[HN Gopher] Try and
___________________________________________________________________
Try and
Author : treetalker
Score : 631 points
Date : 2025-08-10 13:32 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (ygdp.yale.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (ygdp.yale.edu)
| treetalker wrote:
| Prompted by reading an instance of "try and" instead of "try to"
| in an HN-linked _Register_ article[1] this morning, I thought
| this might be of interest to both non-native and native English
| speakers in our community.
|
| Try to ascertain why I'm on Team "Try To"! (If you feel like
| trying and! J)
|
| [1]: (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44854639)
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| I thought from the title that this was going to be about some
| new exception handling mechanism in a programming language I'm
| not familiar with. In fact, the article was even more
| interesting than that, as I've often wondered about this in the
| past but never quite got to looking it up. Thank you!
| onionisafruit wrote:
| That's exactly what happened with me. I expected some
| interesting programming content but ended up spending 20
| minutes (so far) thinking about English grammar.
| cxr wrote:
| In his comments on the use of symbols P and V in semaphores,
| Dijkstra gave the reason for choosing P as it having come from
| "probeer te verlagen", which he infamously explained that when
| translated into English means "try and decrease" [sic].
| willyt wrote:
| 'Try and' is correct British English and the Register is a UK
| publication. If the author had written 'to try make' they would
| have gotten in trouble with their editor and 'to try to make'
| doesn't flow as well, to my eyes at least.
| dcminter wrote:
| British English speaker here (southern demographic) - I'd say
| "to" but "and" doesn't _feel_ wrong so I think it 's pretty
| prevalent.
|
| I'm curious how common it is in Indian English.
| skrebbel wrote:
| I'm not a native English speaker, but to me "try and" has always
| conveyed a sense of more deliberate trying, of getting over
| yourself, in the sense that the "try" means the choice to give it
| a real proper go. So first you try (or, in fact, decide to try)
| and then when you're fully committed and mentally prepared, then
| you do it.
|
| With an interpretation like this, none of the syntactical stuff
| in this story seems useful anymore. You try, and then you do.
|
| Does this make any sense at all or am I just a foreigner
| imagining things?
| avemg wrote:
| I'm a native speaker from the US and I think you're imagining
| things. "Try and" and "try to" are completely the same.
| ale wrote:
| The article literally shows the "bare form" example where
| this kind of meaning can be inferred: e.g. "I will try and
| finish the assignment."
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| Which is identical to "I will try to finish the
| assignment", so what's your point?
| arduanika wrote:
| I'm also a native speaker from the US. Non-native speakers
| often have extra insight into the nuances of language, and I
| think skrebbel's headcanon here is really interesting.
|
| I almost see "try and" as a form of "manifesting", of
| optimism, of believing that you will succeed. This would sort
| of comport with what he's saying.
|
| But any difference is subtle, and most native speakers won't
| notice it, beyond maybe the more formal register of "try to".
| sidibe wrote:
| Usually these extra insights are interesting but incorrect.
| Like here I think. I don't think there's any different
| expectations between someone saying "try and" and "try to"
| except it's maybe a very loosely correlated signal of
| social class
|
| Another example is I've seen people several times online
| trying to argue y'all can be singular and all y'all is a
| way to make it clearly plural. Ok it's interesting that
| y'all is used as singular and all y'all isn't just about
| inclusion, but its not true.
| Walf wrote:
| It's an exception that English doesn't need, and it only adds
| to the difficulty of learning the language. You being used to
| it doesn't make it good.
|
| I'm going to try and learn English. I'm trying and learn
| English. I tried and learn English.
|
| vs.
|
| I'm going to try to learn English. I'm trying to learn
| English. I tried to learn English.
| zuminator wrote:
| As a native speaker my feeling is that if we're talking about
| "I'll try and X" vs "I'll try to X," they're mm@$be asking
| you neutrally to attempt something for the first time, but
| "try and get home without taking any detours" sounds as, if
| we've been through this issue on several occasions, and now
| I'm annoyed.
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| "You try, and then you do."
|
| But it doesn't mean that - it just means you will _try_ which
| doesn 't actually imply any level of action
| clocker wrote:
| When you say "I'll try to do something..." you are giving a
| heads up to the other person that you may give up on that thing
| at any time. There is no commitment.
| furyofantares wrote:
| I think that's exactly right. I say "try to" in more neutral
| situations, or noncommittal, or pessimistic. It conveys it's
| not my top priority to succeed. "I'll try and get it done
| today" is easy to imagine with a neutral tone or a downward
| tone, conveying that I may not get to it and it isn't my top
| priority. "I'll try and get it done today" is easier to imagine
| with a chipper tone, it's a higher priority for me, I intend to
| get to it.
|
| This makes logical sense too, doesn't it? "Try and" implies
| success. I'm not actually saying "I'll try to get it done and I
| will get it done", if that was the case I'd skip the try, but I
| am evoking an idea in that direction.
| StevenWaterman wrote:
| I'd describe it as:
|
| - "try and" implies that the reason for failure is slightly
| more likely to be from laziness / not actually attempting it
|
| - "try to" implies that the reason for failure is slightly more
| likely to be from incapability
|
| As in:
|
| - I'll try and kill the mosquito... that has been annoying me
| all day
|
| - I'll try to kill the mosquito... but it's quite hard to hit
| with this gun
|
| But nobody would notice if you used the wrong one.
| echelon wrote:
| I grew up in the Southeast, and this usage is common. Both in
| Southern accents and AAVE.
|
| I agree with skrebbel's feeling about the phrase, and I think
| yours is also a little bit correct.
|
| To add more character, I also think "try and" feels more
| casual and friendly. Less like a technical suggestion and
| more like a form of encouragement. More caring, less distance
| or annoyance.
|
| "You should try and get some sleep. [I care about you, you
| poor thing.]" vs "You should try to get some sleep. [Why are
| you still awake?]"
|
| There's more closeness with "try and" and more distance with
| "try to".
|
| "Try to" feels formal, technical, distant. "Try and" feels
| comforting, compassionate, friendly, but definitely not
| something you'd use for a complex task.
|
| I couldn't imagine "You should try and recalibrate your
| photon detector" ever being said.
| StevenWaterman wrote:
| I definitely agree with the difference in formality.
|
| > You should try and recalibrate your photon detector
|
| I can totally imagine this, in a lab where all the
| equipment is old, and out of calibration, and the person
| saying it knows there are 10 other things that are more
| important, but this thing is still pretty bad and they feel
| obligated to point out the issue.
|
| Whereas "try to calibrate" sounds to me like the process of
| calibration is quite hard and it's likely to end up no
| better calibrated than you started with.
| dgfitz wrote:
| It seems like you would say: You should try to
| recalibrate your photon detector
|
| To someone who asks for advice.
|
| "I can't understand these results! You should try to..."
| throwanem wrote:
| It makes sense, as folk etymologies often do. But the phrase
| acts in a more conditional manner in Southern American English
| at least.
|
| If I say "I'm going to change that light bulb," I'm probably
| already getting up to fetch my toolbag.
|
| If I say "I'll try and change that light bulb," I may be
| wondering whether I have a spare or a ladder or something else
| whose lack will interrupt the job, or in some other way
| doubtful of success: the implication is I expect I may come
| back and say something about the job other than that it's done.
|
| If I say "Well, I might could try and change that light bulb,"
| I probably don't mean in any particular hurry even to get up
| off the couch, and indeed may already be dozing off.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| To me, "try to catch me!" feels more formal than "try and catch
| me!" Which feels kinda playful, but are both saying basically the
| same thing.
| munchler wrote:
| I think "try and" is used more by children than by adults,
| which is why it works well in this sort of playful, childlike
| phrase.
| card_zero wrote:
| Different sociolinguistic register, innit.
| posix86 wrote:
| Basically yes, but I do hear nuance, idk if it's right - "try
| and" feels more daring, like "I think you can't", while "try
| to" feels more neutral, just a command.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Yeah like if a kid runs off and says "try to catch me!" It's
| a "c'mon and play!" But "try and catch me" is a challenge, a
| dare, a taunt even.
| segmondy wrote:
| You are right on the nuance. "try and catch me" for me, means
| I'm going to give it my all not to be caught and I believe I
| will not be caught. Good luck, try and catch me.
|
| "Try to catch me" means I think you might have some chance.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Hadn't heard about this project before; it's a really good idea.
|
| English is not a language that either lends itself well to, or is
| historically regulated by, prescriptivism (with a few specific
| attempts that didn't claim universal adoption). Treating it as a
| language where "If you've heard this novel construct, here's
| where it came from and what it's related to" is a good way to
| approach it.
|
| (I liken it often to C++. C++ is so broad that the ways you can
| glue features together are often novel and sometimes damn near
| emergent. It's entirely possible to be "a fluent C++ user" and
| never use curiously recurring template pattern, or consider case-
| statement fallthrough a bug not a feature, and so on).
| arduanika wrote:
| Likewise. A really cool site.
|
| The English language has so many little quirks. You can try to
| document them all, and it's a fun endeavor, but you can't try
| _and_ document them all.
| umanwizard wrote:
| What you're saying is probably true of all human languages. I
| don't know of any where usage is actually governed by a
| governing body. Some try, e.g. the French Academy, but they are
| widely ignored in actual usage.
| koops wrote:
| Randy Meisner was not trying "to" love again. Usage settled.
| raldi wrote:
| I think most of the mysteries in this piece can be explained if
| "try and stop me" just an abbreviation for "try to stop me and
| see if you can".
| foolswisdom wrote:
| This is also in line with skrebbel's observation in this thread
| that the phrase indicates a focused attempt.
| foldr wrote:
| I don't think that's anything like the meaning of "I'll try and
| go to the store tomorrow". There's no implication that anyone
| is trying to stop me.
|
| Also, your abbreviation analysis would still leave a syntactic
| mystery, as that sort of ellipsis doesn't seem to follow any
| general attested pattern of ellipsis in English.
| OJFord wrote:
| That example would be something like 'I'll try to go to the
| store tomorrow and see if I can' along the lines GP suggests.
| 'stop me' only came from the specific example they were
| using.
| foldr wrote:
| You can actually construct this using regular VP ellipsis
| (or possibly Right Node Raising?) in English, but it sounds
| weird and doesn't convey the same meaning. So I don't think
| so.
|
| "I'll try to ___ and see if I can go to the store
| tomorrow". [where ___ is the VP 'go to the store']
|
| Then you have the various syntactic facts mentioned in the
| article , such as the possibility of wh-extraction. This
| isn't possible in an analogous ellipsis construction:
|
| "What did you try and eat?"
|
| * "What did you try to and see if you can eat?"
|
| There's also an interesting tense restriction which
| suggests that there's no independent elided clause:
|
| *"I tried and go/went to the store yesterday."
| cwmoore wrote:
| "What did you try but spit out?"
| foldr wrote:
| That's a regular case of across-the-board extraction from
| a coordination (where 'try' has a nominal direct object
| rather than a clausal complement):
|
| What did you try ___ but spit ___ out?
|
| The examples in the linked article involve extraction
| from just one coordinand, which is impossible in "real"
| coordinate structures.
| cwmoore wrote:
| Your examples are not ringing bells for me as a native
| speaker. The linguistics terms may or may not be
| confounding, but are too unfamiliar for me to discuss.
|
| "Try, and [if successful] [do the thing]."
| foldr wrote:
| Sorry, I don't understand what you are getting at. What
| is the significance of the quoted sentence?
| everybodyknows wrote:
| > I don't think that's anything like the meaning of
|
| Parent post said "most"; you've identified an exception.
| foldr wrote:
| If you check the parent comment, the 'most' applied to the
| fraction of mysteries, not the the fraction of instances of
| the construction that the analysis is supposed to apply to.
