Happy Martin Luther King Day Everybody!
Many, many things to discuss, and once again, can't decide which one to write about now. I am fighting the urge to blast you with pictures of the cutest dog ever, who I have the honor of dog-sitting this week. But I will resist, lest you live in San Francisco and start stalking her. Her real owners would be confused if they kept getting flowers from a "secret admirer."
We could discuss that the neighborhood flower shop is a money laundering front for the Mob, and I could even include a picture of their cute polka dot flower pots, but since I have nothing to go on other than my gut, we won't.
Since there was no work today, I had the opportunity to watch some daytime television, which I happily took advantage of (the mountain).
Fuck it. I was going to talk about something I saw on tv, but screw that. Children, today we are discussing prepositions and prepositional phrases. Why? Because they stress me the fuck out.
Everyone knows by second grade that you're not supposed to start a sentence with "and" or "but." It wasn't until 7th grade that I learned about the wonderful world of prepositions. They have been driving me crazy since. Why is it SO EASY to end a sentence with a preposition? Why? WHY?
(And) Any time you start a sentence with the word "and," like in this self-referential one, you can just drop the "and," and the sentence can still stand with dignity. (But) The same can not be said of a preposition. If your sentence ends with a preposition and you want to fix it, you are forced to move the ENTIRE prepositional phrase to another location within the sentence. Thus, "Since there was no work today, I had the opportunity to watch some daytime television, which I happily took advantage of (the mountain)." has to become "Since there was no work today, I happily took advantage of the opportunity to watch some daytime television."
I do not speak any other languages, unless you count New York Driver as a language. Which you shouldn't for these purposes, as NY Driver only has body parts, rather than parts of speech. But for those of you smarties who do, please tell me: is writing in foreign languages as difficult as writing in English? Because I think I need a nap now.
We could discuss that the neighborhood flower shop is a money laundering front for the Mob, and I could even include a picture of their cute polka dot flower pots, but since I have nothing to go on other than my gut, we won't.
Since there was no work today, I had the opportunity to watch some daytime television, which I happily took advantage of (the mountain).
Fuck it. I was going to talk about something I saw on tv, but screw that. Children, today we are discussing prepositions and prepositional phrases. Why? Because they stress me the fuck out.
Everyone knows by second grade that you're not supposed to start a sentence with "and" or "but." It wasn't until 7th grade that I learned about the wonderful world of prepositions. They have been driving me crazy since. Why is it SO EASY to end a sentence with a preposition? Why? WHY?
(And) Any time you start a sentence with the word "and," like in this self-referential one, you can just drop the "and," and the sentence can still stand with dignity. (But) The same can not be said of a preposition. If your sentence ends with a preposition and you want to fix it, you are forced to move the ENTIRE prepositional phrase to another location within the sentence. Thus, "Since there was no work today, I had the opportunity to watch some daytime television, which I happily took advantage of (the mountain)." has to become "Since there was no work today, I happily took advantage of the opportunity to watch some daytime television."
I do not speak any other languages, unless you count New York Driver as a language. Which you shouldn't for these purposes, as NY Driver only has body parts, rather than parts of speech. But for those of you smarties who do, please tell me: is writing in foreign languages as difficult as writing in English? Because I think I need a nap now.
Labels: Ejumakashun, Interactive, New York State of Mind, Overthinking
posted by Green at 1/21/2008 05:24:00 PM
7 Comments:
I don't think anyone taught me about the prepositions at the end of a sentence. :( But maybe I just forgot. Glad I know it now. In German you can have words that "look" like prepositions at the end of a sentence, like "an" or "auf" (on, off). They are not really prepositions in that case however, but prefixes of a composed verb. Those verbs can be split up again into their original parts, leaving the prefix on its own (possibly at the end of the sentence).
I'm a grammar snob and I can't seem to get rid of the And's at the beginning of my sentences. I use "So" just as much.
I suck.
Ditto to Nicole. I think "and" at the beginning of a sentence is perfectly acceptable if I'm not writing a professional letter or some such nonsense. AND I like the quality of emphasis they add.
I believe Winston Churchill once said, "This is the type of nonsense up with which I shall not put".
A professor of mine once said that the rules of English grammar that are completely stupid, like the ending a sentence with a preposition thing, were not originally rules of the English language. After the Norman invasion, some educated person thought it would be a great idea if English emulated Latin and tried to force English grammar into that mold and caused native speakers of the English language grief ever since. He also said something about if most dialects have the same things being incorrect in them, that it's a sign that the language needs to change, not the other way around. I'm not sure if he was full of it or not, but it sounds reasonable enough.
I figure that if someone's going to pick apart my dangling prepositions or my incorrect usage of and or but at the beginnings of sentences, I got no time for 'em.
English is a whacked language compared to Spanish.
I can assure you, writing in other languages is whacked too.
All languages with a long history are filled with inconsistencies in grammar and pronunciation. Finnish is fairly easy because the written language is relatively new, and esperanto is way easy since it is made to be so.
Green, I wanna see that dog!!!
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