What are your pet peeves re English usage?

I have seen comments about the spelling and grammar of the young from British people also.

There are sometimes spelling mistakes and grammatical mistakes in the comments.

It is most instructive.

Kindest regards,

Goldmund

I've got a peeve today.

What is the "D" in ID-Card for? The Brits are currently debating this (the card issue) in Parliament.

We have adopted the American usage without thinking: but why must we have "Eye-Dentity cards? It's silly.

I have no real beef about using ID to stand for identity...we seem to be stuck with that one, anyway.
But I think we Brits should come up with a better name for the cards, if they are ever introduced here

Since I'm here on A2K, I've always mistaken C.I (Cicerone Imposter) for our identity cards (Cartes d'Identité)...

The French say everything backwards !!

I believe the "ID card" useage in this country started with the military, which was the first government large-scale issuer of identification cards and numbers. The services were (and are) much given to, often awkward, abbreviations and acronyms, many of which have entered popular use. (SNAFU, FUBAR, 'admin', 'ops' are a few that come quickly to mind). All servicemen had - and had to know their identification numbers, or "ID numbers, as they were called. The instructions for informatin to be released if you were captured was always "Name, rank, and ID".

I suppose much of this is more readily detectable to English ears than to us here, who simply no longer notice it.

SUSFU!

DILLIGAF, George?

Ignoring your feverish attempts to demonstrate how puerile your own bullshit is--i wasn't wasting my time typing those up then, no. I choose to believe that as intelligent people with a reasonable familiarity with statistics know why that is so, it weren't necessary for me to rehearse them. As that is apparently not a description of you, i'll be more than happy to do so: Google doesn't constitute a discrete sample which can be authoritatively said to represent a characteristic cross-sample of native speakers of English; your search results are not known to be free of repetitions by one or more authors (i.e., one hundred results could be produced by nineteen persons making a single entry, and one person making eighty-one entries, and therefore grossly biased in favor of the usage preference of the one person--such errors grow enormously in significance as the size of the sample grows); your search results are not known to be restricted to native speakers of English, nor even those who are non-native speakers whose usage can be reasonable stated to be idiomatic; your search results are not exhaustive for every plausible use of who or whom.

I've pointed out to you before that a google search is an hilariously unreliable method of establishing anything simply on the face of the results, other than the prevalence of the appearance of one or more words or phrases--and that they (prevalence) prove nothing, for the reasons given above. The value in such results is in reading the sources found, and making further investigation from those sources. On the face of the search, nothing of any statistical significance is learned. I am not surprised, however, to learn that you do not understand this, and that you consider it a reliable method.



That is a lie on your part. I did not either "pass off advice" as something i had thought up on my own, nor is it anyone's bad idea. It is an excellent little device for distinguishing the subjective form from the objective form, something which you apparently disparage in your perfervid worship of whatever horseshit god of language it is whom you revere (forget the name, thankfully). That i did not provide an attribution was only a product of it having been so commonly repeated to me in my life, that i couldn't say from whom i heard it first. The last time i recall having heard it was when Francis Nachtmann repeated it to a student in an advanced undergraduate course in French grammar--it was after the class session, and as he was recommending a book, which i believe is entitled English Grammar for Students of French. As that was more than twenty-five years ago, i don't recall to a certainty. It would not matter, of course, to you, as Professor Nachtmann is dead, and therefore no member of your language pantheon, and twenty-five years ago is hopelessly ancient in your particular and peculiar estimation.

You are hilarious, though, in making such a comment. You make statements from personal authority here as almost your sole contribution, apart from the results of google searchs. You never fail to entertain, though.

A final note for the soi-disant expert "JTT"--what you commonly peddle, and what is implicit in your google search results, is the fallacy known as agumentum ad populum. As Anatole France had it, that fifty million people believe a wrong thing, it is still a wrong thing. Whereas it is certainly true that language is the product of usage, usage must still refer to stucture and convention, else language fails as communication for a lack of consensual understanding.

I frankly think you are so eager to establish yourself as a sole authority, that you get caught up in the excellence of your opinion, and forget the dynamics of language, forget the necessary tension between rules and casual usage. Fortunately, you are no authority, and your opinions, like fads of slang, will pass.

Who let the little ankle biting mongrel out of its kennel?

[quote]

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language

[1]

i a. It is clear whom they had in mind.

i b. It is clear who they had in mind.

In both versions belong to Standard English, with [a] somewhat formal, and neutral or slightly informal. There is no difference in grammaticality.

[/quote]


[quote]

Practical English Usage - Michael Swan

4 who(m) in questions

'whom' is not often used in informal English. We prefer to use 'who' as an object, especially in questions.

Who did they arrest?
Who did you go with?

We use 'whom' in a more formal style; and we must use 'whom' after a preposition.

Whom did they arrest? (formal)
With whom did you go? (very formal)

[/quote]


[quote]Set: Google doesn't constitute a discrete sample which can be authoritatively said to represent a characteristic cross-sample of native speakers of English; [/quote]

I didn't say that it did, Set. What it showed, CLEARLY, was that you hadn't done your homework. It showed a sample sentence that, based on your "advice" would have required that your "advice" be followed. Overwhelmingly, it showed that your advice was, at best, misleading.


