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Does the Mariners even have the offensive weapons to move Ichiro down lower in the lineup than sixth?
Edit: what is the chances of Ichiro actually making 3000(2428 currently) hits, if last year signals a drop in ability?
if his nickname isn't "Eggs"...well, it SHOULD be
Irrespective of whether I agree with you or not, "irregardless" is not a word. :D
Isn't Ackley the only choice?
Neither Gutierrez or Figgins make any more sense than Ichiro
The only way in which it can be viewed as "not a word" is if the viewer is a seventh grade English teacher with a stick up their ass who thinks they know more about language than they actually do, taking the absurdly unrealistic and pathetically simpleminded view that language is something that has explicit, permanent, and uncompromising rules that are dictated from the empyrean and must be followed, rather than what language is, that being a chaotic, ever-changing mass of strangeness about which general, temporary, and exception-ridden patterns -- not rules -- can be figured out -- not proclaimed.
how does that impact frank tanana's hall of fame chances?
"Embiggen" is much more a real word, because the meaning it was given is what we would expect it to mean, given the particles that form it, though since it was coined ironically, I would find it questionable to use it in an non-ironic context. New real words are created all the time, but to be real words, they have to make sense. Is the point of language not communication? You have to make sense to communicate.
No, you're wrong.
Like it or not, "made up of particles that blah blah blah" is not determinant of something being a "real word" or not. Language is usage.
ICHIRO! Is my favorite player. 3 more seasons, please. I am not an Ms fan, but ICHIRO! Is great to watch.
Edited. Redacted a comment.. What I think sounds funny, comes off as dyckish
By its roots, and according to its earliest meanings, "manufacture" means "to make by hand". Now it refers specifically to the making of goods by machine and not by hand.
Do you complain about those words? If not, what is the temporal cut-off before which you accept changes in meaning, and after which you find them unacceptable?
Likewise with newly formed words - all words are made up at some point. At what point in history does a word have to have been invented or come into common usage for you to consider it to be a word?
But by that standard, "ringtone" isn't a real word because most ringtones are neither a ring nor a tone. Of course, you may feel the same way about "ringtone" :)
Irregardless means the same as regardless, but the negative prefix ir- merely duplicates the suffix -less, and is unnecessary. The word dates back to the 19th century, but is regarded as incorrect in standard English.OED
Gentlemen, combobulate yourselves!
"Inflammable means flammable? What a country!"
But I think I'm done here for the night. All you descriptivists out there, clutching futilely to your absurd ideas, feel free to get your rocks off by saying how wrong I am, and how wrong virtually every modern linguist (under pretty much every reasonable meaning of "modern") is. Good night.
Then he starts a (run-on) sentence with "But"....c'mon grammer police, hop to it!!! ;-)
Evidently he went to Harvard. On his first day, he wasn't sure where everything was. He walked up to someone and asked, "Excuse me; would you tell me where the library is at?"
The fellow responded, "I'm sorry, but at Harvard we do not end our sentences with prepositions."
Her instructor replied, "My apologies. Would you tell me where the library is at, #######?"
Well, I laughed, anyway.
This is the OED's entry on "irregardless". You'll have to pay, I forget, hundreds of dollars to look at it, but I assure you that it says no such thing about it being "regarded as incorrect". It of course says that it is "non-standard or humorous", and everyone understands that fact and no one disagrees with it, but "incorrect" is simply not there, nor anything like it.
And generally speaking, the editors of dictionaries will often give usage notes to allow people to understand how to conform to the expectations of stick-up-ass people who are wrong, despite explicitly saying that the stick-up-ass people are wrong. For example, check out Merriam-Webster's on "irregardless" (which you can see free online), and look at the usage section. It's essentially "these people are wrong, but use 'regardless' instead anyway, because they will complain otherwise".
And now I do mean it: Good night.
Without rules, language is just a bunch of nonsensical sounds. The rules are there for a reason.
