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What linguistic constructions do you hate that no one else seems to mind? (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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It bugs me when people say "the thing is is that" (if you listen for it, you'll start hearing it... or maybe that's something that people only do in my area.) ("What the thing is is that..." is fine. But "the thing is is that..." bugs me.)

Also, "just because doesn't mean ." That sentence structure invites one to take "just because " as a noun phrase which my brain really doesn't want to do. Just doesn't seem right. But that sentence structure is very common.

And I'm not saying there's anything objectively wrong with either of these. Language is weird and complex and beautiful. It's just fascinating that some commonly-used linguistic constructions just hit some people wrong sometimes.

Edit: I thought of another one. "As best as I can." "The best I can" is fine, "as well as I can" is good, and "as best I can" is even fine. But "as best as" hurts.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Just because thing, [that] doesn't mean other thing.

You can't even prove that it's grammatically incorrect!

But it sounds awful. And I can't even come up with an alternative.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

"Correlation is not causation" is the phrase I use in that situation.