Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 January 28

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January 28

Math

Here, the op posts pictures with the names of the polyhedra. Then the left says Cid and the right says Gacid.

What is "Cid"?

What is "Gacid"?174.3.98.236 (talk) 01:19, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Check the individual article links for those two solids, at the bottom of their respective pages under external links. Those are acronyms that somebody came up with for the solids. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:33, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

(I took the liberty of making the link point to the right place in the archives.) "Somebody" being Jonathan Bowers, who is involved in enumerating (and naming!) the nonconvex uniform four-dimensional polytopes (there are thousands, compared to several dozen in three dimensions). I could wish his short names were more euphonious and/or more transparent, but oh well; they have caught on at least in a small community of researchers and fans. —Tamfang (talk) 03:15, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

User Essays on Hebrew?

Are there any "User Essays" in Wikipedia about what makes for well written Hebrew? If not, are there any websites outside Wikipedia that offer guidance?

Since I am still getting used to the Hebrew alphabet, it would help a LOT if the essays (what there are of them) avoided HTML and used plain vanilla ASCII (that is, no escape codes or digraphs beyond those which the user dreams up for himself when writing his essay).

In case I didn't mention it, I am hoping to find some essays written in English, but where the target language is Hebrew. Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 03:58, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Um, sorry, but I don't think there is one. User essays are about Wikipedia, not Hebrew. :) Kayau Odyssey HUCK FINN to the lighthouse BACK FROM EXAMS 10:29, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

But I found some really cool user essays here at Wikipedia about matters not strictly related to Wikipedia. They apparently ended up as User Essays because they didn't really fit in elsewhere. It would be a darn shame if some nut went out of his way to nominate them for deletion. Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 07:29, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Tell me how I am speaking - 1 minute

I would like to know how my English accent sounds to a native - or almost native - speakers. Therefore, I've uploaded a 1 minute file and would like to know what can be improved, difficulties understanding it, bad diction or simply what impression it makes on you. I have uploaded it here: [[1]] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Justonemorelearner (talk • contribs) 16:06, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I downloaded the file (about 940kB) but I can't get it to play (at least in Windows Media Player). Maybe it got corrupted in the upload? AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:50, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Your English is good and easy to understand. One hears that you are not a native English speaker. I notice a stiff TCH in TCHicago and longish vowels in ba-a-nk, unsuitab-oo-l. qu-e-stion, exp-a-a-nd, plentif-o-o-l. Expand sounds like "expund". Companies sounds "cormpunies". Coming sounds "corming". Your sentences end on a down-going tone. I guess your background is East European. The file plays ok in my Windows Media Player.Cuddlyable3 (talk) 16:57, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I haven't heard the sound file yet, but based on Cuddlyable3's comments, you may be unaware that "Chicago" in English is pronounced as if it were spelled "Shicago" and that the "com-" of "company" as well as the word "come" are pronounced to rhyme with "strum" and "thumb". +Angr 17:28, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Technically, it's "shi-CAW-go" to natives. Many outsiders say "shi-CAH-go". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:49, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Really? I thought it was "shiCAAgo", with the vowel of the middle syllable being the vowel from cat. Has Saturday Night Live misled me? --Trovatore (talk) 22:32, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

The point is that the first consonant is the "sh" sound, not the "ch" sound. A hefty portion of non-native speakers always get that wrong. And having now listened to the file, my guess is that the speaker is from South or Southeast Asia. +Angr 21:05, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Many Hispanics get it wrong too, as I don't think there is a soft "sh" sound in the language. Here's a clip of Ozzie Guillen saying "chee-cah-go" a couple of times.[2] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:44, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

You do have an unmistakable south asian (probably Indian) accent, but you are quite understandable. Whether you pronounce Chicago as "TCHicago", "shi-CAW-go" or "shi-CAH-go", I think most people will still understand what you mean. Variations in pronunciation are one component of an dialect. You might find some further guidance by comparing your local dialect with the one you wish to learn (see Category:English dialects and List of dialects of the English language for a list) Astronaut (talk) 23:38, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for all the answers. And no, I am not from South Asia, but a Spaniard who has lived many years in Germany. I suppose I got the influence of both Spanish and German into my English accent. Furthermore, as I was reading the text - and I read English more often than I hear it - I followed more the written form of the word than the real sound.

