I’ve heard it explained that “hey” used to be more of an urgent way to get someone’s attention, rather than a casual “hello” like it is now, so it sounded rude to some older folks.
Teachers in 2023: “NOOO you can’t end your sentences with ‘fr fr nocap skibidi’ those aren’t even real words!”
2033:
2033: “Why would you say any of that corny old shit? You sloopy old frond!”
2035: We flippin’ grunts out here or what?
Me n my grepies outta die sinkies by flipoin grunts
Seriously. The “Fr fr no cap” is closer to our generations “Swag yolo”. Or the past generations “Tubular”
This is a bitchin observation.
I think it’s a pretty good example of something that totally lost all meaning and got beat into the ground, rather than getting worked into some individual lexicon or accent, and having a specific kind of role.
Totally passing observation on top of that, but I think, it’s probably much easier for that to happen to specific references, than for that to happen to actual novel uses of language.
Do we have a RemindMe bot for Lemmy yet? I want to re-read this prophecy in 10 years
A bit late but
@RemindMe@programming.dev 10 years
Is it a reference to this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skibidi_Toilet? Is it used as punctuation like “lol”?
When I was a waiter, there was no shortage of boomers getting genuinely upset with me saying “No problem” as a reply to “thanks”.
I prefer to say no problem over you’re welcome cuz it always (to me) sounds sarcastic/disingenuous when I say you’re welcome
It’s like this:
You have a boss. A wrinkled plus-sized brown business jacket of a man whose idea of “cutting costs” is turning the air conditioner off. If he caught on fire, you wouldn’t piss on him to put him out. How do you address him? “Good morning Mr. Perkins, how are you doing today?”
You’ve got a war buddy. You met at boot camp, you served in the same company, he splinted your leg in the field, you’re his kids’ godfather. You’d kill and die for this man. How do you address him? “Ah god not this fucking asshole again.”
Official formal polite language like “Thank you” and “You’re welcome” is the pair of nitrile gloves I put on to handle the really noxious shit that comes my way. “w’thanks man” and “no problem” means I’m willing to handle you with my bare skin.
“No problem” also carries the implication that the favor was taken and done without ill will, where “you’re welcome” carries one of superiority
Superiority from using formal language?
TIL manners are uppity.
Well one would expect it at a five star restaurant, but not your local dive. So… kinda…?
I thought it was every day life politeness, but I am not native. I would rather expect “the pleasure is all mine, sir” at a 3 Michelin stars restaurant.
To me “you are welcome” comes off as taking credit for something minor and expected. No problem does the opposite. I prefer when people say no problem generally over you’re welcome. And that’s why it’s become more common in a day in age where people are expected to be less servile.
Question for the Spanish speakers in the room: Is there even another term equivalent to “you’re welcome” other than de nada that people actually use? Not super familiar but Spanish seems like a language where “it’s nothing” or “no problem” has almost completely replaced other phrases responding to thanks.
Asked honestly and noting cultural differences that may apply here - could be there’s a more formal “you’re welcome” Spanish phrase and I’ve just never heard it. 'Cause, you know, I don’t live in a Spanish speaking place.
Ugggggh I went through this with my (boomer) boss for years until she finally accepted it lmao. Then it was, “WORRIES, CaptFeather! WORRIES!” as a joke every time I said it lol
I had no idea that it’s considered improper. Online gaming is like
thx
np
Thx must have been too many letters because all I see now is “ty”
It’s a stretch for kids to write anything completely online. We call it Kid Pidgin.
Kidgin
Pidgin btw
Nobody expects online gaming to be a bastion of proper grammar.
People type in abbreviations when gaming mainly due to lack of time though… Much better to focus on the game than typing more than necessary to convey a simple message in those cases.
I only ever did that when typing via controller. If I had a keyboard I used full sentences but quickly. Sometimes the speed meant lack of proofreading though and weird things have been said.
Lol did they specifically want “you’re welcome?”
Absolutely. I could understand it if it was a formal dining place I suppose. But it was a fucking Applebee’s in a 20k population town with one other restaurant lmao
Applebees is Sit down McDonalds with better food. If one of your seating option is at the fake wood bar its not fine dining.
A family member of mine briefly worked at Applebee’s. Literally everything is microwaved. I happened to get a Fettuccine Alfredo there and have one of the Marie Calendars frozen Fettuccine Alfredo meals (>$2 at the store) in the same week and realized once its plated you literally could not tell the two apart. Same quality, same quantity, but the store bought meal costs 1/5 the price and is somehow ready faster
It was probably the finest dining in town though.
