XPost: alt.usage.english

Ar an chéad lá de mí Bealtaine, scríobh Antonio Marques:

Never mind that in the bit that Steve quoted to flippantly inquire on >>>> what 'that' meant, it was quite explicitly said 'dither'.

The "it" there isn't idiomatic

The sentence sounded wrong to me, but even now I'm not sure why.
As to 'it', maybe it's not idiomatic, but is it ungrammatical? I don't
quite see it.

"It" refers to "dither",

No, it's an impersonal passive, and I've just found out that for the last 30/40 years I may have been using a construct that english doesn't have.

English does have an impersonal passive, and and what you wrote is grammatical, but again, not idiomatic. No one would have noticed or commented except that the sentence was posted to alt.usage.english. For me this formulating it so:

“Never mind that the bit, that Steve quoted to flippantly inquire on what
‘that’ meant, explicitly said ‘dither’”

reads a little more idiomatic.

--
‘As I sat looking up at the Guinness ad, I could never figure out /
How your man stayed up on the surfboard after fourteen pints of stout’
(C. Moore)

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XPost: alt.usage.english

Ar an ceathrú lá de mí Bealtaine, scríobh jerryfriedman:

Aidan Kehoe wrote:

Ar an chéad lá de mí Bealtaine, scríobh Antonio Marques:

Never mind that in the bit that Steve quoted to flippantly inquire >>>> on what 'that' meant, it was quite explicitly said 'dither'.

The "it" there isn't idiomatic

The sentence sounded wrong to me, but even now I'm not sure why. As >> to 'it', maybe it's not idiomatic, but is it ungrammatical? I don't >> quite see it.

"It" refers to "dither",

No, it's an impersonal passive, and I've just found out that for the last 30/40 years I may have been using a construct that english doesn't have.

English does have an impersonal passive, and and what you wrote is grammatical, but again, not idiomatic. No one would have noticed or commented except that the sentence was posted to alt.usage.english.

I disagree wth both sentences. What's an example of an impersonal passive in English that anyone would say? And if Antonio tries posting sentences like that on the Internet as, say, Anthony Marks, I'll bet it wouldn't be long till someone asked him what his native language is.

https://books.google.com/books?q="it+was+said"

Now, a lot of those results are from court reports and so don’t qualify as “anyone would say,” but that register of English is still English.

Is the British Council wrong?

https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/grammar/c1-grammar/advanced-passives-review#:~:text=The%20impersonal%20passive%20has%20two,from%20the%20third%20century%20BCE.

--
‘As I sat looking up at the Guinness ad, I could never figure out /
How your man stayed up on the surfboard after fourteen pints of stout’
(C. Moore)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)