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

firstinflight

Nij_P wrote: »

My top three are:
1. "I'm good", in response to, "how are you?" "I'm" is short for "I am", "am" is the first person singular of the verb, "to be" and thus requires an adverb. "Good" is an adjective. "Duh", as one says nowadays - how hard can it be?

Putting an adjective with "to be" is valid usage. Unless you'd honestly use any of the following:

I'm hungrily
I'm angrily
I can't talk now, I'm belatedly for a meeting.

"Duh" indeed

firstinflight

I get the urge to tip hot coffee on anyone who orders a double EXpresso

rapido

The last posting about Westminster brings me to another amusing thing.

Spelling pronunciation of place names by non-locals, where the actual pronunciation is different.

Cirencester is pronounced /Siren-ster/ or /Siss-iss-ster/, or even /Siss-itt-ter/ (this last one is a bit rare these days). But in the past few years, I have increasingly heard /Siren-ses-ster/.

Ses-ster? Seriously? What the hell is that? Where does the extra syllable come from? "-cester" is always pronounced "ster". Or do they just think of "cess pit" when they think of anywhere outside the Home Counties?

Olokia

Gerth wrote: »

Please, stop arguing about it, you can go on all day... Just look it up in any dictionary... Please!
It's aitch, eych, (however you want to spell it) there is no 'h' pronounced at the start of the letter "h"
Never has been. If it sounds wrong to you it's because you've been surrounded by people who pronounce it incorrectly all your life. Sad but true. Sorry.

How incredibly rude are you?! I'm sorry that I don't speak the same way as you but there was no need to be rude!! I have looked it up and people use both ways. In Northern Ireland, haitch is standard practice. In Australia, 60% of people use haitch and in england 24% of people use it. Just because you don't use it doesn't mean it is wrong.

I didn't realise about Cirencester, everyone I spoke to including people who live there call it Siren-sester... Thanks
Edit: Wikipedia says Siren-cester...

One guy called Battersea, Baa-ter-see-a. lol

Just noticed in my Google calendar - Guy Fawke's night.... His surname is Fawkes, you can't break it up with an apostrophe!

matt38

Nij_P wrote: »

My top three are:

3. I never cease to chuckle at the incompetents who struggle to realise there is a differecne between "personal" and "personnel". Treble "duh"! How hard can it be?

QUOTE]

differecne? How hard can it be indeed

hennypenny_2

I get so annoyed when I hear people, escecially presenters on television and radio, saying the word proply instead of properly and medcine instead of medicine.

Is the difference between drawer and draw not just down to English accents? As a Scot I always say drawer but thought most English accents struggle with the letter R at the end of a word and that is the reason they say draw.

And sorry if I sound really dumb, but will someone please explain the difference between less and fewer. One person said that if it is to do with quanities use less but someone else also posted that you should always say fewer people rather than less people. If you were expecting 10 people for dinner and only 7 turned up then you had 3 less people for dinner than you expected (or am I missing something here?):o

philwjones

"Should of" annoys me a lot - I have seen this too many times in written language, so it's not a mis-hearing/pronunciation quirk.
"PIN Number" less so, but still irritating.
Nuclear being pronounced Nucular really irritates too.
"Their, There, They're" is another.
Misplaced apostrophes or apostrophes being omitted altogether.

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet - the word "Absolutely" used in agreement to something - it seems so wrong in that context and is really overused - especially amongst management where I work :mad: .

KimYeovil

hennypenny wrote: »

And sorry if I sound really dumb, but will someone please explain the difference between less and fewer. One person said that if it is to do with quanities use less but someone else also posted that you should always say fewer people rather than less people. If you were expecting 10 people for dinner and only 7 turned up then you had 3 less people for dinner than you expected (or am I missing something here?):o

It is more whether the quantity is countable or continuous that matters. If you want a not so sweet coffee you add less sugar or you add fewer teaspoonfuls of sugar. You need less milk so you buy fewer pints of milk.

You had three fewer people for dinner. If you had three lesser people than expected then you are entering Hyacinth Bucket terrritory.

libertino

nathanlock wrote: »

my pet hate is the corruption of the word next.
If today is a Monday, next Tuesday is tomorrow, not Tuesday next week!

Hmm. I would say "this Tuesday" (or even just "Tuesday") is tomorrow so "next Tuesday" is Tuesday of next week.

CraftyCow wrote: »

Oh, and the amount of people who stand still by ordering stationary instead of stationery is horrrendous

Number of people. Second time in this thread somebody's been measuring people instead of counting them! I'm surprised nobody else is picking up on that when less/fewer has been mentioned a great number of times (not a great amount of times).

Tillybud_2

And I can remember some of those mistakes from school and they use to drive me mad then and I am 72, so I hope you don't think you can change anything!!