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

sennypijama

Fascinating replies, and interesting post by Martin. Shame to see 99% of the posters here being completely wrong and projecting their racist or xenophobic views of the world onto the way people speak.

English has had dialects since day one, and criticizing those dialects will lead to the hastening of their demise. Is that what you want? A country where everybody speaks exactly the same with no variant in tone, structure of pronunciation?

Ok, onto the specific mistakes:

Teach/Learn
Is ancient and dialectic. OED states:
In modern standard English it is wrong to use learn to mean teach, as in that’ll learn you; (correct use is that’ll teach you). This meaning has been recorded since the 13th century and has been used by writers such as Spenser, Bunyan, and Samuel Johnson, but it fell into disfavour in the early 19th century and is now found only in non-standard and dialect use

Borrow/Lend
Again, dialectic. OED:
1 Reciprocal pairs of words such as lend and borrow (or teach and learn) are often confused. Common uses in informal speech in a number of British dialects include can I lend your pen?; (correct standard use is can I borrow your pen?; ).
2 There is no noun lend in standard English, where loan is the correct word to use. However , it is used informally in a number of dialects and varieties, including Scottish, Northern Irish, and northern English, as in, for example, can I have a lend of your pen?

Decimate
The original meaning/core/root of a word does not necessarily have a relationship to its modern meaning. There are hundreds of examples, and decimate is one of them.
Historically, the meaning of the word decimate is‘ kill one in every ten of (a group of people)’. This sense has been more or less totally superseded by the later, more general sense ‘kill, destroy, or remove a large proportion of’, as in the virus has decimated the population. Some traditionalists argue that this is incorrect, but it is clear that it is now part of standard English

Quite Unique / Very Unique etc
There is a set of adjectives — including unique, complete, equal, infinite, and perfect — whose core meaning embraces a mathematically absolute concept and which therefore, according to a traditional argument, cannot be modified by adverbs such as really, quite, or very. For example, since the core meaning of unique (from Latin ‘one ’) is‘ being only one of its kind’, it is logically impossible, the argument goes , to submodify it: it either is‘ unique’ or it is not , and there are no in-between stages. In practice the situation in the language is more complex than this. Words like unique have a core sense but they often also have a secondary, less precise sense: in this case , the meaning ‘very remarkable or unusual’, as in a really unique opportunity. In its secondary sense, unique does not relate to an absolute concept, and so the use of submodifying adverbs is grammatically acceptable

Double negatives
Double negatives apply to mathematics, not language, and they are, again, quite dialectic and go back to the beginning of the language. You won't get no better explanation than that.

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So, next time you have a rant about language that you think is wrong or Americanized or born out of mis-education, use this fantastic resource that we have at our fingertips - or go to one of our few remaining libraries - and check that it's not you that's being stupid.

And next time you're in a different part of the country and love the lilt and rhyme and rhythm of other dialects, remember that your rules dictate that they should all be removed, and we should all speak the same language. No wonder there's such a north/south divide when those in the south claim that those up north can't even speak properly.

Mind you, I really can not stand 'could of' and 'should of'. That's just stupid. :-)

meher

sennypijama wrote: »

English has had dialects since day one, and criticizing ...

So, next time you have a rant about language that you think is wrong or Americanized ...

someone once sported a signature which went along the lines that those who use z where s would have sufficed, cannot be trusted and I can't see a reason why I shouldn't go along with that

sennypijama

meher wrote: »

someone once sported a signature which went along the lines that those who use z where s would have sufficed, cannot be trusted and I can't see a reason why I shouldn't go along with that

Because the OED, the universally accepted source of what is right and wrong in British English, not only standardizes on -ize, it also says that both -ize and -ise are not only historically correct (and nothing to do with Americans) but also currently correct.

Which is why it bothers me so much that people disguise their petty racism or xenophobia behind ill-thought and - let's face it - completely wrong 'rules' about English.