I understand that words change meaning over time; that doesn't mean that every single change or mangling is a good one. This isn't about blindly and anally enforcing a vague sense of "rule" it's just about communicating in a way that is logical and effective. Sometimes it makes sense to change the meaning of a word and sometimes it is just moronic to add an extra syllable and three extra letters in front of a word without changing its meaning, antidisirriregardlessful of your opinion of it.
From now on, just say "gud nite." It saves time and we all know what you mean; the rules are just there 2 b broken n e way hoo karz abut dem
As for where Ichiro bats, I think he should hit cleanup, and this should be the year when he shows us all that he could have been a 30-HR guy all along if he'd wanted to.
EDIT: Until then, I'll go with the version I don't have to pay hundreds of dollars to view.
Just like how Oxford explicitly says "irregardless" is wrong?
And now I really, really mean it: Gud nite.
What's with that silent e? Surely you mean "gud nyt".
Fourth time's the charm: Gudd niit.
This months issue of Wired had an article proposing that the old rules need to be more flexible, based upon the way the media is used. That the old rules don't work in regards to texting (it's an extra step to type you're than your with an iphone) That the spelling of old words is arbitrary and should be abolished into a simpler usable framework. I don't think that it was 100% right(or maybe rite as he would suggest it should be) but at the same time, ignoring that language is fluid is exactly the stick up the butt attitude that should be admonished.
No, it says it's "regarded as incorrect in standard English." That's a true statement, because there are people (like you!) who regard it as incorrect. That doesn't make it actually incorrect, nor does it make it wrong. And it certainly doesn't raise it to "not a word" status. "Standard English" is also a phrase that could be parsed pretty carefully.
1) If you write and speak in a way that impedes communication, that's stupid. But nobody is confused by irregardless. Speculating here, I would guess that situations like this are described by the linguistic equivalent of genetic drift: if there are no strong selective pressures between e.g. regardless and irregardless -- true in some social circles -- then the version which "wins" is largely random.
2) I assume you are implying here that the last sentence is, in sum, difficult to understand -- I agree with this -- and that thus, people who tawk lyke dis are stupid. But the exact same point could be made with a piece of text consisting of establishment English (or what I assume is establishment English) from about 600 years ago.
"Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;"
-Canterbury Tales, ca. 1390s
Haha, Chaucer! Get a job! Hell, reading Shakespeare is pretty difficult.
3) Usage decisions like the ones discussed in this thread are almost entirely to let people know what social group you belong to. Freedom fries, anyone?
I hope to have a gooder night.
I'll no longer contend "irregardless" is incorrect, only that it's stupid.
irre?gardless, adj. and adv.
In non-standard or humorous use: regardless.
Etymology: Probably blend of irrespective and regardless . Cheifly used in North America.
Usage:
1912 in H. Wentworth Amer. Dial. Dict.
1923 Lit. Digest 17 Feb. 76 Is there such a word as irregardless in the English language?
1934 in Webster's New Internat. Dict. Eng. Lang. (labelled Erron. or Humorous, U.S.).
1938 I. Kuhn Assigned to Adventure xxx. 310, I made a grand entrance and suffered immediate and complete obliteration, except on the pay-roll, which functioned automatically to present me with a three-figure cheque every week, ‘irregardless’, as Hollywood says.
1939 C. Morley Kitty Foyle xxvii. 267 But she can take things in her stride, irregardless what's happened.
1955 Publ. Amer. Dial. Soc. xxiv. 19, I don't think like other people do and irregardless of how much or how little dope would cost me [etc.].
1970 Current Trends in Linguistics X. 590 She tells the pastor that he should please quit using the word ‘irregardless’ in his sermons as there is no such word.
1971 M. McShane Man who left Well Enough iv. 96 The sun poured down on Purity irregardless of the fact that it received no welcome.
1912—1971
---
(Sorry for the formatting)
Learn something new everyday, my GF was adamant about it not being a word too.
Which ain't a word either.
No. No. No. It is not I, babe.
It is not I for whom you are looking, babe.
