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What linguistic constructions do you hate that no one else seems to mind? (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by TootSweet@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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It bugs me when people say "the thing is is that" (if you listen for it, you'll start hearing it... or maybe that's something that people only do in my area.) ("What the thing is is that..." is fine. But "the thing is is that..." bugs me.)

Also, "just because doesn't mean ." That sentence structure invites one to take "just because " as a noun phrase which my brain really doesn't want to do. Just doesn't seem right. But that sentence structure is very common.

And I'm not saying there's anything objectively wrong with either of these. Language is weird and complex and beautiful. It's just fascinating that some commonly-used linguistic constructions just hit some people wrong sometimes.

Edit: I thought of another one. "As best as I can." "The best I can" is fine, "as well as I can" is good, and "as best I can" is even fine. But "as best as" hurts.

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[–] tanisnikana@lemmy.world 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I hate when people use the transitive “going to be” to describe “is.”

“Hey, what’s your phone number?” “It’s going to be 911-551-0911.”

Her phone number is 911-551-0911 and has been such for a while now. Why does she feel the need to use a transitive verb structure to describe that it will change to that in the future?

I see people using this “it’s going to be” structure for ordering food (they are ordering food now, saying “spaghetti, please” is much less weird than saying “it’s going to be spaghetti”), as part of my job when someone is reporting current or past statistics, and events that aren’t coming up or aren’t scheduled, and are in the past.

[–] tanisnikana@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago

Don’t dial that phone number to see if it works; you’ll get the fuzz.