Even Greener Pastures
Language Learning => Questions about the Use of Language => Topic started by: Nikola on March 06, 2019, 10:08:51 pm
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Nikola,
Thank you so much for your well-stated reply. And please, do not let me inhibit you or anyone from asking any language question you like. I`m no expert in languages, that´s for sure. My opinion, as they say in German, „ist für die Katz“, you know it`s for the cat, the birds!
I do love you box analogy. It is spot on. And you are 100% correct. It takes years and a lot of work to understand the fine nuances of words and phrases when you`re learning a foreign language and I appreciate that, and even native speakers can disagree on things a little.
I think a better teaching style, is to rank order things a bit? You know what I mean? It´s like saying „this is standard style, so it´s fit for book publication or an article in a good newspaper, but this other way of speaking is non-standard, regional, not something you publish in writing. Native speakers say it, so you can`t call it wrong. So we don`t publish it.“ That´s gives you a broader understanding of the nuances of a language. German has the authority Duden, and Duden will classify words and phrases as „technical, elevated, colloquial, saloop, regional´-sometimes specifying the region, youth-language, archaic, dated, etc) so you kind of can classify the word? We have no such authority in English so you have no such guide. I think good English teachers tell you that.
But that´s hard to do with all the variations-BrEnglish, USEnglish, Australian English, and so on.
Actually, I didn`t get kicked off the other forums. Quora just suspended me for two weeks and now I`m back on but don`t use the site much. Italki just banned me a few times and then auto-reinstated me without me asking. That was a mystery. And that was a year ago. I was never banned from the german.stackexchange.com, and only temporarily on the english.stackexchange.com one because of a Frenchmen who went after me, I didn`t go after him. He was saying it was normal and well-understood when someone asked about that ridiculous sentence about „repaying the depths of their heightened enlightenment“ or some other dribble no one would ever say. Then he criticized me for saying I didn`t know what I was talking about?
But please, again, don`t let anything I say hold you back. You all are great people and the last thing I`d ever want to do is offend you.
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SHL, I want to address multiple comments you posted yesterday. Please take this as friendly feedback rather than a personal attack. You got kicked out of another forum and you're annoyed, we get that. Then you went and commented on every topic that reminded you of the topic you disagreed about with people elsewhere. People see rules where there are none, people discuss small nuances in meanings, they don't understand how language works, they ask about all the unimportant stuff and you are here to tell them what is important and what is not. This is the message I got. And it made me feel like I never want to ask any language-related question here again. It probably made some people feel like never replying to a language question again. Is this what you want? From what I know about you, I'd say it's not. You're not like that.
If I'm interested to find out about a particular nuance in meaning and someone else is equally interested in explaining it to me, do you want us to worry about what you're going think about it? Have you ever looked inside an old-fashioned music box? You acquired the English language, you know the tune and don't need to worry about what's in the box. Many of us had to learn it, that's the messy work where you have to know what every single piece does. Once you've learned all the essential stuff, you have to do the fine tuning because otherwise it will never sound right. You have no idea how many little rules and word differences I had to learn to reach my current level, half of them you've probably never heard of, even though you apply them in your day-to-day life. It doesn't mean they don't exist, just because they're buried deep inside the box. Where would I have been if I'd stuck to "just focus on the essential stuff"? Please try to be open-minded. Or try being open-minded? :)
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It reminds me of what linguists like Noam Chomsky have said, „If someone has to teach you something about your own language (native language) the odds are about 100% that what they are teaching you is wrong. That´s why you have to be taught it. Because it´s NOT your language.“
Stackexchange has an English board (and boards for everything from chemistry to gameboards) and people debate ridiculously silly nuances in expressions and words like this. And there are no real „answers“. Native speakers disagree constantly on things. I see this on the german.stackexchange board all the time. The native speakers can`t even agree on things because languages are fluid and change all the time.
Steven, I really can't agree with either Chomsky or you.
