Lake Wanaka
I’ve been doing a spot of online learning of late, getting into a bit of linguistics. All in all, it’s quite interesting. Today’s fact of note came in the introduction of the slang contraction wanna. I was always of the mind that this was simply a shortened form of want to, or more crudely, want a.
- Wanna go to the cinema?
- I wanna piece of cake.
However, the following sentence has two possible meanings if you use the long version, but only one meaning with the slang version:
- Who do you want to visit?
- Who do you wanna visit?
The first question could be asking who you would like to go and see, but could equally be asking who you’d like to knock at your own door. The second version limits the meaning to the former.
It’s subtle, but it’s interesting how something that I thought was a simple abbreviation has its hidden complexities.
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4 Responses to “Lake Wanaka”
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You do know my Ma lives in Wanaka – next to the lake – don’t you, Dan?
Lookie here, where I was a couple of weeks ago:
The URL is here incase that got munged above:
http://rainton.com/fun/diary/php/showimage.php?dates=20050806-20050821&image=P8150064.JPG
How long does paint take to dry in your apartment?
those pics are freakin’ amazin. i’m off home, then.