I’ve just been skimming this thread, so I apologize if this has been covered…
According to my husband, who is a doctoral student in folklore, an accent is what you have when you’re trying to speak another language. A dialect is what you have when you’re speaking your own.
I’ve seen (and heard) this one numerous times. I just saw it in print (in a TV Guide article about game shows, in fact). The example I saw today was (speaking of contestants’ stories on “Queen for a Day”), “Each story was more agonizing than the next.” I’ve heard it various ways, but it’s the same structure: “Each was more _____ than the next.” If this is true, then the level of “agonizing” is getting less and less, not more and more as the sentence intended. Obviously the article meant to say that they kept getting more and more agonizing, not less. If A is “more agonizing than the next,” then B (the next) is less agonizing, and so on, until Z is not agonizing at all. The person should have said, “Each story was more agonizing than the last.” At least this would denote an increasing level of agony, not a diminishing one.
…unless of course the dolphin is a fish (dorado) rather than the dolphin mammal (cetacea).
Know what you mean on this. I was at SeaWorld (which does not have a dorado exhibit), and the educator at the stingray exhibit had just finished a spiel on how the dolphins in the petting pool were mammals when some dweeb walks up and asks “where are the fish we can pet?” She diects him to the tide pool (seastars and small fish). He comes back screaming that she was an idiot - he wanted to pet the fish, “you know, the dolphins and whales!” Everyone at the exhibit started laughing at him; he just got pissed off and left.
Dear god, where do I begin?
I go nuts every time someone tells me that a story “centers around” something. How can anything center around anything else? It either centers on or revolves around the subject. God! Makes me want to throttle something small and non-threatening every time I hear it.
Another one: the widespread use of qualified absolutes. Stoid mentioned one before–very unique. There are loads more. A couple examples are most unprecedented and more perfect.
One more: people should be slapped on or about the head for stupidly mispronouncing common words. Example: “During the funeral procession, the hearst drove over the curve and into the medium.” It’s hearse, curb and median, dammit! Doesn’t anyone ever look at a printed word these days?
By the way, when I first moved to California from the Southeast, people actually seemed to get angry at times upon hearing me refer to a distant object as being “over yonder.” Y’all reckon I orta cut 'at out?
Ok, I attend school in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY…
…not Annandale-on-the-Hudson, NY
My older relatives, in particular, insist on calling it this.
quasar thinks spritle is damn cool!
From a mailing I just received from Salomon Smith Barney:
(Real name used for punishment purposes)
In the next paragraph:
and
also
I realize sometimes those having a gift for investing and juggling numbers are weak in things like English and letter writing, but…GIVE ME BACK MY MONEY, YOU ILLITERATE MORON! This is not a casual note or quick email…this is a mass copied and mailed business letter. Get professional, whydon’tcha?
There used to be a word such as normality. Poe used it before 1849.
Then in 1857 came a mathematical term: normalcy. By 1893, it had become the synonym of normality. Fine. Then along came Warren G. Harding, popularised the thing, and normality was lost.
Even BBC World Service use normalcy now. I cry bitter tears of frustration.
I know normalcy is now established usage (sigh!) but I hate it. I like normality. Has more of a ring to it. For stars sakes, do the astronomers refer to the climax of an eclipse as a “totalcy?” End rant.
I didn’t see this one mentioned, and I may catch hell for bringing it up, but it’s NOT “real-a-tor”…please…please,
it’s “real-tor”.
Also “jewlery”…people, it’s “jewelry”!!!
I’ve also noticed an alarming increase in the number of people confusing “then” and “than”…do I need to explain this??? Look it up if you don’t know!
How about using the word “impact” when what they really mean is “affect”? Or using “affect” when what is meant is “effect”? Every time I hear some say “This impacts our bottom line”, I have to bite my tongue to keep from screaming.
Then there’s “per”, or worse, “as per”. An abomination, if there ever was one. Come on, people, “per” is a percentage or a ratio. You do not say “per your request”, you say “as you requested”.
Lastly, an addition to the intentionally misspelled advertisements. A flower shop near where I lived had the chutzpah to put this on a billboard: “Luv Ya Bookay”.
And people wonder why kids have so much trouble spelling.
The linguist (or at least the linguistics major who took sociolinguistics last term) says this: An accent is a set of phonological or allophonic procedures, i.e. it affects only speech sounds. A dialect, on the other hand, involves morphological, syntactical, or semantic differences, i.e. it involves actual words and grammatical structures.
I pronounce “about” /@bVUt/ whereas most Americans pronounce it /@b}Ut/. That’s an accent. I call a “light-standard” what most Americans call a “lamppost,” and a “metro” what most Americans call a “subway.” That’s a dialect.
