AIBU to not understand (and get really irritated) by ‘going no contact.

[OwlBeThere]

I see it every day on here: ‘I have decided to go no contact with my brother’ or ‘I’m thinking of going no contact with my mother’.
Why is the phrase GO no contact rather than HAVE no contact?
Surely that’s the grammatically correct thing?
‘I have decided to have no contact with my mother’
That’s right isn’t it? Or am I missing something? (Genuine question)

Bippety, in areas of Britain where English isn't the native language its not uncommon to either have English as your second language or to have learned to speak English from people who had it as a second language.
It means that you don't pick up English spelling and grammar when you learn to speak, your words are English but the speech pattern is from a different language.

I think people say they're going no contact because it sounds and feels like they're taking action. It's a more direct, active way of looking at things. Like you're doing something. In reality, of course, it's about doing nothing.

I remember being really annoyed with a bad boyfriend in my 20s because he didn't call me, so I didn't have the opportunity to ignore him. It was infuriating. I just wanted him to ring me so he'd see I wasn't going to answer. 😆

And lets not get started on missing letters - my newly qualified English P1 teacher was completely boggled at having to teach us about the very existance of the letter P - all us wee country people had been happily wearing byjamas and having bitatoes for our tea

It's because it's a choice. Ofcourse ensuring the correct grammar was uppermost in my mind when I made the choice with my mother! Jesus, op, could you not have picked something a bit more sensitive. Why not opt for "get an abortion" or something equally light hearted? Fuck sake. There's a whole section for grammar twats if you're genuinely that bothered

YABU for not posting this in Pedant's Corner where there are knowledgable people who could tell you what it's called when you use a phrase like that. I'm sure I've read it but I can't remember. It's not using nouns as verbs (obv), like "go postal/nuts" but something else.

Side note: Allow me to recommend the wonderful blog Sentence First by Stan Carey, all about language.

YANBU for noticing that this is a common way of phrasing on the forums and that it is in conflict with your own sense of the language, and thus asking the very reasonable question about what grammatical construct it is.

People responding calmly to your question are R.

People seeing this as a dropkick in the face of traumatised abuse sufferers who have gone NC (sic) with their abusers are, with all kindness, being U in this particular situation.

@hazell42 I'm with you on this one. I find it really troubling as I know cults who have pushed the "your family is bad for you, cut them off completely" so when I see people advocating it or using words like toxic to describe someone else's parents, siblings, etc I worry for the person who is being encouraged to burn bridges. I don't doubt that there are people who are better off staying away from physically or financially abusive family members but it seems to go much further than that now, people NCing family and ex-friends are everywhere.

Haha @IDontLikeZombies!! My grandparents didn’t speak English until they were in their twenties and they would never accept that the word sandwich doesn’t have a g in the middle (sang-widge) or that it was a picture not a pitcher.

I think ‘No Contact’ is used more like an abstract noun in these contexts.

@banivani, yes in hindsight that’s what I should have done. I posted her because this is the board I read most so I didn’t think to post elsewhere. That’s my fault.

hence why posted by op today at 3:25

That’s my pet grammar hate.

Hence Is synonymous with why,
So it’s either “ hence I have never”
Or “ this is why I have never” .

Mind you 3:25 am is a bad time for grammar I guess

@flyingelbows at no point did I say you needed to do that. And I have in fact said more than once this has nothing to do with the action of making that choice.

@Ohyesiam, I said right from the start I’m no grammar expert and I make mistakes all the time!

@bertiebotts that actually makes a lot of sense. Thanks everyone who’s helped. Apologies to anyone who is offended by this post, not at all my intention, I just had a question.
Apologies to everyone who didn’t understand my welsh joke. We talk funny in these here parts. ‘Where to are you going’ and the need to add a random ‘like’ or ‘mun’ on the end of a sentence is ingrained in the way people who speak welsh as a first language speak English. The same with Gaelic as @zombies said.

I don't think people understand where hence comes from — it's part of a pattern "this/here/hither/hence", and means "from this place" (just like hither means "to this place"). You also have "that/there/thither/thence" or "what/where/whither/whence".

I know some of those are archaic, but I think if people knew it is actually an alternative to "from here" it might help. I think people might think it's a noun rather than an adverb, so form it as noun + relative adverb (e.g. the reason why).

I've recently seen "comprises of" which I don't like at all.

It’s a thing on mn. Like le being vegan. You go vegan rather than have vegan.

It’s the ones around contraception that set my teeth on edge. How can you be ‘on the implant’ or ‘on the coil’? And as for fell pregnant ...........👿

I think comprises/comprised (and similar) is often a mistype or autocorrect because s and d are next to each other but your phone wouldn't necessarily realise it was wrong.

I thought it was going NON contact?

I have NEVER heard it in RL. Only on mumsnet.