| But anyway, this isn't an exception. The overwhelming
| generalization is that "try and do X" means the same as
| "try to do X". This holds for imperatives like the OP's
| example just as much as for my examples. There's very
| little difference between the to/and variants of any of the
| following:
|
| Try and/to do it quietly
|
| Try and/to be a little more polite.
|
| Try and/to hand your homework in on time.
|
| I agree that in some specific cases there are slightly
| different shades of meaning. However, this doesn't seem to
| be a very systematic phenomenon, or one that obviously
| justifies the assumption that "try and" is an elliptical
| expression of a complex multi-clausal construction.
| echelon wrote:
| I also like how several linguists attempt to call out this
| usage as wrong:
|
| > deemed prescriptively incorrect (Routledge 1864:579 in D.
| Ross 2013a:120; Partridge 1947:338, Crews et al. 1989:656 in
| Brook & Tagliamonte 2016:320).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription
|
| You can't really reign in language.
| foldr wrote:
| The people they're citing are either authors of usage guides
| or linguists who are simply noting that the usage has been
| deemed incorrect by some of the former.
| orwin wrote:
| If a modern linguist call any usage as wrong, I would ask for
| his diploma and check if I have to close his university,
| because clearly they shouldn't teach linguistics 101, let
| alone bring someone towards a PhD. Linguistics is
| descriptive, not prescriptive.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Then linguistics is worthless. Descriptivism can't actually
| _tell_ you anything; all someone can say is "yep, you sure
| are using that word that way". Fortunately prescriptivists
| still exist despite people's best efforts to give it a bad
| name.
| orwin wrote:
| Linguistics can explain why and how the language evolve,
| who caused this evolution. I don't know any modern
| linguist (as in doctor in linguistics) who ever wrote
| 'you should say this and not that', because all of them
| knows that languages change. The only 'prescriptivists'
| are bad philosophers and English majors.
| briangriffinfan wrote:
| How can you learn about how people spoke and the patterns
| that dictate how that changed over time if all you care
| about is what is considered technically correct at the
| moment?
| unscaled wrote:
| These are not linguists doing that. No self-respecting
| linguists will waste time doing prescriptivism. These are two
| linguistic articles about this constructs that are quoting
| amateur language usage manuals. The oldest one is a boys
| magazine[1] published in 1864 discussing "the Queen's
| English"[2]. The newest one (Crews et al.) seems to be an
| obscure usage manual for writers[3].
|
| As demonstrated here, "try and" is older and more "original"
| than "try to", if not contemporary with it. Any other reason
| why would "try to" be more "correct" cannot even make sense
| as anything more than a purely uneducated opinion. When you
| dig deep into most examples of perspectivism you'll usually
| run into the same story too. "Incorrect" forms often predate
| the "correct" forms and are often employed by respected
| writers (such as Shakespeare and Jane Austen). And even if
| they don't, there isn't really any scientific ground to brand
| one form as incorrect.
|
| Linguists do not generally engage in linguist prescriptivism.
| As far as I'm concerned (and I believe most linguists would
| agree), this is stylistic opinion at best and pseudoscience
| at worst. Still, it's not linguists can do anything to stop
| amateurs from publishing prescriptive language usage manuals,
| so you'll always have people who claim that "try and" or
| "ain't" or "me and my friend went for a walk" are incorrect.
|
| [1] https://www.victorianresearch.org/atcl/show_periodical.ph
| p?j...
|
| [2] Yes, this is Edmund Routledge whose father is the
| namesake of the present scholarly publisher, but they were
| just publishing popular books back in the 19th century.
|
| [3] https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/Frederick-
| Crews/dp/0070136386
| umanwizard wrote:
| Linguists don't say varieties are right or wrong (even though
| they might have private aesthetic opinions like everyone
| else). That would be like a biologist saying dogs are the
| correct version of mammals and cats are wrong and/or don't
| exist.
| menage wrote:
| Biologists actually say the opposite of that!
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cats-are-
| perfect-...
| MarkusQ wrote:
| Just because someone has a degree and a job in the field
| doesn't mean they understand how science works.
| Prescriptive biology is even sillier than prescriptive
| linguistics.
| mcphage wrote:
| I think her tongue is planted firmly in cheek.
| simiones wrote:
| There do exist prescriptivist linguists, who do exactly
| that: they try to divine "correct" from "incorrect" usage
| of language.
| tigen wrote:
| *rein in
|
| Some things like this are nevertheless generally known to be
| wrong despite usage
| tomsmeding wrote:
| Though you also can't reign, in language.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| And this is why I cringe whenever somebody tries to defend
| Perl's syntax by perlsplaining "But Larry Wall is a
| linguist!"
| WaxProlix wrote:
| This is a good intuition. The construction is actually
| sometimes jokingly called the "Try And"-C, where "C" stands for
| Complementizer, a thing that introduces and subordinates a
| clause.
| onionisafruit wrote:
| You can also interpret the Dr Dre quote an abbreviation of,
| "I'm gonna try (to change the course of hip hop again) and
| change the course of hip hop again."
|
| In this form "try and" means you will try to do something and
| that you will succeed. Some of the articles tests make more
| sense in this light; Of course you wouldn't reorder the trying
| and the succeeding because that's the order the events will
| happen.
|
| This ignores the fact that "try and" developed concurrently
| with "try to" and possibly before. So it wasn't originally an
| abbreviation for a phrase that was yet to be established.
| jjmarr wrote:
| "I have tried and finished my homework" is correct to my ear
| (possibly because I'm Canadian), but it means successful
| completion as opposed to "I have tried to finish my homework"
| implying I didn't get around to it.
| hyperpape wrote:
| That's not what "try and" means though. It's perfectly fine
| to say "I'm gonna try and fix this" when you don't know if
| you can fix it.
|
| (Source: I say that shit all the time).
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I would only say "try and" if I thought it was likely that
| I'd at least make some progress towards the goal.
|
| If I expected failure, I'd instead say "try to" fix it.
| hyperpape wrote:
| Maybe, but even if true, it's still very clearly
| different from what the parent said.
|
| To me, "I"m gonna try and fix it before I buy a new one,
| but that's probably what I'm gonna have to do" is a fine
| sentence.
| yMEyUyNE1 wrote:
| For me, if someone says "try and see for yourself", it
| implies possibility of failure or something new.
|
| If outcome is considered in terms of success or failure
| then try implies non-zero probability of failure. If
| outcome isn't considered in terms of success or failure
| then "try this flavour of ice-cream" is experience and
| try this outfit(fits or doesn't) is a test you can't
| fail. Philosophically, it is as master Yoda said: Do or
| do not, there is no try.
| NuclearPM wrote:
| That sounds horrible to me. I'm going to try to fix it.
| chuckadams wrote:
| Then there's people like me who use the popular contraction
| for the first three words: "Ima try and fix this."
|
| A contraction containing another contraction, in fact.
| samiskin wrote:
| I think this capture's the essence better than anything else,
| "try and" simply behaving as "try and see if I can" (or
| whatever fits instead of "I" here)
| bendigedig wrote:
| I think "Try and X" means "Try to X and do X" which means to my
| mind means to attempt and, upon success of the trial, to
| complete X.
|
| "I'll try and eat the salad." could be expressed as "I'll try
| eating some of the salad and, if possible, finish eating it."
| KurSix wrote:
| Over time, people probably stopped needing to say the "and see
| if you can" part because the meaning was already baked in
| throwanem wrote:
| Good grief. Quote Dre up top, then totally ignore AAVE and
| Southern American English which both heavily feature the
| construction of interest, despite being interested to find out
| what the Boer pidgin, of all things, has to say. (Why not Basque
| next? That would be about as relevant!) This they call a
| linguistic _diversity_ project? Surely they could not have found
| themselves short of sources!
| _jab wrote:
| AAVE is definitely underappreciated as the source of a lot of
| common modern slang. But in this case, the article makes it
| pretty clear that "try and" is not nearly modern enough to have
| come from AAVE - they show several attestations from the 1500s
| and even mention one from 1390.
| throwanem wrote:
| If they had headed the first section differently, I would
| credit this argument. Under the name "Who says this?" as at
| present it bears, and with nothing there or elsewhere to
| justify the substantial and obvious exclusion, that section
| is substantially incomplete.
|
| _edit:_ But so is your own criticism, in that it ignores
| AAVE is not the only dialect I mentioned. It isn 't even one
| I would say I really speak, except inasmuch as AAVE and my
| own SAE heavily overlap as the close siblings they are. Both
| deserve to be treated, not least for that interrelationship,
| as well as the one you mention with their forcible
| deracination into mesolect and acrolect slang, where the
| class origin makes such terms feel "edgy."
| willyt wrote:
| And also ignoring British English (and probably other
| international Englishes too); writing 'try put', 'go put' or
| 'go see' for example would get a red mark and a correction from
| the teacher in the UK.
| throwanem wrote:
| *'Try put' is also incorrect in American English, as
| discussed in the article. It isn't incorrect in my view, just
| hampered by its authors' lack of diligence.
| refactor_master wrote:
| Interestingly this pattern also exists in Danish (though not for
| the same reasons). Correctly speaking you'd say "try to..." which
| is "prov at...", but since the infinitive "at" and "og" sort of
| both turned into /@/ when quickly spoken and you get "prov
| og...".
| arnsholt wrote:
| Pseudo coordination is a fun phenomenon in Scandinavian. Lots
| of detail in NALS: https://tekstlab.uio.no/nals#/chapter/65 but
| an important difference with English is that the Scandinavian
| construction occurs with many more verbs in the first conjunct,
| not just _try_.
| refactor_master wrote:
| Interesting. I've never encountered this before in Danish.
| Their examples seem very dialect-ish.
| petesergeant wrote:
| This sounds a little closer to "should'v" which should be
| "should have" but then people also say "should of"
| OJFord wrote:
| I don't understand the 'both is not possible' point, the example
| given just doesn't even attempt to add a second thing?
|
| > John will both try and kill mosquitos[, and find where they're
| coming from].
|
| Works fine?
| CGamesPlay wrote:
| The conjunction is "and", as in "try and kill" vs "kill and
| try".
| zahlman wrote:
| The point specifically is that the "and" in "try and"
| conceptually should be "adding a second thing" (what they mean
| by "coordination"), but isn't doing so in a fully regular way.
| Specifically, it seems like it should coordinate "try to kill
| mosquitos" and "[actually] kill mosquitos", but that
| interpretation isn't fully compatible with how the word "and"
| normally works.
|
| On the other hand, there does seem to be a nuance in the
| meaning of "try and kill mosquitos" that makes it not just a
| dialectical form of "try to kill mosquitos"; there's an
| implication of expecting success. One might also point out that
| "try" can be replaced with synonyms in "try to" ("attempt to
| kill mosquitos"), but not "try and" (*"attempt and kill
| mosquitos"). So this is a very particular idiom.
| OJFord wrote:
| Ahh, got it, thanks - re-reading it makes more sense with the
| example of it being possible:
|
| > Usually, coordinated verb phrases can be preceded by both:
|
| > 9) Reality is Broken will both [stimulate your brain and
| stir your soul].
|
| which would be a better example and clearer to me the first
| time if it didn't use two nouns ('stimulate and stir your
| soul').
| starstripe wrote:
| To me "try and" is like a more confident version of "try to." For
| example, "I will try to win" vs "I'll try and win."
| o11c wrote:
| That would be "try, and".
|
| Although the default rule for conjunctions joining predicates
| is that the comma is optional (by contrast, in most other
| contexts it is either mandatory or forbidden), there are a
| _lot_ of circumstances where the comma becomes mandatory to
| avoid ambiguity or just because.
| Etheryte wrote:
| The two are not interchangeable though, as shown in the
| article. If someone asks you "Are you going to win?", you could
| say "I'll try to", but not "I'll try and".
