Because why?
euuuuuuurgh i hate myself
I'm not sure why this is reminding me of the character (Preserved Killick? I think that was the name) from the Aubrey-Maturin books who kept on starting sentences with "Which it's". But it is.
While I lack the vocabulary I'm sure exists, probably neologistic phrases can occasionally work their way into the uncomical standard, but they are thick on the ground and most die out.
I think his rationale for how kids come up with this is ridiculously bogus and that "because" is just a hard concept for kids who are learning to talk. Mara still uses it somewhat indiosyncratically and as a place-holder while thinking ("decause decause decause... I not hungry anymore!") and I'm pretty close to being able to guarantee she's never heard the joke version.
"We're off to see the wizard, because wonderful things."
If in doubt, check Language Log. I think it's widespread enough to go beyond a meme. Ever since the LL post I've been attuned to instances of the formula in contexts outside of where you'd expect to see it (eg Wonkette, which is actually cited in the LL post, or Archer - it's basically house style in those contexts). I'm increasingly seeing it lots of places which aren't obvious meme loci. I'm not saying it's going to take over as standard usage forever, but it's rapidly becoming, at least temporarily, an acceptable usage in relatively formal contexts.
Oh, hey. I was pwned by the post title.
That would explain why the song was in my head.
Having to remember that you have to append "of" to "because" when it's before a noun, but not before a subordinate clause, seems like it would confuse kids a lot, making quotations from them very bad evidence.
On the topic of linguistic drift, I've noticed that people are using the word "reticent" more than they used to. But not to mean "reticent". The word "reticent" basically no longer exists. Since "reticent" sounds sort of halfway between the words "hesitant" and "reluctant", it is now a synonym of those words. As in "I'm reticent to say much about this subject".
What were people using reticent to mean before? "Hesitant" and "reluctant" is basically what the dictionary says it means.
No, the dictionary says it means "inclined to be silent or uncommunicative in speech", or "not revealing one's thoughts or feelings readily", or "unwilling to speak about your thoughts or feelings", or "disposed to be silent or not to speak freely; reserved".
Synonyms "untalkative, taciturn, restrained, unemotional"
16: It means closemouthed; or reluctant specifically to speak. "Reticent to speak" is redundant; "reticent to [do anything other than speak]" just doesn't made sense. I've complained about this one in the past, although my complaints lost some credibility because reticent is one of those words I consistently misspell.
I've stopped complaining about this one, mostly, though, because the error has gotten common enough that it's probably turned into the new norm.
19 before seeing 18, which clarified things for me.
"Reticent" is supposed to mean "taciturn". But it doesn't mean that anymore. So, we have to say "taciturn" instead.
You can be reticent about something specific, as in "reticent about her life before she arrived in town", whereas "taciturn" is a more general character trait. So they're not exact synonyms, although close.
You can be reticent because taciturn.
By the way, which syllable gets accented when you say reticent out loud?
25: Just sound it out and it will be obvious.
25: You can't say reticent out loud. That would be a paradox.
First syllable in Anglo-English. American stresses a lot of words differently though.
If in doubt, check Language Log.
"SimpsonsLanguage Log already did it" seems true about any popular idea on language worth discussing. It's almost scary when some language topic becomes part of mainstream discussion and they link back to their past posts on it--it turns out they'll have been discussing it once or twice a year for almost a decade.
27: Untrue, because use-mention distinction.
Actually, 32 is wrong. The paradox is someone claiming to be reticent.
"I am reticent about the topic of this sentence."
Can you non-paradoxically claim to be mildly reticent? Is reticentiality a vector?
Is there a standard name for the analogue to the use-mention distinction, that distinguishes exemplifying a word from using it?
34. No paradox. You can be the biggest gabster around and still announce that you're reticent about discussing some particular thing. Hence != taciturn.
31: Yes, and it can make it difficult to find a specific, precisely relevant, LL post you have a memory of, because the search throws up a bunch of possibly related but not quite on point posts.
34 takes 33 and queens on 32, landing on Mornington Crescent.
36: The paradoxicalness is proportionate to how frequently you make the claim.
If asked to describe yourself in 500 words or fewer, and your description is, in whole, "reticent", then there is no paradox at all. If, on the other hand, you volunteer the fact unprompted...
paradoxicity? paradoxy? paradociousness?
Actually, that doesn't even sound paradoxical. I think it's just being wrong. It's a self-refuting sentence, like "This sentence is twenty words long."
Memetongue is filth. At the last day a cleansing fire shall beat like burning wings upon this corruption, and there shall be no Twitter, no Buzzfeed and no refuge for anybody who has ever willfully typed "teh." Repent!