Ain't, ain't no kinda word neither
At a mid-1970s Modern Language Association meeting in New York, the subject was double negatives. The speaker made the point that every language has constructions in which two negative words are combined to make a positive (e.g. "I'm not against it"; "never fail"; "refuse to quit"). However, said the speaker, there is no construction in any language in which two positives form a negative. Sidney Morganbesser, a professor of philosophy in the audience, yelled out, "Yeah, right!"
Language Mavens
Steven PInker. From his wonderful book The Language Instinct.
He considers "I Could Care Less" and "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" and other supposed outrages. Very readable.
I don't think Fowler, the granddaddy of prescriptive grammarians, and the editors that have followed with updates of his A Dictionary of Modern English Usage dealt with "irregardless". Pinker considers it substandard, not to be used in formal writing, but of course Pinker, being the amiable sort he is, thinks mavens, and those who pretend to be mavens, get all worked up over stuff like that far too easily and for little or no good reason. As for the double negative prohibition, he points out the obvious: language is not math. Emphasis and intensification has a role. As for "very unique", see Jefferson's "more perfect". Pinker deals with why Jefferson's phraseology is just right. Of course, "very unique" may not be.
"Affordable", "finalize", "hopefully" (to begin sentence, "Hopefully, we can afford to go a vacation"), "Likewise",literally; tons of words not longer ago consider grammatical atrocities, we now say and write without the blink of an eye. Thus, it has always been. I like the New Yorker cartoon of some years back where two guys are sitting on stools at a bar. One has a maniacal look on his face and is saying, ""Hopefullywise', did I hear you say?"
As for Ichiro...he was pretty lousy last year, with OPS+ of 84. He had 184 hits, but that's the lowest of his career, and his high number of ABs mean he only hit .310, with zilcho pwer or OPB.
He has 2,428 hits. That would be 572 hits - or about 190 hits per year for three years. I don't think he'll do that, so he'll probably need four years of 143 hits per year. He might do it, but for some reason, his career path is reminding me of Al Oliver.
They were obviously not the same kind of player, but after the 1982 season, you would've bet that Oliver was going to get there. He finished his 1982 season with 2,362 hits, finishing 3rd in the MVP voting, with power, a .331 average, everything.
The next year, he hit for a pretty good average, but little power. Then, 1984, he has zero HRs. After that, he was all done.
I have the sense that Ichiro could be done really soon, and he doesn't have the OBP or power to do anything to compensate...
Listen, I don't give a #### what the OED says. I don't give a #### what the "rules" are. That's not the point. The point is that you have, in regardless, a perfectly good word. A word that means, simply, without regard. To affix the pre-fix "irr" to the front of that word, without changing its meaning, is pointless. In that, it is without a point (should I say irrpointless?) There is no reason to do so, other than to make yourself look like an idiot who is attempting and failing to impress with a false sense of vocabulary.
So #### off.
Finally, Ichiro sucks and is overrated and shouldn't go to the Hall without a ticket.
And Wilco sucks too.
And your favorite beer.
This is just not even close to being close to right.
Unless by 'rules' you mean the practical standards of usage by which everyday communication takes place, rather than enforced prescriptivist rules. Language would wither and die if it were based on rules. Within the rules of language there is no room for irony, idiom, dialect, differing levels of formality, or any of the other things that makes language vibrant and exciting.
Just limit your objection to: "in the most formal of settings people would object to the word 'irregardless' because it has the potential to generate confusion and, at the very least, is more cumbersome than the simpler and clearer 'regardless."' No one will argue with that, I don't think. But whether something is 'correct' is an entirely different question and simply not a useful one to ask about language for the most part.
Great piece from Stephen Fry on the subject.
I first heard "I could care less" from my fifth grade teacher. The problem was simple and unnecessary: I didn't know what the hell she meant. Could she, or couldn't she? The words meant she could. Her tone meant she couldn't.
I propose that usage is therefore wrong. My fifth grade self agrees.
What did your fifth-grade self say about Picasso or abstract art.
That's rather the point, isn't it?
took the words right out of my mouth. i think it also applies to using 'impact' as a verb and a usage like 'very unique'. but i've been in newspapers for the last 30 years, so these debates are old hat.
