Catching Ducks

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Labels: grammar, random silliness

As someone who has taken French, ancient Greek, and ASL, I can confirm that this is 100% true:


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Labels: grammar

From Joss Whedon's twitter:

Labels: grammar

Seen here:




Many, many years ago I was teaching an ESL class and I completely confused them by using the word "javaney". As in, "Javaney questions?"

Labels: grammar

It shows the most-spoken language in each state, after English and Spanish. Waaay more German than I would have expected.

Labels: grammar

Iris pointed out that I forgot to post something yesterday -- oops!


Seen here:

tumblr #1:
OMG so I just figured out the word “hurt”
it’s past, present and future
you will be hurt
you are hurt
you were hurt
BECAUSE IF SOMETHING TRULY HURT, IT NEVER REALLY STOPS

tumblr #2:
it’s because... it’s an adjective... ...
you will be stupid
you are stupid
you were stupid

tumblr #3:
that hurt


Seen here, from today's preseason Storm/Sparks game:

"[Crystal] Langhorne just outrebounded [Candace] Parker for a putback. And by that I mean she went for the ball while Candace just watched her."

Labels: grammar, Seattle Storm

Seen here:


tumblr #1: in Canada they don’t pronounce Z as "zee". they pronounce it as "zed" and that is crazy to me. it sounds like they made a typo when they invented it

tumblr #2: They do that everywhere in the world that’s not America. We do that here in the UK too. America is weird man.

tumbler: #3: i love it when america’s like lol canada amiright?? and the rest of the worlds like nah bro its literally only you that does it different

Labels: grammar

From "The Golem" (1.10):


Crane: I'm still reconciling today's language and its advancements. For example, in my era a "toilet" was a vanity cabinet. "Intercourse" meant, simply, social conversation. "Awful" meant awe-inspiring.

Abbie: So if I went out with a guy and we had "awful intercourse", we'd be going on a second date?

Crane: Disconcerting, yet accurate.

Abbie: That's just weird.

Labels: grammar, Sleepy Hollow

One of my favorite things about Richard Sherman, summed up in a twitter conversation:


random dude: I find myself saying "Mediocre" all the time now, thanks [Richard Sherman]

Richard Sherman: there u go... Extend ur vocab.... Throw perspicacious in there a few times ... It's fun using a diverse array of words

random dude: ill be sure to ask my english teacher the definitions of those words you have just enlightened me with. Congrats on everything.

Labels: grammar, Seattle Seahawks

Seen here:


Spanish and Italian:
So THESE words are feminine and THESE words are masculine, and you ALWAYS put an adjective AFTER the noun.

French:
haha i don't fuckin know man just do whatever

German:
LET'S ADD A NEUTRAL NOUN HAHA

English:
*shooting up in the bathroom*

Gaelic:
the pronunciation changes depending on the gender and what letter the words starts and ends with and hahah i don't even know good fucking luck

Polish:
here have all these consonants have fun

Japanese:
subject article noun article verb. too bad there's three fucking alphabets lmao hope your first language isn't western

Welsh:
sneeze, and chances are you've got it right. idfk

Chinese:
here's a picture. draw it. it means something. it can be pronounced three different ways. these twenty other pictures are pronounced the same but have very different meanings. godspeed.

Arabic:
so here's this one word. it actually translates to three words. also pronouns don't really exist. the gender is all in the verb. have fun!

Latin:
here memorize 500 charts and then you still don't know what the fuck is happening.

Labels: grammar

So, I took this dialect quiz and.... I'm from the midwest, apparently.



Most similar cities: Des Moines (IA), Wichita (KS), Louisville (KY), Cedar Rapids (IA), and Tulsa (OK).

Huh. I've been to Des Moines, but other than that I've never even been to those cities!

What was most annoying/confusing, though, was the last question:


What do you call an easy course?
- other
- bird
- gut
- crypt course
- blow-off
- crip course
- meat

On some of the other questions they would give an option of "I don't have a word for this concept", but on this one they didn't. Am I being dense? What on earth is an "easy course"? Does anyone here in western Washington use this phrase/concept? Help!!

