Language Peeves

[[deleted user]]

that is a good one!
when i first joined this group
i eschewed my practice on the Internet of eliminating punctuation and capitalization
but as i've gotten to know you i've reverted to my poetic laziness and adopted ee cummuings style
because it's the cyber world where certain rules no longer apply
including grammar rules
so email-quicker to spell and a new word in it's own right

[Ruth]

I go with email, too. But as for e e cummings, let him hang out on the poetry pages. It's too darn hard to read messages with punctuation and caps removed. (Sorry, Maureen. :) )

R

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

"Certain rules should not apply in the cyber world"???!!!! Maureen!!!!! Wash your mouth out!!!!! This IS the Language and Grammar Group.
And Ruth, one of my pet peeves is non-use of capital letters and full-stops - just ask any of my pupils! So I am with you on that one too.

[[deleted user]]

i know guys-sorry :(

but yah know until yah kick me off i shan't desist in my detestable practice

i came to learn from you but seems i'm a recalcitrant pupil

please spare me the firing line due to my sincerest apologies and my total adoration of your abilities to parlay en anglay professionale

(excuse my french) :)

[Symbol]

I don't mind if someone leaves out punctuation or capitalization in text messages or instant messages. Even chatspeak doesn't bother me in these situations. (I've been known to throw out the occasional 'brb' or 'lol' myself from time to time!) But, outside of that, I like to see proper grammar. However, I rarely throw a fit unless the lack of it impedes my ability to understand what's being written.

Thanks to Maureen for at least using carriage returns to separate your thoughts! (I find your posts relatively easy to read.) I've seen some who refuse even to do that and just write everything as one big lump. No line breaks, no punctuation, no capitals! (I'm just waiting for one of them to get the idea to start leaving out the spaces between words too!)

[[deleted user]]

theywouldn'tdare!

not to worry

i won't ;)

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

Maureen - I quite like recalcitrant pupils....I like people with strong opinions who have the guts to defend them! Onya.

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

AND - this is much worse Maureen......

"HaPpY eAsTa EvErY1...hOpE tHa EaSta BuNnY BrInGs U aL LoTzA gOoDiEz...

This is what a lot of kids my daughter's age (20) are doing now (shudder)!!!!!!

[[deleted user]]

thanks debbie!

and eegads!

Happy Easter as well :)

[Ken, Moderator]

Language peeves? What about abuse of the letter K, as in, using it where a C belongs to be kute and kreative? You see some businesses doing this. Drives me Krazy (hint for Debbie: Krazy -- population 28,940 -- is Exit 97 off the Jersey Turnpike).

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

NO!!!! Really? Crazy!
I think we should start a Society for the Prevention of Kruelty to K's. I bet it doesn't like being ignored either (think knife, knight, know). And the biggest cruelty is being associated with a bigoted organisation.....who could possibly take the Lu Lux Lan seriously??

[Eastofoz]

You know what else is a bit weird is how a lot of "new" words are glued together with a capital in between: PowerPoint, WordPerfect, iPod etc etc. I wonder if we're going to end up with words like the Germans that are a mile long....

[Ruth]

Germans are a mile long???

R

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

Teehee Ruth!

[[deleted user]]

no...they just think they are

my apologies to the germans of which i am one/partially

and of one i've been known to be partial to

seriously they have a tendency to be a bit...verbose...martin lutheresque?

ok i've insulted enough-my grandmother was of good german and irish stock and said...there's good and bad in all people

way to kill a joke huh?

[Dottie]

This reminded me of the running "discussion" between my husband and me on my method of giving directions when he stands with a dish or colander or object 'X' in hand and asks mildly "Where does this go?" I tell him and he is nearly always irate because he says I give directions like Germans compose their sentences -- beginning at the end and ending where they should begin. In other words I tell him the general first and specifics last -- or is that the other way round?

By the way, I joined this group a while ago just to lurk. My own grammar and language usage has gone to hell in a handbasket in recent years so I usually just put up with others miscues and try not to yelp unless there is something which is very obviously incorrect. I plan to stay fairly quiet here but may drop a short bit such as my directional challenged self above when such bits seem to fit.

[Ken, Moderator]

Oh, c'mon, Dottie. Don't be quiet. Lurking's no fun. It's the interplay (er... InterPlay) that makes this place.

I would say "please" in German, but all I know of that language is "Gesundheit," "Autobahn," and assorted war-movie commands ("Achtung!" "Zig Heil!").

[[deleted user]]

No wonder@?????
more cyber speak i don't know?
canadian?

dottie that was wonderful!!! :)
you write just like my sister speaks!

i especially like watching her when she tells a story because her face is so expressive

other people lose patience with her digressions, general to specific, barrel rolls and loopty loops but i get such sheer joy out of her stories and am never waiting for her to finish

so, pipe in sister !!!

[[deleted user]]

haha
fat fingered

and i missed mentioning the german for please
it's bitte pronounced bit tah

[Ken, Moderator]

Must of, could of, should of

instead of

must have, could have, should have

anyone...?

(posted peevishly)

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

I can't stand it either NE.....I constantly correct the children in my class who do it....that and 'I done' instead of "I did".
Peevishly yours....

