grammar

[sahib]

English is my second language and I too make mistakes, mostly when I am writing fast without paying due attention. However, I still can not believe the grammatical mistakes even the BBC is making. Often you hear  "the company are" or "the department of such and such are". There are even worse blunders but they escape my mind now. Also everyday I find myself fighting against my son's use of English that he picks up from his friends. I hate it. Things like "...could have went" drive me up the wall.

 

[strangeandbouncy]

. . . . .innit doh . . . .

 

[sahib]

Aye!

 

[abbey road d enfer]

Often you hear  "the company are" or "the department of such and such are".

I've learnt from a friend who's a councellor in education in New York that there is a revision of grammar that would make these forms the correct ones. Any singular form that expresses a plurarity would see the verb and complements conjugated at the plural.
I've also read that a similar reform would occur in French, my native language.
The idea behind this is it makes sense particularly in the context of long, convoluted sentences, where one loses the sense of where is the subject.
Just like Iain, I hate "I could of".
I'm not a purist, I love seeing languages evolve, even bastardize, but not at the cost of making them unrecognizable.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

Not correct: vats much betterer van wot i wuz doin befor, init . . .

Correct: Dat's much mo' better dan that I'se a-doin' befoh, bootstrap...

 

[Emperor-TK]

There are a couple of guys here on the board that neglect to use any accepted punctuation or sentence structure at all.  It drives me CRAZY!  These posts look like one handed cell phone text messages.  The thing is, they are good guys with a lot of interesting things to say... but it drives me crazy!    Seriously though, it can be quite hard to read posts without proper punctuation.  I'm much less sensitive to crossing homonyms.

 

[Rybow]

The english language is fairly ridiculous. Every rule has exceptions. Homonym's up the ying yang. A lot of people type on forums how they speak. I don't have a problem with it. My mom has a masters in english, so I grew up being corrected on this grammar business everyday. Me and my friends...no no...My friends and I. I still have a lot to learn, and I commend those who can learn english as a second language.

It is good to practice proper grammar. Mine ain't that good cause I spend my formative year making mistakes purposefully to bug me mom so I taught myself bad grammar and now I pay for it with that run on sentence me write in forum post.

Writing in all caps and not using paragraphs should garner some sort of severe punishment in my book.

 

[hodad]

On my list:

It's "one and the same," not "one in the same."

It's "for all intents and purposes," not "for all intensive purposes."

 

[sahib]

Often you hear  "the company are" or "the department of such and such are".

I've learnt from a friend who's a councellor in education in New York that there is a revision of grammar that would make these forms the correct ones. Any singular form that expresses a plurarity would see the verb and complements conjugated at the plural.
....

Cheers Abbey. I am aware of this but the context often does not fit. 

 

[kepeb]

On my list:

It's "one and the same," not "one in the same."

It's "for all intents and purposes," not "for all intensive purposes."

man, that's an annoying one.
I think a lot of people try to insert or repeat phrases they have heard, or think sounds good... having no idea what it actually means, or what the actual words even are!

but most annoyingly, this is people with English as their first language that do it.

 

[geoff004]

On my list:

It's "one and the same," not "one in the same."

It's "for all intents and purposes," not "for all intensive purposes."

man, that's an annoying one.

Agreed.
Along with:
kitten caboodle
right-away
worthwild
reverb trails

These phrases seems to slip by easier when they're spoken.

 

[Mbira]

We were playing a gig in a dingy bar, and the dingy bartender came up and told me that my merch sign had incorrect grammar.  I had put: "CD's for sale"  and it should have been "CDs for sale".  I got a good chuckle and haven't made that mistake since...

 

[Rybow]

I was thinking about one of these yesterday.

"I could care less". Doesn't mean a thing. Of course you could care less. You can always care less. I could care less, but instead I'll care more?

"I couldn't care less". Now that's mean.

"Anyways" instead of "Anyway"

Duck tape

Kitten caboodle. Ha! Hear that all the time.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I am mostly impressed with how well non-native english speakers post here and elsewhere on the WWW. In general the inadvertent replacement of words with similar sounding substitutes is a tell, that the person is not a heavy reader, so is only familiar with the phrase from hearing it spoken. Amusing perhaps because the substituted words have different meaning, suggesting that the mis-user doesn't really understand completely the phrase he is trying to repeat.

