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by dqv 2079 days ago
Do you know how they resolve weird grammatical constructions that are now a part of regional dialects?

One that comes to mind is "How it works?" Although it sounds weird, it is now common enough that there is no way to retroactively correct all the times it has come up.

The other one I see a lot is starting a sentence without an article e.g. "Asking, 'How it works?' is now considered grammatically correct. Reason being [,|that] it is frequently used in spoken English."

3 comments

"How it looks like" is a similar incorrect and often used phrase that bugs me. Someone just mashed up "How it looks" and "What it looks like" and it stuck.
> One that comes to mind is "How it works?".

I've never heard that phrase before, so I guess it does qualify as wierd, but it's clearly following the same grammatical construction as [looks at hamburger] "Hamburger?", ie asking "X?" as a offer or request for X.

It's usually a heading in a description of how something works.

It is more natural to say either "How it works" (with no question mark) or "How does it work?"

Ah, as a heading, now it makes sense. It doesn't work as an actual question to a person, but as part of that context the question mark is acting more like a colon.
From my experience in Germany: You can still write however you want. The rules mainly matter if you are in school or in publishing or similar. Thus language can still evolve and the standardization body will eventually catch up.

In some ways auto correct is a stronger enforcer.

> In some way auto correct is a stronger enforcer.

I’m looking forward to the day when duck is considered a swear word.