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Pedants' corner

Quick vs quickly/fast - is it just me?

(24 Posts)
Witzend Tue 17-May-22 09:58:41

Ditto ‘quicker’ instead of ‘more quickly’.
I hope I’m not alone!

Talking of adverbs, after some school tests a dd of maybe 10 said, ‘English was OK, Mum, but I did really craply at maths.’ ?

My inner pedant (OK, not so inner) was delighted that she’d known to add the ‘ly’!

Baggs Tue 17-May-22 10:00:45

I love that kids make words up using grammatical laws they've just absorbed ?

Urmstongran Tue 17-May-22 10:03:20

Me too. Recently our L’il Miss aged 5y told me she’d ‘winned’ at a game she was playing.
?

Germanshepherdsmum Tue 17-May-22 10:09:12

It's not just you! I am always correcting people on the television. Easily irritated!

Witzend Tue 17-May-22 10:30:55

Baggs

I love that kids make words up using grammatical laws they've just absorbed ?

Yes - fascinating, isn’t it?

I still remember my younger sister at maybe 3 ‘mis-applying’ both the regular and irregular verb rules.

Re toys left in the garden, she said, ‘We’ve brunged them all in, Mummy!’ ??

Ailidh Tue 17-May-22 11:08:04

"Craply" is wonderful!

I also shout at television screens, also newspapers.

I've learned not to pass comment in social media because I fully appreciate some people have genuine spelling issues that it would be very disheartening for them to be picked up on.

Newscasters and newspapers that can'tbearsedly get it wrong really annoy me.

Witzend Tue 17-May-22 11:27:33

I love ‘can’tbearsedly’!

I will probably unashamedly steal it!

timetogo2016 Tue 17-May-22 11:41:05

Same here Germanshepherdsmum.
Living close to the black country i could correct people on a daily basis,but i don`t of course.

greenlady102 Tue 17-May-22 11:45:41

but language is a living changing thing....we don't use the same words and phrases as the Elizabethans did!

Chocolatelovinggran Tue 17-May-22 12:09:33

I do remind ( politely) newsreaders et al about matters such as the split infinitive, and the dangers of ending sentences with a preposition.
Sadly, this rarely seems to improve performance.
However, I do enjoy children's reworking of grammar rules, as they understand them.
My own were all puzzled as to why the obverse of "his umbrella " was not " shis umbrella " but " her umbrella ".

grandtanteJE65 Tue 17-May-22 14:21:47

Would anyone care to explain more fully?

I may be missing the point here, but quick, quicker and quickest are adjectives, whilst quickly is an adverb.

So what is this post really about?

FarNorth Tue 17-May-22 15:00:39

Run real quick to the shop grandetante.

Ailidh Tue 17-May-22 15:07:38

Witzend

I love ‘can’tbearsedly’!

I will probably unashamedly steal it!

You are most welcome to it! ?

Witzend Tue 17-May-22 15:14:43

Pedant though I am, infinitives don’t bother me, Chocolatelovinggran - as far as I’m concerned that was an artificial rule dreamed up by 18thC grammarians who thought English should follow ‘perfect language’ Latin, where you can’t split an infinitive anyway.

But English is not a Latin-root language. Although we have a lot of Latin-based words (and Greek-based too) much of our basic vocabulary and grammatical structures come from the Anglo-Saxon root.

Slightly OT, but I once read that Churchill’s famous ‘We shall fight them on the beaches…’ speech, contained only one word that was not of A-S origin, and that was ‘surrender’.

Witzend Tue 17-May-22 15:17:10

Split infinitives!!!

Petera Tue 17-May-22 15:30:53

grandtanteJE65

Would anyone care to explain more fully?

I may be missing the point here, but quick, quicker and quickest are adjectives, whilst quickly is an adverb.

So what is this post really about?

I think it's about qualifying adjectives. The 'rule' (if such things exist and they haven't changed, which I'm sure they have) is

Adjectives with one syllable: add -er -est. I.e. quick, quicker, quickest.

Adjectives with three or more syllables: use more or most. I.e. more feminine, most feminine.

Adjectives with two syllables: it depends.

So it shouldn't be "more quick".

But with adverbs it's different as you point out, I think though sometimes it's unclear if the word in any given sentence is modifying a verb or a noun.

But maybe I've misunderstood.

Petera Tue 17-May-22 15:36:44

Witzend

Pedant though I am, infinitives don’t bother me, Chocolatelovinggran - as far as I’m concerned that was an artificial rule dreamed up by 18thC grammarians who thought English should follow ‘perfect language’ Latin, where you can’t split an infinitive anyway.

But English is not a Latin-root language. Although we have a lot of Latin-based words (and Greek-based too) much of our basic vocabulary and grammatical structures come from the Anglo-Saxon root.

Slightly OT, but I once read that Churchill’s famous ‘We shall fight them on the beaches…’ speech, contained only one word that was not of A-S origin, and that was ‘surrender’.

Not just is the split infinitive rule crazy, but also the 'preposition at the end of a sentence rule' is usually brought up when the word is not acting as a preposition but rather a particle of a phrasal verb.

Witzend Tue 17-May-22 21:59:07

Since I evidently didn’t make it clear, what I was getting at was ‘quick’ being used to modify a verb, when an adverb is needed, i.e.’quickly’, or ‘fast’.
‘Quick’ is an adjective.

Likewise, ‘quicker’ when applied to a verb, so it should be the comparative adverb - ‘more quickly’ or ‘faster’.

‘Fast’ can of course be an adjective or an adverb. E.g. ‘A fast train’, or ‘She works very fast.’

BigBertha1 Tue 17-May-22 22:03:36

Somone on Bargain Hunt today described a lamp as 'industrious '. She was a teaching assistant accompanied by her friend a teacher. She repeated the word when she returned to said item.

GrannySomerset Tue 17-May-22 22:04:37

DS aged about three -“I am be quicking, Mummy!”

FarNorth Tue 17-May-22 22:07:32

Strange that we don't say fastly.

dragonfly46 Tue 17-May-22 22:12:19

When my 4 year old DGS gouged his forehead he said “I shouldn’t have runned!”

Callistemon21 Tue 17-May-22 23:11:20

FarNorth

Strange that we don't say fastly.

I love them!

I was going to ask why fastly isn't a word, FarNorth

HeavenLeigh Sat 09-Jul-22 19:19:12

Awww bless him I shouldn’t have runned, love it