English is weird

boing
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“Only” can go anywhere, not just in between the words.

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Only English is weird

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The meaning of the sentence is transformed yet again if instead of “only” you insert “meat.” Try it!

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Or put the emphasis on any individual word in the sentence:

“I didn’t say I stole her bag.”

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“Weird”? It’s “i” before “e” except after “c.” Right?

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That’s not weird. That’s expected. If you move modifiers around, then different things are modified, and the expected sense of the modifier can change in context.

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I came in to mention, you can place “only” anywhere, and then, put the emphasis anywhere, for 64 possibilities.

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Why stop with only one only?
“Only? She only told him that she loved only him!”

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“
or when sounding like ‘ey’ as in neighbor or weigh
 or in other arbitrary words that don’t follow any rules consistent with pronunciation like ‘receipt’, ‘foreign’ and ‘feisty’”.

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It’s not even an English thing. It’s a grammar thing.


Something something Gödel’s incompleteness theorems


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A short story


Only she told him that she loved him.
She only told him that she loved him.
She told only him that she loved him.
She told him only that she loved him.
She told him that only she loved him.
She told him that she only loved him.
She told him that she loved only him.
She told him that she loved him only.

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She told him that she loved only.
She told that she loved only.
She that she loved only.
She that loved only.
She loved only.
She only.
Only.

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Engliiiissh! [shakes fist]

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or you could do that thing with fortune cookies and add the words “in bed” at the end.
It makes it so much more funny.

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If only.

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So many movie titles improved by adding the words “
in my pants” to the end.

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A linguist is giving a speech at a conference. At the end, he’s wrapping it up with “I think I have demonstrated that, while there are many languages in which two negatives make a positive, there are none in which the reverse is true.”
A guy sitting at the back goes “Yeah
 Right
”

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That’s what she said.

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Spooky!