Our 'Memberlist'

[Tom]

Hi

Isn't it possible that we make our "Memberlist" alphabetically? It is almost impossible to find a member who joined the forum a couple months ago.

Tom

[Conchita]

[Yankee]

Conchita, somehow I find it hard to believe that Tom's phrase never rolls off the lips of anyone in the UK.

Tom, it is already possible to alphabetize the member list. But, trying to find a name that begins with a letter in the middle of the alphabet can be pretty unwieldy. (Is that what you meant?)

Amy

[Alan]

I think I'd slip in a quick schwa twixt 'couple' and 'months' - that way the 'roll' would be more acceptable!

A
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[Yankee]

More acceptable to whom? Yes, that nice little schwa sound sometimes rolls off my lips there, too. Sometimes the schwa even sounds like a full-fledged 'of'. That additional sound/word always shows up before a pronoun, but sometimes disappears entirely before a noun -- even in writing. I don't believe that this is strictly an American phenomenon.

Here are some examples of the "schwa-less" (without 'of') usage from UK websites:
a couple centuries ago

a couple years ago

a couple things

a couple jokes

A Google search of just UK websites gets almost a million results just for "a couple * ago".

Amy

[Conchita]

Using the phrase 'a couple' without the preposition 'of' sounds really colloquial to me (apart from American -- 'go figure!'). Since this isn't usually Tom's style, I was surprised to see him use it like that.

[Alan]

Interesting how everyone flies to Google for verification, justification and clarification. What does it signify? Just for a laugh I put in: Gawd help us! and clocked up close on 80,000. So what? It's all too Gadarene swine-like for me.

Incidentally many of the 'hits' on Mother Google are repeated time and time again and so you don't get a true picture anyhow if, that is, you get a picture at all.

A
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[Alan]

Just come across the following in some instructions for using an electric toothbrush:

After 3 minutes your Phaser timer will of ended ...

Well, did you ever?

A
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[Torsten]

I was quite surprised when I came across 'a couple months' in Dan Brown's 'The Da Vinci Code' and the phrase didn't appear in a dialogue but a description. So it seems that is used in standard American English now.
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