Language Peeves

In My Humble Opinion
1

This is not a debate.
More like a pile on. What mis-uses of the English language, or any language for that matter, bug the heck out of you? Can be spoken or written.

A few of mine lately:

Written

Could of - For the contraction of “could have”.

ect. - seems to justify their mis-pronunciation of “et cetera” or “eck cetera”.
Spoken

Sentences ending in “so”. This is happening a lot lately. So? So what?

“There is many…” and other similar mis-matchings that really make my ears hurt. Even TV anchors are doing this!

Tia- Juana - for Ti-Juana, no aunt involved.

2

In addition to what you’ve mentioned, “asterick” bugs the shit out of me.

One I see a lot on these boards is a dollar sign followed by the word dollars: “100 dollars". Or the dollar sign behind the number : "100” Neither are correct, and both bug me.

3

As a language teacher, I edit and teach grammar for a living. I think I see every possible mistake so often that I can actually understand things better with mistakes than corrected.

That being said, my personal pet peeve are people (nearly 100% who are not grammar teachers or professional editors by trade) correcting other people’s grammar/spelling at bulletin boards. First of all, they might not even be qualified to say X is a mistake. Secondly, they might not even recognize the mistake or identify the correction correctly. But, the absolutely most irritating to me is when the mistake was made by someone who does not have English as a first language. I’m sure the person who tried to get help or advice in their second language took a big personal risk at being publicly humiliated, and then some jerk comes along and flames them for using a comma wrongly.

I have met people in MMORPG’s who play “mute” characters simply because someone in the past embarrassed them about their English. It’s horrible, really. It’s not like the pseudo-grammarian has any qualifications other than being born into that language to begin with.

Overall, I’m pretty tolerant of people’s mistakes, but I wish people would show a little more understanding for those who are not native English speakers.

4

All spoken:

“Jutebox” for “Jukebox”

“Duck Tape” for “Duct Tape”

“Hurst” for “Hearse”

Pronouncing “roof” as “ruff” and “root” as “rut”.

5

Absolutely, ESL speakers should be given a free pass. They are striving to learn a language other than their own. I’m grateful when I’m forgiven for my weak German or Spanish.

However, I don’t feel I need a PhD in linguistics to know that Mischievous only has two "I"s. And education is free in this country. No excuse for squandering the opportunity.

6

Thought of a couple others.

“Jive” for “Jibe”.

And “these ones” for just plain “these”. Trying to break my wife of that. She’s been around her kids so long she’s started talking like them.

7

Throw “whatever” into the mix.

8

“Different than”. Gah! It’s “different from” except in a few very specific circumstances.

Rouge instead of rogue. The player trying to gib you is not a type of makeup.

“Yet” instead of “but” – for example, “We are working on this, yet it’s not done.” That one’s pretty much insta-nerdrage.

9

I imagine those with a Ph.D. in linguistics would generally feel much more sympathetic than you towards the nonstandard pronunciation…

There is wide, wide variation in what prepositions different people follow “different” with in various contexts. It is silly to insist that only one is acceptable.

What’s wrong with this?

I don’t get it. What’s wrong with the question “So?”?

10

[quote=“Indistinguishable, post:9, topic:542598”]

I imagine those with a Ph.D. in linguistics would generally feel much more sympathetic than you towards the nonstandard pronunciation…

All those with a PhD? I doubt it.

11

Here’s an example:
“I finally got enough credits to graduate, so…” Trails off, never completes the “so” part.

12

I used the word “generally”. But, yes, I imagine the percentage of those with a Ph.D. in linguistics who would feel much more sympathetic than you towards the nonstandard pronunciation would be very high. An overwhelming majority would probably feel it was a common but nonstandard variant and possess no vitriolic scorn towards it. Professional linguists are a generally sympathetic bunch on such matters…

13

Ah, I didn’t understand what you were getting at before. Well, you can certainly be annoyed by this (or anything else you find annoying), but I wouldn’t call it a misuse of the language. One of the possibilities present in the language is to indicate a kind of hesitant uncertainty and unwillingness to immediately make explicit the details by precisely this kind of ellipsis.

14

Here we go again. Accuracy is respected in everything except language.

I don’t really buy that though. If one can say “He has a great command of the language”, then it’s also valid to say “She has weak language skills”. Superlatives are what make the world go 'round. Dismissing excellence is reprehensible.

15

No, it’s called not thinking before you speak. Or not getting your thoughts in line.

16

I hate the idiot’s that use an apostrophe-S to make word’s plural.

17

Spelling colour without a U and metre as meter!

grrrr drives me bonkers it does!

18

“100 $” is perfectly correct in Quebec.

I’ll chime in on the “$100 dollars” usage. It’s redundant. As is saying “$0.25 cents”. Or “0.25 cents” unless you really mean a quarter of a cent.

What I want to know is, where did that “%100” usage come from? I saw it today on the boards!

19

Yeesh, coming to the Dope for language peeves… like hunting on a game preserve.

Lose and loose are different words with different meanings, as are devastate and decimate, and just because penultimate is longer than ultimate doesn’t mean it’s better.

20

When someone punctuates a question in a thread title without a question mark (as in “Do Aliens Exist” or even “Do Aliens Exist.”), is that a legit thing? It seems to be becoming more and more common.