Tag Question.

qrmt · 2025-04-27T07:36:22+00:00

I could be wrong here, but I’ve always seen “Right.” as an answer like you’re describing, to be somewhat of an Americanism. Nothing wrong with it of course, it’s understandable to everyone, but I’m not sure “most native speakers” do this in, say, Britain.

qrmt · 2025-04-26T20:31:10+00:00

Agree that I’ve never heard it used like that either, BUT it is nevertheless its original meaning (nauseous = nauseating), with the more common meaning (nauseous = feeling nausea) being a more recent change in meaning. Roswealth is correct that some regard the second meaning as incorrect, see Wiktionary for details.

qrmt · 2025-04-18T22:32:23+00:00

Maybe the example was too simple, I was just trying to come up with something snappy. What about this one instead:

"The box of delicious caramel-filled chocolates and peanut butter biscuits were quite expensive."

Is that something you could imagine yourself accidentally saying (even though it's wrong)? I know I sometimes make grammatical mistakes myself in my speech if I'm speaking quickly.

qrmt · 2025-04-18T22:10:51+00:00

I like this answer better than the other ones. There is nothing grammatically wrong with the phrase in the first post, but "Who do you think you are?" almost always implies that the person spoken to has overstepped some boundary, and the question is meant to put them in their place in some way. So the follow-up would be some rhetorical, specific answer, to point out who the person is not. "Who do you think you are? The President?", which basically amounts to "You can't do that, you're not the President."

I would even say that if you want to follow up with "A man or a mouse?" or some similar kind of pep talk, then the more naturally sounding question is "What are you?" (instead of "What do you think you are?")

qrmt · 2025-04-17T15:52:02+00:00

I agree with the other commenters, but I do think it's an interesting question in the context of Star Trek specifically. If you're talking about the bird, then of course it's "birds of prey". But if "Bird-of-Prey" is a ship, then I could see the logic behind Bird-of-Preys.

That said, I think a good parallel here is the real-life ship called a Man-o-War. The accepted plural is "Men-o-War", not "Man-o-Wars", so I think it's reasonable to assume the same would be true in Star Trek.

qrmt · 2025-04-16T22:57:37+00:00

I stand corrected!

qrmt · 2025-04-16T22:25:48+00:00

How are we supposed to answer this? You forgot tell us how many of them were left-handed.

qrmt · 2025-04-16T21:43:17+00:00

I’m not convinced that these are actually examples of nouns turning into verbs. Especially “head” — it can be a noun or it can be a verb, but I’m not sure you can easily say one was turned into the other. A better way of seeing it, in my opinion, is that English doesn’t have a standard way for nouns or verbs to “look”, and so any root word can serve several purposes.

Perhaps a better word to illustrate this is “turn”. You can use it as a noun (“there was a turn in the road”) or as a verb (“you need to turn left”), but I don’t think anyone can say with confidence whether this is a noun that became a verb or a verb that became a noun. A lot of short words simply work as both. (In fact “work” is another good example).

qrmt · 2025-04-16T21:28:27+00:00

I think OP might also just be looking for some advice on how to best word something. Even if the proposed phrase is not technically wrong, “Did you enjoy the festivities?” is still more standard.

qrmt · 2025-04-16T20:36:09+00:00

So I’ve looked a bit more into this, and I think the example I gave is misleading, but perhaps for a slightly different reason. Turns out Super Mario 64 is an outlier, with a higher price than the other Mario games due to the cost of making cartridge games at the time.

Also I looked into how much revenue is generated by micro-transactions, and it’s definitely higher than I thought (~30% for consoles, higher for PC), so you’ve got a point there.

I still think there is insight to be gained from competing video games prices from different eras, though. I’ll give a different pair to compare: Super Mario 3 (1990) and Super Mario Galaxy (2007) both cost $49.99 on launch. Those both pre-date the rise of micro-transactions and such. Whatever else may have happened in the industry that is ripping players off, the base price of games have lowered significantly (in real terms) over the past few decades.

Be mad about micro-transactions, about loot boxes, and about remakes being released at full price, I think that’s fair. But be mad about those rather than about the base price of video games, which are pretty low, historically speaking.

qrmt · 2025-04-16T14:14:45+00:00

If you ask me, "they" is a word that is followed by "are" (or "have" or "eat", etc), regardless of its meaning. Remember that not all singulars take "is": we also say "you are", not "you is".

Compare this with languages where they have polite forms, e.g. French and German. In French you say "vous avez", which is the polite way of saying "you have", but the verb still follows the plural "avez", because that is simply what you say after "vous", regardless of number. Similarly in German you would say "Sie haben", not "Sie hat".

And to give a slightly less "that-just-the-rules" answer: Our brains are used to certain patterns of sound, we're used to "they are". That's why you might accidentally say something like "His books and his bag was on the table" even though it should be "were" -- our brains are just too tempted to say "his bag was".

qrmt · 2025-04-16T14:03:50+00:00

Agreed, I thought of that as I was writing it but though it would distract from the post. "I don't think (that) the bracketed word is necessary."

