What are your pet peeves re English usage?

One of my peeves is the use of the noun "disrespect" as a verb as in he disrespected me. He may have been disrespectful to you but you can't be disrespected anymore than you can be computered. I know my dictionary is old and perhaps the newer versions allow for the recent rise in the use of disrespected to be included as acceptable because so many people use it. But it still makes me wince, I even heard a Judge use it in Court once....ouch.

You can wear fatigues, you can be fatigued, something can be fatiguing but can you be unfatigued, defatigued,

M-W
Main Entry: 1dis·re·spect
Pronunciation: \ˌdis-ri-ˈspekt\
Function: transitive verb
Date: 1614
1 : to have disrespect for
2 : to show or express disrespect or contempt for : insult, dis <disrespected the officer>

A good massage doesn't defatigue you....it relaxes you or works out the kinks

I almost forgot....the example used to prove respect is a verb is incorrect. "I respect General MacArthur" is normal usage however "respect" is not the verb, the verb is have which is understood.

M-W
Main Entry: 1dis·re·spect
Pronunciation: \ˌdis-ri-ˈspekt\
Function: transitive verb
Date: 1614
1 : to have disrespect for
2 : to show or express disrespect or contempt for : insult, dis <disrespected the officer>

If you ever had to diagram sentences when you were in school, you would understand the rule. I would be happy to diagram it here but the forum doesn't have that feature....to state as a grammatically correct sentance it would be "I (have) respect for General MacArthur....the word "have" is a bonafide verb and so are "has" and "had". Maybe that's explains it a little better. Surely there are some folks posting here whose English teachers made them diagram sentences? Anybody?????

I almost forgot....the example used to prove respect is a verb is incorrect.

"I respect General MacArthur" is normal usage

however "respect" is not the verb, the verb is have which is understood.

If you ever had to diagram sentences when you were in school, you would understand the rule. I would be happy to diagram it here but the forum doesn't have that feature....to state as a grammatically correct sentance it would be "I (have) respect for General MacArthur....the word "have" is a bonafide verb and so are "has" and "had". Maybe that's explains it a little better. Surely there are some folks posting here whose English teachers made them diagram sentences? Anybody?????

Glitterbag, will u quote me a dictionary that says that respect is NOT a verb in addition to a noun ?

David...if you have a copy of "The Random House College Dictionary" you will find 11 hits under the definition of "respect" and none of them are verbs.

To JTT, you might not understand the example I gave regarding the implied verb, and I may have used the wrong word to identify the process, my other languages sometimes confllict with English spelling and grammer nomenclature. For instance in Romanian, vowels are used differently in some cases...such as in English we might say Child, in Romanian it is "copi", we say "children", they say "copii "(plural) we say "the children" and they say "copiii". As an English speaker I found this very hard to pronounce...I said to my instructor "You can't hear the difference because all the words are prounounced the same". She said I was wrong and every vowel was pronounced That was very hard for me to even come close to the proper pronunciation.

As far as grammer and proper sentence structure, you need to consult a good English primer, hopefully one geared to college students but a high school primer will do the trick. Another good source for consistancy is the "Government Printing Office" Style manual. It is a life saver when you need to communicate with a huge organization and you get confused about the proper use (I should say the formal use) of punctuation or grammer questions or words that can be used in a incorrect way.
Many of the questions some of you have asked or usage challenged can be found in the first 32 pages of a dictionary (at least that's what my favorite dictionary has) and they will probably be numbered with roman numerals.

In casual conversation or on forums like this the rules are relaxed. There was a time when the use of "ain't" was a signal that the speaker was ignorant. Now most people use it occasionally to punch up their conversation, but few people use "ain"t" exclusively. Other things I could have mentioned as pet peeves are "He ain't got no more", "I ain't never.....", "irregardless", supossably instead of supossedly, the list goes on and on. Everybody (I think) uses casual verbage, slang, ethnic idioms, hip hop references from time to time to jazz up their conversations. Musicians are a rich source for new slang the eventually finds it's place in ordinary conversation. Then the musicians make up new slang.

So once again, this thread is about pet peeves, I mentioned what makes me wince, it seems some of you think if you hear it a lot it has been bestowed with acceptance. But, unless you are composing a resume, or a dissertation it really doesn't make any difference how you choose to speak or write or what words you want to believe are verbs, nowns or adjectives. Usually we can all understand each other regardless of the grammer or vocabulary.

