Why is the sentence "How to play archery" wrong?

Because you touch your little arrow at night

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>>9325925
Why isn't the verb "play" used with Archery?
Is there a grammatical reason for this?

>>9325923
It's not a sentence.

>>9325955
I'll rephrase it
"How do I play archery?"
Sounds wrong, huh? But why?

>>9325951
Archery isn't a game

>>9325923

because archery isn't a game, it's a sport.

>>9325961
Because you cannot play Archery. It sounds wrong for a reason: you're using the wrong word to identify the action. It'd be the same thing as saying "How do I play sleep?". You're either sleeping, or you're not--there's no alternative: just as you're either doing archery, or you're not.

>>9325983
Or you're playing soccer or you're not?

>>9325976
So is football, but you still "play football", right?

>you're using the wrong word to identify the action
Why is it wrong?

>>9325986
You can play soccer: because play is the correct word to use here in identifying the action. There's a reason we call them a "Soccer player" and we don't call an archer an "Archery player".

>>9325995
I think the word you're looking for is, "Athlete," anon.

>>9325990
Football was invented as a game, while archery was not. Archery was historically a skill that you practiced, later turned into a sport.

>>9326014
So it's only a convention for etymological reasons?
Technically "play" could just as well be used for Archery, then?

>>9326042
Yeah You could, but there is no reason to. Archery is more of a skill than a sport anyway. Reminds me of:

>Be John Green
>"Why do we only eat eggs at breakfast lmao"

Because it'd be retarded. Eggs are easy to make and require little effort--perfect for breakfast.

>>9325923
That jew is really bothering me.

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>Don't think of what you have to do, don't consider how to carry it out! The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprise.

>>9325923
because "play" is an optionally transitive verb but only for Proper Noun arguments

t. linguist

>>9326208
So why do you think "play" is used for football but not archery?

>>9326216
Because "football" is an original name; that is, it functions grammatically as such like "basketball", "soccer", "kick-the-can", and "tag", all of which are grammatical as direct objects of '"play":
"play football"
"play tag"

Whereas "archery" is not a Proper Name so-to-speak, but a Verb to Noun derivation, like gerunds such as "running", or "shooting", none of which are grammatical as DOs of 'play':
*"play archery"
*"play running"

you don't play archery you commit archery

>>9326282
Practice, surely

>>9326270
Very interesting.
Thanks a lot for the explanation.

>>9326290
Or perhaps commit feats of archery if you're doing something particularly exciting. So like, nailing Achilles wouldn't count as practicing archery so much as a feat of archery I reckon.

>>9326295
no problem

Archery is a combat projectile and you're training to fire an arrow.

Its training. You don't say "how do I play SWAT" or "how do I play napalm"

Its a lethal activity.

>>9325923
>no punctuation
>no subject
Or, if it's a book title,
>not capitalized properly

>>9325923
It's a trick question. It sounds off, but it's not wrong. When you hear of archery typically it's in the context of practicing archery or being an archer. But when an archer competes against another archer, they are having duel. Football was intended to be a game, so was golf and so was futball. But archery wasn't. It was a skill, a weapon, a tool in war and hunting. So it translates strangely to "playing archery" because it's unconventional.

>>9326012
Except it clearly isn't. This is no a grammatical question, and demonstrating that "soccer player" is correct and "archery player" isnt was the entire point.

>>9325923
Because archery is a discipline, not a game. You can create games and competitive sports based on archery, but those would require a separate term or qualifier.