ばか！バカ！　馬鹿ー月！

pudding321 wrote:
Have a look at this familiar sentence: "I am taller than her."

Sounds right? No. Look at the original formation of the sentence: "I am taller than she is."

You see? We use the subject form 'she' instead of the object form 'her' since the verb 'is' is omitted.

So this is the correct sentence: "I am taller than she."

I get the logic behind this, but when I try saying it out loud it doesn't sound right. Are you sure it's incorrect? I have a feeling this is more like formal vs informal english, rather than a case of correct vs incorrect.

This is actually something of a longstanding controversy, and AFAIK, the aforementioned stance is not definitively correct. Furthermore, as you say hayashi, it sounds exceedingly strange to a native speaker.

"I am taller than her" seems to be correct, I don't know why it should be more complicated.

Well, "her" is an object pronoun, while "she" is an subject pronoun. Now the question is : is that an object or a subject in that case ???
"I'm taller than she/her"?
At first it looks like an object... But actually the answer is : it's a subject!

Because it's an ellipsis, as Pudding call those.

The whole sentence should be :
"I'm taller than she is."
But the "is" is implied, you don't really need it... Yet, the "she" is a subject, not an object, thus you have to use the subject pronoun.

Lery is right. "I'm taller than she" is the correct, general form. Let me quote the usage of 'than' from Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage edited by Robert Allen.

Than is normally used to introduce the second element in a comparison, and acts either as a conjunction (He is older than I am) or as a preposition (He is older than me). In uses such as He is older than I, than is normally regarded as a conjunction with the verb following I understood, but in spoken English at least the more usual choice is the type He is older than me.

Although it is an 'accepted usage', reserved grammarians believe that a conjunction should remain a conjunction, and there are reasons for this: should you use it as a preposition, you would easily set up ambiguity traps for yourself.

Polly loves cake more than me.

Does Polly love cake more than she loves me? Or does Polly love cake more than I do?

I don't study linguistics, so I may not sound convincing as to whether spoken, grammatically incorrect English can be accepted and be part of everyday usage at one point of the development of language. Nevertheless, our topic is on written English. Shouldn't we make our written English as grammatically correct as possible? I also learnt English first through speaking and listening; thus, I understand how weird some sentences may sound.

A typical sentence would be "The thief was him.", which sounds right but in fact grammatically incorrect. The correct form should be "The thief was he." since the verb to be takes a predicate nominative (he/she/who/I for pronouns) but not an object.

I'm not trying to convince you to stick to correct usages linguistically but correct usages grammatically. The first benefit for using correct grammar is to ensure consistency; the second is to reduce the workload of editors; the third is to allow non-native speakers having a weak foundation in English, who in fact constitute the most of our readers, to establish a correct grammatical sense. Finally, the Elements of Styles says that the best writers might break the standard rules, but they always have a compelling reason to do so. Nevertheless, cohering to all the rules is the beginning of becoming a good writer.

Here's the thing pudding. I'd agree with correct grammatical usage only if the situation called for it. If BT was a site about publishing academic papers, or how to write resumes, or even writing letters for business correspondence, then yes, I'd be a total grammar nazi and clamp down on this usage of than him/he her/she. But we're not.

I'd venture to say any form of literature would fall under informal english, since whenever dialogue is presented it is supposed to convey a natural feel, like what a person would say. And I can tell you right now no native speaker would ever say "I am taller than she."

Also, you keep arguing 'than' is a conjunction. I'd argue that it is possible to treat it as preposition. And if 'than' is treated like a preposition, then I am taller than her becomes grammatically correct.

What I'm trying to say is, there is no hard and fast rule for this particular instance. If we were arguing over 'your' vs 'you're', there is a clear right and wrong. For the usage of 'than' however, it becomes murkier.

That is why I didn't include it in my first post. As you have said, it isn't something of severe importance, though some editors may want to watch out for these constructions, for they could be the root of ambiguity. Besides, as I have said, most readers are not natives, they may have to decompose sentences in a grammatical way in order to understand them.

