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Comment by blasdel | Hacker News Reader

A native speaker of english from the west would never use this phrasing — software is abstract rather than individual. Your usage stands out as south asian as much as "do the needful" would.

"I need software that…" or "I need a program that…" would both be correct.

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You don't need to qualify it that far. It's grammatically incorrect in just about all standard forms of English. Exceptions happen in various jargons like you'll see 'codes' in sciency and weapons-researchy contexts but I don't think this is one of them.

On the other hand, frequency defines correct grammar eventually, doesn't it? If enough South Asians use that phrasing consistently, you can't argue it's bad grammar in that context.

Personally I find 'a software' and 'softwares' extremely annoying.

No doubt. I'm not trying to be some irksome grammarian making a fusty point about dangling prepositions here. In current written English 'a software' is simply bad. This could change, but we're nowhere close to the point where it has. For all we know 'your welcome' might be just fine in another century. Right now, though, it's simply bad writing.

My point was that it is hard to say when something is 'simply bad' in the sprawling and multifarious carnival that is the English language.

I vaguely recollect from reading the blog Language Hat that modern linguists sometimes decide which variant of a class (for instance, 'software' vs 'a software' vs 'softwares') is more correct by counting how many Google search results each variant returns. No doubt they need to filter this data in many ways, but it would seem that it is no longer possible to say 'X is correct, all else is not.'

There are certain terms (like "a software") that are never used by people who's first language is English. IANAL (I am not a linguist), but I'd consider myself a "descriptivist" when it comes to defining a language. I think that a living language is defined by its usage by native speakers. Forms that are never used by native speakers can be defined as "incorrect". Of course, languages change (especially English), so those forms can and do become incorporated into the language over time. But, as English stands in 2010, "a software" is less correct than simply saying "software".

I guess by your argument and the prevalence of usage by native speakers, who's is correct as well.

I don't think he is saying native speakers never make mistakes though.

A better example might be people using if when they should be using whether.

"I think that a living language is defined by its usage by native speakers."

First, I think there are degrees of nativeness in language acquisition. Cutting out the entire class of strictly non-native speakers is a bit of an extreme step.

Second, what about differences in usage of the same language over two classes of native speaker?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_Eng... was once considered to be "incorrect" English.

Yeah it bugs me too. Then again, "I'll have a water" will fall out of my mouth sometimes.

There's nothing wrong with that. In that context, "a water" is the same as "a glass of water".

But that's different. Water is not something that is discretely counted typically, but glasses of water are.

Unless you're the Mad Hatter, you'll be ordering a (whole) glass and enough water to fill it. We collapse the "glass of" into epsilon because it's assumed in polite conversation the waiter won't be pouring the water into your open hands.

"extremely"

Lighten up on the coffee :). When was the last time something newsworthy happened because someone said 'a software'?

I'm a snob at heart :) or so I am informed.

A significant fraction of my coworkers talk like that, and I've noticed lately that I'm starting to occasionally think/talk that way as well (note I'm from the U.S. midwest and only speak english). It's a bit disturbing, really.

It is your innate ability to learn that takes over automatically there. You probably couldn't stop such assimilation of things done around you even if you wanted to, it's how our brains are wired.

If you had to consciously decide to learn something you'd be a baby forever stuck in a 'dead-lock' of not having the reasoning ability to start learning-by-imitation, so it's 'on' by default.

So given extended exposure to some behaviour it is very hard to resist imitating it to some extent, even if you know better.

It's true, spend some time in the South (US) or Britain, and return to the midwest, they will comment on how you picked up an accent while you were there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_noun

The depressing part is that when you fix the query to "I need software that...", you get almost exactly the same list of responses.

There's simply nobody using it correctly.

That's because many of the top results are referring to this story. If you scroll further down the results for that query, most results just have those words, not necessarily in that order.

It was the actual query results (page 3+) I was talking about. You still get "I need a software that helps me with my finances" results, just without the "a" in bold any more.

There are depressingly few hits in there that actually use the phrase "I need software" without the bad English.

When I first read that title I thought that the post was making fun of that wording, and that there would be poorly-thought out examples from non-technical people.

Geeks, always dissecting everything :) .

English is in fact my third language. But, yes, I agree with what would be the correct phrases.

What on earth is a 'third language'? I was under the impression that anything that's not your native tongue is your 'second language', isn't that true?

I would presume that someone's 'third language' is the third language that he learned. However, according to Wikipedia, you are right that someone's second language is any language they learned after their first, not just the second language they learned.

So "my third language" is a succinct form of "my second second language."

What I mean is I was born speaking Wolof. Then I was taught French at 3. Then sometime when I was 15 I started to learn English. That along with German, I believe. That is why I say third.

Edit: Reading my answer to the original comment, you could have figured what I meant. Like when I read your username, I know ur means your, but maybe I should make a huge deal about it :). Lighten up, it's Wednesday.

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