Submitted 11 months ago by Anonymouse@lemmy.world to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
I got hung up on contractions this morning regarding the word “you’ve”. Normally, I’d say “you’ve got a problem”, which expands to “you have got a problem”, which isn’t wrong, but I normally wouldn’t say. Not contracting, I’d say “you have a problem”, so then should I just say “you’ve a problem”? That sounds weird in my head. Is this just a US English problem?
English is weird. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though
My god it’s a tongue twister for my internal monologue.
You’ve mail!
“You’ve a problem” actually still works, but it’s an older way of saying it
Yeah, I’ve definitely heard Brits say that
I’ve a solution!
What’s it?
It seems that i’m. The solution’s me.
Yes, English is weird.
‘Bough’ and ‘cough’ are not pronounced the same. ‘bough’ and ‘bow’ are pronounced the same. ‘Knee’ and ‘Leigh’ are pronounced the same. ‘Neigh’ and ‘Nay’ are pronounced the same. ‘Polish’ (the nationality) and ‘polish’ (as in what you do to a metal object) are not pronounced the same. ‘Tear’ (as in to rip) and ‘tear’ (as in to cry) are spelled the same, but not pronounced the same. Other words which are spelled the same, but pronounced differently:
resume / resume present / present record / record close / close use / use live / live
‘Bough’ and ‘bow’ are pronounced the same
Except, of course, when “bow” is pronounced “bow” instead.
I shot the boughs with my bow and then gave a bow to my bo!
‘Knee’ and ‘Leigh’ are pronounced the same.
Well they rhyme, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say they’re pronounced the same
Leigh can be pronounced like ‘Lee’ or ‘Lay’
Leigh put the Polish bough over his knee but couldn’t polish it. “What’s the use!” he coughed.
Tom Scott has a great video on contractions.
You’ve a problem is proper English as well, albeit more often used in the UK than in NA, feel free to use it!
'uve problm bruv?
Yeah but that’s not English only. Try saying “de el” in Spanish and it sounds super wrong, for similar reasons. Sometimes contractions kill what they replace
Tom Scott recently did a video about this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkZyZFa5qO0
No, this is a problem with the language in general.
It depends on your emphasis. “You HAVE go a problem there,” doesn’t sound weird when you emphasize the have. You’ve a problem doesn’t sound weird, just a bit British.
“you have got a problem”, which isn’t wrong
Can someone explain to me, why isn’t it “you have gotten a problem”?
I actually think that 'you have a problem’s and ‘you have got/you’ve got a problem’ are subtely different in meaning. If someone has something, they may have had it all along. It sort of has an ongoing ontological quality. If someone has got something, it implies that they got it at some point in time. I think.
You’ve got mail!
Goodbye!
People do say that though.
It also has secret rules look up adjectives ordering and vowel ordering.
Y’all crack me up with many of these comments!
English has quite many problems in a lot of components. It is not phonemic and is very complex. That is one of the main reasons I got interested in learning Esperanto. It is simple, phonemic and planned to be good.
Bonan tagon al ĉiuj esperantistoj ĉi tie.
Saluton, mia amiko 👋
It says a lot that I don’t know a lick of Esperanto yet even without the emote I’d have known for sure what you were saying. Working as intended!
Saluton!
Saluton, kiel vi?
Contractions are very regional and a product of spoken English which varies quite a lot from place to place. For example, I use contractions that I don’t see people around me using like: y’all (plural 2nd person pronoun that’s missing in official English speech; verbs are conjugated the same as 2nd person singular forms), shouldn’t’ve, gonna (going to/ going to want to), wanna (want to), that’re, then’ll, then’re etc.
guy@lemmy.world 11 months ago
In the sentence “you have a problem”, “have” is the main verb. When reduced to the clitic “'ve”, it becomes a weak form and is only expected to be used as an auxiliary verb. These types of verbs must be followed by the main verb. “a” is not a verb. Thus, we insert “got”.
If we do not insert “got”, the stress in the sentence moves and it sounds overly affected.
Why this is the case here and not for other verbs, like in “You’re a man”, I’m not too sure though.
reddig33@lemmy.world 11 months ago
🏆
UndercoverGranny@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I can’t find the clitic.
rhythmisaprancer@kbin.social 11 months ago
To add to this, "have got" is perfect tense. "You're a man" is different because "are" isn't an auxiliary verb here, it is just added to "you" as a contraction. That phrase would probably be an existential clause.
I miss World Wide Words!