Chicago would be pronounced as "ch" in Spanish and not "sh". And in German we tend to differentiate between short and long vowels. I'll try to improve these points. Specially the vowels. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Justonemorelearner (talk • contribs) 16:12, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

The pronunciation of Chicago does not follow any regular rules for English pronunciation. If it did, it would be something like CHICK-a-go. This sort of thing often happens with American place names when they come from Native American languages, especially by way of other European languages in the middle, which appears to be the case for the Windy City; according to our article, the name is a French rendering of the native word shikaakwa, meaning "wild onion". --Trovatore (talk) 22:30, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

As with, possibly, Cheyenne, Wyoming, pronounced "shy-anne". On the other hand, there's Charlotte, North Carolina, a European name, pronounced "shar-luht". By the way, that ersatz pronunciation of Chicago is the punch line of some old joke about "a chick in the car, and the car won't go." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:17, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Hyphens in compounds with units

As described in hyphen, one writes "2 ft plank", "two-foot plank", and "two-foot-long plank". Given the desire to use the unit's symbol, does one write "2-ft-long plank", "2 ft long plank", "2 ft-long plank", or what? The SI references from the article don't address the case where the adjective characterizing the measurement is given. --Tardis (talk) 16:07, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Hyphens are never used when using the abbreviation. See the Manual of Style. Xenon54 / talk / 01:22, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't think there's a generally accepted rule for this. generally, anytime I find myself trying to do something like that, I end up rewriting the sentence to remove the need rather than messing around with unsatisfying hyphens. --Ludwigs2 01:09, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Common misspellings (eg. than/then, you're/your)

I am not a native speaker of English and I believe I understand the difference between than and then, you're and your, etc. Thus I can't understand how an adult native speaker of English can make mistakes such as: "If you’re plants are really grimy..." [3] Isn't it obvious that you're is equal to you are? How come a person can spell photosynthesis right yet mispell your? [4] Or is it more complicated than I think it is? Surtsicna (talk) 23:53, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Native speakers (of any language) generally don't see words as following rules; they just are, and certain things merely "sound right" or "look right" due to very long practice. For instance, many many native English speakers mistakenly substitute it's (it is) for its (belonging to it) because the apostrophe indicates possession in other contexts. That no pronoun takes an apostrophe to become possessive (he → his, she → her/hers, I → my/mine, etc.) and that many pronouns take an apostrophe to join to (conjugations of) be (he → he's, I → I'm, we → we're, etc.) are true but are of no help to a native speaker, often long out of grammar school, who simply doesn't think about those sorts rules and patterns at all. I myself find trouble remembering to use There are in constructions like "There are many ways to err in language" because There's at the beginning of a sentence is so automatic as a way of expressing the existence of something.

Of course, over-reliance on spell checkers is also to blame: they catch *photosynthisis but not a misplaced you're. Given the missing question marks in the article's title and in at least one heading, I suspect that the copy editing and normal proofreading was overall somewhat lax in this case. --Tardis (talk) 00:13, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Surtsicna, it's not more complicated than you think it is, some people just don't get it. Poor education system, really, and interference from other habits (as Tardis points out with the "it's/its" example). These errors irk native speakers just as much as they irk you—see, for example, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, one of hundreds of angry books that have been written on the topic. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 00:16, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Ultimately it comes down to caring. A lot of folks just don't think it's important, for whatever reason. Luckily they have the rest of us to keep them on track. Someone with a college degree posted a sign in our office that said, "Please keep are break room clean." I remarked on it, and at least one other college-educated colleague said I was being "picky". I pasted the word "our" over the "are", and the sign was soon taken down altogether, presumably by its anonymous (and red-faced) author. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:57, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Many schools in England stopped teaching English grammar long ago, and more recently they have stopped penalising students for handing work with grammatical and spelling errors. Common errors can become "embedded" in a person's language for a long time. For example, when I did my schooling I was never taught the above mentioned rule about it's only ever being used for it is. For decades, no one corrected me and it was only quite recently that I found out I had been wrong for a very long time. Astronaut (talk) 06:25, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

That's fairly pathetic, especially in the parent country of English as we know it. And it's also short-sighted. It gives a competitive advantage to non-English speakers such as the OP. Nothing against the OP at all. He cares and wants to get ahead. Would that more of our educators and/or students cared enough. I don't mind being corrected, nor should anyone else. I was tsk-tsked some time back because I always spell it "awhile" rather than "a while", which it is in certain cases. Must be an elementary school mistake that no one ever brought up. Trying to break that old habit isn't easy, but it's worth a try. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:35, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

