Mangled and abused words and phrases

[Toddy]

I managed an A in Higher English, I have an honours university degree, and I still find it difficult to limit my vocabulary to plain English
Even teachers who belted us in school for using words like, "Aye", "Gie", "Thon", had no complaints about us using nouns, verbs and adjectives that now seem to be purely Scottish funny old world.
How do folks South of the Border where they still retain local accents and vocabularies manage ? or is it just that there's rather a lot of us and it's not simply a small region sort of thing ? Do the Welsh and Irish have the same issues that I do ?

Chisellers signature I look on just as I would one in latin; it's just a kind of neat wee phrase I've met him and his missus, I can almost hear him say it now

Actually, there's a good point. Among those whose written language confuses, I find that if I have met them, being able to put a voice to the written word makes a tremendous difference.
I am often surprised by just how different the writer is in real life to the imagined personality from the forum.

In real life I'm quietly spoken (no rolling around on the floor now gentlemen )


Mary

 

[boatman]

Doesn't it make a nonsense of the teaching of Erse, Gaelic and Welsh as living languages? Why would anybody want their children to be cut off from communicating with the rest of the English-speaking World? Especially when they did not learn them. Likewise the acceptance of inner city argots is wrong.

 

[sandbender]

Doesn't it make a nonsense of the teaching of Erse, Gaelic and Welsh as living languages? Why would anybody want their children to be cut off from communicating with the rest of the English-speaking World? Especially when they did not learn them. Likewise the acceptance of inner city argots is wrong.

No, not really, the ability to speak another language or languages, even if they are no longer in use is never a bad thing.

The English speaking world may do most of the speaking, but they are mostly saying the same thing. Other languages offer a different perspective.

An earlier poster suggested that we should accept that language will evolve, true, but it can devolve too. However not all 'youth-speak' is bad, some of it has a surprising range of expression and meaning.

 

[abominable_scouse_monster]

Almost as good as the one on the news the other days Mike " a very fatal accident", i thought fatal was well, fatal, didn't realise there was more than one version?.

Michael Burke is a legend

I suppose there is, Slipped on a wet floor and cracked his head on the counter top kind of Fatal accident, and the Guy who crashes a lorry full of snakes and tigers into another lorry full of used needles and baby nappies that rolls into a open tank at a sewage treatment plant kind of accident, because the latter is the more fatal if you ask me

''Can you learn me that?'' - Learn you it?! TEACH

^ That one really really winds me up, I work in IT and when your trying to figure out just what some one has done to there PC and your using *GASP* keyboard short cuts to do something and you hear ''Can you learn me that?, so I can do it myself next time" winds me up something rotten.
I do generally give them a nice and polite no followed by a explanation, but after the 50th time I tend to get a little more verbose.

 

[Wayland]

I love the mixed ethnicity of our so called English language. It is its many borrowed words from far and wide that makes it so descriptive.

What I do lament is the laziness and neglect that turns it into almost pure garbage in the mouths and writings of some of our population.

Text speak is part of this problem but so is the lack of basic punctuation or use of capital letters which makes reading their missives such a toil.

 

[Adze]

some one has done to there PC and your using ...

I work in I.T. too. "Someone has done to their PC and you're using..."

Keyboard shortcuts? Hehe... give me a CLI every time, although there's a few shortcuts in those too.

 

[abominable_scouse_monster]

Almost as good as the one on the news the other days Mike " a very fatal accident", i thought fatal was well, fatal, didn't realise there was more than one version?.

Michael Burke is a legend

I work in I.T. too. "Someone has done to their PC and you're using..."

Keyboard shortcuts? Hehe... give me a CLI every time, although there's a few shortcuts in those too.

I am sure there is a Godwin reference I could make

I support about 500 XP systems about 30 vista ones and 5 OLD DEC systems (for the non IT geeks they are stone age IT systems in this case dating from the mid 70's), and a few FreeBSD systems so I would like to spend more time in the terminal but when the applications are nearly 90% GUI based there is a fat chance of that,

 

[santaman2000]

Less and fewer: Fewer people eat less food (for example)

Infer and imply: I cringe every time someone says "Are you inferring that..." when they really mean implying.

You've been watching too many Big Bang Theory reruns. That's one of Sheldon's peeves.

 

[santaman2000]

Re Grammar - there's a similar phrase to do with punctuation.

"Good punctuation and syntax is the difference between helping your uncle, Jack, xxx..."

I'm sure you can work out the rest

LOL. That's the one I entered that Hoodoo edited.

