What are your pet peeves re English usage?

JTT wrote:

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Context fills us in just fine. I've never, in my life, been confused by any word with dual usage/dual meanings.

Fine: if I write "Badgers in Herefordshire have been decimated by a cull authorised by the Ministry of Agriculture" I know what I mean, but do you?

Bad analogy, Syntinen. Any number of sentences, out of context, can be opaque to a lot of people. But language always has context. That means that disjointed ideas/sentences don't come at us, out of the blue.

To the vast majority of people 'decimate' will have the meaning that is most commonly used. That's how language works.

Many specialized fields use common everyday words with specialized meanings. The computer field is a good example. And as I mentioned, amny common words have multiple meanings. People just aren't as stupid as you make them out to be.

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What might this "audience of classicists" be gathered for

I was literally (that's literally literally, by the way) imagining addressing the annual conference of the Classical Association of England and Wales and wondering whether I could use "decimate" without ambiguity.

Unless these "classicists" and you are one sentence wonders, I think you'll make out okay.

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I'm afraid I must inform you that knowledgeable language sources don't agree with your amateur assessment, Syntinen.

What knowledgeable language sources are those? I stand by what I said.

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, for one. They have entry after entry pointing out these pedantic falsehoods. Not surprisingly, these mirror many of the ones that have been expressed in this thread.

JTT,
I have no problem understanding nuance. Using the word literally for hyperbole is wrong. The word has a specific function,

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language disagrees with you as do a larger number of other language professionals. Maybe that doesn't mean boo to you, but it should.

if such liberties are accepted, how can one know when to take a person seriously, if they use the word as intended. I don't call it nuance, I call it lazy and unimaginative, communicating. And furthermore, how DARE you challenge my perception of nuance while defending BAD english. (If that last sentence sounds a little haughty don't worry, I'm saying it with a slight smile.)

I caught your drift even without the explanation, Booman2.

As I mentioned in the post to Syntinen, language has context and any person can easily be frozen out of that context and miss the meaning. That isn't the fault of language or of vocabulary.

Yours and all the other peevists sense of nuance and sense of language is virtually perfect. It's when you try to analyse language that y'all have so much trouble.

My pet peeves:

Slang/Ebonics: I don't care what your ethnicity is, the fact remains that you were born in the same state as I was and thus there is no need for you to speak as if you have immigrated from a non-English-speaking country. It is not "they is," as hard as it may be to believe.

Get a load of this: Once this girl, Shantell, was copying off my American History test (they act as if I can't see them peering over my shoulder). On my paper, I had the sentence (or something similar to): They were sent to internment camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor due to their Japanese heritage. Shantell copied down on her paper (I read as she passed it up): Theys was sent to internment camps after the bombin because of theys being Japanese.

What? How is it possible to devour a language like so when the proper way to speak it is laying right in front of you? I was baffled.

It may seem baffling but it isn't really, Sanctuary. All dialects are completely correct and grammatical for that given dialect. Just as it wouldn't be easy for you to copy another dialect, it isn't easy for others. Australians, Brits, Scots, etc. all have their dialectal differences.

Additionally, might not Shantell have given herself away by using "your" dialect?

Read this, from a renowned language scientist. It may help you understand.

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

Speaking of the American Black English dialect, Simon says, "Why should we consider some, usually poorly educated, subculture's notion of the relationship between sound and meaning? And how could a grammar -- any grammar -- possibly describe that relationship?

As for "I be," "you be," "he be," etc., which should give us all the heebie-jeebies, these may indeed be comprehensible, but they go against all accepted classical and modern grammars and are the product not of a language with roots in history but of ignorance of how language works."

Steven Pinker: This, of course, is nonsense from beginning to end (Black English Vernacular is uncontroversially a language with its own systematic grammar).

