The way alot, aswell and noone are combining is expected given how many other words we don't bat an eye at went the same way. "another" is the perfect example, it's just "an other" combined.

It's sort of the reverse of what happened to words like apron and newt.

The division and bracketing of phrases changes over time.

"An apron" is the modern usage of the word "napron", and a newt was originally called an eute. The grammatical need for "a" and/or "an" resulted in the root word being rebracketed and changed.

[-] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 years ago

I recall "noone" being taught as acceptable by my english teacher back in 2004. That being said, she's also said some things that ended up being very wrong

[-] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 4 points 2 years ago

Whenever someone says “Noone wanted this” I always picture a big Irishman who has a deep appreciation for stuff Internet people are against.

[-] pyre@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

it's all just made up. you can see old writings without spacing. or punctuation. you can't even define what's really a word universally. people just decided what's what and standardized it at one point just for some consistency. that doesn't mean things won't change; they most definitely will.

[-] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

I always imagine Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits whenever someone does that.

"Noone thinks I have a lovely daughter." Yes, Mrs. Brown. Noone does.

[-] Anyolduser@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 2 years ago

Ampersand is another good example. "&" was considered the last letter of the alphabet for a while. Schoolchildren would recite the alphabet and finish it with the phrase "and, per se and" ("and, meaning and").

The words got mashed together over time and the word "ampersand" was born.

[-] zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 years ago

"Per se" means "in itself", so it's a shorter way of saying "also the word 'and' itself".

[-] vonxylofon@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

No body writes noone as one word because there's a similar word written that way.

[-] Squirrel 2 points 2 years ago

I think spellings and punctuation are still valid. Mostly. Ignore variations between English and Americanese.

[-] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 years ago

In not the Americans' fault that the English decided to butcher their own language after the US kicked them out

[-] Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

The spelling differences are actually mostly due to Noah Webster standardising what he saw as pure Anglo-Saxon English without corruption by French princelings.

[-] Squirrel 2 points 2 years ago

Hah, that makes sense.

[-] psud@aussie.zone 1 points 2 years ago

England and all its former colonies (except the American ones) agree on the language, and the only odd one out - the United States feels it is unique among former colonies and its parent nation as the sole owner of the most correct version of English.

Seems likely /s

[-] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 years ago

I know this is all a joke, but Canada doesn't share the UK's... proclivities with language

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 2 points 2 years ago

I feel like that sort of misses the point. That really has to do with how we transcribe verbal speech into written. "A lot" is absolutely a phrase, I don't imagine you'd disagree with that.

[-] idiomaddict@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

Frankly this wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for “another”

[-] psud@aussie.zone 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Which some who use "alot" consider as two words.

[-] Etterra@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

[-] ytg@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

That has to do with the definition of what a word even is (an open problem!). "Alot" is clearly made up of two separate units, but so is "anyway". I think a lot of people don't like this one because it's simply unnecessary. You need "anyway" to show that the two words are not stressed separately, but treated as one unit, whereas with "a lot" this is already obvious ("a" is almost never stressed).
Also has to do with English spelling just being bad, generally.

this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2024

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