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. :lol:

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
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"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." ~ Abraham Lincoln

[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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English as a Second Language
You can read my ESL story Present Simple

[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'. :D 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
_________________
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." ~ Abraham Lincoln

[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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English as a Foreign Language
You can read my EFL story Progressive Forms

[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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English as a Second Language
You can read my ESL story Passive Voice

[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.

TOEIC listening, question-response: Do you think anyone is going to come and ask us what we want to eat?