Words in the wrong context

[Shawnee123]

Originally Posted by HungLikeJesus

Ali - yes, I'm just kidding you

ZG - I agree about 'could of'

This is a little different, but the phrase 'try and ___' drives me nuts, and I see it all the time. It should be 'try to ___.' For example, "I'll try and call before I leave." Now that I've mentioned it, maybe it will bug you too.

That's one of my peeves too...try and..., I mean. Also, someone who says anyways.

I have my share of regional error speaking...but I'm a firm believer that popular usage doesn't make it right. I catch myself a lot.

My big thing lately is a certain, um...dialect (?) that uses the long e sound for i and and i sound for a long e. For example "He feeled the water glass for me, but I still fill nothing towards him romantically."

Ugh.

Oh, and then there's FASSA.

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by Shawnee123

My big thing lately is a certain, um...dialect (?) that uses the long e sound for i and and i sound for a long e.

I don't like that, but I use it for one word: "league". I say "ligg". How many teams are in this ligg? Do they play in the American or the National ligg? For some reason I find it enjoyable to say it that way.

[HungLikeJesus]

Are you ripping on the lower-case 'e' or the apostrophe?

[Aliantha]

I know you do Zen.

Now you're getting HLJ.

[ZenGum]

Both - the bold is a bit hard to see.

"try and ..." ugghhh.

[DanaC]

This is a little different, but the phrase 'try and ___' drives me nuts, and I see it all the time. It should be 'try to ___.' For example, "I'll try and call before I leave." Now that I've mentioned it, maybe it will bug you too.

'try and...' may be grammatically less correct than 'try to...', but it is in common usage in many spoken dialects of english. I use it myself.

[SteveDallas]

Originally Posted by DanaC

'try and...' may be grammatically less correct than 'try to...', but it is in common usage in many spoken dialects of english. I use it myself.

Well, there you go! If enough people say it, it becomes "common usage." Our kids very early on picked up the habit of using "done" without "with" (example: "I'm done my homework"). It drives my wife and me up the wall, but lots of people around here seem to do it. (Including, to my amused horror, my son's language arts teacher when we went in for our regularly scheduled conference with her.)

[lumberjim]

supposably. go to the liberry, and look that word up.

[Juniper]

Ah yes, the liberry, my favorite fruit.

[Stress Puppy]

< nitpick > Though English is a 'Germanic' language, it's not a descendant of German. They both descend from the same origins, yes, but they evolved a lot due to separation, and then got further separated thanks to multiple invasions of what became England.

[DanaC]

A peeve of mine is saying "I could care less" when they really mean "I couldn't care less." If you could care less, that means you care a lot, right?

Also one of my pet peeves

[DanaC]

I have my share of regional error speaking...but I'm a firm believer that popular usage doesn't make it right.

Nothing wrong with dialect forms. 'Standard' English is just the dialect which won out as the 'correct' version, refined through latinate grammar.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Nothing wrong with dialect forms. 'Standard' English is just the dialect which won out as the 'correct' version, refined through latinate grammar.

Latinate vocabulary, yes; latinate grammar no, despite the dominies' try at making us never end sentences a preposition with, up with which we don't now put. Because structurally, you can't do that in Latin. But English isn't Latin. It even has more letters -- K, U, W, a frenchy J, and a Z. Between the Angles and the Saxons speaking distinct tongues, but still with eighty to ninety percent commonality, Old English had all its noun declensions knocked off in the collisions -- grammar teachers being thin on the ground in the Dark Ages. It already had few verb forms to keep track of, so I suppose (without certainty) that our trains of auxiliary verbs to arrive at the meaning we intend for the verb in the sentence were already being joined up.

We did keep declining pronouns, though, at least into subjective and objective cases -- though usually we just call them forms. We share this not only with the Germanic group, but indeed all of Europe. (What do the Basques do to personal pronouns? And who besides a Basque can tell? )

Juniper: except the ones that are spatulate seal parts.

[Shawnee123]

At what point does it end. If I can convince everyone that "slapbuttosky" is another word for "spaghetti" will that be OK?

It's an ever-evolving language , to be sure. I'm a language purist without the knowledge a language purist should have. In other words, I know just enough to be dangerous.

[Razzmatazz13]

Originally Posted by Shawnee123

At what point does it end. If I can convince everyone that "slapbuttosky" is another word for "spaghetti" will that be OK?

It's an ever-evolving language , to be sure. I'm a language purist without the knowledge a language purist should have. In other words, I know just enough to be dangerous.

One of my favorite books when I was younger was Frindle. You ought to read it sometime, even though it's a kids book.

I also have a big pet peeve with "I could care less" and I lecture my boyfriend for phrases like this all the time.