Yes. I think Pinker in Language Mavens cites the instance when that glorified prick John Simon attempted to give Tennessee Williams a reaming out on his solecisms and grammar miscues. Tennessee's response to Simon: what you say is probably--I don't know, as I don't pretend to be a grammarian; but you know when the people who make dictionaries need examples of uses of language on a point, it is people like me they cite, not people like you.
I agree that "unique" could be pitched as the one word where we don't "adjust for the times."
If we can save only one word's meaning, let's make it this one...
One of the Merriam-Webster online examples of the usage of "irregardless" is from Ring Lardner.
I submit that if it was good enough for Ring Lardner it is good enough for a bunch of lazy bums on a baseball website.
I dunno - isn't the prescriptivist/descriptivist divide part of what makes the Ichiro HOF argument so heated?
Shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn. Shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn. Shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn: shoehorn, shoehorn, shoehorn, shoehorn, shoehorn shoehorn. Shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn, shoehorn, shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn, shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn; shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn. Shoehorn, shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn. Shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn shoehor, shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn? Shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn, shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn, shoehorn, shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn.
Shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn!
I don't know if irregardless falls into this category or not. Maybe it's just laziness or pretentiousness. Like someone using "orientate" to mean "orient". But I don't like it. I am allowed to unlike it, am I not?
Heh. Just looked up orientate online, and one dictionary source lists the definition as simply "to orient". Whereas the original definition meant "to face east", as opposed to the verb orient which meant either "to set or arrange in any determinate position especially in relation to the points of the compass" or "to acquaint with the existing situation or environment", as in orientation. But now the word orientate, and the verb form or orient seem to be merging into one meaning, with the loss of information.
Not that it comes up often, but one used to be able to say "We need to orientate that dish", and now they will have to say "we need to orientate that dish to the east.", and again, that's a shame. Shoehorn shoehorn shoehorn!
Why is language being 'cumbersome' a problem, exactly? Without its cumbersome nature, there would be no Shakespeare, there would be no plays on words, there would be no fun.
If you want technical, precise writing for some specific reason then by all means use words as precisely as possible. You'll find that academic writers who use the word disinterested use it to convey its nuance. And if they don't, they very much should be challenged. But if the medium does not demand that, then it's not just unreasonable but downright dangerous to force people to accede to a strict approach. One place where I very much agree that disinterested carries significant meaning and should be embraced is in the press. We have come to assume that journalism ought be 'non-partisan' when what we really ought support is 'disinterested' journalists. However, if my friend says her kid is acting pretty disinterested lately, there is zero chance I'm going to mistake her meaning and think the child is a budding Kantian.
For literally hundreds of years, people have believed that modern corruptions of old words threaten the precision and delicate communicative possibility of language. But I would suggest that we have more communicative capacity today than we ever have before in history. And it will likely only continue to improve. Words that retain important meanings will survive and flourish and those that do not will meld or fade away. There are always gaps and broken places where words fail to measure up, or multiple meanings create confusion. But that's precisely what gives language its vitality, too, so I think it's worth embracing.
I also thought #17 went especially unloved.
Because Shakespeare invented tons of words. Some of which didn't catch on. (which means you have to try and figure out what he meant.) And then of course there's the issue of how language changes over time.
Or, what Miserlou said in 83. Of course language evolves. That doesn't mean that we should drop "regardless" for "irregardless" for no ####### reason.
To "beg the question" is to assume (usually in a different form) your conclusion.
Edit: I have no real issue with being a pedantic *($#head. I'm one myself. Its a perfectly cromulent stance.
Editedit: Coke to 86
Banana muffin.
Who is "we"? There's a big difference between avoiding a word that doesn't please you, which is your prerogative, and castigating someone else for using the word.
Not only The Language Instnct, but How Stuff Works and Words and Rules are also filled with insight on language engagingly rendered.
Why as a society have we decided to stop castigating people for doing stupid things? People should be called out for stupidity, it helps deter it.
Best just to stop throwing stones, perhaps?
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