Pet Peeves!

[Kitsune06]

"The onerous is on you."

Glad I could amuse, Pyxi. =D

"The onerous is on you." SO reminds me of Kingdom of Loathing's "An Adventurer is You!"
...oops! My gamer is showing!

[chickwhorips]

I'm SO tired of seeing/meeting people whose shins are begging for a good kicking, and I'm *always* wearing my steel-toed Docs.

you learn well my child.

when i leave here and go back to "society" everything seems to annoy me. i think i've become to "bushey".

[pyxichick]

For some reason the kids around here have started saying "right on" when they mean to say "okay," or "yes," or "that's really cool" or "I agree. "

I've heard it so much lately, that "right on" has replaced my former number one annoying phrase, "my bad," which had previously unsettled "it's all good."

[bcipam]

I always thought "my bad" was an acknowledgment of goofing up like in "oh I spilled the beans... my bad!" An apology.

[betagirl]

- iPod nation. Everyone has one and they wear it everywhere!

Guilty

[Tuckervill]

otherwise nice, friendly people who can't tolerate children being children.

Followed closely by people who throw trash out of their cars, wait in their idling cars in the fire lane of any store, and tailgaters.

Karen

[DebW]

People who invent words, like

craptacular

Just joking, Kit.

People who confuse "formerly" and "formally".

People who whine about things they could fix. Eg. My son at 12 on winter hike, wants to rest, sits on rock, complains that he's cold. Me: "Get your butt off that rock!".

[Geonz]

Folks, there's a logical explanation for a lot of the errors that are pet peeves. Many of them are similar sounding words with similar sounding meanings.

Some years back, there was a very effective movement in education called "whole language." Well, it was effective at being adopted; it wasn't quite as effective when it came to educating.

The premise of whole language is that learning to read is all about making meaning from text - and it doesn't matter whether you get *exactly* the right word, as long as you basically get the meaning from the text... and, well, maybe it's not the *author's* meaning but as long as it means something to you, that's "right."

All that old-fashioned inane stuff about pronouncing words correctly and knowing how to break a word into syllables... oh, that is horrible torture and will make our children hate reading and never know the joy of literature.

It works fine through grade 3 or 4... and then we get words like granite and granted, vaccination and vacation, malevolence and male violence.

The educational journals even have this stuff - one highly respected book about teaching to underprepared college students begins with saying that whether you are "reading from the cannon" ... YIKES!!! and there's another homophonic blunder on the same page! (I'm glad to say that the actual articles in the book don't have such errors, so I suspect editing was not as rigorous there.) I wish I could say this were uncommon.

For me, it's a deep peeve, especially since the more I read of inexact English, the more likely errors are to invade *my* communication. I like communicating clearly. I treasure it.

Some of my students have specific difficulties with actually *hearing* the differences in the sounds of words; too many of them, however, simply haven't been taught to even care.

(I don't run around correcting every utterance - it would not be effective and it would be annoying and negative. It does, however, make my job and their learnign much more difficult.)

[bcipam]

It's funny but I actually like invented words. I have a very good friend who is incredibly funny and part of what makes him so funny is his ability to combine words to really express what he wants to say. Wish I could think of an example but my mind is blank right now but you understand. He's very clever.

Back to kids: I really do like kids and have no problem with kids being kids. What makes them so delightful and fun is all their noise making. What I don't like is when kids are being brats. You know what I mean. The kid that screams at his mom in front of everyone that she's a ***** because she wouldn't buy him candy or the kids that are running around in a restaurant while waiters are trying to serve food and I'm trying to enjoy my meal and the parents are just ignoring everything. The behavior I dislike is not the childrens but the parents. I dislike parents who let their kids run amok. A major peeve of mine.

Back to cell phones: Today I was in the elevator. Another woman's phone rang (BTW the ringtone was as obnoxious as her call). She answered and immediately starts screaming at the caller about being stood up the night before etc. Geez Louise... we are not alone here! I don't need to know you and your BF are fighting! Have the good sense and graciousness to let the phone take a message and then call the idiot back, in private.

Word play: The English language is abuse everyday and I'm as much an offender as the next person. But unless the offense is especially horrific, I don't get crazy. I mean, I hate it when someone says "Me and my friend.." but oh well, at least I understood what was meant. Let's save our ire for something really bad - like using a cell phone while going tinkle!!!

[Bluetree]

...or the kids that are running around in a restaurant while waiters are trying to serve food and I'm trying to enjoy my meal and the parents are just ignoring everything. The behavior I dislike is not the childrens but the parents. I dislike parents who let their kids run amok.

Reminds me of a time a few years ago, at an cafe in Beverly Hills. A friend and I were enjoying Sunday brunch, sitting near a large party of adults + one 2-3 year old. The adults were busy talking so the bored boy left them and wandered from table to table. He came over to our table, stared at us and then grabbed my food! The parents and their friends looked over and instead of retrieving him, burst out laughing. The boy was delighted to get attention so he started laughing and throwing the food in the air, which caused the adults to laugh even harder. The mother finally got the boy and lamely apologized, saying, "At least it's a buffet, you can always get another plate."

[Kitsune06]

People who invent words, like

craptacular

Just joking, Kit.

That's alright. I never really used such words until my ex and his friends got me into it. I argued that it was totally incorrect, and a way to 'cheat' in the English language- to screw with other words so you don't have to stretch your vocabulary to encompass the *correct* words to convey your thoughts... until one of his friends (physics major- go figure) told me that it was only as much of an insult to English as the way English takes/borrows words from other languages or 'verbs nouns' (i.e. to 'google' something or to 'xerox' a page). We bickered over it for awhile, but here I am... doing the same thing. Logical people. Gruh!

One other peeve of mine is when I'm with friends and we have inside jokes or a little 'language' between ourselves (bizarre words that have no meaning for anyone else, but make perfect sense within our group) and I start noticing the words working themselves into my normal vocabulary.