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Not sure this works in simple past though. Cf. Dune "They tried
| and failed? They tried and died"
| zvr wrote:
| The whole parent directory of "Phenomena"
| https://ygdp.yale.edu/phenomena-by-category is an amazing source
| of information!
| StevenWaterman wrote:
| I might have to adopt this way of differeniating OR and XOR in
| English https://ygdp.yale.edu/phenomena/alternative-one
| skrebbel wrote:
| You'd enjoy the Finnish language, which has separate words
| for OR and XOR (and also has only one word for he/she/xe/etc,
| as a bonus)
| jp0001 wrote:
| Every time I read something like this, I remember that there is
| truly no correct way to say something - all that matters is that
| your intended audience understands it, eventually.
| bjackman wrote:
| Yep "correctness" only exists contextually. A language teacher
| can say "no that's wrong" with the implied meaning of "that
| doesnt follow the patterns of the dialect I'm teaching you".
| Ditto for newspaper editors and their house style.
|
| But in 99% of situations no such context exists and "that's
| grammatically incorrect" is a bullshit statement.
|
| In the UK when someone "corrects" language what they are very
| often doing is engaging in class signalling. It's widely done
| and widely accepted but personally I think it's pointless and
| somewhat toxic.
|
| (Note many languages have government-sanctioned standard forms
| of the language, but what I said is still true there too.
| Nobody speaks that dialect and nobody should be expected to.
| It's just a "reference implementation".)
| Swizec wrote:
| > Note many languages have government-sanctioned standard
| forms of the language, but what I said is still true there
| too. Nobody speaks that dialect and nobody should be expected
| to. It's just a "reference implementation".
|
| Many of those languages have mutually unintelligible
| dialects. The reference implementation exists to patch
| communication when you run into trouble with people who
| aren't from your village.
|
| Even American English has this. People from Appalachia
| register switch to more standard English when they're not
| home, for example. Or a high schooler will tamper their slang
| when talking to grandma.
|
| You could also argue international business English is a
| contrived dialect used primarily by ESL speakers. It
| definitely has many differences from any English spoken
| natively at home.
| bjackman wrote:
| Yes I experience this regularly with Hochdeutsch and I
| stand by my point. You still don't speak the language
| exactly as specified and it's still nonsensical to
| "correct" someone's grammar/pronunciation if you understood
| them.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > In the UK when someone "corrects" language what they are
| very often doing is engaging in class signalling.
|
| Same is true in the US, though ethnicity is in the mix too.
| White and black Americans are historically distinct cultural
| groups which speak different dialects (though obviously,
| since the end of slavery and segregation the groups are
| mixing more and more). It is no coincidence that varieties
| spoken by white people ended up as the "standard".
| windward wrote:
| >But in 99% of situations no such context exists
|
| Only the ones where your manner of speaking doesn't influence
| how the recipient thinks of you.
|
| Good luck.
| vehemenz wrote:
| I don't think all correction is merely class signaling.
| Sometimes it's teaching others how to properly class signal,
| which is slightly less cynical. We all judge others based on
| the grammatical or spelling errors that others make. At least
| being aware of them gives you a chance to choose which ones
| you care about.
| physarum_salad wrote:
| Yes and constantly obstructing communication is annoying and
| boring!
|
| Imagine sitting listening to a lecture on quantum effects in
| biology or something similarly fascinating and someone in the
| audience obstructs because the lecturer said paetent not patent
| (or vice versa). Tediomania is awful..feel bad for those
| affected.
| tux1968 wrote:
| > Tediomania is awful..feel bad for those affected.
|
| Ellipses are properly written as three dots.
| physarum_salad wrote:
| Anything over one dot communicates the idea effectively..
| the difference between two or three dots is irrelevant...
| Ellipses look like squares......... Close up they are
| circles....
| layer8 wrote:
| That's not true. With two dots, it can as plausibly be a
| typo of a single dot. In fact, in your GP post I was
| assuming that you hit the dot key a second time instead
| of the space key by mistake, and ignored the resulting
| lack of auto-capitalization. (Granted, the fact that
| ellipses are usually separated by a space from what
| follows also played a role.)
| physarum_salad wrote:
| This is tedium... what was the original message about?
| Can't remember now!
| jfengel wrote:
| As far as grammar is concerned, yes, that's true.
|
| But register also matters. A communication is about much more
| than the surface meaning. It conveys a lot about the
| relationship between speaker and listener. Some languages
| formalize that grammatically, but it's present in myriad other
| ways.
|
| Adhering to the arbitrary rules of correctness is one. Saying
| "try and" in a resume cover letter probably conveys a message
| of slackness and over-familiarity. Which might be a deliberate
| choice, but you're better off if you at least know you're
| making it.
| lblume wrote:
| I fail to imagine how one could use "try and" in a resume,
| without actively trying to.
| gwd wrote:
| > I remember that there is truly no correct way to say
| something
|
| Weirdly, that's not what this says. It specifically says you
| can't say this:
|
| > * John will both try and kill mosquitos.
|
| or
|
| > * I tried and finished the assignment
|
| or
|
| > * Try always and tell the truth
|
| What I'd say instead is: If native speakers say something, then
| it's grammatically correct. What you were taught is the
| "prescribed grammar" or "prestige grammar".
|
| Also, grammar is voted on by speakers of a language. I'm
| generally against making fun of people for deviating from the
| prestige grammar; but I will "vote against" using the word
| "literally" to mean "figuratively" as long as I can.
| leeoniya wrote:
| > but I will "vote against" using the word "literally" to
| mean "figuratively" as long as I can.
|
| https://imgur.com/QBTlxf7
| MengerSponge wrote:
| A real flammable/inflammable moment
| strken wrote:
| > If native speakers say something, then it's grammatically
| correct.
|
| In their dialect, sure. In any given dialect, who knows?
|
| Any speaker of a dialect that isn't West Coast American has
| likely watched actors who live in Los Angeles try, and fail,
| to speak their dialect.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Of course. Just like what I'm writing now isn't
| grammatically correct Spanish or Chinese.
| strken wrote:
| Well, no, but I can't understand 99% of Spanish and
| Chinese using my knowledge of my native English dialect,
| so I'm not going to lecture Spanish or Chinese speakers
| on correct grammar.
|
| My point was that differences between dialects drive a
| lot of arguments about grammar. If I'm annoyed about the
| phrase "could care less" then that originates in my
| native dialect not allowing it. Not being part of the
| prestige grammar is secondary, as is whether the phrase
| makes any logical sense.
| mjevans wrote:
| In that context, 'literally' as figuratively makes the same
| sense as inflammable and flammable.
|
| It's just one more errata in a language that's filled with
| horrible hacks from centuries of iterative development.
|
| My hill to die on would be exactly one way (NOT the funky
| dictionary way!) of spelling words exactly as they should be
| pronounced and writing them back similarly.
|
| The hill to die on part of that is they need to start with
| children, teach them ONLY the correct way of spelling words
| as use in school and stick to it. While we're at it, FFS, do
| metric measures conversion the same way. Cold turkey force
| it, and bleed in dual measures and spelling with a cutover
| plan that starts to make the new correct way required to be
| larger text by the time the grade -2 kids graduate. (So about
| a 14-15 year plan.) That's to give all us adults time to bash
| into our heads the new spellings for old words too.
|
| Why can't it be dictionary spelling? Offhand, 1) those
| phonetics aren't used quite like that anywhere else. 2) those
| phonetics are more strongly based on the other languages in
| Europe so the structure isn't as expected. I'd sooner force
| everyone to learn how to write TUNIC's shapes... though
| there's some coverage issues for that.
|
| Effectively I want different shapes for the chart ( https://e
| n.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabe... ) that
| DO NOT MATCH EXISTING ENGLISH LETTERS so that when I look at
| a 'new spelling' my old pronunciation programmed brain
| doesn't index the wrong lookup table.
| cgriswald wrote:
| The problem with "one spelling the way it is said" is that
| (1) pronunciation varies among native speakers even within
| the same country or region. (So, at best, you'd have to
| pick a winner or just count them all as different languages
| with their own spellings.) (2) Pronunciation drifts over
| time (and I'm not sure an official spelling and
| pronunciation could stop it).
| umanwizard wrote:
| The other reason is that there are many countries that
| speak English, and the largest and most powerful one is
| too politically dysfunctional to ever agree on something
| that would be this controversial.
| wingspar wrote:
| How would that work for wood?
| seanhunter wrote:
| Not going to happen. No one's ever going to successfully
| retrofit a logical system into English. English has even
| got two words (guarantee and warrantee) which are spelled
| and pronounced slightly different while meaning the same
| thing because they were borrowed from French separately at
| different times.
| umanwizard wrote:
| There are loads of examples like that. Guard and ward,
| for example.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >Try always and tell the truth
|
| I think the article is incorrect on this though, try always
| and tell the truth is a perfectly fine albeit slightly
| anachronistic usage that would mean
|
| Whatever you do you must always try (that is to say not give
| up), and tell the truth.
|
| One might also assume that you should tell the truth about
| trying always is the meaning, but at any rate it is not a
| phrasing that would be out of order a few hundred years ago.
| losvedir wrote:
| That's not the point. While it's a valid sentence, as you
| point out, it means something different from "try and
| always tell the truth".
|
| In contrast "try to always tell the truth" and "try always
| to tell the truth" are both valid and mean the same thing.
| cgriswald wrote:
| Although it is a little odd and I'm not certain I've seen it
| in writing, I have definitely heard constructions like "John
| will both try and kill mosquitos." to mean, "John will both
| _attempt to_ and _succeed in_ kill[ing] mosquitos. "
|
| "John will both try and like sushi" makes perfect sense,
| although there's an implied "to eat" verb separate from the
| "to like" verb in there that isn't present in the
| constructions the article is talking about.
|
| Likewise, "I tried and finished the assignment," means "I
| tried (to do) the assignment and I finished it." Again, maybe
| not in writing, but with a certain inflection on 'tried'
| (where in writing maybe you'd put a comma or semi-colon to
| indicate a pause) this is something people actually say;
| although they may emphasis it with "I _finally_ tried and
| _actually_ finished the assignment. " (Whereas maybe
| previously they weren't confident they could even do it and
| maybe _didn 't_ try.)
|
| Included for no real reason: "They tried and failed, all of
| them?" "Oh, no." She shook her head. "They tried and died."
| amenhotep wrote:
| These are all just different constructions that are related
| to "try and" only by coincidence. The fact that a different
| construction looks similar to a grammatically incoherent
| one by coincidence doesn't make the incoherent one
| coherent.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I disagree. GP is laying is laying out reasonable
| scenarios that are a few dropped/implied words away from
| the otherwise incoherent ones. For my part, this one is
| very grating to my ears:
|
| "Try and tell the truth"
|
| Since it clearly should be "try _to_ tell the truth "
|
| However this one, while similar in construction, doesn't
| actually sound nearly as bad:
|
| "Try and finish the assignment"
|
| It can be fixed the same way ("try to finish") but it
| also accept GP's form too, which would be "try (to work
| hard) and (see if you can) finish the assignment". As I
| say, for whatever reason this second example sounds much
| more reasonable to me-- I think at least in part my brain
| is much more accepting of a word that feels dropped than
| one that's misused.
| csande17 wrote:
| There's a more standard, general rule in English grammar
| that web searches tell me is called "delayed right
| constituent coordination". It lets you read sentences
| like "He washed and dried the clothes" as "He washed [the
| clothes] and dried the clothes." The same object gets
| applied to both verbs.
|
| I suspect that's what you're applying to these sentences.
