6 ms·
"What This Here Compound Needs Is..." I'm having a hard time reading this. Is this proper English? Serious question from a non-native speaker.
by dao- 10y ago
"What This Here Compound Needs Is..."
I'm having a hard time reading this. Is this proper English? Serious question from a non-native speaker.
- jstanley 10y agoIt means "What this compound needs is..." "this here" is a colloquialism in some places in (I think) the US.
- digi_owl 10y agoBest i can tell it shows up most often in westerns, or when a character is supposed to be from a remote rural area.
- biehl 10y agoSounds like the result of a "too-direct" translation from Danish (maybe German too?). "Hvad dette her stof behøver er noget hydrogenperoxid"
- stevedonovan 10y agoThere's a bit of German influence on American English, that's true, like 'how goes?'. Also Dutch, as in 'How come?'
- qbrass 10y agoIt's from Southern American English.
- douche 10y agoIt's really part of a sort of a generalized redneck/rural argot, at this point. I'm from the farthest northern stretch of the Appalachians, a stone's throw from Canada, and quite often flummox people when I tell them I'm not from West Virginia or Kentucky.
- stan_rogers 10y agoThat's because it didn't originate on this side of the pond. You can also find it in the West Country dialect(s); think Hagrid, Samwise Gamgee or Robert Newton's prototypical movie pirate captains (Long John Silver and Blackbeard). Poke around England a little more, and you'll probably find it elsewhere as well. Standard English really is a much smaller and lesser-used dialect than most literate people think it is.
- lostboys67 10y agoStrictly Sam wise should probably have used black country dialect given where JRRT grew up - its the Rural version of a Birmingham (UK) accent. But I suspect they would have had to subtitled it :-)
- ptaipale 10y agoAs a non-native speaker, that raises my eyebrows as in "What? From Guyana?" Though it is right of course, i.e. Southern American is different from South American.
- logfromblammo 10y ago"This here" is a drop-in replacement for "this", and is mainly used as an emphasis marker in the South and West. Adding more words that do not add to the meaning of the sentence makes it the same idea, but more of it. Compare: We have a communication failure. What we've got here, is failure to c'mmunicate. "Have" is the base word. "Have got" is the same as "have", but with more "havingness" somehow. "Have got here" is also "have", but with so much "havingness" that you might find yourself unable to get rid of whatever it is without a severe beating. And with "what <subj> have got here is", well, you're just going to get shot.
- davidgerard 10y agoIt's dialect, but native speakers would generally understand it.
- rpeden 10y agoI don't think it's technically proper English. It's just a way that some people in some parts of the US sometimes speak. At least, that's what I, as a Canadian, have noticed during a lifetime of watching US TV shows. Now that I think about it, maybe it's a TV-only thing? I can't say I've ever observed a real live American say it. To read it more easily, try removing the word 'here'.
- andybak 10y ago> I don't think it's technically proper English We've got ourselves a linguistic prescriptivist here, folks... String him up. ;-)
- arethuza 10y agoFrom my own native dialect of English you could simply tell him to "haud yer wheesht".
- logfromblammo 10y agoIt's the proper thing to do for one with an "arsoot th'windeh"?
- throwanem 10y agoIt's a feature of the Southern and Texan dialects, and appears occasionally in AAVE, mostly among older speakers. As a Southron, it's fairly natural for me to say it, but since that dialect marks low status most places outside its home region, I generally code-switch into acrolect, so you wouldn't hear me say it. The same is true for most other Southrons I've known outside the South - especially those of us who can't or won't shake the accent, and have social or professional reason to avoid being perceived as a dumb redneck. (Sometimes that happens anyway, but one doesn't help oneself by making it more likely.)
- mercer 10y ago> Southron > acrolect I just learned two new words, and I like words. Thanks!
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- godmodus 10y agoThis here is a southern dialect in the US of A, partner! Try some appalachian dialects, ow lawd 'av mercy. Ain't nobody gon' understand them folk but the devil trees they live under. spits into a bucket and continues carving a squirrel mantlepiece
- mathgeek 10y agoY'all crazier than a rabid squirrel! To answer the original question: the article is explicitly humorous whike also using the correct language for the topic. It's meant to be "harder to read" as a way to add a layer of wordplay.
- throwanem 10y agoIt also, for those familiar with the semiotics of American English dialects, subtly invokes the "Hold my beer - hey, y'all, watch this!" stereotype of rednecks.
- chiph 10y agoIt's what makes Huntsville Alabama so entertaining. Equal parts rocket scientists and rednecks. "I wonder what would happen if I ran my small-block Chevy on some hydrazine? Because Nitrous injection is for wimps." (Hydrazine is highly toxic and dangerously unstable unless handled in solution.)
- Bartweiss 10y agoPrecisely - I took it as a joking accusation that he considers this sort of thing reckless, cowboy chemistry.
- godmodus 10y agoTIL "semiotics" Nice.
- Shivetya 10y agowhat some are passing over is, while its a form of speech in parts of America, it along with the general tone of his article, are all parts of the humor wrapped around a very serious subject. I take it as redneck humor, as in famous last words of "Hey ya'll, watch this"
- jasode 10y ago>Is this proper English? No, but his slang is deliberate wordplay. Take note of the author's page: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/about-derek-lowe http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/about-derek-lowe The author is from Arkansas (the South). Even though he has an advanced degree from a prestigious university and knows what "proper English" is, it seems he likes to play with Southern dialect. The journal he's writing for ('A'AAS) is 'A'merican so native readers (even those outside of the South) will understand the slang. It looks like 99% of his hundreds of blog articles have straightforward serious titles but a few have cutesy irreverent ones. A few more examples of Southern colloquialisms such as "gosh", "darn", and "dang": >Gosh, Fellows, There’s a Better Way http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/08/26/gosh-fellows-theres-a-better-way http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/08/26/gos... >The Papers In This Journal Are Just So Darn Relevant http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2012/07/03/the_papers_in_this_journal_are_just_so_darn_relevant http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2012/07/03/the... >Biosimilars: Not So Dang Easy http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/05/18/biosimilars_not_so_dang_easy http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/05/18/bio...
- mjevans 10y agoThe slang is also a flag for sarcasm/joking in this context (and many others). It's actually meant to come across as a bad idea stated by someone of questionable intelligence or at least wisdom.
- GlennS 10y ago"this here" is a US colloquialism which is being used as a character joke. Imagine a cowboy voice while reading it. You can ignore the "here".
- delinka 10y ago"this here" is redundant; "This" being something near the speaker, "here" being near the speaker. This type of redundancy is often found in rural and vernacular speech in the US. A similar redundant construct is "I don't got no..." meaning "I do not have any...", but one that is entirely more grotesque to my ear.
- fr0sty 10y agoIt could be worse. Could be: "Ain't got no..."
- delinka 10y agoI actually typed that at first, but then I didn't want to explain Yet Another Dialectism to a non-native speaker. :P
- xenophonf 10y agoThe repetition isn't redundant. It's for emphasis. "I don't got no..." is much stronger than "I don't have any...".
- stan_rogers 10y agoNot so much for emphasis as because of different rules for spatial deixis. Even Standard English used to have more than just this and that; we also had yon to indicate things that were farther away than that, and there are finer distinctions in several dialects of English (and in many languages other than English).
- abritinthebay 10y agoIf you imagine a grizzled Texan spitting into the dirt and saying it just after the words "Dangit Clancy..." ... it makes a lot more sense.
- lostboys67 10y agoOr Bobby from Supernatural
- abritinthebay 10y agoDang eejits.