Grammar Nazi
I might be a grammar nazi. Or perhaps just a spelling one.
Arkle of the Geek of All Trades podcast posted his favorite forum entry to twitter tonight. I needed to sit down and take a break at work, so I decided to follow through and see what he was proud of.
I must admit that at first, I had no idea what the frak he was going off about. So then I read the previous entry and it annoyed me a little bit but I still wasn’t clear on what was going on. I scrolled to the top of the page and found this drek:
OK! I get you like to try to make the shows edgy but, please please please stop using frak to replace the lovely edgy four letter f bomb. It drives me nuts. Hell, the way things are today there are so many four letter words your aloud to use that one is just a shameful attempt to be hard core. If I could kick you in the sack for everytime you use that stupid word. We might have to get you to start wearing a dress. OK I am good. Thanks.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!
I appreciated Arkle’s sarcastic and over the top reply:
[...] More than half the frakking time you’re frakking lucky if I can frakking break a frakking $10! And I frakking feel like frakking going on a frakking killing spree every frakking time some frakking douchenozzle frakking asks me if I can frakking break a frakking $100. Frakking seriously dude? [...]
But what I really want to do is re-write the original post in the English language and leave that as a comment. Instead, so I don’t start a war I don’t feel like fighting, I will insult DirtyRottenLuck’s inability to write here. Where he’ll never think to see it! Mwuahaha… eh.
On an interesting side note, grammar related, how in the world does one make a quoted object’s possesive? For instance, “DirtyRottenLuck”’s car?
” car of “DRL” “, duh.
Wow. A car of “DRL”. That seems rather unspecific. I’m more accustomed to “X of Y” being used where X is made out of whatever Y is. For instance, a cup of sugar. A pound of meat. A car of “DRL” would seem to indicate that the car is made out of “DRL”.
What am I missing here, Pen? Is the possible confusion less important than the horribly ugly quote on apostrophe action?
The car of “DRL”. That car of “DRL”.
Would you say “the labours of Herakles” are made out of Herakles?
Wait, are you saying “a cup of sugar” implies a cup made out of sugar? *raises eyebrow*
<a href=”http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/of#Preposition”>doop de doo</a>
fuck you, smartquotes
Great. Now I’m not just puzzled, I am confused. The labours of Herakles are his labours but they are made from Herakles too. The labours cease to exist without Herakles existance.
And I am saying that a “cup of sugar” is a cup made out of sugar. If it wasn’t made out of sugar, then it would be a cup of … whatever else it was made out of.
[reading the wiktionary link] … So. Contextually speaking, “of” connects two words or phrase and indicates that they go together somehow, but doesn’t clearly distinguish what that relationship really is. I guess “The car of “DRL” will work, but I don’t think I like the ambiguity of it.
Is this where the expression “full of win” turns out to be actually grammically correct English?
?_?
“A cup of sugar” usually means, to normal people, “a cup, made out of plastic or glass or ceramics, filled with sugar”. “A bag of candy” means “a bag, probably plastic or fabric, filled with candy”. “A can of soup” means “a can, made out of metal, filled with soup”.
Are you honestly arguing that any of those three phrases means something different? A cup literally made of sugar, rather than containing sugar? A bag literally constructed with candy pieces, rather than holding it? A can literally built from soup, rather than full of it?
(Going back to your earlier example – “a pound of meat” is not a pound made out of meat, is it?)
The English language contains ambiguity and multiple meanings of many kinds. You cannot escape it. You cannot deny the existence or relevance of multiple meanings just because they scare you or you don’t understand them.
“He saw her duck”.
Do you freak out because duck can be both noun and verb? Because her can be both pronoun and adjective?
Do you freak out because “to” can be both preposition (“walking to the tree”) and participle (“I want to walk”)?
Do you freak out because “for” can mean towards (“head for the tree”) and in support of (“hands up for the tree”) and duration (“hands up for three days”)?
It isn’t even as if there’s any confusion going on here. In the same way that sane people will assume a cup is not constructed out of sugar, and thus that this non-sugar cup is containing sugar, once it has been established to a sane people that “DRL” is a person who can own a car and not something that cars are normally constructed out of and not something a car is normally full of, “the car of “DRL”" is quite clearly “the car that belongs to “DRL”".
It’s like going “oh, don’t say “run for the hills” because some people will think they have to run as long as the hills (duration) or run for presidency instead of the hills or run on behalf of the hills”.
A cup of sugar or a pound of meat was supposed to be a unit of measurement, so the cup of sugar was supposed to be a …
It would help if I used the logical system of measurement, wouldn’t it.
Fine. Except I don’t know what the metric equivilant of a cup is. So, a kilogram of meat is made out of meat. But I see from your other examples that I was looking through too narrow a lense. A “bag of candy” clearly does not mean a bag that has been constructed from candy.
I agree. I just get confused when I start to actually look at or think about how the bits and pieces work. It doesn’t help that I have utterly forgotten all the magic words (adverds, prepositions, etc.) from third and fourth grade.
For instance, the multiple usages of “for”… I’m totally fine with that until you mention it. Then I start to ponder it and basically rat hole myself. How can “for” mean three different things? How does a person tell the difference? Are the differences really different? “For” is not a word or an idea that I have ever pondered before.
What does “for” mean, out of context? Wiktionary’s entry has 11 definitions. One conjunction and 10 prepositions. That is… confusing. I understand conjunction. I do not understand preposition. I bet if I learn whatever the term preposition means, that would help.
I’m sorry if I over-jargon; I’m too used to dealing with linguists and smartarses. :p
Doesn’t sound like measurement to me. Maybe you should have your thoughts/arguments sorted out within your head before you take them outside? :/
How can “for” mean three different things? How does a person tell the difference?
Human brains are pretty good. Context isn’t difficult. You can work out the difference between “for” and “four” and “fore”, right? And if someone says “wait here for just a sec” you’re not going to be expecting Just A Sec to turn up, you’re expecting to wait until a short time period has elapsed. You have obviously been doing this just fine your whole entire life, since this is the first time you’ve been in a tizzy about it. Is not difficult or worthy of worrying.
I’ve got the smartarse part covered, but the linguist part is [stretches on tiptoes] way over my head.
Let me express myself differently. For me, this is like knowing that 2 * 2 = 4 but being unable to explain how I know that. It is very basic and I can do it, but I don’t know how to break it down to the most simplistic fragments. Even worse, when you presented the words that I need to break it down, I went into jargon shock and retreated into my turtle shell.
Which makes it hard to learn. ‘Cuz the shell muffles sound.