What are your pet peeves re English usage?

I rather despise "networking" as a verb--but so few people know what reticulate means, that i don't make an issue of it.

I'm with Dlowan...

I would say: "Try not to annoy me."

I would also say "Try to do better"

and then there is the impacted wisdom tooth. Hey, I'm gettin' off of this thread and have gone missing. Hee hee!

A short list of my pet peeves:

Networking
Parenting
Access (used as a verb)
Impact (used as a verb)

I'm not saying I never use them, just that it annoys me when others do.

HUH!

.....This is the second time you've made me respond like that Letty.

boo, we don't really care, do we? I just love colloquialisms.

Hey, bro. Ain't you kin to me?

"Through the ages, language mavens have deplored the way English speakers convert nouns into verbs. ... In fact, easy conversion of nouns to verbs has been part of English grammar for centuries; it is one of the processes that make English English." [S Pinker]

I'd say that most people eschew, excuse me, avoid the formal and the technical in favour of more everyday word choices when the situation is not one that is formal or technical.

I hardly consider reticulate a formal term. It was in quite common usage in this country in the 19th and early 20th century. Women were fond of carrying network bags, known as reticules, and interlocking machinery, as well as mutually supporting military units were described, accurately, as reticulated. The word simply fell into disuse, and those who love neologisms because they show how "in the know" the user is have invented networking. As i mentioned, i don't think it's a big deal, precisely because if you say reticulate to most people, they reply: "What?"

Things have changed since many of you were kids/teenagers/young adults. Science has been applied to the study of language. With such an application, many of the "rules" have been found wanting.

What caused this sea change? Why "now"?

"The devel­opment of the information age and of English as a world language means that such lapses have even greater negative import than formerly." [HOW GRAMMARS OF ENGLISH HAVE MISSED THE BOAT
THERE'S BEEN MORE FLUMMOXING THAN MEETS THE EYE
Charles-James N. Bailey]

It was found that when these rules were put into practice by ESLs, they produced unnatural/ungrammatical language or they were prevented from using the same natural language that was available to English native language speakers.

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The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English

"A theme running through the entire grammar is that there are important grammatical differences among the various types of speech and writing: grammatical features that are common in conversation are often rare in the written registers, and vice versa.

Awareness of these differences is essential for students, instructors, and other language professionals; but native speakers usually do not have reliable intuitions about these patterns of use."
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Well, you say, bad rules for second language learners should also be bad rules for native speakers.

True, but these bad rules had/have very little effect on our "natural grammars" [the ones I said that you'll never have to buy]. Just how powerful is this 'innate' grammar that we each possess. It keeps us from using 'rules' that are not rules.

"Perhaps most importantly, since prescriptive rules are so psychologically unnatural that only those with access to the right schooling can abide by them, they serve as shibboleths, differentiating the elite from the rabble." [S Pinker]

This is/has been a constant theme running through this thread, though it's not really so different than any other location where pedants/PGs gather. This, "I don't use such and such a structure so I'm better, [in some, as yet undefined way], than those who do.

Dollars to donuts [doughnuts] you were not around in the 19th and early 20th century, Setanta.

No, but my grandparents, who raised me, were, and the use of the term was still common in Eisenhower America, when i was but a liddly. In addition, although this may surprise you, given the opinion i suspect you have formed of me, i can read, and have done so extensively. Given that my most absorbed and absorbing reading has been history, and "period" literature, it is a topic upon which i am reasonably well informed.

Make what you will of that, i'm certain you'll have yet another of your tedious, didactic pronouncements from on high for all of us.

You really don't understand this thread at all.

That's precisely the opinion that I had formed of you, Setanta; one who has read extensively, one who is beyond reasonably tending towards exceedingly well-informed.

On this and some other language issues, maybe not quite so. Hey, that's not a problem.

Give it some more thought and I'm sure you'll agree that 'reticulate' does indeed tend to the technical side of language. Google it and you'll find that it is indeed technical in nature.

And I'd wager that you'd also agree that "period" literature should not define what we use today, especially for everyday language use.