Native speakers make mistakes all the time. I keep reading and hearing things like "Salami mit Nüsse" (should be: mit Nüssen) or "Ich verbinde Sie mit Herr Müller" (should be: mit Herrn Müller). Now, granted, the German dative may become as obsolete as the genitive already is - in time. But at the moment, leaving out the dative ending is still considered a mistake and will get you bad marks in an exam. (And so would "das brauchst du zu tun", by the way.)
Plus, I think you're forgetting that you need to have an extremely good grasp of a language in order to decide whether or not something might be considered a "trivial" mistake (if there is such a thing). For a language learner, this is obviously impossible.
Also, please remember that many, if not most people here are quite interested in this kind of question.
I would therefore ask you to kindly moderate your tone a little. :)
My apologies if I sounded like I was coming off too flippant or abrupt about this (I can`t seem to find the best word at the moment). I don`t mean to downplay the importance of grammar rules. I should have been more careful about how I put this. I do agree that standardized grammar rules are essential in that they serve at least three critical functions. 1) they serve as a benchmark by which the written language (grammar, words, spellings) all follow the same pattern. We obviously have to have this in books, literature and in anything written. We can`t have people just writing any old way they feel like it whenever they feel like it. That just would be chaotic. 2) Non-natives learning a language have to have some guidelines to follow or they will never be able learn the language. Then, finally 3), native speakers need to know, what Chomsky calls, the literary standard, so they can communicate in a standardized written form (for books, literature and so on), thus serving the purpose of reason 1). So, for these three reasons alone, standardized grammar is ultilitarian and essential. We can`t do without it. Now, the literary standard differs a little from what a native speaker learns on the street, but it´s really not that different. I think my take on it is just that a little more leeway ought to be given to native speakers to speak in anyway that seems natural to them. It´s just going to happen anyway and it allows for the language to evolve and change over time. Eventually, when some sort of change becomes so widely accepted that no one sees it as aberrant, then someone changes the grammar rules and the language changes. English has no grammar authority, like Duden, but I suppose there are multiple unofficial authorities.
I never really questioned any of this until I heard so much of it on italki. People would say a native speaker made a mistake or what have you, and I would just think „Oh, yeah. Okay. I guess that was a mistake.“ But, for some reason it seemed a little odd to me to say a native speaker was speaking incorrectly in his or her own language. It just didn`t make sense on some level. Of course, italki only dealt with the written form of the language, so I guess a criticism was fair with regard to the writing. I think what didn`t sit well with me was this notion of „wrongness“. I think that, rather than saying a native speaker speaks incorrectly (on occasion), I would prefer to say the speech was just non-standard. You could pass it off as a regionalism, or something, and I think that would be a better description they saying it was wrong. Now, when it comes to the written word, that is different. If people need to write for professional reasons, then they have to learn the literary standard.
Again, no intent to offend anyone here and my apologies if I did, because the people on this board are the best and nicest I`ve ever encountered on any social media site on the internet. We really do have the finest of the fine as they say here. We all know how some people are on italki, and on many other sites, like Quora. Quora and others are filled with some not-so-kind folks. :)
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It reminds me of what linguists like Noam Chomsky have said, „If someone has to teach you something about your own language (native language) the odds are about 100% that what they are teaching you is wrong. That´s why you have to be taught it. Because it´s NOT your language.“
Stackexchange has an English board (and boards for everything from chemistry to gameboards) and people debate ridiculously silly nuances in expressions and words like this. And there are no real „answers“. Native speakers disagree constantly on things. I see this on the german.stackexchange board all the time. The native speakers can`t even agree on things because languages are fluid and change all the time.
Steven, I really can't agree with either Chomsky or you.
Native speakers make mistakes all the time. I keep reading and hearing things like "Salami mit Nüsse" (should be: mit Nüssen) or "Ich verbinde Sie mit Herr Müller" (should be: mit Herrn Müller). Now, granted, the German dative may become as obsolete as the genitive already is - in time. But at the moment, leaving out the dative ending is still considered a mistake and will get you bad marks in an exam. (And so would "das brauchst du zu tun", by the way.)
Plus, I think you're forgetting that you need to have an extremely good grasp of a language in order to decide whether or not something might be considered a "trivial" mistake (if there is such a thing). For a language learner, this is obviously impossible.