Is there a standard name for the analogue to the use-mention distinction, that distinguishes exemplifying a word from using it?
There is a word for words that exemplify themselves, like sesquepedalian or eggcorn: autological.
Fair enough. No paradox at all.
Perhaps a reticent person wants very much for someone to know and remember that they are reticent. (Perhaps they do not wish their silence to be misinterpreted.) Are they to express their reticence? If so, how often? This is not a paradox, but there is presumably some credibility-maximizing reticence-proclaiming frequency, in between never and constantly.
See also here for more discussion on autological/homological and its opposite, heterological.
There is a word for words that exemplify themselves, like sesquepedalian or eggcorn: autological.
So if "short" and "sesquipedalian" and "English" are autological, and "long" and "monosyllabic" and "Chinese" are non-autological, what is "non-autological"?
44: Are cleansing fires aware of use/mention distinction? Fingers crossed, flippy!
48: A Grelling-Nelson paradox, apparently.
45: That's getting closer, but I don't think "autological" quite expresses what motivated peep to think there was a paradox. Autology, that would involve assuming that "reticent" itself made a claim to be autologous - like if there were a word that meant "reticent, such as this word".
But it seems that peep was thinking that the use of the word "reticent" implicitly involved a claim that it describes, not itself, but the user of the word. A word with this property would mean "reticent, such as I am".
First-person pronouns and possessives have this property. If I said, "That is my banana," the sentence would not be true just because it was someone's banana - the owner of the banana would have to be Benquo, because "I" in that sentence refers not to some arbitrary person, but to the speaker.
Does anything else have that property? Is their a name for it?
Is reticentiality a vector?
It carries malaria.
Oh, I meant scalar, didn't I? But that just raises the question of whether there's negative reticence.
54: If there's a reticence-outspokenness continuum, and a zero on the scale such that some people are neither reticent nor outspoken, then outspokenness is irreticence.
What do you get when you cross a mountain climber with a mosquito?
Nothing. Cause you can't cross a vector and a scalar.
But it seems that peep was thinking that the use of the word "reticent" implicitly involved a claim that it describes, not itself, but the user of the word. A word with this property would mean "reticent, such as I am".
I think the word you're looking for is "adjective".
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Charlie Stross's blog mentions that he's about to release a novella making a link between his Laundry Files and the something nasty in Aunt Ada Doom's woodshed. I look forward to this.
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The sheep shall be separated from the goatse.
This is great.
49, 55: There shall be no refuge. All shall be taken up and none let down, but indeed struck off the page of life.
It's such fun to do the Elmer Gantry now and then. Like a little vacation.
So if "short" and "sesquipedalian" and "English" are autological, and "long" and "monosyllabic" and "Chinese" are non-autological, what is "non-autological"?
Oh give it a rest, Russell.
the use of the word "reticent" implicitly involved a claim that it describes, not itself, but the user of the word. A word with this property would mean "reticent, such as I am".
So, a word the use of which implies that the user has the property described by the word?
"Grandiloquent"?
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A friend of friends is in town, someone I've met 3-4 times and like most of the time though he can be impossible (gets pushy and weird with waitstaff in a hard-to-watch way, once started suggesting nicknames for another friend who was at dinner, who was clearly not amused, and kept on going until primary friend quietly reached over and smacked him in the back of the head...&c.) I missed the group dinner outing and now the actual friends are out of town and friend-of-friend has asked if I want to have dinner. Well, I don't , not without a buffer. The problem is he said "this week" instead of suggesting a date so I can't really make up something that's going on all week.
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I imagine memes could turn into actual language change once in a while. In fact, doesn't comic stuff drift into the language pretty often? It's just that it's usually a phrase rather than a grammatical thing. I bet someone has already said this. D'oh!
65:
Me: Ajay is very grandiloquent and loquacious.
Ajay: {nods}
15: Ned's been on the "reticent" beat since at least 2010 (previous discussion here).
Try 2007. If you look at the comment thread, I couldn't spell it right then either.
Started using this on Twitter because characters shortage.
69: Ah, I see. And Ned's 4 was very right.
It's perfectly normal for an isolated, jokey sort of usage to escape (as Knecht says) into wider and more productive usage, but yes, this guy's interpretation of this kid "data" is crap.
66- just say "yeah sure sounds great!" and wait for him to suggest a specific time. Then be busy at whatever time he suggests.
As long as we're on modern grammatical forms, has anyone seen a discussion of "That feeling when " as a form? I'm sure there's something to blame besides Tumblr.
I am not reticent about my reluctance.
76: Google blames it on Jack Kerouac
What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.
