• Illiterate Domine
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    146 months ago

    “Starting a game over” is an interesting phrase. I know exactly what it means, but the words themselves are nonsense.

      • Illiterate Domine
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        6 months ago

        Oh, yeah. Language is just fun to observe because its easy to not notice.

        I understood it to mean “the end of something”, though I guess “repeating the game” might be more concrete. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It’s poetry.

        • @theUnlikely@sopuli.xyz
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          126 months ago

          I think you’re getting stuck on the “game over” part. This by itself does mean “the end of something” But “start over” is a separable phrasal verb that means “to begin again”. So you can say “Let’s start over” or “Let’s start the game over”.

          I always felt a little bad for ESL students who just discovered phrasal verbs because they’re basically a whole new set of often nonsensical verbs to learn.

          • kase
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            16 months ago

            If you go by what my high school teachers taught me, grammatically the phrase should ‘technically’ be “start over the game,” but nobody speaks like that.

            I say this because there are plenty of grammar “rules” that nobody follows that are still taught in schools. I don’t know if ESL students learn them too, but if they do it’s gotta be hella confusing