| "Try and finish the assignment" makes some sense under
| this rule if you read it as "Try [the assignment,] and
| finish the assignment" -- an "assignment" is a thing that
| makes sense to "try". ("He tried [sushi,] and liked
| sushi" works for the same reason.) But "Try [the truth,]
| and tell the truth" doesn't work -- it doesn't make sense
| to interpret "trying" the truth as some separate action
| you're taking before you "tell" it.
|
| So probably you just don't have the article's special
| try-and "pseudo-coordination" rule in your dialect.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| This makes a lot of sense, and it definitely explains
| where other "try and" sentences work while "try and
| finish" doesn't at all.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| The _try and_ in "try and tell the truth" is a different
| idiom from "[try] and [x]" as two separate actions. It
| can almost always be replaced with "try to".
|
| For example, in "let's try and finish this" it does not
| mean _trying_ then _finishing_ , it is _try to finish_.
| The construction is more obvious in a phrase like "try
| and stop me". This phrasing is very common in movies, it
| might just not be as popular in your area.
| oasisbob wrote:
| Those examples seem to differ significantly because
| they're using "try" as an imperative.
| aswanson wrote:
| Irregardless of this, what's your take on irregardless?
| seanhunter wrote:
| Irregardless is fine and people who try to be pedantic
| about it are just mistaken. It is literally in the
| dictionary as an intensified form of "regardless".
| aswanson wrote:
| That's cap. 'Ir' is usually used in the english language
| to denote the negative of the following property that
| follows it, e.g. irrespective meaning not respective.
| Regardless alone signals the negative assertion of the
| following property, so a prepending of 'ir' before it
| connotes a not-not, a double negative, and against the
| context of what is trying to be communicated. Having a
| problem with this abuse of language/meaning/communication
| is to be expected.
| seanhunter wrote:
| It's not an abuse of language or meaning or
| communication. It's a rule that you really want to be
| true for English but which unfortunately has exceptions.
| Irregardless is one of those exceptions. It's not a word
| that I personally use because I don't like it (probably
| for the reasons you're articulating) but English doesn't
| actually care what you or I think. Using "irregardless"
| as a synonym for "regardless" or "irrespective" is not
| incorrect.
|
| OED calls it a "nonstandard or humorous use" https://www.
| oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=Irreg...
| umanwizard wrote:
| Nobody has ever used "literally" to mean "figuratively".
| That's a common misconception and/or a strawman from people
| who want to stick to the original meaning of "literally".
|
| If that were the meaning, you would be able to say things
| like "I stubbed my toe and it hurts so bad I'm figuratively
| dying", mirroring the colloquial meaning of "literally". But
| nobody says this.
|
| The _actual_ new and non-traditional meaning of "literally"
| is as a generic intensifier, see e.g.
| https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/literally
|
| Oh, and by the way, the "traditional" meaning isn't even the
| first one. According to my OED second edition, "literal"
| meaning "Of a translation, version, transcript, etc.:
| Representing the very words of the original; verbally exact."
| is only attested since 1599.
|
| The actual original meaning of "literal": "of or pertaining
| to letters of the alphabet; of the nature of letters,
| alphabetical" is attested since 1475.
| antonvs wrote:
| > The actual original meaning of "literal": "of or
| pertaining to letters of the alphabet; of the nature of
| letters, alphabetical" is attested since 1475.
|
| That meaning comes from the Latin "littera"/"litera",
| meaning letter or character. Words like "transliteration"
| are based on this root meaning
| (https://www.etymonline.com/word/transliteration)
|
| Here's the page for "literal":
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/literal
| card_zero wrote:
| But your link gives two senses, and it's the second one
| that applies here: "Used as an intensifier with statements
| or terms that are in fact meant figuratively and not word
| for word as stated". And Wiktionary offers the synonyms
| _virtually_ and _so to speak._
|
| "it hurts so bad I'm intensely dying" would be wrong too.
| It's more than an intensifier, it _also_ means
| "figuratively".
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It's more than an intensifier, it also means
| "figuratively".
|
| No, its an intensifier for things which are contextually
| unambiguously figurative. It doesn't _communicate_ that
| the use is figurative, it communicates intensity. The
| figurative nature of the expression is understood from
| context, not the use of the word "literally".
| umanwizard wrote:
| > Used as an intensifier with statements or terms that
| are in fact meant figuratively and not word for word as
| stated
|
| That is not the same as the meaning of "figuratively"!
|
| "'Literally' is used with statements that are meant
| figuratively" does not mean the same thing as
| "'Literally' means 'figuratively'".
|
| > "it hurts so bad I'm intensely dying" would be wrong
| too
|
| Indeed, because "intensely" is not an intensifier. In
| your example, "intensely" modifies "dying", whereas
| "literally" modifies _the tone of your utterance_.
|
| For an example of another intensifier: "it hurts so bad
| I'm fucking dying" would work.
|
| Nobody would claim that "fucking" means the same thing as
| "figuratively" in this sentence, even though the sentence
| is itself figurative.
| gwd wrote:
| > The actual new and non-traditional meaning of "literally"
| is as a generic intensifier
|
| "Literally" is used as an intensifier in two situations:
|
| 1. When speaking neither figuratively nor hyperbolically --
| i.e., when the thing you're saying is... er, literally
| true. (e.g., "The beach is literally a five-minute walk
| from my house"; "You literally fold the cravat like this")
|
| 2. When speaking either figuratively or hyperbolically
| (e.g., "My head literally exploded"; "The island was
| literally catapulted into the 21st century")
|
| I have no problem with the first; I do it myself. It's the
| second I object to.
|
| Why? The hint is in #1 -- right now, literally is the only
| word we have to say that this _actually_ _really_ happened,
| that what 's being said is neither figurative nor
| hyperbolic.
|
| That is, the first is not a _generic_ intensifier. It
| intensifies it _because it 's actually true_.
|
| Loads of other words that used to perform the same function
| have become meaningless intensifiers: "really" (from
| "real"), "very" (from "verily" -> "in truth"), "truly".
|
| I think language should be practical. Double negatives are
| perfectly understandable and feel to me more poetic (if
| less logically expressive). Using "they" for a single
| person of unspecified gender is a practical and long-
| standing solution to a real problem. "Megabyte" is a lot
| easier to say than "mebibyte".
|
| And, we need a word to mean "I'm not speaking figuratively
| or hyperbolically"; we don't need Yet Another Meaningless
| Intensifier. We have "literally", let's keep it.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > Nobody has ever used "literally" to mean "figuratively".
|
| People do that _all the damn time_!!! It 's one of the
| single most abominable practices in modern English.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Did you read the rest of the comment?
| ecocentrik wrote:
| Dr Dre is a professional poet and a very successful one by
| any standard. His whole stock-in-trade was American urban
| colloquialisms most of which can be traced back to English
| rural and working class and predate the colonization of the
| Americas. The early development of English "prestige grammar"
| and word usage dates back to the court of William the
| Conqueror and the reintroduction of romance linguistic
| influence on Anglo-Saxon English that lead to the development
| of Middle English by the 13th Century. What you understand as
| English "prestige grammar" today is a moving target,
| consistently evolving but still full of contradictions and
| single-case rules. Many popular European languages today have
| been modified to exclude these linguistic anomalies, making
| them more consistent, less error prone and easier to learn. I
| expect the same thing will be done to the English language
| over the next century.
| antonvs wrote:
| *stock-in-trade: https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/dictionary/stock-in-trade
|
| Sorry, in this thread, I had to!
|
| > I expect the same thing will be done to the English
| language over the next century.
|
| This has already been happening in English, for centuries.
| Compare these examples given in the article to modern
| English:
|
| > 3) ...howe and by what certaine and generall rule I
| mighte trye and throughly discerne the veritie of the
| catholike faithe, from the falsehood of wicked heresye...
| (1554) > 4) You maie (saide I) trie and bring him in, and
| shewe him to her. (1569)
|
| I suppose after more than 450 years, one might expect even
| more simplification, but it is perhaps the fate of a lingua
| franca to have more "backward compatibility" than less
| widely-used languages.
| ecocentrik wrote:
| My point was that English has been changing and in some
| instances those changes might have occurred to remove
| anomalous characteristics but English does have more old
| warts than most popular languages and I expect many of
| those will be removed as English recedes from its
| position of dominance over the next century.
| antonvs wrote:
| I doubt it will play out as you're imagining. Including
| second-language speakers, there are about 1.5 to 2
| billion speakers of English today, which due to British
| colonialism, can be found across the globe.
|
| Previous lingua francas such as Latin and French, by
| comparison, had tens of millions of speakers at most
| during their heyday, and were less broadly geographically
| distributed. There are more French speakers in the world
| today than there were when French was dubbed the lingua
| franca.
|
| It's difficult to predict how English might evolve, but
| it's unlikely to undergo a significant global
| simplification. You already get significantly different
| dialects in different parts of the world. If anything, if
| English starts to lose its position as a global language,
| it will fragment further and pick up new dialect-specific
| complexities as other local languages mix with it.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> but I will "vote against" using the word "literally" to
| mean "figuratively" as long as I can.
|
| Can we have also declare war on using "exponentially" in
| place of "significantly"?
| Quekid5 wrote:
| Interesting use of "declare war" there... :)
|
| I understand the feeling, but language is what language
| does. It will change and you will notice those changes if
| you're alive long enough :)
|
| Even prescriptivist languages (as my own native language
| tends to be) cannot escape. I'm bad at my own native
| language because I've been living elsewhere for very
| long... but not as bad as the Kids These Days :)
| card_zero wrote:
| You can participate in these changes. You can participate
| by resisting if you want. That's not futile, it's part of
| the process.
| Quekid5 wrote:
| Yeah... or I could focus my energies elsewhere... where
| they'd be likely to have an impact. So it goes.
| umanwizard wrote:
| There is no such thing as a "prescriptive language". What
| would that mean?
|
| No living language is only used according to the rules
| laid down by grammar teachers. The only languages that
| are are dead languages like Latin with zero native
| speakers.
| Quekid5 wrote:
| I think you'll find I used a slightly different word.
|
| > No living language is only used according to the rules
| laid down by grammar teachers. The only languages that
| are are dead languages like Latin with zero native
| speakers.
|
| Well, quite.
| scoot wrote:
| Or "decimated"'to mean "practically destroyed" when it
| means the opposite...
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| > If native speakers say something, then it's grammatically
| correct.
|
| What if two non-native speakers say something and understand
| each other?
