Language Log brought up the usage of the phrase another thing coming today. This is the only way I’ve ever heard it or seen it used. But it turns out, the original is another think coming. The thing version is winning out on the interwebs, but the post on Language Log indicates that the two phrases may have been warring since their (mutual?) inceptions. It’s no surprise to me that thing would replace think in this case, for simple phonological reasons. The [k] in think is preceded by a voiced nasal sound (the vocal cords are vibrating) and then followed by a unvoiced velar stop (aka plosive, but essentially another [k] sound). The phenomenon of assimilation occurs when a phoneme changes to reflect the surrounding phoneme(s). In this case, the [k] probably originally became voiced, which would make it a [g] sound. The [k] and [g] sounds are essentially the same, it’s just a difference in whether your vocal cords are vibrating. So, assimilation generated thing instead of think in regular speech and since that is a well known word, people interpreted it as thing instead of think when they were first exposed to it. From there it has been gaining steam.
Another interesting example of a similar nature is home in on versus the original hone in on.
Wow, I’ve never heard or seen someone say “another thing coming”. I’ve always heard it as “another think coming”. Maybe northernors annunciate more clearly :) Or maybe I read it before I heard it.
Home in vs. Hone in always disturbs me when people say it wrong. I guess they’re going for like a homing device. But it gives it a different meaning. Another one that I find disturbing is “I could care less” when people mean “I couldn’t care less”. Because if you could actually care less, then the whole phrase isn’t really meaningful.
And one more that I find amusing rather than annoying — “A whole nother”. It sounds great when you say it — “Hey, I found a whole nother box of cereal”. But when you go to write it, it looks very very strange. :)
Yeah maybe I first heard it in the south. I’ll have to ask my mom and some people at school. There’s a pretty good mix of dialect areas there (among the native english speakers).
Hmm my mom says thing and she was born and raised in the north by northern parents (Columbus, OH). Maybe it’s an education level thing. It was a blue-collar family.