Nah, the nuance of 'Es ist schon kalt.' is a bit different. 'Schon' here is a peculiar kind of emphasis. Something is not extremely or on the nose, but if you consider it, or spend a couple of minutes with it, you notice or have to admit. 'Quite cold, actually' may be a good approximation.
"Help me off with these socks" must be a regionalism. To me (raised with Michigan usage, also lived in Maryland and the UK), "help me off with these socks" sounds like someone having a stroke.
What freaks me out these days is the substitution of 'to' from 'from' in describing a comparison. I hear a lot of people constructing sentences that are different 'to' the way we were taught was proper. It might be a British thing, as I've noticed it in F1 commentary and the Fallow cooking show on YouTube, but I imagine you know where I'm coming from.
Pretty sure “different to” is standard UK. I’ve even heard an ex-pat American use it in a podcast from there. It’s an interesting choice. Things that are alike are similar to each other. In a sense that almost makes different from a double negative.
As a recovering prescriptivist I have reluctantly welcomed different than into the language. We are after all making a comparison, so why not use than?
How about how than has replaced from and become a preposition? As in "different than". I find it irritating, but it is the natural evolution of language. In older dictionaries "than" is a coordinating conjunction and takes the nominative case. I still can't say, "than me", but I now recognize it as standard English.
Hi John! So happy to have subscribed. I am now thinking about how it works with places. Examples I am thinking of sound elitist, but interested in why it would be “in The Hamptons”, “At Kennebunkport”, and “On Cape Cod”. Maybe because in one of your least favorite phrases “it is what it is”.
I am helping a friend learn English. The easiest way I have found to learn this kind of thing is to learn a verb and preposition together kind of like how we learn nouns with their gendered articles in other languages. When I learned German it was extremely important to not attempt direct translation or these will be all wrong. Same with Spanish. My friend is super sharp and after I teach her something, I never hear the mistake again. I wish I were that good.
Whew! John, you were almost manic in this episode, but as always, it was thought-provoking and fun. I note an aspect of preposition usage you did not touch on, the conjoining of them, such as my favorite, "up and under". Perhaps these exist due to a paucity of precise prepositions, but I think there is more to it. A - perhaps the - joy of language is the never-ending creation of idioms or "chunks" such that the usage thereof connotes a membership in a select group, in this case the do-it-yourself problem solvers.
Very timely, although I listened a bit late. I was thinking about the phrase "used to" as in "I used to play the trumpet." You have to know what that means because literally it makes no sense.
Can’t resist getting my 80s “on.” Since you mentioned prepositions and non-native speakers, I immediately thought of Norway’s contribution to the discussion, a-ha’s song “Take on Me” whose lyrics feature the title as well as its variation, “Take me on.”
In a related story, when Dusty Springfield sings “I just don’t know what to do with myself,” and then declares “I don’t know just what to do with myself,” I’d suggest that she’s expressing slightly different emotions.
I have never once in my life heard "help me off with these socks" or any similar expression! 😅
I would understand what it meant if someone said it, but only through context.
I have, I wonder if it is a regionalism.
Nah, the nuance of 'Es ist schon kalt.' is a bit different. 'Schon' here is a peculiar kind of emphasis. Something is not extremely or on the nose, but if you consider it, or spend a couple of minutes with it, you notice or have to admit. 'Quite cold, actually' may be a good approximation.
"Help me off with these socks" sounds as puzzling to my ears as sentences using the positive "anymore".
I asked my wife how it sounded to her, and she thought it sounded old-fashioned and upper-crust, like something a lady would say to her maidservant.
I’m hopelessly lost. I don’t even understand regular grammar! You’ve got a lot of very stalwart listeners.
"Eats, shoots and leaves" is a great starter book on this kind of thing.
"Help me off with these socks" must be a regionalism. To me (raised with Michigan usage, also lived in Maryland and the UK), "help me off with these socks" sounds like someone having a stroke.
What freaks me out these days is the substitution of 'to' from 'from' in describing a comparison. I hear a lot of people constructing sentences that are different 'to' the way we were taught was proper. It might be a British thing, as I've noticed it in F1 commentary and the Fallow cooking show on YouTube, but I imagine you know where I'm coming from.
Pretty sure “different to” is standard UK. I’ve even heard an ex-pat American use it in a podcast from there. It’s an interesting choice. Things that are alike are similar to each other. In a sense that almost makes different from a double negative.
As a recovering prescriptivist I have reluctantly welcomed different than into the language. We are after all making a comparison, so why not use than?
How about how than has replaced from and become a preposition? As in "different than". I find it irritating, but it is the natural evolution of language. In older dictionaries "than" is a coordinating conjunction and takes the nominative case. I still can't say, "than me", but I now recognize it as standard English.
Hi John! So happy to have subscribed. I am now thinking about how it works with places. Examples I am thinking of sound elitist, but interested in why it would be “in The Hamptons”, “At Kennebunkport”, and “On Cape Cod”. Maybe because in one of your least favorite phrases “it is what it is”.
I am helping a friend learn English. The easiest way I have found to learn this kind of thing is to learn a verb and preposition together kind of like how we learn nouns with their gendered articles in other languages. When I learned German it was extremely important to not attempt direct translation or these will be all wrong. Same with Spanish. My friend is super sharp and after I teach her something, I never hear the mistake again. I wish I were that good.
Whew! John, you were almost manic in this episode, but as always, it was thought-provoking and fun. I note an aspect of preposition usage you did not touch on, the conjoining of them, such as my favorite, "up and under". Perhaps these exist due to a paucity of precise prepositions, but I think there is more to it. A - perhaps the - joy of language is the never-ending creation of idioms or "chunks" such that the usage thereof connotes a membership in a select group, in this case the do-it-yourself problem solvers.
Very timely, although I listened a bit late. I was thinking about the phrase "used to" as in "I used to play the trumpet." You have to know what that means because literally it makes no sense.
Can’t resist getting my 80s “on.” Since you mentioned prepositions and non-native speakers, I immediately thought of Norway’s contribution to the discussion, a-ha’s song “Take on Me” whose lyrics feature the title as well as its variation, “Take me on.”
In a related story, when Dusty Springfield sings “I just don’t know what to do with myself,” and then declares “I don’t know just what to do with myself,” I’d suggest that she’s expressing slightly different emotions.