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Then they're having a useful, but not grammatically
| correct, conversation.
| antonvs wrote:
| It may be grammatically correct in the dialect they're
| using.
|
| There's plenty of mutually-intelligible English spoken
| outside of primarily English-speaking countries which
| native English speakers would _consider_ ungrammatical,
| but that 's only relative to their own dialect.
| layer8 wrote:
| That's a pidgin.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Although it doesn't work for mosquitos, it does work for
| "bandits":
|
| John will both try and kill bandits.
|
| ... meaning that John will serve as judge and executioner, if
| not jury.
| gwd wrote:
| Here's where HN needs a "cry-laughing" emoji. :-)
| madcaptenor wrote:
| I'm hearing "try and kill mosquitoes" with "try" meaning
| "eat", except it doesn't quite work because obviously John
| should kill the mosquitoes before he eats them.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > What I'd say instead is: If native speakers say something,
| then it's grammatically correct.
|
| By your own logic, "literally" meaning "figuratively" is
| grammatically correct. Which just goes to show that your
| logic is wrong. Something can in fact be grammatically
| incorrect even when said by native speakers.
| throwanem wrote:
| Sure, but you do still have to try and get your point across.
| omnicognate wrote:
| That depends on the purpose of your writing.
| mikewarot wrote:
| As a EE wannabe, I see everything in terms of impedance
| matching. It's all a very high dimension matching problem we
| tend to get good at, in order to survive.
| da_chicken wrote:
| I've thought a lot about this one. It really is the message
| that matters, not the grammar. It's the song, not the notes.
|
| It's also that language is pretty inherently a very fuzzy,
| ambiguous, and imprecise thing. If I say, "I've left my cup on
| the table," then you know what I mean even though you've never
| seen my cup nor my table. Everyone reading that sentence is
| equally convinced that it's quite concrete, even though
| everyone is also imagining a completely different cup on a
| completely different table.
|
| Even more fascinating, it's likely that nobody that ever reads
| this post will have met me in person. We have not specifically
| agreed in advance what our words mean, merely relied upon
| collective agreement based solely on historic usage.
|
| Honestly, the idea that two people who have never met, never
| seen each other, maybe never even lived in the same hemisphere,
| might speak the same language and be able to converse freely is
| an _astonishing_ feat of magic.
| godelski wrote:
| I think of language like a lossy encoder-decoder system.
|
| You compress/encode your _thoughts_ into words. The the
| listener /reader decompresses/decodes your _words_ into
| thoughts. As long as we don 't think thoughts and words are the
| same thing, then yeah, you're right.
|
| I think this also helps with communication in general because
| it forces you to think more about what someone is saying.
| There's no way you can put all your thoughts into words.
| Decoding is highly affected by prior knowledge, culture, and
| all that jazz. It's why you can make a confusing array of
| unintelligible noises and gestures at a friend and they'll
| understand but everyone else around is left confused. I think
| this also explains a lot of fights on the internet, as it is
| easy to misinterpret and with no perfect encoding it's hard to
| write to an audience of everyone.
| quotemstr wrote:
| > there is truly no correct way to say something
|
| Yes, there is. Linguistic descriptivism is a stale 1960s
| academic fad wrapped up in a revolutionary energy that's dead
| and cringe now. Like that era's other insane postmodernisms, it
| rejects reality and reality has rejected it right back.
|
| "Truly", we understand each other better and communicate faster
| when draw speech from a a collection of words, idioms, and
| grammatical constructions familiar to the listener. This
| linguistic inventory is not natural. It must be taught. Errors
| must he corrected, not validated. Not every utterance from
| someone's mouth has equal merit.
| interestica wrote:
| > "Truly", we understand each other better and communicate
| faster ~ _when we out speech draws from a a collection of
| words_ ~, idioms, and grammatical constructions familiar to
| the listener. This linguistic inventory is not natural. It
| must be taught. Errors must he corrected, not validated. Not
| every utterance from someone's mouth has equal merit.
|
| It's okay. I still understood you.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Sorry, but you are completely misunderstanding what
| "descriptivism" means, why it's the viewpoint taken in
| serious linguistics, and how common it is there (i.e.
| absolutely 100% universal among everyone who studies language
| scientifically).
| quotemstr wrote:
| > absolutely 100% universal among everyone who studies
| language scientifically
|
| They are all wrong.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Well, why?
|
| The point of science is to understand natural phenomena,
| not to pass value judgments on them. Biologists' job is
| not to decide which out of dogs and cats is "correct".
| Why should linguistics be any different?
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Well said. Linguistic descriptivism is completely incoherent
| because it can't actually tell you anything. All a
| descriptivist can do is say "yep, you sure are using the word
| that way" which isn't remotely useful or interesting.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Do you think any scientific inquiry in any field is useful
| or interesting?
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Important to note that no working linguists hold this view
| and it is entirely outside the consensus mainstream of the
| discipline. This view is popular on HN but it is about as
| scientifically reputable as lysenkoism and not much more
| useful.
| weregiraffe wrote:
| >when draw speech from a a collection of words, idioms, and
| grammatical constructions
|
| And who will be the keepers (or should I say gate-keepers) of
| this glorious collection? And will they prevent Tolkien from
| spelling plural of dwarf as dwarves? Will they force Cormac
| McCarthy to use quotation marks?
| interestica wrote:
| https://www.bbc.com/pidgin
| octo888 wrote:
| I think we can all agree of "5 items or fewer" though right
|
| (jk)
| fmajid wrote:
| When I was in high school in France, where they teach British
| English, we were taught try and is the grammatically correct
| form.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| Try and is good. Philadelphia we also have good ones. especially
| dropping with/tos
|
| - Down the shore - done school, done work, done dinner.
|
| Also my favorite is anymore:
|
| - gas is so expensive anymore
| smelendez wrote:
| > regular coordination permits the order of conjuncts to be
| changed, while in (7) we see that the same is not possible with
| try and (De Vos 2005:59).
|
| But sometimes conjunction implies sequential order or causation,
| right? Which seems related here. "I'm going to take a shower and
| get this dirt off me" or "I'm going to get some flour and bake a
| cake." You can't change the order. It doesn't make sense to add
| both in those cases, either.
|
| It's also interesting about motion verbs, because I see "he came
| and picked me up at the station" as an example of two literal
| sequential actions, versus "he went and picked me up at the
| station" as more about emphasis, like he did something notable.
| Which could be good or bad: "he went and got himself arrested
| again."
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| > _I'm going to get some flour and bake a cake._
|
| A group works together. One offers to get flour, another offers
| to bake the cake.
|
| A third could offer, "I'm going to both get some flour and bake
| a cake."
|
| It would make sense to use "both."
| urquhartfe wrote:
| > You can't change the order.
|
| You are confusing semantics with grammatical correctness. In
| both your examples, they would still be grammatically correct
| with reversed order.
|
| (I would actually suggest they are still semantically
| reasonable too, but that's besides the point).
| brianpan wrote:
| The emphasis is a really interesting point and overlooked by
| the article. Your "went and" examples do seem very analogous to
| "try and". "He went and got himself arrested again," is less
| about the going and almost exclusively emphasizing the other
| half of the conjunction.
|
| "Try and" can operate the same way by de-emphasizing the
| trying. If Dr. Dre said "I'm gonna try _to_ change the course
| of hip hop again, " the sentence is about attempting to do
| something. On the other hand, "try and" makes the sentence more
| assured- Dr Dre is going try it and then do it.
|
| I wonder if this half about ordering, half about emphasizing is
| the reason for the special rules of usage.
| KurSix wrote:
| Funny how the same surface structure can be either neutral or
| judgment-loaded depending on the verb
| lutusp wrote:
| This pales when compared to my favorite grammatical annoyance, a
| common perverse construction, for example "... similar effect to
| ..." when "... effect similar to ..." is actually intended. This
| misordering is so common that, in a Web search, it appears to
| outnumber the canonical ordering.
|
| I acknowledge that terms like "canonical" argue for a nonexistent
| language authority, and that an acceptable word ordering is any
| one that conveys what the speaker intends.
| umanwizard wrote:
| I don't follow, can you give examples of what you mean?
| lutusp wrote:
| One might say, "benzodiazepines have a similar effect to
| alcohol", or "benzodiazepines have an effect similar to
| alcohol." The second construction is clearer in its meaning.
| umanwizard wrote:
| I don't really get why one is in the wrong order? Maybe
| we're parsing them differently somehow. The meaning reads
| identically to me although the parse tree is different.
|
| Benzodiazepines have a similar effect to [the effect of]
| alcohol
|
| Vs.
|
| Benzodiazepines have an effect [which is] similar to [the
| effect of] alcohol.
| umanwizard wrote:
| This article illustrates the main reason why prescriptive grammar
| is so boring.
|
| If instead of just writing things off as "wrong", we accept that
| they happen and try to understand why and under what
| circumstances, we unlock a whole incredibly interesting new field
| of science.
| layer8 wrote:
| Why not both? ;)
| cubefox wrote:
| Not too long from now, Yale will likely also give the "would of"
| construction its blessing.
| umanwizard wrote:
| This article is not "blessing" anything, it's trying to
| understand it. And I promise you that linguists have indeed
| given thought to why and under what circumstances people write
| "would of" instead of "would have".
| leeoniya wrote:
| isnt it fundamentally just a mispronounced contraction of
| would've
| cubefox wrote:
| Of course, but linguists consider themselves to be
| scientists, so they are only allowed to describe and
| explain. They can't say that anything is wrong or bad. Even
| "would of." Prescriptive judgements are restricted to
| philosophers of language.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Yes, and a huge chunk of language evolution is driven by
| things getting confused with other things due to
| phonological changes making them sound the same, so
| studying this is squarely within the realm of linguistics.
|
| That said, the one-off simple example of "would of" is
| probably not interesting enough to write a big article
| about.
| vehemenz wrote:
| This looks like a false equivalence. Why are we comparing a
| commonly-accepted usage, hundreds of years old, to what amounts
| to a spelling error?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Example usage: I will _try and_ figure out how this page is
| causing the scrollbar to be white-on-white in a way that makes it
| useless.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| > (a) try (./!)
|
| > She shouted: Try! Try, try, try! Just fucking try it!
|
| > try as you may/might
|
| > try is my favorite word
|
| > try harder
|
| > try 1/2/3/...
|
| > try, quickly!
|
| Do my examples fit in those 3 examples?
|
| Me thinkest thoug dost not knoweth English very well.
|
| And I am not even a native speaker.
|
| But then again, I have no Harvard education, so what do I know.
| text0404 wrote:
| The sentence begins with "typically," indicating that the
| examples are not representative of all possible uses.
|
| When writing numbers, spell out one through nine and use
| numerals for 10 and above.
|
| The correct construction of "Me thinkest thoug dost not knoweth
| English very well" is actually "Methinks thou dost not know
| English very well."
|
| The site is hosted by Yale, not Harvard.
|
| Your last sentence has an extra comma and needs a question mark
| at the end.
| urquhartfe wrote:
| A lot of American commenters here are very much misunderstanding
| how "try and" is used in British English.
|
| It genuinely is used essentially equivalently to "try to". Maybe
| there is some very slight semantic difference, but it's
| essentially the same.
| mathiaspoint wrote:
| I'm American and use the phrase that way literally all the
| time. Also "Go ahead and..."
| justonceokay wrote:
| The majority of the article is describing how it is different
| from "try to" in its usage. In short it acts more like a single
| phrase than as a literal future infinitive.
| amenhotep wrote:
| There's no usage of try and where try to wouldn't fit
| perfectly well and mean exactly the same thing. It's a weird
| construct with weird restrictions on how it can be applied
| grammatically, but it's not different in usage.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Try and find out.
| vehemenz wrote:
| Actually, this is the same way it's used in America. Maybe
| there's a subtle distinction in rare cases, but it's been more
| or less deflated.
|
| There might be some boomer grammar prescriptivists who are
| saying otherwise, but they aren't doing linguistics.
| LocalH wrote:
| Ah, prescriptivism versus descriptivism.
|
| Prescriptivism is appropriate for technical or legal discussions,
| where the specific meanings of words are hugely important.
|
| Descriptivism is appropriate for casual communication, where it's
| fine as long as your intended meaning comes across.
| lblume wrote:
| Prescriptivism is inherently limited to situations where near-
| unanimous consent exists between all speakers.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Nah, prescriptivists _love_ writing books saying that a thing
| almost everybody does - sometimes including themselves - is
| wrong. Prescriptivist amateurs with strong opinions sell
| reasonably well, publishers are quite fond.
|
| But this is part of a project by academics and the academics
| abandoned prescriptivism because it's not science. We don't
| have prescriptivist chemists or physicists either.
| windward wrote:
| Do you have any examples of the books?
| tialaramex wrote:
| "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" by Lynne Truss or "Her
| Ladyship's Guide to the Queen's English" by Caroline
| Taggart would be examples.
| DavidWoof wrote:
| That's absolutely _not_ what the article is about. Did you even
| read it?
|
| People don't really have that debate anymore outside of twitter
| casuals, and it's dismissed with a wave almost immediately in
| this article, which then goes on to examine the complex grammar
| of "try and".
| umanwizard wrote:
| Yep. This is like someone seeing an article about geology and
| saying "ah, sphere earth vs. flat earth". Like, no, the
| article already presupposes that the earth is spherical
| because that's the viewpoint taken by all people with a
| serious academic interest in the topic.
| nmeofthestate wrote:
| Maybe it's different in America but this is being bizarrely over
| thought in the comments. It's a synonym for "try to".
| layer8 wrote:
| The article discusses how it's not.
| vehemenz wrote:
| Agreed. For the most part it's been deflated to a synonym. The
| analysis goes too deep into past usage which has mostly become
| obsolete.
| djtango wrote:
| I did an introduction into the basics of linguistics in secondary
| school and something my teacher pointed out that a rule of thumb
| is that common phrases or words are the most likely to break
| grammatical rules.
|
| He then told me a story about a language that was invented to be
| perfectly regular, and then there was a generation of native
| speakers of this artificial language and the first thing that
| happened was common phrases became irregular.
|
| I believe the language must be Esperanto but I'm struggling to
| find a reference to this anecdote
| Nezteb wrote:
| I spent 20 minutes looking for an Esperanto reference to this
| but could only find pages related to "in" words [1] and profane
| neologisms [2].
