Innovative Usage Thread

[Kuchigakatai]

I notice that lately in the Spanish weeb online sociolect some people use the English word GOD, in all caps, as a suffix for the speaker's favourite characters in a show. E.g. KazamaGOD.

[axolotl]

An innovative usage from 5-or-6-year-old-me.

One morning I kept drinking water because it felt like I had something stuck in my throat. My dad asked why I was drinking so much water, and I replied "I have a golk in my throat."

It felt like it was in the back, like where g is pronounced (but further back), and it felt like it was shaped like an egg yolk, so this made it a golk. This felt incredibly obvious to me at the time. Of course, my dad was very confused, considering that I had just invented a word.

(I think I may have pronounced it with a uvular, or "as far back as I could." No way to be sure, of course, because six-year-olds don't exactly know their articulations).


I was reminded of this by a similar story I read online, where someone as a young child said "my skin is spicy" to describe an itch, not knowing the word.

[Kuchigakatai]

I don't know how innovative this is, but I notice people sometimes say "if no" and "or no" on the Internet, while I never see either in formally published prose, which have "if not", "or not" instead. Here's an example by Moose-tache from another thread:

If yes, accept one allowable meaning; if no, return to sender." Rules dictating which of an infinite set is the best one, rather than rules dictating which single combination is allowable, are still rules.

It seems strongly influenced by the language of programming in this specific quote though, which maybe makes the artificiality of "if no" more acceptable. Unless "if no" is really something Moose-tache regularly says.

Another example I just came across, from a chatroom, by a speaker from Louisiana:

those exist in the middle ages, depending on whether the local language had /ʃ/ or no

[linguistcat]

I don't think I would read "If yes... if no..." as strange; it's just a parallel construction as far as I'm concerned. The "...or no." in the second example sounds more like it's dialectal or idiolectal.

Meanwhile, if the construction were "If [verb phrase] ... If no..." I'd find that a bit weirder. I would use "if not" in that case whether it was formal or informal. EX: "If you go, tell Bob my decission. If not, I'll see him Monday."

[Travis B.]

If yes ... if no ... is understandable to me but feels kind of weird overall; if no feels even weirder when not juxtaposed with if yes to me.

[Raphael]

On the other hand, Wenn ja... ... wenn nein... feels like perfectly regular German to me.

[Travis B.]

To me if yes ... if no ... feels like a short form for if it is yes ... if it is no ..., which feel more natural to me.

[Kuchigakatai]

Anyone else notice that people are saying "If only I would have done X" instead of "If only I had done X"

[Linguoboy]

Anyone else notice that people are saying "If only I would have done X" instead of "If only I had done X"

If anything, I'm noticing more use of simple past in protases, e.g. "If only I did X" (when the action is punctual, not habitual).

[Ryusenshi]

On the other hand, Wenn ja... ... wenn nein... feels like perfectly regular German to me.

It's also perfectly normal in French: si oui... si non.... In fact, it's so common that the last two words have fused into sinon, which can be used in other contexts to mean "otherwise, or else".

It's interesting that almost every programming language uses else in this sort of environment...

Code: Select all

if <condition> then
    <do_something>
else
    <do_other_thing>
 

... even though it wouldn't be idiomatic in regular English. I once read an article wondering how it came to be, and speculating that it was due to non-native English speakers, but I can't find it at the moment.

[Raphael]

It's interesting that almost every programming language uses else in this sort of environment...

Code: Select all

if <condition> then
    <do_something>
else
    <do_other_thing>
 

... even though it wouldn't be idiomatic in regular English. I once read an article wondering how it came to be, and speculating that it was due to non-native English speakers, but I can't find it at the moment.

Perhaps the designers of programming languages thought that "otherwise" would be too long?

[zompist]

Cute coinage found on Twitter to describe Russia's failed attempt to overrun Ukraine in the spring: "cringe-krieg"

[Ryusenshi]

Probably not a recent development, just one I only noticed recently – and an interesting case of the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon.

Last week, I read some online rant, which said at one point:
"And then this thing happened. SIKE! No, actually, the opposite happened."
A comment mentionned that sike should be spelled psych and also berated the main post for using such a childish joke.

I didn't know this usage, or the word sike: I thought I had never seen someone using sike or psych this way before. And then, the following days, I encountered the same pattern three times in unrelated contexts.

It's possible that I had seen this before, but hadn't noticed because I didn't understand it. I probably thought sike meant something like "sigh" or "yikes", instead of being a respelling of psych.

[Ryusenshi]

I once read an article wondering how it came to be, and speculating that it was due to non-native English speakers, but I can't find it at the moment.

Found it! It's here: https://github.com/e-n-f/if-then-else/b ... en-else.md

Apparently, the first computer-related use of the word else was in a paper by German scientists, which had been hastily translated into English. The German proposition was the cleanest and was eventually adopted, despite not being idiomatic in everyday English.

[fusijui]

It sounds perfectly idiomatic to me, in terms of 19th century English and early-mid 20th century formal (written) English norms.

[Qwynegold]

Probably not a recent development, just one I only noticed recently – and an interesting case of the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon.

Last week, I read some online rant, which said at one point:
"And then this thing happened. SIKE! No, actually, the opposite happened."
A comment mentionned that sike should be spelled psych and also berated the main post for using such a childish joke.

I didn't know this usage, or the word sike: I thought I had never seen someone using sike or psych this way before. And then, the following days, I encountered the same pattern three times in unrelated contexts.

It's possible that I had seen this before, but hadn't noticed because I didn't understand it. I probably thought sike meant something like "sigh" or "yikes", instead of being a respelling of psych.

It used to be psyche, as in "to psych someone" (to disturb them so that they perform badly in a game). Back then I would mostly encounter it in speech rather than writing. But then people started using it online, and I guess they didn't know anymore where it came from, so they just pronunciation spelled it. You never see anyone spell it psych nowadays.

[Kuchigakatai]

I'm really surprised by this conversation. I've lived here in Vancouver for nearly 15 years now and I don't recall ever hearing this sike!/psych! interjection. Let's see if the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon ends up applying to me too. Or maybe it just isn't used here.

[zompist]

It used to be psyche, as in "to psych someone" (to disturb them so that they perform badly in a game). Back then I would mostly encounter it in speech rather than writing. But then people started using it online, and I guess they didn't know anymore where it came from, so they just pronunciation spelled it.

I learned this from my nieces when they were young, which would have been in the 1980s.

[Ryusenshi]

It used to be psyche, as in "to psych someone" (to disturb them so that they perform badly in a game).

I knew about this use, or similar ones. What surprised me was its use as an exclamation to immediately contradict yourself, kinda like yelling "Not!" as in Wayne's World. I imagined it started as a way of saying "fooled you", and was later extended to cases where no one is fooling anybody.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I'd actually forgotten the sike spelling.