alcas

2,491 reputation

619

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American English speaker; also likes linguistics.se.

	2,491 reputation	bio	website		visits	member for	1 year, 5 months
619 badges		location	Minnesota		seen	7 hours ago

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Nov 10	comment	“Overseas” vs. “abroad” @PeterShor - does Mexico not exist?
Oct 29	comment	Native English inferiority I'm not saying this to plug my own answer, I'm just genuinely puzzled: why was this considered not a real question? The question can certainly be improved, but I was able to identify what OP was asking for and answer it, so...
Oct 28	answered	Native English inferiority
Oct 28	comment	Native English inferiority I think this has the potential to be a very good question if it is changed to be less about "inferiority" and more focused on the linguistic phenomenon of languages having etymologically distinct classes of vocabulary that speakers are sensitive to. It also might be a better fit for linguistics.se, since OP asks for cross-linguistic examples.
Oct 22	revised	Five percent VS The five percent fixed italicization
Oct 22	answered	Solution of/to/for equation
Oct 11	comment	Friendlier way to express you paid for a person's drink/dinner and expect it to be paid back +1, "cover" is most likely what I would say (US English speaker).
Oct 11	comment	Friendlier way to express you paid for a person's drink/dinner and expect it to be paid back @Martin - I disagree too. I actually think I'd be more likely to say "spotted" than "loaned" or "lent". There's a very specific reason: loaned/lent, to me, would imply that my friend physically gave me cash with which I then paid; whereas in this case no money changed hands between us, because my friend paid for my drink.
Oct 10	comment	Is there a term for referencing the main character in a first-person song? the... singer?
Oct 10	comment	Word for anachronistic elements in design style as a function of cultural adoption Oh, wow, that's basically a duplicate! Didn't see that earlier... I think there is value in having both questions, though, since they describe the word differently enough that they would capture different sets of search terms.
Oct 10	answered	Word for anachronistic elements in design style as a function of cultural adoption
Oct 9	comment	What is the correct present continuous form of “thunder” and “lightning”? Here's how the situation seems to me: 1) "It is lightening", while supported by the OED, looks like either a spelling error or like the person means it's getting lighter outside. 2) "It is lightning" looks strange because "lightning" is a noun 99% of the time. I've never seen either this or (1) used. 3) "It is lightninging" is something I've heard people say periodically, but looks ludicrous in writing. It seems like our best option is to recommend "Lightning is flashing", "There is lightning", or some other paraphrase.
Oct 4	awarded	Enthusiast
Sep 27	comment	Five percent VS The five percent @Derfder, for your example sentence to stand alone, you would have to say "2% of our population have the killer instinct"; if you wanted to discuss this specific group, you would say "the 2% of our population who have the killer instinct are very dangerous"; and if you were speaking in a very limited discourse context where this group is being mentioned many times, you might say "the 2% are very dangerous". Does that help?
Sep 27	answered	Five percent VS The five percent
Sep 27	accepted	How was “ben't” used, and when did it cease to be used?
Sep 27	comment	How was “ben't” used, and when did it cease to be used? Whoa, "baan't"? Bizarre.
Sep 27	comment	How was “ben't” used, and when did it cease to be used? What do you mean "there are similar forms which may represent similar pronunciations"?
Sep 26	comment	Waiteen for waiting Where in the US are you hearing this? I'm an American in my 20s and as far as I know have never heard it.
Sep 26	comment	How was “ben't” used, and when did it cease to be used? Obviously. But you also cannot say "why he be not to have his dinner" in modern English. And the distribution of "is not" is not the same as the distribution of "isn't", anyway, so I don't think it answers the question to simply say that ben't occurs wherever be not would.