[OT] today's random language gripe

[Tzarevitch]

How about the misuse of "its" and "it's"?

I understand non-native speakers confusing them because they ARE confusing and counter-intuitive, but I am not sure why so many people born and raised with english as a primary language still confuse them.

I guess part of the problem is English is such a tough and irregular language. I took Italian and Russian lessons years ago and I was astounded how easy their (not "there" or "they're") gramatical and spelling rules are to understand.

Honestly noone doesn't bother me much because it can be attributed to a typo.

Tzarevitch

 

[Negative Zero]

... (4) "The reason is because..." No. The reason is not because anything. ...

oh good show!!! that one gets my goat too!

... (7) The suffix -ency. There are many words which take this ending (clemency, agency) and many which do not (lenience, convenience, difference). Yet I hear "leniency" and several other misplaced -y words all the time. ...

leniency isn't a word? ... gee, i always thought it was. learn something new everyday. *shrug* how is it not a word, exactly? (no i'm not being sarcastic, i really want to know.)

Thought I'd throw in this bit of language wisdom...

quoted originally by William Safire here


William Safire Orders Two Whoppers Junior
NEW YORK--Stopping for lunch at a Manhattan Burger King, New York Times 'On Language' columnist William Safire ordered two "Whoppers Junior" Thursday. "Most Burger King patrons operate under the fallacious assumption that the plural is 'Whopper Juniors,'" Safire told a woman standing in line behind him. "This, of course, is a grievous grammatical blunder, akin to saying 'passerbys' or, worse yet, the dreaded 'attorney generals.'" Last week, Safire patronized a midtown Taco Bell, ordering "two Big Beef Burritos Supreme."

[/QUOTE]

actually, i think that Bill is wrong. a "Whopper Junior" is the actual name of a product. while "Junior" is descriptive in this case, it still forms the name of the product, so the pluralisation should come after it. just my 2 pennies.

... What really gets my goat is the "Newest". But I lost that battle some time ago. Symptom of the times I guess.

yeah? what about new and improved? not that it bugs me per se, i just always find it amusing. if it's new, what was there to improve on?

... Capitalization, for example, is highly unlikely to go away, and it would be very sad if it did.

i agree, and i don't want it to go away either. when writing "official" letters or letter to "offical" people, i know how to compose them properly. i just don't think that any of my meaning is lost in casual circles when i don't use them. after all, all mu punctuation is usually in place.

My current pet peeves are more about pronunciation:

The word "nuclear" - it has three syllables - noo-clee-ar. I HATE when people say - Noo-kyul-er. Our president does. I hate him even more for making kids think its ok to say it that way. It's not.

The word "jewelry" - it has the word "jewel" in it, hence it should be pronounced - joo-wool-ree. Some folks run it together as jool-ree - but some just say joo-ree. Argh!

The worst one of all for me is the word "ask" - which many people say as "axe."

And finally - Iced Tea. It's not "ice tea" - it's ICED. Past tense as in "made cold with ice." The D is there. Say it.

--*Rob

LOL
i love this whole post!


i gotta say, this whole discussion is highly entertaining and on reflection, i agree with Pielorinho in that the ignorant can be taught. it's jut that, all too often, it just feels like too much work to try to educate so many people who just don't know better. not to mention that, more often than not, i'd wager, unwanted correction isn't welcomed warmly.

and like stevelabny said, i tend to be very forgiving and just skip over typos too. it's easy to spot a typo, especially in a situation like ours where to get to know people, and consequently their style. but, when it comes to the whole their/there/they're/your/you're business, those aren't usually typos. people mean to use those words, and it's not usually out of a desire for speed. they're being misused. and that's what i'm talking about. saying the one thing when you really mean something else.

~NegZ

 

[LazarusLong42]

leniency isn't a word? ... gee, i always thought it was. learn something new everyday. *shrug* how is it not a word, exactly? (no i'm not being sarcastic, i really want to know.)

Well, it *is* a word... now. (More of that 'language evolving' thing. It happens, but I don't have to like it )

That was a bad example, and my addled brain couldn't come up with a better one last night... or now. Bleh. Well, I won't worry over it.

 

[seasong]

Originally posted by seasong
... Capitalization, for example, is highly unlikely to go away, and it would be very sad if it did.

i agree, and i don't want it to go away either. when writing "official" letters or letter to "offical" people, i know how to compose them properly. i just don't think that any of my meaning is lost in casual circles when i don't use them. after all, all mu punctuation is usually in place.

Actually, capitalization is only secondarily useful for showing the start of a sentence. It's real purpose is to be bigger and more visible than ordinary, lower case letters, so that one can more easily pick up the Most Important Part of a sentence or paragraph.

This is also useful for marking sentence beginnings (since capital letters are a more visible marker than the tiny, tiny period), and do allow skimming (and structuring the sentence ahead of time), but that's really just a side effect.

German uses capitals to mark off which words are nouns, which I think is a bit of over-use, but...

Capitals are a method for providing an extra layer of meaning into a sentence, and that meaning isn't be provided by any other method. The punctuation aspect is redundant, but proper noun capitalization is not.

How would you feel if they took away underlining and italics?

