Your Top Grammatical Hates...

[dunover]

Having been listening to radio today, as well as reading forums, my blood has started boiling again due to common and stupid errors people keep making when talking or typing. I would like you to help me create a top-10 of grammatical grievances that you hear that really get on your nerves. I have heard and seen a total of four today:

1. 'Pacifically' (specifically)
2. 'Shouldn't of' or 'couldn't of' (shouldn't have)
3. 'your a fool' (you're a fool)
4. 'you know' interjected into every pause when someone is speaking and cannot create proper continuity.

 

[Tirilej]

I can't give you any examples of words since I'm not a native English speaker.

What I can say is that I love these kinds of threads because I always learn something new about your language.
I've never used a spellcheck myself so I forgive everyone that doesn't write correct

 

[Sovietsky]

I can't give you any examples of words since I'm not a native English speaker.

What I can say is that I love these kinds of threads because I always learn something new about your language.
I've never used a spellcheck myself so I forgive everyone that doesn't write correct

How about I give you some in swedish!

Väll
Igentligen
Imot

Also Dunover, my english is not my native so please have some mercy on me.

 

[dionysus]

conversation fillers like 'um' and 'ya know what I mean', 'ya know what I'm sayin'
I'm 'yes, I get it, continue'

rouge for rogue


oh, there's a few; I probably correct people more often than is polite

 

[dunover]

conversation fillers like 'um' and 'ya know what I mean', 'ya know what I'm sayin'
I'm 'yes, I get it, continue'

rouge for rogue


oh, there's a few; I probably correct people more often than is polite

Yes, people who cannot join sentences fluently and add those phrases in when they should take a breath. I'm like you in that I tend to correct people who should know better, but only usually in the 'shouldn't of' scenario because that really does get on my nerves.....

 

[dionysus]

reading my niece's FB makes my teeth grit

'yo boyyyza N grrlz r like what ya no n all dat k' or whatever the Hell her and her friends are saying

 

[dunover]

I can't give you any examples of words since I'm not a native English speaker.

What I can say is that I love these kinds of threads because I always learn something new about your language.
I've never used a spellcheck myself so I forgive everyone that doesn't write correct

Needless to say I don't include non native English speakers in my annoyances list. In fact, many of you Scandinavians, Germans and Dutch speak English better than some of the natives do, because you are taught it properly and don't include the laziness which students here get away with all too much.

Scandinavian, German and Dutch are like English part of the Teutonic group of languages which may explain why they tend to pick it up and pronounce it better than native Latin speakers (French/Spanish/Italian/Portuguese) do.

English is the most complex language on Earth, with over 300,000 words (not including old Latin Nouns) many of which have several different contextual meanings. 'Set' for example has 29 different uses and contexts. Despite that, it is quite easy to speak at a basic level, because due to its nature even if foreign people mispronounce words or mix them up in the wrong order, we can still understand what they are trying to state. Hell, we can even understand Americans

 

[secret2]

I think I am guilty of most of your grammatical pet peeves....due to laziness, I guess.

But the most important thing is the message. Not everyone has had a good education.

Correct my grammar, above.

My pet peeve is, "aks" instead of "Ask". I am in the USA and this does irritate me.

 

[dunover]

reading my niece's FB makes my teeth grit

'yo boyyyza N grrlz r like what ya no n all dat k' or whatever the Hell her and her friends are saying

Yes, txt spk 4 mrns wch hs n vwls.......:axeman2:

 

[dunover]

I think I am guilty of most of your grammatical pet peeves....due to laziness, I guess.

But the most important thing is the message. Not everyone has had a good education.

Correct my grammar, above.

My pet peeve is, "aks" instead of "Ask". I am in the USA and this does irritate me.

Well, can't you emigrate somewhere else?

 

[secret2]

Well, can't you emigrate somewhere else?

What are you pacifically sayin'? You shouldn't of said that! I think your a fool!

I aks you to take that back.

 

[dionysus]

Needless to say I don't include non native English speakers in my annoyances list. In fact, many of you Scandinavians, Germans and Dutch speak English better than some of the natives do, because you are taught it properly and don't include the laziness which students here get away with all too much.

