Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations strongm on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

It sounds aristocratic! Hmmmmm

Status
Not open for further replies.

Ladyazh

Programmer
Sep 18, 2006
431
US
From another forum:
___________________________________________
PosterOne:
"Do you want to go with?"
I say that too!
As well as
"Have you ever been?"
___________________________________________
PosterTwo:
"Have you ever been?" drives me nuts.
Where is that from? It sounds aristocratic!


Now I am confused.
I am saying 'Have you ever been here before?' so how un-common is this? Aristocratic? WOW! Never crossed my mind.

Or if i am going I am asking 'Do you want to go with me?' - how strange is that? Never though of it...

Or maybe my foreign mind don't get a joke?

 
Both of these figures of speech are "elliptical phrases" (i.e., having an implied ellipsis ["..."] meaning that the phrases are incomplete, but still typically understood.)

"Do you want to go with?" meaning "Do you want to go with...me?"

"Have you ever been?" meaning "Have you ever been...there?"

This is not to imply that these terms are not obvious or understandable to a "foreign mind"; they are probably just not yet comfortable/familiar to a "foreign ear".


[santa]Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
[I provide low-cost, remote Database Administration services: www.dasages.com]
 
One key factor in any elliptical phrase is the requirement that the missing element be understood in context.

The "have you ever been" is fairly common and is typical in this type of dialogue.

"We're going to the French Quarter next week"
"Have you ever been?"

However, I do not like the "Do you want to go with?" phrase. If you're going to include the "with", (preposition) then you should include the appropriate object; otherwise, leave out the entire prepositional phrase, simply saying, "Do you want to go?".

--------------
Good Luck
To get the most from your Tek-Tips experience, please read FAQ181-2886
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
 
I agree with CC].

"Wanna come with?" is slang that, as far as I know, cropped up fairly recently. Or perhaps it was common in another part of the country and I just didn't hear it growing up.

Whatever the case, I don't like it one bit.

[tt]_____
[blue]-John[/blue][/tt]
[tab][red]The plural of anecdote is not data[/red]

Help us help you. Please read FAQ181-2886 before posting.
 
The welsh often leave out words and assume it can be understood.

The most comment I think is

"Did you enjoy?" or indeed "Ooooohh I enjoyed..."

Fee

The question should be [red]Is it worth trying to do?[/red] not [blue] Can it be done?[/blue]
 
Want to come with" could also be a bad literal translation from German (Wollen Sie mitkommen?) French (Voulez vous venir avec?) or Dutch (Wil je meekomen?) where the "with me" part is also frequently left out.

p5
 
p5, it would never, ever be said that way in French.
In German, however, the sentence makes sense.

"That time in Seattle... was a nightmare. I came out of it dead broke, without a house, without anything except a girlfriend and a knowledge of UNIX."
"Well, that's something," Avi says. "Normally those two are mutually exclusive."
-- Neal Stephenson, "Cryptonomicon"
 
Well... "venir avec" gets 795000 hits in google. Not that that necessarily means anything, but still.

Granted, the "moi" part is not frequently omitted.

p5
 
French is my mother tongue.. I've -never- heard "tu viens avec?" or "viens avec" or anything similar in 15 years. Never read it anywhere.
Trust me :)

"That time in Seattle... was a nightmare. I came out of it dead broke, without a house, without anything except a girlfriend and a knowledge of UNIX."
"Well, that's something," Avi says. "Normally those two are mutually exclusive."
-- Neal Stephenson, "Cryptonomicon"
 
I don't remember much from highschool French, but the fact that Google returns X hits is meaningless because among those hits are things like, "Veux-tu venir avec nous" and other sentences that add to the search term.

Re-reading my previous post, I'd like to point out that when I said, "fairly recently", I meant in the last 20 years or so.

[tt]_____
[blue]-John[/blue][/tt]
[tab][red]The plural of anecdote is not data[/red]

Help us help you. Please read FAQ181-2886 before posting.
 
Do you want to come with?" always makes me cringe. To me it sounds incredibly uneducated. It forces a preposition, "with", into fulfulling the role of an adverb. It's especially troubling because "Do you want to come along?" means the same thing and has the added virtue of being grammatically correct.

I'm not sure when this slang first became common, but I first noticed it about 20 years ago.
 
What about 'Who are you going with?'
It makes perfect sense to me, am I wrong to like the way it sounds? And what is the right way to ask this question?

 
'Who are you going with?' is fine with me. "Who" is the object of the preposition "with". Of course, purists would prefer 'With whom are you going?', but that is too formal for ordinary speech.
 
There is nothing wrong with the question "Who are you going with?".

The issue is having a preposition without an object.

"Do you want to go with?" is wrong because it has a preposition 'with' without an object.
"Who are you going with?" is fine because the preopositon 'with' has an object - the pronoun 'who'.

--------------
Good Luck
To get the most from your Tek-Tips experience, please read FAQ181-2886
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
 
And, as an intermediate improvement, the question should be:

"Whom are you going with?" since the object of the preposition truly should be an objective pronoun.

Also, it is less desirable to have a dangling preposition at the end of the sentence, so the best improvement is: "With whom are you going?"

[santa]Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
[I provide low-cost, remote Database Administration services: www.dasages.com]
 
As karluk said, "Do you want to go with?" (or, as I usually hear it spoken, "Wanna come with?) sounds uneducated.

[tt]_____
[blue]-John[/blue][/tt]
[tab][red]The plural of anecdote is not data[/red]

Help us help you. Please read FAQ181-2886 before posting.
 

Isn't this just a type of so-called "regionalism?"

My Chicago-area sister-in-law often says things like, "I'm going to the mall. Would you like to come with?"

Drove me nuts when I first heard { }. Hell, she'd probably get there and buy a bottle of "Pop."

"Make it Soda," said Capt. Picard. ("French's was his mustard tongue...)

[bigsmile] ? [green]Come on, Trev, giggle a bit. I meant no offense; heck, I studied French in both High School and College. It kicked my big ol' butt both times!)[/green]

tim

[blue]
______________________________________________________________
After a cursory examination, the doctor said I was totally f*#king healthy...[/blue]
 
I smile just reading your username, but most of your jokes are beyond me :)

"That time in Seattle... was a nightmare. I came out of it dead broke, without a house, without anything except a girlfriend and a knowledge of UNIX."
"Well, that's something," Avi says. "Normally those two are mutually exclusive."
-- Neal Stephenson, "Cryptonomicon"
 
anotherhiggins,

Using the preposition with no object is not recent slang. My grandmother used to say something like "Are you coming with?" all the time. She also spoke Swedish, so I don't know if that had anything to do with it.
 
In the ... 'east of europe', like Germany and such, the verb "mitkommen" means "to come with".
As many have suggested, there may be a relationship, a bad translation, a brain short-circuit..
It makes no sense in english though.

"That time in Seattle... was a nightmare. I came out of it dead broke, without a house, without anything except a girlfriend and a knowledge of UNIX."
"Well, that's something," Avi says. "Normally those two are mutually exclusive."
-- Neal Stephenson, "Cryptonomicon"
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top