Hey I like Tolkien too but if you start your post or article with "A most ______", "Concerning _______", or "Of _______", you're a huge dork and you deserve an atomic wedgie.

  • Barabas [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    Not related to this directly, but hearing my mum speaking English she uses posh phrases (second language) because she watches costume dramas. She constantly uses "one" as a pronoun, such as "one must" or "one could", which kind of works when directly translated Swedish, but it comes off as if you're a nanny tutoring noble brats in English.

    • CommieTommy [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      A similar sort of thing happened with me when I was a little child because I was an extremely avid reader and would just start using words I read in books without knowing what they meant, apart from what I could gather from context and having no idea how to pronounce them (I called trebuchets 'true-buckets', guinea pigs 'goo-ee-nee pigs', and D'Artignon from the three musketeers "Doctor Artigan"), since my favourite type of books were fantasy books ever since I'd found a copy of the hobbit: I ended up speaking like bilbo baggins' diary entries and saying things like "it's most peculiarly strange! What ever shall we do?" in reference to me losing one of my wellington boots. I was a massive dork

    • star_wraith [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      Interesting. Does Swedish have formal pronouns kinda like Spanish does?

      • Barabas [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Swedish doesn't have that. It is more that indefinite pronouns like "man" or "en" are commonly used in places where it is technically correct to use "one" in English, but in English it sounds like you're from a Jane Austen novel. The only English people who refer to themselves as "one" or use "one" in such a way are either true bluebloods or taking the piss. It is fun to see my extended English working class family do a double take whenever she uses it.