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_vocabulary#Cultural_...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_profanity#Neologisms
| DamnInteresting wrote:
| I know someone whose work is cited in the "Try and" paper, and
| she asked me to pass this along in response to your comment:
|
| > _Feel free to let djtango know that the paper they 're
| looking for is Bergen (2001), "Nativization processes in L1
| Esperanto". It's a minor classic and deserves any attention it
| gets!_
|
| I searched for the title, and this PDF was among the top
| matches: https://pages.ucsd.edu/~bkbergen/papers/NEJCL.pdf
| mbostleman wrote:
| Try and is one of my worst grammatical nightmares. It pains me
| every time I hear it.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| What about "try ya" as in "try ya some of that there salad."
| Something my mother-in-law would say.
| csande17 wrote:
| That sounds like a "personal dative" to me:
| https://ygdp.yale.edu/phenomena/personal-datives
| derefr wrote:
| Possibly-interesting comparison: in Japanese, the way to talk
| about trying to do some verb-phrase X, is "XteJian ru" -- which
| is usually literally translated as "we'll try [X]ing", but which
| breaks down into "[verb-phrase X in present tense] [the verb "to
| see" in whatever tense you mean.]"
|
| Which means that the construction can be most intuitively framed
| (at least by an English speaker) as either "we'll see [what
| happens when] we [X]"... or, more relevantly, "we'll try [X] and
| see [what happens/how it goes]." Or, for short: "we'll try and
| [X]."
| tomsmeding wrote:
| It's even better. The "X-te" (Xte) is technically not X in
| present tense, it is specifically X in the _te_ -form (te is
| read "te").
|
| The _te_ -form has a bunch of different uses, but in the case
| of "verb- _te_ verb ", if the second verb is not one of a list
| of special verbs (of which _miru_ (Jian ru, to see) is one),
| X-te Y normally means "X and Y". For example, _yorugohan o
| tsukutte taberu_ (Ye goFan woZuo tsuteShi beru) means
| "(to/I/we/you/...) make dinner and eat it": _yorugohan_ is
| dinner, the "o" is a particle marking the direct object,
| _tsukuru_ means to make (becomes _tsukutte_ in the _te_ -form)
| and _taberu_ means to eat. (The first word in English is
| ambiguous because grammatical subjects are usually optional in
| Japanese, plus its verbs are not inflected for person or
| number.)
|
| For a number of verbs, however, if they are in the second
| position, the phrase gets a special meaning. If it's _miru_ ,
| e.g. _tsukutte miru_ , it means "to try to make" -- or perhaps
| more aptly, "to try and make". If it's _iku_ (Xing ku, to go),
| it means "to go X-ing": _tabete iku_ (where _taberu_ (to eat)
| - > _tabete_ in the _te_ -form) is "to go to eat [something]",
| or perhaps: "to go and eat [something]".
|
| Not all such special verbs correspond to English
| pseudocoordination though; a common one is _shimau_ (the
| dictionary says "to finish / to stop", but it's uncommon in
| bare form), where e.g. _tabete shimau_ means "to finish
| eating" or "to end up eating" / "to eat accidentally" depending
| on context.
|
| The analogy between English and Japanese here is likely
| coincidental, but it's amusing nevertheless.
| trealira wrote:
| Funnily enough, this has resulted in people saying things
| like "Jian temimashiyou" and "Jian temitekudasai", which
| confused me at first. But I suppose this is like non-native
| English speakers being confused by the extra "do" in phrases
| like "I already did do my work."
| musicale wrote:
| This is a nice explanation; I wish that duolingo hadn't
| removed their user comment/explanation section, which used to
| contain similar (though not always correct, which is probably
| part of why they removed them.)
| bacheaul wrote:
| Pro tip: Duolingo is a game and basically a dead end for
| properly learning a language. If you want to really learn,
| you need to build intuition, and that only comes from huge
| amounts of level-appropriate input. Find yourself some good
| native language podcasts that are targeted at language
| learners and native reading material. Search for "Refold"
| for a better strategy (no affiliation, it's just awesome),
| and make sure that whatever you do, you enjoy it. Language
| learning is a marathon, the fun is in the journey, not just
| the destination.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Plenty of people enjoy Duolingo. And I wouldn't say it's
| a dead end any more than simple picture books or a total
| beginners class. Will it turn you into a fluent speaker?
| No, so what.
| Mtinie wrote:
| > No, so what.
|
| Because it promotes itself as a platform to learn
| fluency. That's why it's important to recognize its
| limitations.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| I guess I just don't know anyone who doesn't recognize
| the limitations, perhaps that's a function of an
| environment where we all know multiple languages already.
| nyeah wrote:
| If literally everyone recognizes the limitations, then
| Duolingo won't be harmed by changing their advertising to
| be accurate.
| lambdaphagy wrote:
| My impression of duolingo was strongly influenced by a
| former PM who said basically what OP said without any
| hint of ill will in their voice. Duolingo discovered that
| it was easier to reward-hack short term signals of
| language learning instead of scaffolding those signals
| into longterm language learning. Today it's essentially
| Candy Crush for people who think they're too smart for
| Candy Crush.
|
| That's not even a diss, it's just The Way Of The World
| when you are directly rewarded for growth and retention
| and very indirectly for language learning.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > Today it's essentially Candy Crush for people who think
| they're too smart for Candy Crush.
|
| That's overly harsh. I use Duolingo for Japanese because
|
| - I thought it would be fun to learn a little about
| Japanese. And I do learn some, and it is fun.
|
| - I wanted to "understand" a bit of what was being said
| during subtitled anime I watch. This was _partially_
| successful. I understand some words, and I notice some
| things like "oh, that was a question", and sometimes
| notice when what was said doesn't match the text. I get
| enough out of it that it adds to my enjoyment
|
| So, clearly there's a group of people out there that are
| there to gain some knowledge out of it, and _not_ to rack
| up some kind of score (and feel superior).
| johnisgood wrote:
| I always say, that if you want to learn a language, then
| surround yourself with it.
|
| I learned all languages I know this way. When it comes to
| Polish, I mainly saw people writing in that language
| without knowing much. Translator came to the rescue. I
| picked up common words and phrases that way, and it
| helped with grammar, too, but it was not a fast process
| as it is a difficult language. I do not speak it well,
| although I speak it understandably enough, because I did
| not listen nor speak to people in the language much, as
| opposed to English, and this includes movies, TV series,
| etc.
|
| Spanish was easy, all it took was a translator and long
| conversations with 2 people and some music. :D
| Pronunciation is not an issue, my native language helped.
|
| French would have been a bit more difficult to learn, as
| I have tried, then lost interest and reasons to do so.
|
| I am trying to learn Arabic, but for me, that is a whole
| different one.
| haunter wrote:
| Hungarian works the same, well I guess the few agglutinative
| languages do share this element
| hackyhacky wrote:
| > Hungarian works the same, well I guess the few
| agglutinative languages do share this element
|
| Not sure what you mean. In Hungarian, the verb meaning "to
| try" is _(meg)probalni_ , which does not mean "to see." Its
| argument is typically given as an infinitive verb, which
| would never be translated using the pseudocoordination
| described above, and there is no related form that would be
| translated as "and".
| unscaled wrote:
| It's an interesting coincidence, but I think there is a
| reason that the te-form in Japanese is much more fruitful
| than "and" in English in producing these constructs. Japanese
| verbs have too conjunctive forms: te-form and ren'youkei[1]
| (continuative form). Ren'youkei, is more formal and has a
| different but overlapping range of conditions in which it can
| be used. The "te-form" itself was originally[2] just the
| ren'youkei conjugation of a special auxiliary verb "tsu",
| that is used to mark a completed action.
|
| Neither of these forms is nearly as flexible as the
| conjunction "and" in English. For one, they can only connect
| verbs and one class of adjectives, but another important
| point is that the actions described by the verbs need to
| occur sequentially in time, with the action marked by '-te'
| occuring earlier. You cannot use either of these forms to say
| something like "The dog kept jumping and wagging its tail" or
| "It's important to both eat and drink".
|
| If we compare this to how linguists define
| "pseudocoordination" in English and other Germanic languages,
| then every instance of the te-form or ren'youkei in Japanese
| is pseudocoordination and not real coordination: you cannot
| reorder the verbs freely, you cannot add "both", and you can
| use an interrogative pronoun. Since these limitations apply
| to every use of the te-form and ren'youkei, not just the
| "special case" ones, it makes these form more amenable for
| building special construct. Add the fact that Japanese does
| not have an infinitive form, and you end up with either of
| these forms as the most natural way to attach auxiliary verbs
| in Japanese.
|
| Now you end up with a plethora of constructions (demonstrated
| with the verb Zuo ru tsukuru "to make"): Zuo
| tsutemiru tsukutte miru (make and see) try to make
| Zuo tsutemiseru tsukutte miseru (make and show) prove that
| [I] can make it Zuo tsuteiku tsukutte iku (make
| and go) gradually make (or make more and more) Zuo
| tsuteshimau tsukutte shimau (make and complete) finish
| making or "oh shit he really ended up making that" (the MORE
| common meaning in this case) Zuo tsutekudasai tsukutte
| kudasai (make and give (imperative)) Please make
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_conjugation#Conjun
| cti...
|
| [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/v08pbp/br
| ief...
| derefr wrote:
| > (make and complete) finish making or "oh shit he really
| ended up making that" (the MORE common meaning in this
| case)
|
| I would note that we have that one in [vernacular] English,
| too, but only in the past tense: "done [X]ed", i.e. "he
| really done made that."
|
| > (make and go) gradually make (or make more and more)
|
| And we have a construction equivalent to this, but that
| means more like "set out to [X]" -- that being "go and
| [X]." I.e. "now why'd you go and make that?"
| tsunamifury wrote:
| Try'n ta
| Raj7k wrote:
| Why there are so many rules for speaking
| foysavas wrote:
| The "and" in "try and..." may be a shorthand for the material
| implication of two temporal modal paths:
|
| "try and X" = can X -> must X = not can X or must X
|
| That said, the word "both" doesn't collocate before "try and X"
| because it instead pushes us toward an interpretation as logical
| conjunction:
|
| "both try and X" = can X and must X
|
| Likewise, despite the usage of "try not to", the phrase "try not
| and" doesn't show up, because under material implication the
| phrase becomes nonsense:
|
| "try not and X" = not can X -> must X = can X or must X
| baobun wrote:
| OTOH "you mustn't try and X" sounds plausible, which tracks.