The Language Log thread suggests that an early form of "Because [noun]" was "Because fuck you." Thinking about that, I'm recalling the usage as "Because fuck you is why," but I'm not coming up with a source -- is there a particular movie or TV show I'm thinking of that anyone else can come up with?
"Because fuck you, that's why," perhaps?
79: My first thought was DeNiro in Midnight Run; it would be in character but I'm not finding it in the quotes or the online script.
There was a line in Good Will Hunting that was something like "because fuck him is why" but I'm on a phone so I'm not looking it up and also presumably that wasn't the first usage.
"Is why" sounds better to me -- the "that's why" version needs the comma you put in it, and I'm not remembering an internal pause. There may not be an original source, I'm just hearing the phrase in a NY/NJ thug accent in a way that makes me think I'm recalling something particular.
83: That line was specifically mentioned in the languagelog comments.
85: Well, you get a lot of your version in Google--all seem to be from last 5 years or so. Time delimited Google searches are not foolproof of course, but I only see 2 results from 2007 and nothing before that.
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Quick bleg: I am trying to work up the nerve to call the hospital and ask them to reduce the bill, since the insurance isn't covering any of it. (It's not too onerous itself - $500 - but there's another $1500 we coughed up which were all things insurance did partially cover, so the total bill is high and this seems like the only negotiable item.)
Anyway I don't know how to ask.
"Is there any wiggle room on this bill?"
"Can I negotiate for a lower bill?"
Everything seems like I'm inviting myself to get laughed off the phone.
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This thread has been on topic for long enough that I can brag about something different?
My 7 year old nephew broke the national record for 1500m this weekend (boys, 8 and under). (Actually, he broke it two weeks ago and was two seconds faster than yesterday, but that track didn't have an inner rail, so it doesn't count.) He runs the 1500m in 5 minutes, 17 seconds. He's seven and a half, young for his division. He's the nephew I always thought was unusually coordinated; turns out that applies to running too.
that track didn't have an inner rail
It doesn't count if there's no risk of being electrocuted? Anyway, congrats to him.
88: "You're breaking my balls, here."
66: The problem is he said "this week" instead of suggesting a date
First answer (in 24-48 hours): That would be great. Let me see how things shake out, I'm running kind of crazy right now.
Second answer (by Thursday): Not looking good this week. :( Could we rain check? Sorry to miss you.
Under no circumstances forget the emoticon. It sells it.
I got a payment plan on a hospital with easy terms, but now I'm wishing I'd asked for the bill to be lower too. Since the bills seem to be entirely arbitrary, why shouldn't they be arbitrarily smalller?
I didn't have the forethought (and likely wouldn't have had the nerve), but maybe:
How can you make this bill lower for me?
It might work, and be worth a couple hundred dollars. You could buy a lot of waterfall prints for that.
I like 93, although I would use "we." "I wonder if there's some way we can make this bill a little lower?" Enlist her in your sketchy plan. You're taking all the responsibility, she's just figuring out the implementation.
Take a long fuck off a short pier, Philip Galanes. k-sky has the a's to your social q's.
I usually start with asking who has the authority to offer a discount, generally customer-facing staff can't make a change themselves. Are there posted prices for procedures elsewhere? There's a hospital, Surgery Centers of Oklahoma, which was described as posting prices. Someone else's competing price is a good starting point for haggling over material goods.
88: Pay half of it, and stop paying.
Ignore their calls and rude letters for the next 12 months.
They send you to collections. Ignore this too.
After another 12 months, the debt is cleared.
(This only works for small hospital bills. May not function in all states. Not a good idea if you need to go back to that same hospital for something in the intervening 24 month period.)
I don't actually know what the services are for! Just a bill, one charge for Ace and one for me.
97: Really? That sounds stressful, to be honest. I hate the sensation of being in trouble.
Also, yay fast nephew!! Okay back to me.
98: That seems like a starting point for negotiation. "I've already paid $1500 out of pocket for this, and I don't even know what the new bill is for. I understand that the sticker price isn't what patients with insurance generally pay -- can we settle this for $150?" And then if they react as if haggling is a completely new concept to them, ask if you can be referred to someone with authority to negotiate the amount of the bill.
89/99: Faster than me by probably two minutes.
I'm on hold! Isn't this exciting.
It turns out insurance did pay half of it, they just didn't put it on the bill. Then I ran out of planned words to say and now I guess I'll just cough up the rest.
As of yesterday, he's the fastest boy ever in the country at the 1500m. That said, there's an 8-year-old girl in L.A. who does to him what he does to the rest of the field. When they ran in Arizona, she came in scorchingly fast, he came in twenty seconds behind and everyone else came in thirty seconds (or a couple minutes) later. Keep your eyes open for McKenzie who runs with the L.A. Jets. She's exceedingly fast.