... there is no need to use terms like "bad grammar," "fractured syntax," and "incorrect usage" when referring to rural and Black dialects. ... using terms like "bad grammar" for "nonstandard" is both insulting and scientifically inaccurate.
==============================

Also, this pertains to internet lingo:

The use of "u," "r," "b," so on and so forth, as if they were actual words by themselves. Now it may just be the ease I find when typing, but I don't find it much more difficult to type out the extra two letters it takes to spell out "you". Are we so incredibly lazy that we can not even finish the word "be" without abbreviating it? Goodness!

I notice that you used the contraction <don't>. Is this not also lazy, Sanctuary? Language isn't simply one style, one pattern for everything. There are multiple levels of language register.

scoates, I think syntinen has explained quite well why "literally" shouldn't be used in the sense of hyperbole. It is simply confusing.

JTT

I've got no specific objection to your posts. If we were to characterise the majority of the posters here as "linguistic authoritatians" you seem to fall into the category of anarchist. "Anything goes", according to you, it seems.

(I'll try to imitate Carrie Bradshaw at this point but you'll see from my photo that's near impossible)

Shouldn't that be "nearly impossible" Pete?

I couldn't help but wonder:

- what are you getting out of this thread?

- if usage is the major determinant, are there any which go "beyond the pale" for you?

- for the same reason, why bother to back up your points with the dictionary entries - surely it doesn't matter what the old book says, it'll always be sligthly out of date?

Please don't take this as an attack. I'm genuinely interested to discover your motivation and whether you can apply any general principle to your comments.

It seems the authoritarians make their (our?) points on the basis of an inate sense that the precision of language use is being eroded, to the detriment of meaning.

Do you wish to comment?

I shall, I shall, Pete, soon.

KP

Saying that because words change we should go with the changes is like agreeing with Marx that 'because revolution is inevitable' we should fight for it. Several previous changes haven't gone anywhere - the revival of 'well' as in 'she's well fit' seems to have more or less died out now - though it sounded sweetly archaic to me, as in 'I am well pleased'.

Another bad analogy. Language is a wee bit different than a political system, Clary. Of course, words come and go; that's called language change.

These changes come with such dizzying speed that the pedants only have time to complain about the few that hit the pages of some columnist. The same old tired arguments get recycled again and again.

Professor Nunberg likened these kinds of people to landscape gardeners trying to stop tectonic plates from moving into one another. My sentiments exactly.

Hyperbole exists, and it devalues meaning. We don't have to help it do so, because then the power of the word is lost and a new one will have to take its place. Can you find a new word for 'literally' if it now is demoted to an intensifier?
'Really' and 'actually' went the same way, and have so little power that people have to say 'really really really' - or 'literally', if they are literary enough - now.

That's a crock of sour owl manure, Clary. Why aren't all the peevists complaining about the thousands of new words that are created yearly?
These escape the peevists because no one has brought them to their attention or figured out a pat, but invariably wrong argument yet.

The first five dictionaries I checked had the two definitions. SCoates knows how to use it, everyone, except the Fowlerites and the followerites, knows how to use both words.

Read the usage note from AHD, gang; 100 years, 100 f---ing years. And you peevists have the temerity to suggest that you aren't just repeating old wives tales? {"f---ing" too, has become an intensifier; I don't see anyone suggesting that its other meanings are in jeopardy}

Clary, are these two books recommended further reading?
I couldn't quite get the details off the screen.

Mind you, I've still got a Stephen Pinker which I haven't finished yet (that figures, says JTT) but my opinion of him I have given before.

An opinion, it should be noted, that was chock full of language related info.

Also my Fowler is very out-of-date. I can see I'm going to have to brush up if I want to participate in this thread. :wink:

I favour the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" school of thought, where if a serviceable and respected and well-understood phrase already exists, that's the one I will use.

Clary, are these two books recommended further reading?

McTag wrote:

I favour the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" school of thought, where if a serviceable and respected and well-understood phrase already exists, that's the one I will use.

... as it happens, this is Pinker's school too. He spends a lot of time in The Language Instinct looking at usages that language mavens like Bill Safire consider broken, demonstrating that they aren't, and showing how they often work better than the maven's suggested correction.