What are your pet peeves re English usage?

I believe Andrew is correct. 'Heroine' is another casualty of the priesthood of political correctitude.

At one time 'gay' meant happy and lighthearted.

I saw a letter to the editor today that used the word "loosing". ARGH!

THE WIND BENEATH MY WINGS (Bette Midler)

It must have been cold there in my shadow,
to never have sunlight on your face.
You were content to let me shine, that's your way,
you always walked a step behind.

So I was the one with all the glory,
while you were the one with all the strength.
A beautiful face without a name -- for so long,
a beautiful smile to hide the pain.

CHORUS:
Did you ever know that you're my hero,
and ev'rything I would like to be?
I can fly higher than an eagle,
'cause you are the wind beneath my wings.

It might have appeared to go unnoticed,
but I've got it all here in my heart.
I want you to know I know the truth, of course I know it,
I would be nothing with out you.

(CHORUS)

Fly, fly, fly away,
you let me fly so high.
Oh, fly, fly,
so high against the sky, so high I almost touch the sky.
Thank you, thank you, thank God for you,
the wind beneath my wings.

and as we sit here picking apart our language,
The world holds it's breath.

Goodnight,
From Letty

Letty

I always assumed that she was singing about a man...am I wrong?

KP

Hey, KP. No, the song was from the movie Beaches. She was singing about her female friend who was dying. The two had been childhood friends and had chosen different walks of life. I still say actress, incidentally, but heroine is sort of melodramatic.

Well to you maybe, Letty dear, but not to me.

I have seen "actors" used as a collective noun, referring to "players" or "actors and actresses", and that seem okay to me somehow.

After all, man embraces woman.

Isn't it wonderful, McTag? Wouldn't it be a terribly boring planet if we all spoke one language?

As a teacher of GED, I have had endless arguments with students to convince them that the following are NOT words:
gonna
omina (Omina go now)

But perhaps my biggest per peeve is your instead of you're

And what about the use of is is

Example (when explaining something, or answering the question, What is that?)

"What it is is a new way of ......"
Instazd say "It is a new way of...."

I've seen that discussed in print recently. It's a peculiar modern quirk- "The thing is, is that we're going to...."

It looks weird, but it sounds like extra emphasis is being used. (I did it again!)

I don't mind it.

Well, here's one. Just heard our local news announcers and entourage pronounce the word "avAilable", "avElable". As I once said in a thread of long ago. The long "a" has journed into night.

One thing that has been winding me up over recent years is shop & office staff who make notices using Word, print them out, laminated/whatever, and never use the spell check or grammar check or even ask someone to see if it makes good grammatical sense. Random (or missing) punctuation, spelling mistakes etc etc.

And people using over-long sentences like that one. :wink:

Speaking of interoffice memos, nobody seems to know the difference between 'bi-weekly' and 'semi-weekly' any more. I'm constantly seeing notices which seem to suggest that something will take place every two weeks when I know, for a fact, that it's been scheduled twice a week.

The days are long gone when the BBC selected announcers and trained them how to speak. Although we do still speak of "BBC English" meaning RP or received pronunciation. Now, as in the song, anything goes.

We had a TV weathergirl who spoke of "temmitures" and meant temperatures.

I have noticed that too, and I think it's lamentable. We're all much the poorer for it.

My peeve today is that fewer and fewer (not less and less, there's another for good measure) people seem to know the difference between its and it's or care to find out and use them properly.

GRRR you know how to rile a girl up!

My peeve is that CONtribute does indeed seem to have replaced conTRIbute as the verb in British English to my shame. A very erudite friend who wouldn't dream of using less for fewer or it's for its said it yesterday - aaaah!

Clary - where would someone find the correct way to pronounce a word? I know the dictionary has those little upside down 'e' and all that other stuff, but is there an easier way? Maybe I'm just being too lazy to decipher it. :wink:

Online dictionaries will sometimes tell you, though they are often American; dictionaries I've worked on in the past - destined for foreign learners mostly - come with CDs, so you can hear any word you choose. Once all the headwords in a dictionary I wrote was recorded on cassette tapes by an actress - must have been desperate for work! Just a primary dictionary for Hong Kong, not useful for you.

Looks like I'll have to decipher the arcane symbols then! Thanks anyway.

They aren't very difficult really. You can find them at the beginning of any good dictionary.

What about those of us with strong regional accents? It's a tricky one.