English 101 with Trihan sometimes!

[Calin Leafshade]

Time is an illusion though.

You're an illusion.

[Alun]

A rope has no logical progressive direction.

It doesn't? They're infinitive?  

The infinitive would be "to rope".   

[Kweepa]

Time is an illusion though.

Lunchtime... is awesome.

[tzachs]

...well not to be the one that brings religion into the topic, but if the "it's part of the weekEND" argument is not enough, acording to the Bible, Sunday was the end of the week therefore it isn't at the begining...some weird nations use it as a begining of a week, but I don't get the concept since Monday is the day you start the part of the week that you work thus it's logical that that is the begining
...then again some nations use metric system (which uses the same logic as the number sistem) unlike other nations which use 3/8 of stuff etc. ...it takes all kinds.

Sorry to burst your bible ( ), but in my bible, the Hebrew version, Sunday was the first day of creation... More than that, in Hebrew, Sunday is actually called "the first day", monday is called "the second day" and so on.
And even the weekend argument doesn't work, because in Israel, the weekend ends in Saturday, and everybody goes to work on Sunday...

[Anian]

Sorry to burst your bible ( ), but in my bible, the Hebrew version, Sunday was the first day of creation... More than that, in Hebrew, Sunday is actually called "the first day", monday is called "the second day" and so on.
And even the weekend argument doesn't work, because in Israel, the weekend ends in Saturday, and everybody goes to work on Sunday...

...awww, somebody didn't read my post all the way through.  
And the weekend argument does work, it's in the name and that was the argument... it's not a good one, but unless the word "weekend" is translated into jewish as "week begining," the argument is valid.  
It's not "my" Bible, nor is it my religion.

The infinitive would be "to rope".  

Stupid english. I've used the term from my language and made an incorrect application.

[Alun]

...awww, somebody didn't read my post all the way through.

I'm not sure why just because he disagrees with you you think he didn't read your post...  I've read your post all the way through and I don't agree with it either.  Mainly because the Bible doesn't in fact say anything at all about Sunday being the end of the week.  It doesn't mention Sunday at all.  The closest thing it says is that God rested on the last day of Creation, and that this day should be set apart as the Sabbath and made holy.  But associating the Sabbath with Sunday came much later, and still is far from universal; Judaism defines Saturday as the Sabbath, and so do some Christian denominations (like the Seventh-Day Adventists).  So nope, no Biblical support for Sunday ending the week, I'm afraid.

I should add, though, that really I'm just being a devil's advocate here.  I don't think this particular argument holds water, but I do agree with the more general point that it's more logical (at least given typical Western societal norms of the weekend at all) to consider the week to begin on Monday.  As an American, I'm used to thinking of Sunday as the first day of the week... but I admit that starting the week on Monday is more logical, even though that's not what I'm used to.

[Anian]

Actually I was reffering to me mentioning how basically everybody (nation, country, continent etc.) has their own strange differences.

[Alun]

Actually I was reffering to me mentioning how basically everybody (nation, country, continent etc.) has their own strange differences.

What you said was:

some weird nations use it as a begining of a week, but I don't get the concept since Monday is the day you start the part of the week that you work thus it's logical that that is the begining
...then again some nations use metric system (which uses the same logic as the number sistem) unlike other nations which use 3/8 of stuff etc. ...it takes all kinds.

He pointed out that in Israel Monday isn't the "day [they] start the part of the week that [they] work", so it isn't particularly "weird" for them not to have it as the beginning of a week.  Again, not sure how you get from this that he didn't read the end of your post...

But anyway, by now I think there've been waaaay too many posts about the days of the week, so let's try to get things back to English grammar.  Which I will do by mentioning one of my own grammatical pet peeves, something that I have even made up a word to describe: "miswhoming".  This is when people use "whom" when they should be using "who".  (The other way around doesn't bother me at all, for reasons I'll explain below.)

