 |
 | Home | Contact Us | FAQ | Search & Site Map | Link to Us |
 | Sign In | Join | Other 45 Sites in Network |
| HomeDiscussion GroupsEnglish UsageBritish EnglishESL Teaching Learnglish.com Contact UsLink To UsSearch & Site Map |
Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2009most of 'em
Hi all, See the following snippets: ------------------------ >It's probably worth mentioning that AFAIK, assuming the above works, >it'll only work in gawk since it requires a multi-character RS. Wrong. The statement that it will *only* work in GAWK is false. It will work in any AWK that supports multi-character RS. And that's most of 'em nowadays. ------------------------ In the above discussion, they use *most of 'em*. Who can give me some explanation on the origin and meaning of this phrase?  Signature.: Hongyi Zhao [ hongyi.zhao AT gmail.com ] Free as in Freedom :. > Hi all, > [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > In the above discussion, they use *most of 'em*. Who can give me some > explanation on the origin and meaning of this phrase? It's a representation of the way many English speakers say "most of them" when speaking informally. SignatureDavid [...] >> In the above discussion, they use *most of 'em*. Who can give me >> some explanation on the origin and meaning of this phrase? > > It's a representation of the way many English speakers say "most of > them" when speaking informally. It's worth mentioning that we pronounce it "um", with the indefinite unstressed "schwa" vowel: I don't think anybody says it exactly as it is written. <`I didn't know that Cheshire cats always grinned; in fact, I didn't know that cats COULD grin.' `They all can,' said the Duchess; `and most of 'em do.'> SignatureMike. >> Hi all, >> [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > It's a representation of the way many English speakers say "most of > them" when speaking informally. Alternate spelling: mosta them most a' them (them pronounced thum). (alla them, anya them) I don't know if many Brits, convert "of" to the "a" (schwa sound), but it is common in the US. (Oh, "most of 'em", etc, can be heard fairly often in the US, too.) >> Hi all, >> [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > It's a representation of the way many English speakers say "most of > them" when speaking informally. That's how we tend to interpret it today, but I believe that historically it was a separate word (maybe older than "them", I'm not sure) written as "hem", and not by any means colloquial or sub-standard in Chaucer's day. Signatureathel > In the above discussion, they use *most of 'em*. "'Em" is a contraction of "them." It occurs in informal speech anytime the word "them" is unstressed. It's used in writing to emphasize the informal nature of the expression. ¬R Hongyi Zhao wrote: > > In the above discussion, they use *most of 'em*. Glenn Knickerbocker: > "'Em" is a contraction of "them." It occurs in informal speech ... And in case it wasn't obvious, "them" means "AWKs", which in turn is informal for "implementations of the language AWK". SignatureMark Brader, Toronto "Let us knot coin gnu werds huitch msb@vex.net are spelld rong." -- Rik Fischer Smoody >Hi all, > [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] >In the above discussion, they use *most of 'em*. Who can give me some >explanation on the origin and meaning of this phrase? First the meaning: "most of them". Then the origin: It's a survival of the Middle English "hem", which was the native form of the pronoun before it was displaced by the Scandinavian "them". James (BrE) >> Hi all, >> [quoted text clipped - 20 lines] > > James (BrE) One of the problems with killfiling is that my newsreader sometimes displays a single thread as if it were two or more, so I think I've read the whole thread, only to find that someone has already said in one of them the same as what I've said in another. All this to say yes, James, I agree. Signatureathel > ------------------------ > >It's probably worth mentioning that AFAIK, assuming the above works, [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > In the above discussion, they use *most of 'em*. Who can give me some > explanation on the origin and meaning of this phrase? This is an attempt to reproduce speech style in writing. 1. Fiction writers attempt to do this from time to time (see Dickens, W.H. Drummond, Mark Twain etc.) This is usually called "dialect" and is usually out of fashion. 2. The general convention for all non-fiction writing is that only standard spelling should be used. This applies even when writing technical jargon. (Gawk is not a standard English word, which implies this passage is jargon.) SignatureDon Phillipson Carlsbad Springs (Ottawa, Canada) |
Reply to this Message |
 Sign In
 Join
 My Latest Posts My Monitored Threads My Blog My Photo Gallery My Profile My Homepage Start New Thread Enable EMail Alerts Rate this Thread
|
©2012 Advenet LLC Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
This website includes both content owned or controlled by Advenet as well as content owned or controlled by third parties.