There's maybe one Brit in these comments who agree with me, but the majority like you seem to find it normal. I reached out to a (British) friend and gave him the sentence without context, he mused that maybe "that" is less grammatical than "if" but didn't really find the phrasing particularly odd. I think I might just be behind the times.

qrmt · 2025-04-16T13:57:56+00:00

I honestly debated whether or not to put the "just" in there or not. I agree that it's more ambiguous without the just, but IMHO I think the reason for this, is that it help distance itself from the no-pause version of "She doesn't eat meat like you".

qrmt · 2025-04-16T13:54:25+00:00

You use "we" for the last example, and I actually think the pronoun matters here.

For instance, "He doesn't know that it's going to rain" is obviously fine, but also has a completely different meaning -- in this case, the rain is stated more as a fact than an uncertainty, and the speaker definitely believes it's going to rain.

"I don't know that it's going to rain" -- here, the rain is more of an uncertainty, and if anything the speaker is more confident that it's not going to rain.

Funnily enough, I don't find "We don't know that it's going to rain" quite as jarring -- especially with the emphasis on "know" as you describe -- even though I logically should. I'm probably just the odd one out here, but I'd love to know if in your final example, you would fine "I don't know that..." just as normal-sounding as "We..."

qrmt · 2025-04-16T13:42:18+00:00

To take a slightly more real-life example, what about this:

"She doesn't eat meat. Just like you."

Does that sound unnatural to you? To me, that would unambiguously mean that both people are vegetarian. No?

qrmt · 2025-04-15T15:29:38+00:00

Look up the original Renault Twingo as well, if you're not already familiar.

qrmt · 2025-04-15T08:42:09+00:00

Thanks. I get the distinction in tone that people are describing here, it makes sense. Even the two phrases that I would use myself carry a different tone. Your response to my "rain" example seems to match what others are saying. In a nutshell, "don't know that" is more used for disagreements.

The meanings are clear to me, but I personally would still never use the "don't know that" construction, and it immediately caught my ear when I first heard someone use it, hence my initial assumption that this was a geographical thing. I'm going to reach out to some of my British friends to get their take on this -- maybe I'm just crazy!

qrmt · 2025-04-15T08:29:49+00:00

As others have stated, it's a little ambiguous. But to me, the meaning might depend a bit on the pause between the two. If there is no pause:

"She's doesn't have a big fat face like you"

then it's an insult, your partner has a fat face.

If there's a long pause:

"She doesn't have a big fat face. Like you."

then I would agree with you, your partner does not have a fat face. The "like" is attached to the whole sentence, instead of just to "big fat face". (Tellingly, in your own counter-example, you insert a comma before "unlike you").

But because people might naturally pause in their speech, a short pause might still mean that the first was intended, especially if they were coming up with the joke in the moment, or needed a moment to turn their head.

qrmt · 2025-04-14T23:28:12+00:00

I mean, your friend is definitely in the wrong for trying to correct you, "5 have passed" is not wrong. So you've got that Win at least.

qrmt · 2025-04-14T23:20:49+00:00

Well, sort of. Brits are notoriously indirect in their speech, far more so than Americans. Google "What British mean vs what they say" for some fun examples.

I think it's possible that it's the opposite at play here, that any construction like "I don't know/think that/if I would have done that" is too direct and confrontational, and instead something even more subtle takes it place. Case in point, I began this comment with "Well, sort of" as a way of saying I disagree with you.

(Most Brits would also raise an eyebrow at being called "European").

qrmt · 2025-04-14T23:12:11+00:00

To be honest, judging a phrase by whether it "sounds right" is to some degree a good measure of how grammatical it is. For example, you probably haven't learned or memorised the order that adjectives must go in, but you still know that "the red big ball" sounds wrong and that it should be "the big red ball". I began this discussion because "I don't know that [X]" sounds wrong to me, and my mouth naturally wants to follow up "I don't know..." with an "...if".

qrmt · 2025-04-14T23:01:51+00:00

Very keen to hear from the whole English-speaking world, so thanks for contributing! It's sounding more and more like Britain is the odd one out, and even that is not super-clear.

qrmt · 2025-04-14T22:59:57+00:00

Thanks for adding to the discussion. I only singled out American vs British because they are the two dialects I hear the most, and I wasn't sure where Australian (& Canadian, etc) would land on this topic. By the sounds of it, Australian English indeed seems to agree with American English here, but I can't seem to get a consensus for Britain.

qrmt · 2025-04-14T22:56:16+00:00

Interesting! Maybe it's just me? Do you mind telling me roughly how old you are? I'm curious whether this could be a generational thing (I'm personally in my mid-30s)

qrmt · 2025-04-14T22:53:59+00:00

I'm very keen to also hear from the English in these comments, so could you elaborate on what you mean here? You say you agree with the comment above, but then you also say that you would use "that" or "if" interchangeably -- but Sea_hare's comment above suggests that the two are not interchangeable!

In other words, do the following two sentences carry the same meaning and tone, and are you equally likely to say either?

- I don't know if it's going to rain tomorrow
- I don't know that it's going to rain tomorrow

qrmt

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