As an Aussie I don’t understand how people get confused by ‘no worries’ .
Inmates lost all manners smh
Nah the prison guards are too uptight.
I’m an American and I say that all the time. I’m not sure how I picked it up.
There’s a little Aussie inside of everyone.
Bonzer!
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“No problem” takes “You’re welcome” and implies that it was of no inconvenience to you either. But I understand that older generations find it important that service workers be most humbly at their service, and adhere to a strict social etiquette just short of “Yes, m’lord” and “Shall I suck upon your dick, sir?”
“You’re welcome” is more appropriate in a professional setting, but if you’re getting your jimmies in a rustle over someone saying “No problem” to you instead, you’re a bit of an assfuck.
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It’s literally meanings of words strung together being described.
You are welcome = you are welcome to my servitude
No problem = I don’t mind doing this thing for you
Oh you. 🤦♀️
I don’t think either phrase is impolite. Good manners are a made up thing. If someone said ‘thanks’ to me and I said ‘tiddle dee dee’ I’m not being rude, just a bit weird, nobody’s honour has been questioned, I haven’t said anything that could be taken as an offence.
If you are a service worker at a restaurant, then that is literally your job, to serve.
I love it when I order a sandwich at my local banh mi place near my office and you can see the cashier literally eye roll every customer that orders. They can’t even look you in the eye…
If you want people to be happy to be serving you then demand that they are paid more.
Otherwise buy your sandwich without any delusions of grandeur and fuck off.
Min wage is $15/hr
And why do people need to pander to you specifically? Cant people be themselves?
Those are narcissistic traits.
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only one way to interpret “you’re welcome”
This is just wrong. Tone matters just as much with “you’re welcome” as it does with “no problem”. Language is fluid like that, and it’s completely arbitrary to elevate one of these expressions over the other when both are in common usage.
Also, you’re deliberately misrepresenting what “no problem” means, in regards to “that’s the only reason you complied”. Nobody says it that way, and I don’t believe that you think they do.
I often say “hey, anytime”. Is that acceptable?
I personally see “anytime” as a much more appropriate reply to “thank you” than “no problem”.
If someone says you’re welcome, you know they are a corporate drone and management wants them to say that to avoid certain people making a scene. Why’s it insincere to say no problem? In the same vein, they only said you’re welcome because they are complying too.
There’s no issues with saying no problem unless you want there to be. Those are cool workplaces.
The implication is that a problem was assumed until “no problem” was stated.
“No problem” is absolutely low key rude.
To me, ‘No problem’ is just short for something like “oh don’t worry about it; it was really no problem at all and I’m happy to help”.
Colloquialisms are fun like that.
The context in which the listener is expected to comprehend communication is important if the speaker hopes for the intended message to actually be communicated.
If the speaker chooses to ignore how the listener is expected to perceive their communication then I’d say that actual communication was never truly their intent… seems more like linguistic masturbation to me.
Bullshit.
If you infer something from something that’s on you.
I feel that kind of interpretation is more region specific. Specifically, West Coast?
Midwest, actually!
Maybe they should just die, that way they don’t have to face a world they clearly can’t deal with.
There is a difference, but it’s not one of inherent meaning, it’s more or less a generational culture difference.
I’ll place this here and pre-emptively say that assisting your understanding was… no problem https://youtu.be/eGnH0KAXhCw?si=sVBI__SCJ3mQkkWo
Not an important difference, no.
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Your feelings are valid and real. But as a society, the new standard is that there’s no difference. If you decide to catch up, it will lead to much fewer hurt emotions.
Imagine repying “danke”, which is thanks in German
It was “yo” for me. Any time I used it some old shit would complain. My mom called it n-word speak. Me and my mom don’t talk.
I use it daily, mostly out of spite.
She wasn’t ok with yo but the n word was ok? Hahaha wtf old people be crazy
My mom was about 35 when she said that. Went to services every weekend.
In the '90s I had a snap back that I decorated with stick on jewels (beadazzled) and on the back I wrote “YO!” in sparkly silver puffy paint. I thought I was so cool in that hat.
It was the 90s, so you were. These days, not so much.
I say yo, but only to feel cool
I say yo but only bcoz its a call in Japanese
I’m glad that the attitude that if you don’t speak “correctly,” then you are not worth engaging with is dying out.
Well, on the grammar front, anyway.
