What are your pet peeves re English usage?

Clary wrote:

Do you think it's OK for BBC weatherpeople to say "Come Sunday"? It sounds like a folksy bit of English "She's seventeen come Sunday" etc. and not at all natural. I think it's down to their scriptwriters who want to seem jolly and informal and a tad peasanty.

Is every word that is produced on TV scripted, even what seems like an off the cuff remark?

It must be perfectly natural for many, Clary, for people don't normally say unnatural things. Doesn't "folksy bit of English" illustrate just how natural it is.

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We know this is scripted, since suddenly all the weather people are doing it, and it isn't really natural sounding. People who read scripts try to sound natural, of course, but don't always manage it.

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Well, call me folksy but we say that here, "Come Wednesday, the shop will be shut down"... quite normal and aboveboard.

What I don't like is: revert back Smile

And I don't like the news anchors suddenly changing HOW we say a word, ie. DEtails at 11:00 or deTAILS at 11:00

They now pronounce this town AbbotsFORD whereas when I was growing up, it was always AbbotsFERD...

irritates the bejesus out of me. Small DEtails or deTAILS, I know, but irksome.

Come 2050, it probably won't bug me at all.

Oh, and I CANNOT stand Brits who say: "I fink you're a nice person" and those who omit the article "the" as in "Who was that at door?" Sounds so stupid.

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Mame wrote:

Well, call me folksy but we say that here, "Come Wednesday, the shop will be shut down"... quite normal and aboveboard.

What I don't like is: revert back

And I don't like the news anchors suddenly changing HOW we say a word, ie. DEtails at 11:00 or deTAILS at 11:00

They now pronounce this town AbbotsFORD whereas when I was growing up, it was always AbbotsFERD...

irritates the bejesus out of me. Small DEtails or deTAILS, I know, but irksome.

Come 2050, it probably won't bug me at all.

Oh, and I CANNOT stand Brits who say: "I fink you're a nice person" and those who omit the article "the" as in "Who was that at door?" Sounds so stupid.

Mame, our British cousins have been in the habit of dropping the definite article for a very long time. They say "she had to go to hospital" instead of "the hospital" and "nurse says to take this" instead of "the nurse" (as though nurse was the person's proper name). Doesn't bother me a bit. Amusing, perhaps, but not irritating. It's just soooo British!!

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Merry Andrew wrote:

Mame wrote:
Well, call me folksy but we say that here, "Come Wednesday, the shop will be shut down"... quite normal and aboveboard.

What I don't like is: revert back

And I don't like the news anchors suddenly changing HOW we say a word, ie. DEtails at 11:00 or deTAILS at 11:00

They now pronounce this town AbbotsFORD whereas when I was growing up, it was always AbbotsFERD...

irritates the bejesus out of me. Small DEtails or deTAILS, I know, but irksome.

Come 2050, it probably won't bug me at all.

Oh, and I CANNOT stand Brits who say: "I fink you're a nice person" and those who omit the article "the" as in "Who was that at door?" Sounds so stupid.

Mame, our British cousins have been in the habit of dropping the definite article for a very long time. They say "she had to go to hospital" instead of "the hospital" and "nurse says to take this" instead of "the nurse" (as though nurse was the person's proper name). Doesn't bother me a bit. Amusing, perhaps, but not irritating. It's just soooo British!!

Hey just a cotton-pickin' minute there.

"She had to go to hospital" means her injury was severe, she needed specialist treatment.

"She had to go to the hospital" has a slightly different meaning.

The phrases "at table", "at stud", at attention" and the like have a special construction too, which JTT could explan to you, and the "the" is completely redundant, superfluous or wrong.

IMHO.

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Okay. then can you exp;ain why you drop the article in:

Please put it on table.

????????????????

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Mame wrote:

Oh, and I CANNOT stand Brits who .... who omit the article "the" as in "Who was that at door?" Sounds so stupid.

The construction in "at t' door" and "on t' floor" and "On Ilkley Moor bar t' 'at" is common in Yorkshire and Lancashire dialect. It sounds as if the "the" is missing, but it's implied.

