What are your pet peeves re English usage?

@OmSigDAVID,

"welcome" to the forum, David? She posted in 2004.

Quote:

Inconsistency of number annoys me,
e.g. " there 's 3 dogs playing."

Inconsistency of thought is what should annoy you, David and you're certainly guilty of that, on a pretty consistent basis.

'there' is an existential and users of this language we call English use, in speech, there + singular verb + plural far more than there + plural verb + plural. I know that won't impress you much given your notion that you have a handle on what's logical and what isn't.

But surely you've noticed that you don't use the same language style in, say, a legal brief as you do in speech.

I've noticed that you've pretty much fallen into the 'you' singular subject, 'are' plural verb type of usage. So much for your ideas on consistency of number/notions of what is logical in language.

For existential-there, the empty subject 'there' simply states, "the situation is" such and such.

There's two men at the door. -> The situation is, two men [are] at the door.

Following predictably, we commonly have,

Here's your keys.

How's your mom & dad?

There is a dog, a few horses, -- hold on a cotton-pickin' minute here, a singular verb is being used to describe a transposed plural subject. Where's the consistency, David?

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@aidan,

Quote:

Basil with a short a is a man's name and you have to have some sort of way to delineate the two.

Differentiate.

In French you say "basilic" with a short a, and frankly, if someone cannot tell whether you mean the herb or a person, either you have profound problems of communication, or they have similarly serious problems of comprehension. Or both.

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@contrex,

2. delineate - determine the essential quality of

That's the definition of delineate I was thinking of and to me - for over forty years the essential quality and purpose of the word Basil (with a short a) was to describe a specific masculine person - so to switch gears and use the word for an herb - does not come naturally.
It's not that I can't comprehend that other people use another pronunciation to label the same thing - I do comprehend that and I have no problem with it - it's just that in my mind, when I'm labeling it myself - I label it the way that I grew up labeling it.

So when an English person names their son Basil - are they naming him after the herb?
*nevermind - I looked it up and it means royal or kingly

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@aidan,

aidan wrote:

So when an English person names their son Basil - are they naming him after the herb?

Of course not: it would be Basilius in Dutch/German, Vassilios in the original Greek, Basile in French ...

(Saint Basilius the Great, 4th century [I think])

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@Walter Hinteler,

yeah - see my edit above.

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@contrex,

I agree that context let's us know which meaning works and which pronunciation works, but i can't recall ever hearing the man's name being said as the herb name.

But the man's name, in my circles, the pool of examples is tiny indeed.

But don't you think, Contrex, that that might also apply to this situation, ie. delineate versus differentiate?

Basil with a short a is a man's name and you have to have some sort of way [delineate] "to describe, portray, or set [the two/them] forth with accuracy or in detail [the two]".

The underlined is an actual dictionary definition, save for the addition of 'them', which was added for syntactic purposes.

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Was Saint Basilius named after the herb ?

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@OmSigDAVID,

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@JTT,

Quote:

'there' is an existential

Should have been,

'there' is existential and users of ...

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@JTT,

Yeah - I used delineate as opposed to differentiate, because although my thinking may have been wrong - I had a situation in which I was talking about two totally different entities- a man and an herb - as opposed to differentiating between two objects of the same form of being.

But British English has a lot of those for Americans - we already have objects that are coaches, biscuits, trainers, etc.- so it's hard to start using a word for one thing that in your mind has always meant something else.

And pound is a difficult one. My daughter said to me just today, 'I lost five pounds.' Well as she's thin to begin with and not fully grown, my first reaction was, 'What - you shouldn't be losing weight- are you sick?'
And she said, 'No mom - I lost five pounds in money.'

And even English people do it - when I go to the butcher and I say, 'I'd like three pounds of boneless chicken breast,' they always ask me, 'In weight or in money?'

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@aidan,

Quote:

And even English people do it - when I go to the butcher and I say, 'I'd like three pounds of boneless chicken breast,' they always ask me, 'In weight or in money?'

That's why I would say "a kilo and a half of boneless chicken breast".

Quote:

an herb

An herb? Don't you pronounce the 'h'? Are you American? But your daughter uses pounds for money? I'm confused. Ah! (Light dawns) You're a UKYankee?

