One of the tricky things with English is that we often have words that can be combined to form different words.

Like greenhouse. It’s a combination of green + house. But a greenhouse is something very different from a green house. Autocorrect may cause some people to make this mistake, but generally, the concepts are understood to be different.

On the other side of things, there’s things like “alot” which is mistakenly used so commonly that my autocorrect didn’t even care that I typed that (and it’s not just because of the quotes!).

Then there are words like login, which as a noun is definitely one word, but as a verb, should almost definitely be two words (“log in to this website”, but “this is my login for the website”)…but “login” seems to be universally recognized as standard for a verb, even though we don’t say loginned for the past tense (we still say “logged in”).

And of course, there are other words that are commonly paired together that we don’t often see with the space removed, like “Takecare”, “Noway”, or “Ofcourse”. These could all be potential candidates for the “alot” treatment. What makes “alot” special?

So what causes “Please login to the website” to be “correct”, but “I workout everyday” to be incorrect? (And maybe everyone is “wrong” about login, or everyone is right about “workout” and “everyday”, and the compound word is an acceptable alternative to the versions with the space)

I feel like this would be better in an AskLinguists community here… maybe there’s an active one that someone could point me to? But I’m still curious to see what people think

  • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
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    6 days ago

    Isn’t written language just an arbitrary agreement? I don’t see much logic in a lot of aspects of the English language. I just memorize it. And as a German, I kind of struggle with these words, as we have a lot of compound words in our language. And the languages share a common ancestor. And I don’t really see any reason to write “livingroom” as two words… I mean it’s one room… And you tend to do it the other way around with other nouns… I also have no idea why. And then there’s the occasional dash in between words… Or “in between” itself. Or “itself” or was it “it self”? It’s just confusing. It’s probably an artifact of how the language developed.

    • otp@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      6 days ago

      Isn’t written language just an arbitrary agreement?

      So is spoken language! And I’d argue that it’s more the case for spoken language than written language.

      As someone who taught English and had to try to find patterns, here are my tips…

      • If it’s an adjective describing a noun, it’s two words (e.g. a house that’s green is a green house)
      • if its one concept without an adjective, it might be a single compound work (e.g, the special building for growing plants is a greenhouse. Green doesn’t describe a colour)
      • Compound words usually don’t have any conjugation when a verb is used…if there’s conjugation, then it won’t become one word (which is why we have “living room” and “bathroom”…but a “bathing room” would be two words. But not always)
      • If the compound word that’s a verb needs to be broken apart to be conjugated, it’s probably not a compound wor (e.g., if you need to say “He works out” and not “he workouts”, then it should be “I work out” and not “I workout”)

      But also English is just dumb. Especially with the dashes. I use those more for sticking together words that aren’t actually compound words. Or when it looks better, like with level-headed. It looks too long without the dash to my English eyes.

      Also, “itself” is always itself. It’s the reflexive pronoun (I think) like myself, yourself, etc. It’s one word the same way that “hers” is one word.

      • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
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        5 days ago

        Thanks for the tips. I’ll try to remember some of that. And yes, English is dumb. But also kind of nice. I think it’s comparatively easy to learn. At least that’s what I took from my own experience with learning English in school and then a few years later - French. And that’s just loads of exceptions to each and every rule, almost all verbs are irregular, half the letters are silent for some reason… But I guess English does that, too. You can’t really tell how to pronounce something just by reading the letters. Point is, I kind of enjoyed learning English. At least after overcoming the initial hurdles. And I’m exaggerating. We had a nice French teacher, and I wish I hadn’t lost most of it after school, due to lack of exposure… And I think learning languages is fun, as you’re bound to learn something about different cultures as well, and it might open doors to interesting places.

        • otp@sh.itjust.worksOP
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          5 days ago

          French is in a different language family. One nice thing about French is that, even with all the silent letters, it tends to be more consistent than English. The same letters should make the same sound (or the same silence) in any context…at least more often than English.

          So if you know how “llon” in papillon is pronounced, you’ll probably be able to pronounce bouillon.

          Whereas if you know how “ough” sounds in “rough”… you’re fine with “tough”, but might have trouble with:

          • through
          • thought
          • though
          • cough
          • thorough
          • dough
          • drought
          • bought

          Those have all stopped looking like words to me though. <== This one too

          • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
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            5 days ago

            Yes. Surely it has to be easier for me (who grew up learning a germanic language,) to learn another one of them. I occasionally like to watch these Youtube videos on why for example English has a handful of ways to pronounce “ough”. I still think the French are crazy people for writing l’eau and pronouncing it “oh”, when it’s literally the one vowel missing in that word. Or coming up with insane concepts like a silent letter “x” in the plural words… But you’re right. I remember there was almost always some rule to it.

    • Polygondenimland@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      As a Dutchman, I agree. In fact, I’m pretty sure that ever since we’ve been increasing our exposure to the written English language, many Dutch people have been adding nonsensical spaces to words that used to be written as compounds. We even call it ‘English disease’ (along with other anglicisms)