The Enid Blyton Society

I only say it if I do expect to see the person or people in question some time in the reasonably near future!

Same here. If someone I'm most likely never gonna meet again is saying it, I just smile, nod, and leave with a Goodbye.

Rather than "See you later," Jesus put it more eloquently:

"In My Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and welcome you into My presence, so that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going."

Mind you, that was over 2,000 years ago...

It's like the French who say "au revoir" and the Germans who say "auf wiedersehen". In both cases the meaning is "until the next time we see each other". I wonder if it was German and/or French influence that led to folks saying "see you later"

Courtenay wrote:I like hate it when like people are like always putting "like" in like every sentence as like every second word, like when someone is like "and she was like 'woah!' and I'm like 'what?'" and like, you know, like that...

I feel completely the same way about this Courtenay, it sounds terrible! On Steve Wright's Radio 2 show a few weeks back they were interviewing someone who spoke in the exact same way as your example. It was awful to listen to as he just sounded dozy and unable to string a sentence together.My English teacher would have had a fit if I'd spoken in such a way, she didn't even want us using the word 'nice' in sentences because it wasn't descriptive enough to stretch the mind! You were allowed one 'nice' per page and that was it.

It's such a pity certain words are falling out of use, it's not even as though the replacements are worthy of taking over. Everything is 'awesome' or 'cool' instead of marvellous, superb, smashing, splendid, outstanding, spiffing, sublime, tremendous, magnificent, spectacular, and nothing will ever beat piffle and poppycock, codswallop and tommyrot to describe something that's rubbish or nonsense . How can anybody need to add a 'like' to every other syllable when there is an abundance of perfectly wonderful words available?

Rob Houghton wrote:It seems to me our language will eventually revert to a 'Janet and John' type of speak - 'It was good' 'We had fun' 'we ate our food' etc. Just bland short sentences with no real feeling - just statements. I 'quite like' qualifiers. They enrich the language 'rather' in my opinion. 8)

     This seems pretty obvious when you think about it - so why do so many books, web sites, and so on advising on how to write seem universally to say to avoid adverbs almost totally? That seems to run counter to that. While I would never think they should be excessive or in that "purple prose" style, I have never really been entirely convinced of the soundness of that advice.
     Adverbs are a valid part of speech like any other, and no more devoid of meaning than nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so on. So why do the givers of advice pick on adverbs in particular there?

Regards, Michael.

John Pickup wrote:Why do so many people start their sentences with "basically"? I find that annoying.

     I suspect it began legitimately, in that the person may be trying to get to the essence of their argument and not get bogged down in details that are either not entirely relevant or that they don't have time to go into; so, conscious of this, and aware that they are cutting a few corners, they preface it with "Basically" to convey this. I see it as an attempt at honesty in a sense - you see a need to cut a few corners to save time, but you also feel a need to acknowledge openly that you are doing that.
     If that were all it were, I would have no objection; but it is true that it tends to become a habit, used beyond that situation. I'm afraid I'm sometimes caught myself using it, and a few others. I think such words may sometimes be time-fillers along the lines of "um", "er", " like", and son - buying a bit of time to think up your next words.
     I think being critical of this, in speech at least, is probably being a bit hard: speech is, after all, usually composed in real time as you say it. We must probably overlook it to some degree - unless it becomes so frequent, such as a few times in every sentence, that it reaches the point of seriously distracting from the meaning the person is expressing.

Regards, Michael.

Rob Houghton wrote:

Moonraker wrote:

Julie2owlsdene wrote:I find conversation annoying

I find people annoying.

Me too!! :lol:

     Gosh! Have I somehow stumbled into "Misanthropists Anonymous" or something?

Regards, Michael.

MJE wrote:

Rob Houghton wrote:It seems to me our language will eventually revert to a 'Janet and John' type of speak - 'It was good' 'We had fun' 'we ate our food' etc. Just bland short sentences with no real feeling - just statements. I 'quite like' qualifiers. They enrich the language 'rather' in my opinion.

This seems pretty obvious when you think about it - so why do so many books, web sites, and so on advising on how to write seem universally to say to avoid adverbs almost totally? That seems to run counter to that. While I would never think they should be excessive or in that "purple prose" style, I have never really been entirely convinced of the soundness of that advice.
Adverbs are a valid part of speech like any other, and no more devoid of meaning than nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so on. So why do the givers of advice pick on adverbs in particular there?

That's interesting. I don't think I've ever heard that adverbs in particular should be avoided. As long as they're not overdone they add colour and mood to a piece of writing - and even rhythm and flow. I see no reason to avoid using them.

I agree! I suppose if you kept saying things like 'said Peter slimily, said Janet exultantly, etc on ever attribute to speech it would become a bit annoying...or if you described things such as 'extremely, horrendously dark' or 'the jungle was hot, sweaty, smelly, scary, and frightening!' it might get a bit too much!

I freely admit that, despite learning the difference at school, and despite doing a teacher training course, and despite having a degree in 'Primary English' (meaning children's literature) - I still can never fully remember the difference between verbs adverbs and adjectives...

