Monday 12 January 2009

'Playing' Bowling...

Why is it you 'play' every other sport apart from bowling. You 'go bowling', you 'bowl' but you don't 'play bowling'.

...I'm going Ten Pin Bowling. Well, I'm not, I'm just making a point.

Stupid fucken english

Anyway, nighty night nights.

11 comments:

  1. I would give up one of my children to just spend a day inside of that weird head of yours.. lmao Night night!

    ReplyDelete
  2. The reason is fairly straightforward (unusually for the English language). If the name of the sport is a noun, like football or cricket, you play it, because a verb is needed to show whether you’re doing it, watching it, or whatever else you might be doing to it.

    If it’s the present participle of a verb, like bowling, or skiing, or surfing, then you don’t need to prefix it with the present participle of the verb to play – ‘playing’ – because it already is one. Hence ‘playing football’, but not ‘playing surfing’, which would be a redundancy.

    I hope that has set your mind at rest.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Damn it! Simon stole my comment!

    And here I was feeling smart. Bah humbug.

    ReplyDelete
  4. from nasty royals, hitlers JS account to bowling. only the big topics here in Strange land.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I've got them covered U. lol

    SD ~ No, you don't. lol.

    Simon ~ Always figured you for a genius.

    MAndo ~ [ ] THAT, close.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I can't play 10 pin bowling for shite.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Better than the following dude, I'm sure.

    http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=1Pr4B7CSRgc

    ReplyDelete
  8. Don't listen to the grammar brainiacs. There's no present participle verb redundancies. Its just that English is overly complicated. Learn Esperanto instead.

    ReplyDelete
  9. One doesn't play gymnastics either. It's rather curious, this language of ours.

    ReplyDelete

Please leave your name/handle with your comment. It's important to stand next to our thoughts.