The reason this bothers me so much, I think, is because it seems it almost has to be a conscious choice.  "Whom" is kind of on the way out anyway, and barely used; I don't think it comes naturally to people to stick it where it doesn't belong.  It seems they decide to use "whom" in a conscious effort to sound educated, which of course backfires completely when they use it wrong.

I could go on at length here giving the details of when exactly it is correct to use "whom".  ("For whom the bell tolls"?  Correct.  "To whom it may concern"?  Correct.  "The man whom they thought had died"?  No.  Wrong.  Don't do that.)  But my advice?  If you're not completely sure whether to use "who" or "whom", just use "who".  Like I said, "whom" is rarely used and kind of on the way out anyway.  If you use "who" in the objective case, nobody is going to care, with the possible exception of some of the most persnickety pedants whose opinions don't matter anyway.  But if you use "whom" in the subjective case... well, then to those who know the difference, you're going to look kind of silly.

This has been my English grammar rant for the day.  I'll shut up now.

[Andail]

Well, whom has quite a wider usage than you seem to suggest.

Basically, in its object function it's always right to use whom, even though it may sound a bit pretentious to most people. As in "whom do you love?" or "whom shall we choose?" both of which are grammatically correct.

A good thumb rule is that whenever the answer is (or could be, hypothetically) "him" you can use whom instead of who.

[Alun]

Well, whom has quite a wider usage than you seem to suggest.

Basically, in its object function it's always right to use whom, even though it may sound a bit pretentious to most people. As in "whom do you love?" or "whom shall we choose?" both of which are grammatically correct.

A good thumb rule is that whenever the answer is (or could be, hypthetically) "him" you can use whom instead of who.

Yes, I know all that.  As I said, I could have gone on at length explaining when to use "who" and when to use "whom".  And in fact, I have done just that, some years ago, in my LiveJournal, even giving the same rule of thumb that you cite in your post.  I intentionally didn't do that here, because I didn't figure it was worth the trouble... those who knew the difference between subjective and objective would already know, and for those who didn't, they'd still likely be tripped up.  My point is that most people don't really know the difference between objective and subjective, and "whom" gets used a lot when it shouldn't be.  (As in my last example, "The man whom they thought had died".  There it's actually subjective -- after all, you'd say "they thought he had died", not "they thought him had died" -- so it should, of course, be "who".  But I've seen sentences like that in which "whom" is misused all over the web... including in posts here on the AGS forums.)

I'm not saying nobody should use "whom".  (I'm one of the last people in a position to criticize anyone for sounding a bit pretentious.)  All I'm saying is, if you don't know the difference, and you're not sure "whom" is correct, when in doubt it's better to err on the side of using "who".  That doesn't apply, of course, to those who do know the difference.  If you do know the difference, and you're sure you're using the words correctly, go for it.

[Snarky]

My point is that most people don't really know the difference between objective and subjective, and "whom" gets used a lot when it shouldn't be.  (As in my last example, "The man whom they thought had died".  There it's actually subjective -- after all, you'd say "they thought he had died", not "they thought him had died" -- so it should, of course, be "who".  But I've seen sentences like that in which "whom" is misused all over the web... including in posts here on the AGS forums.)

I'm not saying nobody should use "whom".  (I'm one of the last people in a position to criticize anyone for sounding a bit pretentious.)  All I'm saying is, if you don't know the difference, and you're not sure "whom" is correct, when in doubt it's better to err on the side of using "who".

I don't think the example is so much about not knowing the difference between "who" and "whom" as about English sometimes being tricky about whether you should use the subjective or objective. We discussed this issue earlier in the thread following this post.

[Alun]

I don't think the example is so much about not knowing the difference between "who" and "whom" as about English sometimes being tricky about whether you should use the subjective or objective.

I'm not so sure everyone knows that "who" is subjective and "whom" is objective; I get the feeling seeing some of the ways "whom" is misused that many people think there's some other rule for their usage, or just use them interchangeably, or use "whom" whenever they want to sound smart.  Still, of course, even for those who do know the difference, it's easy to make mistakes.

