[Accipender]

(2011.May.16 11:09 AM)Troopermccue Wrote:  "toni decided to smoke some shards of meth before his rabbit hunting excursion."

seems to work as a plural. he didn't smoke only one shard of methamphetamine, he crushed them up and smoked numerous bowls so that he could hunt for rabbits all night long. i can see why you would say that selling "them" doesn't work, but i believe it does just fine. think of it as you are cutting the meth into baggies of 1oz portions, you would sell your dealer 10 bags of meth @ 1oz per bag. therefore, you are selling "them" to your dealer so that your dealer can get them into the right hands to be smoked, ingested, or sniffed.

Well, strickly speaking, he is correct, as the antecedant of "'em" is clearly "a stash of meth".

[johnsonhalo76]

(2011.May.16 05:18 PM)Accipender Wrote:  

(2011.May.16 11:09 AM)Troopermccue Wrote:  "toni decided to smoke some shards of meth before his rabbit hunting excursion."

seems to work as a plural. he didn't smoke only one shard of methamphetamine, he crushed them up and smoked numerous bowls so that he could hunt for rabbits all night long. i can see why you would say that selling "them" doesn't work, but i believe it does just fine. think of it as you are cutting the meth into baggies of 1oz portions, you would sell your dealer 10 bags of meth @ 1oz per bag. therefore, you are selling "them" to your dealer so that your dealer can get them into the right hands to be smoked, ingested, or sniffed.

Well, strickly speaking, he is correct, as the antecedant of "'em" is clearly "a stash of meth".

and how many people really care that much? yah sure it bugged me sometimes, but you change crimes. btw now that i'm done with english courses that is one of the first words i plan to forget.

[Accipender]

(2011.May.16 05:51 PM)johnsonhalo76 Wrote:  

(2011.May.16 05:18 PM)Accipender Wrote:  

(2011.May.16 11:09 AM)Troopermccue Wrote:  "toni decided to smoke some shards of meth before his rabbit hunting excursion."

seems to work as a plural. he didn't smoke only one shard of methamphetamine, he crushed them up and smoked numerous bowls so that he could hunt for rabbits all night long. i can see why you would say that selling "them" doesn't work, but i believe it does just fine. think of it as you are cutting the meth into baggies of 1oz portions, you would sell your dealer 10 bags of meth @ 1oz per bag. therefore, you are selling "them" to your dealer so that your dealer can get them into the right hands to be smoked, ingested, or sniffed.

Well, strickly speaking, he is correct, as the antecedant of "'em" is clearly "a stash of meth".

and how many people really care that much? yah sure it bugged me sometimes, but you change crimes. btw now that i'm done with english courses that is one of the first words i plan to forget.

I agree. It's petty and, on the grand scheme, irrelevant. I was merely pointing out that he /was/ technically correct. The best kind of correct.

[DirkDanja]

I sell "em" to make cash

[spacebird]

your "stash" measured by weight, so you are selling x amount of bags or some other unit of measurement. since the "stash" price changes, one can only assume that it is being measured in some way. you don't purchase a meth, you purchase an amount of meth.


geekiest argument ever.

[Monk]

(2011.May.15 07:35 PM)Accipender Wrote:  Ahem.

(2011.May.14 10:19 PM)chaosprime Wrote:  This is a text-based game. It is made of words. Could we possibly, then, have the words used correctly?

For both of the meth lab crimes, the success message is "Result: You manage to have all the right ingredients except one, but you manage to fudge it to work. You make a stash of meth and find a pusher to sell em for you. He buys them off you for $XXXX."

"Sell em"? So, like, I have five meth, and I need to sell 'em? Um, no. That should be "find a pusher to sell it". "Meth" is not a plural; it is a collective; you have "some meth", not "several meth". Not only is this illiterate, it isn't even fancy illiterate; it's street illiterate.

And, yes, it bothers me. I have solemnly pledged that I will not donate another red cent to this game (and I've donated plenty) for as long as I continue to be ignored about this, and the TEN SECONDS it would take to correct the issue remain uninvested.

For a self-styled grammarnazi, you certainly managed to mangle the language quite a few times, and in a rant ABOUT grammar of all places. I have to admit: your grammar IS quite good, relative to the norm, but it still leaves much to be desired if you are to seriously (read: not hypocritically) criticise another's grammar.

Sincerely,
the TRUE forum Grammarnazi.

lol

[Accipender]

(2011.May.17 05:34 AM)Troopermccue Wrote:  your "stash" measured by weight, so you are selling x amount of bags or some other unit of measurement. since the "stash" price changes, one can only assume that it is being measured in some way. you don't purchase a meth, you purchase an amount of meth.


geekiest argument ever.

I agree with you, and you definitely could choose the find a way to make meth plural, but, as it stands, stash is a singular collective noun when used in the crime statement.

And this is not even close to the geekiest conversation I've had

[InPaceRequiscat]

(2011.May.16 11:09 AM)Troopermccue Wrote:  "toni decided to smoke some shards of meth before his rabbit hunting excursion."

seems to work as a plural. he didn't smoke only one shard of methamphetamine, he crushed them up and smoked numerous bowls so that he could hunt for rabbits all night long. i can see why you would say that selling "them" doesn't work, but i believe it does just fine. think of it as you are cutting the meth into baggies of 1oz portions, you would sell your dealer 10 bags of meth @ 1oz per bag. therefore, you are selling "them" to your dealer so that your dealer can get them into the right hands to be smoked, ingested, or sniffed.

Wouldn't meth be singular in all those given examples? The modifying nouns (acci feel free to correct me) are the plural, but meth is not. You have meth. You have a large quantity of meth. But as soon as you call them shards, it is the type of meth you have that is singular, regardless of how many of that type you have.

However, I don't know how that would work if you were to say you had 3 rocks and 2 shards of meth.

Acci? Am I stumbling in the dark here or do I have some relevant point you can help bring to light?

[Accipender]

(2011.May.17 08:12 PM)InPaceRequiscat Wrote:  

(2011.May.16 11:09 AM)Troopermccue Wrote:  "toni decided to smoke some shards of meth before his rabbit hunting excursion."

seems to work as a plural. he didn't smoke only one shard of methamphetamine, he crushed them up and smoked numerous bowls so that he could hunt for rabbits all night long. i can see why you would say that selling "them" doesn't work, but i believe it does just fine. think of it as you are cutting the meth into baggies of 1oz portions, you would sell your dealer 10 bags of meth @ 1oz per bag. therefore, you are selling "them" to your dealer so that your dealer can get them into the right hands to be smoked, ingested, or sniffed.

Wouldn't meth be singular in all those given examples? The modifying nouns (acci feel free to correct me) are the plural, but meth is not. You have meth. You have a large quantity of meth. But as soon as you call them shards, it is the type of meth you have that is singular, regardless of how many of that type you have.

However, I don't know how that would work if you were to say you had 3 rocks and 2 shards of meth.

Acci? Am I stumbling in the dark here or do I have some relevant point you can help bring to light?

You have the right idea, but are not articulating it superbly. Generally, "meth" is a collective singular noun. Like any other collective singular noun, it can be 'partitioned' into a variety of subsets, as you noted.

The other issue that I just realized is that "meth" is an abbreviation for "methamphetamine". Since you rarely have a (single) methamphetamine, it would explain the tendency to be a collective noun, as the actual would be "I have methamphetamines".