The English Pedant Strikes Again

[azurelunatic]

Let's. Not lets, but let's. Let's go to the movies! It is a contraction of let us. The phrase "Why don't we" can be substituted for the contraction let's if the writer is in doubt.

Let's not confuse 'let's' with 'lets', as in, "My landlady lets us this apartment." This word is not seen much in American writing.


(Note to self: 'not seen much in American speech' is... um... right. )

Comments

[boojum.livejournal.com]

"lets" is used to mean "allows", so it's not a complete British-ism.

[azurelunatic]

Point. I thought of that somewhat later.

I do not speak American particularly well.

[boojum.livejournal.com]

I don't always speak human very well. There are times when I cannot sufficiently unfracture my language and communication abilities to communicate with (mostly to) other humans. I'm working on it.

[azurelunatic]

Mona didn't, and Naomi doesn't, speak very well at all. Finger-spelling, sure, but not speaking. I think the only person Mona ever spoke to at any sort of length was Darkside.

[boojum.livejournal.com]

Do/did they speak fairly normally, just spelled out on the fingers? *ponders* I know that sometimes when I'm having communication problems, it's because I keep trying to communicate with body language, not with words, but I don't know what sign language would count as. Hmm.

Brains are way cool; pass the screwdriver. *grin*

[azurelunatic]

Normally, though with a less sophisticated vocabulary, and without certain important concepts needed to exist sanely in society without getting completely trampled, which is why onboard security has disallowed them use of easy communications to anyone who might get them hurt. To date, Darkside's one of the few who has ever had Mona speak to him.

I can't fingerspell very fast. At some points I've had to resort to Little Mermaid-like "ghaa, my throat" motions, followed by the usual sign for "crazy", and then pointing firmly at myself. I can't talk because I'm crazy. But it's cool.

[boojum.livejournal.com]

Yeah, makes sense to protect them if they don't have adequate protection. I tend to drop concepts whose format needs to be derived. If I don't already know (and really know, not just rederive on the fly) the translation of a concept from my brain to a reasonable English chunk, that concept is hard to get across when my brain's in one of its communication-broken states. I also have "nnnr" (brain not awake enough yet to handle complicated things like people, unfamiliar food, and, occasionally, walls) and "Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?" (which I think is originally from Chris Tucker in Rush Hour. It's when I can't tell why I can't get people to understand me. I hate it.)

I don't much tell anybody when I'm in either of the first two states, both because it's obvious and because I can't really. I have bowed out of conversations because of the third, but don't generally explain it much.

Hmm. There's also the word-jumble-foo state, where I lose track of linearization of words and concepts and I move around wildly on the colloquial--stiffly formal axis.

[azurelunatic]

Word jumble happens to me when I'm very tired or drunk, and it's amusing. I search for the most precise word to use for something, because I don't want to mess up, but sometimes I settle for a complex word that almost works.