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your welcome and it’s package

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While I was drafting my previous post, I pondered whether people are more likely to write or type its instead of it’s or or your instead of you’re or vice versa. 

Firstly, by themselves its is far more common than it’s (and some of those are obviously it has), and your is even more common that you’re (Google Ngram Viewer). Its has declined slightly since about 2005, and it’s has increased slightly since about 1980 and steadily since about 2000, though that might be more about increasing informality in writing (using it’s rather than it is and it has). Your has increased significantly since about 1980 and you’re also slightly since about 1980 and steadily since about 2005.

The Language Log commenter I quoted in my previous post complained about your welcome and it’s own package. You’re welcome is far more common, and has increased steadily since about 1980 and significantly since about 2000. Your welcome has increased slightly since about 2000. Note that your welcome is correct in a longer sentence like Thank you for your welcome. Ngrams has no results for it’s own package. its own is far far more common than it’s own, which increased from the early 1960s to early 2000s, then has been decreasing. Of the most common next words (accord, way, weight, sake, reward, right, nature, peculiar, proper, axis) only peculiar and proper are correct (if they are followed by a head noun). But even they are all far less common than the versions with its. I think the Language Log commenter is worrying too much about the wrong things. 

A general Google search for “your welcome” shows mainly discussions/explanations about why it’s incorrect, but also a podcast/Youtube with that title (I can’t tell whether that’s a mistake or a deliberate play) and an unauthorised video of the song You’re Welcome from the movie Moana. A search for “it’s package” shows mainly longer phrases like “It’s package sorting time” and the computer terms “it’s package module” and “it’s package variant”, but also an answer to a question on Reddit “Should I open it, or leave it, in it’s original package” – “I would say keep it closed and take care of it’s package”.

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LORRAINE QUICHE

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A pie shop sells SPINACH QUICHE and LORRAINE QUICHE. Elsewhere, it is overwhelmingly quiche Lorraine (or lorraine) and I can’t decide why Lorraine (or lorraine) quiche looks and sounds so strange. Partly (or mostly) it’s because no-one writes it anywhere Google can find it. I searched for “Lorraine quiche” and “lorraine quiche” (in quotation marks for an exact match) and got absolutely no results.

In French, adjectives usually, probably always follow nouns, but Lorraine is a noun, and I don’t know how noun modifiers work in French.

Wikipedia lists Quiche au Camembert, Quiche aux champignons, Quiche aux endives, Quiche aux épinards, Quiche au fromage de Gruyère, Quiche aux fromage blanc, Quiche aux fruits de mer, Quiche aux oignons, Quiche aux poireaux, Quiche au Roquefort, Quiche comtoise, Quiche lorraine and  Quiche niçoise, à la tomate, and shows photos of salmon and spinach quiche, leek and mushroom quiche and spinach quiche.

No-one can quite decide whether L/lorraine should have an upper or lower case letter or is a noun or adjective. Wikipedia lists Quiche lorraine, but the linked page uses Lorraine throughout.

Google Ngrams includes spinach quiche and quiche lorraine as both a noun and adjective. Compare quiche niçoise, which is definitely an adjective (Nice quiche, with French pronunciation would sound even stranger, and with English pronunciation would mean something different).

Soon after I drafted this post, I was talking to a woman named Lorraine, and she agreed that Lorraine quiche sounded strange. She said she relates more to the French historical region than the pastry recipe.

Much ado about adieu

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One item on many lists of English usage mistakes is without/with no further adieu for without/with no further ado. I can’t remember that I’ve ever encountered it in real life, like many (maybe most) items on many (maybe most) lists of English usage mistakes. I don’t use either ado or adieu a lot anyway. I also pronounce them differently, with a /j/ (‘y’ sound) in adieu, which I had assumed was the standard pronunciation, but Dictionary.com lists the pronunciation as ‘ado’ first. 

I recently encountered “without further due” in a Youtube video. I first thought the high-level English-as-a-second-language speaker said “without further adieu” with the schwas elided, but after listening to it many times, I’m sure he says “due”. This appears in the subtitles, which seem to non-automated, because there is sometimes further explanatory material as well the transcription of the voiceover, there are no auto-subtitling mistakes, and several English-as-a-second-language speaker infelicities. He and I pronounce due with a /j/ sound. 

