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I have come across a video in which the speaker says something like

What the Commons is, though however, is ...

Why use 'though however' together? Is the sentence with double 'is correct?

You can hear the whole utterance here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8101854.stm

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    The double 'is' causes me no problems, though some might object purely on style grounds. The 'though however' is redundancy; I'd drop the 'though'.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Nov 10, 2013 at 9:23
  • How many times does one repeat a word while speaking? I guess the answer is many. Sometimes they say something then drop it in favor of a better or different word. And I think this is one of those instances.
    – Noah
    Commented Nov 10, 2013 at 9:27
  • @Edwin Ashworth Yes 'though' and 'however' are really serving the same purpose, and only one of them is needed - preferably 'however'. If this is an extract from speech, it is unsurprising. None of us ever speak in a manner which would pass muster if it was committed directly to paper. We frequently repeat words, duplicate expressions, stop before the end of a sentence and say things like 'You know what I mean?'. Conversation is an altogether different skill to writing and you can't simply convert one to the other without some editing.
    – WS2
    Commented Nov 10, 2013 at 9:44
  • People use various devices, while speaking, to gain time for their brains to catch up with their mouths. One is to say many things (keeping the mouth busy) with only one meaning (so the brain can work on something else). Another is "umm ... well ...". Another is to just shut up for a moment, but that tends to invite interruptions.
    – Andreas Blass
    Commented Nov 11, 2013 at 2:58

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Both instances of is are syntactically necessary. It would be ungrammatical to omit one of them and say ‘what the commons is . . . the representatives from every constituency’.

It might be different in a piece of edited prose, but in the context of a speech, however reinforces the contrast marked by though.

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  • I like the idea of reinforcement :) Do you often hear 'however' used this way?
    – mick
    Commented Nov 11, 2013 at 21:30
  • No, but I can't say I've been listening for it.
    – Barrie England
    Commented Nov 11, 2013 at 22:05

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