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Is "to put something" grammatically correct? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 1 year ago by gentooer to c/[email protected]

23 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'll preface this by saying that English is not my mother language and I'm sorry if this isn't the right community, but I didn't find a more appropriate one.

Last year I started to notice more and more people on YouTube for example using the verb "to put" without a preposition -- like "Now I put the cheese" -- which sounds very weird and kind of feels wrong to me. Is this really used in spoken English and is it grammatically correct?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The phrase that immediately comes to mind is "poner la mesa." It translates from Spanish as "to set the table" but literally means "to put the table." Similarly, one might take photos with a camera, but the literal meaning of the Spanish phrase "sacar photos" is "to remove photos."

Linguistically and colloquially (the latter lending more to your example of adding cheese to something), we often use weird verbs in specific contexts.

What you've described might not fall into the category of proper grammar, but it also doesn't come across as strange or unexpected.

There are also unspoken rules about the ordering of adjectives to ~~blindly follow~~ follow blindly.

Edit to add: Proper, verbose grammar is also not usually necessary or even useful in the context of directions/commands, particularly in lists of such. Sure, "add cheese" would probably make a technical writer happier, but the point still gets across.

The context is important as well:

"What toppings do you put on your burgers?"

"I put cheese."

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I have worked in a lot of kitchens where English was the standard language but different groups spoke Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Swiss German, French, Arabic, Croatian, Tamil, etc. (not always the same time) and we just needed to work so the language was rudimentary and often literal translations.

"Put me three eggs" meaning "get me three eggs".

"I make it" meaning "I'll do it".

And so on.

"Close the fire" would be "turn off the burner".

I figured out at some point that "close" was like closing a switch. And that things like me, my, mine were not always easy for people. You'd hear "put me lettuce in fridge".

I want to be very clear I am not making fun of anyone. I sounded exactly the same when I was saying stuff in non-English (e.g. the garde manger were all Spanish at one place so they used it and when I worked their section I'd try to use it).

Edit - we talked like this outside of work too when having a beer "baby 3 now, get cake in morning, grows fast!". Good friends learn each others languages better but its mostly vocabulary and not grammar.