People think anything after a verb is an object, whence the “how dare them/her/him” abomination.
I thought you meant Canada, which is why I wondered if you were a native speaker of English from there.
“Already” as an intensifier at the end of an imperative is completely nonsensical.
It is, however, old nonsense, as previously pointed out, so not much good complaining about it now.
Speaking from southern California, I don’t use or hear this “-,already!” construction all that much, but neither does it sound so bizarre or unusual as to be surprising. It’s definitely part of the current language as I know it, unlike ‘23-skidoo’ or ‘How now?’
Come to think of it, wrt ‘how now’ maybe ‘how come’ is a surviving relic from a time when such elliptical constructions were more common.
More specifically, my understanding is that it derives from the Yiddish phrase genug shoyn, which has entered American English as “Enough already!”
This expression reminds me of charades, which I’ve only seen played at parties in old movies and TV shows, but not IRL. In charades, the person whose turn it is always begins by indicating the number of words, although I believe this is done by holding up fingers rather than saying it out loud.
Oh, is that what it means?
Honest to God, I always thought they meant like a joint – you know, “I’d hit that if you passed it to me.” Because people always say, “Ya wanna hit this?”
(And I say, “No thanks.” …I can’t smoke pot. Bad things happen.)
tomndebb, thanks for reminding me why that phrase annoys me so much! (at this point in time.) You are absolutely right, it was Watergate and the Nixon staff!
Which is strikingly similar to why I get mad every time I hear, “I do not recall.” Yeah, right. Mistakes were made. Plausible deniability.
There’s nothing that pisses me off like irrational or nonsensical State responses to legitimate questions. It’s like your mom saying “Because I say so.” Only worse.
There are two things an ex-girlfirend of mine used to say commonly. It’s not “American” this girls is was a New Zealander who was raised in Australia. The first is “come with” which was sort of used as its own verb and synonym for accompany.
“Oh, you’re going to the store? Do you mind if I come with?”
It didn’t annoy me, really, but I thought it was odd. Especially because she only seemed to use it when referring to herself or the person she was addressing, which is what confused me.
For example, there is going to be a party, she tells me:
“Mickey Mouse will be attending. Donald the duck is also going to come.”
(Donald will be making his way to the party independently of Mickey.)
“Mickey is coming to the party and Donald will come with him.”
(Donald will be accompanying Mickey to the party.)
“Mickey is coming to the party and Donald will come with.”
(Mickey is coming to the party. Donald with be accompanying ME.)
There was also a way she would put “do” at the end of sentences. But it was confusing to me, so it’s hard to come up with an example. I guess she used it like in the song “Daisy”:
“Daisy, Daisy give me your answer do.”
Um… Like maybe, this example:
Me: “Do you think Donald ought to ride his bike to the party.”
Her: “Yes, he should do.”
I wish I could think of a better example.
That “should do” is an English thing. I don’t wanna get into it because I have a Malicious Snake Bitch From Hell former friend who happened to be from England, and who said it a lot, and I’m already getting mad just seeing the phrase in writing.
Someone will come along to etymologize & place in context shortly.
The one I like is “I have no present recollection.” If you had asked me yesterday, I might have remembered.
“We don’t respond to hypothetical questions.”
“Recommend me a book”. Technically correct. But it makes me nuts.
I don’t use “already” a lot, but I quite frankly don’t get why people say it’s nonsense. Saying, “stop whining, already” isn’t a whole lot different than saying “stop whining, damnit”. The difference is, as someone else point out, it implies impatience and that it’s something that already should have occurred and that you shouldn’t have to even be complaining about. A better way to look at it would be to mentally rewrite the sentence as “you already should have stopped whining”. So, really, it’s just an intensifier that is less obscene than many other options. I can understand it being a little odd to non-native speakers because it’s an intensifier that is only used in a small subset of cases and has another use that doesn’t make the meaning obvious, but I really don’t think the logic to how it’s used is so far off as to make it seem nonsensical.
“All set” is certainly not something that I hear a whole lot around here, but I certainly wouldn’t be confused if someone used it in a situation to which I’m not accustomed. In these parts, we just use it in response to a “ready…?” question.
