Grammar Discussions

GPH said:
How about " that was really good but" ...... But what?!!
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Ending a sentence in 'but' seems to be peculiar to WA. When I was at school there it was widespread. I came from South Australia when 'though' was routinely added to the end of sentences.
 
Walter_Plinge said:
Ending a sentence in 'but' seems to be peculiar to WA. When I was at school there it was widespread. I came from South Australia when 'though' was routinely added to the end of sentences.
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I've heard that being used before, usually in the context that the but should actually be placed at the beginning of the sentence. For example:

"I heard that Max is hungover big time this morning."

"Yeah, we were doing shots last night. I think he'll be out for the whole morning. Really good last night, but."
 
anat0l said:
I've heard that being used before, usually in the context that the but should actually be placed at the beginning of the sentence. For example:

"I heard that Max is hungover big time this morning."

"Yeah, we were doing shots last night. I think he'll be out for the whole morning. Really good last night, but."
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Indeed. Poor sentence construction, which is worse when speaking.

andye said:
I usually hear the triple:

Yeah, but nah, but yeah

which is the opposite of

Nah, but yeah, but nah
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Also an element of the parties to the conversation understanding the pros and cons so that they don't need to be stated.
 
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I couldn't resist posting this comment I read where the poster was having a go at the columnist for using the 'abomination' (his word) "different than" instead of "different from".

You may be thinking about "different to". "Different from" is always the correct form."Than" is used for rank order comparatives: you have two objects and you are measuring them and placing them into an order. If you reverse the order, you invert the meaning:
"Alice is taller than Bob"
"Bob is taller than Alice"
"Brighton is closer than Paris"
"Paris is closer than Brighton"
"Different than" makes no sense because the order of arguments is irrelevant, unless you are using e.g. "more different than", e.g. "Paris and London are more different than Brighton and London are", i.e. where (again) you are using 'than' for the purposes of a rank order comparison.
"Different than" manages to sound both lazy and awkward at the same time. It sounds like something a hillbilly would say, yet it's become the dominant form in North America over the course of the last 30-40 years for some reason. (You barely hear it or read it earlier than that.)
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The poster seemed to be Indian, by the way. "Different than" is almost universal in the US of A and is creeping in here.
 
Warks said:
I couldn't resist posting this comment I read where the poster was having a go at the columnist for using the 'abomination' (his word) "different than" instead of "different from".



The poster seemed to be Indian, by the way. "Different than" is almost universal in the US of A and is creeping in here.
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"Different than" is plain ugly...I wouldn't call it an abomination but the poster is right, it just doesn't make sense

Another thing that is widely used but always makes me cringe is "cheap prices"...prices are either low or high but not "cheap" or "expensive". Interestingly, this phenomenon isn't restricted to English, in my mother tongue (Russian) it's exactly the same thing so there is no escape for me when I visit the motherland :mrgreen:
 
Dabbling in the differences between a LOTE and English again, I've realised that the following two sentences mean the same thing:

I have a hammer.

I've got a hammer.

The second one would seem to have a superfluous verb in it. If someone asked the question, "Who has a hammer?" both responses would seem fine.

Is there a semantic difference here I'm missing or are they semantically the same, maybe the second one is clumsy and tends to be more in spoken English more than written?
 
anat0l said:
Dabbling in the differences between a LOTE and English again, I've realised that the following two sentences mean the same thing:

I have a hammer.

I've got a hammer.

The second one would seem to have a superfluous verb in it. If someone asked the question, "Who has a hammer?" both responses would seem fine.

Is there a semantic difference here I'm missing or are they semantically the same, maybe the second one is clumsy and tends to be more in spoken English more than written?
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you have answered your own question

yes, it's exactly the same thing

Americans seem to go more with variant No 1, the British would go with No 2
 
What about 'why' vs "how come"?

"How come" appears to mean the same as 'why' but I don't know if you hear it so much these days. It sounds a bit rustic though.

"How come you didn't come to the pub?" vs
"Why didn't you come to the pub?"

It actually sounds a bit less interrogative now I think about it.
 
Warks said:
What about 'why' vs "how come"?

"How come" appears to mean the same as 'why' but I don't know if you hear it so much these days. It sounds a bit rustic though.

"How come you didn't come to the pub?" vs
"Why didn't you come to the pub?"

It actually sounds a bit less interrogative now I think about it.
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there is a slight difference...in brief "how come" is informal and "why" is formal but it's not only that, there's a difference in the meaning as well

here's a nice little article on it

Difference Between How Come and Why | Difference Between | How Come vs Why
 

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