On Sun, 17 Jul 2005 16:13:20 GMT, Miss Elaine Eos
<Misc@*your-shoes*PlayNaked.com> wrote:
> In article <slrnddk4v0.ims.chris@ccserver.keris.net>,
> Chris Croughton <chris@keristor.net> wrote:
>
>> I happened to hear an American pops ong recently which contained a usage
>> which seemed strange to me:
>>
>> "I do love you much."
>>
>> In British English that is wrong. Is it acceptable American, or a
>> dialect form, or a slang usage?
>>
>> Following comments are about British English use of 'much'.
>>
>> It seems that 'much' can't be used without some sort of qualifier. "I
>> love you very much", "too much" and "not much" (or "I don't love you
>> much") are acceptable, [...]
>
> The same holds for American English. Pop songs should typically not be
> used as examples of correct English :)
Oh, I wasn't using it as that, I was asking whether it was correct and
this was an example. And then got to pondering why "love you much" is
unacceptable whereas "love you a lot" is fine. Not that human 'natural'
languages are or have to be logical <g>...
> In addition, American Youth English (not quite slang, not quite a
> dialect) often uses the strange rule "if it's reasonably clear what I
> meant, then it's correct-enough for this situation." I suspect that
> those who frequent this group prefer their English a tad more structured
> than that.
If it's similar to British Youth English then I'd term it a dialect in
the making.
> In addition, the manufacturing of cute-ish sounding words in order to
> draw attention to and/or emphasize a point leads to such things as "I
> love you muchly" and "you are filled with beautiousness." I speculate
> that this sort of thing became popular with the "Pogo" comic strip (Pogo
> spoke using that manner of manufactured words, often.)
Hmm, it's been around for centuries, a number of British writers of
literature have been happy to make up their own words, some have entered
the mainstream ("galumphing" from Lewis Jabberwocky's famous Carol, for
instance <g>). Journalists do it as well. I blame printing and the
education of the masses <g>...
Chris C
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