One of my buddies, well-educated and one of the most intelligent people I know, always says “each another” for “each other”. I don’t have a clue where that comes from, because other than that, he’s got a pretty neutral accent.
I almost think he does it to be deliberately bohemian.
[sub]Bohemian with a small “b”, no offense intended to any Bohemian-Americans out there.[/sub]
The name of the southcentral Pennsylvania county and the city comprising its seat are both pronounced LANK-ister.
BTW, Lancaster County is famous for the large numbers of Amish who live there. That’s AH-mish, not AY-mish or AM-ish.
Zap!
Former English major to the rescue!
“Where are you at?” is a no-no because sentences are never supposed to end in prepositions. Therefore, if someone calls you on this grammatical faux-pas, the correct response would be
“Where are you at, ASSHOLE?”
Now. Do any of you know of the tendency of those in a certain geographical area (Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania area) to omit “to be”?
My roommate was from West Virg/Virginia border, and used to
say “the lawn needs mowed”, “my laundry needs folded”,
“the car needs washed.” AAAAAARGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!
It was the weirdest thing. Since then I’ve heard that it’s
a regional thing?
I think that, actually, this would not be giving birth to one’s self, but rather actually performing the act of conception upon one’s self. Therefore, “Self-conceived”, would be somebody that just fucked themselves.
Down here in Baltimore, you hear both.
Lank-ister and Lang-caster.
I think Lank-ister just sounds “more right.”
And yes, it’s where all them Aim-ish people live at. 
So, scredle, where’d you major in English at?
::d & r::
The one that bugs me most is NUCULAR…
Um, actually it would be “I”. Just take the other people out of any given sentence to see whether “I” or “me” is the appropriate word.
[sub]Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. You feel free to correct the egregious error I’m sure to make in my next post, okay?[/sub]
Hey-don’t you know it’s Oldtimer’s Disease??? AAAAARGHHH!
A former boss said phantom instead of fathom. As in “He just can’t phantom how much we do here.”
Of course he can’t – phantom is not a verb!!!
My husband’s family uses retch as the past tense of reach. As in “I retch in the cabinet and got some cereal.” For the first year or so, my automatic response was “Well, did you clean it up?”
Biggest mispronunciation problem I have, and see on TV all the time: Nevada.
Listen up folks, NOBODY in Nevada calls it Nuh-vodd-uh. It’s Neh-vad-uh. Very simple.
Also, my roomate is from Hawaii, and is the most irritating person in the universe when it comes to bad grammar. He shortens EVERY sentence to about 3 words, and seems to choose tense at random.
“Are you going to the cafeteria?”=“You go for eat?”
“I’m not going to go to class today”=“I no go class”
“What did you say to him?”=“What you say him?”
And so on…
Re: You (plural)
In most of the South one hears “y’all” or sometimes “you all.” In and around the Great Smoky Mountains, “you 'uns” or “y’uns” is not uncommon. (I say y’all but I find y’uns to be quite charming)
Now Tabithina informs me that they say “y’uns” in the Ozarks. That’s several hundred miles away. Just curious: is it a mountain thing? Any theories?
And for those of you whose knowledge of rural Appalachia is limited to scenes from Deliverance, that’s not what we mean when we say we were “reared in the hills”
…
Peace, y’all,
TN*hippiebilly
One I see on the boards a lot is “could of.” Drives me up the wall and down the ceiling.
Oh, and since people in Minnesota pronounce aunt as “ont,” I’ve created the new sound of uncle as “oon-kel.” Take that, use it, and claim it as your own if you want to.
Last year, taking world history, I had a teacher who seemed to be trying to use proper grammar, but any attempt would just collapse on him.
He knew that ending sentences with a preposition was wrong, so he would try his best to put them somewhere, randomly, in the beginning. It would result in such wacky sentences as, “The Holy Roman Empire, of which much fame is attributed to…”* It was like he had forgotten about the first preposition he used (which didn’t make any sense in the first place), because it confused him, and he went on to put it at then end irregardless.
Then for the last couple months of school, we had a student teacher. He wasn’t too bad a teacher, but there was one thing he said that drove me absolutely crazy.
Every single day, after he made every single point, the question would follow:
“Is there any questions?”
Over and over again he would ask it, and nobody would point it out to him. I just felt like screaming at him, “No, Mr. T, I don’t think there ARE,” but being the shy, introverted type, I could never muster the courage.
-Disciple of Alf
*I know this sentence doesn’t make sense, I just needed an example, and that’s the best I could do.
No, you’re quite right. Sometimes, though, it is “me.”
I know sometimes “me” is correct (instead of “I”) but can’t think of an example right now.
Hmmm…
“Who is this present from?”
“It’s from John and me.”
(you wouldn’t say, “It’s from I”, right?)
I just hate this “myself” thing. I hear it all the time.
I heard it a lot during new bits on 9/11. Someone being interviewed would say, “The firefighters told my co-workers and myself to leave…”
“Myself and my husband saw the plane…”
Yes, in the midst of tragedy, I was nit-picking grammar…
That’s another thing my world history teacher would do without fail; he would misuse the word myself.
“So if you could just bring those to myself after you’re done,” or, “Just set those papers up by myself.”
Good thing it wasn’t a grammar class.
I believe the “at” in “Where are you at?” is redundant.
Cheat Chet?
No Jew?
Nose go.
“I and my family” is correct grammar. Putting yourself last in a list is usage, not grammar.
“I’m a” as shorthand for “I’m going to” literally drives me crazy. Listen to nearly any athalete being interviewed on TV and you’ll here this. It has inflected my students.
I’m a workout in the oft-season.
I’m a do my homework first thing when I get home.
I hate, really really hate, people using nouns as verbs. A particularly egregious version of this occurred in the Olympics when athletes/commentators would refer to their desire “to medal” meaning win a medal.
grrrrr.