Yeah, pronunciations count. I always hate it when people pronounce 'H' as 'haych' instead of 'aych'. But I'm pretty sure both are acceptable.
Extra Note: Also, another of my most hated grammatical errors is when people write 'to' when it should be 'too'. Is it really so hard to write/type an extra 'o'?
yeah, the pronunciation of H shits me. We were actually told that 'haych' was how you say it properly in primary school, and now in secondary college everyone's doing it, and I cringe every time.
EDIT: also, about the bought/brought thing, some people say 'brang'. What in the name of all that is good and holy?!
Well, sometimes Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 2: The Siege of Spinner Cay has a LOT of grammar problems on the PC. Examples: the misspellings of "MerLeader" and "bury", putting commas instead of periods, "I have's" instead of "I've got's", etc.
EDIT: also, about the bought/brought thing, some people say 'brang'. What in the name of all that is good and holy?!
Oh, gosh, yes! That annoys the hell out of me. I hear it so often as well. My own father says it all the time, I hear other relatives say it a lot, about 75% of my friends say it... eh. It kills me.
Is there a Grammar Nazi party? Do you have Grammar Rallies in Grammarberg? Who is the Grammar Fuhrer? I vote Avistew because it's the most irritating vote I can make.
Well, sometimes Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 2: The Siege of Spinner Cay has a LOT of grammar problems on the PC. Examples: the misspellings of "MerLeader" and "bury", putting commas instead of periods, "I have's" instead of "I've got's", etc.
I don't think you need the apostrophes in haves and gots. Just saying.
Thank you so much for the linkage! I love David Mitchell, but didn't know about these soapbox rants. I stayed up way too late working my way through them.
"I could care less" probably tops my list of linguistic irritations, mostly because it always makes me pause and try to figure out if they actually meant that or if they just got it wrong.
I'm surprised no one's mentioned effect/affect yet. A lot of people don't even seem to realise that those words have different meanings, and so just use them interchangeably.
In general I'm quite forgiving of mispronunciations. You can't be too hard on someone for not knowing how to pronounce a word they've only ever seen written down. The English rules can be a bit crazy, and then you've got words that have been appropriated from other languages and so have different rules altogether. It would be sad if people used fewer cool words in conversation just because they were scared of doing it wrong.
Along the same lines as 'I could care less'. Double negatives in general are quite annoying. Things like 'I didn't never say that!' is not only bad grammer, but as Puzzlebox mentioned previously, it always takes a moment to get your head around what has been said.
Oh, yeah, double negatives are always hard for me because I start by thinking the person meant it "I didn't never say that" = "I did say that" but sometimes it's not the case. Actually, at first it was always the case because the only people I talked to were other students, so double negatives were used for the effect.
But as I spoke more fluently, I spoke to more and more native speakers, and most of the time these don't do it for the effect. And well, if someone is telling you to do something, or not to do it, it's kinda different. So having to stop and wonder which they meant isn't ideal.
This being said, when I type I commonly forget negations or add them. It's a "finger memory" thing, though, but I assume it would be just as confusing. I try to correct it but sometimes I let one slip by.
Can we be the Linguistic and Grammar Communists? I don't think commies have quite the same negative connotations as Nazis. Well, at least not outside the US. That little Cold War really demonized the guys who deserve most of the credit for beating Hitler. Also, I just realised the irony in electing a French woman the Grammar Fuhrer.
Well, sometimes Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 2: The Siege of Spinner Cay has a LOT of grammar problems on the PC. Examples: the misspellings of "MerLeader" and "bury", putting commas instead of periods, "I have's" instead of "I've got's", etc.
I started at Telltale during the production of Chapter 3, I unfortunately was not able to go back and drop the Grammar Hammer on previous releases.
I can't believe nobody has posted this yet, since I have a signed full color print prominent at my desk, I feel it is my duty to do so.
The worst I think are those made by people who are grammar nazis themselves. All I care about are smug people trying to come over as smart and making spelling errors in the process. I mean I couldn't care less if you made a topic filled with grammar errors, as long as you don't try to seem "intelligent" or something.
