Commonly mispronounced words

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by monster

It would be to you and I, but . . .

. . .but surely you intended to say "to you and me," the pronouns being the objects of the preposition. Prepositions such as to, from, between cause pronouns to take the objective case, not the subjective -- me, not I, them not they.

"Pooooor Professor Higgins...Night and day he slaves a-way, oh poooor Professor Higgins!"

In a word, pronouns decline in English (and most other languages, including Esperanto, which has about as many moving parts as an anvil). You wouldn't say to I, and you still wouldn't even with another pronoun in the works. The confusion seems to come from you remaining unchanged.

[monster]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

. . .but surely you intended to say "to you and me,"

No, dear, I said what I intended to. If you look closely, you'll see the last half of the sentence isn't gramatically correct, either.

Sometimes it's fun to play with language. Well, if one has a sense of humour that is.

Still, I'm sure you got a kick out of feeling all superior, so alls' well that end's well.

[Cloud]

UG--what did you want me to look at, please? link d/n seem to work

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Cloud, that was just a change of color, not a link. I wasn't finding the shrink-the-font trick to write the teensy eee noise.

Bad grammar, monster, is a solecism. Solecisms are bad.

[Perry Winkle]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Bad grammar, monster, is a solecism. Solecisms are bad.

That's just simply bullshit.

[monster]

Did someone say bad grammar?

[monster]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Cloud, that was just a change of color, not a link. I wasn't finding the shrink-the-font trick to write the teensy eee noise.

Bad grammar, monster, is a solecism. Solecisms are bad.

Hmmm.... Bad, huh?

Bad is subjective. Are we talking "the bad place" bad? Or more of the "technology is bad" bad? Or perhaps the "girl, you so bad" bad? Or maybe the Lieutentant Hauk "bad comedy" bad?

Please be more specific.

1. Are the two bads the same type of bad?
2. Which type(s) of bad?
3. Which is which?
4. Do you use solecism to mean grammatical mistake or a breach of good manners?
5. If you mean mistake, do you mean that I made a mistake in deliberately ignoring grammatical correctness or do you mean that my incorrectness was not deliberate? Or do you believe that intent does not make a mistake and a deliberate act mutually exclusive?
6. If you meant a breach of good manners, do you not believe that the same etiquette you perceive me to have transgressed would demand that you not draw attention to my embarrassment?
7. Is your repetition of the word bad, bad?
8. Is my repetition of the word bad, bad?
9. Will I be going to Hell for my badness?
10. Can I choose somewhere further away? Hell is frozen over right now.

In my opinion, inability to express oneself clearly is bad. But I am able to appreciate that not everyone shares my opinion. And that deliberate badness can be a good thing

/Can we take the discussion about my starting sentences with conjunctions as read?
//grant said it

[Perry Winkle]

Originally Posted by monster

/Can we take the discussion about my starting sentences with conjunctions as read?

Just say no to linguistic prescriptivism. Rejoice in the language as you speak it.

* Except in a job interview or other times that it counts, then for your own sake speak like your grammar school teacher taught.

[DanaC]

Well said Grant. Language is a tool for expressing thoughts, nothing more. If your use of language adequately expresses your thoughts then really, what is the problem? We all have an innate understanding of grammar, it's hardwired into our brains.....trouble is the hardwired grammar doesn't always correspond to accepted grammatical rules and norms. Does that mean that the hardwired (original) grammar is wrong?

Picking holes in people's of use language is, in my opinion, unkind. Unless of course it is one's job, or responsibility so to do. It is also, again in my opinion, unwise. Doing so opens one up to have one's own use of language scrutinised and critiqued. Very few people are flaw free in this regard. This is partly because most people have been subjected to dialect in their upbringing, which brings with it certain 'irregularities' and also because 'correct' grammar is to a large extent an artificially imposed set of rules. In addition most languages have evolved from several origins and therefore contain different and sometimes contradictory grammatical and lexical rules. This is why in pretty much every language, there are common mistakes made by children as they learn to speak: their innate, inbuilt grammar does not correspond to the 'correct' grammar which they are learning to use.

