Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 August 27

The bloody McDonald's advert has made this phrase very common, but to me it sounds wrong. Surely the correct construction is "I love it". For example, I eat burgers, and I am eating a burger mean different things, if you were actively loving a McDonalds you'd have your mouth full, so wouldn't be able to sing a little jingle. So my question is, eventually, is this grammatically wrong, or is it just me? And is this an Americanism, hence why it might sound so awkward to me as an Englishman? Cyta 07:46, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It probably is an Americanism; at least, as an American I can say that this and similar constructions seem perfectly natural to me. McDonald's has made one particular phrase popular, but there are many others in the same form, such as "I'm liking this." The use of the progressive naturally creates a sense of something happening, of movement through time. Google books hits for "I'm liking this" show that the phrase collocates strongly with adverbial constructions like "more and more." As in "Now that I can get a lifetime worth of cholesterol in a single sitting, I'm liking fast food more and more." ... This may be part of the reason the slogan was chosen -- to project an image of this tired old hamburger chain as a happening place where the experience keeps getting better and better. "I love it" fails to convey the same impression. -- Visviva 08:55, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"How are you liking your new job?" implies that you're still in the process of forming an opinion, where "How do you like your new job?" implies that process has finished. Tesseran 11:10, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is a "rule" that stative verbs – verbs denoting a state rather than an action – cannot take the progressive tense. Verbs likely to appear on lists of stative verbs include appreciate, be, believe, belong, conclude, contain, decide, equal, feel, forgive, have, hear, know, like, love, mean, owe, perceive, possess, prefer, remember, resemble, see, seem, smell, suppose, tend, think, understand, and wish. There are two ways to interpret the "rule". One is that it gives a way to figure out if a verb is stative or not: Can you say: I'm preferring coffee over tea? If that sounds strange to you, then, apparently, in your mental lexicon prefer is a stative verb. The other interpretation is prescriptive: some verbs are stative, and if you use the progressive tense for one of those you're an oaf who doesn't know proper English. Whichever of these interpretations you may be being preferring, using the progressive tense has the effect of "de-statizing" the verb, turning it into one of action, possibly for effect. That is easier with some on the list than with some others. I'm having difficulties believing that even prescriptivists wouldn't readily utter I'm having difficulties believing that. Still, where the progressive tense is usually needed in English to signal that some action is ongoing, with stative verbs you can normally use the present simple for describing an ongoing state.  --Lambiam 12:04, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(Edit conflict - Lambiam said most of what I wanted to say - and more!). I was going to say that certain stative verbs appear in the present progressive when the meaning is of a more temporary nature, or 'tentative' - i.e. the doer of the action is not sure whether what he/she is doing is right but is doing it tentatively. Ever since that phrase started coming out on the MacDonald's adverts I've always thought of the meaning as this.--Manga 12:12, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am always interested in how they translate it into other languages...it's just boring old "I love it" in German. Adam Bishop 12:40, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Some examples from the musical descriptivist side: The old song "I Never Knew I Could Love Anybody Like I'm Loving You" (composed in the 1920s and popularized by Judy Garland), "I'm Loving Nothing" (1968), "Just Imagine I'm Loving You" (1979), "I'm Loving Every Moment With You" (1990). ---Sluzzelin talk 13:00, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(Aside to Adam Bishop) English is somewhat unusual in having three present tense forms, whereas many other languages have one. E.g. English "I love", "I do love" and "I am loving" are all equivalent to "J'aime" in French. -- Flyguy649 ^talk _contribs 14:07, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah but it's still slightly odd in English, so it's too bad there aren't slightly odd translations! Adam Bishop 17:52, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The French text, at least in America, is "j'm", which is cute. Tesseran 23:54, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks all. "I'm having difficulties" does sound ok in a discussion, but I would say, for example, I have difficulties with McDonald's adverts as well, it all depends on context and timing. If the slogan had been ushered by someone in the middle of a meal ("are you enjoying your meal", "I'm loving it") I don't suppose it would have sounded odd to me. Always interesting to learn grammar, I had never heard of stative verbs before, I learned English the easy way, being born into it. Thanks again, especially Lambiam Cyta 14:13, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Also to Sluzzelin, "Just imagine I'm loving you" suggests sex as much as love to me, and I'd rather not just imagine Justin Timberlake loving a Big Mac. "Do you want to go large on that?" Aggh forgive my immaturity. Cyta 14:16, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps he was attracted by a nice set of toasted buns...don't forget to visualize the "special sauce". StuRat 14:24, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mmm, Super Size Me. Marco polo 14:47, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In Ireland, you can even say "I do be loving it", 'cos Hiberno-English speakers often borrows from Irish language syntax. EamonnPKeane 17:42, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I just remembered I had a Mancunian high school teacher who used this phrase quite a bit (in different persons, like "you're loving it"). He also wrote it as "luvin it" once. Adam Bishop 17:52, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The McDonald's slogan is simply an attempt to sound young and cool. Note that the Quebec French version is "c’est ça que j’m." There's no such word as "j'm" in proper French. It's like SMS (text messaging) talk. -- Mwalcoff 23:56, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I guess I am not young and cool then, ah well I knew that anyway. Thanks again Cyta 09:44, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In France it's c'est tout que j'aime, which loosely means "I love it all." EamonnPKeane 12:21, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