Scandinavian, German and Dutch are like English part of the Teutonic group of languages which may explain why they tend to pick it up and pronounce it better than native Latin speakers (French/Spanish/Italian/Portuguese) do.

English is the most complex language on Earth, with over 300,000 words (not including old Latin Nouns) many of which have several different contextual meanings. 'Set' for example has 29 different uses and contexts. Despite that, it is quite easy to speak at a basic level, because due to its nature even if foreign people mispronounce words or mix them up in the wrong order, we can still understand what they are trying to state. Hell, we can even understand Americans

I think I read something to the effect of 2.5 million words, college educated grads knowing perhaps 250,000. I agree, the language is the hardest to teach and learn. There's a ridiculous amount of idioms, broken 'rules' and unnecessary duplicates (I mean, really, do we REALLY need to differentiate between large, huge and enormous).
Teaching students is a nightmare..they go out understanding pretty and beautiful then someone says 'you're stunning/gorgeous/hot' and their eyes glaze over.

I speak Indonesian and it was a cakewalk to learn - one tense to English's 12.
We need to say I study, I studied, I will study, I have studied, I had studied, I will have studied, I am studying, I was studying, I will be studying, I have been studying, I had been studying, I will have been studying.
Native speakers know the subtle difference when we hear it, because we know it instrinsically. The poor student has to learn it.
Indonesian has one form...I study...then tack on today, yesterday, tomorrow etc lol

 

[dunover]

What are you pacifically sayin'? You shouldn't of said that! I think your a fool!

I aks you to take that back.

I couldn't of resisted that won if I tryed

 

[dunover]

Another fact most people aren't aware of is that IF you pronounced all your English words correctly, you would have a Scottish accent. Try it. In fact, that alone is good enough reason to speak it badly.

 

[dionysus]

Hell, we used to have an Aus, S. African, American, couple Brits and couple Canadians on staff...and we were ALL native English speakers, none of us even spoke or taught the same English. Look at the gap in vocabulary and grammar from the two ends of the spectrum, a Brit and an American, throw a Canadian in the centre, and you've three different Englishes.

 

[weesie]

"me thinks" Drives me nuts!

"just sayin" at the end of a comment

Speaking of yourself in the third person = "Weesie likes slots"

 

[secret2]

"me thinks" Drives me nuts!

"just sayin" at the end of a comment

Speaking of yourself in the third person = "Weesie likes slots"

Anywho....

 

[KasinoKing]

Just the usual ones:

Loose (floppy, not tight) when the person means Lose (opposite of win).

There (over there)
They're (they are)
Their (belonging to them)

Your (belonging to you)
You're (you are)

Deposite instead of Deposit

Rigged, when the person means "I was just unlucky..."
Etc...

Oh, and there's a few words I hate because I always seem to type them wrong - if it wasn't for me using a spell check on all my posts you would probably see them full of these words:

Becuase
Varience
Possition
Mane (name)
Randon

KK

 

[dionysus]

lol, my posts are riddled with spelling errors and I often juxtapose letters and end up with words like King's 'becuase' and 'hwatever'.

My spelling is actually really good. My typing sucks. I'm still a 2 finger hunt and pecker. I never switched because now I can type 2 fingers almost as fast as a lot of regular typists and I don't have enough cause to write large passages. But if I don't look at the board I can't type and make loads of mistakes.

 

[skiny]

lol, my posts are riddled with spelling errors and I often juxtapose letters and end up with words like King's 'becuase' and 'hwatever'.

My spelling is actually really good. My typing sucks. I'm still a 2 finger hunt and pecker. I never switched because now I can type 2 fingers almost as fast as a lot of regular typists and I don't have enough cause to write large passages. But if I don't look at the board I can't type and make loads of mistakes.

I type perfectly. My keyboard is an idiot.

My brain thinks a lot more formally than my mouth speaks. For example, I rarely sleep in but it does happen and on the quiet drive to work I might run over an adequate response in my mind for when I'm questioned about it. In my mind I might explain that sometimes I start watching movies on a Sunday night and if I don't remember to set my alarm before the movie starts I tend to fall asleep before the movie ends. Normally I wake up on time regardless but this is one of those rare occasions that I slept a little late.

