Getting off the car???

[edubya]

Originally Posted by sapphire

I think it's because a lot of people were taught (even though there is no rule) that you are not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition, and the second sentence--I guess they are expecting an "us" or a "me" with that.

Well, there is a rule, but it's an old holdover from latinate grammar, one of several grammars that are slowly falling out of style. The problem I have with "Where are you at?" is not that "at" is a preposition but that it's wholly unnecessary. Still, I wouldn't call it wrong, just inefficient and perhaps overally informal for certain settings.

Back to the subject, my wife and I used to have exchanges like this:

Me: What should I do with this bottle?

Wife: Just throw it.

Me: Throw it where? Hahaha!

Of course, I knew she meant "throw it away," but I always had to laugh. Her first language was Spanish, so I think she was more or less borrowing the construction from her first language. A Filipino girlfriend from years ago used to say the exact same thing.

[gwrober]

My mom is filipino, and has a Thai friend that says "shut the light" when she wants you to turn the light off. Goofy.

[sapphire]

How about "make groceries"--that's not a SA thing, it's a VA thing, but I never could figure out how to make them.

[gunadz]

Originally Posted by gwrober

My mom is filipino, and has a Thai friend that says "shut the light" when she wants you to turn the light off. Goofy.

I'm not sure, but it might be an influence from the Sino-Tibetan family of languages (think any dialect of Chinese: Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.) on Thai. The term in mandarin is 開燈 (kai deng), which literally means to "Open" the light, means to turn on the light. So its only natural that they'd use 關燈 (guan deng), which means to "close" the light, to turn it off

[gwrober]

Originally Posted by gunadz

I'm not sure, but it might be an influence from the Sino-Tibetan family of languages (think any dialect of Chinese: Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.) on Thai. The term in mandarin is 開燈 (kai deng), which literally means to "Open" the light, means to turn on the light. So its only natural that they'd use 關燈 (guan deng), which means to "close" the light, to turn it off

Whoa. I just thought she was out there....of course, that was years ago!

[buffy888]

I'm glad others mentioned the "I'm going to take the baby a bath" and floor v. ground things. I hear those both a lot here, but have heard them from my husband's family for years and they drive me crazy as well. I don't know how they missed the "get off the car" saying if they have some of the other ones... They are in Galveston. None of the grandkids - my husband's generation - speaks any more Spanish than I do, which is just a tiny bit - yet they all still ended up saying some of these things.

[LindaGrace]

Originally Posted by TexHwyMan

Another one I've heard around here is that instead of saying "I'll drive you home" or "I'll take you home", some folks say "I'll carry you home".

Yeah, that makes me crazy too. My husband's family also says, "Do you want to carry the baby?" when they aren't moving. I always say, "Carry the baby where? I'm just sitting here!"