 

[Negative Zero]

i tend to think that punctuation is more important than capitalisation when it comes to marking the start and end of sentences. while you're right about them aaiding skimming, to the person who actually is reading, there isn't really a differnece.

now with regards to importance, you're quite right, but here on the boards, there are other ways to show that, i.e. this and that. also, i'll usually capitalise certian proper nouns for effect. but casually, i assume people know what/who i mean.

~NegZ

 

[tarchon]

Well. . .it is, and it isn't . . .

While spelled with a "d", depending on its environment it is either pronounced as a "d" or a "t". In the case of "iced", the preceding "s" sound causes it to be realized as "t" (devoiced).

An additional twist occurs wrt "iced tea", as the first sound of the following word is also "t"--and so the two tend to be run together into an indistinguishable whole. Except in very careful speech (which is not the same thing as more correct speech), we say "ice(t)tea", not "ice(t). . .tea". Of course, I don't doubt that because of this it is often misanalyzed in the fashion you outlined.

BTW, because doubling consonants in a word isn't meaningful in English (unlike in Italian), there is no difference to an English speaker between "ice(t)tea" and "icetea".

EDIT to insert a "not".

There's a dialect distinction there too. Some dialects prefer to form a participle from a sort of dummy verb, so you get "iced coffee" or "spiced cider" while others prefer to construct those as with attributive nouns, like "ice coffee" or "spice cider."

 

[tarchon]

My current pet peeves are more about pronunciation:

The word "jewelry" - it has the word "jewel" in it, hence it should be pronounced - joo-wool-ree. Some folks run it together as jool-ree - but some just say joo-ree. Argh!

The worst one of all for me is the word "ask" - which many people say as "axe."

--*Rob

Please - listen to yourself speak for a minute and you'll easily find dozens of elisions like in "jewelry." It's a universal and highly regular phenomenon in human language, so much so that its presence or absence is actually used to communicate meaning (especially emphasis).

As anyone who's studied the history of English can tell you too, "aks" is the original form. "Ask" is a metathesis that became accepted in prestige dialects and thus made its way into the standard form of the language. "Aks" has lingered in a few colloquial dialects though, [from] whence it became a fairly common feature in American Black English. Many so-called "incorrect" forms are like that - formerly standard forms which have colloquially held out in the face of "mistakes" that were propagated by somewhat misguided authorities centuries earlier (take the 'l' in "could" for example).

English literary circles have accepted elision as valid in written poetry throughout the entire history of the language as well. Certainly on the day before the 4th of July, I would hate to bust Francis Scott Key's chops for daring to use "o'er" for "over."

 

[Gez]

what is this facination that certain people seem to have with the word "noone"? there is no such word in the english language!

I didn't knew it. Sincerely, I saw it frequently -- even outside of "teh typo realmz of Intarnet massageboreds" -- so I thought it was valid.

and while i'm at it, what on earth is this fascination on the internet with the interchangable "their", "there" and "they're"??? c'mon people, they all mean different things! learn them! it just ticks me off whenever i see them.

You forgot "you're" and "your". As well as "it's" and "its". It's a problem of phonetics.

The fact is that speaking and reading don't use the same areas of the brain. It's a proven fact. So, when we write, we first use the speech zone to formulate sentences, and then the writing zone to "translate" them into valid words. But the effort needed for that is not mandatory, we can do without. The result is errors. This happens mainly either if you have little self-discipline about that, or if you're too fatigued to pay attention.

An interesting side effect is that people who express in a foreign language they don't know how to pronounce are less likely to make these mistakes (but, as they use a foreign languages, more likely to do grammar errors...). I've constated that, the better I grasp speaking English, the more frequent the they're/there/their confusion I made...

It's especially bad on the Internet, because everytime someone reports such an error, he's called a grammar nazi.

Writing well is, in popular opinion, the mark of an elitist snob.

 

[Pielorinho]

Re: Re: [OT] today's random language gripe

Writing well is, in popular opinion, the mark of an elitist snob.

I disagree. I think that offering unasked-for criticism of someone's grammar and spelling is the mark of an elitist snob.

I've got rules that I try to follow regarding when to correct someone's grammar and spelling on a messageboard:

1) Don't do it, you creep!
2) If you're going to be a creep and do it anyway, at least make sure that what you're correcting is genuinely an error and not a variant recognized by dictionaries and other authorities.
3) If you're going to be a creep and do it anyway, make sure your own post is flawless.
4) If someone else is being a creep and correcting a third party's grammar and spelling, it's completely uncreepy to correct the creep's grammar and spelling. In fact, it's appropriate to do so, and to end the post with, "BOO-YAH!"

That said, I do think that following standard rules for punctuation, grammar, and spelling is both kind to your readers and good strategy: the harder your post is to read, the less likely people are to read your post.

Daniel

 

[Shard O'Glase]

Re: Re: Re: [OT] today's random language gripe

.
4) If someone else is being a creep and correcting a third party's grammar and spelling, it's completely uncreepy to correct the creep's grammar and spelling. In fact, it's appropriate to do so, and to end the post with, "BOO-YAH!"

That said, I do think that following standard rules for punctuation, grammar, and spelling is both kind to your readers and good strategy: the harder your post is to read, the less likely people are to read your post.

Daniel

I need to get better at spelling and grammar then, so I can post a lot of BOO-YAHs.