[TerranRich]

Here's a question. What is the official term for a noun that describes an innumerable amount of something? For example: snow, dirt, sand, etc. You can't have "one snow, two snows," etc. Is there an official term for that kind of noun?

[Alun]

Here's a question. What is the official term for a noun that describes an innumerable amount of something? For example: snow, dirt, sand, etc. You can't have "one snow, two snows," etc. Is there an official term for that kind of noun?

Officially, it's called a mass noun.  (I've also sometimes seen it just called "uncountable", but apparently "mass noun" is the more technical term.)

[TerranRich]

Thanks! "English 101 with Trihan Sometimes" has come through yet again!

[SSH]

Back to the weekend/sunday thing, in Chinese the days are called:

Zhou yi  (lit. Week One) = Monday
Zhou er (lit. Week Two) = Tuesday
Zhou san (lit. Week Three) = Wednesday
Zhou si (lit. Week Four) = Thursday
Zhou wu (lit. Week Five) = Friday
Zhou liu (lit. Week Six) = Saturday
Zhou tian (lit. Week Heaven) = Sunday

So you can be sure that Chinese calendars will ALWAYS start on Mondays. Its also way more logical than naming your days after Celestial bodies, Norse Gods and Roman Gods.

Any months are easy too: yi yue, er yue, san yue, etc. English's month name etymology is totally screwy.

[Gilbert]

So you can be sure that Chinese calendars will ALWAYS start on Mondays. Its also way more logical than naming your days after Celestial bodies, Norse Gods and Roman Gods.

No. I haven't really dug deep into the topic (i.e. maybe just reading the Chinese Wikipedia article would give better explanation), but as far as I guess these one, two, three, etc. stuff were possibly adapted from the western counterparts.
In ancient time, we Chinese DID use Celestial bodies to name the week days. This practice is still used in Japan (and possibly Korea) but we changed that (with the exception of Sunday that we still use Sun/Day (Sun and Day are interchangeable terms in Chinese for obvious reasons, so are Moon and Month, funny, eh?) to refer to it and it's a bit incorrect to say that Tian refers to 'Heaven' as it's probably used in the context that it means Day) probably just because of convenience.
Also, 99% of calendars would put Sunday on the first column.

In Hong Kong here, it is actually enforced that Sunday is the first day of the week (though some people would use this incorrectly like saying 'from Monday to Sunday'), but I think it's probably mainly a British convention. When we wrote textbooks we made sure that we taught children that a week starts from Sunday. When I inspect the exercises from say item banks, etc. I also make sure that this rule is followed.

Edit:
All right. I've checked the Wikipedia article. The Chinese version is short but it is straight to the point (if only its information are all accurate). We have the transition to using one, two, three... for only about 100 years. When we still used Celestial bodies for the names there was no confusion (i.e. Japanese and Korean should still be okay with this as they hadn't changed this practice). Sun-day was the first day of a week for sure. But after that change in names certain people have changed their preference, leading to the confusion in some districts (seems that there isn't any unified standard for Chinese speaking people now and this confusion mainly lies in the Mainland). Hong Kong is never affected as it uses British convention. Sad thing is, the ISO-8601 standard now uses 1 to represent Monday and 7 for Sunday.

[Bror_Jon]

what? people don't start the week with monday?
that's just too  weird.

edit: just read that it used to like that here too.

[TerranRich]

All my calendars begin with Sunday as the first day of the week.

[Intense Degree]

Another It's/It is one.

I came across this on another forum.

In related Swedish news, I understand that now you also have a nationalist-socialist (or a (neo)nazi) in a communal council (or whatever it's in English) in a small municipality somewhere...

(my emphasis)

Now clearly saying "whatever it's in English" isn't "good" English, but I'm not sure if it is technically incorrect. Obviously we're all aware of the possessive vs contraction situation, and it seems to me that what is meant here is clearly "it is".

So therefore my question is, is this a technically incorrect usage of "it's", or is it just not the done thing in practice?