I’m glad the “not worth engaging with” attitude is dying out, but I do still think it’s important to push for people to communicate accurately and effectively, which includes understanding and following grammatical rules when needed.
Language and vocabulary are essential to how we think and collectively problem-solve.
There’s got to be movement on both sides to a common understanding. If one side won’t budge, then fuck 'em.
The point of language is to communicate information.
If the information was successfully relayed, the language exchange was successful.
If the person knows you MEAN “hello, I would like two of these items here, thank you good sir. hands cash and cashier says thank you You’re welcome. Have a pleasant day, sir” when you SAY “Sup, two please. Thanks man. No problem have a good one.” then you have successfully languaged.
So when my wife with a plethora of issues involving word recall says some insane thing because she can’t remember the right words, as long as I understand what she means, her language did it’s job.
It should of died out long ago and on the side of academic linguistics did, but on the internet sadly not so much
should of
Why do you want to hurt us so?
Because these who feel hurt by this deserve to be hurt. No tolerant for intolerance
There’s descriptive and there’s prescriptive linguistics. The first is the scientific endeavor of finding out and explaining how a language works. The second is the realm of anal politicians from the colonialist era who used language as an oppression tool to suppress local cultures and force the hegemonic culture upon indigenous people to make it easier to dominate, eradicate and subjugate them. Currently regarded as one of the defining elements of Genocides. For examples see, Spanish, French, English, Russian, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin … well you get the idea.
I think they are finding that they will be lonely if they want to continue to follow that path.
People using they/them pronouns:
I think it’s all about context. Sometimes things are formal, sometimes things are informal. The ability to participate in either situation is important.
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Does it really create a stumbling block though? In a lot of the threads I see it being pointed out in, everyone does understand the OP. The people pointing out the grammar seem to be more derailing to the conversation than anything.
Plus I can’t say I agree with whatever you mean by “getting their work more widely read or published”. A lot of famous books that you’re expected to read in school are already past modern English.
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Isn’t this conflating professional publishing with…general speaking though?
You have to understand as a publisher that there’s different standards between doing your job and talking to people everyday.
“Hej,” pronounced “hey” is Swedish for “hello.” Also “Hej hej” these days if you want to be more casual. It seemed weird to me at first, like “Hej mormor,” for “Hello, grandmother,” seemed informal, but if I said, “God afton,” (good afternoon) my cousins said I sounded like a government issued language tape.
Probably not a super accurate representation of Swedish language, but it always brings a smile to my face to hear Brigitte’s “hej hej” and other voicelines in Overwatch
From what I remember Brigitte’s voice is quite good, maybe a slight Disney princess tint to the voice, that I find a bit misfiting, but that’s about it. Her Swedish however isn’t bad at all.
Her Swedish however isn’t bad at all.
Probably because the VA is Swedish. As with all characters in Overwatch they use native speakers. So English is actually their secondary language.
Yeah I know, if I read the IMDB page right she was also the Swedish voice of Kim Possible. Which made me even more confused over the Disney princess tint in her voice, but I might not remember Kim’s voice to good, or she managed to not have the tint back then.
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Honestly it seems like most people have assumed that the way things are now is how they’ll always be. I’m not sure why everyone seems to think this but I’ve noticed it everywhere with almost everyone.
There’s this sense that everyone seems dug in and rooted and acting like their entire world isn’t subject to change on a whim.
It’s really fuckin weird.
Life gets more turbulent as you age so you just try to hold the fuck on.
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And we don’t give a fuck about you thinking we sound like a fifth grader.
Your existence is meaningless and has no influence on the world, let alone our lives, fr fr no cap.
someone on reddit got pissed at me for not writing a ‘coherent’ comment, ie because i didn’t use enough capital letters. so anachronistic, don’t you know the style now old man?
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Indeed, every elder phone should have a shortcut to the Urban Dictionary.
Many don’t agree with words that have been accepted into Oxford or other dictionaries. So the sarcasm falls flat.
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None of what we speak today is “proper English.” Languages are constantly evolving.
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…or it makes you bad at communicating, which is the entire purpose of your comment, and language in general.
Maybe you shouldn’t ride on such high linguistic horses?
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I am foreign. Never set foot in an English speaking country.
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You aren’t foreign, you would be if you were to visit them :p
Wow, it must suck being such a ass to everyone all the time. Can’t imagine how people who have to deal with you routinely can manage.
Also, the kids they were telling off in the early nineties are pushing fifty now and won’t take any shit from an octogenarian.
“Fuck off Dad, or I’ll take you back to the home!”