It is a sad thing that so many people are content with a limited vocabulary and too many folks use a vulgarity as a pause tool. English is very rich and can be so expressive, you don't have to dig out arcane or obscure words to impress anybody. The idea is to inspire or illuminate or illustrate, not to impress or belittle or intimidate.

I'm tired, it's 12:30 A.M. on the East Coast and I want to go to sleep. I'm not going to argue with anybody about what should be taught in English classes. We all have chosen the method we want to use, so you use yours and I'll stick with what the nuns and brothers taught me.

David...if you have a copy of "The Random House College Dictionary"
you will find 11 hits under the definition of "respect" and none of them are verbs.

To JTT, you might not understand the example I gave regarding the implied verb, and I may have used the wrong word to identify the process, my other languages sometimes confllict with English spelling and grammer nomenclature.

M-W
Main Entry: respect
Function: transitive verb
Date: 1560
1 a : to consider worthy of high regard : esteem b : to refrain from interfering with <please respect their privacy>
2 : to have reference to : concern
synonyms see regard

For instance in Romanian, vowels are used differently in some cases...such as in English we might say Child, in Romanian it is "copi", we say "children", they say "copii "(plural) we say "the children" and they say "copiii". As an English speaker I found this very hard to pronounce...I said to my instructor "You can't hear the difference because all the words are prounounced the same". She said I was wrong and every vowel was pronounced That was very hard for me to even come close to the proper pronunciation.

As far as grammer and proper sentence structure, you need to consult a good English primer, hopefully one geared to college students but a high school primer will do the trick. Another good source for consistancy is the "Government Printing Office" Style manual. It is a life saver when you need to communicate with a huge organization and you get confused about the proper use (I should say the formal use) of punctuation or grammer questions or words that can be used in a incorrect way.

So when a scientist considers all the high-tech mental machinery needed to arrange words into ordinary sentences, prescriptive rules are, at best, inconsequential little decorations. The very fact that they have to be drilled shows that they are alien to the natural workings of the language system. One can choose to obsess over prescriptive rules, but they have no more to do with human language than the criteria for judging cats at a cat show have to do with mammalian biology.

...

The legislators of "correct English," in fact, are an informal network of copy-editors, dictionary usage panelists, style manual writers, English teachers, essayists, and pundits. Their authority, they claim, comes from their dedication to implementing standards that have served the language well in the past, especially in the prose of its finest writers, and that maximize its clarity, logic, consistency, elegance, precision, stability, and expressive range. William Safire, who writes the weekly column "On Language" for the [New York Times Magazine], calls himself a "language maven," from the Yiddish word meaning expert, and this gives us a convenient label for the entire group.

To whom I say: Maven, shmaven! [Kibbitzers] and [nudniks] is more like it. For here are the remarkable facts. Most of the prescriptive rules of the language mavens make no sense on any level. They are bits of folklore that originated for screwball reasons several hundred years ago and have perpetuated themselves ever since. For as long as they have existed, speakers have flouted them, spawning identical plaints about the imminent decline of the language century after century.

All the best writers in English have been among the flagrant flouters. The rules conform neither to logic nor tradition, and if they were ever followed they would force writers into fuzzy, clumsy, wordy, ambiguous, incomprehensible prose, in which certain thoughts are not expressible at all. Indeed, most of the "ignorant errors" these rules are supposed to correct display an elegant logic and an acute sensitivity to the grammatical texture of the language, to which the mavens are oblivious.

http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1994_01_24_thenewrepublic.html

In casual conversation or on forums like this the rules are relaxed. There was a time when the use of "ain't" was a signal that the speaker was ignorant. Now most people use it occasionally to punch up their conversation, but few people use "ain"t" exclusively.

Other things I could have mentioned as pet peeves are "He ain't got no more", "I ain't never.....", "irregardless", supossably instead of supossedly, the list goes on and on.

So once again, this thread is about pet peeves, I mentioned what makes me wince, it seems some of you think if you hear it a lot it has been bestowed with acceptance.

I do indeed dispute your use of respect as a verb or the notion that it is
a verb and I further crap all over the notion of on-line dictionaries as well
as Wikipedia for they are the tools of the lazy.

far as grammer

grammer questions

regardless of the grammer

Quote:

far as grammer

Quote:

grammer questions

Quote:

regardless of the grammer

grammer is a weightier concern