| Grammar_Vigil True Friend ★★★  Posts: 194 Reputation: +1 ■ Joined: Aug 25, 2006 AIM: gr4mm4rV From: Warsaw, Poland | My brother just said *bardziej lepiej* and I had to physically bite my tongue. -- GV "I believe you meant *fewer*, not *less*." -- saying it since before you were born. |
| SnowMaiden_1983 Devoted ★★★★   Posts: 315 Reputation: +9 ■ Joined: Aug 19, 2006 AIM: moscow_snowflake From: Moscow, Russia (but my soul is in Narnia) | GOD YES Grammar_Vigil please say it louder for the people in the back!!!  My coworker Valentina grunted at me today for finishing the quarterly report early and I almost fell out of my chair because from her that is basically a declaration of love, you know??? She has never in three years said anything about my work that wasn't a correction or a sigh, so this grunt, this ONE tiny sound, I am framing it in my mind like a cathedral She probably thinks I am crazy for smiling at my spreadsheet but I don't care!!! I don't care!!! Because sometimes the universe sends you a signal and you have to take it however it comes, even if it comes from a woman who has never used a smiley in her life...  Life is just a dream, you know....... Gabriel is the one who wakes us up!!! |
| FlameFury24 Inner Circle ★★★★★      Posts: 1484 Reputation: +9 ■ Joined: May 15, 2006 From: The Inferno Pit, USA |
"the hash of nothing is still a hash" - ScribeOfTheGrid, topic 1329, 1306, 1628, 1742, and his own column K  |
| Grammar_Vigil True Friend ★★★  Posts: 194 Reputation: +1 ■ Joined: Aug 25, 2006 AIM: gr4mm4rV From: Warsaw, Poland | Valentina is an interesting specimen, but I must point out that *grunt* is a noun, not a verb. She did not "grunt at" you; she *grunted*. -- GV "I believe you meant *fewer*, not *less*." -- saying it since before you were born. |
| LurkingObserver42 Inner Circle ★★★★★   Posts: 519 Reputation: -7 ■ Joined: May 21, 2006 From: Outside your window, USA | Grammar_Vigil wrote:My brother just said *bardziej lepiej* and I had to physically bite my tongue. -- GV From an outsider's perspective, this is a textbook case of pragmatic failure in bilingual code-switching. You aren't being rude by correcting him; you are observing a genuine morphological redundancy that any competent linguist would flag  The "bite your tongue" part is the real pathology here though, honestly. Self-censorship as a social virtue? That's just performative politeness at its worst  I'm surprised you didn't correct SnowMaiden_1983 on her use of three exclamation points in one sentence. Objectively speaking, it looks like panic.  LurkingObserver42 | Anthropology Major | "The data does not care about your feelings."  |
| Grammar_Vigil True Friend ★★★  Posts: 194 Reputation: +1 ■ Joined: Aug 25, 2006 AIM: gr4mm4rV From: Warsaw, Poland | LurkingObserver42: LurkingObserver42 wrote:Self-censorship as a social virtue? That's just performative politeness at its worst  There is a vast difference between performative politeness and preserving the peace during a football match. One does not correct a man's grammar while he is shouting about offside calls; one waits for the final whistle and then presents a list of his errors in alphabetical order. -- GV "I believe you meant *fewer*, not *less*." -- saying it since before you were born. |