This is terrible planning on the part of those who invented the language, don’t you think?
“Working Class” Queenslanders have this spectacularly annoying of using the word “But” where other people would use “Though” or “Eh”.
For example: “We should order Pizza before the shop closes but.” or “I dont know if he got the message but.”
BUT WHAT???
It’s not even being used to imply that there’s more coming or additional information to be appended to the sentence- it’s just randomly put on the end of sentences. Drives me completely mad, and has done ever since I got here…
People will find ways of getting it wrong, no matter how simple or logical it seems.
‘Take and brought’ being exchanged proves that it’s not just similar words that get confused.
Though that’s another one that makes me twitch a little:
People round here get their persciptions filled at the pharmacy, hoping to improve their preformance.
It’s like a grain of sand in my shoe.
Too small to bother about, but *there *all the time.
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We need a nonchalantly shrugging smiley.
We’ve got an ad running over here that drives me nuts - gutter cleaning products that removes “De-breeze”, (debris).
I was so enraged every time I saw it that, until tonight I completely failed to notice the last sentence, “Ask for its name!”
:smack:
“Anymore”, used in place of “nowadays”. It’s so wrong that it hurts.
Regarding the “a friend of mine” vs “my friend” thing.
Now, english isn’t my first language, and I might be wrong here, but to me “my friends car” seems to imply that I have only one friend, while “a friend of mine’s car” suggests that the friend with the car is but one of several friends.
But when the King bellows “I AM SPARTA!” people get understandably confused.
Sailboat
I’ve never used “on accident” in my life, but somehow all three of my kids learned it and I have not been able to get them to change it. It drives me right up the wall. I’d never heard it before they used it, but it must be fairly widespread, since they learned it at two different schools over at least eight years.
If you don’t like “you guys”, you head will surely explode from the possessive form that I sometimes hear: you guys’s. It doesn’t bother me much–like “minus” as a verb, it’s so wrong that I just smile and ignore it.
TLDR’s “come with” peeve is similar to something annoying that my father-in-law does: he leaves out the objects of his verbs. For example, if you ask him “Could you cut this for me?”, he might respond “I will cut.”
I put ‘you guys’ in the same box as ‘y’all’ and ‘youse’ (and ‘yinz’, which I’ve never encountered outside this messageboard, but hey): regional informal plural forms of you. I never did like you being plural as well as singular; it gets confusing and usually needs clarification anyway.
The word asap. Has the acronym become a word?
I HATE IT!
I absolutely can’t stand people who insist on incorrectly conjugating their verbs by saying things like “I seen so-and-so” or “I been to the store” or “I dived in the water”.
I put a book down the other day in a fit of rage, because the book insisted that the main character “dived into the water” and then “swimmed to shore”. AARGH.
AAARRARARARA!!! NO SHIT!!! I haven’t even finished reading this thread, so I’m sure there will be more, but that drives me bat-shit crazy! My ex (who is from Chicago) would do this all the time! Now I feel like pulling my hair out.
Oh, and I challenge computer software manufacturers to NOT use the word robust when talking about the stability of their product. WTF, come up with something different! Coffee is robust, your software blows! Get a new marketing department!
“Ya know”
“like”
“uh”
“gonna”
An twin engine Piper was coming into Tulsa International one day and I was also talking to Approach control East. His first transmission on that busy day was full of CB lingo. The silence on the frequency was bone chilling cold and complete. After a year or three, Approach East came transmitted, “If you use that type of language even one more time, your transmissions will not be acknowledged.” In a voice so full of ice that there was another three or two years of dead silence. It was so beautiful… All the locals were on our best behavior for a few days with that controller. Bawahahaaha
“Dived” is a perfectly valid past tense of “dive”. If anything, it’s preferable to “dove”.
Since we’ve wandered into more complicated usages that irritate people, I’d like to nominate “positive reinforcement” and “negative reinforcement”. Almost nobody uses these correctly. Almost everybody views positive reinforcement as rewarding good behavior in some subjectively positive way, while negative reinforcement is punishing bad behavior.
This is wrong (well, partially wrong; the former is positive reinforcement, but not for the reason most people think).
Reinforcement is when the consequent to a behavior makes that behavior more likely to happen again. Positive and negative are entirely mathematical constructs: plus and minus. Positive reinforcement means you’re adding something to the situation, negative reinforcement means you’re taking something away. Praising someone for something is positive reinforcement, while, say, giving your kid a night off from doing dishes because he got an A on his math test is negative reinforcement. There is no subjective part of it. Yelling at a kid who is acting out in order to get attention is, in fact, positive reinforcement, because you’re giving him exactly what he wants.
Punishment is the exact opposite of reinforcement.
I can’t tell you how many educators, education students, and education professors get this wrong.
Are you sure it’s them and not you? 
Yes. I actually read the book.
This doesn’t really have anything to do with grammar but the following phrases make my skin crawl:
-shooting the shit
-shits and giggles
-sausage fest
gross
Anyone care to join me in my personal boycott against without further ado?
Is there any situation in which that phrase is necessary? Essentially, the phrase itself is the type of superfluous “ado” with which it claims to be dispensing.
Maybe it’s just me, but I have noticed a surge in the use of “Thank you so much”, when a simple, “Thank you” would have sufficed. Those two words on the end always seem to be dripping with sarcasm no matter who I hear speak them.
I’m too easily irritated to be able to list all the ways people piss me off with their language skills (or lack thereof). One that really grates is when people leave the “g” off the end of words. A good friend of mine does this all the time. “Good mornin’” “I’m going campin’”. I realize it’s probably one of those regionalisms that we’re all supposed to excuse, but it works on my last nerve. Of course, most regionalisms do.
A few that I don’t encounter too much IRL but seem to be constant here:
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“Hubby”. What the fuck, is this 1953? It just sounds so juvenile and, well, lame.
-
“Veggies”. Usually said by someone telling us more than we want to know
about their dietary habits. Add an extra kick in the pants if they use the
term “fresh veggies”. No, I’m not exactly sure why this makes me homicidal.
It just sounds so cliche and moronic. -
“But there you go”. Used at the end of a sentence to imply that the speaker
doesn’t have an explanation; that’s just the way it is /the way they see it.
Where did this even come from? Are they trying to sound smart? British?