I speak English very good!

[AngelWings8]

:roll2 So, like the title...have there ever been times when someone says something incorrectly in English and it makes you cringe...but you don't want to deal with the hassle of correcting them? Might be grammar; might be that they just never learned the correct phrase. Here are a couple of mine that I cringe every time I hear/see it:

Their vs. there vs. they're
Its vs. it's
Nauseous vs. nauseated: If you say "I feel nauseous", you are essentially saying "I feel that I make other people sick"
Beckon call: What is a beckon call?! It's "beck and call"!
For all intensive purposes: NO! It's "for all intents and purposes"

Or maybe I'm the only one with this strange pet peeve :O_O:

[Martyr]

"I'm going to miss you like a child misses their blanket."
Fergie pretty much screwed the whole language right there, since most people can't figure out what's wrong with that sentence. Of the remainder, most don't care. But I do.

[Pheesh]

Loose and Lose, ugh.

[Pike]

For all intensive purposes: NO! It's "for all intents and purposes"

For all intensive purposes it's a doggy dog world out there and these threads are a diamond dozen. Still, we shouldn't take them for granite but as a blessing in the skies.

[Araciel]

Having been bested by the DECAL debacle, I cannot in good CONSCIOUS post in this thread...lolconscious.

[Citizen Bleys]

For all intensive purposes it's a doggy dog world out there and these threads are a diamond dozen. Still, we shouldn't take them for granite but as a blessing in the skies.

Not even the Incredible Hulk could punch you as hard as you deserve for that.

[Timekeeper]

"I'm going to miss you like a child misses their blanket."
Fergie pretty much screwed the whole language right there, since most people can't figure out what's wrong with that sentence. Of the remainder, most don't care. But I do.
I know what you think is wrong with the sentence, but I don't have a problem with it.


I go through phases of particular mistakes annoying me, but I usually give up when I realise there is no point in trying with many of those people. At the moment my favourite is mistaking 'jealous' for 'envious'.

[cloud_doll]

Are you an English Major?

I live in the south so everyday is full of horrible English.
"I ain't got none!"
"I'ma get me some!"
"I ain't no damn fool!"
Yes, yes you are.

What really bothers me is that my brother had an internship for NASA a few years ago and is still friends with a few engineers from there. He recently got married and his NASA buddies bought him a sign to put in his house that says "The King's". Really? You're a goddamn engineer? "The Kings"! Or "The Kings' " is you want them to look like possessive assholes, but now you're just being douches and leaving my sister-in-law out of the possessiveness!!!!

[blackmage_nuke]

"I'm going to miss you like a child misses their blanket."
Fergie pretty much screwed the whole language right there, since most people can't figure out what's wrong with that sentence. Of the remainder, most don't care. But I do.

Is it something to do with the word misses and it should be "like a child would miss their blanket"? I can't figure it out if it's not.

As for things that annoy me:
1. People who are adamant about 'alot' not being allowed to be a word. If they're going to let 'nonetheless' be a word I can't see a good reason they shouldn't make 'alot' one.
2. People who are adamant about not ending sentences with prepositions, it seems so arbritrary.
3. When any of these above people say something like "minus 4", "Minus" is a verb not an adjective. It would be like saying something is an "eat carrot" instead of an "edible carrot". The correct term is "negative four". If you demand I live by your arbritrary rules of english I demand you live by mine.

Anyway I find all these arguements to be a bit of a damp squid, english is such a mess theres no reason for us to put it up on a peddle stool.

[Shaibana]

i think its part lazyness..
i havent had english in quit some time @ school. and if i have english, than its nothing.
What i type is problably full of faults. But im not that much bothered by it.

about: Its vs. it's
thats just one of those lazynes things, i dont always bother either to put a ' between it
and every languag has it's 'internet languag' where they simply shorten things up to save a calorie :P

[Rantz]

Few spelling and grammar errors really bother me, at least in everyday conversation. What does bother me is when people don't bother getting the grammar right in their company name or things like that. Swedish doesn't use an apostrophe before the possessive 's', but there are countless businesses here that name themselves Robert's El or Ture's Godis or even Marcu's Bygg.

[demondude]

When people say "I can't be asked" and I tell them that it's "arsed" but they deny it then I have to cut myself.

[Old Manus]

There are posters all over 'the strip' in Cardiff which warn you not to leave your bag open and mobile phone on display while on a night out etc, with a picture of a hand sneaking up behind someone and taking their phone. Above it, in big text, it says something like "When a thief call's don't let him answer the phone!". Not only does that make zero semantic sense, but these posters are ALL OVER THE CITY CENTRE and it blows my mind how many hands this design must have passed through without anybody noticing the glaring error. Call's isn't even a word, god damn it.

