So?

I was in Costa Rica, with two of the undergrads who came with me to that study abroad program. We were talking about our respective trips when one of them started her intervention this way:

"So, we were all in the lab, buying our tickets, and decided that since we were all together we should also fly together. Isn't it nice?"

The "So" at the beginning reminded me of a snippet of a conversation between Scully and (a supposed) Mulder, in the TV show The X-Files, in which Scully says "So, I was there, in the middle of nowhere, at three o'clock in the morning, and I wondered: what on Earth am I doing here?"

If this rhetorical trick appears in TV shows and movies, I only can imagine that it's purpose is to make you feel as if you were in the middle of an interesting story. The difference between Scully and my student is that she wasn't in the middle of any story, but still wanted to convey to other ears that she might have been.

I know, it makes no sense... but it also annoys me. However, I concur with a previous statement: it's easier to take than "You know?" every three words.

BTW, "like" is soooooooooooo twentieth-century... :)
 
Thanks (almost) everyone. The TV announcer buying-time argument and the idea that it draws people into a conversation (the latter misguided, in my view, but quite possibly what its users believe) seem to be the likeliest bets. Thanks for examples from other languages, including Italian. Is the Italian usage recent, or has it been more or less constant for (say) 100 years?

As many have said, it is almost certainly a passing fad; and I shall not mourn its passing. 'Say' (from the 1930s) is probably an exact parallel, but 'so' looks just as odd as 'say' to me.

Oh, and Gumby, if you're determined to be patronized, I'll do it properly, and correct your English. It's 'expat' not 'ex-pat'. An expatriate is someone who lives outside the country of his birth; 'ex' in the sense of 'outside' as in 'external' or 'exogenous', not 'ex' in the sene of 'former' as in 'ex-soldier'.

Cheers,

Roger
 
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Oh, so you are interested in word usage, eh?

Interesting that US English is the current world standard, so future native English speakers are being and will be born on this continent, and a rubber is to prevent, not erase or preserve. ;-)

Only a few cars have wings, or boots for that matter.

Italian is not really one language, or so my Italian friends tell me, but a collection of dialects some quite distinct from others, so it takes a bit of effort for one from one region to understand one from another, and adds confusion to those taking lessons.

We do seem to abbreviate many things, shortening the two fingers to one as well.

So, you guys started the language, the French severely modified it, and then you leave it to us to perfect it?

Deep thinking going on at 4am? Perhaps not.

Did not see anything of yours in the last Issue of Shutterbug, have I renewed needlessly?

Regards, John
 
For what its worth in this examination of current slang, here in NZ people do not use "So' the way you guys have described it. I have noticed it on American forums though, and idly thought it was just some American way of indicating a "chattiness' to thread. I was mildy interested to find that it seems you use it in coversation the same way.

Perhaps an equivilent we use here is "anyway," as in a translation from one subject o another "Anyway, then I went to the circus..." But then maybe you guys do that as well. I dont know. The only American language I know is off TV. For example I was suprised to speak for the first time to a friend from Arkansas on the phone who I had previously only correspanded with by email; his accent was unfamiliar, being as how not many people obviously make TV shows about people from Arkansas. I sort of assumed that there was NEW York accent, Californain accent and deep southern Carolina or something like that. The Arkansas accent threw me. I hadn't heard it on TV.
Shows how powerful the medium is. It influences not only by what it shows other people, but by what it omits.
I have gone off topic; forgive me.
 
An interesting thread. Having just walked around for ten hours a day, for four days, with just over 40000 other people from (approximately) 37 countries and had a bit of an international experience as a result, may I just point out that there is nothing wrong with languages evolving differently in different places. For example, Canadian french compared to French french, or Brazilian portugues vs. that used in Portugal, or American english and British english.

In the case of english (as I am British) the verbs, especially participles, have changed differently over tha last couple of hundred years and the adjectives are used in different structures too. Children from either land would fail a grammar test in the other ! But it's not a problem so long as everyone discusses possible ambiguities when they write the instructions for hospital equipment, nuclear-powerstations, aeroplanes etc etc.

Amusingly, quite a few Dutch people have picked up the "so" thing as well, then continue in Dutch - learned from tv or films I suspect.
:)
 
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I am surprised no one has mentioned "well" as an English (American English, anyway) word that is used seemingly at least as often as "so," and for the same purpose -- to make a a new statement sound as if it was a continuation of an existing conversation when that's not necessarily the case. Definitely like the Italian "allora" (and -- though I'll defer to the German speakers here -- "also.") And Roger, isn't "donc" much the same in French?

In English, anyway, it does seem as though "so" and "well" serve to signal and soften the transition to a new topic of conversation. Certain TV newscasters use "well" so often that my wife and I figure it's something they're taught in broadcast school.
 
This is intriguing; I am learning a good deal about other languages and dialects. I don't think that 'donc' is used as much as 'or' (more or less 'well...') in written French, and it doesn't seem that common to me in spoken French. Or maybe I just don't notice it.