http://www.mcdonalds.de/ uses "Ich liebe es". http://www.mcdonalds.fr uses "c'est tout ce que j'aime". Corvus cornix 21:33, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In my experience, the use of progressive present where British English would use simple present is a common feature of Indian English. The McDonald's adverts do annoy me, but then I strongly suspect they would annoy me even if they contained great prose, brilliant acting, high production-values, and were directed by Hitchcock. DuncanHill 21:45, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In Japan, they didn't even bother translating it, and the phrase is the same as English.--Manga 17:01, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a site similar to babelfish that can translate English to Latin? --Czmtzc 17:45, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not whole sentences, although this can translate single words and give you all the important grammatical info. Adam Bishop 17:52, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Perfect! That is exactly what I wanted. Thanks--Czmtzc 12:34, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The Irish language has three sets of numbers:

• one set for counting: a haon, a dó, a trí, a ceathair...
• one for giving an amount of objects: amháin, dhá, trí, ceithre...
• and one for counting people: duine, beirt, triúr, ceathrar...

Are there any other languages sharing this feature? EamonnPKeane 17:52, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Korean has:

• 하나, 둘, 셋: native numerals
• 일, 이, 삼: Sino-Korean numerals (from Hanja)
• 한 개, 두 개, 세 개: one thing, two things, three things: adjectival forms of native numerals when used for counting

--Kjoonlee 19:15, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And if you go into ordinals, there's also 첫째, 둘째, 셋째: first, second, third. --Kjoonlee 19:16, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Using classifiers with numbers isn't particularly rare among the world's languages, but the Goidelic system (Scottish Gaelic and Manx having more or less the same pattern as Irish), which isn't really a classifier system anyway, is probably unique among European languages, or at least among Indo-European European languages (one never knows what freakiness is going to pop up in Basque or Hungarian). —Angr/talk 19:27, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Korean does use classifiers, but what Kjoonlee was referring to is actually two completely unrelated sets of numbers, one native Korean, and one derived from Chinese. Deciding which one to use for which purpose can be quite complicated. Then there's another set of words specifically for counting numbers of days, or specifying a date within a lunar month. It's not just a special classifier, but the entire word is not recognizably similar to the ordinary number words. --Reuben 16:44, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I had forgotten about those. 하루, 이틀, 사흘 for one, two, three days, and 초하루, 초이틀 for first day, second day of a lunar month.. Thank you! --Kjoonlee 04:42, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Japanese, like Korean, also has a few sets of numbers: mainly native Japanese numerals, most or all of which have archaic and counting variants; and Sino-Japanese numerals derived from Chinese. -Paul —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.29.16.127 (talk) 11:46, August 29, 2007 (UTC)

