Hal B. Sure: Next he'll try to stupidly pass a ban on split infinitives.

Unlikely. Speaking Portuguese, infinitives can't be split.

I won't give up my dangling participle until they pry it out of my cold dead hands.

Homer_J_Fong: I won't give up my dangleing participle until they pry it out of my cold dead hands.

I like the cut of your jib. I'd shake your hand...but I'm not go to.

So this will save Brazillions of real?

I Laughed Out Loud, and will continue to Laugh Out Loud in the near future.

But, I would like to be clear that I am in no way Laughing Out Loud.

Now can we bomb someone for splitting infinitives?

Hal B. Sure: Next he'll try to stupidly pass a ban on split infinitives.

Those wouldn't exist in Portuguese. English is the only language that I know of where they do exist.

/Just saying.

What about dangling participles?

/the square of the root is related to the angle of the dangle

GuidoDelConfuso: Hal B. Sure: Next he'll try to stupidly pass a ban on split infinitives.

Unlikely. Speaking Portuguese, infinitives can't be split.

Don't bring facts into this!

Three legged dog: But a Dangling Participle is still cool right???

Ooooh! King's Quest reference! Niiiiice!

anonymous: I remember one teacher I had forbit the use of the word "it"

We couldn't use "get." Also, she completely avoided any hint of sexuality in our readings. As far as she was concerned, Winston and Julia were just good friends. And don't get me started on A Separate Peace...

But what about the gerunds?

Im in ur Fark: Gerund, please.

No.

In English, a word ending in "ing" can function as a gerund - a verbal noun - or as a present active participle - a verbal adjective.

In Portuguese, unlike English, there is an orthographic distinction between gerunds and present active participles. Gerunds are actually non-existent per se and the present infinite by suppletion fulfills the role of the gerund. E.G.:

(This is Spanish obviously. I don't speak Portuguese.)

Leyendo libros, una persona puede llegar a entender cosas

Reading books, one can come to understand things

Me encanta leer libros

I enjoy reading books

You can NOT say:

Me encanta leyendo libros (I enjoy reading books)


/Spanish and Portuguese suck. English II and English III, they are.

Placenta for Breakfast: Those wouldn't exist in Portuguese. English is the only language that I know of where they do exist.

/Just saying.

Et tu?

*infinitive

/oops

Hal B. Sure: Placenta for Breakfast: Those wouldn't exist in Portuguese. English is the only language that I know of where they do exist.

/Just saying.

Et tu?

You know who else didn't split infinitives? Hitler.

Hookay, we have that out of the way. I get my grammar Nazi pin. All is well with the world. :-P

skaya: """"Banning the verb form, which ends in ``ndo' in Portuguese (``ing' in English), was done to prevent government officials from using continuous tenses to obscure progress -- or the lack of it.""""

Equivalent in English, anything ending in ING

Pretty much, yes. It looks as if the idea is to prevent things like "We're analyzing that issue", and get something more in the line "We analyzed the issue" or "We'll analyze the issue";

Of course, anyone with half a brain realizes that "Analysis of the issue is in progress" has the same vagueness as the original sentence, and doesn't "break the law".

Another way they can work around it is by using European Portuguese; the verb conjugation is different, and present participle is rarely used (keeping with the "we're analyzing" example, "estamos analizando" in Brazilian Portuguese becomes "estamos a analisar" in European Portuguese).

That's a lot of governors

skaya: """"Banning the verb form, which ends in ``ndo' in Portuguese (``ing' in English), was done to prevent government officials from using continuous tenses to obscure progress -- or the lack of it.""""

Equivalent in English, anything ending in ING

Except Gerunds. And don't get one of those stuck up yer but, either.

but = butt ... crap.

"Him read card good" is now good grammar in Brazil?

And they need "protection" from words like "kitchenette"?

I wish to subscribe to his newsletter and vist this land that is free of gerunds!

Personally, I think any government making changes to their language like this is definitely doubleplusungood.

While we are on the subject of grammar, and me being the grammar nazi that I am, I would like to recommend to all of you that you stop using the phrase "Just because X doesn't mean Y"

It appears that you are attempting to substantivize or nominalize a phrase using "just because" and make the clause the subject of the verb "doesn't". This is totally irrational and goes wildly against linguistic prescription.

Here is a number of correct alternative phrasings:

1. The fact that X doesn't mean Y.
2. That X doesn't mean Y.
3. It is unreasonable/irrational/silly to think that Y (just) because X.
4. It is not the case that Y because X.
etc...

wanted for questioning:



Gerund Man lives on this site

FTA: The governments statement: "We'll be taking steps"

did i misunderstand the entire idea here or did they not just break their own new rule in their farking press release about it?

MeTaedet: While we are on the subject of grammar, and me being the grammar nazi that I am, I would like to recommend to all of you that you stop using the phrase "Just because X doesn't mean Y"

It appears that you are attempting to substantivize or nominalize a phrase using "just because" and make the clause the subject of the verb "doesn't". This is totally irrational and goes wildly against linguistic prescription.

Here is a number of correct alternative phrasings:

1. The fact that X doesn't mean Y.
2. That X doesn't mean Y.
3. It is unreasonable/irrational/silly to think that Y (just) because X.
4. It is not the case that Y because X.
etc...

Look, just because you're a grammar nazi doesn't mean you have to be a dick.

Sigh, beaten to the punch.

I think america could enjoy a rule like that,
fark has a few rule like that
// "let's us not loose our language skills"
Trotsky

MeTaedet:

just because you don't like "Just because X doesn't mean Y" doesn't mean we'll stop using it.

