Language Pedant
Are there any common language misuses that bother you? I don’t like it when people say “me either” instead of “me neither”. I won’t cry about it though, I probably make loads of language mistakes all the time that I’m not even aware of.
go get her some chocolates!! NOW!!!
Actually, other people’s grammar things never bother me, but i hate it when I get into some annoying habit. Lately I’ve been constantly overusing the word ‘actually’.
Misuse of “their” and “there” – “too” and “to” – etc!
Makes my hair stand.
“I went to *there* house.” NO!
“I went to the movies *to*.” Double-NO!
:o)
Hahah I live in Singapore where we use British english, and it’s an eyesore (to me) when there’s American spelling heh. Even worse when there are both types in a text.
I pacifically said, “No!”
anyone who says/writes “of” when it should be “have” as in “we should have gone there.” not “we should of gone there.”
oh, it makes me so angry!
also people who say/write “his” instead of “he’s”. it makes no sense!!
Most of the time what you’re probably hearing is actually “we should’ve gone there”. It’s perfectly fine in my books. The written mistake comes from people trying to sound out this same contraction.
No, no, there are plenty of people who think that it is correct to say “could of”, so they write it that way, too. You can hear a difference from “could’ve”.
I agree with you both, since “could of” seems to have entered the popular lexicon. All I’m sayin’ is I think it is derived (back in the day) by a transcription of “could’ve”.
This so much. I really really REALLY try to not be a grammar nazi, but that, much like Charlie, it fills me full of impotent rage.
Though I have as of yet, never encountered the use of “his” instead of “he’s”. I can see how that would be vexing.
My ultimate pet peeve is when people misspell or use incorrect grammar in adverts, notices, pamphlets, menus, etc. I mean, if you’re serious about your business, make an effort!
Agreed! There’s a cafe down the road from me called “Pat’s Bap’s”. It’s always closed so I guess I’ll never find out what Pat’s Bap is.
Negative.
I will not.
I decline.
I’m busy.
Not today.
Ask your mother.
Don’t count on it.
Ask me again later.
Outlook not so good.
I have to wash my hair.
Lovely.
I hate when I tell people “I got a haircut” and they respond with “Just one hair?” or “It looks like you got all of them cut.” I did not come up with the singular naming convention, but “haircut” is the socially accepted term!
Next time I’m going to say “I got hairs cut.”
That’s when you look at them and go “HAHAHAHAHAHAHA” very, very loudly. It’s a very backhanded way of telling them they’re not clever that I’m quite fond of.
Oooh I am really sick of hearing “at the end of the day” and “threw me under the bus”.
It also bugs me when people talk about food having heart and/or soul on TV cooking competitions.
haha! I don’t like it when Jamie Oliver calls different food items “bad-boys”. They’re not boys, they’re potatoes and they’ve been perfectly well behaved!
Haha!
Most grammar and spelling mistakes bother me (although for friends I overlook them), but also two common “corrections” I see as overpedantic garbage. Hypocrite? Me? Never.
So people:
“Alright” is not a misspelling of “All right”. It is an accepted English word that you will find in most dictionaries and most people’s vocabularies.
Split infinitives are the way people talk. “To boldly go where no man has gone before” sounds fine, while “To go boldly” or (heavens!) “Boldly to go” sound clunky and strange. Native speakers speak the language better than any prescriptivist grammarian.
So just live with it, alright?
Ugh, I’m sorry. That was a serious rant. I just had to resist the urge to yell at my English teacher, so I needed another way to vent. Again, I’m sorry.
I used to get annoyed by a teacher who’d always correct people for saying “can I” instead of “may I”. “Can I open a window sir?”. “I’m sure you’re physically capable of opening the window. What you meant to ask was MAY I open a window”. As if anyone didn’t understand what I meant!
If that happens, I say, “In that case, I am going to open this window, unless you physically restrain me…. go ahead. Try it!”
Purists might tell you what is and isn’t appropriate language. Of course, standardisation is only a tool to resolve ambiguity. So long as so long as the intended audience understands, and can communicate it accurately to others, then your language has done its job.
This need to stop the evolution of language represents the purist’s fear of the unknown. It stems from our fear of growing old.
Perhaps you should take a seat: get comfortable.
Now… tell me about your father.
…Was he teh L337 HAXX0R?
Thank you. I wish I could think that way. Also, resisting the urge to punch you.
Please don’t shoot the messenger. I feel dirty for having written it; like I am struggling with an internal compulsion to floss between my ears.
And what about “than” and “then”? I’m Spanish and I know how and when I have to use each of them!
If you speak Spanish natively it should be easier. Some of us grew up saying “then” for both, then had to learn the spelling. You I am guessing learned the spelling and the word at the same time, and probably also learned to pronounce them distinctly from one another.
All the same, it bugs me too.
