SE23 Forum

Silly theotherbrian, Michael was being mischievous, hence the smiley beside the word 'hung'.

Why the (apparently) redundant 'for', Brian? What's wrong with 'wishes those grammatical ...'?
Only asking.

If only we could be as well learned in the English language as Mr Orton... Life would most definitely be richer and I could preach at the lowly people who make mistakes in their efforts to speak and write.

I'm sure there is a redundant word in here somewhere, which I will absolutely expect to be questioned on. Perhaps even ridiculed on a public forum.

Feel free to have the thread to yourself Robin. You can muse over the language you hold so dear, without interruption from those of us clearly so inferior.

For now, I have also gotten me coat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-PIckHrZ0o

As I keep trying to explain, that girl, I'm not trying to preach or ridicule, and I'm sorry it it comes over like that. I would be very disappointed if I thought I had frightened other potential contributors off.

I am genuinely interested in why people adopt what seem to me to be new or non-standard usages .On 'wishes for x to happen', for example, I wonder whether there is a feeling that 'wishes x to happen' should be restricted to wishes for oneself ('I wish to be hanged') rather than for other people? Is it felt that 'want' would be more appropriate in the case of other people ('I want those grammatical miscreants to be hanged')?

I am not suggesting that my own idiolect (if I am using that word correctly!) is in any way superior to anyone else's. And, incidentally, I have no special claims to expertise in the English language, not having studied it since 'O' level.

Enjoy the wedding!

But surely, it would be more polite to discuss the topic and the content of the posts, rather than take it to a personal level of dissecting each word used by the poster?

It would also be more polite to refer to me as my chosen pseudonym of 'Thisgirl' than for me to be referred to as 'that girl'.

I do not wish to be argumentative either, but I do think there has been an air of superiority to some of your posts, which irks me slightly. Perhaps we draw the line under it all and go back to the subject of English usage in a more general way...

Here's a bugbear of mine; 'for free'

Being that 'free' is not a quantity, the quantifying use of 'for', suggesting you can get something for the amount of free always grates for me...

There. My olive branch, so to speak.

Thanks, thisgirl.

I agree with you about 'for free.' The OED says it is an American usage (as is 'for real'); first examples are from the 1940s. There is a suggestion from an American dictionary that it is the result of a confusion between 'free' and 'for nothing' (although I don't see how that would explain 'for real'.)

On the previous topic, it appears that 'for' is sometimes added to 'hate' as well as 'love' - perhaps for the same reasons as I suggested. In todays' 'Observer' a New Zealand schoolteacher at the royal wedding is quoted as saying, 'We'd hate for the union jack to disappear from our flag...'

I think 'wishes for' is correct when followed by a noun, isn't it? Eg 'I wish for a good outcome' or 'I wish for a new car'?

Maybe 'wishes for' so often gets used in sentences when the 'for' is redundant because this makes for a simple and predictable sentence structure with no risk of having to use a subjunctive. Or maybe the word 'wish' has just started automatically being followed by 'for', in the same way that 'Much as I would like (to watch the royal wedding, or whatever)...' seems to be turning into 'As much as I would like to watch...'. Not because the 'as' is necessary or helpful, but because the phrase 'as much as' is so common that it trips off the tongue.

'Gotten' is simply an archaic English verb form. Ironically American English does follow some older grammatical patterns, which is why it makes me laugh when some English people get sniffy about it.

Robin - what alternative would you have expected to see for 'hate for' in your example?

There seem to me to be two alternatives:

'I would hate the Union Jack to disappear...'

or

'I would hate it if the Union Jack were to disappear...'

The first works well in the written word but isn't easy to say - it wouldn't sound natural in conversation. The second is more natural, but also more convoluted that using 'for'.

Is this use of 'hate for' something new? Sounds perfectly natural to me.

Is it that 'I would hate the Union Jack to disappear' would sound too formal in conversation, Dunlop? It would sound OK to me (and the extra 'for' jars rather) but I'm very much an old fogey, linguistically at any rate. (By the way, thank you for silently correcting my non-capitalisation of 'union jack'. In my defence, 'The 'Observer' got it wrong too. Still, at least they didn't 'correct' it to 'Union Flag'!)

'I would hate it if the Union Jack were to disappear' (or 'I would hate it if the Union Jack disappeared'?) illustrates Jane's point about subjunctivophobia. Whenever I meet a linguistics expert, I always ask them why it is that there seems to be a trend in so many modern languages (English, German, French, Italian) for the subjunctive to disappear. Nobody has yet been able to tell me.

