Marco! or Marco?
I’ve been pondering things that matter lately and here’s one I think I need a little more input on.
When you shout Marco are you asking a question or making a statement?
I need to know if when I’m yelling it out I should be putting an upward inflection on the end of the word, thus asking a question, or end it with a exclamation mark, a statement.
The way I see it the rule is that you have to respond Polo in a audible voice so that would kind of suggest to me that it is a statement. You’re not asking them to respond but rather telling them they have to yell Polo.
If it were a question I kind of feel that you wouldn’t be obligated to respond, for instance someone might think that you have just asked a rhetorical question, or they may not answer as they might think you were directing your question to someone else.
What do you think?
I just realised something, it could be an unfinished sentence, maybe it’s not followed by a question or exclamation mark but rather 3 dots, you know … do they have a technical name?
In the laws governing the English language are you technically allowed unfinished sentence’s?
It’s all waying just a little too heavy on me for my liking…
(that wasn’t an unfinished sentence but rather a trailing off… which has confused me more…)
May 24th, 2009 at 12:53 am
I believe the three dots are called an elipsis.
I also believe that the ‘Marco’ is a question, asking where the person is. The response (‘polo’) is the person’s acknowledgement of the question, and their attempt to inform the first person of their location.
May 24th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
I’m with Pete on this…
And by the way, I love the elipsis…
One thing to keep in mind is that the English language (like all languages) is continually evolving (some may argue de-evolving) but with the widespread use of abbreviated sms language, and just the effect of accent and colloquial slang, you can more or less do what you want with the English language as long as you can successfully communicate.
You wait another 10 years and we’ll be writing “youse” for the 2nd person plural.
May 25th, 2009 at 8:30 am
I recognise the (de)evolution of the English language, but I’m from the Column 8 school of thought – always striving to improve my command of language in the traditional sense.
May 25th, 2009 at 8:32 am
By the way – when I see the language changing with things like ‘youse’, I just think of the film ‘Idiocracy’, and I’m inspired to learn the correct spelling or grammar.
May 25th, 2009 at 9:54 am
I despise the thought that one day ‘youse’ will be accepted as grammatically correct! I cringe when I’m in a restaurant or a professional arena when we are asked “can I get youse anything?”.
May 25th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
See, the problem is that the plural 2nd person pronoun in the English language actually is ‘you’. The singular 2nd person pronoun in the English language is ‘thou’. But in common use, the English language has (de)evolved by dropping the singular and given the plural to uses… confusing and stupid.
So here is society recreating the plural in modern terms…
May 25th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Is that you Michael?
May 25th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Ok, let’s say you’re right and I should have the slight upward inflection on the end of my Marco’s.
What about other people? Should I be correcting them when clearly they are finishing their Marco off with and exclamation mark? Or am I not socially obliged and therefore do I need to just let the incorrect use of punctuation run rampant?
On a similar note, not a fan of abbreviated sms language, some is ok, but I still don’t get some of it and am not prepared to google it.
And 2 last questions, is that you Michael? and What? If I read that more it might sink in, so I’ll put that on tomorrows to-do list, but for now I must go.
May 25th, 2009 at 11:57 pm
Of course it is. I’m an educated man now.
I know stuffs about somefink gramma n’that coz i done studied the grik language wich taughted me abouts english
May 25th, 2009 at 11:58 pm
I say let the marco thing go.
It’s not worth the brain cells
May 26th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Gramma?
She’s married to Grampa?