| bsoles wrote:
| As a nonnative speaker of English who lived more than 30 years in
| an English speaking country, "try and" sounds to me as bad as
| "should of". Right or wrong, I perceive it as something an
| "uneducated" person would say. That said, I firmly believe that
| correct language is whatever people deem to be appropriate for
| their communication.
| eaglelizard wrote:
| Do you mean "should've"? That's a common contraction of
| "should" and "have." In many American accents, the difference
| between "should've" and "should have" is negligible, and will
| sound like "should of" even though it isn't.
|
| It also depends on the audience and medium, with "should've"
| being more appropriate for conversational/informal usage. It
| would be perfectly normal to say something like "he
| shouldn't've done that," but if I were writing a message, I'd
| at least expand the last contraction to "have."
|
| I think there's a general perception that many of the common
| dialects of American English, especially in the South and West,
| are associated with being less educated. I am not sure where
| that comes from.
|
| I'm a native English speaker, and my perception is that when
| someone speaks in a way where they don't use contractions, it
| seems verbose and stilted; I associate it with being scolded or
| disciplined, or when someone is speaking sternly to make a
| point (or out of anger). E.g.: "You don't know where you're
| going, you should've taken a left" - informative/neutral "You
| do not know where you are going, you should have taken a left"
| - critical/scolding
|
| Omitting contractions can result in speech that sounds strange
| and unnatural in general: "Shouldn't we go?" -> "Should not we
| go?" "Aren't you coming?" -> "Are not you coming?" "We didn't,
| but we should've." -> "We did not, but we should have."
| bendigedig wrote:
| > Do you mean "should've"? That's a common contraction of
| "should" and "have." In many American accents, the difference
| between "should've" and "should have" is negligible, and will
| sound like "should of" even though it isn't.
|
| I think they specifically meant "should of" which is a
| colloquial form of "should've" in a number of places in the
| UK.
|
| I went to school with a large number of people who would
| write "I should of done X instead of Y". In fact I'm pretty
| sure I made that "mistake" a number of times growing up.
| umanwizard wrote:
| We are not talking about writing; we're talking about
| language.
|
| Is there really a difference in how "should have" and
| "should've" are pronounced? There isn't in any accent I'm
| familiar with.
| ZeWaka wrote:
| > Is there really a difference in how "should have" and
| "should've" are pronounced?
|
| I sure hope so, one's a contraction and the other is
| not...
| zuminator wrote:
| Likely gp meant "should of" and "should've."
| umanwizard wrote:
| Indeed
| bendigedig wrote:
| What I'm saying is that people in certain regions
| actually say "should of" instead of "should've".
|
| And yes, there can be and often is a difference between
| saying "should've" and "should of".
| bsoles wrote:
| I meant "should of", especially in writing. I am not sure if
| "should've" is supposed to sound the same as "should of", but
| seeing the latter in writing annoys me a lot for some reason.
| woodruffw wrote:
| They sound the same in most American English accents, at
| least.
|
| (This response contains another funny modern colloquialism:
| 'a lot' gets used by both native and non-native English
| speakers where 'many' or 'greatly' is prescribed. Not that
| we need to be prescriptivists, of course.)
| robocat wrote:
| > sounds to me as bad as "should of"
|
| Interesting that you've used the spelling mistake which is
| perhaps why you hate it?
|
| If you heard "should've" or "should have" then perhaps it
| wouldn't annoy you so much??? Also listen for would've /
| could've
|
| But listening to https://www.grammar-
| monster.com/lessons/should_of_would_of_c... made me wonder if
| people do clearly pronounce the "of" in "should of"... Now I'm
| worried that I'm going to hear the mistake and be annoyed.
|
| There is nothing more annoying than being told something
| annoying, and then learning to be annoyed by it.
|
| Try not to internalise that dictum or it will recursively annoy
| you.
|
| Next time you hear a really annoying vague
| repetitive/intermittent sound at work, mention it to a coworker
| if you wish to ruin their worklife.
|
| (Minor edits). I often hear people who have learned English
| make a particular class of mistake (usually pronunciation) that
| is a result of being taught English by reading from books.
| Modern schooling for languages causes certain types of
| mistakes. There is a natural mimicking art/skill to learning a
| language by ear. Unfortunately the art isn't taught and is
| hardly even recognized: perhaps because it works best with
| intense one-on-one interaction and intent. Book learning was
| the default that our society used, and some well-educated
| people prefer books. When learning spoken English it is
| important to try and ignore spelling. Natural English speakers
| learn the spelling after learning the language and are in an
| environment where we have tricks to learn pronunciation of
| unfamiliar words. There is a strong classist/academic
| ridiculing of people that make the mistake of pronouncing a
| word as it is spelled (knowing how words are "properly"
| pronounced is an important distinction to many people - as is
| received wordplay).
| segmondy wrote:
| They are not even remotely the same. "should of" is a phonetic
| issue. of is spoken with the schwa vowel uh, so the o sounds
| like uh, and the f takes the v sound, so "should of" sounds
| like "should uhv", and "should have/should 've" sounds exactly
| the same, "should uhv". The issue is that folks that don't read
| much hear "should uhv" and think it's should of, so when they
| write "should of" because they expect should 've to sound like
| "should have" even tho they completely use the contraction when
| they speak!
|
| It's like saying that people with accents come across as
| uneducated when it come just be that the person has a deafness
| to American th and hears t does a substitute so they will say
| ting instead of thing or tin in place of thin. With that said,
| I grew up speaking/hearing the form of British english and "Try
| and" sounds perfectly fine to me.
| umanwizard wrote:
| How can "should of" _sound_ bad to you, when it sounds
| identical to (a not super carefully enunciated pronunciation
| of) "should have", at least in every dialect I'm aware of
| brontitall wrote:
| Except in rapid speech, and particularly at the end of
| sentences, I can definitely hear "should of" being used by
| some people in local Australian English.
| petesergeant wrote:
| Guess it depends on the country? As a native speaker of British
| English "try and" sounds fine to me, and in some cases would
| flow more naturally than "try to"
| willyt wrote:
| In written British English it would be correct grammar to say
| "try and" or "go and". In speech it would be said "go' _n_ "
| with very little emphasis on the 'n' and some dialects drop the
| 'n' completely but would still write 'and'. I suspect that this
| would also be true for other dialects of English from NZ,
| Australia, South Africa, Ireland, India etc but I stand to be
| corrected.
| vehemenz wrote:
| Native speakers don't think so, but I suppose that's why you're
| nonnative--"and try" is completely conventional, idiomatic, and
| correct (even if it breaks a pattern, but that's English for
| you). Should "of" is generally a spelling error. Not remotely
| in the same category.
| euroderf wrote:
| "try and" is a pet peeve of mine.
|
| "try 'n" sounds suspiciously close to "tryin'", so I suspect that
| people who were saying "tryin' to" began to reanalyse the first
| two syllables as "try 'n" and then started dropping the newly-
| superfluous "to".
| thfuran wrote:
| What's your position on "finna"?
| euroderf wrote:
| Never heard of it ! (Am from NE US.)
| jagthebeetle wrote:
| This construction is similar to a hendiadys (which comes from the
| Greek for "one through two"); e.g. "nice and warm." (So says
| Fowler anyway.)
| Sardtok wrote:
| It's kind of funny that in Norwegian, people mix up the
| infinitive "to" and "and", as they are pronounced the same, "o"
| in IPA. So we have the same thing in Norwegian writing, but if
| you happen to use "and", you must use the imperative form of the
| verb for it to be grammatically correct. So, "try to stop me" is
| "prov a stoppe meg", and "try and stop me" is "prov og stopp
| meg". The latter is much more colloquial.
|
| This isn't a problem in Swedish and Danish, as their infinitive
| marker is "att/at", which in Norwegian only means "that" in its
| conjunctive form.
|
| I wonder if there's any relation to the Norwegian here.
| Arn_Thor wrote:
| First thing I thought of when reading the linked post! You
| explained it for a non-Norwegian audience better than I could
| have too!
| triyambakam wrote:
| Professor Faarlund might agree
|
| > In his 2014 paper "English: The Language of the Vikings" (co-
| authored by Joseph Embley Emonds), Faarlund and Emonds assert
| that English is a Scandinavian language (or North Germanic
| language) which was influenced by Anglo-Saxon (a West Germanic
| language) [1]
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Terje_Faarlund
| actionfromafar wrote:
| And in that case, "try and" is potentially very old and very
| "correct" English.
| triyambakam wrote:
| I don't disagree but I don't follow what you mean in
| response to Faarlund's theory?
| hopelite wrote:
| He may be referring to what I suspect too, that even
| though it is unlikely that any one Germanic language has
| the key to this, let alone the many similar linguistic
| mysteries, deeply diving into each of the languages to
| graph connections will likely provide the best chance at
| solving such things.
|
| I believe that not only do we have a hard time with this
| matter because our conception of what "try" means today
| is not original, but also that effectively "try and" and
| "try to" are effectively different concepts of the mind
| that we simply do not understand anymore, homographs
| whose separate original meanings and appropriate uses
| have been lost over time.
|
| I look forward to what LLMs will be able to unlock with
| this kind of historical and linguistic analysis. I think
| we will start unlocking some interesting this this way. I
| could see us being able to, to some degree, rewind
| linguistic history and also then apply it to historical
| context. Imagine an LLM that can not only graph all
| languages and meanings in those languages, but will also
| be able to infer meanings and origins going back into
| history by cross referencing all related languages ... at
| least with some degree of accuracy greater than what we
| can do today. Now we just need all historical texts in
| digital form and to not erase all life on the planet.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| "Try and" has a very Norse/Scandinavian/Swedish feel to
| it.
| touzen wrote:
| Actually, the situation is even weirder in Swedish! Even though
| we write "att", it is pronounced "o" _when used to mark an
| infinitive_ but not when used like the word "that" in English.
| So, in the sentence Jag tror *att* han gillar
| *att* ata I think *that* he likes *to* eat
|
| the first "att" (that) is pronounced similar to its orthography
| but the second one (to) is pronounced "o".
|
| https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/att#Swedish
| nyeah wrote:
| I think "try and stop me" is more colloquial in my brand of
| English too.
| bravesoul2 wrote:
| > In dialects of Northeastern Canada, parallel inflected forms
| are acceptable:
|
| > 12) They tries and does that.
|
| There is a Ricky Jervais show
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Life_(TV_series) where the
| main character talks like this alot but not because that is
| common in the UK but perhaps to show he is a bit simple/slow. I
| think there is a danger in making that assumption about anyone
| based on the accent or general way they talk.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Surprised if they are quoting Dr Dre they don't mention "run
| and..." (as in "run and tell that")
| throwmeaway222 wrote:
| The argument from about 10 years ago forward is that because
| English is already messed up, we should allow any usage of the
| language possible.
| drewbeck wrote:
| Descriptivism is much much older than 10 years but that is
| perhaps when you first became aware of it.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| > The argument from about 10 years ago forward is that because
| English is already messed up, we should allow any usage of the
| language possible.
|
| Makes me wonder how people managed to speak English before they
| invented grammar rules. /s
| sgentle wrote:
| When you say "allow"... what exactly do you imagine happening
| if Yale's linguistic department forbids people from using
| English in certain ways?
|
| Or is this more of a federal government thing? Grammar Force as
| the seventh branch of the US Military? What about other
| countries... are we thinking NATO or UN? Either way, gonna be
| tough to try and convince the Brits that US English is the
| correct one, since we didn't exactly get permission from them
| in the first place.
| rezmason wrote:
| At first glance, I thought this was some new TC39 JavaScript
| syntax proposal.
|
| This is a cool site. I thought I'd look for a page about my
| favorite syntactic phenomenon, "what all", and not only did I
| find it, but also they changed the "Who says this?" section
| header to "Who all says this?"