Over here in Ohio, US we have a bad local habit of saying, “Where’s my hat at?” instead of, “Where’s my hat?” The “at” is unnecessary. I do my best not to say it, but everyone does it and it’s so hard not to! Another one in certain crowds is “I seen,” which is so obviously wrong but after hearing it so many times it sounds normal! One verbal quirk you Brits have that I like is, “The floor wants cleaning.” Why? Because I sure don’t want to clean it, and it sounds much more classy than saying, “I have to clean the floor.”
My mum will say that about food that’s close to its use-by date. “that ham wants eating by the end of the week”. Makes it less appetising somehow.
Kinda creepy. makes me think of the ham as having eyes & mouth. As if the ham will actually want people to eat it.
Hah ha – ‘s’like the cow from Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
I’m from Ohio too, and yes, the unnecessary “at” is incredibly annoying. I do catch myself saying it sometimes, though. :/
My biggest grammar pet peeve is when people confuse “further” and “farther.” I hear it all the time in TV commercials, and it makes me cringe every time. I’m an English major, though, so a lot of stupid things like that bother me.
Yes, well sentient meat, in an overall need to be consumed, isn’t very appetizing.
Hm. ‘Language Pedant’. In the US we say, ‘Grammar Police’, which, now that I think about it, is synonymous.
I hear people say ‘Grammar Nazi’ a lot, too!
“I won’t cry about it though, I probably make loads of language mistakes all the time that I’m not even aware of.”
I hate to be “that guy” (girl?), but you ended your sentence with a preposition.
That’s actually another pedantic thing that bothers me. I believe ending sentences with prepositions and starting them with conjunctions to be the way people talk. I prefer descriptivism to prescriptivism.
But you might think differently, which is a fact I’m aware of.
I agree, because I do the same thing. My boyfriend corrects me all the time, so now I notice when other people do it.
And (oh look) I notice when pepole don’t say “please” and “thank you,” but that’s a manners thing.
Also I see what you did there… :>
I hate it when people say: The family *have* done this, or the media *have* done that. I don’t know if that’s correct in other places, but it just sounds so strange…
It is at least in the UK. While we in the States treat a group of people as just that – ONE group – in the UK the emphasis is on the “group” rather than the “one.” When a new Mario game comes out, to us it’s “Nintendo has released a new Mario game.” To the UKers, it’s “Nintendo HAVE released a new Mario game.” Kind of interesting to think about. International grammar is nifty!
I like to think of it as “Congress has done something, Parliament have as well”
I don’t mind that many things because my grammar is not the best, but I absolutely hate when people use Z’s instead of S’s like “Catz” or “Poniez”
When people use “a whole nother” instead of “a whole other” and “irregardless” instead of “regardless,” it drives me up the WALL.
Also, when people spell “could have/could’ve” as “could of.” Grrrr.
Absolutely right! I can’t stand that either, ESPECIALLY when people use ‘your’ instead of ‘you’re’. It’s so annoying!
“Your my maths teacher!”
I saw that in a poster on this website that featured a story. UGHHHH
I hate seeing people write “defiantly” instead of “definitely”. “Definitely” is tough to spell, and I understand “definately”. But “defiantly” is a whole different word with its own meaning which is very far from “definitely”. I think this problem might be borne of spellcheck/autocorrect.
I had THE WORST TIME learning to spell that word! I always tried to spell it “definantly,” which has an extra “n.” And then I would try to correct myself and get it even MORE wrong, so the word didn’t come up when I checked autocorrect!
It’s a notoriously tricky one!
that is the same with me…. when i want chocolate, i NEED chocolate!!!
Nothing annoys me more than when people try to correct other people’s English. You know what they mean, alright?? Same with spelling. There wasn’t even such thing as spelling until 1798. Before that, EVERYONE spelt words differently. Why would these things even matter? People are acting like they’re professionals at English or something. Just let it go, would you? When you correct other people’s English, they will feel stupid and embarrased.
I know, and I try to restrain myself whenever possible. But, when I read something with a bunch of grammar and spelling “mistakes” my personal intelligence rating for the author goes down significantly. Not on purpose, it just does that. So, I like to let the author know if I can, so that they can seem smarter. Also, it just makes me twitch uncontrollably, like an obsessive-compulsive thing, to see repeated mistakes, so it’s really hard not to correct them.
Also, I disagree with some of what you said. I like the slowed language development that comes with restricted spelling and grammar. It’s because there wasn’t such a thing as spelling that we have such a hard time understanding Beowulf, or even Shakespeare. I’d kind of like to speak the same language as someone two centuries ago.
Sorry about the length of that. Really I am.
Most really obvious grammar mistakes bother me on paper. But in conversation my two most hated mistakes are: when people say supposively/supposebly when it’s supposedly. And when people say acrosst when it’s across. I’m a little late to this discussion! Great topic