If you hate the Americans, go ahead. Hate a nation of 240 million people.

But don't use your shoddy knowledge of English spelling to justify it.

meher

sennypijama wrote: »

If you hate the Americans, go ahead. Hate a nation of 240 million people.

That's your perverted interpretation of my post that I reject, albeit not surprised, considering the number of posts you've devoted to point out racism and xenophobism where it doesn't even exist. As for the rest of your post, I'm not someone who mindlessly follows imported words or usage; I happen to believe that it is the custom which decides what's aesthetic and correct.

John_Pierpoint

It is all a conspiracy organised by the Microsoft "Word" spell checker. Now I know how it feels to be a Muslim victim of USA/CIA inspired cultural imperialism.:eek:

All this argument leaves me completely tired out.

[If you want a good laugh, I once had to design a computer system to be used all over the world, but the greatest possible savings and returns on investment were, unsurprisingly, in North America. So the intention was to conduct the initial trial and implementation in North America. In deference to the sensibilities of my N.American "customers"
I wrote about those black circles at each corner of a "Truck" using "I" as the central vowel not "Y".:rotfl:]

It caused an Email "war" around the world.

sennypijama wrote: »

But don't use your shoddy knowledge of English spelling to justify it.

There is a word that has changed its meaning, probably because of the Ministry of War (or was it Army or Navy in those days) attempts to economise in the Crimean war and the need to fit out an army in the American civil war..

http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Shoddy

http://www.copperwiki.org/index.php?title=Shoddy_Yarn

http://www.antiquequiltdating.com/Sayings_We_Have_Generated_from_our_Textile_Heritage.html

sennypijama

meher wrote: »

That's your perverted interpretation of my post that I reject, albeit not surprised, considering the number of posts you've devoted to point out racism and xenophobism where it doesn't even exist.

You don't know that, and it's hard to find another explanation.

meher wrote: »

As for the rest of your post, I'm not someone who mindlessly follows imported words or usage; I happen to believe that it is the custom which decides what's aesthetic and correct.

As I've said, and you have chosen to ignore, -ize is not imported. It's English. It is the custom.

But because of your strange and petty prejudice (which must be based on something unless you just pick prejudices out of the air), you choose to ignore that, thus making yourself look like an utter idiot in the process.

meher

sennypijama wrote: »

people disguise their petty racism or xenophobia behind ill-thought ... hate the Americans, go ahead. Hate a nation ... strange and petty prejudice ... utter idiot ...

Up your own standards, then you wouldn't see or dwell on non existent negativity. It isn't me to indulge or suffer people who misrepresent whatever said and found in bad faith and on that note, I'm out of this conversation and when I say I'm out, I honor my word so please excuse me if I don't respond.

sennypijama

The only thing worse than an incorrect pedant is an incorrect pedant who won't admit he's wrong.

athenajm

I feel the same about most of the examples listed here. Another pet hate (sorry if it has been mentioned but I haven't read through all the pages) is shiropodist instead of chiropodist. A friend of mine, who also said haitch instead of aitch, always used the word shiropodist until I showed her the origins of the word. Once she realised chiro is from the Greek and so therefore is pronounced with a k sound not a sh sound, she soon changed the way she said it thankfully!

Also hospikal, bockle etc- this is particularly prevalent on Jeremy Kyle I find.

BNT

Things that irritate me (this is far from an exhaustive list):

"They/their" used as a singular: "anyone parking here does so at their own risk".

"Is sat", "was stood", etc. Our vicar often refers to people who are sat at the front. Thankfully, I have yet to hear him refer to Jesus being sat at the right hand of the father.

"Like" instead of "such as".

"Amount of" where someone means "number of". I'm amazed at the amount (sic) of people who do that. Same with "fewer" and "less".

And then there are phrases that people have obviously heard, but don't think about before they use and end up getting wrong: "here, here", "toe rag" to name a couple.