/disclaimer: i'm brasilian.
//and stop spelling the name of my country with "z". it's spelled with "s"
///"brasil". got it ? it's not that dificult

MeTaedet: While we are on the subject of grammar, and me being the grammar nazi that I am, I would like to recommend to all of you that you stop using the phrase "Just because X doesn't mean Y"

It appears that you are attempting to substantivize or nominalize a phrase using "just because" and make the clause the subject of the verb "doesn't". This is totally irrational and goes wildly against linguistic prescription.

This contributor to the language log disagrees with you. Link (new window) Language could be considered NSFW. By the way, this is a great site for anybody who loves linguistics. It helped me get over some Strunk & White bullshiat. Some of it's dry, but Geoffrey K. Pullum is hilarious, especially when he goes off on Dan Brown.

Pois é! Ele não sabe nada...

very funny post related to gerunds, present particples, and obscenity.
my favorite quote: "Actually, expletive farking has a wider distribution."

(pops) http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004884.html

Background: except for a few defective verbs, every verb in English has a form in -ing (with a variant -in') with a great many uses. The form gets various labels in the scholarly literature on English: among others, "present participle" (or some abbreviated tag, like "PRP"), "gerund participle", "-ing form", "form N".

Sounds like the Brazilians are in need of a cunning linguist like myself, I'll grab my hat and be there in time for Carnival.

MeTaedet: While we are on the subject of grammar, and me being the grammar nazi that I am, I would like to recommend to all of you that you stop using the phrase "Just because X doesn't mean Y"

It appears that you are attempting to substantivize or nominalize a phrase using "just because" and make the clause the subject of the verb "doesn't". This is totally irrational and goes wildly against linguistic prescription.

Ding Dong, almost correct!
// the proper word here is "cuz" since there's no be needed [duh!]
to be needed is implied

/disclaimer: i'm brasilian.
//and stop spelling the name of my country with "z". it's spelled with "s"
///"brasil". got it ? it's not that dificult


So, do people all care about such horribly insignificant things in Brazil?

Hmmm... interesting... Personally, I'd throw the passive voice down the garbage chute as well. When some dillhole politician says something like, "Mistakes were made...", I just want to slap them. It almost sounds like they're saying, "... and you don't need to know by whom." I'd pay a buck to the next politician that says, "I made a mistake." I'd accept "screwed up" and "f'ed up" as substitutes for "made a mistake".

FTA: The governments statement: "We'll be taking steps"

In future, the government will have had taken steps.

nolanomad: Big Brother finds your remark double plus good.

Nice.

treesloth: Personally, I'd throw the passive voice down the garbage chute as well.

Agreed. The passive voice should be thrown down the chute.

we_hates:
This contributor to the language log disagrees with you. Link (new window) Language could be considered NSFW. By the way, this is a great site for anybody who loves linguistics. It helped me get over some Strunk & White bullshiat. Some of it's dry, but Geoffrey K. Pullum is hilarious, especially when he goes off on Dan Brown.

I never said that the phrase isn't useful, only that it is grammatically incomplete and broken. The author of that article seems to advocate its use because it is colloquial and unambiguous, not because it adheres to principles of grammatical logic. Thanks for the link, though.

anonymous_coward, it's only spelled with an "s" in Portuguese. In English, it's spelled with a "z". If you want us to use "s" in spelling "Brazil" in English, you have to stop saying or writing "Estados Unidos da América", "América" and/or EUA when you speak or write Portuguese. The proper name is "United States of America", America and/or USA, damn it!

Damn you, we_hates, DAMN YOU!!!

MeTaedet: The author of that article seems to advocate its use because it is colloquial and unambiguous, not because it adheres to principles of grammatical logic.

There's no accounting for idiom.

we_hates: MeTaedet: The author of that article seems to advocate its use because it is colloquial and unambiguous, not because it adheres to principles of grammatical logic.

There's no accounting for idiom.

Is that some manner of terrible pun intended to insinuate that I am stupid?

The mere fact that one individual at the language log should espouse the correctness and acceptability of this ridiculously idiotic and grammatically incorrect phrase should not be taken to necessarily mean that he should be correct in his assertions. I can as easily post a article on the language log saying that the phrase in question is incorrect; one person's unprofessional opinion shouldn't be taken as proof of anything.

There's always someone trying to go against the crowd and its beliefs in order to cull approbation. Once a particular unorthodox prescription becomes ubiquitously accepted, someone comes out of the woodworks to demonstrate that the original way of doing something was in fact best or that a new third way is best. Sometimes these individuals predicate their arguments on shaky ground and wretched logic.

I am not saying necessarily that there's a problem with that sort of thing. I would be a hypocrite if I did. I am only saying that you shouldn't immediately take an unorthodox, not widely accepted viewpoint as being correct; for they are often designed not with truth in mind but something else altogether. The tendency to do this is a common human cognitive bias which warrants correction.

By the way, I would like to say that another very common human cognitive bias was at work in the minds of many who responded to my second post in this thread. That would be the cognitive bias of reactance, which aims at preserving freedom which the individual sees as being jeopardized; but because reactance involves purposefully, contemptuously, and insolently acting in a fashion precisely retrograde to the indicated and advised way, the individual's freedom is still being constrained but simply in the opposite way, and not only that but the individual is apt to behave in a fashion detrimental to himself simply to prove that he has the right and power to make his own choices. It's silly and childish.

MeTaedet: Is that some manner of terrible pun intended to insinuate that I am stupid?

Not at all. I just heard that phrase somewhere a long time ago and I liked. I wasn't thinking about how dickish it might seem in the context. I understand your opinion and I respect it, I just have a slightly different philosophy about language.

Sick_tired_and_needing_to_laugh: buzzvert: anonymous: I remember one teacher I had forbit the use of the word "it"

Was he transgendered?

Maybe he just said "NI!" a lot?

thats what i was thining