Re: Word usage in English dialects // was Slang, curses and vulgarities

Tristan McLeay wrote, quoting myself:

> > It's the same as "should" in the sense of "Would you approve of this
> > course of action?" except that it also implies a promise that if you
> > say yes then I will.
>
> I'm not sure where the 'should' is in 'Would you approve of this course
> of action?', I suppose you edited it out at some stage...
Er, no ... "in the sense of.." doesn't mean "as contained in.." to me;
it means, "in the capacity whereby it can be used to mean..".

(This is a "well" in the sense of "hole in the ground", sort of thing.)

> > Besides, "shall" is easier to say than "should" :-)
>
> I think you'll find it hard to prove that!
[d] -> [l] is a pretty common sound change, especially after [U], I
suggest, and easy to reproduce by slurring.

> > An example in dialogue might be:
> >
> > "So, do you have anything planned for tea?"
> > "Er, no I don't, but shall I go down the shop and get a chicken?"
> > "Yeah, sounds good to me."
>
> here, wait, was the missing 'to' between 'down' and 'the' in your
> earlier post not an error then? I assumed it was---in fact, I read it
> in, so to speak, because I wasn't proofreading. Stop breaking the
> language! God gave us prepositions for a reason---to prepose---so do
> it, damnit!
In normal conversation (i.e. informal spoken language) I would almost
certainly leave out the "to" in this context. Only in informal spoken
language, of course, but that's what this example is.

> > Only I and we. You can't really make implied promises on behalf of
> > other people. :-)
>
> Yeah, but I didn't know it was an implied promise, did I? I was aware
> that there's a prescriptivist rule about using 'shall' in the first
> person and 'will' in the second and third though...
Are you sure? I would have sworn that the old-fashioned prescriptivist
rule is that "shall" is a command ("thou shalt not", sort of thing, or
"you shall not enter this room without permission") whereas "will" is
a prediction (as in, "if you stand too close to the edge you will
probably fall off").

Adrian.

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