Then when I finally arrive at work and someone says "You're late." My response ends up being something more to the effect of "Really? I thought it was come whenever the !@#$ you want day."

I haven't really put much thought into it but now that the subject has come up, I think that the English language is spoken in so many different countries by people from different cultures who have different dialects and accents that "doing the best you can" is just an accepted method of speech when you speak English. Personally, I'm ok with that especially if English isn't a person's first language.

On top of that you have this tendency for people who are comfortable speaking English to take existing words and just use the word any way they like and if the word is used this way often enough the word actually accepts the new meaning. The word "flounder" comes to mind. A flounder is a fish but at some point someone somewhere described the motion resembling a fish out of water as "floundering." Now suddenly it's a verb... And a brand new word.

And because the quarter million words we already have to deal with aren't good enough people are constantly making up new words. The word cool means to have a low temperature so someone decided that it would be a good word to describe being calm. When you want someone to calm down you can also say "cool off." Another word that describes cooling off is the word chill so chill must mean calm as well so when we want people to calm down we can also say "chill out." But even that wasn't good enough so someone decided to go all the way back to the original word "relax" and just mash it together with the word "chill" and start using the brand new word "chillax." Just give it a few years. Webster's will have that in the dictionary too.

Another example of this was the (thankfully) short lived use of "S'up?" in the late 90s and early 00's that came from mashing "What's up?" together. I remember trying my damnedest to get "S'appening" to catch on but nobody would bite.

 

[Nifty29]

Just the usual ones:

Loose (floppy, not tight) when the person means Lose (opposite of win).

There (over there)
They're (they are)
Their (belonging to them)

Your (belonging to you)
You're (you are)

Deposite instead of Deposit

Rigged, when the person means "I was just unlucky..."
Etc...

Oh, and there's a few words I hate because I always seem to type them wrong - if it wasn't for me using a spell check on all my posts you would probably see them full of these words:

Becuase
Varience
Possition
Mane (name)
Randon

KK

Yeah....the "deposite" one really irks me.

I originally thought it was Scandinavian, and so I ignored it for years, but I've discovered that even home-grown Americans use it, so it cannot be just a translation/language thing.

My absolute favourites are when people are trying insult you in a post/comment/email with things like:

"Your a f*cking morron. Just coz you think your more inteligent you think you can make me lok stupid. Your so a looser!!"

If one is going to insult someone, they should at least do it correctly.

My philosophy is that if someone can't be arsed to take an extra 10 seconds to spell and use correct grammar, then I can't be arsed reading. It certainly doesn't encourage me to help them either. Of course, non-English speakers are a different story, and I think it's poor form to have a potshot at them.

dionysus....typos are different. It's fairly obvious when it is a typo vs poor spelling. Typos don't bother me, as long as the post isn't full of them, as that just shows laziness, and IMO, a lack for respect and consideration for one's audience.

 

[bsilva028]

who wants to know someones in portuguese?

lol

 

[jetset]

I am often intrigued with the manner in which English words are adapted to an entirely new, and frequently quite opposite meaning.

Examples:

"sick"

"wicked"

and I marvel at the way the word "like" has taken on new importance in the language

edited to add:

Two thoughts.

Perhaps the languages of nations that have risen to global prominence and become colonisers of other nations absorb words and even phrases from those other nations in the same way that the colonised take on board some of the cultural and language aspects of the dominant nation?

The ease of modern global communication surely accelerates this process of growing a vocabulary?

 

[mattsgame]

Just the usual ones:

Loose (floppy, not tight) when the person means Lose (opposite of win).

There (over there)
They're (they are)
Their (belonging to them)

Your (belonging to you)
You're (you are)

I will admit, I always have to think twice when using some of those. I always bugger them up and still do.

But ey mate, I don't know English that well, I am Australiaaaaaaaaaan champ.