|
| https://ygdp.yale.edu/phenomena/what-all
| nine_k wrote:
| Why, "try and" could be like "try / finally", and "what all"
| could be filter().
|
| I won't mind "await y'all" to await multiple promises.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| What if... try { let x =
| parseInt(input); and {
| displayResult(x / 0); } } catch {
| displayError("Parsing error.") }
|
| And the catch can't catch a division by zero error because it
| occurred inside an "and" block.
| rcxdude wrote:
| That's kind of like python's try/else, but not quite (the
| 'and' would be more general, if you can interleave them
| with statements in the try block)
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| In practice you can move the displayResult(x / 0) outside
| the try catch. It's hard to think of a counterexample that
| comes up in practice.
|
| There might be something to this idea, because I've often
| been in situations where a try catch catches an error that
| originates a dozen frames down the call stack, which is
| sometimes (but not always) unrelated to the original point
| of the try catch block. People try and deal with this by
| adding more try catches around the code deeper in the call
| stack, but maybe there's a better way.
| nroets wrote:
| What is this JavaScript thing ?
|
| I guess I come from a different era:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COMEFROM
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| They seem to be missing the incipient disappearance of the -en
| form of verbs, with people saying things like "I should have
| went" instead of "I should have gone".
|
| It isn't clear why they feature the constructions they do. They
| are titled "Yale Grammatical Diversity Project", but the
| constructions are not necessarily examples of grammatical
| diversity:
|
| > _Have yet to_ is a construction that appears in most, if not
| all, varieties of English.
|
| > this construction appears to be distributed across speakers
| in all regions and demographic groups.
|
| > Repetition clefts are quite widespread in English and can be
| observed as early as the mid-17th century
|
| > They are robustly attested in contemporary North American
| English and are also used in the UK. Related constructions have
| been observed in Australian English (McConvell 2004) and in a
| corpus of New Zealand English speech as well
|
| > the usage of repetition clefts does not apparently correlate
| with any sociodemographic features.
| KurSix wrote:
| Feels like one of those constructions you don't notice until
| someone points it out, and then you start hearing it everywhere
| sudhirb wrote:
| Anecdotally I think I have heard "what all" most commonly
| spoken by Indian English speakers - though that's probably
| quite far outside the scope of this site.
| ziroshima wrote:
| It makes sense from a boolean perspective. E.g "I'll try and go
| to the store." If the try fails, you did not go to the store.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Only if your language has short-circuiting booleans.
| petesergeant wrote:
| That's just the meaning of "try" tho; "I'll try to go to the
| store" is identical in meaning
| pnut wrote:
| For that matter, "trying" is implied by "going", and you
| could just say "I'll go to the store".
| petesergeant wrote:
| Nah, there's a marked difference in the expressed certainty
| there
| kwoff wrote:
| "However, De Vos (2005:59) points out that _try and_ may not be
| preceded by both: " [example] "John will both try and kill
| mosquitos."
|
| Then the next sentence has " _try and_ is available only when
| both _try_ and the verb following _and_ are uninflected ". (only
| when "both try and") I know the italicization of "try" and "and"
| makes it a different thing grammatically, just thought it was
| amusing.
| jmbwell wrote:
| The point I was waiting for them to get to was saved for last:
| _entails completion._
|
| Try _to_ do something, you might or might not do it. "I'm going
| to try to persuade them to decide in my favor."
|
| Try _and_ do something, you expect to get it done one way or
| another. "I'm goin down there to try and straighten them out."
|
| I don't have a long history of research in this going back to the
| 1500s, but I grew up in southeast Texas, and this is how I've
| always understood it to be used around here, when it is used with
| any intention at least.
| purplehat_ wrote:
| Interesting, where I'm from in southern california, "try and"
| doesn't entail completion. (The article only mentions this for
| "go and", which here does indeed entail expected completion.)
| sssilver wrote:
| Doesn't "try" imply possibility of failure to complete?
| zarzavat wrote:
| "Could you wash the dog?"
|
| Is not a question asking whether the person is capable of
| washing the dog. It's a command phrased politely.
|
| "Try to wash the dog"
|
| "Try and wash the dog"
|
| If you had no prior information on whether the dog likes
| water or not, I'd say that the try-and version expresses a
| greater level of confidence that washing the dog will be
| successful, in other words it's a command.
|
| Whereas try-to could be read either straight (this task may
| fail) or as a command phrased politely.
| cratermoon wrote:
| The linguistic prescriptivist in in me cringes at "try
| and", but I recognize usage has moved on.
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/were-going-to-
| explai...
| antonvs wrote:
| When prescriptivism is balking at usages that have been
| continuously in effect for four centuries, the problem is
| not with the usage. The prescriptivism you're using is
| suspect.
| llbbdd wrote:
| Prescriptivism is silly anyway, you'd be better off
| counting sand.
| nyeah wrote:
| Yeah. Prescriptivism may have a worthwhile role to play.
| But it needs to be a lot more thought out than "what some
| authority wrote 75 years ago".
| elliotec wrote:
| It still implies possibility of failure, but in the example
| of the commenter above, that possibility is almost low enough
| to the point of expectation (but not quite) and "try to"
| would increase that possibility in the direction of failure.
| Nuance!
| KurSix wrote:
| Funny how the grammar write-ups treat it as basically
| synonymous with "try to," but the lived nuance can be totally
| different depending on where you grew up.
| iqandjoke wrote:
| So when I ask people to do me a favor, use "try and". And when
| I need to answer somebody, use "try to".
| nonotthat wrote:
| As someone who understands usage of "try and" outside of the
| Yale definition, it suggests will and belief in possibility,
| which is probable unless the speaker does not sound confident,
| in which case it's still will and belief in possibility but not
| necessarily will and belief in probability.
| nyeah wrote:
| Yeah, maybe it's regional. I hear "tryan get some peace and
| quiet" about the same as "tryta get some piece and quiet. Maybe
| the former is more confident. But tone of voice probably
| matters more than the words.
|
| FWIW I grew up mostly in the Northeast.
| matthewkayin wrote:
| I'm surprised there was no mention of accent. For their
| example "It's tough when you're trying and finish(ing) an
| assignment under pressure.", I can't help but hear "It's
| tough when you're tryna finish an assignment under
| pressure.", which really is more like "trying to" than
| "trying and finishing".
| nyeah wrote:
| Yeah if I wrote "tryna" out nicely, I would spell it
| "trying to". So but that's my accent accounted for. There
| are a lot out there.
| mikestorrent wrote:
| This makes sense - "tryna" -> "tryn ta" -> "trying to".
| "Tryan" -> try and.
| mikestorrent wrote:
| I concur with "tryan" - it's its own word, IMO, in my mind. I
| had never seen "Try and X" sentences written out before this
| article, even though I say "tryan" all the time.
| hidelooktropic wrote:
| Reminds me of the incorrect "A whole nother"
| vehemenz wrote:
| That's a quaint way of saying "another"--not appropriate for
| formal use--but not quite incorrect either.
| GaryGapinski wrote:
| The use of "try and" is usually grammatically incorrect (when
| "try to" was meant).
| dddgghhbbfblk wrote:
| Prescriptively, maybe. But it is certainly grammatical in the
| sense that linguists normally use. "Try and" sounds perfectly
| natural to my own ears and it is regularly used by native
| English speakers.
| kazinator wrote:
| "try and <clause>" is syntactically correct.
|
| That is to say,
|
| > I'm going to try and change the course of Hip-Hop.
|
| can be parsed as
|
| > I'm going to try; I'm going to change the course of Hip-Hop.
|
| which has been subject to a well-understood extraposition process
| to factor out the leading "I'm going to" from all the clauses, so
| that a single copy of it distributes into all of them.
|
| It's essentially the same as what is going on in the following
| unassailably correct sentence:
|
| > I'm going to turn on the TV, crack open a beer, and watch the
| game".
|
| Also note that this "and" is not something which exclusively
| pairs with "try":
|
| > Linguists, go ahead and fight me!
| jameshart wrote:
| There's explanations in the article of why 'try and' can't be
| parsed as simply as that kind of parallel ellipsis structure.
|
| No reordering: You can't rephrase as _I 'm going to change the
| course of Hip-Hop and try_ the way you can _I 'm going to watch
| the game and crack open a beer_
|
| No use of _both_ : You can't say _I 'm going to both try and
| change the course of Hip-Hop_ the way you could _I 'm going to
| both crack open a beer and watch the game_
|
| No inflections: You can't say _I have tried and changed the
| course of Hip-Hop_ the way you can _I have cracked open a beer
| and watched the game_
| KurSix wrote:
| The syntactic quirks make it feel like a weird halfway point
| between coordination and some fossilized idiom
| willyt wrote:
| 'Go and put your shoes on' is correct British English. We
| consider 'Go put your shoes on' as incorrect grammar. So 'try and
| put your shoes on' would also be natural. I'm trying to think
| what other verbs this would work with because 'find and put your
| shoes on' doesn't sound right in British English but neither does
| 'find put your shoes on' in US English perhaps someone who
| understands grammar better can explain why some verbs work with
| this construction and some don't.
| mdcurran wrote:
| 'Go put your shoes on' is sensical in British English. If I
| heard someone saying this, I wouldn't bat an eye.
| willyt wrote:
| Yes, I would understand it and that's probably what people
| naturally say informally where I live in Scotland and in
| other dialects it's said more like 'go'n put your shoes on'
| where the 'n' is very soft. But especially if I saw it in
| writing I would assume that they were not a native British
| English speaker. It's interesting. In America I presume it's
| not grammatically correct to say 'the police officer went got
| his gun and shot killed the suspect' so why does US English
| drop the 'and' from go (and) or try (and)? Curious. (Edit
| with some observations about dropping letters from and)
| lpribis wrote:
| 'Go put your shoes on' is just another slightly different
| example of pseudo-coordination. I'm guessing that is has
| various levels of acceptance per-dialect (even within the UK)
| just like 'try and'.
| vehemenz wrote:
| Both are "correct." I'm not saying this is why, but there are
| many dialects in British English, so it might be more difficult
| to pin down what is "correct" compared to American English.
| willyt wrote:
| But you would have your essay corrected if you wrote "go put"
| in any British school (and possibly other 'commonwealth'
| countries) but it's fine to say it in informal speech;
| sometimes we hint at 'and' by saying the 'n' and sometimes we
| don't in regional dialects. In the US you would have "go and
| put" corrected if you wrote it in an essay. So there is a
| meaningful difference.
| dataflow wrote:
| Hang on. Isn't "try and" just completely different from "try to"?
|
| "Can I leave work early?" "Try and see."
|
| This is at worst a threat, and at best telling the other person
| to just do it and ask for forgiveness later afterward than for
| permission beforehand.
|
| "Can I leave work early?" "Try to see."
|
| This is telling the person to go research the answer to figure it
| out properly. And it feels less natural to say it too.
|
| How can these be interchangeable in meaning? If anything they
| feel closer to being opposite in meaning here.
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| I think your example shows [try] and [see], where as this
| article is about [try and] see.
| nyeah wrote:
| Sure, but that's not the same use of the phrase. To me, "try
| and get some of those new fries" means more or less the same as
| "try to get some of those new fries".
|
| Maybe "try and see" is an exception to "try and ___".
| itslennysfault wrote:
| This is also the construction used for FAFO
|
| FA = "try" (as a vulgar slang)
|
| When you de-vulgar/de-slang it it becomes: try and find out
| varunneal wrote:
| I think this is a different construction. "And" in "try and
| find out" is acting as a conjunction, separating two different
| actions
| lacoolj wrote:
| what about "I'll try better"?
| tempodox wrote:
| English, Simplified is now called "grammatical diversity"? That's
| so politically correct.
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