There also used to be big police notices on lamp posts saying "CCTV IS IN AFFECT IN THIS AREA" before some buff bod must have pointed it out and SW Police took them all down.

[Timekeeper]

Is it something to do with the word misses and it should be "like a child would miss their blanket"? I can't figure it out if it's not.
I was under the impression that the problem was that 'their' should only be used as a plural and here it is being singular. Meaning the sentence should read "I'm going to miss you like a child misses his/her blanket.", but I personally prefer the use of their/they in this kind of situation.
That was the issue, right?


i think its part lazyness..
i havent had english in quit some time @ school. and if i have english, than its nothing.
What i type is problably full of faults. But im not that much bothered by it.

about: Its vs. it's
thats just one of those lazynes things, i dont always bother either to put a ' between it
and every languag has it's 'internet languag' where they simply shorten things up to save a calorie :P
Unfortunately when I see blatantly incorrect grammar and spelling in a someone's writing, I read it as if they have an unintelligent sounding accent, which is rather judgemental and rude now that I think about it xD

[Martyr]

Is it something to do with the word misses and it should be "like a child would miss their blanket"? I can't figure it out if it's not.
I was under the impression that the problem was that 'their' should only be used as a plural and here it is being singular. Meaning the sentence should read "I'm going to miss you like a child misses his/her blanket.", but I personally prefer the use of their/they in this kind of situation.
That was the issue, right?


That's the issue, but I wouldn't approve of your fixes either. His/Her is too wordy, too busy, too distracting, and it takes too much attention away from more meaningful parts of the sentence.

The problem, to be clear, is that the word "child" is a singular term.
Because he's a person, we do not refer to him as an "it."
However, since we do not have a specifically stated gender, people cannot tell whether to call him a he or a she.
The common result is that people default to "they."
It seems to be a peaceful solution, but it isn't. What is happening is that people are referring to one human as many humans. Even though it is becoming more and more acceptable, there is no difference between referring to a child as "they" and referring to a car as "cars."
Everybody would get upset if you pointed out a car you liked and would always speak like, "Oh! That one is my favorite cars!"

If you haven't guessed by now, the official rule is to use the word "he" when the gender is not specified.
Unfortunately, that basic, fairly clean fix for the problem has been assaulted in recent years(not so recent anymore) by those who believe that the rule is misogynistic.
That's when the awful he/she butchery came into existence.
And now, there are actually heavy scholarly advocates of replacing the old rule of using "he" with "they," even though it is more absurd and wrong than any other idea brought up to date.

As far as I can tell, there are no problems with the original system. In theory, maybe the ungendered pronoun might someday be found to refer to a woman in some parallel universe scenarios where hypothetical situations that fleetingly come and go over the course of casual conversation take life and follow a course where, by some means unbeknownst to us, gender matters. But until that sort of discovery is made, using "he" and "his" is a lot easier than using "he/she" or using a term like "they" which is utterly wrong.

If somebody really wants to cry misogyny, then I wouldn't care if, maybe, male authors used "he" and female authors used "she."
Although that sort of change could cause some confusion, since the use of "she" has since become a tool to powerfully establish a female element to a statement. I would think that making "she" into the other generic term would cause some confusion among readers during its early stages. But that problem should probably go away quickly enough.

--------------

Anyway, because I'm aware of all that garbage, it jars me to hear people refer to a singular person as multiple persons. I'm more upset because I know that a crooked, incorrect theory is dominating our language than I am at the sound of it, really. It sounds fine. But it isn't.

[Peegee]

i also like the pgism "your're"
34683

[blackmage_nuke]

I'm going to miss you like a child misses one's blanket.

and if they say you cant just use the posessive case to refer to 'child' or anything besides a previous 'one' then fuck them.

[Pheesh]

"I'm going to miss you like that male infant misses his blanket."

[Rantz]

Eh, a male kid wouldn't be a little pansy about his blanket.

The correct sentence should be "I'm going to miss you like a little wuss of a girl misses her cuddly-wuddly blankie." Or, if the person saying it is a man, "I'm not going to miss you, you female whore."

[Jessweeee♪]

A friend of mine once said that if someone made minor errors such as using dashes or quotations incorrectly in a scholarly work, she'd question the credentials of that person. But wouldn't that be the fault of the editor, not the microbiologist that wrote the book?



What really bothers me is that my brother had an internship for NASA a few years ago and is still friends with a few engineers from there. He recently got married and his NASA buddies bought him a sign to put in his house that says "The King's". Really? You're a goddamn engineer? "The Kings"! Or "The Kings' " is you want them to look like possessive assholes, but now you're just being douches and leaving my sister-in-law out of the possessiveness!!!!