On the other hand, I suspect the types of literature you read differ from mine, as what I usually see is the construction of "I am taller than she".

Pretty sure any work that has either "I'm taller than she" or "I'm taller than her" would hardly count as "literature".

In any case, it seems to me that nitpicking at the fine - and ambiguous - details of grammar usage while both noticeably failing to abide far simpler rules and utilizing stiff and awkward phrasing is putting the cart before the horse. There are other things to be fixed first.

Here's an example of what I was talking about earlier.

It is, of course, on a totally different and unrelated message board, but it's what I mean about seeing people use possessive for plural.

I was looking over this, and I found it quite interesting to see the debates between the finer lines of English grammar (comma placements, etc).

As curious as it is, I almost feel like [the teaching of] grammar is emphasized less in American schools than schools that teach it as a second language. Perhaps it's because we grew up speaking it natively? I didn't really need to hound over the technicalities of grammar until it was time to take SATs (college entrance exams).

Here's my stance:

There's sort of an "oral grammar" and a "written grammar". Oral grammar encompasses everything and anything that feels natural to a native speaker speaking. It also encompasses local dialects, slang, word order, etc. (ex: Anyway vs. Anyways). Oral grammar is surprisingly flexible -- logical grammatical errors don't matter so much as long as the meaning is understood. Many English speakers won't even notice misplaced modifiers unless they're trained to (ex: Eagerly awaiting her birthday, Mary's presents were all picked up by me). In fact, even the most grammar-conscious writers will slip up in their speech! xD I can guarantee you that. Basically, the rules of "oral grammar" don't necessarily follow the rules of "written grammar".

Want an example? Let's look at this conversation:

"Hey, how are you today?"
"I'm good. What about you?"

See an error? Most Americans don't. However, the technically correct response should be: "I'm well. What about you?"
The reason? Good is an adjective. Well is an adverb. The verb we are modifying is "am", meaning the modifier really should be an adverb.

Does this mean that "I'm well" is formal English whereas "I'm good" is informal? Not necessarily. "I'm good" is used in a majority of social interactions, formal or informal. I wouldn't claim that "I'm good" is an informal or slang response based on the fact it's grammatically incorrect. In modern American culture, practically everyone uses naturally. The "I'm well" variant, for some curious reason, is less common.

This brings up a good point: formality in English.

Unlike Japanese culture, formality in English isn't a universal mode of speech. Not everyone can be formal if they want to in America (note that politeness and formality are NOT the same things). In ways, it's heavily tied to social class. Those who are highly educated (and thus higher up on the social rung) tend to pay greater attention to grammar, or at least have greater awareness for grammar rules. Turning casual dialogue, narration, or writing into extremely grammatically accurate (and consequently exceptionally formal) English can at times... distort the portrayal of the character. Which, for that matter, may not be the desired result.

That being said, there are a lot of rules in English that many native English speakers have never heard of, and/or blatantly just don't follow.

Another famous example: ending sentences with prepositions. (Ex: "What did you step on?")
This has been disputed for ages. Actually, nowadays, most people (and grammaticians) will say it's a myth, despite the fact that schools have taught like this for centuries. Why is it now a myth? Well... primarily, it's because far too many English speakers (Winston Churchill, famously) have poked fun at the fact that it's far too awkward to say, "On what did you step?" But apart from that, English has changed overtime. English as spoken in the 1500's is no longer the same as the English spoken today (grammar especially). Heck, let's not even get into British/American/Australian English!

So why do these (remnants of) outdated grammar rules still exist? A). Because they're rules. B). Talking the old way makes you sound formal/snottier than everyone else, but at least you can say you're grammatically correct.

English grammar evolves. It's evolving now. Quite quickly. Standards of English society have changed, mostly. Go read the New York Times. Compare their writing style of today, vs. New York Times from the 1930's. It is different.