Well, in Russian, there's one set of numbers for counting and giving number of objects, but a different one for counting people. Conscious 15:03, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Really? I'm racking my brains here, and I can't think of a special set of numbers in Russian for counting people. Surely you can count people like anything else: один человек, два человека, ... I can't think of any other way I've seen numbers of people given in Russian. --Reuben 15:26, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Двое, трое, четверо, ..., десятеро. Conscious 17:54, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting, I didn't think of that. You could say though that English has very similar words: duo, trio, quartet, etc. (among many other possibilities!) --Reuben 04:42, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Двое, трое, четверо etc are used not only for people, but also for nouns used only in the plural (eg. сани - sledge, сутки - a 24-hour period); and двое is used for nouns denoting words for objects usually occurring in pairs, eg. eyes, stockings etc). -- JackofOz 06:03, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, I'm surprised by the similarity of ceithre and четыре. Conscious 06:36, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The first 3 Irish numbers are also similar (and in one case phonologically identical) to the first 3 Russian ones (a haon - один; a dó - два: a trí - три ...). A common origin suggests itself. -- JackofOz 05:16, 1 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See Indo-European languages and Proto-Indo-European numerals. Words for two through ten are mostly similar throughout the family. —Tamfang 10:19, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm trying to put an ene (in spanish, the letter that is an n with the ~ on top)letter on my laptop in ms word, just the lower case one. Can somebody help me?

Ctrl+Shift+~ (tilde key) then press n, and you should have ñ. -- Flyguy649 ^talk _contribs 20:15, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

thanx a lot. wikipedia has saved me so many times!

You can also use Alt+0241.--El aprendelenguas 00:54, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Also, ALT+264 (carlrichard) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.5.86.109 (talk) 14:57, August 28, 2007 (UTC)

Incidentally, Spanish-speakers when confined to seven-bit channels seem to use "nn". —Tamfang 10:22, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A few questions for anyone who can weigh in, please. Thanks. (Question 1): What are the subtle nuances in difference (if any) between the words "reply" and "response" ...? Also, consider the following email exchange.

• Email 1 - Ann to Bob: "Hi, Bob. What are the lunch plans for tomorrow?"
• Email 2 - Bob to Ann: "Hi, Ann. Let's meet 12 noon at the pizza place. Does that work for you?"
• Email 3 - Ann to Bob: "Hi, Bob. That's great. I will see you there!"

(Question 2): How would you phrase the following? Email 2 is Bob's (reply / response / what?) to Email 1? and Email 3 is Ann's (reply / response / what?) to Email 2?

The reason I ask is this. If I am Ann, and I am referring to Email 3, I would hate to say "my response to your response" ... or "my reply to your reply". Is there an easier / less cumbersome way to refer to the reply of a reply ... or the response to a response? Many thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro 22:40, 27 August 2007 (UTC))[reply]

When in doubt coin a new term, either re-response or re-reply.  :-) --Nricardo 00:16, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Except those mean something different. If I re-reply to your message, I'm sending my response again because my first attempt didn't work or there's something else I need to add. IMO, there's not much difference between reply and response, though I guess the second sounds a bit more formal. The confusion here is that the second email is not just a response, but a response with a new question attached. So it's 1)salutation, question; 2)salutation, response, new question; 3)salutation, confirmation, exclamation. If I was Ann, I'd just say that Email 3 was my response to Bob's question. Matt Deres 00:26, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In this instance, confirmation. Clarityfiend 00:23, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Response" is a more general term, referring to whatever the "hearer" does, or however they react, to the "speaker's" words. This may mean a reply back to the speaker, or it may mean them doing/saying something else that doesn't involve the speaker, or both, or nothing (at least nothing external, because there is always at least an internal response to any communication or other incoming sensory signals). In this case, Bob's response to Ann's email happened to be a reply to Ann. Ann's response to Bob's reply was her reply to Bob. Re the "my reply to your reply" question, it would hardly be necessary to go that extreme. If you're replying to a communication, no matter whether it's the original message or one occurring later on in an ongoing dialogue, it's obvious that your reply is to the last message received. So, "My reply is ..." should suffice. But even that would be superfluous in most cases. If you're replying to a message, it's obvious that it is a reply, particularly if you've added it to the original e-mail message, so labelling it as a "reply", "response" or anything else doesn't add any value. -- JackofOz 00:54, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]