What are your pet peeves re English usage?

If English followed the Germanic style rigidly, such words as, say, 'memorable' would be 'nevertobeforgotten' instead.

You still don't understand the difference between knowing a language and knowing about a language, MJ? Of course, Farmer knows his language. He doesn't know about his language.

The Awful German Language, by Samuel Clemens, from A Tramp Abroad. Credit to Thomas, who first introduced me to this gem.

Hi POM, long time no see. Did you ever explain to your fellow teachers that the reason students couldn't "correctly" identify the grammatical subject of a sentence was because the dumb teachers hadn't adequately explained the difference between the grammatical meaning of 'subject' and the normal everyday meaning of 'subject'?

It's what Farmerman does when he can no longer argue an issue. You've called him on it many times, Spendi.

Well, same as "wimped out".

'Equation,' 'Gingerly' And Other Linguistic Pet Peeves
by GEOFF NUNBERG

My friend Scott is always sending me indignant e-mails with examples of people using the word "equation" to mean just a situation with a lot of factors, when nothing is actually being equated — as in, "Family members are a critical part of the doctor-patient equation." I tell him I think of this as just routine journalistic bloat, and not even he thinks it's a threat to the republic. But he enjoys grousing about it, all the more because it doesn't seem to annoy anybody else that much. It makes for a fine pet peeve.

I have peeves of my own. When I hear people say "oversimplistic," I suspect they don't know that "simplistic" means that all by itself. I wish somebody would drive "arguably" and "quite possibly" into the sea. And it seems to me it's almost always a bad idea to begin a sentence with "I pride myself on."

A pet peeve should be like a pet theory or a pet story — a tic or fancy that you nurture in your bosom and make your own. You can have a pet peeve about people who mispronounce "mascarpone." But it's odd to use the phrase for off-the-rack gripes that everybody shares. Saying that you have a pet peeve about "thinking outside the box" or "Your call is important to us" is like saying you have a pet theory that you should feed a cold and starve a fever.

I have this notion that "gingerly" shouldn't be used as an adverb, as in, "She hugged the child gingerly," because there's no corresponding adjective "ginger" — you wouldn't say, "She gave the child a ginger hug." I'll concede that "gingerly" has been used as an adverb for 400 years, and nobody's ever complained about it before. But so much the better: Every time I see the word used as an adverb, I can take a quiet satisfaction in knowing that I'm marching to a more logical drummer than the half-billion other speakers of English who haven't yet cottoned to the problem.

Writers tend to have lots of these notions. Kingsley Amis held that it was incorrect to use "pristine" to mean pure rather than "original," and that you shouldn't say, "I was oblivious to the noise," since "oblivious" can only mean "forgetful." And in a usage book he published a few years ago, Bill Bryson contended that it was wrong to use "expectorate" as a synonym for spit, since it really means to cough up phlegm from the chest. The word did originally mean that, but it's been used to mean spit since Dickens' day. And Bryson knows perfectly well that it would be unreasonable to insist on the original meaning — think of the mischief it would work with Major League Baseball's rule 8.02, which says that the pitcher shall not expectorate on the ball. But Bryson also understands that it's the very unreasonableness of the argument that makes it so handy to have around when the dinner conversation flags.

...


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124001415

I like this man.

Dot Wordworth (quite possibly a pseudonym, I don't know) writes an amusing and interesting column in The Spectator: Mind Your Language.

an example

http://www.spectator.co.uk/life/mind-your-language/3453076/mind-your-language-199/

Interesting article, that. She says that the English have no response to make when someone says "Thank you" to them, in contradistinction to the Italians, who'd say "prego" or the Spanish who'd say "de nada" (which also is interesting, because I think Mexicans say something else, but it's been too long and I can't remember what it is).

She was struck when the guy ahead of her in line at a London Starbuck's (we Yanks have a lot to answer for here) said "thank you" and the counter person (whom she does not call a "barista") replied "no problem", which she thought meant she was an immigrant (and I would say Yank).

Now while Brits may have no expectation of an answer, I think if we speak American we do have that social expectation. I was taught to say "You're welcome", but which now sounds overly formal, and I tend to respond with "mm-hmm" or "sure", and I get "no problem" from others a lot. And I have the feeling there are several other common responses, tho none come to mind off the top of my head. There's a woman I work with who always answers "You're welcome", which always surprises me a little.

