ

'Who' versus 'whom' is important for me, but most people do not decline 'who' in the objective case.

I never use "whom." Why? I don't really know when to use it. If I use "whom" when it should be "who" I sound illiterate. But if I use "who" when it should be "whom" I'm just making a common mistake many others make.

Basic rule: pretend to replace "who" with a definite pronoun like "he" — if "him" is correct, use whom, and if "he" is correct, use who.

Basic rule: pretend to replace "who" with a definite pronoun like "he" — if "him" is correct, use whom, and if "he" is correct, use who.

Not that simple. I googled examples of using whom and was given the following 4.

1. With whom am I speaking? (I am speaking with him/her.)

2. To whom this may concern. (This concerns him/her.)

3. A number of friends went to the cinema, one of whom was the birthday boy.

4. Actually, she knew very little about the man with whom she had promised to spend the summer.

***

In #1, you can't replace "whom" with "him". What's in parentheses explains why it's "whom."

#2 is the same as #1.

In #3, you can't replace "whom" with "him." You can replace it with "them."

I guess #4 is like #1.

But in none of them can I replace "whom" with "him."

"I and Bobby Mcgee" would be correct.

I wouldn't be too sure about that.

'Bobby Mcgee and I' would be correct in all settings (I hope).

'Me and Bobby Mcgee' would be correct informally but not informally.

'I and Bobby Mcgee' would be wrong in all settings, I believe. It's all to do with us English and our tradition of politeness, putting ourselves second ;-)

AJ

My mother tongue is American English, and I often state I may be Missunderstood in more than 20 languages!

I too have had a very high reading compression, since even before I began kindergarten. My Godfather gifted me his childrens' collection of hundreds of books a few months before I turned four, and was learning to read (his youngest kid was leaving for college).

I was driven to learn the Words relating to all of those cool pictures of dinosaurs, asteroids, aircraft, volcanos, etc.

Spoken English is so common, that with some 350 common words a person can get by, as a soldier or tourist.

as there's circa half a million recognised words in English

Considering how extensible and adaptable English is, both in adding prefixes and suffixes to words plus incorporating and bastardising terms from other languages (chaise longue etc), I would imagine there are rather more than half a million recognisable words.

AJ

as there's circa half a million recognised words in English

Yes, but how many of them are used outside very specialized conversations? And how many are archaic, and thus rarely used? And so on.

Shakespeare only used something like 28,000 unique words, and the Wall Street Journal around 20,000.

I recall reading that adults have a range of 25,000 to 40,000 words in their full vocabulary (active and passive), with the number mainly related to how much education they've received (but not always).

A three-year-old has, if I recall correctly, comprehension of something like 1,000 words, growing to around 10,000 by the time they begin school.

I'd put 'basic communication competency' at around 1,000 words (based on these remembered numbers).

If I had to write this I would use 'neither'

You would be correct.

Unfortunately 'me either' seems to be catching on in the colonies. It's especially annoying when the character who says it is supposed to be an English teacher :-(

AJ

Looking in Google's Ngram Viewer, "me either" beats "me neither" in both the 2019 American English corpus and the 2019 British English corpus.

They don't provide context, just raw data. 'Me either' is valid in plenty of circumstances - "The French champion couldn't beat me either'.

In HM's example, the speaker is agreeing with a negative statement so 'me either' is ungrammatical.

AJ

And you missed the one that, for me, takes the biscuit. Flammable and Inflammable.

Which, of course, both mean the same thing! :-) 'inflammable' is actually the older word.

both mean the same thing!

Not really.

If something is flammable it means it can be set fire to, such as a piece of wood. However, inflammable means that a substance is capabble of bursting into flames without the need for any ignition. Unstable liquid chemicals and certain types of fuel fall into this category. The opposite of both words is non-flammable.

Not really.

Well, according to dictionary.com:

flammable: easily set on fire; combustible; inflammable.

inflammable: capable of being set on fire; combustible; flammable.

and Merriam-Webster.com:

flammable: capable of catching or being set on fire

inflammable: capable of catching or being set on fire

and New Oxford American Dictionary:

flammable: easily set on fire

inflammable: easily set on fire

and the OED:

flammable: inflammable

inflammable: Capable of being inflamed or set on fire; susceptible of combustion; easily set on fire. Cf. flammable

As I said.

Yeah, but the dictionaries don't have "distraughtness." So what do they know? LOL

Yeah, but the dictionaries don't have "distraughtness." So what do they know? LOL

Not a lot, actually. The are point-in-time observations of the use of the language. and word meaning drifts over time.

The specific 'problem' we're discussing is due to some 'genius' deciding to import 'flammable' as a replacement for inflammable, because 'in' often means 'not' as a prefix. All he did is make it worse!

is due to some 'genius' deciding to import 'flammable' as a replacement for inflammable, because 'in' often means 'not' as a prefix

I would guess the difference we have today was someone involved with safety. That is, labeling something "inflammable" requires different care than something labeled "flammable."

But other than the safety part, this is pretty good:

Inflammable came into English in the early 1600s. Things were fine until 1813, when a scholar translating a Latin text coined the English word flammable from the Latin flammare, and now we had a problem: two words that look like antonyms but are actually synonyms.

Yes! really!

No. When you see "inflammable" and "flammable" on safety labels, they mean different things.