106 That was a disappointing performance heebs.
I'm kind of disappointed, too, and $2K poorer to boot.
107: So she beat the national record for 1500m by twenty seconds? Was the girls record already well faster than the boys, or did it just take a serious jump?
The good news, I think I've paid off all possible categories of deductibles, both individual and family. The next six months are gravy.
91 had me laughing out loud as I imagined Heebie saying this in a Butters voice.
Honestly, I haven't checked. And that was a month ago; my nephew wasn't right up against the boy's national record then.
Off to look; brb.
Back in April, MacKenzie ran the 1500m about ten seconds faster than the girl's current national record. She and my nephew would be neck and neck right now, if she hasn't improved since April. But that's unlikely. I'd say that after this season the girl's 8 and Under 1500m record is going to drop by a lot.
Is it a good idea for 7 year olds to run the 1500 meters competitively?
My one year old is a lightning fast crawler. Halfway across the room when you take a well deserved baby-monitoring break to sip from your drink.
It's a good idea compared to having 7-year-olds run the 1500 meters drunkenly.
It is probably better than teaching them to drive.
Twice a year here, they have a one mile race for the kids from ages 4 or 5 on up to whatever age kids start running cross country.
119: Right. Drive for show, putt for dough.
one mile race for the kids
Right. My nephew would run that in about five and a half minutes.
100: It is stressful, Heebie. But our medical bills are incredible. (Me: cancer survivor. Him: diabetic.) It comes down to paying the hospital or paying the power bill / feeding the kid.
If you have to go back to the same hospital within that two year period, they make cough up what you owe. It's a flaw in the plan, especially since at this point my credit cards are maxed out.
Plus, there are only two hospitals in this town. So it gets tricky.
Obviously, the solution is to have better health insurance. Or to make more money!
And how long will it be before one hospital beheads the other while a hired anti-trust lawyer shouts, "There can be only one."
I have a particular lawyer in mind, if you're looking for volunteers.
Late to the thread, but in my observation 102 is generally good advice.
Overall my recommendation on hospital bills is remember that simply pro-actively calling them, and being able/willing to pay ANYTHING, already means you are doing them a favor.
Seriously. Doesn't matter how big the hospital is or where it is. They are writing off bad debt like you wouldn't believe. And you are calling up offering to confirm that some of that cash is actually going to come through their front door.
It's not a "discount." They are not "helping you." They began by charging you rack rate in a situation in which nobody who bothers to ask will actually end up paying full freight. Start from the position that they are GRATEFUL to know that they have guaranteed income coming in, rather than bad debt they'll spend money chasing.
Doesn't work if you get a low-level flunky who is unwilling to push to the next level of authority, or the rare authoritarian who just wants to enforce Rules and to hell with consequences to her employer. Otherwise, though, it's pretty effective in my observation (UMC/middle class people and poor people alike).
125: I don't know if UPMC is hiring.
The good news, I think I've paid off all possible categories of deductibles, both individual and family. The next six months are gravy.
Heh. The doctor this morning suggested testing on a something could wait. Having already eviscerated my deductible by tripping over my own feet, I told him I am game to test everything I can. It's like losing money not to get all the health care at this point!
As for fast nephews and should 7 year olds run competitively. Rory's friend's brother had double stress fractures a couple years ago because apparently too much mileage on growing bones is bad. No idea what the recommended ranges would be, but maybe worth looking into.
You certainly wouldn't want a kid to run the sorts of miles an adult would run to train for a mile race (I saw some data on teen soccer semi-pro players that was scary), but running a mile is fine.
If they poop when they're running then you know they're running too much.
Buy him a zero-g treadmill for his birthday. Crowdfund it.
Long, but interesting: http://m.runnersworld.com/high-school-training/should-kids-run-long?page=single
49 is the funniest fucking comment in the history of the Internet.
Oh, nosflow. I've never forgotten that joke, and how I called it the greatest joke ever, and then how you had to ruin it with comment 106 on that thread. There was briefly joy in my heart, and then you took it away.
This Mefi thread has some examples of Jack Handey using the "because [phrase]" construction that probably date to the '80s. "Because hey, free dummy."
Are they to express their reticence?
I think "reticent" is one of those words that ought only to be applied by other people. Like "charming".
You may think you are reticent while everyone else in the world thinks you continually overshare and should shut up.
140: Whereas you certainly know if you are hesitant or reluctant.
Wow to Megan's nephew! Having a national record must be very exciting.
