this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
734 points (90.9% liked)

Comic Strips

12785 readers
3138 users here now

Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.

The rules are simple:

Web of links

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Sources for Salo Comics

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The fact that you seem to not have seen this before indicates that you cannot actually always contract ‘you’ and ‘are’. ‘Cannot’ in the sense that most people don’t do it and you will get grades deducted if you do it when learning English as a second language.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The fact that you seem to not have seen this before indicates that you cannot actually always contract ‘you’ and ‘are’.

I'm still re-reading this sentence. How does not having seen this before indicate what you can or can not do?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I love how they are trying to correct bad grammar with even worse grammar

seem to not have seen

cannot actually always

🤡

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Both of these are perfectly grammatical in modern English though?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

They don’t think it be like it is, but it do

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Now that I re-read it, I’m pretty sure the second one should be “actually cannot always”.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I retract the word ‘indicate.’ It’s not proof, but if you haven’t seen a phrase before, despite n years of reading and/or speaking a language, it means that that phrase is uncommon. If that phrase also looks like it should be used more (I’m referring to “you’re” being very common in different sentence structures), that’s a strong hint that the phrase doesn’t exist or has some very different meaning in that context.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Because language is a thing that everyone agrees on, together. If nobody else is using the words like that, maybe you shouldn't either.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

The fact that you seem to not have seen this before indicates that you cannot actually always contract ‘you’ and ‘are’.

This is the line I am referring to, not any specific word. This sentence is nonsensical:

"The fact you seem to not have seen this before indicates..." followed by "that you cannot always contract 'you' and 'are.'"

How are those related? If someone hasn't seen this before... it indicates ... grammar rules? How does not seeing it indicate a grammar rule?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I wasn’t trying to imply that contracting is always wrong. Rather, it is not always right.

In the case of “it’s what it’s”, the “it is” part is being stressed, so contracting it is weird.

This is why I find contracting “You are already“ weird. To me, the stress is on the are. However, after reading and re-reading the statement in my head, I can feel people stressing the already instead. To those, “You’re already” would probably be fine.

[–] joby 1 points 1 year ago

In this case, "you already are" feels more natural than "you are already." I think that might be part of why the contraction feels weird? I sure can't explain why to someone who doesn't have the same feeling.