You probably spend too much time with another language if you, as a non native speaker, are getting annoyed with words and phrases native speakers use.
So I want you dopers to 1) agree with me and tell me that I am right to be annoyed with these things, and 2) explain why these expressions are used by dumb folks, and 3) don’t - which must be tempting - point out spelling or grammatical errors in this post.
**First: Already. **Like: “Stop whining already!” You can’t use “already” in a sentence like that, or as in: “Just go shopping already.” It sounds ridiculous, and it means nothing; as a matter of fact, is sounds slightly retarded. Stop it.
Second: Point in time, as in “at this point in time”. What else would the point be in? At this point in room? Of course it’s point in time, you don’t have to add words to your sentences just to make them longer. Skip them if they’re unnecessary, especially if they are annoying to!
Sorry, at this point in time I can’t just follow your instructions already!
Those uses of “already” are fine. It’s an expression, man!
Yes, point in time is redundant but it does have a slightly different meaning from “at this point” which could refer to how far we’ve gotten in something.
I had a couple of French speaking Canadian friends in college who have made me very, very aware of how often we Americans say “all set”. Really. Pay attention sometime, and it’ll amaze you.
Well, since “sooner or later” is another way of saying “eventually”, “sooner, rather than later” implies that something will happen eventually, but time is an issue so one should try to speed up the process.
Are you American but now living elsewhere and using a different language, or a different variant of English? If so, it would be interesting to know which it is, since different second-language environments might produce different impressions.
Every language does tend to have intensifiers and other expressions that are difficult to translate. Doch in German, although a cognate of “though”, is an example. In some contexts it is almost like this usage of “already!”, although it can also be a contradictory yes.
Another thing I noticed between English and German is that for some single English words there might be many German ones. For instance, because of its case grammer, German has five different ways of saying “the” distributed over sixteen possible combinations of gender and case. (I’m ignoring grammatical number, because in German the genders have merged in the plural, which now is, grammatically, a fourth gender).
On the other hand, in some situations we have two or more English words, and German has only one. For example, like most European languages, German has the same word for “to wear” and “to carry”. I suppose the context is always sufficient to clarify matters, but they are such different things, how could there not be a different word for each?
Neither of those bugs me. Probably because I sometimes use “already” – it doesn’t “mean nothing” – it’s a perfectly good way to express mild annoyance at the (slow) rate at which something is proceeding. “Let’s go” is less descriptive than “Let’s go, already!”
“Point in time” – I don’t use it, but it doesn’t bother me like some things. I understand why it bugs you, though, if that helps…
Is “how come” specifically American? I don’t think there’s anything terrible about it. It’s not difficult to imagine how it sprang into existence, but might have made more sense to speakers of Old or Middle English, when the past participle of “to come” was different from the present tense.
At this point in the process, at this point in my story, at this point in our conversation…
At this point in time and at this point in the process are very different things. As a project manager/process analyst, trust me that there is a reason to be clear (or perhaps I speak to idiots - always a possibility).
“Already” in this context is an indicator of (sometimes mock) impatience. There is a difference between “stop whining” and “stop whining, already,” with the latter suggesting it’s noticeably past time to stop.
“At this point in time” implies a precision not necessarily conveyed by “at this time.” The latter can be a little fuzzy, perhaps meaning “today” or even “this week.” The former suggests “at this very moment.”
So while you may find these phrases annoying, they aren’t inherently meaningless or redundant. Dumb folks use them (sometimes when they probably shouldn’t) because they’re imitating the smart folks who use them appropriately.
Litoris walks past her hose pipe, into her living room and picks up an ink pen to write down all these superfluous words, for future reference. On second thought, nah, I live in the South. If we didn’t differentiate between an ink pen and a stick pin, you’d never know what we’re talking about.
