“We got down from the car and went inside.”
Language changes, and if it is used in a way that has any kind of underlying logic that enables communication, then there’s no such thing as “bad” grammar, just more or less popular dialectical choices (though of course at the fringes these can affect how broadly your message can be understood), and signifiers that are more or less prestigious to a given group. Even something as basic as “don’t use double negatives” only makes sense because there are multiple semantic frameworks one could set up around what a double-negative means (e.g. is it a logical negation, a sematic intensifier, or an emotional intensifier?), and it will often, though not always, serve your communication needs better to treat it as a logical negation. Basically, language evolves; communication has a cultural context; don’t be a pedantic dick.
Almost completely shifting gears, and pulling something tangential from the article, a few weeks ago, I ran across some folks online complaining that they were being enthusiastically served chicken when they’d mentioned they don’t eat “meat.” This snippet from the article helped me clarify how it could be a language issue:
In Spanish, “carne,” which translates as “meat,” can refer to both all meat, or to beef, a specific kind of meat. We discovered local speakers saying “meat” to refer specifically to “beef”—as in, “I’ll have one meat empanada and two chicken empanadas.”
In Spanish, “carne,” which translates as “meat,” can refer to both all meat, or to beef, a specific kind of meat. We discovered local speakers saying “meat” to refer specifically to “beef”—as in, "I’ll have one meat empanada and two chicken empanadas.
Reminds me of where I grew up, we used “coke” to mean soda/pop. As in, want a coke? Which kind? Coca Cola, Sprite, Dr. Pepper, etc.
“we got down from the car and went inside” can make sense. Assuming the ‘car’ is a truck… and it’s lifted. or just a new model ford or chevy.
If you grew up with people who’s first language is Spanish, you probably don’t even think about it. I honestly had to read it a bunch of times to understand the issue, and English is my first language.
I’m from Montreal and the Anglo community has a bunch of these.
“Leave me the mannet before you go to the dep. If there’s a guichet, get that $20 you owe me.”
I had a friend who was from Louisiana. This was a commonly used phrase there.
I wonder if other Spanglish phrases are going to get the “down from the car” treatment, like:
- “Yo tengo calor”: “I have heat”
- “En grupos sociales”: “In groups socials”
In groups socials
Or maybe In groups social. English has got some postpositive adjectives, but -s ending is too ambiguous. (socials = plural of a social, of adj. social, or 3rd person sing. of to social?)
Agreed. I tend to think where English has simplified choices compared to the “partner” language, it will hold on more stubbornly. For instance, English used to have a much wider variety of which words had inflectional endings and how many, but relying on word order was a simpler concept to memorize for a learner and more forgiving when used “sloppily”, so over time it won out, and few loanwords retained any significant number of inflections from their original languages.
We almost never pluralize adjectives, and very rarely gender them, and while not a difficult concept, doing so involves extra effort and choices. Postpositive adjectives, while rare, are not inherently more complex, so I think they could more easily make (further) inroads. All the governmental, legal, and military terms from Norman French may have some new friends in the decades to come, LOL.
