of what he does
"of" can be dropped. Maybe this is more colloquial (I'm not sure), but either should be okay.
I'm not sure it can be and I've never seen or heard it used this way. See: http://www.merriam-webster.com/...ary/regardless
I'm pretty sure, though.
http://www.google.com/search?q=...Q&start=0&sa=N
I think FeuDRenais is right, but it's fairly uncommon, at least in American English.
I wouldn't say it's uncommon, necessarily. Why bother to say the "of" when you can drop it, use less words, and achieve the exact same meaning? I would imagine that it'd be common enough in speech for that very reason. The "of" breaks the flow...
But it's probably uncommon when compared to "regardless of what" (roughly a 1:100 ratio on Google).
Ndr tht rgmnt we cld drp lts f stff. Nglsh dsnt rlly nid all thse vwls, dus it? ;-)
The “of” doesn't break the flow. It turns the phrase into a preposition and dropping it seems awkward (to me, at least). Perhaps we should tag this as uncommon and/or non-standard.
For the efefct to wrok poeplrry, you hvae to keep the fisrt and lsat ltteres inetdacil.
I aslo aerge taht roveinmg the of meaks the stecnene arkwwad. Trhee are mcuh fweer ggoole htis for the petopirison-lses scneente and tehy’re pblaorby due to tpyos.
Thts a dffrnt ffct.
The fact that it seems awkward to you and perfectly fine, and even a little more "slick", to me... clearly puts us at an impasse.
But I can't argue with people who deform their words in replying to my comments. You people are just too clever for me.
And Scott, no offense, but for someone who often cites Google, you've got a lot of gall saying that we have half a million typos. Whether or not omitting an entire word is a common typo is another story altogether...
It doesn't put us at any such thing. You've provided examples where this is used and, even if it's very rare, seems permissible though non-standard. It's not a contest, after all.
I'm not sure what you mean by deforming ones words. If you mean the way Scott and I changed the spelling of words, these are two ways to write English, completely ignoring spelling conventions while retaining legibility. Scott's version consists of randomising all but the first and last character of a word.
It's a popular myth that this was a result of a study at the University of Cambridge. While no such study took place there, the effect still works.
My little trick illustrates the relative unimportance of vowels in the English language by omitting just about every one. My point was that just because you /can/ omit something without losing meaning, doesn't mean people do (though, true, language often tends to evolve to the more simple and shorthand).
As for Scott's arguing that it's a typo, I don't see it insolent to call half a million hits the result of a mistake. Both “regardless og” and “regardless od” have a few thousand hits each. As you stated yourself, the Google hit ratio is only a hundredth of that which the others in this discussion claim standard.
Does that mean it's incorrect? Not necessarily. It could very well be some sort of a corruption such as “irregardless”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irregardless
Can I assume that you agree to the tags I suggested in an earlier comment?
Let's collect a few more native opinions before we proceed to the tags. Isn't it presumptuous of the 4-5 of us to decide whether a certain expression is "standard" or not? Especially in a language as liberal as English?
Regarding the Google result, I maintain my stance: they're not, in general, typos. They read fine to me, and they are what I would expect with this version of the expression.
I was just having fun with the randomization effect. It wasn't aimed at you.
When I search for "Regardless what he does" and scroll to the last page, I get less than 200 google hits. "Regardless what he" gets about 550. That's very small considering the estimated 85 million hits for ""Regardless of what he" and 16 million for ""Regardless of what he does". When you consider them relative to the size of the normal expression, it seems perfectly reasonable to assume that they're typos/non-natives.
The 85 million hits only goes up to page 65 and no further. Is there any way to get the exact numbers?
Everything indicates that this is uncommon and non-standard. I've just checked with another speaker who grew up as a native English speaker, mainly in the UK who says this sounds incorrect to him (and that's from a non-prescriptivist).
I'll add the tags for the time being. If it turns out they are inappropriate, it's simple enough to remove them. So far, however, dictionary entries and frequency tests all indicate that this is non-standard and uncommon.
@Feu When you get lots of results, you can't get a more precise count
"Everything indicates that this is uncommon and non-standard."
Someone is prone to hyperbole...
Thank you, Superman, for taking it upon yourself to add these tags. Thanks to you, Tatoeba is now a safer place.
It really couldn't wait, could it?
Not at all, FeuDRenais. As you noted yourself, this phrase has a frequency on the order of a hundredth of that of "regardless of". I think it's thus safe to say that it's uncommon.
Every dictionary I've seen gives this as "regardless of" and I've yet to hear anyone but you imply that this is standard speech anywhere (something which you've yet to support with sources other than search results gathered from all over the World Wide Web). Hence, it seems to be non-standard.
If you have anything that indicates otherwise, please share that with us.
You're welcome Phoenix! I do try to keep you safe from harm.
> It really couldn't wait, could it?
Yes, it could, but so far everything indicates that these tags are appropriate. Please don't take this personally, FeuDRenais. It's simply a question of tagging this as accurately as possible given what we know so far.
Also remember that this tag isn't hurting anyone or anything. If it gets later removed in light of new signs that this is commonly used or standard somewhere. I'll even remove these tags myself, if that would please you. I'll even apologise, if that's what would make you feel better.
