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My pet peeve (and I'm sure I've mentioned it) is your vs you're. I've received invitations that read your invited. I'm also currently fighting I seen with my students. They'll say "Hey, I seen you the other day", or "I seen Joe downtown". Goes right through me.
Thank heavens there is another human in the world who cares about the improper use of the reflexive pronoun! I thought I was the only one!Quote:
Originally Posted by Skierchickie
Do they use it because they think it sounds nicer and less egotistical than good old "me"??? It is so common and so insidious that the other day I had to stop myself before I used it too!:eek:
They call me "the apostrophe Nazi" at work for my efforts to ensure anything that goes out under my signature (with an apostrophe) is correct.
Yea, the "does" was simply a typo.
While I really know that spelling ability has nothing to do with intelligence, it still bothers me to see misspelled words in print. I know there are varying opinions as to how necessary correct spelling is on a forum like this, but the same errors over and over get to me. I am pretty sure many would tell me to chill out, and that it doesn't matter.
As far as the speech patterns go, many of them are regional. It would be sad to lose some of the words that are unique to different parts of the country. It's already happened around Boston. Words like tonic (soda), barrel (garbage can), and bubbler (water fountain) are only heard in certain towns, usually places where many generations of families have lived without any in-out migration. You only hear the "Boston accent" in the old mill cities, certain towns, or in older people. I know that I purposely lost mine very quickly when I moved away in high school.
However, things like "I seen" and "he don't" or "your" for "you're" are just bad grammar/spelling!
I'm a right brain type, so I hope you all give me a break when I screw up. I have other strengths.
I confess to having issues with its and it's, affect and effect, and even left and right :o. I can use them correctly, but it takes some effort.
But, I can draw a nude figure without looking at the paper. ;)
Actually, I think it's more casual vs. formal than "good vs. bad." In many social situations, saying "I saw" or "he doesn't" is like wearing black tie to a football game. Cambridge is different from Appalachia on that score, I'm sure. ;) But my opinion is when in Rome, speak Latin. (Or Italian, depending on what millennium that saying came from. :p)Quote:
Originally Posted by Crankin
I use both of those constructions frequently in conversation; never in formal situations and rarely in writing. And I'm the one who just went back and edited to make sure that the period was on the correct side of the quotation marks. :cool:
Not necessarily...Quote:
Originally Posted by Crankin
I've been taking a class that talks about African American English and often what we hear as poor grammar is actually a linguistic dialectic and has real meaning.
When someone says, "He been bugging me." It's not poor grammar; it means the person has been bugging them repeatedly. "I seen" means the person has seen it often. "He don't never..." the repeated negative is for emphasis.
It's been really interesting. AND, it's helped me understand my students a little bit better. The trick is getting the kids to understand when they need to use standard English.
Veronica
You are not alone!Quote:
Originally Posted by pinkbikes
We were at the Opera the other day and they have a big marquis where you can read what they are singing while they are singing. I could not resist letting my husband know the two times they made typos.
Yes Veronica, good points. They need to be conversant in both the mainstream dialect and their own.
I guess I meant that those constructions are bad grammar for standard English. Believe me, I am not one of those "English only" types. But, I have had a problem getting kids to understand that it is necessary to speak standard English in business and school situations.
The "I seen" and "he don't" are much more prevalent in other parts of the country, even among well educated speakers. If someone spoke like that here, even in a social situation, it would not be seen as something positive. Yea, we are language snobs here, so don't start yelling! When I was first married, my husband used both of those expressions, because that's what his parents used. When he was getting ready to go back to finish his BA, I explained to him that he probably shouldn't use certain language forms at the university. He just never thought about it, as it was all he had ever heard.
Actually, I find regionalisms and dialects quite interesting to learn about.
Oh, I'm a total language snob. :D 4 years of Latin in high school, 4 more in college and 3 years of Classical Greek.
I think it's all about situational approriateness. Our society as a whole has become less aware of what's approriate or the lines are getting blurred and language is just a side effect of that. There are some things about Miss Manners I miss.
Veronica
"I seen" and "he don't" are not acceptable among educated speakers in any part of the country. When I moved to the northeastern U.S. from the south, I did notice that some people believed that, and I really had to bite my tongue to stop myself from pointing out their grammatical errors.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crankin
In written communication, the people I worked with in the northeast were actually worse than southerners, but that might be a function of the corporate structure. I did notice that people in the northeast simply would not believe that there are rules about use of language. One person told me that she didn't want to use hyphenated modifiers because "it looks funny."
Pam
Quote:
Originally Posted by PamNY
Not afraid to speak your mind I see.
I believe there is a time and a place for everything - even bad grammar.
Veronica
I haven't read through all of the posts, so I apologize if this one has been discussed already.
LESS and FEWER. Get it right, people!
Ah, that's better.
