It was used repeatedly as a dialect word in the very popular radio show Amos and Andy from 1928 to 1955, a fact that is sometimes said to have given it such currency.

I didn't explain myself well before. The problem with the second sentence is that it has a comma (after "Mandarin") separating the subject and verb. That is, if you drop the parenthetical phrase you have "Anything translated from Mandarin, has obscurity."
(That said, as with almost any rule governing punctuation, you can find exceptions if you look hard enough. Earlier prose writers, such as Auden in his essays, would sometimes use a comma to separate complicated subjects from the sentence's verb.)

My recent tilt phrase is "that being said". What's wrong with "still"?

What's wrong with widening your range to include both?

I agree. Often, "still" or "yet" accomplishes what you want here. "That being said" (and it's variants: "That said", "having said that") are just the current verbal crutches of people trying to sound smart. Another one I hear a lot is "At the end of the day," e.g. "At the end of the day, the Redskins just aren't a very good team."

There's nothing wrong with them from a grammar standpoint, but when I hear them it makes me think the speaker (or writer) is just a trend follower. It's kind of like when I was about seven years old and an older, cooler kid on the block (I think he was nine) used the word "neato" a lot, so I adopted it. It also reminds me of George Costanza going rock climbing with his hat on backwards ("I'm down with rock climbing!").

It's worse than "neato", unless whatever word you would have you used to express excitement about the object (or whatever else "neato" was expressing) couldn't have been much shorter than "neato", while "that being said" is much shorter than "still". Substituting syllables may or may not be warranted, but adding syllables without at changing content at all never is.

Those who use this phrase, try an experiment: very time you use it, try plugging in "still" for it after you're done. Or better, try plugging it into other people's sentences (in which you're not yet invested) in place of the phrase. It works, doesn't it? It gets the same point across, and does it more quickly, more efficiently — and consequently more effectively.

What?

You cannot be serious.

And I think you meant 'there's nothing wrong with them from a grammatical standpoint'.

http://forum.thefreedictionary.com/p...-that----.aspx

A search for the phrase brings up 162 instances on this forum (all of 2p2) in the past week. Here are the first eight hits (I don't know how the search function orders them; eight because I got bored; those in which the phrase appears in quotations omitted), along with the simple substitution:

"Still, would 4L be a good place to have a porn star draft?" Works fine, and gets the point across more clearly (and yes it would).


"Still, I think [you] should probably bet something around $500 and jam all turns." Better.


It doesn't work here without rewording the sentence. But I'm not sure the phrase actually fits his intent: he seems to mean something like "considering that", which isn't how the phrase is usually used. I'm not sure how to score this one.


"Still, I've never been to Afghanistan." That's OK. "But I've never been to Afghanistan" is better.


"Still, I think the Jim nk could easily have been FPSed if Felix was his fakepeek." Lots of werewolf jargon here, but move past that and I think you can see that the slimmed-down version is better.


Here, "still" doesn't work too well but "but" does: "But I'll be watching Leeds Arsenal so probably won't be around much later on..."


Here, the phrase works, because the author is going for a dramatic pause, not simply a conjunction of opposition. Score one for "that being said".


One could argue that the rhythm works better here with the longer phrase. I wouldn't use it, but some might, and I admit that "Still, of course not all capitalists are exploitative as a rule" is a different statement. This may be because he's used the phrase with the word "with".


In those eight instances I think five would be noticeably improved by substituting either "still" or "but": They're clearer and more concise, while the meaning is the same. In three others, there is at least arguable justification for the phrase.

Maybe it's not as bad as I initially thought, but it seems clear that it's overused.

You're not alone. This is probably the eighth time it's been brought up in this thread, and at least three of those times someone has posted the Larry David picture as support. Expecting another one soon.

I vehemently oppose your argument!

The English language is rich and often has many ways of expressing similar ideas or concepts. With more people like you around, we're going to limit ourselves to saying the same things and become as linguistically boring as the likes of the Spanish.

I don't want to fight you about this, man, and I hope you don't take this as an insult, but I cannot bring myself to respect your argument.

Sorry, I didn't really say who I was talking to. Really to W0X0F but also to anyone who thinks these phrases are bad.

They've been used as far back as I can remember. 'At the end of the day' is a famous (in the UK) football catchphrase of Jimmy Greaves.

