'The word pedants' top 10 | It's specific, not Pacific...' blog discussion.

Barter

Lwsi wrote: »

My biggest pet hate has to be "I was stood" or "I was sat". When did everyone turn into Nellie Pledge? Also, when did the pronunciation of the letter s turn into sh? (as in shtudent, shtreet, shtupid. I could go on and on)

Agreed; your 1st point was one of my issues in post #129 above.

Your 2nd concerns me too: particularly the lazy introduction of the sh sound into words such as assume (ash-ume instead of as-sume) and appreciate (appreesh-iate).

Another one is the lazy pronunciation/confusion of the letters D & J in words such as dew/jew ("There was jew on our garden this morning" "My library book is jew back today")

baby_fuzz

Raksha wrote: »

And speaking of 'Pence' - when a price is given as £1.99p - it's either £1.99 or 199p

If I'm feeling a little silly, I try and get it for 2p... Especially if they are missing the £, and it says 1.99p!:D

Gerth

Excellent!
Wherever I've lived I have always had an 'h' in my postcode (yes, I used "an" because it's an aitch, not a haitch...). I've lost count of the number of times I get corrected when giving my postcode to people and I pronounce the letter 'aitch' ... "you mean haitch...?"
No. I really don't.
This is one of the many reasons I named my son Haylan. More opportunities to correct people. Usually, those same people, adamant that it's 'haitch', then proceed to drop the 'h' and my son becomes 'Aylan.
I once posted on my Facebook;
'Is it hypocritical to drop your haitches not your aitches...?"
Well, I thought it was funny...

purpleweasel

Aalso, i really hate the adverts where they say "and it's only 1-9-9!". I assume they believe that we will think "wow, only 199! that's much cheaper than their rival's one hundred & 99 pounds!". Makes me want to throw things at the tv

kirstyh72

Well, try this one for size.....
My 10 year old son came home from his rather expensive school last night having being reprimanded for asking to go to the lavatory. Good lord. I shall be asking for a refund and have already sent a rather rude missive.
This is a £12k a year junior school and he was instructed that the appropriate word is "toilet" and asked not to use the word lavatory as it is vulgar. How utterly ridiculous. :mad:
Ironically, when my husband was at the same school 30 years ago he was slippered for using the word toilet. He was told that word lavatory was correct and toilet was absolutely not acceptable and would never be so!
The locals round here say tor-let by the way......

My older son was once told that it was better to say HAITCH as AITCH was elitist. We nipped that one in the bud......

spandit

purpleweasel wrote: »

Also, I really hate the adverts where they say "and it's only 1-9-9!". I assume they believe that we will think "wow, only 199! that's much cheaper than their rival's one hundred & 99 pounds!". Makes me want to throw things at the TV

Haven't had the guts to try it, but if a Sofa is "only 5-9-9" I've been tempted to offer them £5, then £9, then £9 to give a total of £23.

sandyhatter

I have to disagree slightly with Martin over the should have vs should of point. You can reduce should have to should've and unfortunately when said quickly this can sound very much like should of.

sheddragger

Absolutely bang on korekt whoops, I mean correct!

deeplyblue wrote: »

OK, this is probably the fifty-first post answering this one, but these things produce steam from my ears - note to smiley producers - where is the "steam coming out of ears" emoticon?

Yes, decimate has a lot to do with the decimal system. Both words come from the Latin word for "ten"

Decimation was a punishment in the Roman army when an entire group were deemed guilty of something (cowardice, indiscipline, wrong aftershave), and they were lined up and every tenth man was punished - usually executed.

It was assumed, I think, that a fighting force was still operational at 90% strength, and that was better than a force which wasn't obeying orders. So you could lose 1 man in 10 with safety. Execute any more and you reduced your fighting efficiency by too much.

However, 1 man in 10 is still a lot of dead men and it was a severe punishment. (Imagine if every tenth person in your local football stadium was to drop dead) It was also a random one - they didn't kill 10 selected men. They chose the first one and then counted every 10 from there. This is one reason why people use the expression to describe a seemingly random slaughter of a large number of people.

kirstyh72

chrismbt wrote: »

Two pet hates are "ask" pronounced "arks" and "quite unique".

"Unique" means that there is only one of it, there are no degrees of "uniqueness", if there are two or more then its not unique. Nothing can be "very unique". Unique seems to have become a synonym for "rare".

Correct if I am wrong but.... the use of "quite" is correctly and still very often used as litotes to emphasise phrases. i.e, she is quite = is of rare = she is stunningly beautiful. That's a correct usage so I thought.
In fairness to many kids, they seem to understand this and I have heard both my kids using it to emphasise rather than reduce.
But I agree it has been transformed to mean "a little bit". R4 journalist are often the biggest wrong doers.
BUT - my personal pet hate is "BADLY WRONG". What?????? As opposed to goodly wrong? Justin wotshisname Webb? on the TODAY programme says it all the time. Grrrrrrrrrrrr. Maybe a hangover from his years in America.

patchwork_cat

Would of and haitch are my pet hates and my kids say both! I have another if you are addicted to alcohol you are an alcoholic so why are you a foodoholic surely you are a foodic?

Interestingly my 13 year old hates that Jamie Oliver says literally a lot.