We . . . (Oh, let me help. What are you trying to say? We have? We had? We were?).
No, we went . . . (Are you sure you want went? Maybe it was want? Or sent?). Thanks, I’ll stick with went.
We went . . . (to/through/into?). To it is.
We went to . . . (to/too/together?). No, thanks, to it is. And don’t be disturbed by that noise: It’s just my teeth grinding.
If my phone were a person, I would tell him or her to sit down and shut up. But I sorta hate to turn off the auto-complete function altogether: Sometimes it really is helpful. I do wish that it would wait for some hesitation on my part, some indication that I’m searching for the right word. But it thinks — if such it can be called — just a hair faster than I type, so the auto-complete suggestions bounce onto the screen before I can manual-complete. It’s like a conversational partner irritatingly addicted to finishing my sentences.
I plod on.
We went to the . . . (Counter/hospital/same?). Huh? The Counter? That’s the coffee shop in Letterkenny where we met up with family one morning in early September on our trip to Ireland. And why is “hospital” coming up?
Ah, this is just pulling up destinations recently used in my text messages. But of course. Fatally distracted from my mission, I wonder what will happen if I take the adjective instead of a noun here.
We went to the same . . . (as/place/room?).
We went to the same place . . . (we/with/in?). Goodness, this is slow going. Let’s jump ahead through a few forks in this road.
We went to the same place we had to go to . . . (to/together/too?). Haven’t we been through this? Together, in fact? One too many times? Jump again!
We went to the same place we had to go to a place.
All right then. Better with some punctuation, perhaps.
We went to the same place:
We had to go to a place.
OK, maybe not better, but hard to argue with.
What happens, I wonder, if I just wander from screen to screen, always taking the left-hand suggestion.
We went through (to/into) this (the/a) process (together/and) for (and/to) years (a/the) before (to/and) they (we/the) started (get/were) . . .
Don’t leave me hanging. Before they started what? To get suspicious? To realize something of import? To founder on the shoals of indifference?
Before they started working together to create . . .
Ooh, ooh. What did they jointly create after years of this process? A movie? A new product? A particle accelerator? I feel as if something is about to be revealed.
Oh. Jobs. But not just jobs. Jobs and . . . something. My hopes rise again. Jobs and what?
Oh. Jobs again.
But not just any jobs. Jobs that were going to Trenton.
Oh, no, a quick turn and it’s jobs (and jobs) that were going to use our resources for a better future and we (would/could/will?) will (Never mind the left-hand protocol, damnit, we need some certainty here!), continue working together with the government to ensure that we can do it together.
Well. There you have it. Or, alternatively, with different choices, “There was no such response from his team.”
Anyone can play, any number of times.
We have power to make lunch and dinner for the confusion
and the penalty had been little bit more than $10K
if, as usual, I would have been paid already for the confusion.
I couldn’t have said it any better myself.
Isabel
I understand what you mean about the obtrusiveness of auto-correct. I just don’t know how it happens. One has to be eternally vigilant.
Another very thinking colloquialism in the bollocks for you though.
Tom
Tom – LOL. Yes, auto-correct also has sins to answer for. It’s bad enough that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty (per John Philpott Curran via Wendell Phillips, apparently, and just forget about Thomas Jefferson). If it’s also the price of clear communication, we are in trouble.
Excellent.
Mary – (ex/except?) Thanks!
LOLl – get a mac.
Reminds me of the GoFish (was that it’s name?) translation site. Hilarious. (For those
of you who have my pocket lint book, I included the French translation of my book’s flyer.
I can’t find it in my 184-page index!!)
I’m sure translations have gotten better — a test for another day…
Barbara – My favourite translation story is likely untrue, but goes like this: In the early days of computer translations, they tested the program with the adage, “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak,” submitting it for translation from English to Russian. Hey, presto, back comes some Russian. But how to know if it’s any good? Hey, I know, feed it back in for translation into English! And what comes back? “The vodka is good but the meat is rotten.”
better than I expected!
Barbara – Yes. A shame it’s apocryphal.
May I add that I hate Grammarly with a vengeance. Grammarly has no sense of poetry and no soul to put it in if it had one. I find myself longing to turn its smug green face yo red in erroneous responses to its notion of errors. Try it yourself, just for fun. Yet, the smug and smarmy compliments come in weekly in the hope that I will submit everything I write to its ministrations. The only place I could use it on my computer is the email function, to which it does not accommodate itself. Grrrrrammarly.
Laurna – I like the Spanish concept: you can “know” a language, or “dominate” it. I like to feel that I dominate English, so I feel free to take whatever liberties I choose. Of course, every so often I do make an actual mistake, and then I’d like something competent to have my back. But “competent” is an important caveat.
Interesting that it cannot self-correct its own name, don’t you think?
Laurna – 🙂 Interesting and suspicious . . .
Yikes! Glad I don’t have this or else have never discovered it!
Judith – I found how to turn it off, but sometimes I want it. Sort of a tricky choice.
I just updated my Gmail, and have now acquired a new version of auto complete. Jury is out on whether it’s helpful? Time will tell, but I’ve no idea how to get rid of it if I want to??
Alison – I don’t use Gmail enough to have hit this yet, but there’s at least one YouTube video that offers a set of Three Easy Steps to disable auto-complete. Sort of ironic, given that Gmail is a Google product . . .
Wow — shades of HAL and Dave and 2001 A Space Odyssey! https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/23/2001-a-space-odyssey-what-it-means-and-how-it-was-made
Marilyn: Hahaha. Thanks for the link. And remember how chilling it was to hear HAL say, “I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that.”?
Isabel, my computer says that to me every day!
Marilyn – LOL. If it uses that patiently regretful tone, consider a change . . .