• zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    I’ve noticed a tendency of people to combine words that are frequently seen together: “alot”, “aswell”, “noone”, etc.

    Some of these catch on, like “nevertheless” and “whatsoever”. Maybe eventually “alot” and “noone” will become standard English, too.

    • DillyDaily@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      The way alot, aswell and noone are combining is expected given how many other words we don’t bat an eye at went the same way. “another” is the perfect example, it’s just “an other” combined.

      It’s sort of the reverse of what happened to words like apron and newt.

      The division and bracketing of phrases changes over time.

      “An apron” is the modern usage of the word “napron”, and a newt was originally called an eute. The grammatical need for “a” and/or “an” resulted in the root word being rebracketed and changed.

    • mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      I recall “noone” being taught as acceptable by my english teacher back in 2004. That being said, she’s also said some things that ended up being very wrong

      • NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone
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        4 months ago

        Whenever someone says “Noone wanted this” I always picture a big Irishman who has a deep appreciation for stuff Internet people are against.

    • pyre@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      it’s all just made up. you can see old writings without spacing. or punctuation. you can’t even define what’s really a word universally. people just decided what’s what and standardized it at one point just for some consistency. that doesn’t mean things won’t change; they most definitely will.

    • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I always imagine Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits whenever someone does that.

      “Noone thinks I have a lovely daughter.” Yes, Mrs. Brown. Noone does.