They're goddamn engineers and they have many more important things to study than the particulars of grammar. I mean, if they make the teeniest tiniest mistake in what they do, people die. Sometimes a lot of people! I'd much rather have my engineers focus on what's relevant to their work xD


EDIT:

Also what are you saying to southern people to make them say things like "I ain't no fool!"? Maybe you should be nicer :<

[blackmage_nuke]

Engineers are also a spiteful bunch. I wouldnt be surprised if they did it on purpose just to piss you guys off.

[AngelWings8]

I go through phases of particular mistakes annoying me, but I usually give up when I realise there is no point in trying with many of those people. At the moment my favourite is mistaking 'jealous' for 'envious'.

...I just realized that I've often been using jealous in place of envious :p

[Pike]

For all intensive purposes it's a doggy dog world out there and these threads are a diamond dozen. Still, we shouldn't take them for granite but as a blessing in the skies.

Not even the Incredible Hulk could punch you as hard as you deserve for that.

:takeabow:

[Levian]

I'm not entitled to complain about English grammar, I wouldn't know the first thing of it.

I am, however, entitled to complain about Norwegians who can't speak English for the life of them, and I'm also entitled to complain about Norwegian grammar. :]

Our former former Prime Minister is a prime example. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XAPf3tWo-U)

I had a teacher who talked like that, he had to talk in English because we had a handful exchange students in class, and I pretty much died inside every Tuesday when we would gather for lectures.

As for the Norwegian grammar part, I guess I could try explaining it, but I'm not sure how interesting it would be to you foreigners. Eh, let's just do it. Just to pull an example out of my ass, Katy Perry's song "Teenage Dream" is written as two words in English. In Norwegian it would be written as one word, as the two words are connected. Tenåringsdrøm. It annoys me when people separate the word into two words, and peple do it constantly. Constantly. Grocery stores are especially bad at this.

[Pumpkin]

I just passed english in the 97th %ile so I can speak proper english (that's saying alot considering I went to an all french school from grade 3 to grade 10)

But in situations like this I don care. I'll mistype words as much as a please cuz I can. Apostrophes are so annoying. I have to press and hold the shift and then the apostrophe button. Stupid french keybord.

I did however have the highest grade point average in my school evey year since grade 6 in french verb conjugation so if anyone needs to know how to conjugate a fench verb, I can easily help.

[Peegee]

conjugating verbs in general confuse the hell out of me.

[Timekeeper]

@Martyr
Wasn't there a similar issue here quite some time ago with the use of 'you'?
Originally 'you' was plural, but over time the language evolved and you became both plural and singular (replacing thou), right?

Could get around the whole problem without making any grammatical changes by rephrasing the sentence? "I'm going to miss you like a children miss their blankets."

[Jessweeee♪]

I don't think Fergie is to blame for starting that particular fad.

[Rebellious Eagle]

"Your" and "you're". I ALWAYS see it the other way around. ALWAYS. It pisses me off so much. Is it that hard to memorize the uses for only TWO words? Gosh.

[NorthernChaosGod]

Nauseous vs. nauseated
"Good" when you should be using "well"

And then the people that argue that English is a living language and that using things incorrectly makes them correct. :|

[Martyr]

@Martyr
Wasn't there a similar issue here quite some time ago with the use of 'you'?
Originally 'you' was plural, but over time the language evolved and you became both plural and singular (replacing thou), right?

Could get around the whole problem without making any grammatical changes by rephrasing the sentence? "I'm going to miss you like a children miss their blankets."

You can definitely get around the problem by rephrasing the sentence, but it shouldn't have to be that way. Grammar is grammar. There shouldn't be tiers where some sentences are more confusing to write or say than others, forcing people to rearrange their words.


I don't think Fergie is to blame for starting that particular fad.
lol no it isn't Fergie's fault.

edit: why does my post look dark and shadowy and impossible to read without highlighting in NeoClassic? I copied and pasted it, but what changes?

[blackmage_nuke]

"You will be missed by me as a blanket is missed by the child to which it belongs."

[Jentleness]

...If you haven't guessed by now, the official rule is to use the word "he" when the gender is not specified.

This is correct because the inclusive term to describe all humans is mankind. Also, I don't believe that assigning male gender when gender is not specified is strictly an English rule (although I could be wrong about that). Anyway, political correctness is getting way out of hand and its time people stop making a mountain out of a mole hill!

[Timekeeper]

And then the people that argue that English is a living language and that using things incorrectly makes them correct. :|

Well it is a living language and to some degree that's correct, but I think you're referring to people going way out of line xD


You can definitely get around the problem by rephrasing the sentence, but it shouldn't have to be that way. Grammar is grammar. There shouldn't be tiers where some sentences are more confusing to write or say than others, forcing people to rearrange their words.

edit: why does my post look dark and shadowy and impossible to read without highlighting in NeoClassic? I copied and pasted it, but what changes?