Also, please remember that many, if not most people here are quite interested in this kind of question.
I would therefore ask you to kindly moderate your tone a little. :)
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Xx
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I don`t know if „off of“ is used in BrEnglisch or not. I`ll assume not, since su ki says so.
But „off of“ is perfectly standard AmEnglisch. It is not considered colloquial and is not uncommen. „He makes a lot of money off of his business.“ You can leave the „of“ out and it`s just the exactl same thing. With or it it`s the same. Redundant? Not really.
I will guarantee you no native speaking American is going to even hear or notice the difference or care, even if you were to point it out. It is one of the most trivial things to worry about there is for an English learner. If that´s all you`ve got to worry about, believe me, you`re going really good. I use the two interchangeably and don`t even notice it. I`d say about 90% of the time „she fell off of the horse“ not „off the horse“ is the most likely to be said, but the latter wouldn`t sound strange to me either. I say don`t sweat the small stuff and think of the two as interchangeable. Understanding is totally unaffected as it is.
It reminds me of what linguists like Noam Chomsky have said, „If someone has to teach you something about your own language (native language) the odds are about 100% that what they are teaching you is wrong. That´s why you have to be taught it. Because it´s NOT your language.“
Stackexchange has an English board (and boards for everything from chemistry to gameboards) and people debate ridiculously silly nuances in expressions and words like this. And there are no real „answers“. Native speakers disagree constantly on things. I see this on the german.stackexchange board all the time. The native speakers can`t even agree on things because languages are fluid and change all the time.
And there are always the language purists who want to protect their language from outside influences. That´s just ridiculous. Example. 40 years ago I was taught you could always say in German „das brauchts du nicht zu tun.“ You don`t need to do that. But it always had to be cast in the negative. You could never say „das brauchts du zu tun“ - the same phrase but in the positive. Now, I`ve heard native German speakers say „das brauchts du zu tun“. So, the language has changed. Unterestingy enough I read that the exact same rule was appied in English until the 1970s. Prior to 1970, you could never say „you need to do that.“ It had to me „you must do that“, but you could always say „you don`t need to do that.“ The „need to do that“ came as a result of modern pop psychology suggesting new ways of correcting children in less harsh ways who misbehaved. Instead of scolding a child and saying „Don`t do that“, pop psychology taught people to say, „Johnny, you need to listen to me. I need you to do this.“ (I read about this in an article saying the Netflix series, Man Men, depicting the US 1960s. The article said the series was accurate in clothes design, cars, etc, but inaccurate in some of the language used back then, as in the example cited). I personally have no recollection if this phrase was used in the 1960s,and I asked my mom about it, who would have been at an age to remember, and she doesn`t recall. Native speakers don`t pay attention to small stuff like this.
They do this constantly on german.stackexchange all the time, with some people saying the phrase „das macht keinen Sinn“ (that makes no sense) is an English import that should abandoned because it likely was adopted in the 1980s, and the better expression is „das ergibt keinen Sinn“ (or das is sinnlos). Trivial nonsense like this is not even worthy of comment. I`ve heard highly educated former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt say „das macht keinen Sinn“. That´s why I say only a fool would criticize its modern use. So, the bottom line: ignore the trivia and focus on the important stuff.
Of course, don`t be like the Peruvian translators who posted a sign in Peru in Spanish, (with an illustration of a llama) saying „Please don`t feed the llamas“ but placed the English translation below it as „Please don`t feed the Flamingos“. LOL. :)
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I think it is an American thing. When you don't use of after off you risk sounding British (and therefore, "putting on airs" if you are not British), which could end up badly for you.
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@Alharacas, ah, South Africa... Thanks for clarifying!
Yes, I can confirm that he does have a South African accent, but it's a very mild one so it's not surprising everyone found it so hard to pinpoint.
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It appears I was wrong. There are very, very limited cases in which saying "off of" is correct. Maybe I do use it and don't realize it as two others have suggested to me. Again, it would be extremely limited usage.
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@Alharacas, ah, South Africa... Thanks for clarifying!
