OT: Where did our language go?

I love it when quite educated Americans say 'gotten' which basically passed out of general use in the UK at least 200 years ago.

But is now being reintroduced, along with the ubiquitous 'we is singular' total loss of the plural...

But we still say 'forgotten' as the perfect rather than 'forgot', or at least most of us do.

The discount is temporary, and just a bribe to get you to put yet another piece of potential spyware on your phone.

Funny how these 'apps' tend not to have PC versions, only mobile phone stuff.

I thought there were apps you could put on your desktop to emulate the Android OS?

There are - but I suspect most users are not aware of these. For a while MS built the capability into Win 11, but seem to have backtracked on that now.

I found that all Americans use 'gotten'. It sounds odd.

Another misuse of English is the lack of knowledge of how to use 'me', 'her' and 'him' etc as the objects of an action. A typical modern useage would now be: " He talked to her and I.." It makes me cringe. This goes along with the placement of the writer or speaker in the first place in the sentence, as in the doubly offensive: "Me and him did this..." Ugh.

I expect the speaker has been rapped over the knuckles by a schoolmarm for saying "Me and my brother [did something}" and has decided that "I" is always correct.

When of course it isn't always correct.

A)

Subject - verb - object

When it's the subject, it's 'I'. When it's the object, it's 'me'.

(And see (C), below)

B)

criterion - singular criteria - plural

C)

it's - short for 'it is' or 'it has'. This is always true. its - possessive. Never has an apostrophe.

An example is (A) above, where the apostrophes are required.

Another example is: See the cat? It's sitting on its mat.

D) Similarly to (C):

who's - short for 'who is' or 'who has' whose - possessive

There are undoubtedly others, but I'm busy doing nothing just now.

Or worse "myself" as in "he talked to her and myself";

How about, "It is I"? (Does anyone still say that?) the verb "to be" takes a predicate, not an object.

And "if I was/were"? (Subjunctive?)

Tim Streater snipped-for-privacy@streater.me.uk> wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net:

Have you considered where responding to threads initiated by group trolls takes us?

Having kill-filed these 'persons' I don't see their 'wisdoms' unless responded to by others attempting to challenge their misguided views which of course satisfies their object of achieving wholly unwarranted attention.

No need to challenge those with aberant opinions/views, silence in response to their opined rants is evidence enough that their opinions are worthless.

Silence can be a virtue.

YMMV

Le 18/09/2024 à 09:42, Davey a écrit :

It's not your language. The Americans invented it and you copied it, like city's names.

Perhaps you mean cities' names, unless you are asserting that there's only one city but it has several names.

Your rant is interesting but irrelevant.

Isn't "app" the term used for an application on Android or Apple?

Quite possibly. But it is still a diminutive of the original noun, so should really be called that in full. As mentioned above, at least call it 'app.' if you must abbreviate it. It takes very little effort to do things correctly.

Are you a history scholar :-)

You mean like the B.B.C.?

Le 18/09/2024 à 16:14, Jeff Gaines a écrit :

I have a history of skipping school, so yeah.