Rob Houghton wrote:I freely admit that, despite learning the difference at school, and despite doing a teacher training course, and despite having a degree in 'Primary English' (meaning children's literature) - I still can never fully remember the difference between verbs adverbs and adjectives... :oops:

     So I see! (Some of the examples of excessive words you gave were adjectives.)
     It's quite simple, though: adjectives apply to nouns; adverbs apply to verbs or adjectives or even occasionally other adverbs. Adverbs also very often end with "-ly", whereas few adjectives do. (One which does is "kindly", which is also at the same time an adverb: e.g., respectively, "a kindly act", "acting kindly".)
     I've read quite a few "how to write books" over my life; and yes, some of them (especially those ones which greatly stress the need to cut down your writing as much as possible) advocate the completely ruthless pruning of adverbs.

Regards, Michael.

     As for the original topic, "old thing", is that in fact a real part of British speech (or was it)? - or is it an idiosyncratic thing Enid Blyton made up and put in various books? (Mainly the Famous Five - not sure where else it appears - one or two school stories, maybe.)

Regards, Michael.

As far as I know, 'Old Thing' was indeed a real term in the days The Famous Five were written - although mainly amongst the 'upper classes' rather than the rest of the population!

I think regards adverbs, adjectives etc, the main gist of what I read once regarding words disappearing was that any qualifiers (whatever they may be) are disappearing - so instead of 'it was jolly good' people would say 'it was good' or instead of 'the weather was bitterly cold' it would just be 'the weather was cold'.

We learned a LOT about adverbs and adjectives etc...but I never really understood the use in gathering them together under a heading. We use them every day without thinking 'I need an adjective' or 'I need an adverb' etc.

Rob Houghton wrote: I freely admit that, despite learning the difference at school, and despite doing a teacher training course, and despite having a degree in 'Primary English' (meaning children's literature) - I still can never fully remember the difference between verbs adverbs and adjectives...

When I first came to India, I could only speak English (and broken Marathi - the local language), but most kids here were the exact opposite. So for my first ever English exam, I didn't even open the book, (and was barely attentive in class, since I was B.O.R.E.D.), and I was super confident. Well, the question paper was full of questions about identifying the adverb/adjective, deciding whether the blank space would be filled wit a noun/adverb/adjective... etc. You get the drift. I think it's safe to say that 8 year old Sunskriti flunked her first ever English exam big time. If they'd just given words as options and asked us to fill in the blanks, I would've aced it, but no, it had to be about the types of words, which I had no clue about. (And I still haven't taken much effort to learn them. )

Rob Houghton wrote:I think regards adverbs, adjectives etc, the main gist of what I read once regarding words disappearing was that any qualifiers (whatever they may be) are disappearing - so instead of 'it was jolly good' people would say 'it was good' or instead of 'the weather was bitterly cold' it would just be 'the weather was cold'.

     I would hope that they are not disappearing amongst skilled writers, at least, even if they are in the general population. I've never seen why one should make a point of eliminating them when possible - I suppose that just makes for advice that's easier to follow. But I think the best advice is that which is probably harder to follow, and that is use such qualifiers when they are appropriate and eliminate them only when they are excessive - but that means you have to go to the effort of developing a sense of where they are appropriate, and in what quantities.

Rob Houghton wrote:We learned a LOT about adverbs and adjectives etc...but I never really understood the use in gathering them together under a heading. We use them every day without thinking 'I need an adjective' or 'I need an adverb' etc. :wink:

     It so happens that I am rather good at that sort of thing - it was always one of my strongest points in school for instance. So I suppose that might make it too easy for me to be too smug about such things, and not very understanding of those who struggle in such things. But I'm not sure, either, whether knowing about such nuts-and-bolts things about words and grammar is important for good writing or not.
     If I were to draw an analogy with composing music, one might wonder whether an extensive knowledge of music theory is important for composing good music - and I do tend to think the answer is "yes" in that case, because it does give you an understanding of how harmony, counterpoint, and such work and fit together most effectively. I'm not sure if an analogous thing applies to writing, that knowing about adjectives, adverbs, and such things helps you somehow to use them more effectively. I think perhaps it might for a person who is not so skilled in writing, but is trying to be - perhaps they need to write for work or something. Maybe it doesn't matter for a person truly talented, who has a natural ability to use words effectively. And maybe music theory is less important for a person with a deep instinctive understanding of the musical idiom they are working in.
     Where such an analogy falls down, of course, is that words are an everyday thing for all of us, and we all have some level of skill in them (written or spoken), whereas music theory is not a natural human skill that we all have, and it has to be very deliberately learned, and that is done only by the small number of people to whom it will be useful. That difference may make the analogy less applicable. But I do tend to think music theory at the least can't hurt any musician, and very likely will be either a slight or great help to maybe the majority of composers. And perhaps the same is true for writers, that the theory stuff will never hurt, and is very likely to help most to at least some degree.

Regards, Michael.