And it’s not true to say that someone “has an accent” or “speaks in dialect.” Everybody speaks in an accent and a dialect.
It bugs me when people write “must of” or “should of” instead of “must have” or “should have.” True, it sounds like that when a person says “must’ve” or “should’ve”…but if it’s written, for the love of cheese don’t write it like that! GAAAAH!
The reversal of the /k/ and /s/ sounds, changing “ask” /aesk/ to “aks” /aeks/ is a regular feature of many dialects of American English- Appalachian, Black, Southern, and some in New York. The pronunciation survives from Middle English, just not in Standard. It’s as English as English gets.
Criticism of this type perpetuates the myth that non-standard dialects of English are somehow corrupted versions of Standard English, instead of just socially stigmatized dialects that evolved alongside the Standard dialect.
Students understand this on some level- they realize you’re making fun of them, not correcting them. Teachers, particularly English teachers, should know better.
This thread makes me sad. The dictionary is the secular bible, and you’re all bible-thumpers.
-fh
I said:
To which Ammurit replied:
And Helena later followed with:
Which leads me to say “that is what I meant, sorry I described my query poorly.” I should have instead put forth my belief that [a] dialect refers to people that speak the same language, but for various reasons, be they geographic or based upon tradition, have particular speech mannerisms that differentiate their spoken word from others, or what might be understood to be the “grammatically correct” version of the spoken language.
This being the case, I think I stand correct when I state that hicks have a southern dialect, additionally, Easterners have a mighty funny dialect, certain urbanites have what might be termed a ghetto dialect and interestingly, portions of Ohio and California speak “grammatically correct English.” Likewise, if I were to say that a person raised in the UK had a British dialect, I would not (necessarily) be wrong (the catch, of course, being that they must be from the Britain portion of the UK 
) but again if I were to say my mother, who was born and raised in the Netherlands, has a Dutch accent, that would be 100% correct.
Long winded? Yes. Vindicated? Perhaps, though I don’t think anyone was really saying otherwise, but clarification was in order.
one that gets me more and more as we get closer to the middle of February is “ValentiMes day.” one of my co-workers says it.
No, you silly twit, there’s NO FREAKIN’ “M” in Valentine!
But then, this is the same person who chews with her mouth open…while she’s on the phone with customers. but that’s a rant for another day.
Grr.
I’ve started a thread in Great Debates based on this thread. In particular, it was inspired by hazel-rah’s comment.
If you have ever used the word “eclectic” you are either stupid or pretentious.
Not necessarily. Some of us are erudite. And sometimes the word fits the sense of the phrase.
quoting from http://www.m-w.com on the usage of verb forms of effect vs. affect:
"The confusion of the verbs affect and effect is not only quite common but has a long history. Effect was used in place of 3affect as early as 1494 and in place of 2affect as early as 1652. If you think you want to use the verb effect but are not certain, check the definitions in this dictionary. The noun affect is sometimes mistakenly used for effect. Except when your topic is psychology, you will seldom need the noun affect. "
Anyways, that’s like, what I thought and stuff.
Hazel-Rah:
Although I agree with you that’s ill-informed and condescending to make fun of others who speak different forms of English (is a Yorkshireman saying “I mun know tha” (I must know you) speaking “broken” English?), I DO think one should tell the truth to kids who want to substitute “aks” for the more common pronunciation “ask.” First, you need to find out if they are aware that they do it. I trained radio announcers once upon a time; the first thing you had to do was get the trainee to hear his or her own regionalisms. It’s harder than yout think. (“That’s ‘butcher’ not ‘butcha’ store.” “What’s the difference?” “Not ‘Lawn Guyland’ but ‘Long Eye-land’.” “I don’t get watcha mean.”)
Then you need to teach them how not to do it. I usually point out that the “announcer” way to say the word in question is so that it rhymes with “mask,” like “Halloween mask.” Or task, or bask, or cask. You might have to explain some of those last three depending on the age group.
Then tell them the Real Truth. Rich people with good jobs and lots of money say “ask.” People who aren’t going to have good jobs and lots of money say “aks.” Also, fair or not, a lot of people will assume that you’re dumb and lazy if you say ‘aks’." Sure they’re prejudiced themselves, but is it worth it to give up interesting work, more dollars, and a good first impression on strangers just so you don’t have to change your speaking style in certain situations?
Heck, hardly anyone I know talks the same in church as they do during a backyard barbecue. There’s just different levels of formality for different times in life.
I do wish more Americans understood that variant verb forms in so-called dialects actually carry EXTRA information that’s missing in “standard” English.