• Illiterate Domine@infosec.pub
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      9 months ago

      Oh, yeah. Language is just fun to observe because its easy to not notice.

      I understood it to mean “the end of something”, though I guess “repeating the game” might be more concrete. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It’s poetry.

      • theUnlikely@sopuli.xyz
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        9 months ago

        I think you’re getting stuck on the “game over” part. This by itself does mean “the end of something” But “start over” is a separable phrasal verb that means “to begin again”. So you can say “Let’s start over” or “Let’s start the game over”.

        I always felt a little bad for ESL students who just discovered phrasal verbs because they’re basically a whole new set of often nonsensical verbs to learn.

        • kase@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          If you go by what my high school teachers taught me, grammatically the phrase should ‘technically’ be “start over the game,” but nobody speaks like that.

          I say this because there are plenty of grammar “rules” that nobody follows that are still taught in schools. I don’t know if ESL students learn them too, but if they do it’s gotta be hella confusing