Labels: grammar

Seen here:


"The collective noun for a group of books is a 'damn, I'm never going to get around to reading all of these.'"

Labels: books, grammar

Seen here:


Quoted text:

It is perfectly grammatical to have two "thats" or two "hads" in a row for that matter. With proper punctuation, you can have even more. Robert Day offers the following example: "He said, in speaking of the word "that", that that "that" that that student had referred to was not that "that" that that other student referred to."

Comments:

omfg I am so sorry to all you non-native english speakers that need to learn this shit.

Welcome to english, here's your bag of 150 wtfs, use them wisely

Labels: grammar

From here:


"please learn how to use 'literally' because if you tell me that a boy 'literally took your breath away and stole your heart' i'm just gonna assume he choked you to death and then sold your heart on the organ black market"

Labels: grammar, random silliness

From a post on Monkey See back in 2009, in which Linda Holmes discusses upcoming movies:


"Terminator Salvation, which I used to think was Terminator: Salvation, but it turns out that it does not contain the colon, meaning that it is about the salvation of terminators or possibly salvation by terminators, as opposed to just being the next movie in the Terminator franchise and also named Salvation. (This may seem like a small point, until you realize that, for instance, Batman Returns would be a very different movie if it were called Batman: Returns, which would almost certainly make it about whether you can write off your cape as a business expense if you are self-employed as a late-night doer of good deeds.)"

Labels: grammar, Linda Holmes, movies

I saw this on Life is good & bad:


"Grammar is the difference between knowing your shit and knowing you’re shit.”

Labels: grammar

One of my favorite things about listening to ABBA is that they occasionally (and really, it is pretty rare) mess up their English idioms. Personally, I find it adorable.

Like in the song "Kisses of Fire", they have this line: "Kisses of Fire, burning, burning/I'm at the point of no returning".

Or in the song "When I Kissed the Teacher": "I was in the seventh heaven when I kissed the teacher".

And in "What About Livingstone": "Traveling up the Nile/
Putting themselves on test". (To be fair, this one may be a British English vs. American English thing.)

It's not just ABBA, of course. Shakira (who's from Colombia) has a song called "Whenever, Wherever" that has the line: "We can always play by ear".

And in a recent episode of Project Runway, Heidi Klum (who grew up in Germany) was talking to a contestant. The contestant got a little snippy with her and then turned away. Heidi accusingly said, "Are you rolling eyeballs?"

Labels: ABBA, grammar, music, Project Runway

From a Seattle Times Shootaround with Lauren Jackson:


Q: What are three Aussie words an American wouldn't understand — and can you toss in a favorite Aussie curse word I can put in the newspaper?

LJ: Dunny — toilet. Cobber — mate. "How you doin', cobber?" My grandfather calls my brother that all the time. Grog, as in alcohol. And bugger. I always say bugger.

Q: Now can you use all four in a sentence involving you and Sue Bird?

LJ: (Laughs). OK, let me give it a shot. "Sue, me cobber, and I went out for some grog last night, I went to the dunny and dropped me mobile in the loo and all I could say was bugger!" Not very intelligent or witty, but I got it done!

Labels: grammar, Seattle Storm

Sometimes I feel like a Grammar Nazi. But there's a reason, really! Good grammar reduces confusion and miscommunication*.

I was looking at Cracked.com's list of "6 Historic Acts of Revenge That Put 'Kill Bill' To Shame", and under a picture on the first page they had this caption:

"OK, see this? This is my ass kicking face."

Which I read as an ass kicking someone's face. It took me a second to realize what they meant was this:

"OK, see this? This is my ass-kicking face."

A minor change in the text, but a big change in meaning.


Related: xkcd's "Hyphen"





*Spellchecks are handy, but can also be pains-in-the-butt. To wit: The blogger spellcheck is convinced that "miscommunication" is not actually a word. (Nor does it like "spellcheck", which is nicely ironic.)

Labels: grammar

I went to "Jack in the Box" on my way home from work tonight. They had a handwritten sign posted saying:

"Please bare with us. We only have two workers."

While I was happy to bear with them, I wasn't comfortable baring with them.

Labels: grammar