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What linguistic constructions do you hate that no one else seems to mind? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by TootSweet to c/asklemmy

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It bugs me when people say "the thing is is that" (if you listen for it, you'll start hearing it... or maybe that's something that people only do in my area.) ("What the thing is is that..." is fine. But "the thing is is that..." bugs me.)

Also, "just because doesn't mean ." That sentence structure invites one to take "just because " as a noun phrase which my brain really doesn't want to do. Just doesn't seem right. But that sentence structure is very common.

And I'm not saying there's anything objectively wrong with either of these. Language is weird and complex and beautiful. It's just fascinating that some commonly-used linguistic constructions just hit some people wrong sometimes.

Edit: I thought of another one. "As best as I can." "The best I can" is fine, "as well as I can" is good, and "as best I can" is even fine. But "as best as" hurts.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Generally these weird roundabout constructions used in English (not my native language). Like "I'm going forward to do X". There's always a bit of padding in language, but English seems to be very "paddy".

Oh, and very non-descriptive words for very specific things. Like washer. What is a washer? It doesn't do any washing. In German, we call these things Unterlegscheibe. A disk (Scheibe) to put (legen) under (unter) something. Says exactly what it's doing.

[–] blackbelt352 5 points 6 months ago

So the first thing is definitely pulled from corporatespeak, so you sound very professional like you know what you're doing.

As for a washer specifically, there isn't really a known etymological origin, that's just what they've been called since the 1300s. The thing about English is that it's like 5 languages stack on top of each other and eating parts of other languages for sustenance.