26 Comments
42
Many Americans of an older age were taught in school that it is wrong to end a sentence with a preposition, so would prefer to say or hear On which floor do you live in preference to Which floor do you live on.
- 23
Yes. I don't even think of myself as all that old, but I still did learn to not end a sentence with a preposition, and so do think "On which floor do you live?" sounds better in English. (Though I appreciated the very gentle correction - "it is not necessary to switch word order here" or something like that). One is reminded of the line attributed (perhaps erroneously) to Churchill: "This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put!" (The bloody nonsense, of course, is the rule that one can't end a sentence with a preposition.)
There is also the fact that language constantly changes and "evolves", making some rules become used and others entirely obsolete. Same thing goes with the new rules or nuances of grammar, like the use of "they" as a singular neutral pronoun.
There will always be people ready to criticize the changes a language goes through, claiming to defend some Pure and Clean version of the language when in fact that very same language they're defending is itself a variation of an even more ancient form of language.
(I found a 17th century rant about the use of singular you a couple days ago, but I can't seem to find it now :<)
- 890
It's never really been wrong in English, this is just a convention that was imported from Latin, because all grammar teaching was based on Latin grammar at one point.
- 890
Here's a link to one article about it: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/11/grammar-myths-prepositions/
and another confusing one for Dutch and German people! (woning/wohnung meaning home)
- 890
våning can actually mean 'an (upscale) apartment' in Swedish, but if you're lucky enough to live in one of those, the preposition is i. With på, you can be sure that the word is used in the 'floor' sense. And the normal word for flat/apartment is of course lägenhet.
- 42
In the US the convention for floor numbering is that street level is first floor, next up is second floor, etc., while in many other countries the floor numbering counts starting at one floor above street level. What is the convention in Sweden?
- 890
We use both conventions so varies between different buildings. It's pretty odd, Sweden is usually an orderly country.
What is the meaning of 'floor' in this sentence? In portuguese it sounds like a homeless person asking another on which part of the ground he lives!
- 890
Wikipedia tells me it's um andar in Portuguese (my Portuguese isn't at that level yet ^^) Um andar na arquitetura é um nível de um prédio acima do nível do chão. https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andar_%28arquitetura%29
You can say "piso" that by the context can mean both "chão" or "andar" (also "pavimento"). In portuguese we have many words for the same thing, and many meanigs for the same word (for example: "andar" can be the verb "to walk"). :D
Why isn't V2 followed in this sentence? Shouldn't bor come second?
- 890
For questions, the rule is that the verb goes first. The only thing that can go before the verb is a question word (like 'who' or 'what') or a phrase that has the same function as a question word. So the first part of the sentence is vilken våning, which has the same function as a question word.
- golv is the kind of floor on which you walk
- våning is in the sense of a building level
The audio for this is hideous - starts off OK but becomes inaudibly quiet.