My philosophy is that if someone can't be arsed to take an extra 10 seconds to spell and use correct grammar, then I can't be arsed reading. It certainly doesn't encourage me to help them either. Of course, non-English speakers are a different story, and I think it's poor form to have a potshot at them.

I do read over most of what I type, click post and what do you know I read it again and it still has errors, so I fix them up (probably still left some). I will be honest though posting on a forum my number 1 priority is usually not to get my grammar perfect but to get my point across and I am usually doing this to fast without checking what I have typed in the first place.

I can forgive people for making some mistakes (I do it) what I cannot stand is people taking short cuts e.g text talk, teen talk or what ever you would like to call it, as Dion pointed out on Facebook etc. It drives me up the wall.

 

[Balthazar]

English is the most complex language on Earth

Basic to mid-level English is fairly easy to learn, though.

 

[Jasminebed]

I think if was just to pick one, it would be alot. I dont mind it here so much here in the forum, but it drives me up the wall in a "news" artuckkkle.

The misuse of literally figuratively drives me up the walls.

 

[dionysus]

oh, when my mother says 'supposably'...drives me bonkers

 

[Redbet-Andy]

Don't be too quick to correct people who say "aks/ax" rather than "ask"
They are actually correct, the use of "Ax" in that context predates "ask" by hundreds of years.

It's the same with a lot of words that people commonly correct. Especially Americanisms or colloquialisms from regional England (by regional I mean places where we still have our own accents and dialects), as many of them are from old English.

If you'd like to imagine me saying that instead of writing it just reread it and throw in an errmm wherever there's a natural pause and ending it with a 'yer know warra mean'?

Andy

My pet peeve is, "aks" instead of "Ask". I am in the USA and this does irritate me.

 

[dionysus]

One I get corrected on (mostly by Brits) but isn't incorrect, at least regionally (it's considered correct as far as the Canadian Oxford dictionary...but as a regional usage) is 'boughten' as the past participle of 'buy'

ex I haven't boughten any summer clothes yet. (lol, the chat box is even highlighting the word saying it's wrong)

 

[dionysus]

someone mentioned earlier how things that are wrong get often so used they become correct..here's a classic example:

A: how are you?
B: good, thank you

English grammar tells us 'good' is incorrect and that 'well' is correct. Ok, I actually say 'well' but barely anyone does and the expected response is 'good'..in fact, we even teach good is the proper response now

 

[Redbet-Andy]

Perhaps they are enquiring into your morality rather than your health...

Ahh inquire and enquire another one that gets people.

someone mentioned earlier how things that are wrong get often so used they become correct..here's a classic example:

A: how are you?
B: good, thank you

English grammar tells us 'good' is incorrect and that 'well' is correct. Ok, I actually say 'well' but barely anyone does and the expected response is 'good'..in fact, we even teach good is the proper response now

 

[Redbet-Andy]

Are you sure about the context there though?
Isn't boughten used to describe something that was bought rather than homemade?

One I get corrected on (mostly by Brits) but isn't incorrect, at least regionally (it's considered correct as far as the Canadian Oxford dictionary...but as a regional usage) is 'boughten' as the past participle of 'buy'

ex I haven't boughten any summer clothes yet. (lol, the chat box is even highlighting the word saying it's wrong)

 

[dionysus]

Are you sure about the context there though?
Isn't boughten used to describe something that was bought rather than homemade?

as an adjective, yes, not the verb:

v.
A past participle of buy.

adj.
Commercially made; purchased, as opposed to homemade: boughten bread.

 

[dionysus]

Perhaps they are enquiring into your morality rather than your health...

Ahh inquire and enquire another one that gets people.

is there a difference? same word different spelling as far as I know

The traditional distinction between enquire and inquire is that enquire is to be used for general senses of ask while inquire is reserved for uses meaning make a formal investigation. In practice, however, enquire (and enquiry) is more common in British English while inquire (and inquiry) is more common in US English, but otherwise there is little discernible distinction in the way the words are used.

 

[Redbet-Andy]

No difference, which is why it annoys me when US-English spell checkers tell me enquiry is incorrect.