Differentiation of languages from a common root fascinates me. An example I've used elsewhere is 'sump' (English), 'oil pan' (American) and 'chamber' (Indian), but on a larger scale consider Provençal, Catalan, Spanish and French. It seems to me that we may be embarking on a new (and possibly unnecessary) reversal of the way in which dialects have been consolidated (largely by television), while simultaneously seeing 'English as a second language' (and mostly American English at that) appearing even among the speakers of one or another dialect of English.

One definition of a language, of course, is 'a dialect with an army'.

Cheers,

Roger
 
I would still like to know why and how sub-standard items 'suck'!. I have a very good vacuum cleaner that sucks!.....and sometimes my pipe gets a bit blocked!........:confused:
Dave.
 
"So, what’s the camera like to use?" Roger Hicks discussing Zorkis.

More ubiquitous than we thought.
 
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Roger Hicks said:
This is intriguing; I am learning a good deal about other languages and dialects. I don't think that 'donc' is used as much as 'or' (more or less 'well...') in written French, and it doesn't seem that common to me in spoken French. Or maybe I just don't notice it.

Differentiation of languages from a common root fascinates me. An example I've used elsewhere is 'sump' (English), 'oil pan' (American) and 'chamber' (Indian), but on a larger scale consider Provençal, Catalan, Spanish and French. It seems to me that we may be embarking on a new (and possibly unnecessary) reversal of the way in which dialects have been consolidated (largely by television), while simultaneously seeing 'English as a second language' (and mostly American English at that) appearing even among the speakers of one or another dialect of English.

One definition of a language, of course, is 'a dialect with an army'.

Cheers,

Roger
Click to expand...

When I was in Brazil, several years ago, I was informed that Brazil is the largest Portuguese-speaking country in the world; not Portugal. Furthermore, apparently the dialect of Brazilian Portuguese is not the dialect of modern Portugal. Rather, it is related as, say, modern English relates to Middle English. The Portuguese who colonized Brazil brought their (then current) language with them. In later years, Portuguese as it is spoken in Portugal changed, but it did not change as much in Brazil.

The unusual (and somewhat amusing) part to me was that Brazil exports a large number of television shows to Portugal, where they are quite popular. As a result, Portuguese parents are becoming concerned that their children are growing up speaking what English-speakers might consider Elizabethan English in terms of equivalence!
 
Maybe the other American RFF members did not have a Father that would say "SO?", "SEW Buttons".

I cannot recall starting a thread or a reply like that.

Do you have a Histogram of the words used to start threads? I wonder if we could separate out American/English/and Non-Native English speakers by looking at the distribution.
 
Thardy said:
"So, what’s the camera like to use?" Roger Hicks discussing Zorkis.

More ubiquitous than we thought.
Click to expand...

Dear Thomas,

I do not recall, but I think that was part of a continuing discussion -- in which sense I do indeed use it. What I'm questioning is the beginning of a whole thread (or indeed using 'So' in the title of a thread) when clearly it is a new topic of conversation.

In the sense described above, surely I was saying "All this having been said, what's the camera like to use?"

Which argues, of course, that beginning a thread or topic of conversation with 'So' is an attempt (as I have said, misguided in my opinion) to pretend that it is a continuation of what has already been said, when it clearly is not so. EDIT: or indeed, not 'So'.

Cheers,

Roger
 
Roger Hicks said:
Oh, and Gumby, if you're determined to be patronized, I'll do it properly, and correct your English. It's 'expat' not 'ex-pat'. An expatriate is someone who lives outside the country of his birth; 'ex' in the sense of 'outside' as in 'external' or 'exogenous', not 'ex' in the sene of 'former' as in 'ex-soldier'.
Click to expand...

Roger... if "patronizing" is what you want to do, well that is what you'll do. Doesn't offend me one bit. It is, however, an expression of what's in your heart. "Sew a button on a balloon"... I haven't heard that since I was a kid. It fits this conversation! :) Thanks for reminding me of that great saying!

If correcting me is what you want to do, well I'll accept that... you are correct about expat being more proper than ex-pat. Have a nice day!
 
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I don't remember which science fiction author it was who referred to what we speak in the U.S. and Canada as "North American Anglic". Jamaicans are taught British English in schools but speak a patoise (the word they use) that consists of mostly English words with a West African grammatical structure. Taditional American "black English" (not the slang the kids speak) is also based on West African grammar. It substitutes words like him, her, etc. for he and she, as well as the following verb such as "Him be going to the market" rather than "He is going to the market". They make no distinction between the objective and the subjective forms, but neither do the West African languages.

Television has just about destroyed regional accents in the U.S. Back in the 40's and 50's growing up in New England you could tell which town somebody was from by their accent. There was an obvious difference between Boston, Brockton, Taunton, and New Bedford if you drove the 50 miles north to south. Heading west you knew you were in Providence, Rhode Island, then Harford, Conneticut, and EVERYBODY complained about the way New Yorkers couldn't pronounce a damned thing properly.
 
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