What are your pet peeves re English usage?

Well, talking about those (Stupid neologistic herd-following cloth-eared illogical bastards), someone just told me:

- They will start lighting the artificial fires at 10:00 PM.

Then I asked: can they also start lighting the natural ones?

A puzzled look was the answer...

Very good, Francis.

You may (or may not) have noticed, when we met in SF, that I customarily wear a ring with a lapis lazuli in a 14-kt. setting on my left hand, next to my wedding band. Today someone asked me what kind of stone it is. "It's a lapis," said. The other fella asked: "Is it real?"

I had to think about that for a moment. Then I said, "No. It's imaginary."

Ha! I know exactly what you mean. I have worn artifical fingernails for years. I am often asked, "Are they real?"

When I counter with, "No, they are figments of your imagination." I get,

"No, no, I meant, are they YOURS?"

No, I have someone else's fingernails stuck on the end of my fingers.

I don't mind at all saying that they're artificial, but if I answer the questions which I am asked...

Good for you, Wy. Those are dumb questions. Like asking the mother of an adopted child, "Who's the child's real mother?" What's the person addressed supposed to be? An unreal mother? Just as dumb is the more delicately put, "Who's the natural mother?" What's the stepmom-- unnatural?

Pages and pages of people being dismissive about fellow human beings - sad and so superior! Why can't you accept that some people have not been lucky enough to have the education/insights that you have? I say that as someone who is very grateful for what I had. I really hope this post makes at least some of you stop and think how you sound!

Hey! This is a peeve thread. It's for peeving.

Oh come on, McT . . . nothing is more self-evident than that Whiteviolet is peeved . . .

No, I'm not peeved! I've also had a lot of English textbooks published so am not unconcerned with preserving accuracy and precision in the English language. But there are ways of peeving without being so superior and callous!

Don't think you could get no peeveder . . .

^

That pet smells bad.

I feel honour bound to come to the defence of our whiteviolet.

I don't think she's in the least peeved. I agreed with every word she said and I admired the way she said it.

And I'm not peeved about the characteristics she elegantly discusses. Pity is more my feeling. I always feel a welling of that emotion when I see snobbery. I think of them sat on the khazi straining a bomber out and the snobbish behaviour looks oh so very silly then which is a matter for sympathetic understanding and I'm still trying to recover from that virtue having been crushed out of me before I was 21.

You see, we all say silly things from time to time. On the "DNA created by a mind" thread, just across the road, it's non stop.

I highlighted an example on the ID thread just now.

So to pick on somebody's else's silly sayings is like picking on their dining-room curtains. It makes an assumption that one's own silly sayings are not silly sayings and it is surprising how often they turn out to be exactly that when critically looked into.

I am aware that whiteviolet, in referring to "lucky" in relation to a person's education, falls into the same difficulty. She can, naturally, be forgiven not only in deference to the elegance of her prose but because she has been brought up among that class of persons which thinks that it is lucky to have had the upbringing it has and that those who haven't are unlucky. She has had no chance of thinking otherwise. When a class of people think something the individuals it is composed of don't even know they are thinking it. It is how they are. Like when Marilyn held her skirt down when a sub-way train caused an updraft. And she had her knickers on.

And she's for preserving accuracy and precision in the English language.

School is all very well for football and cricket and finding out a few necessary things which priests are best positioned to offer but whether the rest is lucky or unlucky nobody knows.

Joan Collins had an education that many might feel was unlucky.

I'm a bit peeved that I can't understand Merry Andrew's post. I've never heard anybody, or of anybody, asking those questions but I can imagine some societies where they would be expected to be asked. Necessary even, where elaborate marriage lines are traced. They are natural questions that women would ask. One might be peeved that women in our society are frightened of asking them. Equally one might not.

But Merry Andrew's post intensifies that fear if by only a smidgin. And it patronises primitive societies. And women.

I'll bet you weren't aware MA that you have tendencies towards racist, male chauvinist piggery.

I understood Wy's post though. I go in the pub every night for years and I order a pint and a half of John Smith's Extra Smooth. I order the half because it takes too long to pull a pint and I'm anxious for the first gulp.

And the barmaids wait for me to ask for it. That peeves me. So I'm in no mood for "been a nice day again I see". That pisses me off.

thank you spendius for that glorious insight.

or perhaps after a few gulps of jssmooth... inshite.

I'm listening to the proms on radio 3. How's that for sshnobbery?

To misquote someone or other, "Snobbish is as snobbish does."

I do believe that this is the first time anyone has accused me of "racist, male chuvinist piggery." In the absence of any corroborating evidence, that's realy remarkable insight. Bless you, Spendi. Have another pint on my account.

Thank you, Spendi. I would just say I DO feel lucky on the following grounds. I went to an old style grammar school, from a distinctly unprivileged background, and was able to receive a good grounding in languages, especially English.

I am lucky in that this has enabled me to enjoy good writing by others in a way that would have been denied me if I knew less about the nuances of English. I have also been able to write specialist books myself which has provided some sense of fulfilment.

I have no limitations on my understanding of other people's position though - one of my grandfathers was totally illiterate, for example, so I am only too aware of the different life this predestines.

I am very aware of deficiencies in my education/understanding of some other academic subjects (eg the sciences) and can see they limit my ability to get involved in them in a valid way. Difficult to be a polymath these days!

I am just suggesting that peeves can be made about transgressions without insulting the transgressors!

That's what I was attempting to do WV but it would have been disrespectful to have held back on anything I was thinking.

I attended an old style school myself but I only partly put whatever my luck is down to it. It was one of many things. It was only as formative as it was because of the period in which it occured.



That's true, but the transgressors always feel insulted even though enlightenment might be the motive for the suggestions.

And I don't think listening to the Proms is necessarily snobbish. It depends how you listen.

MA-I didn't accuse you of anything. I laid out some facts--that's all.

All I was saying is that what peeved you doesn't peeve me and to the extent that I might be slightly peeved some odd time it is when I read someone peeving about something I find quite normal.

The irony of it all is that virtually none of the language peeves have/had any validity. They are nothing more than old wives tales, fabrications that people unthinkingly repeat.

"I go in the pub every night for years and I order a pint and a half of John Smith's Extra Smooth. I order the half because it takes too long to pull a pint and I'm anxious for the first gulp. "

What if, trying to be awkward and uncaring about your plight, she pulls the pint first?

They often do Mac and I meditate then upon the English educational system which I see going off the rails. More and more barmaids are coming to resemble the chambermaid in Alphaville.

BTW Mac- have you noticed that the exam marking cock-up is down to an American firm. TLS I think it is called.

It's down to Thatcherism- go for competitive tenders and then accept the lowest tender.

Spirit of Free Enterprise.

Pay peanuts, get greedy unscrupulous and incompetent monkeys.

Order the half, with a half glass of the water of life, calm you addiction, and order the pint immediately as she delivers your half . . .