Without further due also appears on some lists of English usage mistakes but I hadn’t seen it before, or encountered it in real life. To me, without further adieu makes sense only in the context of saying goodbye and departing from somewhere, not when introducing  a topic. Without further due only just makes sense, if you use due as a noun, which it is in give them their due.

Google Ngrams and a general Google search both show that without/with no further ado is used many times more often than either adieu or due. Many of the first results are dictionaries, usage guides etc, but there are enough instances of adieu and due to say that they are used, mostly in informal contexts. 

Ngrams shows that without further ado is 96 times more common than without further adieu, and 522 times more common than without further due. Search shows 35 and 187 times, respectively. (There are obviously discrepancies between how Ngrams and Search use their data, but for general purposes the numbers above are sufficiently similar. The ratios are almost exactly the same.)

In lists of usage mistakes or elsewhere, no-one seems to fulminate against without further adieu or without further due in the way that they do against irregardless, so it may be much adieu about nothing. Speaking of which, much ado about nothing (I used that phrase in my post about irregardless) is either about 10,000 (Ngrams) or 1,485 (Search) times more common than much adieu about nothing. A brief skim of the results for much adieu about nothing shows that it is reasonably likely that people are using it deliberately, as a pun. It is also possible to use without further adieu deliberately …

So adieu

adieu

…

“recieve”

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Soon after posting my previous post, I was having a phone conversation with musical friend. Somehow the topic changed to English language usage and my friend ventilated several of his pet peeves. I said what I’d said in my previous post: that words mean what people use and understand them to mean. He said “So if everyone spells receive -i-e-v-e, then that’s right? I see that everywhere”. Yes, if everyone spells receive -i-e-v-e, then that’s right. Or more precisely, if enough people with enough authority use that spelling enough times in enough contexts for long enough, then that spelling will be right, if only in those contexts.

But that’s not going to happen. Word for Window and Pages for Mac both autocorrect recieve to receive and red-underline it when I change it back. Every dictionary and ‘how to spell words’ site  (and human editor) states that receive is right and recieve is wrong. Of course, there are people who don’t use or ignore autocorrect, spell-checkers, dictionaries or ‘how to spell words’ sites (or human editors), and there are instances of recieve from across the internet, buried below the dictionaries and ‘how to spell words’ sites on the search results.

Receive is a classic case of ‘i before e expect after c’, which unfortunately has more exceptions than examples. -i-e-v-e and e-i-v-e are rare and very rare spellings: nine common-enough words (and their derivatives) are spelled with i-e-v-e (achieve, aggrieve, believe, grieve, relieve, reprieve, retrieve, sieve and thieve) and four with -e-i-v-e, all following c (conceive, deceive, perceive and receive). (There are also some very rare words with each spelling, which I’ll ignore.)

Related to this are the corresponding nouns achievement, aggrievement (Pages for Mac and WordPress don’t like it, but Merriam-Webster does), belief, grief, relief, reprieve, retrieval, sieve and thief (no rhyme or reason there) and conceit/conception, deceit/deception, perception and receipt/reception (note the added p in receipt). 

I think my friend is exaggerating the everywhereness of recieve. As well as the search results above, Google Ngrams shows that recieve, concieve, decieve and percieve are all used about 0.05% (= 1/2000th) as often as their correctly spelled equivalents. In fact, the ratio between receive and recieve is the highest of those four – in other words, it is spelled correctly more often  than the other three (and is also the most common overall).  

(I find myself in the slightly paradoxical position of saying ‘this is wrong’, ‘if enough people use it, it is right’ and ‘that will never happen’.)

Equinox

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Today’s Google Doodle acknowledges the equinox , which actually falls tomorrow, Australian time. One mark to Google for knowing that the seasons in the southern hemisphere are reversed (this doodle appears in Australia, New Zealand and southern South America). One mark from Google for calling the doodle “Fall 2019”. In Australian English (and as far as I know, New Zealand English) it’s always “Autumn”.