Here is an old monologue made famous and recorded by Stanley Holloway

'Sam, Sam, pick up tha' musket!'
The Sergeant exclaimed with a roar.
Sam said 'Tha' knocked it doon, Reet!
Then tha'll pick it oop, or it stays where it is, on't floor.'

http://ingeb.org/songs/itoccurr.html

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I wrote a long and well-argued post about this earlier and then it disappeared with a critical error message Evil or Very Mad

so

I concur with the t' theory of the dropped article. I myself have never heard this except in a dialect so Mame is the privileged recipient of genuine Yorkshireism.

Going to hospital is like going to school. We think Americans rather quaint in going to THE hospital, as if there was only one of them.

Nurse as a proper noun is a bit yukky but then how about this: whenever I took an injured child to hospital I was called Mum by docs and nurses alike, and referred to by that name too, "Take Mum to the relatives' room" - as if I was Mum to the whole hospital. But on reflection it was a sensible enough thing to call me since I obviously wasn't known by name, and they had to call the hysterical woman handing over a bleeding child something.

So come Friday may be a reimport from N America. That seems more likely than a reversion to folksiness. But it was passing rare in Britain 20 years ago.

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Clary wrote:

Going to hospital is like going to school. We think Americans rather quaint in going to THE hospital, as if there was only one of them.

Going to the hospital isn't like going to school, Clary, as it is/was not the daily event that school is/was. And in North America, often there was only one hospital in many cities and towns.

The hospital, I'd say, got lumped in with those things that were infrequent/not routine places, ie. the theater, the movies, the bar, the show, the pub, the ...

Surely Brits don't say, "I'm going to school" after they've graduated school.

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There is an apparent argument within regions of California about whether or not it is 101, or the 101 - referring to one of the state's major highways.

Being from west LA, I always took the 101, whereas I gather northerners took 101. Sounds like a false division to me, but what do I know. As a non-sequitur, I'll add that my fine dog was found on 101 and taken to the Humane Society, and thus to me. See, learning is possible, I became northern californian.

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Thanks for the info re the use or not of "the"... now, what about "fink", as in "I fink I'll go to hospital"?

Smile

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Mame wrote:

Thanks for the info re the use or not of "the"... now, what about "fink", as in "I fink I'll go to hospital"?

No excuses Mame, it's awful, I agree. I think it's part of what is called "Estuarine English" which is creeping over the country (except in a few notable redoubts) and which emanates from the Thames Estuary, i.e. East London, Essex and Kent.

But it's quite funny too, and lively.

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Or maybe it's Estuary English, I forget which. Where's Clary? She'd know, and illustrate her answer with lots of interesting examples.

Know what? I've been looking at The Sopranos lately, and Estuary English seems to me a lot like Brooklyn American.

Or, fuggedabadit.

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fink is defnitly estuarine, along with the glo"al stop a defining sound. Seems to come from kids not been corrected, my nephew always said f for th and was endlessly corrected by patient mama, now gets irritated when he hears others get it wrong. Just proves th is a difficult consonant I suppose.

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On Estuary English, this is quite good from Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estuary_English

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Thanks for the link, McT... it explains the use of the intrusive R in my name when my dad pronounces it...

as in:

Pam-'ler (instead of Pamela)

Moni'ker (instead of Monica)'

etc.

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Mame wrote:

Thanks for the link, McT... it explains the use of the intrusive R in my name when my dad pronounces it...

as in:

Pam-'ler (instead of Pamela)

Moni'ker (instead of Monica)'

etc.

The unwarranted R is also common in the speech of New Englanders and Bostonians in particular. Cuba becomes Kew-ber, for example. But then they'll go and drop it from words where it clearly does belong and plumber gets pronounced as plummah. You'll hear this quite clearly in the speeches pf President John F. Kennedy. He often spoke of Kewber and of clam chowdah.

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I'll tell you what pisses me off- the universal use of Microsoft wordprocessing software has meant the American spellings are being used everywhere here, more and more.

And another thing- now the British apparently can't decide whether to say reSEARCH or REsearch.
The former is UK pronunciation, or was, and the latter is wrong. Rolling Eyes

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Goes with harASS and cONtribute.

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Something which really peeves my pudding is all these provincial islanders from the right-hand side of the pond lording it over everyone else as though it were their bloody language or something . . .

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What are your pet peeves re English usage?

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