I have not in any way suggested that period literature should inform contemporary usage. Were you well versed in the period literatures of the United States in the 19th century, then you'd perhaps better understand that the least of men and women were at great pains to display their erudition through the medium of vocabulary. Especially after 1850, the literature which was popular then (as opposed to what is highly regarded today) uses a very stilted language, and this is also to be seen in both newspaper editorials and in letters to the editor. Public speaking was the most popular form of evening entertainment, in an age that knew no radio or television. "The man in the street" sought to burnish his image by an imitation of the great public speakers. Although Edward Everett complimented Lincoln immediately on his speech at Gettysburg, saying in effect that Lincoln had more clearly stated the momentous character of the battle which had taken place there in a few minutes of speaking than he, Everett, had in hours of speaking--the newspapers and the public at large, however, considered it a drab performance. As late as the 1950's, elderly Southern ladies still referred to their handbags as reticules, even when they were not actually made of network.

To put this in terms which you might more readily understand, one can judge the impact of the Wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars on English society by a look at the popular novels of the day. Jane Austen, in her juvenilia, started a novel fragment entitled Catherine, or the Bower. This was circa 1797. The novel Northhanger Abbey (which derives from it) was published after her death--in 1817, i believe. Despite what contemporary historians consider to be the momentous character of those wars, they are only mentioned once in her novels. I don't have a copy of Persuasion at hand, so i do not recall the character's name, and can't be arsed to look it up online--but he (the male protagonist--a naval officer) hopes to improve his prospects as a marriagable bachelor by the prize money which would accrue to him if he can secure a good command. In Mansfield Park, the brother of the heroine is sent to sea as a midshipman, so that he may make his way in life as a naval officer--but there is no direct or indirect reference to the wars in that novel. Of the popular novels of the day, and especially of those which are today considered classics, only Vanity Fair deals explicitly with those wars, and then only with Napoleon's gotzendamerung at Waterloo. This is very important to anyone who really seeks to understand historical events from the perspective of those who lived in a particular era. Austen's career, from the family entertainment she produced as an adolescent to her death, corresponds exactly to English involvement in the wars of the Revolution, and the Napoleonic wars--from the disasterous Walcheran Island expedition to Wellington's invasion of France with the Pennisular Army. Yet it is not even a whisper in her novels, nor yet again in any popular literature of the day, with the exceptions already noted.

As i have devoted the most of my attention to history to "classical" times (i.e., Greece and Rome before christian pollution) and the history of European nations, in which i include the nations of North and South America--and in particular, that of my native land--i have done a good deal of reading in period literature. I have a very good feel for how Americans used their language in the 19th century, not least because so many of them were still living and were respected members of the community when i was a boy. During the 4th of July parades in my youth, the Spanish War veterans (1898) always got pride of place.

As i feel rather certain that you will point out that none of that is relevant to contemporary usage, and whether or not reticulate is to be considered a techincal term today . . . i will again observe that you really don't understand this thread.

VERSUS






A bit presumptuous of you, Setanta, to assume, just how 'versed' I am in that period. Additionally, I'm not at all sure just what your point is. What has all this to do with the language issue that you raised.

There are a good many men and women about today who are also "at great pains to display their erudition through the medium of vocabulary". One such gentleman left us with the decided impression that people are misusing 'network' by failing to substitute 'reticulate'. Still

Ah, a pre-emptive strike. Please look up the word, "dissemble", Setanta. Then please do explain just what this thread is all about.

This is a specious argument on the face of it. I simply pointed out that i personally dislike the term "networking." I was at pains to note that the objection is nugatory, given that reticulate is not in common use.

Again, you demonstrate that you don't understand the nature of this thread.

EDIT: I will also add that it is a pathetic attempt to insult.

As i have already mentioned, it is a place for people to vent their virtual spleens . . . note the specific term "pet peeve" . . . this thread is not about, and never has been about, the last word, the latest scientific assessment, of the language. It is as much a social venue, as it is anything else. Mostly, we like one another here, and are willing to listen, and to be patient of other's foibles.

There is not a hint of the dissembler in what i wrote, and i needn't look it up to understand the nature of that snotty remark . . .