I am not above making my own mistakes, but I have one personal peeve, the misspelling of the word "bus". Unlike most incorrect word substitutions that are (IMO) caused by not seeing them used in print, the affectation to use two 's'es, has gained traction precisely because it has been seen misspelled by some high profile companies, in advertisements and literature. This misspelling/misuse is not caught by spell checkers because 'buss' is a real word, albeit with a completely unrelated meaning. Perhaps if enough people spell it wrong (use the wrong word), it will become the new right use. I'll hate that too...  :'( 

For common mistakes I will either try to correct people off list, or just use the word spelled correctly in my response. Sometimes when the mistake is in the topic of the thread. it just gets automatically repeated, over and over, like waving a flag to draw attention to itself.  I suspect some people are already tied of my whining about bus(s).

JR

PS: For extra credit count all the mistakes I just made in this post... but don't tell me. There is no prize. 

 

[Kingston]

I think a lot of people try to insert or repeat phrases they have heard, or think sounds good... having no idea what it actually means, or what the actual words even are!

but most annoyingly, this is people with English as their first language that do it.

This is true.

English was not my native language being an exchange student in California long a go. Everybody thought it was funny I was spell checking and correcting grammatical errors of my US high school friends. But this one is easy to explain: native english person first speaks, and in the end "thinks" in english. The rest of us most likely read it first, and the written format does not match the spoken one:

http://vimeo.com/17561068

By the way, I've lived long enough in english speaking countries and actually had my "thinking" transformed to english. It was only after this the local dialect started to catch on me, which is why I have a strange Yorkshire twang by now.

 

[ruffrecords]

The thing about English is that it truly is a language 'of the people'. After the Norman Conquest (1066) when all the nobles spoke French and all documents were in Latin, the English language was developed almost entirely by the 'common' people. It drew on the roots of those people, Angles, Saxons and so on, and , in the way of people who spend most of their time just trying to stay alive, it got rid of many superfluous aspects. That's why it is so rich, so odd and so full of exceptions.

So, despite my complaints about phrases like 'could of', I console myself with the thought that English is still very much a language of the people and long may it remain so.

Cheers

Ian

 

[Kingston]

It's the language of the internets, too. I've heard alarming tales of the english language nudging the finnish language to a direction that's not acceptable by the old standards - borrowed words - but it is also refreshing to see how the entirety of english language itself is being transformed globally.

All your base are belong to us.

 

[ruffrecords]

It's the language of the internets, too. I've heard alarming tales of the english language nudging the finnish language to a direction that's not acceptable by the old standards - borrowed words - but it is also refreshing to see how the entirety of english language itself is being transformed globally.

All your base are belong to us.

Yes, I seem to remember some years ago there was an outcry in France about English phrases entering the language, such as 'le weekend'. I think they even tried to ban it.

Cheers

Ian

 

[strangeandbouncy]

Hi,


  there is a difference between the progressive mutation of language(which I applaud), and shear laziness, brought about by a lack of comprehension( Could of, Kitten Caboodle etc). My absolute hate is the misuse of *like* ( . . . .and I was like da-di-da, and she was like so-and-so, and it was like S-o-o-o thingamy-jig . . . . ) We seem to be losing the ability to express ourselves. I wonder just how the vocabulary of the average person in previous generations compares to the average now . . . I reckon most kids know about a quarter of the vocabulary I learned at school. Oh well . . . . .


    I also hate mixed metaphors. I heard *batting from the same hymn-sheet* today . . . it is almost like a malapropism. I like to mix them up for comic effect, but it seems to be entirely lost on most people.


  . . . You get me . . . if you naut-I-mean . . .


        ANdyP

 

[PRR]

> bear in mind that a great many of the users here does NOT have English as their primary language..

The seasoned "english as secondary language" guys here use english VERY well. Better than most native users.

And I have no complaint about people who have little practice in english-- their english is far better than my French or German. If I can read it a little, they are better than me.

What annoys me (though I bite my tongue) is folks who have clearly grown up in english language culture, must have read millions of words of well-accepted english (books, magazines, the better instruction manuals), but WON'T use it to write CLEARLY.

If you are writing for yourself, whatever. To one other person, that's between you and them.

But here your words are seen by MANY eyes. This thread has 400 views. If one sloppy word (way-mis-spelled, misleading homonym, runtogether) makes one reader pause one second to work it out, that's over 3 minutes of total reader-time wasted. When you have many readers, when you want them to read your words, it is efficient and worth-while to WRITE WELL.


> it can be quite hard to read posts without proper punctuation.

Exactly.

I hope these guys don't write like this for self-promotion or when applying for a job (but I know many do). The their/there/they're mix-up is like interviewing for a straight office job wearing sweat-pants.... right away you say you are not serious.