As for bloggers, I'm not sure you'll be able to find anything particularly interesting. Inexplicably, most western bloggers in China usually speak of traditional stereotypes and prejudices people from all over the world already have about the Chinese. There is an element of truth in some of them, but all in all... At least some of the bloggers are reasonable enough to add that "in fact, most Chinese people are friendly etc., just know that there are not nice people too", but it's not really informative of course. Actually I think it's because in big cities it's relatively easy to live in a bubble hanging out only with other expats. To each their own, of course, but this representation of the Chinese as total aliens is so ubiquitous that you just get used to it.
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Nikola, the guy's from South Africa. And no, I'm not really good at recognizing accents, I've just watched some of his videos (or tried to), and this is one of the few things he tells you.
Side note: The video Kseniia linked to appears to be the only one where he actually talks about what he says he's going to talk about. The rest of them are just click-bait. Which is a shame, as I'd love to hear somebody talk about what it's like to live in China.
I don't get why he has such a lot of subscribers - am I missing something, or are they all brain-dead?
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@Susan
So people might be doing it without realising it? Just adding a little schwa? That explains a lot. It's probably why "off of a horse" would sound strange to you. You'd have to say "off-/ovə/" instead of the usual "off-/ə/", unless you said "off-/ə//ə/ horse", which would sound even weirder. In BrE it would sound like "offer a horse" :)
The Stones probably just needed an extra syllable.
@Kseniia
He does say "off of you" and he doesn't sound uneducated to me. I have no idea where he's from, though. He doesn't sound British to me but I'm not very good at recognising accents.
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Tsk, I never, never get accents right!
Susan, sure, no problem. If you're using a desktop version of Youtube, just right-click on the video and choose "Copy video URL at current time". Or, you can calculate it all by yourself, and add
?t=n
to the link, where n shows the number of seconds from the beginning of the video. So, for example, 5 minutes and 29 seconds = 329 seconds, hence you add
?t=329
The result is
httрs://youtu.be/5ncOyYzOP3w?t=329
(the blue part is the link to the video, and the red part shows how many seconds from the beginning you want to skip)
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He does not sound American to me-- sounds more British or European, but he sounds educated to me.
Kseniia-- is it easy to explain how you made that link start at the spot you wanted us to hear? I do not think I have ever seen someone do that before I and would like to be able to do it.
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I remember I tried to find a video on tea scams in Shanghai for Alharacas and came across this:
https://youtu.be/5ncOyYzOP3w?t=329 (5:29)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the guy (an American?) does say "off of you". Does he sound not very educated because of that, then?
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I have been thinking more about this and trying to remember when I do actually use ¨off of.¨ In reality, I do not think I say ¨off of¨-- I think I say ¨offa.¨ Thinking about one of the comments in the stack exchange link, I think that in some respects, it is kind of like ¨wanna¨ except that it is an emphasizer. It is standard in the speech of many Americans, even educated people, especially for emphasis. But when it is written, it is written as ¨off of¨ and is like an idiom because it is so common. That´s why I thought of ¨off of my...¨ and ¨off of your...¨ because it is usually said as emphasis when you tell someone to ¨get offa my... (foot, blanket, ass, etc) or to ¨get offa your... (butt, hiney, high horse....)¨ Or like the song ¨Get off of my cloud¨ (is it not really pronounced like ¨Get offamy cloud?) I am thinking about a recent comment by Phil about ¨wanna¨ where he gave the opinion that ¨wanna¨ is a standard way to say things, including among educated people, but in writing it should be ¨want to.¨ When written as ¨off of¨ it does not even seem wrong to me. But I also have pretty casual speech and am so far from a grammar nerd.
(Jerry-- I suspect it is so common in speech that you don´t even notice it.-- Unless I am wrong and that it is only so common in the Southern and the areas that border the South. Here in Kansas it is so common that I do not recall it ever being discussed before. I certainly don´t recall hearing an English teacher complain about it.)
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I think it's safe to say that Mongoose doesn't like it.
(https://img27.rajce.idnes.cz/d2701/15/15863/15863438_a5da6f9608ca116f6ed8810ec47e453c/thumb/anmo.jpg?ver=0)
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This construction is not at all common in AmE. I can't recall ever hearing it. If I did, it was from someone not very educated.
