Hmmm....
In my opinion you fail to discuss the colloquial nature of the expression
when you declare ELL right. In an informal survey of my office(They already
think I'm weird), no one has every heard of the expression using 'think.'
Also, about half of the ten people I asked, questioned if I meant 'thing'
instead. Which goes to the use in the story. If the average person walking
around would say something, it's appropriate, in my opinion to say it that
way.
It might be a funny scene for the second character to make fun of the first,
but the second character would have to be someone who would pick up on that
misquote. But if the characters are the mental equivalents of Azusa and
Mikado, then it would only come off as stupid. I don't know the characters
in questions, so I'm using proxies.
The other thing that I agree with you on is that it's an imprecise saying.
But so is a ton of American English. So if the author wants to make some
joke about it, I'd advise not to do it in a way that makes it seem like he's
showing off his knowledge of correctness. It would come across as boring
and can detract from the scene at hand. If one of the characters was a
language freak, it could be appropriate, and probably funny.
My two cents.
But if I were the author, I wouldn't change it unless it can be proved that
whoever is speaking wouldn't say it the way it now stands. And from the
public response, and my own little informal poll, the way it stands is the
more common usage.
-----Original Message-----
From: Gary Kleppe [mailto:gary.kleppe@morningstar.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2002 12:41 PM
To: FFML
Subject: [FFML] Re: [FFML][RANT] Typographical/proper word choice
rant
At the risk of perpetuating this spam thread....
On Thu, 22 Aug 2002 07:09:04 -0700 (PDT), Brian Welch
<bwelchz7@yahoo.com> wrote:
The phrase, "You've got another thing coming," is a
widely accepted American idiom... I'm not familiar
with its etymology, but I would guess that it's
evolution is the result of people not realizing that
"think" can be correctly used as a noun.
I had never heard of "you have another think coming",
but after a little research it appears to be an excerpt
>from a once popular (and purposely ungramatical?) joke
that ended with "If that's what you think, you have
another think coming."
I'm not sure whether it was a specific joke, or just a general
colloquialism. In any case, I'm surprised to see how many people are
unfamiliar with the expression. [Waves bottle of Geritol angrily] What'n
tarnation are them thar schools teachin' you young folks? Why, in my
day....
Ahem. Anyway. :) In a nutshell, Lurker is right. While it's true that
"think" as a noun is ungrammatical, as some people have pointed out, its
use as one in this expression is an obvious deliberate license, and the
overall meaning is clear -- that you had better think again. "Thought"
would be more correct, but isn't used in the usual expression simply
because it doesn't sound as nifty. Using "thing" is okay technically,
but the resulting expression doesn't quite mean what you obviously want
it to mean, or in fact much of anything at all. I've got another thing
coming? Gee, that's a little vague. Am I due for an extra birthday
present? Is Benjamin J. Grimm going to drop by? It's not really a
question of grammatical versus ungrammatical. It's a question of sloppy
usage versus using words as precise tools -- of using them as if they
*meant* something.
And yes, it's possible that this was a mistake on the part of the
character and not the author. But if that's the case, I'd suggest that
the author do something to acknowledge this in the story so that we
*know* it's intentional on his part. Might be some humor to be had here;
maybe the character being spoken to starts asking what thing he has
coming, how soon it's due to arrive, etc. Otherwise, perhaps he could
just change it to "think again" and render the point moot.
Gary Kleppe
http://www.garykleppe.org/comics.html
Writing from work; please reply to gary@garykleppe.org
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