In fact, I'll do so now: I apologise, FeuDRenais, if these tags are incorrectly applied. In that case I regret adding them. Please accept my apology and know that I intended nothing but to follow the advice of Ari the Wise[1] who said that when one was in doubt, it was better to use what proved more accurate.
And in case there is any doubt, while the first sentence was tongue-in-cheek, I'm quite sincere about this. I think the same goes for everyone here that no-one is acting disingenuously.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ari_%C3%9Eorgilsson
I think the "uncommon grammar" tag is okay, but I definitely wouldn't call it "non-standard". The results on Google are clearly not typos or mistakes. People do talk and write that way sometimes, so I see no problem with this sentence.
I see your point, but “irregardless” gets more results than this, and has made it into dictionaries -- albeit labelled “non-standard”. People may use it, but I'm not sure that renders it standard.
But this, of course, depends on what you'd call “standard” language. Perhaps you could elaborate on that?
> Yes, it could, but so far everything indicates that these tags are appropriate. Please don't take this personally, FeuDRenais. It's simply a question of tagging this as accurately as possible given what we know so far.
I admire your rigor and dedication. However, newsflash: the English corpus is riddled with sentences that have real mistakes, and so perhaps your time would be better spent on fixing those than arguing with native speakers about what tags to apply.
> I see your point, but “irregardless” gets more results than this, and has made it into dictionaries -- albeit labelled “non-standard”.
Dictionaries are almost always behind the times, and native speakers often have better, and more up-to-date, intuitions. You could also argue that "It's good you came" is non-standard and that one should use "It's good that you came" because the "that" is oh-so-crucial (although here Google would actually argue the other way).
> In fact, I'll do so now: I apologise, FeuDRenais, if these tags are incorrectly applied.
You don't need to apologize (or if you do, at least do it sincerely). Just admit that you jumped the gun without waiting to hear out what more people had to say. I'm pretty sure I conceded and said I'd be okay with whatever tags you wanted as long as there were a few more opinions. You came to your own conclusions without waiting. But I'm not going to lose sleep over an Icelander telling me my English is non-standard. Do as you like.
@FeuDRenais: Would you mind if I add the "@Needs Native Check" tag for the purpose of getting more input from native speakers? Personally, I would like to remove both of these tags, since I have heard this construction several times since this discussion started. I guess I hadn't paid very good attention before...
@Zifre: If you feel confident that these tags are incorrectly applied, you can always remove them. I do find that the comparative rarity that FeuDRenais pointed out warrants giving this a “uncommon grammar” tag (unless it's a local variant). If not, then I wonder what would constitute a rare usage.
As for “non-standard grammar” I'd similarly argue that if this is not mentioned anywhere, then the tag would apply. Not to push any prescriptivist agenda; it's just a comment that this hasn't been compiled as a form of English grammar anywhere (yet ... as far as we know). If a form is standard if it's used anywhere, then there is no non-standard grammar. There's no need to define the term out of existence just because one doesn't like enforced standardisation.
Finally, to anyone who may care, I fail to see the what seems to get certain contributors so up in arms about these tags. They are just about as easily removed as they are applied (trusted users have to show a little bit of ingenuity, though) and the sentence is no less a sentence just because its grammar is rare or non-standard.
Rare forms are no less valuable for a corpus such as Tatoeba and uncommon structures are often desirable for aesthetic reasons or the air they impart. Non-standard forms may or may not be uncommon, but needn't reflect poorly on those who use them aside from the fact that standards change as language evolves.
@FeuDRenais: I'm not sure where to begin. Plenty can be said, but this is certainly not the venue.
@Zifre: Sure.
@Swift:
> Finally, to anyone who may care, I fail to see the what seems to get certain contributors so up in arms about these tags.
Specific personal flaws aside, I can think of a couple of reasons for this.
1) I think that the term "non-standard" does not benefit from a great connotation. Someone learning English will naturally give sentences that are "standard" more authority, and so the "non-standard" goes the way of the minority (it is forgotten and disappears). If someone sees the tag, they may just decide not to pay any attention to the sentence and move on to a "standard" one. The problem is that the boundary between the two is not that clear. My personal theory is that expressions like these may be a result of the 21st century, where efficiency and competitiveness have become so important that we look for shortcuts wherever we can find them. This may be influencing the way people speak, and so these "non-standard" terms may in fact be already becoming a standard and may replace the new ones soon. But that's just a stupid theory - don't take me seriously there.
2) It's a question of user rights. Here, I only consented to the tags conditionally, and you ignored the condition and added them anyway. To me, this is disrespectful and so I took offense.
By the way, all this has made me think of this:
http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/831802
Would you be willing to add the same tags to this sentence? In my opinion, it's non-standard (and I think Zifre also expressed something similar).
@FeuDRenais: If you took offense, contacting me via personal message would have been a good first step. It's a better venue to discuss matters unrelated to this sentence.
Similarly, we should rather discuss the sentence you referred to in the comments to that sentence.
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This sentence was initially added as a translation of sentence #351570
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