• jettrscga@lemmy.world
      55·
      9 months ago

      The reason it feels wrong is that “are” is the main verb in the sentence and shouldn’t be contracted. You are only supposed to contract auxiliary verbs like “you’re eating already” where eating is the main verb and are is auxiliary.

      Edit: (I used a bad example because “eating” is a noun, as pointed out below.)

      Also, I’m thoroughly confused about who’s saying “you’re already” in this comic.

        • DaGeek247@kbin.social
          141·
          9 months ago

          Yes. It doesn’t work as “you’re already” and really, it doesn’t work all thay well as “you are already” either. This is almost yoda levels of rearrangement.

          It makes the most sense as “you already are”.

        • hakase@lemm.eeEnglish
          4·
          9 months ago

          Yup, this is likely a phonological restriction in addition to a syntactic one, though it’s worth noting that the copula (the “be” verb) shows a lot of idiosyncratic behavior in different contexts in different dialects of English.

          It seems that this pattern may have something to do with stress assignment within a predicate, but I’m not sure what the conditioning environment is at first glance. Any English phonologists here who can shed some more light on this?

          • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca
            3·
            9 months ago

            I’m no expert, but I think “you’re already” doesn’t work because the “anti-stress” on the contraction tells us the focus is later, but the focus of “already” is actually on the “are” in “you’re”. It trips us up because it sneaks the focus past us and then just ends the sentence before the focus the stress told us about arrives.

            It may also be because “you are already” is a variant of the sentence “you are” which can’t be contracted, so the contraction insinuates “you’re already [something]”. It makes us parse a different sentence structure than it is, then we get confused when the sentence ends early.

        • quindraco@lemm.ee
          25·
          9 months ago

          “Eating” isn’t a verb, either. The person you’re responding to just got some terms wrong, the underlying idea about contractions is correct.

    • slazer2au@lemmy.world
      23·
      9 months ago

      Also, is the cat saying it? The speak marker points to the cat on the third frame not the dude on the third or fourth.

    • bleistift2@feddit.deEnglish
      711·
      9 months ago

      The fact that you seem to not have seen this before indicates that you cannot actually always contract ‘you’ and ‘are’. ‘Cannot’ in the sense that most people don’t do it and you will get grades deducted if you do it when learning English as a second language.

      • TSG_Asmodeus (he, him)@lemmy.worldEnglish
        211·
        9 months ago

        The fact that you seem to not have seen this before indicates that you cannot actually always contract ‘you’ and ‘are’.

        I’m still re-reading this sentence. How does not having seen this before indicate what you can or can not do?

        • thorbot@lemmy.world
          73·
          9 months ago

          I love how they are trying to correct bad grammar with even worse grammar

          seem to not have seen

          cannot actually always

          🤡

        • bleistift2@feddit.deEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          I retract the word ‘indicate.’ It’s not proof, but if you haven’t seen a phrase before, despite n years of reading and/or speaking a language, it means that that phrase is uncommon. If that phrase also looks like it should be used more (I’m referring to “you’re” being very common in different sentence structures), that’s a strong hint that the phrase doesn’t exist or has some very different meaning in that context.

        • DaGeek247@kbin.social
          21·
          9 months ago

          Because language is a thing that everyone agrees on, together. If nobody else is using the words like that, maybe you shouldn’t either.

          • TSG_Asmodeus (he, him)@lemmy.worldEnglish
            4·
            9 months ago

            The fact that you seem to not have seen this before indicates that you cannot actually always contract ‘you’ and ‘are’.

            This is the line I am referring to, not any specific word. This sentence is nonsensical:

            “The fact you seem to not have seen this before indicates…” followed by “that you cannot always contract ‘you’ and ‘are.’”

            How are those related? If someone hasn’t seen this before… it indicates … grammar rules? How does not seeing it indicate a grammar rule?

      • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
        11·
        9 months ago

        I’m not a native speaker and I’ve written plenty of awful English, but “never contract” is just bullshit they tell you in case you’ll have a career writing important English texts.

        Cannot can be contracted, but it depends on context. When you’re talking or when you’re quoting something someone said (even in formal context), you can use words like “gonna”, “can’t”, and a whole bunch of other stuff that English teachers don’t like, because accuracy is more important than perceived grammatical correctness. Imagine writing an essay on “You cannot touch this” by M.C. Hammer, you’re not going to rewrite the lyrics!

        Even in (informal) writing, it’s fine to contract such words. However, you need to know when native speakers do or don’t. Contractions aren’t just fine and replace, you need to get a sense of what “feels” English or you’ll write weird (but technically correct) sentences like these.

        In the case of “it’s what it’s”, the “it is” part is being stressed, so contracting it is weird. On the other hand, nobody will bat an eye if you write “it’s raining” outside academic work; the “it” and “is” are just there to communicate “raining”. In the case of “cannot” I’d argue that “No, you can’t” is a perfectly natural response, because the “no” at the start is more than clear enough about the intention of the sentence.

        • bleistift2@feddit.deEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          I wasn’t trying to imply that contracting is always wrong. Rather, it is not always right.

          In the case of “it’s what it’s”, the “it is” part is being stressed, so contracting it is weird.

          This is why I find contracting “You are already“ weird. To me, the stress is on the are. However, after reading and re-reading the statement in my head, I can feel people stressing the already instead. To those, “You’re already” would probably be fine.

      • BolexForSoup@kbin.social
        61·
        9 months ago

        I mean, no, it is not proper grammar/English. It would be marked incorrect you are totally right. But that’s not as fun as what I wrote lol

        Fun fact: you should be typing “can not”!

  • jarfil@lemmy.world
    62·
    9 months ago

    “If you want the cat experience, get the fluffy ear hair band, soft paw mittens and pluggable tail…”

  • TAG@lemmy.world
    611·
    9 months ago

    My wife always gets mad when I point out that the dog sits around all day, demands the food off of her plate, and constantly interrupts her when he is bored or wants attention, but she spends hours doting over him and praising him. I, on the other hand, work all day to sustain our lifestyle, spend a lot of my “leisure” time doing chores around the house, and am mindful to be polite, but I barely get a hug and “I love you”.

    …

    For anyone who is in doubt, I mean it in jest. I don’t need constant reassurance and reward to keep being a responsible adult. Also, though she will not admit it, she knows the dog is much cuter than me.