So, why the hell have people started starting sentences with the word 'so'?

The King of Moo

dxhound2005 wrote: »

Another one for the collection

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056534624

So you're pointing out examples of people beginning sentences with "so."

So many posts begin with "so;" I hope you're not planning on rounding them all up! :eek:

dharn

So, i bought a car today but im having problems with it,......many threads start this way, very annoying

dxhound2005

Yahew wrote: »

Here's something I have been looking for since this idiocy began. So is hiberno-English. I have heard it all my life, and use it myself, as a declamation. So, are you going to town, is used to move on from the last sentence. Or after a pause. A bit of verbal throat clearing.

Seamas Heaney used So, at the start of his translation of Beowolf, where he uses hiberno-Irish where he thinks it works. He says

Conventional renderings of hwæt, the first word of the poem, tend towards the archaic literary, with ‘lo’, ‘hark’, ‘behold’, ‘attend’ and – more colloquially – ‘listen’ being some of the solutions offered previously. But in Hiberno-English Scullion-speak, the particle ‘so’ came naturally to the rescue, because in that idiom ‘so’ operates as an expression that obliterates all previous discourse and narrative, and at the same time functions as an exclamation calling for immediate attention. So, ‘so’ it was.



Full article here.

I had read that article before and while it might explain an Irish person starting starting a post with "So the parents are away on holidays" I don't think it could account for the usage in the BBC mini rant.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9644000/9644002.stm

I am hearing it in lots of radio interviews now, for instance this evening the technology guy on with George Hook began most of his answers with the word So. This is the new usage which has been widely remarked upon and which seems to have spread from America.

Yahew

dxhound2005 wrote: »

I had read that article before and while it might explain an Irish person starting starting a post with "So the parents are away on holidays" I don't think it could account for the usage in the BBC mini rant..

But thats what you just linked to.

Anyway, I think it harmless either way.

philologos

OP: It's a perfectly valid use of the English language. Generally one wouldn't say "So that means we're all American" unless it followed from a previous sentence in a discussion that would at least imply that logic. In that context, I think the word so would mean something like "As a result of what you've just said", or "Following on from what you've just said", or simply "Therefore".

Perhaps that's a wild assumption, but it works that way generally.

DanWall

Eamon Holmes has started saying "OK" before he starts anything.
I also hate at the end of a sentence "ya know" or "ya know what I mean"

RichieC

We really need to consolidate all these "problems i have with people pronounciation/dialect" into one giant wankfest.. Preferably in cocos nest.