[quote]Set: ... your search results are not known to be free of repetitions by one or more authors (i.e., one hundred results could be produced by nineteen persons making a single entry, and one person making eighty-one entries, and therefore grossly biased in favor of the usage preference of the one person--such errors grow enormously in significance as the size of the sample grows); [/quote]

You're not seriously trying to offer this up as a proof that your "advice" has merit, are you? Even if the number of hits for each were close, they weren't, the same thing would befall the 'whom' hits.

People don't get to choose how many times they make entries in Google, Set. Google just "sentenced to death" a German {I believe it was German] car company for attempting to rig Google results.

This is one of the reasons Google is an excellent tool for checking, NOT scientifically verifying, particular usages in English.


[quote]Set: ... your search results are not known to be restricted to native speakers of English, nor even those who are non-native speakers whose usage can be reasonable stated to be idiomatic; [/quote]

Sorry, Set. An "exact phrase" search, "English only" pages.


[quote]Set: ... your search results are not exhaustive for every plausible use of who or whom.[/quote]

They weren't intended to be nor do they have to be. They were sufficient, however to illustrate that your advice on using 'who' or 'whom' is not an accurate reflection of language.


[quote]Set: I've pointed out to you before that a google search is an hilariously unreliable method of establishing anything simply on the face of the results, other than the prevalence of the appearance of one or more words or phrases--and that they (prevalence) prove nothing, for the reasons given above. [/quote]

And I've pointed out a number of times that what you know about language has been confined to whatever silly little prescription you can remember, or more likely, misremember at the time.

Stick to doing language, Set. At that you have the skills that all native language users have. If you want to offer any more sage advice on the mechanics of language, please have your postings vetted by someone more knowledgeable or someone who has given some thought to the issue.


[quote]You make statements from personal authority here as almost your sole contribution, ...[/quote]

Check above, [in bold] for two highly respected language sources; the same sources, I must note, that were in my previous posting. Now count up the number of sources that you've cited, Set. Compare them, strictly as to number, [quality, you'll have to leave to someone else] and get back to me.

Now, one more source. Don't forget to include this one in your tally.

[quote]
CGEL

The formal feel of 'whom' is most apparent in mai clause interrogatives: examples like [26ia] are widely perceived to be very formal indeed (verging on the pedatic), with nominative 'who' considered preferable in almost all contexts.
[/quote]

Note the phrase "almost all", Setanta. That would jibe very closely with the googled results.

This is evidence of the extent to which you are a perfect example of the childishness of which you accused me.

The tedious post with which you followed this does nothing to support a contention that Google searches such as you conducted are statistically reliable evidence of your thesis on the face of it. I was not using those results to prove anything about the advice i had offered, i simply pointed out that your pontification cannot be supported by reference to Googles searches such as the ones you conducted. They prove nothing, they are statistically meaningless, for the reasons i gave.

Get over it.

I'm working on this Francis. I know I deserved it, but I haven't yet figured it out. UFSUS ?? FAGILLID ??

Stop working, George, you are retired I believe...

SUSFU - Situation unchanged, still f*cked up.
DILLIGAF - Do I look Like I give a f*ck?

Now it is FUBAR!

Acronyms - scroll the page.

I assumed you had the words backwards as in French !

FUBAR actually came from our Navy shorthand for grading carrier landings. Never had one of those myself. (I observed that yiur guys used similar codes -but, again, backwards - on CLEMENCEAU in the late '80s.)


Never heard of DILLIGAF, Must be French !

Our version was, "Excuse me sir, you must have me confused with someone who gives a ****". The brevity code for it was "Falcon 114".

May I difer?

YOU have the words backwards!

je m'en f*cking fous

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=67179&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=40



Setanta provides sources? What a grand idea! Perhaps one or two would be in order here in this thread.

But the hypocrisy, Set, chiding Lash for sneering at sources when that's exactly what you do.

You sneer, (when it suits you) yet you never provide any sources of your own. And god knows, you're desperately in need of some given your pronouncements on the workings of language.

I'm not so big on sources, either. References from "sources" to me means some boffin sitting in a research establishment in the USA or Canada (I must say I set better store by British ones) has reached a conclusion about my language which I may or may not agree with. Usually for the sake of argument, I don't. :wink:

Nice to hear from you again, McTag. I saw the wink but some, eager to believe that the prescriptions they learned in grade school have some validity, may well miss your subtle humor.

I'd say that you're mighty big on sources. As an engineer, [correct me if I'm mistaken], you'd think it more than silly to build a bridge or a building or a road after chatting it over with the ironworkers, carpenters or pavers [what are they called over there?] down at the local pub.

Yet folks here think nothing of repeating old wives tales that were concocted by a group of folks who gave less thought to language than those workers do to their jobs.

Let's call this bar room bullshit the Setanta Effect. So named because it causes normally rational, thinking people to lose their senses when it comes to language and latch onto, tenaciously, any old canard.

Where else would one expect research to be done on language but in the very disciplines that study language?

Now if this was one boffin, you might have a point. But even with just one boffin, when you measure the results, scientifically, against the very thing that is being studied and find that the results are equal to what the boffin states, then you have to ask; just who are the boffins?

But just to help put your mind at rest, 5 of the 13 contributors to the CGEL, including the two major contributors, have a BrE background and the two spent their formative years in British universities.

But it matters little where real researchers are from because the one important point is that the collective wisdom of actual researchers is uniform in its rejection of the silly old prescriptions that abound in this thread.

FIGJAM!

see if you can work this one out.

Dadpad - Looking my response you can wonder why I think : F**k I'm great, just ask me."