[Ruth]

Must've been an ear contraction of must have, could have, should have. People could've just gone by the sound, although they should've been paying better attention.

R

[Ken, Moderator]

Exactly, Ruth. The error is borne of the "have" contractions: could've, would've, should've, but didn't've.

[Lara]

If you'll allow a language nerd of a different sort a little aside:

As a linguistics instructor, the "have" contractions are examples I often use - of language change in action. These kinds of phonological shifts happen all the time, and sometimes their spelling shifts to match, regardless of their source or standardization.

One way to think of it, rather than a misspelling, is that the younger generation ( who tends to use it more frequently than the older at this point in time) is simply rejecting the lack of a phonetic match between what they hear/produce, and what they write. I think that's pretty cool, (and reasonable, too).

English spelling has only been standardized for a little over 200 years, anyway. : )

Rather than thinking of it as an error, think of it as a production of a new grammatical necessity - it makes it more difficult to trace to the perfect tenses, true, but it's interesting that it is still every bit as rule-bound as the use of "have."

I dunno...too dorky? I find these shifts interesting, as they reflect, rather than an ignorance of language structure, a kind of re-analysis in a new community of users.

Just another way to think about it, I guess.

[Sheila]

One way to think of it, rather than a misspelling, is that the younger generation ( who tends to use it more frequently than the older at this point in time) is simply rejecting the lack of a phonetic match between what they hear/produce, and what they write. I think that's pretty cool, (and reasonable, too)....


Sorry, Lara. Just curious about it all.... I'm not enough of a language nerd probably, certainly not a professional one - but doesn't this open up the door for a "personalized" spelling system of words as well (if it becomes acceptable for individuals to "reject" the lack of a phoenetic match between hearing and writing)?

Or would that maybe not be a bad thing?

[[deleted user]]

but of is not have and never will be
and i have to have have or else we might as well change it to half
axe me later why doncha
y'all crazy
i'm takin my cranky sef to da thinkin arenie

[Ken, Moderator]

I agree with Lara in theory, but the reality is that kids are tested (or, if not tested, judged) based on accepted conventions. So a state test in school might blow them out of the water. Or, if they get a corporate job and send a memo around to everyone with "must of" written on it, who's going to be belittling them behind their backs? Right. Everyone. (And especially those who work UNDER them, who will deem it "ironic").

If we don't teach them as much and just say, "Cool! Anything goes! It's our language evolving, after all!" we can all party and pass the cake, but the day of reckoning will come. THEN who will they all point fingers at? Their teachers, of course.

Just a modest dissension.

[Ruth]

I have a friend with a Masters in English, who swears that a native speaker can't make a mistake. It is what it is.

We have had endless enjoyable arguments over this.

R

[Lara]

My MA is in Linguistics, and we make the same assumption - or rather, we say that native speakers don't make errors, but they frequently make mistakes. An error is considered systemic, which a mistake is like a spoken typo.

Of course we have to teach students the source and prescriptive rules of the current standard - that's what education is: disseminating standardizations and creating opportunities for innovation. I'm not suggesting we don't. My point is simply that, as many of you have pointed out, language change does occur, and often much more rapidly than we might assume.

Look at how British English and American English have diverged on negating verbs in the present tense: British English allows "I haven't any...," for instance, while American English requires an auxiliary: "I don't have any..."

It is possible that the contractions for "could have, should have," etc. are shifting away from whole word structures. The only time we DON'T use a contraction is when we're emphasizing a missed possibility...
"Dja go t' the party?"
"COULD have...didn't." etc.

It is also possible that, sooner or later, the whole-word form won't exist any longer, except for odd emphatics - think of the negative future: will not. How do we spell the contraction?
"won't"
This is an artifact of exactly the same kind of pronunciation shift.

Writing standardizations are different from spoken language - few of us speak the way we write, anyway. I guess I'm just pointing out that it's more of an "orthographic peeve."

And what might really bug you is not that students' future employers or professors or whoever would look down on them for those kinds of spellings, but rather how few would even notice.

I'm eternally amazed at the lack of spelling consistency, even among "educated" (read "submitted to standardization") adults.

Oh, and Sheila - don't be sorry...I love dissent! >: )

(Sorry for the long, rambling, pedantic posts...I'm really a lot of fun at parties, I swear.)

[Lara]

And Donna...I love your comment about word play.

[Symbol]

I have no problem with wordplay or gramatical "errors". I don't mind if someone uses a word in a way that is technically incorrect. I do like for the user to understand what they're doing though.
If someone says or writes "should of", that's fine. But I want there to be some little dark corner of their mind that realizes that the of is standing in for have. I don't care if listeners/readers realize it. But the speaker/writer should understand it.
Basically, I want people to understand the rules before they break them.

[Symbol]

This conversation has just reminded me of something else along the same lines. I was thinking about people using "should of" without realizing that of = have in this case. It reminded me of a few other things I've seen people write...

I once had a guy mention "bicycle petals" in an email.

Another time one of the grad students at my university posted on a forum to say that we should change the course format to something new "as a pose to" the current format.

I also see "per say" fairly often.