I hate when people misuse "whom." It doesn't bother me too much when people just use "who" for everything -- you could argue that the English language has evolved to the point where the relative pronoun has lost its objective case in everyday speech -- but when someone says something like "the person whom did this," you know that they're just trying to sound smart but utterly failing because they have no actual understanding of the grammar.
Likewise, I also hate when people use "octopi" as the plural for "octopus," as if the word were a second declension Latin noun. It is, in fact, a third declension Greek noun, and so its proper plural form is "octopodes." Of course, we're speaking English here and not Ancient Greek, so you might as well just use the standard, accepted English plural form, which is, you guessed it, "octopuses."
Oh, and I also hate it when people mess up Early Modern English verb conjugations and say things like "thou hath" and "he dost." Ugh.
I like that angry flower comic. I did think about it but was too lazy to look for it.
And I agree it's funny when you correct someone and make other mistakes in the process. In a forum where I used to go, we once had a big chain of people each correcting a previous post but making a mistake and getting corrected in turn (okay, not a huge chain, but maybe 3-4 people correcting someone). It was a lot of fun.
In all seriousness, i'm fine with all Amercanisms, with the exceptions of Lazer (because the S stands for spontaneous, not Zpontaneous!), and thru. Afterall, UK english is just as different to old english as US english is.
Likewise, I also hate when people use "octopi" as the plural for "octopus," as if the word were a second declension Latin noun. It is, in fact, a third declension Greek noun, and so its proper plural form is "octopodes." Of course, we're speaking English here and not Ancient Greek, so you might as well just use the standard, accepted English plural form, which is, you guessed it, "octopuses."
There's also a huge debate over the plural of "penis" for some reason, with the most common stance being that the plural is "peni" (often spelt as "penii" with the extra "i" probably being a source of power). Obviously the plural, if not "penises" would be "penes"..?
There's also a huge debate over the plural of "penis" for some reason, with the most common stance being that the plural is "peni" (often spelt as "penii" with the extra "i" probably being a source of power). Obviously the plural, if not "penises" would be "penes"..?
In all seriousness, i'm fine with all Amercanisms, with the exceptions of Lazer (because the S stands for spontaneous, not Zpontaneous!)
1) Actually, we've gone ahead and made that the official spelling, with Zs being more awesome and, thus, more American...we're working on getting an X in there too.
2) The only time you see the spelling lazer is when referring to the super fun game of Lazer Tag, any other time is somebody asking for a swat of the Grammar Hammer.
2a) Btw, Will, I've been the resident Spelling/Grammar Nazi around here for a good while at this point, shouldn't I have my official TTG Grammar Hammer by now?
________ Suzuki Cultus specifications
There's also a huge debate over the plural of "penis" for some reason, with the most common stance being that the plural is "peni" (often spelt as "penii" with the extra "i" probably being a source of power). Obviously the plural, if not "penises" would be "penes"..?
Oh God, I've argued with so many people about that. They think "lots of words in '-us' have a plural in '-i'" and somehow apply it to a word in "-is". I don't get it. They don't seem to have a problem when it's bases or hypotheses or any other such plural...
For the record, I prefer "penises" over "penes", but at least they're both correct, unlike "peni"
Hmph? I have never seen Laser spelled with a Z. That's just stupid.
Also, being a bad American, I can't stand when people spell Centre like Center.
My nickname at school was "laser" (being a hybrid of my first and last names), and I lost count of the times people spelt it as Lazer.
As for centre/center, i'm never sure which one is the correct one to use. The ammount of times i've written one and crossed it out in exams is... quite a few. I usually settle on centre though.
Here's what I say: don't care about the different spellings between the U.S and everywhere else. When America was founded, we probably wanted to change from our "Britain ways" so we dropped the metric system and changed some of the words up.
I got a business email today that was signed off with "Rgds". Regards? Are you such a busy and important person that you couldn't possibly spare the seconds required to type 3 more characters and spell out the entire word?