One example I've noticed recently in British English (but haven't seen commented on) is in conditional clauses. Increasingly I hear e.g. 'If he would phone, I'd go today' rather than 'If he phoned ( subjunctive) ..'. I gather this is an American usage - we seem to be adopting it. I also gather that it is parallel to a development in German ('wenn er anrufen wuerde' rather than 'wenn er anriefe'.)

I wasn't actually querying 'gotten', seeformiles. Some Americanisms are very useful and, as you say, more ancient than our own usage. However I don't myself care for 'gotten' very much. 'Got' is shorter, and I think that, other things being equal, the shorter the better.

Jane's 'as much as I should like to...' is interesting. I discussed it with my wife over supper, and we thought it might again be that 'Much as' sounds rather formal and archaic, and that 'as much as' is creeping in, under the influence of the common usage of the phrase in e.g. 'I don't like you as much as I did.'

'The Lib Dems are headed for their worst defeat ever...' (John Humphreys, this morning). Increasingly common this, I find. Is it just for the sake of variety? Or does 'heading towards' mean something different?

Another usage increasingly common amongst journalists is ' named for' rather than 'named after'. I noticed an (apparently) real person using it on the SE26 forum the other day ('Is Kirkdale named for St Barts Church?'). The OED says it is 'now US and Scottish', which may explain it, as I think the poster concerned may be Scottish in origin.

Fairly common use in Scotland - and its diaspora.

From http://www.se23.com/forum/showthread.php...6#pid36616

If it is all about equality then why does it intrinsically include 'femin' in the name?
I don't have a problem with the aim of equality, and it has been/is still very necessary to fight for women to have a fair role in all aspects of society. But I don't believe that 'feminism' can address inequalities that hit men (i.e. poor levels of education/exam results for a generation of boys across all subjects).

There are many other words that have intrinsic gender bias that are in the process of being addressed: manned, men at work, chairman, mankind, workmen, spaceman, postman, fireman, malestrom, etc

In my opinion, we need a new word to separate feminism from gender-equalitism so that it can address inequalities between genders in both directions. Imagine if we called anti-racists 'Blackists'...

Michael wrote:

I guess that is precisely why it has 'femin' in the name.

Is humanist the word you were looking for?

I think 'humanism' means something else.

What about 'anti-sexism' ? The OED doesn't seem to recognize it specifically, but it is a perfectly regular formation and, I think, in common use.

The OED says that that 'sexism' is formed on the model of 'racism' and means 'The assumption that one sex is superior to the other and the resultant discrimination practised against members of the supposed inferior sex (esp. by men against women); also conformity with the traditional stereotyping of social roles on the basis of sex'.

I don't think Humanist is quite right as it is often merged with the idea of Secular Humanism (not that I have a problem with this philosphy).

I'm thinking 'anti-sexist' might be right, in the context of anti-racist. But they are both fairly negative expressions of beliefs that require change rather than just reaction to what they are anti.

Michael, the historic roots of the word feminism are hard to ignore - therefore it would be quite difficult to find a word excluding the 'fem' aspect that doesn't sound contrived and clumsy.

I expect even now there will be men on here who will have decided I'm a flag waving harridan for daring to use the word. I think it's incredibly sad that 'feminism' now carries such negative connotations. I see it as an all-embracing thing - a drive towards equalility for all.

We also need to take a global view on this - if we look at women alone, it's only in a relatively tiny proportion of the world that they have any degree of equality. So we can't afford to be complacent about it.

I also agree that many working class boys and young men are struggling at school but it's hardly being ignored. In education circles there are very serious debates going on about this and attempts made to address the problem. But it is a complex one and I work with many of these young men myself - so I know it's often about embedded attitudes rather than a concerted attempt to neglect their needs or teachers not caring. Let's not forget there are many females from poorer backgrounds who are suffering just as much, but the current focus is on how to help young men.

Since this is pedant's corner, can I point out the correct spelling of maelstrom, which has an etymology unrelated to sex, "derived from the Dutch maelstrom, modern spelling maalstroom, from malen (to grind) and stroom (stream), to form the meaning grinding current or literally "mill-stream", in the sense of milling (grinding) grain."(thank-you Wikipedia).

Or was Michael, not for the first time, having his tongue firmly in cheek?

Surely the point here, as Michael says, is that feminism and anti-sexism (or whatever better word anyone can come up with) are two different things. Feminism implies wanting consciously to strengthen the the rights of women vis-s-vis men. (So far as I know, there is no male equivalent - 'masculism'?). Anti-sexism on the other hand implies wanting there to be no unfair privileges for either sex (or perhaps I mean 'gender' - 'anti-genderism'?) over the other.

(Must stop now - I can see the post person coming through my front gate with my person.)