Another think coming

[cimorene]

Listen, people.

It's not "If you think ___, you've got another thing coming". It's "If you think __, you've got another think coming." Get it? See how that works? The word "think" appears in both places! As if to suggest that the approaching think is going to replace the previous think which was in error! See how it even (gasp!) makes sense that way, whereas a "thing" coming in that context is so meaningless as to be completely baffling? [*]

Comments

[cimness.livejournal.com]

The etymologists were suggesting that a confusion of accent was the origin of the divergence/the "thing" form, not that it's a separate occasion of mispronunciation every time it's spoken, so Simon's accent wouldn't have to confuse the two sounds, he would just have to speak a dialect that uses the "thing" form (but in fact the issue is whether the accent would require separate enunciation of two k sounds: think(.)coming. I can't think of any accent offhand that would pronounce it that way outside of deliberate emphasis). The origin would have to have been decades ago at least for the forms to be so close to neck-and-neck in usage as they are today (and for 80% of users of each form to be unaware of the existence of the other!).

I can't really see how they could have separate meanings. How would you parse the significance of the phrase with "thing"? What would it mean that was different from the version with "think"? The beginning of the expression refers to assumptions and doesn't imply anything about objects of any kind.

[copracat]

I hear the 'think' version as an admonition* and the 'thing' version as stronger, perhaps more threatening. A think is internal and a thing is external.

It's one of the most fascinating things, really. And it reminds me that no matter how much me and my fellow English speakers appear to be alike, if you're from a different country you are alien to each other in all sorts of small and unexpected ways.

*Now that I no longer hear it as ignorance on the part of the speaker, that is.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

I just have to try to watch a movie with a bunch of Scottish actors to be reminded about that particular culture barrier. :/ I need subtitles sometimes. Sometimes just reading fanfiction for a British show is enough and I end up googling all sorts of things. (It would be faster with Australia, I think, but you don't get a lot of exposure in mainstream media fandom to historical Australian settings. But isilya wrote this one droving AU for SGA and someone posted a review of it that was like, "I think the author needed to get an American beta though, because we don't have a Prime Minister!")

There was this whole post in the Life on Mars comm a couple of weeks ago because a whole bunch of Americans couldn't at all understand the final exchange, which had something to do with chunky Kit-Kat bars. But that Manchester accent was just too dense for them to penetrate! (For once, I actually understood it.)

I see what you're saying, though - that the "thing" that's coming could be a birch branch or a belt or a day scrubbing the bathroom? I can see that. I still don't think it makes sense, though, because it implies the punishment is just for thinking whatever and not contingent on doing anything.

[ciderpress.livejournal.com]

Take this with a pinch of salt but I don't think that it's really the elision of one of the two k sounds that's going to mess perception up. "thing" vs. "think" + [kVmIN] "coming" does have a pronunciation difference: "think" undergoes vowel clipping and is perceptually shorter. It's how generally, Americans can tell the difference between "can" vs. "can't" even if the "t" is elided because the voiceless stops, in this case "t", clip/shorten the preceding vowel. In my accent, I don't have any kind of problem because the vowels in "can" and "can't" are different but in most accents (but not all) of American English, the two vowels are the same and the vowel clipping is how people don't confuse the two.

It's even more noticeable when it's a voiced vs. voiceless stop difference (eg. bad vs. bat but you can still hear it in baa vs. bat, in a standard American accent.)

Personally, I always thought it was more of a British English vs. American English problem. Most British influenced dialect speakers I know use "think" and most American English speakers I know use "thing"; generally, Americans don't use "think" as a noun and the word "thing" has a wider range of meanings. I see it used a lot to reference a certain grouping of materials, like "a thing of candy" which is a usage that you don't really find in Britain. I always thought that in that context, "thing" took the meaning of the if- whole clause, like "that".

[cimness.livejournal.com]

I take your point about vowel clipping and pronunciation, but I think it's possible that the special rhythm that's given to the phrase when you say the whole thing - especially if it's embedded in other speech and could be speeded up - could make that confusion possible again. The phrase sort of takes a poetry/chanting kind of rhythm when you say it. I'm sure it's often pronounced like "thing" by the speakers I'm familiar with, but I'm not convinced that means it is. I know some of those speakers would describe it as "think". And the polls mentioned in that link above and the others I found with Google seem to indicate a near-even split of opinion in the American samples as well.