I speak English very good!

[AngelWings8]

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.