I got a business email today that was signed off with "Rgds". Regards? Are you such a busy and important person that you couldn't possibly spare the seconds required to type 3 more characters and spell out the entire word?
People sometimes miss vowels out when typing if they're apprehensive about what they're writing, so maybe the person wasn't used to such a formal sign-off and thought it sounded silly or something?
That's not backed up by anything scientific, by the way, it's just something I've noticed. Could be entirely wrong
Edit: On the subject of grammar, should the "What's up, [username]!" thing at the top of the page have a question mark on it? I can't decide. Maybe it isn't being used interrogatively but as more of a general greeting (rather than even a rhetorical question), but does that make it exempt from the question mark? HMMMM. Must buy monocle and pipe to ponder further.
Also, I've just thought of something else that annoys me. I guess it isn't really grammar, but I find it irritating when people on Facebook (or whatever) elongate a word by typing multiple consonants (like "im sooo tireddddd"). That really annoys me, even though it shouldn't
People sometimes miss vowels out when typing if they're apprehensive about what they're writing, so maybe the person wasn't used to such a formal sign-off and thought it sounded silly or something?
That's not backed up by anything scientific, by the way, it's just something I've noticed. Could be entirely wrong
Edit: On the subject of grammar, should the "What's up, [username]!" thing at the top of the page have a question mark on it? I can't decide. Maybe it isn't being used interrogatively but as more of a general greeting (rather than even a rhetorical question), but does that make it exempt from the question mark? HMMMM. Must buy monocle and pipe to ponder further.
Also, I've just thought of something else that annoys me. I guess it isn't really grammar, but I find it irritating when people on Facebook (or whatever) elongate a word by typing multiple consonants (like "im sooo tireddddd"). That really annoys me, even though it shouldn't
It should have one of these ‽ (an interrobang, a ?! hybrid)
Another spelling related thing. Not really an error, but still. I've noticed a few American bands/musicians using British spellings in their albums/song titles. I noticed a while ago that "colour" was spelt the British way in the Foo Fighters album, The Colour and the Shape, and the other week I noticed that it was the same thing with the Ok Go album, Of the Blue Colour of the Sky (both pretty good albums, by the way), and I just noticed that the Jimmy Eat World song, Goodbye Sky Harbour uses the British spelling of the word "harbour".
Comments
yeah, the pronunciation of H shits me. We were actually told that 'haych' was how you say it properly in primary school, and now in secondary college everyone's doing it, and I cringe every time.
EDIT: also, about the bought/brought thing, some people say 'brang'. What in the name of all that is good and holy?!
Yes. Agreed. I couldn't agree more.
Oh, gosh, yes! That annoys the hell out of me. I hear it so often as well. My own father says it all the time, I hear other relatives say it a lot, about 75% of my friends say it... eh. It kills me.
However, since we've been talking about orthography and even pronunciation, I suggest we label ourselves Linguistic Nazis instead of Grammar Nazis.
Also, we need a flag now.
I don't think you need the apostrophes in haves and gots. Just saying.
Well, here is the existing Grammar Nazi logo, which can be changed to an 'L' quite easily if needed.
Hah, that's perfect.
Thank you so much for the linkage! I love David Mitchell, but didn't know about these soapbox rants. I stayed up way too late working my way through them.
"I could care less" probably tops my list of linguistic irritations, mostly because it always makes me pause and try to figure out if they actually meant that or if they just got it wrong.
I'm surprised no one's mentioned effect/affect yet. A lot of people don't even seem to realise that those words have different meanings, and so just use them interchangeably.
In general I'm quite forgiving of mispronunciations. You can't be too hard on someone for not knowing how to pronounce a word they've only ever seen written down. The English rules can be a bit crazy, and then you've got words that have been appropriated from other languages and so have different rules altogether. It would be sad if people used fewer cool words in conversation just because they were scared of doing it wrong.
How about this:
The dull colours represent how dull we are.