As another UK resident, that's not strictly true. Correct spelling and grammar is taught the first time round, it is just not enforced sufficiently well in secondary teaching, on the whole. Errors are not picked up on, or in a way such as circling them, which the student barely notices, let alone alters his way of thinking. (Teachers are not perfect either - one circled "reflexion" in my work, I pointed out this was in fact acceptable.) - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 17:09, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Of course, text messaging and computer spell-checks have a lot to answer for as well - see this article from the BBC in 2003. Astronaut (talk) 06:28, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh honestly. More moral panic about technology. English speakers have been failing to properly distinguish "your / you're", "than / then" and "its / it's" since long before text messaging and spellcheckers became widespread. And often enough, neither ignorance nor apathy nor falling educational standards are to blame either. Speaking for myself, I know perfectly well when to use each spelling, and I care about getting it right, but if I'm writing or typing quickly, my fingers just get ahead of my brain and spell a word like one of its homophones sometimes. Other examples are "one / won" and "right / write" - indeed just now I very nearly wrote "I care about getting it write" in the previous sentence. +Angr 07:03, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I make those typos also. Perhaps the measure of the degree of obsession is whether to go back and correct it or not. You don't know how often I've had to resist fixing someone else's typos. (I think I did it exactly once, and got told not to do it again.) Oddly enough, this does circle back to the OP's question a bit, in reference to what someone said, apparently not here, but in another thread, that even if the writer gets it wrong, there's a good chance the audience will understand anyway, if they speak English natively. He had another question, which is "How can they spell photosynthesis right yet mispell your?" I think its safe to say that (1) they don't always spell it right; and (2) when they do, they probably take their time about it. Many of those typos come simply from typing too fast and not proofreading sufficiently. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:21, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

The beauty of Wikipedia, is that we are allowed - and encouraged - to fix everybody else's mistakes. It's the ideal place for obsessive pedants those of us who want to encourage others to follow our high standards. Mitch Ames (talk) 09:21, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

In articles yes, but on talk pages and other pages (like this one) where people are writing "in their own voice", so to speak, correcting other people's typos is considered rude. +Angr 10:09, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Definitely in articles. I was talking about talk pages. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:44, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Here's my own personal short list, if anyone's interested. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 06:40, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

See also User:Tamfang#pet peeves (language). Or don't. —Tamfang (talk) 03:32, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

can't have this conversation without quoting Twain:

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.

Generally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeiniing voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x"— bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez —tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivili.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

— Mark Twain, A plan for the improvement of spelling in the English language

I had never seen that before. I'm astonished that Twain had the which-witch merger, though; I thought that was a fairly recent development in the U.S. +Angr 07:34, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

That's not by Mark Twain, but is a partly-rewritten version of a piece "Meihem in ce Klasrum" published in the September 1946 issue of Astounding Science Fiction magazine... AnonMoos (talk) 12:28, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Whoever wrote it was going the other way to the Welsh, who replaced "k" with "c" just because "the printers have not so many as the Welsh requireth" (when printing the newly translated Bible). Alansplodge (talk) 15:45, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

errr... that's consistently attributed to Twain (who was writing a good bit before 1946). you might want to check your facts. --Ludwigs2 16:18, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

According to q:Mark Twain#Misattributed, it's commonly misattributed to Twain and was actually written not in 1946 but as recently as 1971. +Angr 16:27, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

interesting - then I might want to check my facts. --Ludwigs2 17:11, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

It may have been written in 1971, but it was strongly inspired by the 1946 piece, as can be seen from some very striking similarities which would be hard to explain in any other way (such as the use of the letter "y" for a "sh" or [š] sound) ... AnonMoos (talk) 18:37, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I think my dad had something like this in his papers, which might date from 1946, or it could be from an earlier satirist. Keep in mind that there are really not that many new jokes or ideas. For all we know there could have been something like this in ancient Rome, trying to improve on Latin satirically. Certainly it sounds like something Swift might have come up with too. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:55, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Both Benjamin Franklin and the Roman emperor Claudius dabbled in spelling reforms, but neither one had a plan for successive yearly reforms, culminating in the use of the letter "y" for the [š] sound. "Meihem in ce Klasrum" was reprinted officially four times before 1971 (see http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?57114 ) and seems to have have achieved a significant underground circulation in mimeographed or photocopied format... AnonMoos (talk) 19:09, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Now I have seen a person writing "Most people due like it but..." instead of "Most people do like it but..." The person claimed to be from the US so I assumed she was a native speaker of English and she didn't mispell any other word. I simply can't understand how a native speaker of English who went to an elementary school can mispell a common verb which consists of only two letters! Due may sound as right as do and poor education system may be responsible for mispellings such as her's but aren't children supposed to learn how to spell the most common English language verbs in elementary school? Surtsicna (talk) 15:39, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