Relaxations in grammar rules have correlated with rise of liberality. In the past handful of decades, particularly in the modern era, we see a lot of emphasis on self-expression and writing with "voice". In my experience, at a liberal arts university, university writing classes are targeted at developing "voice" moreso than following "rules". This has been the trend in all sophisticated English literature in at least the past decades.

Writing with voice means going with gut instinct. Spontaneity. Conviction. (<--Look! I just made one-word sentences. I put them in my college essays anyways. xD Sophisticated, published writers will do that too.) Artful writing means bending the rules, as much as all the rules add up to.

This doesn't mean that grammar rules are ignored. It just means that grammar rules are judged entirely by the audience of peers ("oral grammar"). In the practical world of American publishing, a proper standard for grammar is that of a reasonably educated common American. Note that exceptionally good flow and artful writing can easily compensate mediocre American-written grammar. Alternatively, terrible grammar can kill good writing. There's really a threshold (basically, as long as the grammar isn't substandard). Once the threshold is passed, above-average grammar and much-above-average grammar doesn't make a difference.

tldr;

^basically cloud was bored and wrote huge blocks of text... but that doesn't help anyone with ESL................

"I'm taller than she (is)" should be the correct one to use in 3rd person narration, or formal 1st person narration (though it doesn't happen in light novels).

For dialogue, it's better to use "I'm taller than her." Same for colloquial 1st person narration. Light novels are terrible in many things. Never use them to study academic Japanese.

my ignorant 2 cents.

cloud wrote:As curious as it is, I almost feel like [the teaching of] grammar is emphasized less in American schools than schools that teach it as a second language. Perhaps it's because we grew up speaking it natively? I didn't really need to hound over the technicalities of grammar until it was time to take SATs (college entrance exams).

Actually I'm asking myself now that you're saying that, if it's not just because no school actually teaches american English... At least every time I studied English, or met someone studying English, it was the British one.

And I can't tell if such a statement is true, but I believe that grammar is more considered in Great Britain than in America.

Lery wrote:And I can't tell if such a statement is true, but I believe that grammar is more considered in Great Britain than in America.

Not just in England. Rote learning was typical in South America, I found. The school systems in the USA generally believe they need to teach people how to think more than they teach how to do. There is both good and bad in that approach.

It has been said that the schools in the USA are best at producing students that think well of themselves . . . whether they know anything or not.

Lery wrote:And I can't tell if such a statement is true, but I believe that grammar is more considered in Great Britain than in America.

That's a hard call. I'm American, but I don't particularly notice any native British people being any more grammatically correct than Americans usually are, at least going by the way I usually see them type. Honestly, both Americans and British are pretty bad at following English's grammar rules from what I find.

That said, I obviously can't speak for how thorough British education is concerning the subject, but it likely depends on the school district in question to begin with. I personally think I learned more grammar from the Internet and my own interest in English than from proper schooling, but my German teacher was displeased with the class average to the extent he started teaching English during German classes as well. He did like languages in general though, so it wasn't too surprising. Our English classes—while teaching vocabulary, conjunctions, and all that jazz—never really got into advanced punctuation, but we did practice typography and sentence structure that certainly isn't shown by the common Internet typist.

And even in proper English courses or references, there are professionals that disagree with how some punctuation is presented. Like how rpapo put spaces between each period in his ellipsis, several people consider that unnecessary nowadays and just use none, unless omitting part of a quoted passage. Even I honestly find it how staggeringly careless several professional companies are with their subtitles. One good example I can think of, though, is Nintendo developed games.

Enigma wrote:

Lery wrote:And I can't tell if such a statement is true, but I believe that grammar is more considered in Great Britain than in America.

Even I honestly find it how staggeringly careless several professional companies are with their subtitles. One good example I can think of, though, is Nintendo developed games.

With anything done commercially, though, you must keep in mind that companies (especially publicly traded companies) are rarely willing to pay for more quality than they have to. Most newspapers nowadays have dispensed with proof-readers entirely, and have their writers rely on electronic spell-checking. Computer programs have not caught up to the quality of a professional proof-reader/editor. Not yet.