[monster]

Originally Posted by grant

speak like your grammar school teacher taught.

scary thought

they didnt teach no grammar when I were at school there was a hippy idea that you wood pick it up as you went along an not be put off writing if they didnt have no boring grammar lessons. But me mum learned me.

[DanaC]

*chuckles*

Oh just as a side note: none of what I said in my post corresponds with written language. There is no innate ability to write, they are entirely separate skills and written language is entirely artificial in nature.

[Kingswood]

Originally Posted by Nunya

Do you ever mispronounce words to purposely irritate your foreign friends? I do. One of my French friends hates it when Americans pronounce French words incorrectly. One day we were having a party and she was making crepes. I made sure to have a reason to say croissant, but I pronounced it "croy-SANT" just to see what she would do. She screamed,"CWASOOOO!!!" and then threw a crepe at me. Then I said, "Hey! Quit throwing creaps at me!" She did refrain from throwing the skillet at me.

Ask her how she pronounces the words "western" and "week-end" when speaking French, and if she pronounces them as "vestern" or "veek-end", you can throw unpronounceable things at her.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by monster

. . . Or maybe the Lieutentant Hauk "bad comedy" bad?

Please be more specific.

1. Are the two bads the same type of bad?
2. Which type(s) of bad?
3. Which is which?
4. Do you use solecism to mean grammatical mistake or a breach of good manners?
5. If you mean mistake, do you mean that I made a mistake in deliberately ignoring grammatical correctness or do you mean that my incorrectness was not deliberate? Or do you believe that intent does not make a mistake and a deliberate act mutually exclusive?
6. If you meant a breach of good manners, do you not believe that the same etiquette you perceive me to have transgressed would demand that you not draw attention to my embarrassment?
7. Is your repetition of the word bad, bad?
8. Is my repetition of the word bad, bad?
9. Will I be going to Hell for my badness?
10. Can I choose somewhere further away? Hell is frozen over right now.

In my opinion, inability to express oneself clearly is bad. But I am able to appreciate that not everyone shares my opinion. And that deliberate badness can be a good thing

/Can we take the discussion about my starting sentences with conjunctions as read?
//grant said it

Hokay, I'm a good sport, and besides this is fun. Rather than bust the quote up into micro-blocks, let's keep it all in one big indigestible lump like unto an underdone suet pudding, nyah.

1. No.
2. I don't care which.
3. Ditto, I think.
4. Neither, but instead the dictionary or philosophical definition: that it's an error you ought to know better than to make. Look into the history of the Greek city of Solis, whose inhabitants' mushmouthed diction and abundant grammatical error the Athenians had some things to say about. Fortunately, ending a sentence a preposition with is possible in English. So are inverted constructions. Logging much training time with Master Yoda we have been.
5. Were you listening to yourself asking such a question? Your Honor, I move the fifth question be taken out and shot. Or shot at.
6. I didn't, so the rest is moot. So I suppose you can rest easy.
7. No.
8. No, but enough of it begins to sound like the opening bars of Surfin' Bird. Oo Mow Mow Ba Ba Ba Oo Mow Mow... 'Cos ev'rybody knows that the Bird is the word...
9. What, to get away from me?
10. I suppose the Yukon and Northwest Territory are even more so.
And your last: Doubt it, as about the only way for a conjunctional usage to be correct in that circumstance would be as an elliptical construction, leaving off the entire sentence, clause, or word that was to be conjoined by the conjunction to the expressed, explicit sentence. That seems to me working implication until it collapses in the traces.

As a general thing, it is better to be able to pronounce "inarticulate" than to have it said of you that you couldn't.

[Sundae]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

btw.... squirrel ....one syllable.

I thought of this thread watching children's tv last week. There was a reasonable cartoon called "Jane and the Dragon" and despite it having a Canadian/ Kiwi heritage it has a variety of accents, most of which appear to be an attempt at British.

Therefore it really jarred, halfway through when I heard the word, "Squirl" to mean squirrel. At least I knew what they meant I suppose...

[Kingswood]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

btw.... squirrel ....one syllable.

Only for in the US (and maybe Canada). Proper pronuniation elsewhere is SKWI-r*l. (First part sounds like "squid" without the d, and second sounds like "Errol" without the E.) This pronuniation is also used by some speakers in the USA. Both pronunciations are considered correct.