Can a British person explain to me when/why you use "amongst" instead of just among and "whilst" instead of just while?

Can a British person explain to me when/why you use "amongst" instead of just among and "whilst" instead of just while?

Other urls found in this thread:

blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2016/02/while-or-whilst/
grammarbook.com/grammar_quiz/who_1.asp
grammarly.com/blog/who-vs-whom-its-not-as-complicated-as-you-might-think/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_(pronoun)
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

Try 9gag, champ

English is the worst possible language for being consistent and making sense. Honestly just don't even try to study it's rules. If you can convey your points properly and understand people, that's all you need to know.

It's used in Canadian and every other English too.

they are just formal forms of among and while, arent they?

I'm a native (Canadian) English speaker, and to me they just sound like pretentious versions of among and while.

Is it a case where they mean the same thing, or is there a distinction for some people?

They mean the same thing.

blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2016/02/while-or-whilst/

Literally the first google search.

Apparently not the same thing:
>Whilst is more limited in scope than while, and can only be used as a conjunction and relative adverb, so if you know the word you want is a noun, verb, or preposition, then while is the only possible option. As conjunctions and relative adverbs, while and whilst mean exactly the same:

Told you English is horrible.

>Whilst
nah

English does tend to drop useless features though, hence 'whist' going away. More than can be said for most languages.

whom is pretty useless 2bh.

To whomsoever says that: that is like saying the he vs him distinction is useless.
Just google it next time.

>More than can be said for most languages
all languages chsange lad

I've heard "amongst" before, usually in the context of "amongst friends"

"whilst" is absolutely foreign to me though

so do you say whom did you meet this morning?

whomsoever and whosoever are both variants of whoever. no difference at all. it is not french ffs.

whomsoever and whomever mean the same thing, but whoever is something different.
Here just take this quiz: grammarbook.com/grammar_quiz/who_1.asp
if still don't get it just google the difference and you'll get it. It's sort of like he vs him like i said.

At least English doesn't have arbitrarily-gendered nouns, conjugated adjectives, etc.

oh here, I found a super simple explanation: grammarly.com/blog/who-vs-whom-its-not-as-complicated-as-you-might-think/

Instead, it has arbitrarily pronounced vowels, weird syllables and unnecessary double consonants

Yeah or even simpler than that:
>Its derived forms include whom, an objective form the use of which is now generally confined to formal English
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_(pronoun)

also, what the fuck do you mean by conjugated adjectives?

vós diríeis "vós"?

Oi?

maybe he means inflection in german

If you get past the totally arbitrary spelling* English seems pretty streamlined and logical.

*there's a hidden genius to this though: by uncoupling spelling and pronunciation, it's been possible for English to spread all over the world, where accents will naturally diverge, yet maintain a (99.9%) common spelling standard.

Sorta of like how Chinese people speaking different languages/dialects can read each other fine, even if they can't or have trouble speaking to each other.

If not for your SPELLING MUST REFLECT PRONUNCIATION autism Spanish and Portuguese could easily be the same language as written as an example.

Everyone in this thread can communicate fine, but if speaking the differing accents would make it much much more difficult.

Don't you Canadians learn English (Traditional) in school?

Like in Spanish how it's rojo/roja/rojos/rojas. In English it's just fucking red.

never mind me, i am studying archaic forms, i want to be a priest in brazil. how about this
rapazes, vós chuparíeis o meu pau? sound about right?

that's not conjugation. thats just m/f and plural forms. real easy. try german or russian

But I can understand 90+% of whatever is written in Spanish, some words are pronounced quite literally the same, others have very minor differences, the accent and some grammatical differences are what set them apart.

That's not conjugation, it's "concordância nominal". Just like you don't flip flop between tenses on a sentence in English, on Spanish /Portuguese the adjective gender/number has to be consistent with the usage of the noun they are referring to. m/s noun with with m/s adjective, m/p noun with m/p adjective, so on.

Not even I know how to conjugate that, but it's not hard to understand the message kek

>But I can understand 90+% of whatever is written in Spanish, some words are pronounced quite literally the same, others have very minor differences, the accent and some grammatical differences are what set them apart.

My point is that you could understand 100% if you just agreed to spell everything the same (arbitrary) way, as is done in English.

That is, there's an upside to the arbitrariness of English spelling: it doesn't reflect anyone's pronunciation, so everyone can use it equally.

If there's any difference in meaning, it's that "amongst" is perhaps used slightly more commonly to refer to less positive, "personal" situations than "among". That's not actually a rule, in either the sense that it must be obeyed, or even that it is obeyed, it's just what I've observed from when people use amongst rather than just use among.
>He is among friends
>What are secrets amongst friends?
>I am one amongst millions

There are also reasons not to use "amongst" more to do with pronunciation than grammar. Because it's literally an extra "st" sound, it's not as common to choose to use "amongst" when it'll be followed by sounds that are hard to distinguish from it, in speech.
>eg: "amongst the" becomes "amung-steh" while "among the" keeps the syllables of each word distinct from each other: "amung the"

If it sounds "off" in American English, it's because American autism basically made adverb forms of adjectives alien to common use. That's why Americans say things like "I got here as quick as I could" rather than "I got here as quickly as I could". It doesn't seem as bad on paper, and if you roll it around in your head or even say it yourself, but if you go to America one thing you'll pick up on is the fact that their language is more imprecise and frankly, stunted, for not distinguishing as clear(ly) between different usages.

>whom did you meet this morning

Wrong. Whom and who is super simple to get unless you are a brainlet that can't understand grammatic cases.

I find brits are really sloppy about using articles and prepositions (in a way North Americans aren't). They either drop them or roll them into the previous/following word.

him is also useless

It actually is.

Not used with "it" and works fine.

do you not use amongst and whilst?

i mean i dont use them often, but in formal speech you can use them occasionally here.

>why
it's a remnant of the old indo-european case system

we have such remnants as well, they seem unnecessary but are used by more literate people

You'll see it in books and shit but not in every day use. I doubt Brits use it irl either.