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Ending a Sentence with a Preposition

Started by SGOS, April 22, 2017, 10:53:38 AM

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SGOS

I'm advocating this and organizing a protest that calls for grammatical disobedience.  After years and years of creating awkward sounding sentences, because I'm forbidden to end a sentence with a preposition, I'm throwing down the gauntlet.  I am demanding the right for everyone to end a sentence with a preposition anytime they goddamned well want TO.

This all started two days ago, when NPR did a little blurp on how that totally senseless rule started way back in some long forgotten century of antiquity.  It seems like the audacious grammatical elite, who controlled the English language, and who all walked around with sticks up their butts, decided it was wrong, and saddled the rest of us with their uppity bullshit.  Why?  Because they were all well versed in Latin to which they assigned the same importance that other people with sticks up their butts assign to attending the opera on a regular basis. 

Now, you may have heard of Latin.  It's a little known language but often taught in colleges today in curriculums that include accounting with an abacus, and engineering with a slide rule.  My high school offered classes in Latin, and even back then people knew it was a dead language, but they taught it anyway, sometimes defending its inclusion in the curriculum on the grounds that understanding Latin would help you understand English, which I had already been speaking my entire life.  Anyway, just telling you that some of my friends actually took classes in high school Latin, so you know I've been around the block a few times and have figured out a thing or two on my own.  Actually, I can't remember anyone I knew that took a class in Latin, but the class was offered.  Hell, learning how to speak Hawaiian would have made more sense that learning Latin.

As it turns out, Latin doesn't really make a big deal about ending sentences with prepositions, but because of Latin's obscure word order, prepositions at the end of the sentence turn the whole communication into mostly meaningless gibberish.  And since these grammatical megalomaniacs with sticks up their butts thought Latin to be purer and holier than any other language, regardless that no one except Catholic priests had any use for it, and even the Church itself wasn't sure why it was still there except that their priests spoke in Latin confident that no one in the congregation would comprehend a word of what they said, and were thereby secure from the challenges of trouble making upstarts with axes to grind.

So they decided that prepositions at the end of sentences in English, and any other language as well, were forever off the table.  And obedient me, the fearful child, along with a militant band of conservative "do it the right way" zealots, have been turning perfectly understandable expository into long laborious sentences that lack punch and clarity ever since.  No wonder people today can't tell a fallacy from a logical claim.  They can't even understand the language the fallacy is communicated in.

And I've been pissed over it for the last two days.

Baruch

100 likes, a brilliant essay.  And I even like Latin.  Has to do with "indirect objects" and formal vs informal speech (which allows incomplete clauses, phrases and ye gods! ... incomplete sentences).  We peasants are supposed to ape our betters like the jackanapes we are, imitate how they speak, so we can better pass in polite society.  Like a man dressed as a woman, attempting to pass, with the usual comical results ;-)  Your complaint is far better based than the SJW war against traditional pronouns.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

SoldierofFortune

You can not end a sentence with with...

SGOS

Quote from: SoldierofFortune on April 22, 2017, 12:04:04 PM
You can not end a sentence with with...
You can not end a sentence with with... unless you want to.

Gawdzilla Sama

We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers

Gawdzilla Sama

Quote from: SGOS on April 22, 2017, 12:19:06 PM
You can not end a sentence with with... unless you want to.
Conversational grammar is nothing to fuck with.
We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers

Mike Cl

Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on April 22, 2017, 12:32:02 PM
Conversational grammar is nothing to fuck with.
Unless you want to.  Just make sure you know where you get it at.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?<br />Then he is not omnipotent,<br />Is he able but not willing?<br />Then whence cometh evil?<br />Is he neither able or willing?<br />Then why call him god?

Gawdzilla Sama

Quote from: Mike Cl on April 22, 2017, 01:08:44 PM
Unless you want to.  Just make sure you know where you get it at.
That I can go with.
We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers

Sorginak


Gawdzilla Sama

Waiting for the "End a sentence with a proposition" thread.
We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers

Gawdzilla Sama

We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers

aitm

"This is the sort of stuff of which we shall not put up with."
A humans desire to live is exceeded only by their willingness to die for another. Even god cannot equal this magnificent sacrifice. No god has the right to judge them.-first tenant of the Panotheust

Hydra009


Sorginak


Mike Cl

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?<br />Then he is not omnipotent,<br />Is he able but not willing?<br />Then whence cometh evil?<br />Is he neither able or willing?<br />Then why call him god?