So what is it in your version of English, and where are you? Do you expect an answer and is so, what? Or do you think under your breath "rude bastard" if you don't get one?

No response to "Thank you"? What rubbish. There is almost always a response to this. (Hawaiian is the only language I know of where there is no response for "Mahalo".) When I was learning English as a young refugee in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany following WW II, our teacher was an English-speaker who had probably never visited a country where English was the main language. I was nine or ten years old, btw. She (the teacher) taught that the proper answer to "Thank you" is "Don't mention it." No doubt she had read this in a British text-book; much of what she taught was strictly non-American Brit-speak, e.g. that the word for motion pictures was "cinema."

You can probably imagine my surprise when I came to the USA at the age of 11 and found that if I said "don't mention it," people would look at me kind of strangely. We settled in Boston, but everywhere I've ever been within the borders of the United States, the most common response to "Thank you" has always been "you're welcome." It's in everyday use among many, many people to this day. I've had people say "You're welcome" when I've said "Thank you for the compliment."

As MJ has already noted, there are, of course, several other responses possible. The truly garrulous might come back with "Think nothing of it," but that's relatively rare. "No problem" has been a commonplace response since roughly the 1960s. (And that's a recent addition to Hawaiian as well, btw. Non-native speakers will sometimes answer "Mahalo" with "a'ole pilikia" which translates as "no problem.") A simple "mm-hm" might suffice as an answer under certain conditions, as when a sales clerk is harried and hurried but some response is clearly expected.

I don't know where this woman gets the strange idea that there is no response to "thank you" in English. The above just skims the surface.

Dear duke, I know it's 2013 and this thread started in 2005, but I was trolling and found your remarks. I'm not expressing displeasure, but when it comes to listing dates such as 9/11 instead of 11/9, I can say as an American this trips me up. Having worked for DoD, as well as familiar with the way business used to list dates it's confusing. It used to be common to list day, month and year, but the military does it differently. And regarding commas, I was taught by nuns to place a comma after every item including before the inevitable 'and'. I cannot confirm this as the honest to god truth, but when I was hired on at DoD, the editors would remove what I believed to be a perfectly proper comma, and was told that eliminating the last comma saved a huge amount of money on printing and typewriter ribbons. As to bubba, dude or whatever else passes for Americana in filmdom...I'm too stuffy to actually use those endearments. Sorry this is so late.

I agree, Merry, as far as America goes. She's a Brit and is talking about English English, and says there isn't a response to "thank you" in BrE, and that's what I don't know about, whether or not she's accurate.

I think we we taught it was polite to say your welcome when someone thanks you. "Don't mention it" I haven't heard in a while, but it seems it would be said by a shopkeeper to a customer after the customer thanks them for something minor (but courteous by the shopkeeper) such as reaching up for an item the customer can't reach. Okay, this is starting to be hairsplitting, but the style seems to change over time. I hear "no problem", which I'm not terribly enthusiastic about, and hearing "my pleasure" is starting to chap my cheeks. But, like I said, I'm a tad stuffy even in informal conversation.

I don't think Dot says that at all, MJ.

I forgot about "my pleasure." Years ago I knew a bartender who would invariably say that when you thanked him for pouring your drink.

I think it has only become a sore point for me when I noticed (how could you not) that every time I made an appointment at the salon I recently divorced after 10 years, the poorly trained call center (that's right, not the appointment desk) that routinely screwed up my appointment times or booked me for the wrong service, always chirped "my pleasure" as they boloxed up my time, or were suddenly dumbstruck that the screwup was of their own making.

So I suppose it's a matter of timing.

Jtt says:


I read the article. I think that's what she does say.

There are plenty more DW articles we could discuss. If you click "Mind Your Language" on that page, you get an archive.

When I was growing up, it was polite to murmur "Not at all" when someone thanked one.

I don't think I hear that now. Young folks seem to say "cheers" for everything.

We occasionally say "You're welcome", with a smile, but I think when we say that we think we're aping Americans.

It just depends.

I like the sentiment behind "de nada"- it was nothing. Politeness, with a bit of self-deprecation.

Is he being serious? I am afraid that people who take pride in marching to "logical drummers" strike me as, to put it plainly, jerkwads.