Timeline for Dubious Tenses in Airline Preflight Speech
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
14 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 10, 2015 at 22:23 | comment | added | WS2 | Think yourself lucky you don't fly with Japanese airlines We hope you have enjoyed your fright with us. And after serving drinks and peanuts, in turbulence, please hold your drinks in your hand, (and your nuts in your other hand). | |
| Jun 15, 2014 at 23:21 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | I've always understood this phrasing to use will in the literal, semantic sense of actual willingness, rather than the semantically void sense as a future marker; i.e., even if the bag refuses to inflate. | |
| Jun 15, 2014 at 18:14 | history | edited | tchrist♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Per http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/a/4722, please ‘never’ use 𝚖𝚘𝚗𝚘𝚜𝚙𝚊𝚌𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚎𝚡𝚝 or ˋbackticksˋ on ELU.
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| Mar 5, 2014 at 5:46 | comment | added | geometrian |
@JohnLawler: The linked resource was extremely helpful, but does not the "verb phrase syntax" need to match as well as tense? @MrHen: I wanted to add the tag soft-question, but it doesn't seem to exist on this stackexchange site. I'll also admit the question isn't exactly productive; after sitting on a plane for some hours surrounded by people yet cutoff from human contact save an awkward preflight announcement, one's writing is not at its best.
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| Mar 5, 2014 at 5:27 | vote | accept | geometrian | ||
| Feb 26, 2014 at 19:07 | comment | added | MrHen | This question appears to be off-topic because it is a rant. | |
| Feb 25, 2014 at 23:41 | comment | added | Sven Yargs | When you fly to San Francisco, be sure to spend some time in the BART system, where you'll almost certainly hear this announcement at some point: "Report any suspicious packages to the train operator, station agent, or call BART police at 877-679-7000." | |
| Feb 24, 2014 at 20:17 | comment | added | Barmar | I think I've sometimes heard it as "Even though the bag does not inflate, ..." | |
| Feb 24, 2014 at 19:50 | review | Close votes | |||
| Feb 26, 2014 at 19:47 | |||||
| Feb 24, 2014 at 17:47 | answer | added | David M | timeline score: 1 | |
| Feb 24, 2014 at 17:35 | review | First posts | |||
| Feb 24, 2014 at 19:31 | |||||
| Feb 24, 2014 at 17:34 | comment | added | John Lawler | Second, I hate to be the one to tell you, but there are only two tenses in English: present and past. All the rest of the so-called "tenses" are just old fancy names for a few of the several thousand combinations of auxiliaries and verbs possible in English. So don't worry about mixing them. And don't worry about correctness unless you know the actual rules. | |
| Feb 24, 2014 at 17:31 | comment | added | John Lawler | All formulaic speech, especially legally-mandated speech like this, contains oddities of expression and usage that feel strange out of their original context. So it's not surprising it's odd; that's one of the reasons for official speech in the first place -- to make you take notice. | |
| Feb 24, 2014 at 17:17 | history | asked | geometrian | CC BY-SA 3.0 |