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My daughter just returned from a semester in China. On the way home, she stopped in Beijing for a few days. In China, Bei Jing is two words.
Apparently they liked the "I <Heart> NY"T-shirts you can buy in NYC and thought they'd make a great Beijing souvenir. My daughter brought home "I <Heart> BJ" T-shirts for all her friends.
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
24,544 posts, read 56,138,920 times
Reputation: 11862
Quote:
Originally Posted by bostonguy1960
Proly instead of probably.
Probably popular with texters who then use it in e-mails as well as more formal writing.
Do they also say it this way, thinking it's proper? After all, they see it spelled that way often enough...so it must be right!
Silly and stupid.
Yeah I hear Americans say/even write it. Drives me nuts. I always wondered how they came up with it, it doesn't even make sense. We say 'probly' that's the lazy way to say it, but prolly, deleting two 'p's', just sounds like imitating some drunk person slurring their speech.
Also 'hella.' I mean what the hella? I understand 'hellava', but 'hella good?' That sounds retarded.
Yeah I hear Americans say/even write it. Drives me nuts. I always wondered how they came up with it, it doesn't even make sense. We say 'probly' that's the lazy way to say it, but prolly, deleting two 'p's', just sounds like imitating some drunk person slurring their speech.
Also 'hella.' I mean what the hella? I understand 'hellava', but 'hella good?' That sounds retarded.
Phoneme deletion (leaving out sounds and syllables) is pretty common in every day speech. Most people, in casual conversation say:
Written: Do you want to go out to dinner?
Casual speech: Do you wanna go out to dinner?
Written: I'm going to go get some dinner.
Casual speech: I'm gonna go get some dinner.
Written: I have to go to the bank.
Casual speech: I hafta go to the bank.
Written: You ought to tell her sooner rather than later.
Casual speech: You oughta tell her sooner rather than later.
Written: He should have left sooner.
Casual speech: He shoulda left sooner.
We do it all the time. Some forms, like wanna and gonna, are just more widely accepted nowadays than other forms, like prolly and hella. Other phrases become shortened in the same way all the time, without second thought, like Wenzday for Wednesday and yes'm for yes ma'am. Another classic one is coulda, shoulda, woulda for could have, should have, would have. It's all part of the same phenomenon, though. It's true that some forms are more marked, and that it wouldn't be wise to use the shortened forms in writing, but people say it and hear it in speech all the time, without even noticing.
Yeah I hear Americans say/even write it. Drives me nuts. I always wondered how they came up with it, it doesn't even make sense. We say 'probly' that's the lazy way to say it, but prolly, deleting two 'p's', just sounds like imitating some drunk person slurring their speech.
Also 'hella.' I mean what the hella? I understand 'hellava', but 'hella good?' That sounds retarded.
Yes it does. Glad someone else feels that way. I noticed that my niece used "hella" a few times when I saw her recently.
I remember when my cousin worked in a home for mentally challenged children, there was a sign on the wall that said, "Ignore the behavior you do not want." I put that into practice in situations like this, too.
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
24,544 posts, read 56,138,920 times
Reputation: 11862
Quote:
Originally Posted by nimchimpsky
Phoneme deletion (leaving out sounds and syllables) is pretty common in every day speech. Most people, in casual conversation say:
Written: Do you want to go out to dinner?
Casual speech: Do you wanna go out to dinner?
Written: I'm going to go get some dinner.
Casual speech: I'm gonna go get some dinner.
Written: I have to go to the bank.
Casual speech: I hafta go to the bank.
Written: You ought to tell her sooner rather than later.
Casual speech: You oughta tell her sooner rather than later.
Written: He should have left sooner.
Casual speech: He shoulda left sooner.
We do it all the time. Some forms, like wanna and gonna, are just more widely accepted nowadays than other forms, like prolly and hella. Other phrases become shortened in the same way all the time, without second thought, like Wenzday for Wednesday and yes'm for yes ma'am. Another classic one is coulda, shoulda, woulda for could have, should have, would have. It's all part of the same phenomenon, though. It's true that some forms are more marked, and that it wouldn't be wise to use the shortened forms in writing, but people say it and hear it in speech all the time, without even noticing.
Well they are contractions but I get what you're saying. I suppose your example of Wenzday for Wednesday is a good example. British and by proxy Australian English has more 'accepted' phoneme-deletions too. Take the words 'library', 'literally' or 'battery', which are all pronounced 'ly-bree', 'litrally' and 'batree' in BE.
Here's something else I find most annoying: people who use apostrophes when all they really wanted to do was make a plural. Like a flower store advertising Rose's.
How did the idea creep into the language in the first place, of putting an apostrophe in possessives? We have a perfectly good, nearly universal alphabet of 26 letters, and I don't see why we cant spell all words just using those 26 symbols. Just to confirm that it is actually English, of course, there is "its", the obligatory exception that must exist to every rule.
Other inflected languages using our alphabet manage to form case endings without an apostrophe, how come we can't figure out a way to do that?
Another classic one is coulda, shoulda, woulda for could have, should have, would have.
There are an awful lot of people who seriously believe those words are slurred versions of could of, should of and would of. And not only do they think that way, but they speak that way, into the bargain.
Also 'hella.' I mean what the hella? I understand 'hellava', but 'hella good?'
There have been whole threads in the CA forum on use of the word "hella" and arguments about from where it originated. Definitely not a word one hears from anyone over the age of about 25. (Thank goodness.)
From Craig's List-------a beautiful swade sofabed. I wonder if it swayed. Oh. Could the person have meant "suede"? I bet the person had phonics in school.
Good grief. Here's a new one from one of the other fora here:
anywais it depends on the views
.
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