What are your pet peeves re English usage?

It is a verbal way of indicating a rhetorical question, innit?

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It's copied from America, and the Australian youth are doing it now, too.

I don't like it either.

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It's definitely American in its origin. I remember when it was a dead certain tipoff that the speaker was from the South. Still a very common speech pattern among Southerners of any age. But then it gor copied by young people, regardless of geographic location. I believe that started in California. Now, apparently, we've exported this aberration to other parts of the English-speaking world as well. I agree: it is irritating. (But only irritating, no more.)

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I suppose that should be "Australian youth IS doing it now." I humbly apologise for not being pedantic enough for the thread.

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I rather think that "Australian youth" can constitute a plural substantive, taking the plural form, much as one would say "staff are taking measures."

However, i haven't any doubt that our local pedant will eventually arrive to give us the dictum from on high.

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Setanta wrote:

However, i haven't any doubt that our local pedant will eventually arrive to give us the dictum from on high.

From on high or low, Set, it makes no difference. What matters is that you seek the truth. But you know that, don't you?

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What is truth? Do we know what the meaning of "is" is?

Actually I think I know what JTT's opinion on this question would be-

Youth can take a plural verb.

e.g. The youth of today are inspirational.

Am I right? (Of course I am right- am I ever wrong? :wink: But am I right about the opinion of JTT?)

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I find few things so pretension as a self-avowed search for "the truth." Even more so in language, wherein the "experts" have only customary support for their "expertise."

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Setanta wrote:

I find few things so pretension [sic] as a self-avowed search for "the truth." Even more so in language, wherein the "experts" have only customary support for their "expertise."

You continue to confound with this plethora of ignorance on language, Set. But strangely enough, you still keep stepping up to the plate, flashing it about with wild abandon.

Care to expand on this latest inanity of yours.

[What you're looking for above is the adjective form, 'pretentious', not the noun form, 'pretension'.]

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I don't think you can have a plethora of ignorance, sorry.

But I wish you chaps wouldn't bicker so. It makes me sad. You both have so much to give ordinary folks like me. Crying or Very sad

Make me happy. Write something nice.

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McTag wrote:

What is truth? Do we know what the meaning of "is" is?

You know exactly what it means, Mr McTag. You deploy it properly with no conscious thought; you receive and absorb it, again with no conscious thought. You tend not to give near the credit due to the little grammar parsar in your brain when it operates just so damn smoothly.

Actually I think I know what JTT's opinion on this question would be-

Youth can take a plural verb.

e.g. The youth of today are inspirational.

Am I right? (Of course I am right- am I ever wrong? :wink: But am I right about the opinion of JTT?)

I think I can remember once way way back, Mr McTag, where you were in error but as I recall you were arguing with Lash, so in retrospect, given what I've seen from her, especially of late, it hardly seems possible.

Let's let people's parsar's speak to this. This issue is slightly more complex that it appears at first blush, for we have more than one meaning for 'youth'.

Results 1 - 10 of about 676,000 English pages for "youth is".

Results 1 - 10 of about 732,000 English pages for "youth are".

A quick perusal of an entry or two would seem to indicate that notional plurality clearly trumps prescriptive grammar's notions of singular/plural. Could you please take a moment to explain this to Set?

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[duplicate]

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McTag wrote:

I don't think you can have a plethora of ignorance, sorry.

But I wish you chaps wouldn't bicker so. It makes me sad. You both have so much to give ordinary folks like me.

Make me happy. Write something nice.

Setanta can sure write a mean historical monologue.

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He hasn't disagreed with it, so far as I am aware.

Thank you. Smile

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McTag wrote:

I don't think you can have a plethora of ignorance, sorry.

But one can have a plethora of "fields of ignorance", right?

McTag wrote:

Make me happy. Write something nice.

That would be nice Smile

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I love everybody.

How's that? Nice enough?

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You're always ready to sacrifice to humankind, Andy Laughing

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Francis wrote:

McTag wrote:
I don't think you can have a plethora of ignorance, sorry.

But one can have a plethora of "fields of ignorance", right?

Well now I must apologise. Pride (even in jest) truly cometh before a fall.

Friend JTT had earlier caused me to consult the dictionary, because I had thought "plethora" referred to number, and not quantity.
(cf. "less" and "fewer")
But, it turns out I was wrong. Although in my opinion it is often used nowadays to refer to number, in its purest sense it refers to quantity.

So Embarrassed

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It's not a peeve, but I recently noticed a phrase I liked in a now-famous interview with New Orleans' Mayor Ray Nagin. (Transcript here, mp3 audio file mirrored here.) It's "I'm going to be in so much trouble it ain't even funny." I enjoyed this figure of speech, though I would have prefered to get to know it in a less dramatic context. Is it a common phrase in English, especially American English? For what it's worth, I don't think I'd heard it so far.

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What are your pet peeves re English usage?

Simple answer to that one: there's no rational way to spell anything in English. Somebody like St. Cyril needs to develop a reasonable phoenetic alphabet for English; at present, we don't really have one.

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What are your pet peeves re English usage?

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