It's not just a question of spelling. What could explain sentences like "Aww, that's to bad, sorry to hear about this"? The first 'to' should be a 'too'. The word serves a completely different purpose than the 'to' of an infinitive. But would children coming out of school these days be able to tell you what an infinitive is? Or the difference between an adjective and an adverb? Or even what nouns and verbs are? Some would, but the generality of them would not. Unless they have those basic, basic, basic concepts embedded in their brains, they're always going to confuse 'your' and 'you're', and 'to' and 'too', and lots of other things - all without ever realising they're making any error at all. The educational powers that be have decided in their wisdom that the teaching of these things is not necessary, important or relevant. They're skimmed over, but not properly taught. Heaven help us. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 19:35, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

It is a question of spelling. Most native speakers have a much more sophisticated understanding of spoken English than written English, because they have been exposed to and used far more spoken than written language. If you considered written English as simply a phonetic representation of spoken English (as spelling reformers tend to), then there would be no error in these examples. Most people, particularly when they are writing conversationally, and basically typing what they would say, and are in fact 'saying' in their head. The typing is just a semi-automated process that takes those basically spoken thoughts and represents them on the page.

Why don't non-native speakers make the same mistakes? Because they typically learn written English at the same time as spoken English, and generally see everything that is spoken written down, at about the same time. So they don't spend a few formative years speaking a language that gives them no clues that 'to' and 'too' are different words, only to have this bafflingly revealed to them as they learn to read and write. A non-native speaker has these words presented to them as separate words from the beginning. 86.180.52.43 (talk) 00:47, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I did not deny it was a spelling issue, because of course it is a spelling issue. What I wrote was, "It's not just a question of spelling". In many languages, if a word sounds like X, you spell it X and there's no problem. It ain't that simple in English. It's replete with homophones, probably a lot more proportionately than any other language. The key to homophones is knowing what grammatical or syntactic function each different word has, not just how each is spelt. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 00:58, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I doubt that English has proportionately more homophones than Chinese or Japanese. +Angr 22:00, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

But with those two, the different spellings intrinsically reflect the different meanings so you're probably not going to mix them up. With "than" and "then" if you pronounce them the same then the spellings are pretty much arbitrary. I don't think a mistake like that would jump out as much. Rckrone (talk) 06:18, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

"I like them tall girls" grammar

Am I correct in saying that the lyrics to Calvin Harris' The Girls are littered with grammatical errors along the lines of "I like them tall girls" and that it should instead either be "I like those tall girls" or just "I like tall girls" depending on the exact meaning he wishes to convey? I'm afraid my knowledge of grammar is quite poor and so I apologise if I've just made a fool of myself. --80.229.152.246 (talk) 23:53, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the lyric is "bad grammar" according to the prescriptive Standard English grammar (i.e., according to high school grammar textbooks). Although technically, from a descriptive linguistic standpoint, it's really just a dialectical variation (i.e., he's speaking a version of English that is slightly different than Standard English and allows constructions like that). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 00:06, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

It's also a subtlety of English, in that it's a way of conveying something about the singer's roots, or "where he's coming from". In short, it's deliberately "incorrect". Plus, it's a song, and songs and poems often don't follow the conventions of prose. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:52, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Poetic licence being the appropriate link, I think. Vimescarrot (talk) 06:32, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't [think that], whatever the article may say. There is no error or wrongness here. The song is written in a (probably entirely appropriate) variety of English that is different from formal varieties of English. No licence required. --ColinFine (talk) 08:35, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I disagree; Bugs is correct; the phrase is known by the listener to be deliberately incorrect. Unless you're being hypertechnically linguisticky and claiming that anything that anybody says is correct because there's no such thing as incorrect. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:04, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

There's such a thing as incorrect, but this isn't an example of it. It's correct non-standard English. It may be deliberately non-standard in this song, intended to provoke a certain response from the listener, but it's not incorrect in its own context. +Angr 18:13, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

