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In a recent reply to a post I found myself using the phrase "that's a whole nother category." I stopped and looked, and realized that while I've been saying this all my life (it seems) I have never before committed it to writing. Of course, the proper phrase would be "a whole other category." But then I thought, 'if I use that in my spoken language, then why shouldn't I commit it to paper,' and left it alone. Is this Jackie's theory of "Metanalysis" at work? It's much easier to say "whole nother" than "whole other"...but that "n" is not attached to either word here either way, it just appears by proxy in this case! And it isn't a contraction of "another" (i.e. 'nother) here, either. I find it startling that I have accepted this usage in my spoken language all along but never transcribed it to paper before, even in character dialogue. Why did I let it meet the page now? (Perhaps AWAD has coaxed me to be more adventuresome!) And why has it taken me so long to recognize this? (but that's a whole nother story!)  And I was also wondering how many others use this phrase??? And is there a term for it???  If you missed the Metanalysis thread it's on Miscellany. I also meant to add that the phrase "one or the other" is often spoken as "one or nother." Where does that "n" come from?
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where does the n in nother arise?
well "that is an other story" or "that is a whole bunch of nothing" .. but that is try "that is a whole apple"... (it cries out for an N.--the soft h and next word also starting with a vowel sound.. Nother sounds right-- and i think it also has something to do with the shape of the mouth and position of the tongue.. (do we have a speach therapist here?)-- it's hard for A - Whole- Other to be spoken.. so i think the n really belongs to the A of "a whole nother story"
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it's hard for A - Whole- Other to be spokenWhat do you mean? People say "a-hole" all the time. 
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"a whole nother story" = simply a tongue-tangled version of "another whole story"??
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there are a couple of things which could be (probably are)going on here. originally 'another' was two words (hi ot): an other, sometimes found in the literature as a nother (thru metanalysis). [Shakespeare gets some credit for combining the words.] so there is quite an atural split. the other possible way to look at this is as an example of tmesis, the separation of parts of a word by inserting a-whole-nother word, as in abso-freaking-lutely. I guaran-dam-tee it.
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There's® even rules about where the infix goes. You can say, for example abso-freakin-lutely but not ab-freakin-solutely.
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If we also consult maverick and Helen of Troy on these, all questions should be answered. If they aren't, I'll leave 'em to tsuwm and Faldage.
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If we also consult maverick and Helen of Troy on these, all questions should be answered. If they aren't, I'll leave 'em to tsuwm and Faldage.
And that's a whole 'nother thang!
How's my Suthren accent doin' Jackie?
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As a half-Suthrenah, I say "whole nother" too, wow. But I'm relying on maverick, Helen and, why not, Faldage and/or Jackie to splain us why we say it (I forget - I'm tarred)
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And that's a whole 'nother thang! Interesting that you put an apostrophe (a napostrophe?) at the beginning of 'nother, wow. I've seen it that way as a contraction for "another"...but is that appropriate here? And have you seen the apostrophe in this context before?.....y'all?
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you teasin’ me, E?! well, I’ll rise anywayz™
I think what ‘s going on here is actually a bit more complicated, though based on tsuwm’s infix observations.
The main sense of this phrase is surely designed to bring out the ‘otherness’ as its basic feature – remarking on how different something is. So buried in the sub-conscious linguistic pattern is our frame of “an ‘other’ experience”, by analogy to “an ‘exciting’ experience” etc.
Yet when we want to express it more forcefully by inserting ‘whole’, we also recognise that we are forced to make ‘an’ agree with it by dropping the ‘n’.
This leaves a taste of incompleteness in the mouth – and when the tip of your tongue finds itself towards the top frontal position dictated by the el sound of ‘whole’, it comes back into mind, requiring you to just inflect the sides of your tongue upwards to form a palatal seal for the change to ‘nother’.
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I see, maverick...so, in essence, we drop the "a" off another and insert "whole" instead...subconsciously speaking, of course!  So, then, do you think it is appropriate to write it that way?
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WO'N asks: do you think it is appropriate to write it that way?
Certainly if you want to write what you speak. Writing serves a whole range of purposes. I think those who equate writing with formal and speaking with informal are guilty of inability to see that different circumstances demand different responses. Certainly speech making and debating are formal and while the former may be written at some stage in its development, it is not necessary. Notes to oneself and brief memos, although written, are informal. I would contend that posting in AWAD is mostly informal although one may be formal if one so desires.
So put dat in yer fadder's mustache an smoke it!
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So put dat in yer fadder's mustache an smoke it!LOL - what a scriptwriter Bush coulda had!  Yes, the difference of style expected in different channels of communication is one of the things I am really interested in just now. One of the (many) intriguing things about this forum is the way these style boundaries are crossed and joined. Forming sometimes in the nature of very colloquial speech and with many of the discursive and collaborative features of dialogue, and made sometimes in more formal ‘written’ style with reference to other written texts, this seems to me a whole nother way of designing a discourse. I am looking forward to David Crystal’s book due out this autumn, in the hope that he may have some interesting research in this area.
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I’ll rise anywayz™maverick, I've never known you not to be able to rise to the occasion!  And--thanks, Honey, for the suggestion on increasing the number of posts-per-page to 99. That is REALLY speeding up my catching-up. 'Cept I still can't get to the latest in Wombats.
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mav, I first heard about D.C. rat cheer in this venerable forum - many of you Brit types have praised him. Well, lo and behold, while helping my mom go through her books, what did I find but his "Encyclopedia of the English Language." Wow! I open the book to any page and am instantly riveted. I feel like a bull in a candy shop!
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Encyclopedia of the English LanguageI agree, E A few weeks ago I got an assignment back which queried my failure to use the term isogloss, and I was able to quote the page number of this to validate the more precise term I had chosen. Can't let ancient perfessers think they know it all!
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AnnaS feels like a bull in a candy shop!
Wait a minit here. What you bin hiding from me?
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