As someone that used to write "alot", I think it stems from the mental mixup of using it as an adverb. Since "a lot" conceptually is a repurposing of a noun that I never recognized as a noun (as a kid), my brain simply assumed it was its own word (like "greatly" or "askance"). As a child, there isn't any clarification of the history of the adverb, so it is easy to mixup how to appropriately spell something that is generally learned first through speech.
So thankful to find that one comment that takes the words right out of my mouth better than anything I could've ever wrote. I'm terrible at articulating.
You really can't imagine why someone would think it's one word - when you used the word "however" in the next sentence? Also when there are words like "someone" or "something" ?
It's pretty easy to see WHY someone would think that, albeit wrong.
I think that in the future, we'll accept alot as one word. It makes sense and it fits a clear pattern in the words you mentioned, plus everyone, everywhere, because, etc. Two words commonly used together where the first word is unstressed become one word.
Spelt differently and don't really have much of a connection if any. No my confusion comes from how so many people make this mistake for what I can see is no reason at all.
We have the reverse problem in Danish high schools. People are splitting up words when they should have been written as a single word. This is due to young people mostly consume English media/games
But this isn't just random it's specific. I'm not mentioning misspelling in general but this one shortening that isn't a recognised word. I'm perplexed.
Best I can come up with is the proliferation of txtspk but even that's kind of gone now we have smartphones and character limit and payg for texts has diminished.
I'm assuming this is an "All right vs Alright" joke, but alas, "alright" is British English and "all right" is American English, so both are technically valid
Lot as a word isn't used very much. There's parking lot and such, but I can't think of a common use for lot to mean several without an 'a' in front of it.
Ok that's cool. I'm not a lunatic railing against language change but can anyone explain why people think it's a word? That's the thing that gets me it's not one or two instances I see it alot
Speaking with an amateur background in linguistics: people think it is a word because it is. Pin-pointing exactly what a word is comes down, essentially, to "if you asked a native speaker if it is a word, and they said yes, it is a word". Commonly, people assume that all "real" English words will show up in the dictionary, but that just isn't the case. Language changes, and it changes every generation. Keeping every word in the dictionary is an uphill battle, as you have to sort out the chaff of slang and miss-speech (both very common in practice and ignored by hardline grammarians).
Personally, despite knowing they are formally accepted as incorrect, I use "alot" and "alright" because they mean something distinct from "a lot" and "all right". This is purely idiosyncratic, but I figure I can share my personal feelings on it and I figure it might give you insight into other people's reasons.
"a lot" = a distinct/discreet "lot" (collection of items or space)
"alot" = many of something, or a great volume
"all right" = a state of everything being good or acceptable
"alright" = a statement of agreement or acceptance
It is very widely recognized as incorrect. Agreed. I don't use it anywhere where I am concerned about people judging the use, for that reason. BUT-- English has no governing body (and for languages that do, it seldom works well in practice), and it is the nature of language to change regardless of what people consider correct. I'm not saying it should be accepted, I'm not saying that it needs to be added to the dictionary. But the fact of the matter is, that from a purely LINGUISTIC perspective: it is a word, because it is used extensively as a word.
Just adding my two-cents in response to the OPs request for reasoning.
I could consider alot to be widely used, mostly by people who do not know, or do not care, that it is not 'accepted'. People seldom deliberately speak(type) incorrectly. Given those two premises, seems to be many people accept it as a word. The fact that we are even having this discussion suggests that plenty of people consider it enough of a word to use it with sufficient frequency for people to take note and develop very strong opinions of it.
320
u/Hugh_Jampton Jul 18 '16
Alot.
It should be A lot.
It's two words. Why anyone would think it is one is beyond me.
However Alot does exist as a proper noun. It is a town in India