I have noticed lately that a lot of users on Lemmy spell whining as “whinging” what’s up with that? I could understand if it was misspelled “wining” or somthing but that extra g really confuses me. Is this a misspelling specific for some region or is it lingo of some sort?

  • TheBananaKing@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    144
    ·
    1 year ago

    It’s whinge, pronounced winj.

    UK / Australian English thing. It has a slightly different connotation.

    Whine is what a dog does when it wants to go out.

    Whinge is what a 14yo does when they don’t get their way. It’s salty whining.

    • JungleJim
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      44
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      I feel as though in the US these are seen as the same sort of behavior, though perhaps to different degrees. The dog may be whining to go out, and the teenager is whining about having to take out the dog. Very interesting, the differences that have cropped up in such a short time between our dialects. Have a nice day!

      • DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        15
        ·
        1 year ago

        Whining is usually general and not actionable, while whinging is specific and can be remedied.

        My kid has spent the last few weeks whining about how hard it is to be a teenager. This morning they had a whinge about always being the one to let the dog out.

        • JungleJim
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          So in TheBananaKing’s example of the dog wanting to go out, that’s actionable, because the dog can be let out, and would therefore actually be whinging and not whining?

          • DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            1 year ago

            Perhaps. I’ve definitely heard whinge applied to animals, like when people talk to their dogs, “are you having a whinge mate? Didn’t anyone let you out?”.

            In that context whine is the sound and whinge is the message.

            • JungleJim
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              1 year ago

              Thank you, that makes sense of it. I suppose I see why the US dropped the “g” in whinge and just went with whine. There’s a lot context in the differences, but they’re also so similar that things could be more confusing when made more specific, to the point where the two are used almost, but not quite, interchangeably.

    • MartinXYZ@lemmy.mlOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      40
      ·
      1 year ago

      Fair enough. I had never seen the word before, but saw it used in comments in the same way that people usually use whine so I assumed it was a misspelling. My bad. Thank you for teaching me something new.