Seriously? Outside of fiction? I'm not arguing; just curious. I do think bad grammar can be used for emphasis in a joking way -- I can't think of an example that would work in writing, but we did it a lot in my family. In fact, this thread has reminded me that I should write down a few of the things we laughed about in my family so I don't forget them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Veronica
Pam
I write a column (online, for the SciFi Channel) and I regularly use sentence fragments and words such as "ain't" and "I dunno." It's conversational and I think allowed in that context.Quote:
Originally Posted by PamNY
Now, I don't view this as an excuse to not learn the proper grammar of the day, but just remember that language is not static. It is ever evolving and that the rules that were used just a generation or two ago may not apply in this day and age. Someday everyone may properly use words or forms that in this time seem to be slang or poor grammar and today's rules may seem impossibly stiff and formal.... (my husband's great aunt was a school teacher and her grammar book still had all the rules and conjugations for thee and thou)
Bad grammar in conversation often comes from the home. When you criticize a child's language, you're criticizing their homelife and maybe even their culture.Quote:
Originally Posted by PamNY
Often they are following certain grammatical rules. They are not standard English grammatical rules, but they are rules.
Veronica
I would call that poetic license.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pedal Wench
Pam
From an on-line recipe for pumpkin soup:
*To make pumpkin purée, cut a sugar pumpkin in half, scoop out the seeds and stringy stuff, lie face down on a tin-foil lined baking pan. Bake at 350°F until soft, about 45 min to an hour. Cool, scoop out the flesh. Freeze whatever you don't use for future use.
Takes a pretty big oven to do that :eek: :eek: ;)
*snort* hilarious! I think that's the best lie/lay confusion I've ever seen. :D
How about a cookbook my kids had that says to beat the eggs with a fork. It did not say to crack them open first. My oldest got a big kick out of me beating the heck out of those eggs with a fork. Made a big mess but was good for some laughs!
Language is a beautiful evolving thing. But at a certain point isn't it the job of the entire village idiot that raises the child and even educates adults because we never stop learning to say "you ain't going to get or keep a job if you can't use standard written and spoken English" :cool:?Quote:
Originally Posted by Veronica
I'm not criticizing, I'm not saying anything about your parents, family and culture, I'm just sayin' ;) :cool: at a certain point it's like showing up for the interview with the knuckle tattoo. ;) I can express myself any way I choose off the job but at work I will need clear standard English.
I'm a teeny tiny itsy bitsy cog working in a to remain unnamed large company. We recently got a chat application so you could be on our website right now, it says "click to chat" and you reach me, or another rep.
I was surprised, shocked really during the training .... it's cross cultural, racial, age, height .... there were many of us being taken off the application and told "sorry, you're fine on the phone but you can't write your way out of a paper bag".
Well, the company could say "This is your job. We're doing everything online now." :( What if I could not write?
Like the bumpersticker says "if you can read this, thank a teacher"
"People judge you by the words you use." Wasn't that a commercial for something?Quote:
Originally Posted by Veronica
I keep trying to envision a way it could make sense. Only safe-to-try-at-home one I've come up with is that it was so exhausting cutting and cleaning the pumpkin, that while the pumpkins is in the oven you take a nap on the floor, face down on the spare baking sheet. Even that image is pretty funny. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by lph
Here is set of words that I see miss-used/miss-spelled on a regular basis:
rain
rein
reign
My brain is not cooperating, so please, someone supply a fun sentence using all 3 properly.
When it rains, the reins of the reins of the reigning queen's horses get wet.
Veronica
Durning my reign as queen I will try to rein in the rain.
OK, next:
For
Fore
Four
spazz
This may be my all time favorite comic strip.
http://comics.com/pearls_before_swin...arch=&x=49&y=9
We LOOOOOVE Pearls Before Swine -- fight over the paper in the morning to see who gets the first gut-busting guffaw of the day!Quote:
Originally Posted by SadieKate
My bulletin board is filled with scads of cycling ephemera and two comics: the conjugal visits one you hyperlinked and this one -- http://comics.com/pearls_before_swine/2009-01-02/.
Love it!
I finally signed up for a daily email from comics.com which I can get on my iPod (before I even get out of bed). No paper-wrangling now.
She smiled as the call of "FORE" came through the window from the golfers as she contemplated the four remaining pieces of chocolate-nut fudge they had left for later.Quote:
Originally Posted by spazzdog
Tiger Woods won't be yelling "Fore" for he had at least four illicit affairs.
I had a friend in college who was dyslexic - spell check was his savior, but indeed homophones were his worst enemy. They are also seriously challenging for the people I know who speak English as a second language.
Their, there, they're
They're having their party there...
Oh, jeez. I read that as homophobes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eden
It makes complete sense as a standalone statement but in this thread I had a "where the heck did that come from" reaction.
Ok so now we do the "change one letter to change the entire sentence" game.Quote:
Originally Posted by SadieKate
But it makes sense. With enemies like that who needs friends? :rolleyes: :p
and now because I live and work in Spanish, where you spell things exactly how they sound, I have transferred that ability to English, which drives my mother crazy in emails "were i right whatever letters/words first come to mind an then use the wrong their/there/they're all over the place".
Homophones were the bane of my existence when I was teaching English. Some kids never learned the differences/usages no matter what hands-on activities I tried. And judging from communication with other adults, a lot of people don't know correct usage for things like there/their/they're.
There there, dear. I'm sure they're all doing their best for you over there.
How about discreet/discrete?