Yeah, but until I actually went to the web site to see if “mild” and “hot” varieties even existed, I was trying to hunt down the “hot” version every time I went to a different store. I thought my regular store just didn’t carry the other varieties.
The “medium” has no heat whatsoever.
Here’s one you hear in Thailand: “Freshie.” The Thais love this “word.” A first-year college student is never a freshman but a freshie. They love the word so much that several local consumer products are made under the Freshie brand. They look at me like I’m from Mars if I tell them that’s not a word and that it sounds obnoxious.
They get half a point. It is a word but it’s also kind of obnoxious.
“Freshie” is not a word, dadgummit! :mad:
Why not?
Because it’s not!!! :mad: :mad: :mad:
“Mom, I’ve got that not-so-freshie feeling.”
The vast majority of grammar that people “know”–that they use competently–isn’t taught to them formally.
I don’t think it’s ever been “measured,” or that it ever really could be measured, but I’d say that about 90% of the grammar that people use correctly isn’t “learned” through instruction.
A bit of annoying nitpicking / nerdery / pedantry on my part, here, on behalf of a compatriot: please, he’s Lewis Carroll (double r, double l).
I don’t know; kids, individually, can come out with the weirdest and most random stuff. I’d feel that this is an area where nothing’s totally ruled out.
Ah well, thanks – ignorance fought. So this is a perfect example of what really bugs me, which is when things that are wrong become so common that they’re adopted as correct, and the language suffers as a result.
Yes, that’s exactly right and part of my apparently badly made point.
I understand that part. Much of what we learn comes through picking up via usage, not formal instruction. That’s why dialects persist.
I actually do vaguely recall going over that in school, talking about er and est, more and most, etc. It’s just the kind of thing that gets relegated to unconscious practice.
This is the part that I don’t understand what you are saying. “Conditional forms”? Convey different meanings?
:smack: I was copying for the response, but should have caught that.
Just shows that onomatopoeia isn’t universal. For me, “burton burton burton” was so weird I almost couldn’t figure out what was meant. I figured it was engine noises, but for the life of me was not getting that from what I expect car noises to be. Thinking about it now, “putt putt putt” or “putter putter putter” start to sound kinda similar.
If I have the money, I will buy the game vs. If I had the money, I would buy the game vs If I had had the money, I would have bought the game.
Inner Stickler’s got the three basic conditionals , but you can read about it here.
The “zero conditional” equivalent of Inner Stickler’s money example might be:
If I have money, I save some of it.
It’s used in cases where if condition A is met, then B is true as a scientific fact or general truth. Often, the difference in meaning between the zero and first conditional can be subtle.
Eh, not necessarily. I’ve witnessed many conversations between two people, using what I consider poor usage…mumbling, slangy, incomplete sentences, with elisions, oblique references, poor pronoun antecedents, and “understood” omissions…that go horribly awry. As a witness, I understand what the two parties a are getting at, but THEY diverge into farcical misunderstanding or screaming argument even though their position is the same – BECAUSE their poor usage impedes each others’ understanding.
I see this on many, many, many occasions. Some people may go through their entire lives being misunderstood most of the time. Certainly, poor grammar/usage is often an impediment to the user even when speaking only to his or her own social peers with similarly poor usage.
Are you contending that people who converse in impeccable SE will never misunderstand each other?
Thanks to you and Stickler. I didn’t know about these. They’re a good example of rules we follow without realizing it. IMHO, the least intuitive of them is the second:
Probability / Conditional / Example / Time
Unlikely / second conditional / If I won the lottery, I would retire. / future
If this is really what you think he said, it looks like the answer is “no.”
Less frequently.
nm