[Lara]

It took me about twenty years to connect the word "awry" in books with the spoken word that sounds like "eh-RAI". In my head, "awry" always turned up as "AW-ree," even though the meaning of both was clearly the same. Fleh.

[Inky]

Incorrect -- or entirely fabricated -- verb tenses are my peeve. For instance, I grew up in a state located in the southern-middle part of the U.S. where the verb bring had a simple past tense of brang and a past participle of brung.

I know you shudder, but there it is. Imagine hearing people using those words in spoken sentences. "I brung it." "He brang it to me."

[Ruth]

Then there are those who wait with "baited breath." Guess they had anchovies on those pizzas, after all.

My husband, who has the excuse of growing up speaking a language other than English, for a long time though "misled" was pronounced "my-zeld." Sounds much worse that way, doesn't it?

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

I have seen 'bated breath' deliberately mis-spelled in a childrens book, because the cat had a piece of cheese in her open mouth, waiting to catch mice..."as she waited with baited breath" (Joy Cowley...as mentioned many moons ago). That was clever and I appreciate clever wordplay, like Donna.
What I don't like are kids at school who use 'bait'(or maybe 'bate') as the past tense of beat....as in "He bate me in the race". Ranks with 'I done it' and 'must of' in my books! Brang and brung grate too.

[Sheila]

I haven't heard of "bate" before. Ugh.

Brang and brung are a little more common around here.

My daughter and I were out on our swingset not too long ago and were discussing something and she used the word "swang", as in "I swang". Something about it didn't seem right, so I corrected her and told her that it's "I swung". But the more I thought of it, the more I wonder if I was right. How popular is "swang" versus "swung" as the past tense of "swing" now?
Anyone got thoughts on that?

[Ken, Moderator]

Here's a list to print and put on your refrigerator, Sheila. (And why not, if it's anything like MY refrigerator, you can't see the door for the papers!)

Delightfully irregular English verbs:

http://www2.gsu.edu/~wwwesl/egw/verbs...

[Sheila]

Thanky, NE.

Hmmmm. Refrigerator space at a premium right now. If I put it under my pillow instead you think they'd just kind of float up into my head at night? :)

Lighted? Weaved? eeek.

[Ken, Moderator]

Think, thank, thunk nothing of it...

[Inky]

Here's one, just overheard in the workplace:

Using flounder in place of founder. I flashed on a flopping fish.

[Ken, Moderator]

That peeve is well-foundered.

(kidding)



Here's an expression that's run rampant in the language in recent years. Who do I blame -- TV?

"I would have to say..."

Why not just cut to the quick and SAY IT?

Another:

The fact that...

Again, if it is a fact, why does it constantly need to be prefaced with "The fact that..."?

And, finally, the word "piece." Suddenly, it's everywhere:

"We have in place this piece..." or "The piece that we're forgetting is..." or "What she's forgetting is this piece..."

Is there no peace from "this piece"?

[Ruth]

At this point in time...


Gack. You mean NOW!

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

OR....... (sports commentators usually) "At the end of the day......". (Means when all factors are considered).

[Ruth]

A knee is keeping a big tough football player on the sidelines?

Migawd, what shall I do? I have two of 'em!

R

[Ken, Moderator]

Well, you could "take a knee" as they say in genuflecting circles.

I hadn't heard Belichick say these things, but I tend to only watch the games (and even then not always), taking a pass on reading Patriots-related articles or watching Patriots-related pre-game shows, etc.

Sports talking heads are notorious for clichés:

"Get within his head..."

"Play inside of himself..."

"One game at a time..."

"How do you feel about tonight's win?"

The last one especially cracks me up. How many times do you see the postgame quicky interview where some overpaid commentator sticks a mike in a victoriously-sweaty jock's face and asks, "How do you feel about this win, Biff?" I'm just waiting for Biff to reply, "Horrible! It sucks! I hate winning -- what do you think?!"



Basically there's been a rash of people prefacing every sentence with basically lately. So basically I'm not sure where it's coming from (probably Fiji), but you basically have a lot of people using it for the sake of using it.

Oh, the fillers we use in everyday speech!

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

Aussie sheilas!!! Basically that is who I first noticed saying that.

[Sherry]

I hate "this point in time" too. I first noticed it during the Nixon administration when everyone was trying to lay the blame on everyone else.

Another peeve I have is "quality time." You should spend "quality time" with your loved ones. "Quality" has no quality--it just IS. I want some modifiers in there. I also take issue with the concept, as well. Just spend time with people! It sounds so smug to me for some reason.

[Ken, Moderator]

Basically was started by Sheila in Oz? I basically didn't know that.

And Sherry, you're right about the gratuitous modifier. Time spent with someone, if there's any desire on the part of the spender, means quality by definition.

You want a gratuitous word? How about very in front of unique?

Your poem is very unique, Poindexter. Congrats.

Grrrr.

[Sherry]

My point is that I don't think "quality" IS a modifier. I think it needs a modifier. And I agree about unique. I've had arguments with my daughter about this one. She tends to think that there can be "kinds" of unique, like strangely unique, unusually unique--along those lines. I guess I may agree with her, but I still dislike it.