• bleistift2@feddit.de
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    1 year 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.world
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      1 year 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
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        1 year ago

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

        seem to not have seen

        cannot actually always

        🤡

      • DaGeek247@kbin.social
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        1 year 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.world
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          1 year 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?

      • bleistift2@feddit.de
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        1 year 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.

      • bleistift2@feddit.de
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        1 year 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.