My pet hates are spell checkers rather than people.

is there a difference? same word different spelling as far as I know

The traditional distinction between enquire and inquire is that enquire is to be used for general senses of ask while inquire is reserved for uses meaning make a formal investigation. In practice, however, enquire (and enquiry) is more common in British English while inquire (and inquiry) is more common in US English, but otherwise there is little discernible distinction in the way the words are used.

 

[dionysus]

Lol, spell-check is constantly telling me I'm wrong; especially hard for us Canuckle-heads when sometimes there's only the UK or US versions and we borrow a bit from both.

 

[skiny]

Other words that I'm sure people just made up are "doohickey" which is not a bold command on a first date and "thingamabob." I guess sometimes when you can't think of an actual word, speaking gibberish is better than staring blankly.

I work with this big Russian guy who used to say "ten hundred" all the time. I corrected him at least a dozen times before he quit saying it. I told him you can say eight hundred, nine hundred, eleven hundred and twelve hundred but you can't say ten hundred. You have to say a thousand. He asked why. The short, easy answer was "because I said so."

 

[weesie]

I type perfectly. My keyboard is an idiot.

Love it!

 

[Gremmyboy]

Gremmys wife here.
He put me onto this thread as it's a constant complaint of mine.
I'm a regular visitor of Facebook (and by regular, I mean 'addict') and it frustrates me daily to read the uneducated ramblings of morons!
'Discusting' is a pet hate of mine - IT'S A G PEOPLE!!
There, their and they're must not be taught in schools anymore.
N writin lik dis is jus ridikulus n taks so much longa to do than rite it korectly.... Seriously just want to hurt myself after typing like that!

 

[dunover]

Some of the examples people mention earlier in thread have always been multi-contextual. 'Cool' for example has been used for in the context of a non-volatile personality for centuries, as well as for cold. It is more recently that is has been used in the 'right-on' context like Fonzarelli (yes we had that crap here in the UK...)

If you used the word 'gay' fifty years ago, it could mean happy, dandy or colourful. Now it immediately has the connotation of the subject being a windjammer.

Another annoyance to those learning English is inconsistent plurals. For example tree and trees. When it comes to 'sheep' the singular and plural are the same. Same with 'fox' - the noun 'fox' as in the animal is the same in both cases. 'A field full of foxes' is incorrect; 'a field full of fox' is correct. Then we go on to the alternative the verb to 'fox' somebody (trick them) 'see if he foxes him' (see if he tricks him.) I spent about 15 minutes explaining this to a Polish girl at work once, to her complete bafflement....

English has a remarkable capacity to both absorb and bastardize words. We use foreign words like 'kindergarten' from Germany, and 'Juggernaut' from India. Some we bastardize like 'Weiss' (white) to our particular pronounciation. The French are so concerned about Anglicisms in their language they have actually legislated to protect it from English.

In the US they still use words that the original British settlers used (like 'hex' from the old German) for witch. The word hex was commonly used here at that time, but has now been superseded by 'witch/witchcraft'. So unlike the US we seldom say 'hex' but nearly always use the term 'witch'.

Another idiosyncrasy is the phonetics of plurals. We spell 'rocks' and 'socks' but in the US they spell 'sox' which sounds correct but isn't allowed here - some say it should be as it's another unnecessary complication.

If English isn't a persons first language it is almost always their second they are taught. Like it or not, it's everywhere and we should celebrate its capacity to link different peoples together, and to constantly absorb new words from an ever-changing world.

 

[manuels58]

I type perfectly. My keyboard is an idiot.

Superb!
The culprit was found

 

[skiny]

This thread is actually about grammatical "hates" but I don't really hate grammatical errors. For one thing, when people learn to speak "proper" English they're actually learning what's proper in their respective countries. UK English, American English and Canadian English have many differences and since we're mostly conversing globally online I don't really bother to think much about who's typing what correctly. I also respect the fact that not everyone is good at everything. I've known people who were brilliant carpenters or exceptional mechanics but spoke English poorly even though it was their first language. I just accept the fact that not everyone grew up in an environment where speaking proper English was a priority but they were obviously not stupid or lazy.