KInd of like obliged and obligated, right?

No. I have different reasons for disliking it. I said it's clumsy and sounds horrible, which I accept is subjective, but it's also a word I had never heard being used until I heard a Spanish person using it.

The National Corpus has only 30 entries of it, whereas there are almost 2000 for obliged.

The other day I witnessed a conversation that instantly made me think of this thread. The manager at a store was speaking with a cashier who was a young urban lady. The cashier was complaining about being ready to go home and wanted to take another break. The manager responded with how the cashier had already received her break for the day and that she would be finishing her shift. Then the cashier whips out this little gem

"you ain't give me no nothin"

The rare triple negative! As soon as she says this I burst out laughing thinking of you guys.

Have a nice day.

Grammar nits on paper is one thing but grammar nits in conversation it another.

Most of it is snobbery. Nothing in the last two pages seems out of line at all.

Still vs longer constructions debate. People make word/phase choices for a bundle of reasons. Who they're speaking too, mood, confidence, status, dialect conventions. The "end of the day" usage might be marginally "warmer" than the efficient "still". Considering most conversation is a social act and is lots of it is essentially the equivalent of primate flea picking, efficiency isn't the be all and end all of things.
Shorter, more effecient phrases will also be decoded as less friendly by the hearer imo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politeness_theory

Triple neg is fine too. People have this idea that grammatical constructs should be like a mathmatical equation and both sides should even out. Be honest, did you have even the tiniest amount of difficulty understanding the cashier? I doubt it.

Ya but she could have just made some heinous grunting noises and waved her arms around and the perception would be the same.

"Irregardless" is a pet peeve that my dad installed in me at a very young age. At family get-togethers the word "Disirregardless" sees frequent usage, the reasoning being that the triple negative is actually communicating the intent of the word while the double negative reverses it.

My family is weird but also kind of awesome.

That post makes me think you are some kind of computer. Did you mean instilled?

I agree; the great thing about English is the fact that we have so many different ways to express ourselves in the spoken language. Conciseness and succinctness should be left for written language, as it can definitely be much better to get the point across quickly for one's audience.

Good grief!

From dictionary.com: 'ever - adjective 5.
South Midland and Southern U.S. every: She rises early ever morning.'

Clearly, yes, one of the great strengths and beauties of English is that its huge and multifarious vocabulary and flexible grammatical structure allow one to say (orally or in writing) things in so many ways, that the subtlest of nuances — not only in denotation, but also in connotations and even such secondary considerations as rhythm and of course dialect — can be conveyed. In fact, there are so many such subtleties inherent in the language that most speakers could not tell you how they chose the words and constructions that they did, but nevertheless in most cases there is a reason for the choices.

But that there is a reason does not mean it is a good one, particularly because subconscious choices may often be made without consideration of the alternatives. I believe that in many cases speakers choose a currently fashionable word or phrase — as, for example, "that being said" — not to convey any nuance relative to the more obvious choice, nor to accomplish some goal with respect to rhythm, delivery, or the like, but simply because they didn't think about it. Why did the posters I quoted above use the longer phrase instead of "still" or "but", even in spots where the shorter word would clearly have been better? I think it was because it never occurred to them that they could use a single word for it. Everyone says "that being said," so they did too.

And I think that's sad. As the phrase's apologists are arguing and as the sticklers are agreeing, English is an amazing vehicle for conveying one's thoughts; to go through life without at least trying to use it to its full capacity is a great loss.

Meanwhile, I think 2945 is pretty amusing, but I'm tempted simply to applaud their effort.

Sorry mate but I'm afraid you are well behind the times. Your examples are not currently fashionable in my world. They've been used, as I said, for as long as I can remember.

I keep referring to Spanish as an example and I will again to say that all of those nuances you speak of exist because of the richness of English. Here in Spain, everything is 'important' or 'incredible' and it absolutely grinds my gears that this completely unimaginative culture can't find any synonyms to describe things in a more illustrative manner.

Let's not allow that to happen to English - the most evolved language on earth.

I could also say the same about your use of 'spots'. Clearly, you used it 'in that spot' because you heard some poker player use it or read it on here and started to apply it to 'certain spots' where, imo, 'example' is better and much less 'tilting'.