this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
1454 points (98.5% liked)

Confidently Incorrect

4005 readers
1 users here now

When people are way too smug about their wrong answer.

Posting guidelines.

All posts in this community have come from elsewhere, it is not original content, the poster in this community is not OP. The person who posts in this community isn’t necessarily endorsing whatever the post is talking about and they are not looking to argue with you about the content in the post.

You are welcome to discuss and debate any topic but arguments are not welcome here. I consider debate/discussions to be civil; people with different opinions participating in respectful conversations. It becomes an argument as soon as someone becomes aggressive, nasty, insulting or just plain unpleasant. Report argumentative comments, then ignore them.

There is currently no rule about how recent a post needs to be because the community is about the comeback part, not the topic.

Rules:

• Be civil and remember the human.

• No trolling, insults or name calling. Swearing in general is fine, but not to insult someone.

• No bigotry of any kind, including homophobia, transphobia, sexism and racism.

• You are welcome to discuss and debate any topic but arguments are not welcome here. I consider debate/discussions to be civil; people with different opinions participating in respectful conversations. It becomes an argument as soon as someone becomes aggressive, nasty, insulting or just plain unpleasant. Report argumentative comments, then ignore them.

• Try not to get too political. A lot of these posts will involve politics, but this isn’t the place for political arguments.

• Participate in good faith - don’t be aggressive and don’t argue for arguements sake.

• Mark NSFW posts if they contain nudity.

• Satire is allowed but please start the post title with [satire] so other users can filter it out if they’d like.

Please report comments that break site or community rules to the mods. If you break the rules you’ll receive one warning before being banned from this community.

This community follows the rules of the lemmy.world instance and the lemmy.org code of conduct. I’ve summarised them here:

  1. Be civil, remember the human.
  2. No insulting or harassing other members. That includes name calling.
  3. Respect differences of opinion. Civil discussion/debate is fine, arguing is not. Criticise ideas, not people.
  4. Keep unrequested/unstructured critique to a minimum.
  5. Remember we have all chosen to be here voluntarily. Respect the spent time and effort people have spent creating posts in order to share something they find amusing with you.
  6. Swearing in general is fine, swearing to insult another commenter isn’t.
  7. No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia or any other type of bigotry.
  8. No incitement of violence or promotion of violent ideologies.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Just registered on Lemmy at last to pitch in! "I've just xyz" is much more common in most Englishes than "I just xyz", because the present perfect tense implies some connection to the present, hence "present perfect", and is perfectly correct English. The author has simply omitted "I've", which is common in colloquial speech. This is also common in Dutch, a closely related language that I speak every day as a second language, if that helps legitimise it for anyone: "net gezien" as shorthand for "ik heb net gezien". In fact, while there are a number of problems with the post, none of them are ("none of them is" for the pedants) grammatical. I assume from the English in your post that it's not your first language so hopefully this is more helpful than annoying.

For reference: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/grammar/online-grammar/present-perfect-simple-with-just-already-and-yet

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

That's me! Humourless too!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Welcome!

While what you’ve said is correct, your application is, unfortunately, incorrect. Once again, the OP did not use the helping verb “have” in front of the pp form of the verb “to see,” which is required. If you would perform a simple search of similar posts in a microblogging format, you will discover that while there is a convention of treating the initial article as implied (“Heard the new Taylor Swift single - amazing!”), there is not a similar established pattern of eliding entire parts of a verb form.

Again, there are similar patterns in other vernaculars. African American Vernacular English (AAVE) in particular uses forms of verbs that differ from those of Standard American English (SAE). AAVE (as well as other English vernaculars such as in the south of Ireland)) use verb forms such as the habitual be (“Mama be doing laundry”) to indicate that the action is performed repeatedly.

In any case, SAE would prefer the standard past tense in this formulation, again with the subject “I” left as implied (“Saw that those nasty Welshmen are acting up again. Fsfafagafacaga!”). It is entirely possible that the author is using a non-standard English vernacular that is perfectly legitimate but with which O am unfamiliar. That’s fine, but it does not decrease the irony of their “Are language is English!!1) post.

And regarding your final sentence, “None of them are” is the more standard formulation in English because it refers to “a number of problems,” which is plural. The singular “none” is reserved for when the meaning is a single exception (“My choice is none of the above, implying that I get to make a single choice).

Hope that helps! Unlike most people, I like the Dutch!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

English is my native language; I speak a British dialect and the original post is in British English. "I've just xyz" is standard outside American English and omitting "I've" is extremely common. I thought I was clear about that. In fact it seems like you haven't quite paid attention to, or haven't understood, everything I've written, because I quite expressly said I'm not Dutch as well and you seem to think I'm Dutch.

Regarding the is/are thing: you could also say "a number of problems with the post, but one of them is", and "none" is a short way of saying "not one", hence "none is"; in fact you'd instinctively say "a number of... but not one of them is". I'd say "none are" though out of habit. Your "a number is plural" reasoning is overthinking it.

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

“A number” is plural. You would not (I hope) say “A number of people has complained about my English.”

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

But the verb in question is what "none" is doing, not "a number", so that's irrelevant. By analogy: "The singers are performing today, but one of them has a sore throat." Introducing "one" doesn't change the number of "singers"; it's in a new clause. Bringing something irrelevant into it is what I called overthinking in the last comment.

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

overthinking

You are truly fortunate not to have that burden.