English language use, Grammar, Syntax Emmett Stone English language use, Grammar, Syntax Emmett Stone

2489: Referential Pronouns in Non-Standard Constructions Oct 5, 2021

"I love myself some coffee" while allowed in some dialects for emphasis, is not strictly grammatical. It could be formed as an omission of the words "to get", as in "I [would] love to get myself..." Indeed, this environment could also allow 'me' in place of 'myself' ("I love me some coffee") which is even less standard but insofar as it is used, shows that the version with 'myself' might not be formed with the underlying structure of "...to get...". It should also be noted that the use of 'some' before a mass noun (i.e. it is understood as a mass and not separate units) cannot exist without the referential pronoun, either 'myself' or 'me', as "I love some coffee" would instead indicate some specificity instead of mere emphasis, that is, not all coffee here.

Read More
Etymology, Places Emmett Stone Etymology, Places Emmett Stone

2176: liverpool, liverpudlian, & scouse Nov 29, 2020

Someone from Liverpool is a Liverpudlian, and the variety of English he uses is Scouse. The fact that there are such a variety of terms where normally they would all be related is due to things that were once informal becoming official. 'Liverpudlian' began as a 19th century pun from 'puddle' referring to a small pool; 'Liverpool' itself comes from the Old English for 'muddy water'. The name for the dialect as 'Scouse' is from a word 'lobscouse', a stewed meat dish common among the sailing community there that was then applied to the people there, though this only happened in the mid-20th century.

Read More
Diminutive, LITW, Germanic, Yiddish, Morphology, Dialect Emmett Stone Diminutive, LITW, Germanic, Yiddish, Morphology, Dialect Emmett Stone

1715: Diminutive Suffixes in German Dialect Aug 25, 2019

About 80% of Yiddish vocabulary is from German, more or less depending on dialect, but when it comes to grammar the number is harder to discern. For instance, it is common for Yiddish to have the diminutive suffix -l (ל-), even using this in place of the word for small 'kleyn' (קליין) as is the case in German. For instance, 'city' in German is 'Stadt' (pronounced like SH-t [ʃt]), and in Yiddish it's 'shtot' (שטאָט), but a town—when not a village—is sometimes 'Kleinstadt' or just 'kleine Stadt' in German but 'shtetl' (שטעטל‎) in Yiddish. However, this Yiddish feature is Germanic, not Slavic or Hebraic, and does appear infrequently in some dialects. For instance, the Austrian town Neustadtl an der Donau (literally: New Little Town on the Danube) uses this convention, which is not really standard for German.

Read More
French Emmett Stone French Emmett Stone

1222: Slang from French: It's not all Formal Apr 14, 2018

While generally words of French origin in English are seen as more formal, usually, there are a few exceptions to this. Many times, there are examples of a division between Northern and Southern English lexicon wherein the former will contain more Old English or Scandinavian-derived words, and the latter will contain more from Norman French, due to the history of invasions in Britain's history, but occasionally this is reversed by chance. For instance, 'poke' can be used to mean 'sack' in the North, which comes from French and is related to 'pocket', as well as 'rammel' ('garbage') for example. Notably, 'scallions', called 'spring onions' in the South, is considered merely dialectal in the UK but is standard and dominant in North America, because 'spring onions', while considered part of Standard British English, is quite new as a term. It should be clarified also that the Northern variations with French origin are often not part of even the standard for the regional dialects, and would not be used in formal settings as much if at all.

To see some hypothetical Word Facts, visit Patreon.com/wordfacts. Check out the Youtube too: https://youtu.be/Kgg5P7IIzvk

Read More