I agree that grammar should be straight forward, but it seems to me that by allowing the use of they/their as singular or plural pronouns (like the way the word 'you' changed), it helps get around the issue of 'sexist' language and means you can avoid the he/she problem.

Also, you're having the same problem I did, it's because of the new WYSIWYG feature in the Reply field. Naturally the text appears white, but because you copied and pasted your text, it retained the black font colour and TNR font... You can remove the formatting by clicking the 'Remove Format' button at the top left of the field, as I did with your text above.
This sounds like it could be an issue though. Sounds like a problem for... Rantzien!

[NorthernChaosGod]

Well I'm specifically referring to people saying it's correct to say nauseous when they feel sick.

[Peegee]

it took 2 pages for me to post this? you guys suck

communication and grammar are mutually exclusive terms. grammar fail desu desu you know what i say?

I believe when I took some classes with rubahs in linguistics I posited (and then the class reinforced) the idea that there were communication concepts that can be used instead of straightforward syllogisms. What the hell were they...context, esoteria, and something else. It doesn't matter.

Anybody who talks to me has to heavily use context and esoteria to make sense out of what I am talking about. When I'm not spewing pikaspam you have to use heuristics and guesswork to break down the syllogism (which does exist!)

[Loony BoB]

On occasion I correct people who don't have English as their native tongue because I've been told by many of them in the past that they like it when I do as it allows them to improve on things. I don't see who speak English as their main language shouldn't be of the same mindset, but hey, what works for some people won't for others. I don't tend to correct many natural English speakers with their spelling/grammar, although I do with Danielle on some occasions.

As for at EoFF, well, you might be surprised how often I edit thread titles, unclosed tags, typos and the like in various posts out there. I obviously don't do it with everything (that would be insane with some of the people here xD) but sometimes a little help can't go too far wrong. :) But yeah, mostly thread titles and tag problems, not so much typos and grammer within posts.

[Citizen Bleys]

@Martyr
Wasn't there a similar issue here quite some time ago with the use of 'you'?
Originally 'you' was plural, but over time the language evolved and you became both plural and singular (replacing thou), right?

Could get around the whole problem without making any grammatical changes by rephrasing the sentence? "I'm going to miss you like a children miss their blankets."

The second person singular is still correct English, but nobody uses it anymore--methinks were it taught today, people would be too lazy to learn the difference between the nominative and genitive case and just refer to everyone perpetually in the plural.

I'd actually like to see the second-person singular come back into vogue in English. Its elimination has led to such abominations as "y'all" when people try to create a new word for the second-person plural because they're already using the correct term to mean singular, which is wrong. There is no other language on Earth has a distinction between singular and plural for absolutely every concept except second-person references and it's skullfuckingly retarded.

I can see scrapping the difference between nominative and genitive case -- as long as you're willing to do the same for every existing nominative/genitive pair in the English language that we take for granted, such as I/me, we/us, and they/them. Wait, you say you know which of those terms to use intuitively? Well, if people would stop ignoring the difference between thee and thou, you'd be able to do the same with them. I can, an I choose to speak thus.

In French (and some other languages, including Ukrainian), the distinction between singular and plural in the second person also serves a dual purpose: denotation of formality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E2%80%93V_distinction). I think it would be useful to have that in English too. I could say thee and thou to my friends, making an expression of comfort and familiarity with them inherent to the fucking language, and you to arseholes and strangers who I don't like (or, alternatively, to be polite). It could be used to identify the tenor of national and regional cultures between the English-speaking world, too. As an example, in France, people use vous damn near as often as we use you, dropping to tu only amongst their closest acquaintances, but in Quebec it's "tu-toi tous les temps!" as a visiting Frenchman once put it. That gives an instant verbal cue, as soon as someone opens their mouth and says damn near anything, that Quebec is a hell of a lot more informal than France is. Also, rude enough to say "tu" to a stranger.

[Peegee]

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

[Shaibana]

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

.. ..... . .. ..... ... what?

[NorthernChaosGod]

You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve been further even more decided to use even go need to do look more as anyone can. Can you really be far even as decided half as much to use go wish for that? My guess is that when one really been far even as decided once to use even go want, it is then that he has really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like. It’s just common sense.

[Shaibana]

... ... ... my brain hurts

[Peegee]

http://i51.:bou::bou::bou::bou::bou::bou::bou::bou::bou::bou::bou::bou:/24c6wdl.jpg


You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve been further even more decided to use even go need to do look more as anyone can. Can you really be far even as decided half as much to use go wish for that? My guess is that when one really been far even as decided once to use even go want, it is then that he has really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like. It’s just common sense.