I can't say that it's American English. It's simply incorrect. Just as many things are said by many native speakers of all languages.
What?! I see that construction all the time. And I heard it non-stop when I lived in the States. I do my best not to use it, but having heard it so many times...
Anyway, I just plugged "off of" (with quotes) into Google. I got 241,000,000 hits. That's about a quarter of a billion. So, I'd say it's pretty common.
Get off of my back, will ya kid?
Hey! Who y'callin' kid?!!
Kiddo. Is that better? :D
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This construction is not at all common in AmE. I can't recall ever hearing it. If I did, it was from someone not very educated.
I can't say that it's American English. It's simply incorrect. Just as many things are said by many native speakers of all languages.
What?! I see that construction all the time. And I heard it non-stop when I lived in the States. I do my best not to use it, but having heard it so many times...
Anyway, I just plugged "off of" (with quotes) into Google. I got 241,000,000 hits. That's about a quarter of a billion. So, I'd say it's pretty common.
Get off of my back, will ya kid?
Hey! Who y'callin' kid?!!
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This construction is not at all common in AmE. I can't recall ever hearing it. If I did, it was from someone not very educated.
I can't say that it's American English. It's simply incorrect. Just as many things are said by many native speakers of all languages.
What?! I see that construction all the time. And I heard it non-stop when I lived in the States. I do my best not to use it, but having heard it so many times...
Anyway, I just plugged "off of" (with quotes) into Google. I got 241,000,000 hits. That's about a quarter of a billion. So, I'd say it's pretty common.
Get off of my back, will ya kid?
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SuKi, we'll let you off, of course.
I agree that "lonely off" sounds rather cute.
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Yes, when I said the combination of words 'off of' doesn't exist in BrE, I meant that it didn't exist as an alternative to just 'off'. Or 'lonely off', as Sunshine rather sweetly put it.
I should've made that clear before logging off, of course.
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@Irena
I try to avoid searching individual phrases without context, even with quotation marks, because the results can be very misleading. In this case, your results will have included the examples I mentioned in my previous comment (the kick-off of...), language forums where people either ask about it or complain about it, cases where there's a comma or another punctuation mark between the "off" and "of" (I got told off. Of course I was surprised), and last but not least many websites that mention the Rolling Stones :)
I agree that it still seems to be very common, though.
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This construction is not at all common in AmE. I can't recall ever hearing it. If I did, it was from someone not very educated.
I can't say that it's American English. It's simply incorrect. Just as many things are said by many native speakers of all languages.
What?! I see that construction all the time. And I heard it non-stop when I lived in the States. I do my best not to use it, but having heard it so many times...
Anyway, I just plugged "off of" (with quotes) into Google. I got 241,000,000 hits. That's about a quarter of a billion. So, I'd say it's pretty common.
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https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/101683/difference-between-get-off-of-and-off
I thought the part highlighted on the page was especially interesting. It remarks about how common ¨off of¨ is in print in American writing and editorial practices.
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Thanks for your comments everyone.
@SuKi
American vs British... It hadn't occurred to me that it could be so simple.
As to the "off of" combination not existing in BrE, are we talking about the cases I described above or using them together in general? Because if the verb the off is part of becomes a noun and the "of" is possessive rather than related to place, it should be ok, right?
We talked about the kick-off of the new project.
He survived the cutting off of his hand.
@Susan
Thanks, I didn't realise the article mattered. So it doesn't work with "a" or "the" but works with "my". I'm glad you said those sentences didn't sound illiterate to you. This is what I suspected, after reading that even intelligent, educated people used "off of".
@Gef
It's probably not used where you live. Different areas within the U.S. seem to have different ways of saying things, to the extent you could almost question someone's sanity, by the sounds of it :)
Here's an example from one of the articles I mentioned:
"I’ve mentioned before that, being from Pittsburgh, I am perfectly content to say The car needs washed instead of The car needs to be washed. Within my dialect, to be is often superfluous, and there are some sentences that I find greatly improved by omitting it."
