Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 May 12

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May 12

Redundancy problem

Is the phrase Personally, I don't think... redundant? I think it is, but I'm not sure. Thanks! Cessaune [talk] 05:16, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

It is redundant, but it's also fairly common usage. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:56, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

It would totally depend on the context. "I think" is more likely to be redundant, I think, because what someone says or writes is invariably what they think. Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:09, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Not so fast. "I think Henry VIII had 9 wives" is somewhat less categorical than "Henry VIII had 9 wives". The first is a revelation of the speaker's belief, the second is an assertion. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 08:18, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Jack. To my ear, the subtle distinction between "I think . . ." and "Personally, I think . . ." is that the former is a little dogmatic, implying that the opinion is likely correct because it is the speaker's, while the latter implies a degree of admission that others may differ in their opinion of the matter concerned, or might be answering a contrary opinion already expressed in the conversation. (Had I chosen to express the above by commencing with the phrase, I would have begun "Personally, I think . . .".) {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.199.210.77 (talk) 09:52, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

I'd interpret it the other way round: "I think Henry VIII had 9 wives" sounds like someone trying to remember the answer while conceding they might not be recalling it correctly. Whereas "Personally, I think Henry VIII had 9 wives" sounds like they know their opinion is at odds with what is commonly believed, but are rejecting consensus in favour of their own opinion. Iapetus (talk) 12:18, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

That's almost opposite to how I read it. I'll only infer someone trying to remember a thing if they append an (optionally bracketed) question mark, like "I think Henry VIII had nine wives?", with an increasing number of question marks indicating decreasing certainty of recollection.

Whenever I introduce an opinion with "personally", this has nothing to do with what I anticipate majority opinion to be, but rather an awareness that opinions on the topic are generally highly subjective. I'm in rough agreement with unregistered editor .77 above that "I think" without "personally" can sometimes carry shades of "I think this and so should you", depending on context and the social dynamics of the parties.

So to answer the initial question: personally, I don't think so. Folly Mox (talk) 15:08, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Someone seen as a spokesperson for an organization may choose to interpolate a personal opinion, in which case the adverb serves to alert the audience that the opinion should not be ascribed to the organization. JFK, asked by a reporter if another round of nuclear tests by the Soviet Union was to be expected, responded, "I would think that would be— personally I would think that would be a great disaster for the interests of all concerned." The fact that he went back to modify the statement, making clear it was not a pronouncement of the official position of the USA, shows he definitely did not see this as redundant.^[1]  --Lambiam 10:53, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

A line spoken by Rolfe Sedan in a 1950s Superman episode about an attempt to rig an election: "Personally, I don't care who wins... personally." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:34, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

• Emphasis is never redundant; it adds meaning to a phrase to emphasize it. "I think <blah blah blah>" and "Personally, I think <blah blah blah>", the "personally" adds an emphasis to the spoken phrase in a way that indicates something different about how strong the belief is held, or maybe the speaker is trying to convey that they understand the strength by which others hold a contrary belief, etc. etc. --Jayron32 11:53, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

If I were to say "Emphasis is never, never, never, ever redundant". would you say any of those words were redundant? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:24, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

I'd say the sentence contains unnecessarily duplicative words that repetitively replicate information already provided and that therefore could and perhaps should be removed, omitted or left out, but that for some undisclosed reason were left to remain so that they are still there when they are not needed, although we do not know the reason why.  --Lambiam 07:59, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

No, because they add to the strength of emphasis by the speaker. --Jayron32 11:49, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

"We are never, ever, ever, ever getting back together" -- Taylor Swift. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:08, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

"Pig's feet" vs. "pig feet", etc.

Hi,

I'd like to make the entry 'O pere e 'o musso more consistent in the use (or not) of Saxon genitive. To give an example (from the lead section):

 Its name refers to its main ingredients: pig's feet and cow snouts.

Would it be OK to say "pig feet", here? Similarly, the entry uses both "calf's snouts" and "calf foot". Could I say "calf snouts"? All in all, it would be nice if I could just remove all "'s"s in the expressions that refer to parts of animals. Would that introduce any error or make anything odd-sounding?

Thank you. —Gennaro Prota^•Talk 06:30, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

I would say pigs' feet, where the apostrophe after the s indicates a plural possessive. I think pig feet would also be acceptable. --Trovatore (talk) 06:34, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Gennaro Prota, in American English, these are called "pigs' feet" as a culinary item. I believe that they are called "pig trotters" in the United Kingdom. See Pickled pigs' feet for the American dish. "Pig feet" would sound a little bit off in the United States, in my opinion. Cullen328 (talk) 06:41, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Pig's trotters. We have a food called calf's foot jelly (misleading redirect), the Collins entry for which is suggestive: "calf's-foot jelly: a jelly made from the stock of boiled calves' feet..." DuncanHill (talk) 06:48, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

I have no personal experience of the dish, but my impression was that the phrase was calves' foot jelly. Google ngrams seems to show that your form is the older one, that the plural form appeared abruptly about 1820, and briefly outnumbered the other until 1830; but since about 1860, the two have mostly been neck and neck. However, since about 1935 and apart from a few years around 1960, calves' has consistently outnumbered calf's in British English, which may explain my belief. ColinFine (talk) 10:54, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Just picking up on this observation: the only time I have encountered this dish is in More About Paddington, the second book in the Paddington Bear series. It was published in 1959 and, interestingly given what is said above about dates, uses the form calves' foot jelly. (Paddington is ill and his nemesis, grumpy neighbour Mr Curry, gives him a jar of it, "which he said was very good for invalids".) Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 11:48, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

I recall it from The Great Muppet Caper, in which John Cleese and Joan Sanderson play a stuffy British couple dining together and discussing whether the Cleese character is bored. Sanderson asks "What would you buy if you were bored?" and Cleese, after thinking, responds "A jar of calves' foot jelly?" (I just looked at the scene on YouTube, and to my ear he clearly says calves' rather than calf's.) Deor (talk) 15:19, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article aspic is probably also both relevant to this discussion. --Jayron32 14:30, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Anecdotally, I have never encountered this substance in more than 60 years living in the Sceptered Isle and assume that the mentions above are intended to evoke a food which is both unpleasant and belonging to the distant past. The plural of "calf" is usually "calves"; Wiktionary says that "calfs" is "nonstandard". Alansplodge (talk) 17:31, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

It was a staple of Aunt Effie's cuisine in the old Ernie comic strip, I recall. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 20:50, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks everyone, especially to Trovatore who took the time to also edit the article. May I ask Trovatore or any other native speaker to also check the rest of the entry? It's not long. Alternatively, I can list the expressions I'm in doubt about here, and ask again for your help. One point worth noticing is that the name of the dish is "all singular", i.e. it means "the foot and the muzzle", not "the feet and the muzzles"; this makes me lean toward using singular throughout the article ("foot", "udder", etc.), the more so given that some of these parts, such as udders, are relatively big. But I'll leave the final decision to native speakers, especially since this might just be my perception and not something objective. Thanks again everyone. —Gennaro Prota^•Talk 08:45, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

The dish seems related to khash.  --Lambiam 18:44, 13 May 2023 (UTC)