As for the OP, one thing that really gets me is when unnecessary prefixes or suffixes are added to words. Yeah, these are now affectionately known as Bushisms, but they’ve been around a lot longer than he’s been president, and I hear plenty of them that I’ve never see attributed to him. The ones I hear most often are “irregardless” and “orientated”. The first one I’ve made my peace with because I know it’s not going anywhere, but the second one really irritates me. I have to correct “orientated” with “oriented” because it just sounds stupid. Other examples are things like “pre-qualify”. You can’t “pre-qualify”, you’re either qualified or you’re not; “pre-qualify” seems to imply some step before qualifying, like you have to be qualified to qualify. For instance, a “pre-qualified” credit card is one that you’re already qualified for, so don’t say “You’re pre-qualified for this Visa from Bank of Bad Grammar” just say “You’re qualified for this Visa…”
Other usages that irritate me are how people use “ironic” when they mean “coinicidental” or “interesting”. Or when people use “literally” when they mean “very” or “really”. How ironic that these people literally have no idea what they’re talking about! :rolleyes:
Ths is my pet peeve. People jumping to cite Yiddish over German. Yiddish is the derivative language here. The phrase you quoted is a twist on the German schon genug, and I’ve heard it in the order you stated as well.
This will start another thread no doubt but there is very little Yiddish that is unique, that is to say, not derived directly from the German.
Oy vey. Guess what, that’s German too, oh the pain. Just spelled differently.
I don’t mind it at all if the n words prefixed happen to be striking, surprising, oddly juxtaposed or otherwise unexpected for example:
Person A: How’s the missus?
Person B: Two words; Devil Incarnate.
or
Person A: Why are you walking funny?
Person B: One word; Candiru!
But when it’s just a straightforward answer, I find it grates terribly - I suppose because as you say, it’s a flourish - and introducing the mundane with a flourish just seems silly.
Yeah but if someone is talking about a phrase that originated in New York (or is strongest there), I’d assume Yiddish instead of German because of the large Jewish population. Yes, Yiddish descends from German*, but it’s also the language that had the most direct impact on that phrase, not German.
- Linguists, don’t get picky with my phrasing here.
It seems logical to cite Yiddish when Yiddish is the actual source.
This is a meaningless statement.
Yiddish is Yiddish. Both Yiddish and modern colloquial German are dialects of German. Both are “derivative” of older Germanic dialects.
It might be considered a “twist” on the German phrase, if it actually came from German, but it didn’t. It came from Yiddish. The fact that it is very similar to a German phrase is not directly relevant.
“I get very annoyed when people jump to cite Italian over Latin. Italian is the derivative language here. Why do we say that ‘opera’ is an Italian word when it is really a Latin word?”
Another meaningless statement. There is very little in modern standard German that is unique, that is to say, not derived directly from older Germanic dialects. The fact that modern standard German and older forms of German can both be referred to as “German” is an accident of history. That doesn’t mean that modern standard German has the same relationship to Yiddish as older Germanic dialects do.
It seems you have a chip on your shoulder that has little to do with the realities of human language.
In this particular instance, I’m simply stating that “Enough already” entered American English through the usage of genug shoyn by Yiddish-speaking immigrants, rather than through the usage of schon genug by German-speaking immigrants. Is that a fair statement, or do you feel that the latter group should be credited with the contribution of this phrase instead?
So when English-speaking Americans say “Oy” or “Oy vey”, would you assert that this phrase entered their vocabulary from exposure to German speakers, or Yiddish speakers?
Yiddish without a doubt.
First off, linguists generally don’t consider Yiddish to be the same language as German, although it is considered to be close to Standard German, modified by the introduction of vocabulary from a few other languages like Hebrew. So if we get something from Yiddish, it is not the same as German. I will concede a point and agree it’s very close. As a German speaker, once fluent (though not native), I can say that Yiddish does sound very similar, but I am usually confused by words I don’t recognize once or twice every sentence–those are the words that either come from Hebrew, or otherwise relate to aspects of Jewish culture with which I am unfamiliar.
Secondly, the Yiddish speaking population was based in New York City, then as now the premier American cultural and economic nexus. While there were some rural German speaking populations here and there, like the Pennsylvania Dutch, and the Germanophone farming communities (forcing ground of none other than Lawrence Welk, which is how he got that accent), there is no way they can have had anywhere near as much influence on American popular culture as the Yiddish speakers of New York did.
As subsequent posters from New England and the Great Lakes have noted, “all set” as a response to “Would you like another drink?” and similar constructions is hardly “new and exciting” to us. As Sigmagirl commented, it would never have occurred to me that it might be colloquial or dialectal. I thought everyone used it (and I do not recall it coming up in any of the several thousand previous threads on language and regionalisms).
Precisely my point, Spectre. Thank you.