 

[santaman2000]

...I'm sure a lot of these short cut phrases are a direct result of TV soaps, in particular EastEnders...

Or are the soaps using words and phrases because they're already in the poular lexicon?

 

[santaman2000]

Ahh, you should see the fast food joint near me then..they sell burger's, Frie's, drink's,

This one more of a bugbear to me: 'Can i get a coffee?'
No!You cant!I'm serving you..i will get the coffee, not you....

And the answer I would have gotten as a child, "I don't know; CAN you?" Ask me instead, "MAY I get a coffee please?"

 

[Lister]

Less and Fewer, It boils the blood how often these are misused. It is not rocket science, if the subject matter is quantified, use "fewer", if the subject matter is not quantified, use "less".

There is less sand on the beach than previously thought
There are fewer grains on sand on the beach than previously thought

 

[Adze]

There are fewer grains on sand on the beach than previously thought

Must... prove... Godwin... WRONG!

That's all from me I think - a plus tard mes amis.

 

[kennyboy]

[video=youtube;KAfKFKBlZbM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAfKFKBlZbM[/video]

Maybe it's nothing new.

 

[Man of Tanith]

For me personally the one that irritates me the most is-its a big ask
for example-can you email me that care standards report?
-- thats a big ask.
or -It's a big ask but can you rewrite the entire care plan?
I have to bite my tongue every time i hear it.
I don't know if i am over sensitive or even correct but it really annoys me.

 

[Imagedude]

Deceptively easy, does this mean something is hard but you are deceived into thinking it is easy, or it's easy but you're decieived into thinking it's hard? Should the word 'deceptively' (adverb) even be used to qualify 'easy' (adjective)?

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3468#comment-142781

 

[boatman]

The English speaking world may do most of the speaking, but they are mostly saying the same thing. Other languages offer a different perspective.

Content is not the same as form. How does speaking a different language give a different perspective? I do not deny that the exercise of learning another dying language is useful as an academic discipline or as some nostalgic hobby.

 

[Paul72]

One thing that constantly annoys me in work is people ordering quantities and saying "two off..." etc. Shouldn't that be "two of" ?


I find that children pick up on language use or misuse very quickly. One word that I find myself using too much is 'actually' and now my six year old has started it too!


She also pulled me up last night on something when we were in the woods. I said we'd be hitting the path soon after being off it and she wondered if i was going to give it a thump.

 

[Toddy]

Content is not the same as form. How does speaking a different language give a different perspective? I do not deny that the exercise of learning another dying language is useful as an academic discipline or as some nostalgic hobby.

These languages are not dying; like English they are changing, growing and their vocabulary is expanding. They are in daily use, are the first words that come to the minds and mouths of those who speak them.

Thought patterns are often demonstrated in speech, and those who live in a different culture to the one in which they were reared, with a different language, actually find themselves eventually dreaming in the new language. My Uncle did it with Welsh, and he was reared in Central Scotland over ninety years ago speaking broad Scots. Later he learned English at school and in adulthood moved to Wales.

Flexible minds are wonderful Individuals so blessed are creative, innovative and make connections that spur development. A facility for language use, in it's myriad forms, is actually good for us.

We are incredibly lazy in the English speaking world. Like the Romans who thought that everyone should speak Latin, without realising that the Latin they spoke was a changed from it's original as our modern English vocabulary is from that of Shakespeare.

The little phrase, "What can't change, dies.", is as relevant to language as it is to living creatures and plants.

Language is inherantly tied to culture. That is demonstrated here, on this forum, day in, day out. The posts in the threads show a level of familiarity and understanding of what appears to be rather esoteric terms to the rest of the world; perfectly understandable to the rest of the members, despite their own cultural differences.
A sub culture, but part of the mainstream. Like hundreds of other interest groups.
Now expand that concept to embrace entire regions, countries, and while they are intrinsically their own particular culture (with their own language) they are very much a part of the whole.
We manage to be both; at once familiar with the intimate and in full accord with the wider world.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[MattB]

People not understanding the difference between 'sat' & 'sitting' and "stood' & 'standing'.


It's 'I was standing' or 'I stood', not 'I was stood'!


I am also mildy peeved by the grocer's apostrophe and it's/its confusion - one of my absolute favourites is grammatically incorrect sign-writing; getting it wrong on something transient like a price on a blackboard is one thing, but you'd hope that if you're paying hundreds of pounds for a professional sign that someone would proof-read it!