The most loneliest day of my life

guest   Fri May 04, 2007 12:20 am GMT
u guys r weird
ateo   Sat Jun 16, 2007 1:15 am GMT
I cringe every time I listen to this song. The grammar Nazi deep within me wants to fly out to California and slap all of them for making an otherwise great song with such a glaring grammatical error.
JP   Sat Jun 16, 2007 3:01 am GMT
<<Everytime I hear this song on the radio the error makes me mad.

I'm from Finland and have only learned English at school. Maybe that's why the error sounds for me so obvious and bad, while some native speaker would not pay so much attention to it, having got used to such errors.

For native speakers these are maybe things that come naturally, but when English is taught as a foreign language, superlatives are some of the very first things taught in primary school and when you learn the grammar from the beginning, errors like this sound weird.

Anyway, I'm not trying to say that I would be better in English than any native English speaker, no way :-) >>

As a native speaker, I also get annoyed when I hear things like this.

I would add that most pop music lyrics are terrible examples of English grammar, which means be careful when listening to the radio ;-)

By the way, in the second paragraph, I would reword the last line to read, "Maybe that is why the error sounds so obvious and bad to me, while some native speakers would not pay so much attention to it, having gotten used to such errors."

In the third, I would most likely reword the first line to read, "For native speakers these are things that might come naturally..."

For that matter, when writing, I would most likely split the sentence into two, so that it looked like less of a run-on, probably like this, "...superlatives are some of the very first things taught in primary school. When you learn the grammar from the very beginning, errors like this sound weird."
Jonathan   Sat Jun 16, 2007 4:36 am GMT
>>guest
>>u guys r weird

Hi, welcome to Antimoon. You seem to have some problems with writing correct English. I suggest you peruse the site and start working on that.
furrykef   Sat Jun 16, 2007 4:01 pm GMT
I wouldn't call "most loneliest" an error if it was intentional, and it probably was. I don't really know if it constitutes good lyrics, but it's not necessarily an error.

My cousin used to say "more better" all the time (I don't know if he still does), which always grated on my nerves...
Orson Cart   Mon Jun 18, 2007 4:09 pm GMT
You mean your cousin doesn't say "more betterer". tut tut.
JJ   Sat Jul 14, 2007 3:13 am GMT
It's about rhythm, and the way it sounds. The incorrect grammar is OBVIOUSLY done on purpose. Sometimes you need to just enjoy a song, and let the technicalities go.


It's not like "Fergalicious" where they spell tasty "tastey."
beneficii   Sat Jul 14, 2007 4:23 am GMT
When I get out of school, it's the most funnest time ever! That's the most awesomest time of the day!
JJ   Sat Jul 14, 2007 6:39 pm GMT
P.S.
Why would anyone even bother to post on something like this whining about the lyrics of an alt. rock song? The only type of person I can think of is a stereotypically pretentious nerd who likes to try and make themselves look smart for their internet buddies.
beneficii   Sat Jul 14, 2007 7:03 pm GMT
JJ,

Just so you know, when native English speakers were elementary school students, they had to be told not to use words like "funnest" and combinations like "most awesomest." In other words, it's a common "native speaker mistake," if it can even be said to be a mistake. I remember having the teachers getting on me and my peers about it.

Though we wanna help foreign language learners use the prescriptively proper forms, we can't deny that native speakers used such forms too and their English came out fine and sounding natural. After all, being like a native speaker is the goal right?
JJ   Sat Jul 14, 2007 7:34 pm GMT
beneficii,


I AM a native English speaker, and I'm fully aware that the song is grammatically incorrect. However, to myself and what seems to be most of the population of native English speakers, solecisms like this one are acceptable in songs and the like, but irritating in everyday conversation. We don't expect every popular chunk of media to be poetry. Heck, I'm more uptight about stuff like this than most people, and I get as annoyed with IM-speak as anyone else who loves the language, but I can accept pretty easily that much of the music floating around these days is simply meant to be fun, so we can be more lax about it.


To the people who are taking this thread as an opportunity to whine about angsty (Angsty isn't an actual word? Oh, perish the thought.) songs: Essentially any sad song can be interpreted as angsty, so nobody is allowed to depict negative emotion without it being seen as whiny? I personally like "Lonely Day" because songs aren't often about loneliness that's not directly related to romance.
Angel   Fri Nov 16, 2007 6:39 pm GMT
In Old English and Early Middle English doubling and tripling up on descriptors was a means of emphasis... so saying something like "most lonliest" WAS gramatically correct at one point in time.
Laura Braun   Sat Nov 17, 2007 1:49 am GMT
so let us listen the music. http://youtube.com/watch?v=2gcmfYFZBjY