MANY RULES

Question

Dear Teachers,1. The band Simple Plan used to sing "there's so many rules I got to follow"- I think "there are" and "I got" are better, right?2. Are you on a mission to bring me down?- "bring me down" here means "disappoint me", right?3. I think I need a miracle to make it through.- "make it through" here means "get over it", right?4. I need to hold on to you.- This means "I need to hold you tight", right?5. I don't like people who always like moralizing / preachifying other people / the others.- Is this natural?Thanks a lot to Teachers, Stevenukd.

BarbaraPA · Accepted Answer

StevenukdDear Teachers,

1. The band Simple Plan used to sing "there's so many rules I got to follow"

- I think "there are" and "I got" are better, right? Well, it should be "There are so many rules I have to (or must) follow" but song writers don't follow the normal rules, or we wouldn't have such gems as "Baby you and me got a groovy kind of love."

2. Are you on a mission to bring me down?

- "bring me down" here means "disappoint me", right? No - Two possibilities: The person who said this is feeling happy and the other person is making negative remarks, so "bring me down" means make me sad. Or, remove from power or from a position of esteem. For example, the person is thought highly of, and the other person is going to exposure corruption and show him to not be so good. You need the context to know which.

3. I think I need a miracle to make it through.

- "make it through" here means "get over it", right? More basic than that - survive.

4. I need to hold on to you.

- This means "I need to hold you tight", right? It could - or it could be keep you from going away and leaving me for someone else, or for another job. It could mean simply I want you to stay with me.

5. I don't like people who always like moralizing / preachifying other people / the others.

- Is this natural? No - I don't like people who are always preaching to others.

Thanks a lot to Teachers,

Stevenukd.

Siggy · Answer

Don't you just love Simple Plan?

1. I think you are right; the Plan guys probably are trading grammatical accuracy for simple meter - "there are" is two syllables but "there's" is only one, so the phrasing of the line might sound better.

2. Sounds about right. I would say "bring me down" is "make me sad - just to keep the same phrase structure - but your "disappoint me" works.

3. Again, that seems to be the basic idea. It has a flavor of "getting through some difficult challenge," but that's just my way of thinking about it.

4. The sentence itself doesn't infer the need for the word "tight." You can "hold on" to someone tighly, loosely, closely, and others,

5. Oooh, that "preachifying" makes me shudder! Sounds like a word-formation train wreck to me. It doesn't sound natural because they've taken the verb "preach," then used the suffix -ify to turn the verb into ... er... another verb, and then used a regular -ing participle. It's the needless adding of -ify that makes it unnatural - that suffix is used to turn non-verbs into verbs, not verbs into new verbs.

Siggy

Davkett · Answer

Siggy4. The sentence itself doesn't infer...

Oops: The sentence itself doesn't imply...

Siggy · Answer

Well smack me over the head with a large cod and call me Shirley! I wonder what Dr. Freud would say about that one

Siggy

Davkett · Answer

The devil made me do it--

Siggy · Answer

...and I shall treasure the image for years to come

Siggy

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