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@contrex,

Quote:

An herb? Don't you pronounce the 'h'? Are you American? But your daughter uses pounds for money? I'm confused. Ah! (Light dawns) You're a UKYankee?

Yes! I'm an American living in the UK.
And you answered another question I was going to ask - English people say 'a herb' (pronouncing the h) I gather from what you wrote.
Why do many English people then NOT pronounce the initial h sound for words like hotel and historian saying, 'an hotel' or 'an historian'?

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@aidan,

I just wanted to ask him the same. Wink

I suppose, it's an individual thing.

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@Walter Hinteler,

And then (after some online research: I wasn't aware of the differences) we have ... "h"s before "w" words such as "which" and "where", "whether" ...

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@aidan,

aidan wrote:

I said:

Quote:
As an aside - I will NEVER waste a syllable saying 'aluminium' (pronounced al-u- min-ee-um).
Maybe that's where I can find my extra syllables while I'm here in England - I'll save one every time I say aluminum foil -
which I'll always say no matter who tries to convince me I'm wrong

David said:

Quote:
What arguments do thay use
to convince u ?

None, when I've asked, they have no answer - just as when I've asked why do you say, po- tay-to, but you then say to-mah-to , although the syllables whose pronunciation you are changing are exactly the same?

They don't have a good argument that I've heard so I still say to-may-to. And I still say bay-zl (basil) instead of ba-zl with a short a because to me Basil with a short a is a man's name and you have to have some sort of way to delineate the two. I will also not say herb- pronouncing the h- because that's also a man's name.
I have a reason for everything I say- David.

That sounds good to me, Rebecca !

David

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@farmerman,

Quote:

.... as proper drivers of the English language, Americans (Canadians and USers) dont engage in these useless syllabic appendages.

You have got to be bloody joking.

You belong to that nation of transatlantic blackguards who have all but destroyed the language. It's certainly reeling.
And as far as extraneous syllables and unnecessary verbiage goes, you lead the world.
When a robber enters your house, you are not burgled but burglarized.
You say utilize when the meaning is "use".
In fact, you add -ized to just about everything.
Tenderized? Simonized? Supersized? Clunky neologisms, all American.
You call an anaesthetist an anesthesiologist.
You call a car an automobile, or or even personal transportation.

There are other even more egregious examples, but I can't be arsed digging them up.
No, we have a bad case of pots and kettles here.

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@JTT,

Quote:

i can't recall ever hearing the man's name being said as the herb name.

I have. I was surprised that the man pronounced his own name that way but it seems that was the tradition in his family.

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@aidan,

aidan wrote:

another question I was going to ask - English people say 'a herb' (pronouncing the h) I gather from what you wrote.
Why do many English people then NOT pronounce the initial h sound for words like hotel and historian saying, 'an hotel' or 'an historian'?

That is an interesting question. My theory is that 'herb' came from Latin (herba) in which the initial 'h' is pronounced, whereas hotel came much later, from French, in which language the initial 'h' is not pronounced. It used to be an upper/middle class thing to drop the 'h' from 'hotel'.

I think it comes down to how you deal with weakly pronounced 'h's

Many Americans write and say "an historian", as a Google search will reveal.

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@aidan,

Quote:

And pound is a difficult one. My daughter said to me just today, 'I lost five pounds.' Well as she's thin to begin with and not fully grown, my first reaction was, 'What - you shouldn't be losing weight- are you sick?'
And she said, 'No mom - I lost five pounds in money.'

And even English people do it - when I go to the butcher and I say, 'I'd like three pounds of boneless chicken breast,' they always ask me, 'In weight or in money?'

I wonder why the prescriptivists aren't ranting about "English losing important distinctions" with the 'pound' issue.

I can tell you why. It hasn't been written up in some style manual or in some column by some wag who wants to froth at the mouth about the steady decline of the language. If it had, all the little waggies would be going full bore.

1 Reply

@JTT,

JTT wrote:

I wonder why the prescriptivists aren't ranting about "English losing important distinctions" with the 'pound' issue.

Well, In the UK, food has been officially sold in metric quantities since 1985, so I don't suppose it causes much of a problem. These days, many more people buy preweighed food in supermarkets than formerly. When the Imperial system was still in use, most people made it clear by saying "Three pounds worth" if that is what they meant, or else used a word like "quid".

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What are your pet peeves re English usage?

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