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Both, really. Some people enjoyed it, some people wanted it to stop.
It could also have been just that - an old joke that everyone liked responding with when they had the chance.
That is how I always perceived it. I can’t even imagine someone saying that with a straight face as a correcting rebuke.
It was what passed for a meme back in the 1950s. There was a comic alphabet that was performed as a turn in the music halls. It started off with “A for horses, B for Mutton, C for miles” and so on.
Your link says 1936.
It does, and if there is a recorded version at that date you can bet it had been floating around for longer than that. Reason I said 50’s is because that was when my parent’s generation were in their young adulthood which if you think about it is where all these catchphrases really set up home in your brain. The other thing, now I think on it, is that it wasn’t said as a response to ‘Hey’ as a greeting it was always said to stop the somewhat Cockney way of indicating you hadn’t heard. What they wanted you to say was ‘Pardon?’ or even ‘I beg your pardon?’, they didn’t like ‘What?’ all that much and couldn’t abide ‘Eh?’ or ‘Ay?’ So it it was usually more of that same ‘Don’t talk to your elders like that’ bullshit that all the baby boomers rebelled against.
I still say it. I thought it was funny. Now I am nervous people thought me rude.
Same, and I still say it to little kids because it’s silly and confuses them for a second. “Hay is for horses. Aren’t you glad you’re a dog?”
In the nineties, i had an old guy respond “‘Hey’ is the first stage of horse shit.”. I still use it to this day.
that’s so much better. I’m 100% incorporating that into my daily phrases
My grandfather used to say that, but it was more of in a dad joke way rather than a ‘you shouldn’t say that’ way.
I say it to my kids all the time.
“Hay is for horses” is such a dope saying. I loved it, horses are dope.
Exactly. I thought it was just a silly joke to open up conversation.
In Germany we have something similar. Our word for Hey, “Hai” actually has two meanings. Obviously it means “Hey” but also “Shark”
So it was common to respond with either “Where” or the more famous “Fish”
If you went for Fish it turned into a silly game of trying to compound the word as much as possible in responses to each other. Usually going like “Hey” “Fish” “Fin” “Soup”. Sharkfish fin soup
Horses agree:
(tap to view animation)
I remember my mom getting uptight over the word “sucks”, as in “that sucks” or “it really sucked”. Literally everyone was saying it, there was no way I could help it lol
Core memory unlocked.
Mom used to get angry about me saying something sucks. She explained why it made her angry, and how it referenced a terrible and no-good sex act. I was about 16 at the time, and had already experienced this horrible, no good thing that nobody should do and just felt sorry for dad.
Tell her to sit on it. And rotate.
Sit and swivel was phase where I grew up. Nobody says it anymore that I know of.
You sit and spin man!
Sucks for her
No, she does it
Go suck an egg, man
A mayon-egg?
Vacuum. It sucks too.
I think someone took a dad joke too seriously.
A few years ago a very boomer gen-xer tried this on me and got very enraged when I would say “hey” instead of “hello {his name}”. At one point even threatened me.
I believe it. I have seen them melt down over the tinest thing. You can shorten my name, like pretty much every first name, and one of the old shits I used to work with would scream and yell about it.
“Greetings, sir!”
What, no salutations? So rude!
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They’re saying the Gen X’er was acting like a Boomer. Which a lot of the older ones kind of are, from what I’ve noticed. They’re almost like “Boomer-lite” in their entitlement and other nasty attitudes.
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I would argue it’s the zoomers and millennials that fit that description better than boomers or gen X.
I don’t know man, I’ve never seen a zoomer yell at a cashier at a big store chain about the prices being too high or them not having something in stock. Boomers on the other hand, I have a number of times. Boomers are also the only people I’ve ever seen get called entitled by not only older generations, but also yonger ones too. Seriously, google “me generation” and see what pops up.
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Yes, one’s option is largely based on their experiences.
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Being a boomer is an state of mind
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I like to mix it up with a ‘howdy’ too. Kind of a throwback ‘hey’.
I still say this to my kids because they don’t understand why and it’s hilarious.
Dadbro, checking in. Hey will always be for horses.
It’s better for cows.
Piggies would eat it, but they don’t know how.
My 3 year old daughter has started saying “Hey!” Right before sharing a brilliant idea like “let’s have ice cream for breakfast!” So I’ve started cutting her off with “Hay is for horses” and she just ignores me
Sup?
“Sup is for meal times!”
Bonus: sup means vulture in Czech. :-D
