What are your pet peeves re English usage?

spendius wrote:
You must be kidding JTT.

Do you mean we could spell television like sausages if we so chose and we would get used to it.

Or knickers like rocketry?


That post shows total and abysmal ignorance of what language is all about.

Jesus, JTT seems bound and determined to let no one forget that he is a twit totally lacking in imagination.

Do you suppose that JTT is so thick as to believe that Noah Webster is responsible for the contents of any dictionary to which someone has tacked the name Webster?

And if the article is serious in intent, they are not appropriate.

Check out the Laughing Policeman song.

You must be kidding JTT.

Do you mean we could spell television like sausages if we so chose and we would get used to it.

Or knickers like rocketry?

It's not what JTT said; what he did say is absolutely true. Writing is simply a code, generally [universally?] agreed upon by the majority of users of a given language. When we speak of 'language' qua language, we are speaking of a convention of oral symbols used for purposes of mutually intelligible communication. Writing is always a code, a system of visual symbols. You could spell television as 2@#$47zip. As long as we all knew that these symbols refer to a specific object which we all recognize, it would be the correct spelling.

As it is well known that those whose task it is to pass judgment are fully qualified experts I have no alternative, for want of evidence, than to accept your superior opinion MA.

You silly twottie. Your sentence there has no meaning and that is a strange way to use language. In relation to the word "total" very strange.

It's obvious you are a prescriptivist. Which is, to save you looking it up, a person who brays his subjectivities over anyone within earshot. Inanimate objects sometimes too such as the 2@#$47zip set.

You must think that a word like "pinprick" would have been suitable for a soft, gentle caress if only we had thought to use it for that originally.

And "absolutely" is out of all sense

You're complicating things for yourself, Spendi, making it harder for you to grasp this.

JTT wrote-

Quote:

You're complicating things for yourself, Spendi, making it harder for you to grasp this.

Not a bit. It is a very complicated subject. Complex as well. Anybody who thinks it's simple is simple.

When you provide something satisfactory regarding "pin-prick" not being chosen to represent a soft, gentle caress I'll take you more seriously.

Symbols in our Indo-European West Germanic language are derived from the emotions and the facial shapes, esp mouth shapes, associated with them. You should read Vico and his students.

Merry Andrew's position was prescriptive. It seems almost all N. American language is prescriptive. It's catching on fast here. It comes naturally. It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's a strength. As long as you're quickest on the draw.

Not got what??

[No rancor intended]

From reading the following, I'd say a fair bit, Spendius.

I'm not fixated on pin-prick and I like the idea of something in between pin and prick. It was merely an example. Try dump.

All I know about Japanese is that it has about three times as many onomatopoeia expressions as English.

When dialects give the same symbols to different sounds it reflects interbreeding between different languages and to an extent, as I mentioned earlier, the landscape.

I never said that the symbols "couldn't" be different. All I meant was that the shapes of them were chosen for a reason. The letter P has a phallic shape. Turn it 90 degrees clockwise and you could see it entering a C which is a container on its side. The B in breasts and buttocks is self explanatory.

Out of all the possible words in English that start with a 'B' or a "C' or a 'P', you focus on ones with a sexual meaning. Someone has been pulling one of your appendages.

Bernard Shaw invented a 42 (I think) letter alphabet and left most of his money for a foundation to develop it. No doubt it is being spent wisely but not on the original purpose.

Simply because the reasons for the choices are lost in the foggy ruins of time does not mean there were no reasons and that they were chosen at random. Efficiency of expression and factors relating to recognition being important but that does not imply the absence of wit.

I'll admit to knowing very little about this incomprehensible subject but I think you know even less and from that position you pronounce with certainty and that is prescriptivism because it is invidious. It implies a superiority which I don't recognise.

I have to agree with you. It seems clear that you don't know enough about these issues to add useful comment.

[EDITED: I kinda take what I said, above, back. I think that if you think about these issues you may well be able to provide some useful comment]

But there's nothing wrong with not knowing. It is a complex subject and if you have not been involved then you just haven't been involved.

It is not invidious to claim the superiority of English because English is being selected in by the human race and thus the superiority is just a fact in the evolutionary sense. It is one of England's assets. And it's under attack.

It is not invidious to claim the superiority of English because English is being selected by the human race and thus the superiority is just a fact in the evolutionary sense. It is one of England's assets. And it's under attack.

spendius wrote:

I wasn't saying that English or BrE is superior. I just said that the world is choosing them. Announcements at the Olympics are being made in Chinese and English.

The world is saying it. Not me. I'm merely reporting it.

The world chooses to use English as the language of business for historical reasons, not because other language groups are somehow recognizing English as some superior method of communication.