The two things that really do bug me is these silly made up words and phrases that seem to catch on like "My bad." Those two words don't make a sentence no matter how you put them together. When people say this around me the hair stands on the back of my neck and I reply with "No, not your bad. Your stupid." Another one is "Aight" which I think means "All right." Of course if you've mashed these two words together as if they're one word you're obviously not all right so I could be completely wrong.

The other thing is text speak. This should never have come to the point where it required a name. I was ok with this in the early days of chat when it was basically restricted to simple one word responses like LOL or GTG followed by a normal sentence like "GTG! Talk to you later." It was a very short list of very commonly used sentences and I could live with that. When people started typing half words and strings of letters throughout sentences I started to get annoyed. "I have 2 go 2 the store." It's actually harder to type a number 2 than it is to type the letters t or o and you've only saved one key stroke per word.

Any1, Some1, No1, 2day, 2nite, 2moro, 4ever, B4, Str8, H8, L8, L8tr, M8 and then they start getting longer IMHO, FWIW, AFAIK, ROFLMAO.

2HWIYDWJTLIOS? (To hell with it. Why don't we just type letters instead of sentences?)

I saw FML once. I asked what it meant and was told it means "F@#$ my life." The sad part is that so many people online are typing "F#$% my life" that we needed to shorten it to save time. It's bad enough that their lives were so pitiful that they needed to type this in a public forum but what's worse is the 2 or 3 seconds it took for them to bitch about it. We had to shorten this down to three letters instead of three complete words so they could get back to their miserable lives two or three seconds sooner.

FMLAT3SITTTT. (F#$% my life and the three seconds it took to type this.)

 

[dunover]

Actually I'm guilty of potentially creating a new word which will spread. For the last year or so I have prepared my daughter a packed lunch for school each evening. I started calling it a Pee-Lunch then shortened it to 'plunch'. Now her friends are using the word and it has spread around the school. PLUNCH. It's possible this may propagate via texts and contacts the kids have in other areas. Then if it makes the OED in the next few years, you can blame me.

 

[vinylweatherman]

I find the widespread use of the incorrect plural of "bonus" irritating.

 

[Nifty29]

I find the widespread use of the incorrect plural of "bonus" irritating.

Bonuses is correct. Boni is correct.

 

[nepatsfan01]

Biggest pet peeve EVER -

Lose vs. Loose. I can't tell you how many times a day I see people say that they will "loose" their mind or they want to "loose" weight. Seriously.drives.me.nuts.

 

[Balthazar]

Bonuses is correct. Boni is correct.

As a non-native English speaker, I hate this confusing plural crap. Boni, octopi, two fish, two moose, two deer...

 

[dionysus]

As a non-native English speaker, I hate this confusing plural crap. Boni, octopi, two fish, two moose, two deer...

To make it worse, in some cases it IS beers, deers, cereals etc. Oh, and fishes is also correct lol, by the way, us non-native French speakers find it hard to remember why some inanimate objects in French are masculine while others are feminine.

 

[Balthazar]

To make it worse, in some cases it IS beers, deers, cereals etc. Oh, and fishes is also correct lol, by the way, us non-native French speakers find it hard to remember why some inanimate objects in French are masculine while others are feminine.

Yes, French has its fair share of dumb rules as well. Every noun has a gender (without any kind of rule behind it, you must learn by heart the gender of every single noun.) I won't even talk about mute letters...

Purists will disagree but IMO most languages should have been simplified over the years. Not to dumb it down, but to respect some sort of logic.

 

[dionysus]

I'm on the fence there, seeing both sides.
The language is ridiculously complex, rules don't follow themselves, there's far too many words, idioms and tenses.

However, on the flip side, the language is so rich that we're at the point we can differentiate the smallest nuance or feeling from another by the words we choose..ie 'pretty' could serve as a catch-all, but there is a difference between pretty, attractive, beautiful, sexy, hot etc.

a: you should go on a date with my friend
b: is she hot?
a: er..she's pretty
b: ah, so, she's not hot!
a: she's attractive
b: ok, gotcha