Know your English

[Atithee]

Is this one of the worst headlines ever? If you’re corona positive, advise is to stay positive and become a patient?

COVID-POSITIVE? STAY POSITIVE AND BE PATIENT

https://bangaloremirror.indiatimes.com/ ... 778191.cms

[jayakris]

^^^ Haha. I also saw another headline that was misleading. In a news article from Hyderabad that said something like "Positivity, the most important weapon against Covid" or something in the headline. I thought, oh goody, some press guy might be taking the TEL Government to task, on test positivity... But it was some drivel with the same idea as above!

On another matter - I saw this tweet from our PM's office to Trump today - "I congratulate US President Donald Trump & people of USA on the 244th Independence Day". Now, isn't it wrong to say "the USA". I think it is "the U. S." or simply USA without the "the". "I congratulate the people of USA" is the correct form. Right? I need to investigate.

[suresh]

I'd say "I congratulate the people of USA."

[Atithee]

I think the USA is used commonly.

[jayakris]

Yeah, it looks like both are used, and "the USA" may be more correct in some sentences, while both are sorta equally correct in many sentences too. Still not fully sure. Anyway, the PMO got this right, or at least not wrong. Or should it be "PMO got this right"?

[Atithee]

I’d think it’s be the PMO but I’m very bad with the use of it. So, I tend to overuse it.

[prasen9]

We did some sentiment-mining work on posts from a cancer survivor support forum. We decided not to use the existing cue-words but trained the algorithm to learn the cue words that would be associated with positive and negative sentiments. The word "positive" had a negative sentiment in medical forums.

[Atithee]

Between, after a gap of 2 years China will be finally hosting World tour Finals this December and will require strictest measures of bubble to let players participate. I think players won't be amused to go through all that non sense just to participate!

I’m curious; I’ve seen many in India use “Between” and I am not sure what it means. Could it be that someone started using it as a misinterpretation of BTW (By the Way) and it mistakenly entered the internet lingo in India?



P.S. Mods—We can move this post to “know your English” thread. Also, Srini, not directing this at you. I’ve been meaning to ask this for many years and just used your post as an example. [Done. Mod, Jay]

[jayakris]

^^^ Interesting. I hadn't noticed that usage before, but something like that starting off from "btw" like you wonder, is quite plausible. The word "between," brings up a feeling of "in between (in time)" or something like that. That would be like saying "meanwhile," that is sometimes used as a substitute for "by the way" even when it is not about something that happened in the meantime... This is all just wild guesses from me. I have no idea.

[Atithee]

From Quora. Confirms my thinking and Jay can comment on the Tamil angle:

https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-say ... way-or-btw

Oh no no no! I've just read all the answers to this question and everyone is mistaken. It's not smartphones that turn “BTW” to “Between”. I've seen many of my friends and many from my college using “between” at places where one should be using “by the way” or in short “btw”. I asked many of those guys why they're using the word “between” in all the wrong places by citing them some places where they went wrong, and their answers were appalling. But, yes, everyone had a similar reason.

Their lack of knowledge in the language and the trend where if you don't understand (or pretend to understand) memes you ain't cool are the two primary reasons behind this. They've witnessed many memes that had “btw” written in their captions and naturally, on reading the entire caption, they assumed it meant “by the way”. But no, the difference here is, they assumed it meant “by the way” in their own native language. (A lot of tamilans assumed “btw” meant “adhu irukatum”, which means “by the way” in English) But they also assumed the abbreviation of “btw” in those memes to be the English word “between” due to many reasons like teachers using “Btw” as short form for between on the blackboard to write faster (those teachers weren't wrong either, they have no idea about text trends!).

So basically what I'm trying to say is, the guys who use “between” instead of “by the way” or “btw” actually mean “by the way” when they use “between”. It's like between’s body (word) has the soul (meaning) of by the way!

They are completely oblivious to the fact that they're wrong.

This is the first time Quora has ever needed my answer lol!

Kindly up vote if you found my answer reasonable.

[srini]

P.S. Mods—We can move this post to “know your English” thread. Also, Srini, not directing this at you. I’ve been meaning to ask this for many years and just used your post as an example.

Athithee, Glad to be corrected. I tried to introspect why i have used 'Between'..It was a lame attempt to connect two unrelated topics in the same post - Siril's progress and Chinese hosting a tournament. May be i thought its overkill to use 3 words at the time i wrote when most of the forum members (Indians) who anyway are familiar with the one word usage, i don't know... but now i figured a large chunk of members are non resident and can easily catch such slips.

[Atithee]

Srini, thank you for explaining. You wouldn’t believe it—many immigrants to the US use the English language better (grammatically correct and properly spelled) than those born and brought up here.

[srini]

Srini, thank you for explaining. You wouldn’t believe it—many immigrants to the US use the English language better (grammatically correct and properly spelled) than the born and brought up here.

I know it only too well having resided in US for 10 years . Between (Oh my..old habbits die hard lol) i find it non intuitive on the part of native English speakers to still not accept words like prepone which any Indian would immediately understand, webster keeps that in words being watched list. Request Mods to move all the posts to language thread.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/prepone

[Omkara]

In Vaidehi's thread it is all about the jumping the gun. Made me wonder, how did this phrase originate?

[jayakris]

^^^ Good question. Apparently it is from track and field sports and horse races. Maybe first from horse races. They were using a gun to mark the start of races from early 1900s, and it comes from runners or horses jumping ahead of the gun sound! Who knew?
https://grammarist.com/idiom/jump-the-gun/