The author admits that people from elsewhere would think he sounded crazy. On the other hand, if he added "to be" it wouldn't sound as good to people in his area.
@Sunshine
You're as confused as I was :)
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@Sunshine asked: But can anyone please confirm that what's the correct usage, I mean whether this "off of" could cost someone their marks in IELTS or any such exams where they look for every detail?
1. But can anyone please confirm what the correct usage is?
In BrE, 'off' is the correct usage. There is no doubt about this: 'off of' doesn't exist as a combination of words in BrE.
In AmE, there appears to be a conflict. GTTM has never heard 'off of' and says that it is incorrect. Meanwhile, Susan seems to suggest that 'off of' is standard, and that the 'of' is only omitted for the sake of euphony when the next word is 'a', for example. You'll need to wait for a few more AmE speakers to give their view.
2. Could this "off of" cost someone their marks in IELTS or any such exams where they look for every detail?
I don't think you'd lose marks in IELTS for a minor issue such as this. In Cambridge exams, we generally allow Americanisms, anyway. But, as there still seems to be some doubt about how acceptable it is even for AmE speakers (in some cases, according to Susan, and in all cases, according to Gef), it's probably better to avoid it.
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So what I got from comments above is that this "off of" is not common in BrEng and as Jerry said not in AmEng as well, right? But as to a non native ear, it sounds good and if I only go for "off" it sounds a bit odd maybe because I have seen "of" followed by "off" more time than only a lonely "off".
But can anyone please confirm that what's the correct usage, I mean whether this "off of" could cost someone their marks in IELTS or any such exams where they look for every detail?
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This construction is not at all common in AmE. I can't recall ever hearing it. If I did, it was from someone not very educated.
I can't say that it's American English. It's simply incorrect. Just as many things are said by many native speakers of all languages.
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In looking at the examples, I think I avoid saying ¨off of a ....¨. It´s just awkward like saying ¨offava.¨ I would say ¨The child fell off a horse.¨ I think I also sometimes avoid ¨off of the...¨ I am more likely to say ¨pull the car off the road.¨
However, I agree with the person about (5a) and (5c). Those need the ¨of.¨ I am trying to think of other examples but I suspect I omit the ¨of¨ before ¨a¨ and ¨the¨and use it in other cases such as ¨off of my...¨ ¨off of their...¨ I have no idea why I it sounds right to me to say ¨The child fell off a horse¨ but also to say ¨I fell off of my horse¨ pr ¨I fell off a horse.¨ None of them sound illiterate to me though.
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Other than in a rendition of the Stones' 'Get Off Of My Cloud' (artistic licence) I'd never use any those phrases - 'off of' doesn't exist in BrE.
I actually think it's quite sensible, though. If the opposite of IN/INTO is OUT OF (e.g. get in/into a car: get out of a car), it would seem reasonable for the opposite of ON/ON TO to be OFF OF (e.g. get on/onto a horse: get off of a horse). Perfectly logical.
In answer to your question, it doesn't sound "off" to me, or wrong, or 'not nice' - it just sounds American. It's just one of those things that Americans say but Brits don't.
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I'd like to know just how bad it is to use "off of" where just "off" would be sufficient. I've read a few articles about this, some people say it's simply wrong and some say it's perfectly fine. It's definitely not "nice" English, as far as I'm aware. Here's an article that provides a brief summary of its use in the past and how some dictionaries see it: https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2009/12/is-off-of-so-awful.html
The number of google matches was significantly higher for just "off" when I tried looking up various sentences. However, the "off of" variant still seemed frequent enough to be considered widely used.
In this article here https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2012/07/31/on-off-of/, the author claims that in the following cases, removing the "of" would make the following sentences noticeably worse:
(5a) It’s a way of profiting off of something you expect to drop in value. (I'm guessing using "from" instead would solve this problem?)
(5b) My new invention will knock the socks off of the scientific community.
(5c) I broke your statue by knocking the top off of it.
What do native speakers here think?
Did the child fall off a horse or off of a horse?
Do you pull the car off or off of the road?
Feel free to add more examples and tell me what you would or wouldn't say.