origin of "o'clock" , "let's"
"Let us" can still be used instead of "let's" in formal and poetic situations. The first quote that comes to mind is what Civil War general Stonewall Jackson said before he died from pneumonia: "Let us cross over the river and rest in the shade of the trees."
However, in colloquial speech, "let us" always means "allow us to", rather than forming the first-person plural imperative as "let's" does, and "let's" can never mean "allow us to".
- Kef
Yes, as Furrykef says 'let's' can only be used as an imperative. You couldn't say for example:
'Our bosses let's leave work early on Fridays', it would have to be 'Our bosses let us leave work early on Fridays'.
''"wanna, gotta, goin', brakin', 'cause etc."
But most of those are those horrid and ugly Americanisms.''
This is not true/
You can hear WANNA, GOTTA, GONNA used by CBC (Canadian state tv) newscasters.
o' is actually irish, not english. it's evident in irish surnames.. like o'brien and such, meaning of brian.
"This is not true/
You can hear WANNA, GOTTA, GONNA used by CBC (Canadian state tv) newscasters. "
They are Americanisma that have spread to other English-speaking countries.
"o' is actually irish, not english. it's evident in irish surnames.. like o'brien and such, meaning of brian."
O'clock is English. It's short for "of the clock".
Irish surnames are completely different. O'Brien, for example, comes from "Ua Briain" or "Ó Briain" in Gaelic. It carries the sense of ‘eminence’, i.e. ‘exalted one’. The Brian referred to is in most cases the ancient Irish king Brian Boru, or in Gaelic - Brian Bórumha mac Cennétig
>>"This is not true/
You can hear WANNA, GOTTA, GONNA used by CBC (Canadian state tv) newscasters. "
They are Americanisma that have spread to other English-speaking countries.<<
Somehow I doubt they "spread to" Canada in the sense that you imply, rather than being features of spoken North American English as a whole to begin with.
This is a while back in the conversation, but not all Americans use dumb words like gonna and so forth. I, for one, don't.
<<This is a while back in the conversation, but not all Americans use dumb words like gonna and so forth. I, for one, don't.>>
When you're getting ready to have a conversation, you should use a tape recorder and record it. Once you play it back, I'm sure you'll find that you've use clitics like "gonna".
I have no idea what's dumb about gonna or any of those forms. Everyone uses them and I'm pretty sure we didn't come up with them, the English must have.
I don't think they're Americanisms at all. I have usual contact with Canadians and they use them and my English teacher at school is Australian and he uses all these forms constantly.
They make speech faster as far as I'm concerned.
As things like "wanna", "gotta", and "gonna" go, they are really standard colloquial North American English in reality, despite what some might think. I would be shocked if I ran into any NAE-speaker who did not use such forms in all but the most formal speech.
If one really wants to push it as these kinds of things go, one should use forms like ["wQ~@:], ["ga@:] and [4~@:] or [n@:] for "wanna", "gotta", and "gonna" respectively (the pronunciations are those in the dialect here). Most older and middle-aged people here do not seem to really use such forms (even though I have at times heard middle-aged people use them), while they are more common amongst younger people (but not all younger people use them all; I for one practically never use [4~@:] or [n@:] for "gonna", even though I may rarely use [@~4~@:] for such).
I definitely agree, it would be really shocking to meet someone who just doesn't use any of these forms.
As far as pronunciation is concerned, I find the way you guys say it sounds a little odd, where are you from?
I pronounce them as /wQn@/ (wanna,) /gQ4@/ (gotta,) and /gQn@/ (gonna.)
"o'clock" is short for:
'of clock','of [the] clock'
like in "will o' the wisp", "jack-o'-lantern", etc.
The surname prefix O' as in O'Malley comes from Irish ó meaning descendant.
's is tricky:
the s comes from the Old English masc & neut genitive case ending -es, but as someone pointed out, the APOSTROPHE comes as a contraction of the word "his" as if "John's book" were a shortening of "John his book". So the apostrophe is written for the "h"; not the "e" of -es (albeit this is incorrect).
The use of postpositioned "his" is the result of a misunderstanding of the suffix -es (sometimes written -ys/-is in Middle English after certain sounds) pronounced as "iss", which made it indistinguishable from unstressed "his". So in essence, both are right, but one is actually wrong.
In all actuality, there shouldn't be an apostrophe there at all: it should be simply -s, i.e. "Johns book" and this is often how it was written in Chaucer's (rather "ChaucerS") day.
>>I definitely agree, it would be really shocking to meet someone who just doesn't use any of these forms.
As far as pronunciation is concerned, I find the way you guys say it sounds a little odd, where are you from?
I pronounce them as /wQn@/ (wanna,) /gQ4@/ (gotta,) and /gQn@/ (gonna.)<<
The usual semi-careful pronunciations of "wanna", "gotta", and "gonna" are ["wQ~4~@:], ["ga4_0@:], and ["gV~4~@:] here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Note that [4~] is a nasal flap, and is used in these words because of an underlying /t/ (which is also why these words have a short vowel in their first syllables.
The pronunciations ["wQ~@:] and ["ga@:] for "wanna" and "gotta" are simply due to flap elision, which happens very frequently in the dialect here (along with other sorts of elision as well - my dialect likes to shorten words a lot at times). These are not clitics but rather are still pronounced as independent words. On the other hand, the pronunciations [@~4~@:], [4~@:], [n@:] for "gonna" are clitics which are attached to the preceding word.