But as I spoke more fluently, I spoke to more and more native speakers, and most of the time these don't do it for the effect. And well, if someone is telling you to do something, or not to do it, it's kinda different. So having to stop and wonder which they meant isn't ideal.
This being said, when I type I commonly forget negations or add them. It's a "finger memory" thing, though, but I assume it would be just as confusing. I try to correct it but sometimes I let one slip by.
I started at Telltale during the production of Chapter 3, I unfortunately was not able to go back and drop the Grammar Hammer on previous releases.
I can't believe nobody has posted this yet, since I have a signed full color print prominent at my desk, I feel it is my duty to do so.
________
vapourizers
Also, I hate posts without white-lines.
White-lines?
Likewise, I also hate when people use "octopi" as the plural for "octopus," as if the word were a second declension Latin noun. It is, in fact, a third declension Greek noun, and so its proper plural form is "octopodes." Of course, we're speaking English here and not Ancient Greek, so you might as well just use the standard, accepted English plural form, which is, you guessed it, "octopuses."
Oh, and I also hate it when people mess up Early Modern English verb conjugations and say things like "thou hath" and "he dost." Ugh.
And I agree it's funny when you correct someone and make other mistakes in the process. In a forum where I used to go, we once had a big chain of people each correcting a previous post but making a mistake and getting corrected in turn (okay, not a huge chain, but maybe 3-4 people correcting someone). It was a lot of fun.
In all seriousness, i'm fine with all Amercanisms, with the exceptions of Lazer (because the S stands for spontaneous, not Zpontaneous!), and thru. Afterall, UK english is just as different to old english as US english is.
Oh, I just had to correct the sentence above, because I made a very common mistake: "to" instead of "too"
There's also a huge debate over the plural of "penis" for some reason, with the most common stance being that the plural is "peni" (often spelt as "penii" with the extra "i" probably being a source of power). Obviously the plural, if not "penises" would be "penes"..?
Yep. "Penes" would be the correct Latin plural.
Also, being a bad American, I can't stand when people spell Centre like Center.
1) Actually, we've gone ahead and made that the official spelling, with Zs being more awesome and, thus, more American...we're working on getting an X in there too.
2) The only time you see the spelling lazer is when referring to the super fun game of Lazer Tag, any other time is somebody asking for a swat of the Grammar Hammer.
2a) Btw, Will, I've been the resident Spelling/Grammar Nazi around here for a good while at this point, shouldn't I have my official TTG Grammar Hammer by now?
________
Suzuki Cultus specifications
Oh God, I've argued with so many people about that. They think "lots of words in '-us' have a plural in '-i'" and somehow apply it to a word in "-is". I don't get it. They don't seem to have a problem when it's bases or hypotheses or any other such plural...
For the record, I prefer "penises" over "penes", but at least they're both correct, unlike "peni"
Pfff, like there's anyone on these forums who doesn't know that yet.
As for centre/center, i'm never sure which one is the correct one to use. The ammount of times i've written one and crossed it out in exams is... quite a few. I usually settle on centre though.
@seher: Lazex sounds like some kind of drug!
Case closed.
I was referring to the plural
Let me repeat myself: "Pfff, like there's anyone on these forums who doesn't know that yet."
People sometimes miss vowels out when typing if they're apprehensive about what they're writing, so maybe the person wasn't used to such a formal sign-off and thought it sounded silly or something?
That's not backed up by anything scientific, by the way, it's just something I've noticed. Could be entirely wrong
Edit: On the subject of grammar, should the "What's up, [username]!" thing at the top of the page have a question mark on it? I can't decide. Maybe it isn't being used interrogatively but as more of a general greeting (rather than even a rhetorical question), but does that make it exempt from the question mark? HMMMM. Must buy monocle and pipe to ponder further.
Also, I've just thought of something else that annoys me. I guess it isn't really grammar, but I find it irritating when people on Facebook (or whatever) elongate a word by typing multiple consonants (like "im sooo tireddddd"). That really annoys me, even though it shouldn't
CONSPIRACY?!?!‽‽
I think so.