It's not proper English grammar if you're writing formal prose, but it's fine for slangy purposes like in a song. It's kind of a "country" way to say it, for a particular emphasis. It's kind of like saying "ain't", which you wouldn't put in a corporate annual report, for example, but it can be useful in everyday speech. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:33, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Call it 'slangy' if you like, but it conforms to the grammar of several everyday varieties of English spoken by millions in various parts of the world. Calling it "incorrect" is exactly parallel to calling jeans and a t-shirt "incorrect dress". In some contexts, yes, (socially) incorrect. In an appropriate context, appropriate. Can I get off my soapbox now? --ColinFine (talk) 00:00, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

"Them" is an object pronoun. The sentence already has an object. So it's not proper usage. It's a hick expression that's also used by the educated just to be funny. You could say, "There's gold in those hills!", but it's much more colorful and interesting to say, "There's gold in them thar hills!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:01, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

That's only in Standard English, and only if you assume that the features "them" has in Standard English have to carry over to every other variety. A syntactician's way of describing this, though, would probably be to say that in Standard English it has an object feature (some attribute on the lexical entry stating that it can only be used as the object of a verb), but in some varieties of English it has an additional demonstrative feature (or, more specifically, a feature saying it can be a determiner instead of an object NP). (or a slight variation of that would be to claim that those varieties of English simply have an extra, homophonous lexical entry, them₂, with those specifications. Either way the end result is the same. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:08, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

If I wrote a sentence like that in my elementary English class, I would have been marked down for it. You can say "I like tall girls", you can say "I like them" if the object is known. "I like them tall girls" automatically labels the speaker as poorly educated, unless he's just doing it for effect, like the late WGN radio host Bob Collins, who sometimes used to call rock and roll groups, "Them Rolling Stones", et al., just to be funny. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:13, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you're precisely right, that's because school classes are teaching Standard English. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:18, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

To quickly sum up...in response to Bugs and 80.229.152.246, yes the sentence is considered incorrect in prescriptive, Standard English. (And if someone is asking about if a sentence is "littered with grammatical errors", then what they're probably interested in is the prescriptive kind anyway.) But there's nothing wrong with it from a linguistic/descriptive point of view. So, in short, everyone is right. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:11, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

But then, there's nothing wrong with anything from a descriptive point of view - well, anything that has at least a core group of users. The descriptive viewpoint passively records whatever it comes across and does not make judgments. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 10:45, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, there is still "wrong", but the meaning of wrong is different...instead of being "you shouldn't say this", it's "the grammar of this ideolect does not produce this". For example, He put the book. is wrong (except in some very specific context) because of an unfilled subcategorization frame; colorless green ideas sleep furiously is more or less semantically wrong; Max's of the pizza has an impossible phrase structure, etc. Of course, if some dialect appears where these constructions are possible, that would be different; but for now, no English grammar I know of generates these. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 15:31, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

That's what I meant by "anything that has at least a core group of users". There is no core group of people who regularly say "Max's of the pizza" to each other, so any single person who does inadvertently say this is using words in a way that would be both descriptively and prescriptively wrong. Should such a group be discovered, then that expression would cease to be descriptively wrong, but it would still be prescriptively wrong, as it does not conform to any of the standards of prescriptive usage. I think we agree. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 19:24, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd add that 'incorrect' isn't quite irrelevant from a descriptive point of view within the context of second language learning, where the notion 'incorrect' can apply even to a practice espoused by a core group; non-native speakers are (normally) striving towards a native variety, not towards a variety of their own, so when a group tends to make similar mistakes such as, say, "the Peter's book" and even contaminate each other, it is still incorrect. This situation is not usual in native speakers, however. As for the prescriptive point of view, it really has no right to exist in its widespread form "this is incorrect (in general)"; a descriptive point of view would still inform you of what you need to know, namely the fact that you are speaking a variety other than the one you were aiming for in this particular context, and additional social prescriptions, subject to change, tend to determine which varieties are considered appropriate in which context; but condemning a variety as such is just primitive snobbery that enlightenment should liquidate (although education is, alas, not always enlightenment).--91.148.159.4 (talk) 14:27, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

An old example: movie title Them Thar Hills (1934), see also the There's gold... phrase mentioned above. 195.35.160.133 (talk) 12:58, 3 February 2010 (UTC) Martin.

Thanks for all the answers, everyone. --80.229.152.246 (talk) 20:18, 31 January 2010 (UTC)