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English Grammar


How come you always work so late

Fugendichter
User since 2008
Posts: 588

20 March 2011

In my today's lesson I found this expression to be right, but I don't understand it. Who would be so gracious to explain it to me.


- How come you always works so late?-


What I expected to read was: How comes it (with an s for the third person) that you always work so late.

8 comments

  • User since 2008
    Posts: 588

    23 March 2011

    Dear piggle,


    this expression, which you mention, seems funny to me too, but GG said it was the appropriate (but informal)form to ask for reasons and causes.


    Besides: I'm very interested in the meaning of your nice name, because i cannot find it in my dictionaries.
    C wanted and welcome Gwendo
  • User since 2008
    Posts: 588

    24 March 2011

    Hi Gwendo,
    thanks for your answer.


    You ask me about the pseudonym I use, or do we have to say pen name, surname, username ore what else?


    I came across it during studying Donald Winnicott, who always used to play games with his little patients, e.g. squiggle games. And one of these little patients had got the pseudonym piggle by the doctor.
  • User since 2006
    Posts: 2715

    5 April 2011

    Hey, piggle, you were expecting to read "How comes it that you always work so late?"
    For sure it is about the how and the why of something.
    Is it about the fact of working late or coming late?
    Weren't you somehow squiggling the phrase?
    Why not "How is it that you come always so late to work?"


    Here is a similar way to speak, not informal here, rather as formal as dated.
    "Lead us not into Thames station."
    Such sentence is to "Lead us not into temptation." just as squiggle is to piggle.
    Saying so, I am definitely stammering as much as a king did in 'a King's Speech'. That's due to a jiggle I cannot stifle while giggling.


    Sorry for possibly scribbling, piggle. Wish you the best.
    Sandy
  • User since 2008
    Posts: 499

    6 April 2011

    'I am definitely stammering as much as a king did in 'a King's Speech'.'


    This absolutely no laughing matter! Stuttering is a severe, painful, terrible impairment - a physical one, due to a dysfunctional breathing - and has nothing to do with being stupid, deranged or something. It's terrible painful and devastating to the self-esteem of a stammering person, due to the prejudices still prevailing in society.


    Making fun of it, even in another context, is absolutely ingorant and a slap in the face of all affected persons!
  • User since 2006
    Posts: 2715

    8 April 2011

    I think you are misjudging me, Jenkins. I wasn't jesting about any stammerer. I was only laughing at myself uttering "Thames station" as "temptation". If I was referring to Colin Firth, the stammering king, that cannot be taken as a mocking as we know that he has got so any awards (Awards and Oscars) for his performance. I don't think yet that such movie can be taken as a slap in the face of any stammering person. I even think it is really worth watching.
    I am not used to laughing at disabled persons as in my job I take care of them on a daily basis.
  • User since 2008
    Posts: 121

    9 April 2011

    Hard things to read on a Saturday morning!
    Kind Greetings to you all!


    For stammering people there exist efficient help by Milton Erickson (or Erikson) therapists by his special form of hypnotic healing.
  • User since 2008
    Posts: 499

    17 April 2011

    Yes. The movie is a slap in the face of any stammerer who has finally overcome the idiotic misconceptions about the cause of stuttering.


    And the outrageous bilge 'sunny19' is talking about 'Hypnotic healing' proofs that there are still people are talking nonsense about stammering - without really knowing what they are talking about!! It's appalling what misconception are still floating around in the heads!!


    And back to point: The movie with Colin Firth conveys a long obsolete misconception that stuttering has a
    'psychological' cause. That's nonsense. And I know exaclty what I'm talking about.


    And Sunny99: Leave the course if you don't like it. And spare us with your arrogant manner!
  • User since 2008
    Posts: 121

    19 April 2011

    Dear jenkins,


    of course, stammering is no laughing matter and certainly based on a dysfunctional breathing. Did you ever try? A friend of mine was healed by a good therapist who used that Eriksonian method, Milton Erikson, who - if I'm well informed, had a lot of problems to speak because of his polio paralysis in many phases during all his life, and he seemed to have invented the best method to cope his own problems.

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