h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

asl

Not a word, but still pretty irritating.

Well, not a word, but what really riles me is when people write emails in txtspeak, especially when the email is large due to attachments etc..

Takes about twenty minutes for the email to download and an extra half-hour to decipher it...

Caper Plip

Anything that bears the taint of political correctness! The term "chairperson", "spokesperson" or things of a similar ilk. What's wrong with Chairman or even "Madame Chairman". Our language is under sufficient attack from the items mentioned in previous posts without all the post-feminist nonsense. It's about time we fought back for our language rather than let interest groups (including the Americans) ruin it!

When I hate political correctness the most is when you can almost hear the person who introduces the term giving themsleves a mental pat-on-the-back and saying "oooh, look how politically correct i'm being!". For example, the term 'linesman' has been dropped in favour of 'assistant referee'. It would have made much more sense to drop the 'man' and introduce the term 'line'.

Ooh no, don't like "line" any more than "chair"
A chair is furniture, to be sat upon, a line is to be drawn, crossed, or if it toots your whistle, snorted!

>> What is the point of speaking one of the most versatile and subtle languages on the planet, with one of the largest vocabularies, if all you can do with it is mulch it down to three verbs and four adjectives. <<


An awesome rhetorical question no doubt, Agapanthus, deserving of acknowledgment if not like a direct reply. The point (somewhat blunted) seems to be a display of disdain for communicating anything out-of-the-ordinary or of particularising any specifics, maintaining a familiar status quo of well worn and ambiguous sounds like some sort of mindless mantra.

If I might add, the so called dumbing down of spoken language, as witnessed by the growning tendency to rely on reflexive grunts and abstracted sound bites, is also characterised by a lack of diction and enunciation.

The slurry that passes for contemporary speech has all but abandoned most of the consonants and is a monotone of vowels strung together with only minor inflexions.

I blame pop singers. What's strange is they put so much physical effort into their choreography but refuse to move their lips and tongues with sufficient precision as to form intelligent sentences.
Perhaps out of fear that if we actually heard what they were saying our response would be, 'uhm, like, yeah so what?'.


~jwf~

>> ..without all the post-feminist nonsense. <<

I have expounded at length elsewhere on several occassions about the 'man' problem. But for those who haven't figgered it out yet, the word 'man' does not mean 'male of the human species' in words like Chairman, linesman, manager or salesman.

It is from the French for hand. And is the root of manufacture and manifesto and manipulate. All to do with hands, not 'men'.

The order to 'man' the oars means to put your hands on the oars.
To man the lifeboats or man the guns means to handle these things.
A chair-man is the person who handles the duties of the Chair. A 'man'-ager handles everything.

I do hope you will spread the word and inform women how stupid they are being to reveal their ignorance in this matter. Perhaps if more of them had gone to sea...

~jwf~

'Gotten'

Particularly irritating when it's in a book I bought from an English bookshop.

"like"

"so"

"totally"

"awesome"




"dawg"

"brilliant!" (ick)

re: no problemo. I have never understood how that got started when the Spanish word is actually problema.

However, I do love the Spanglish word coolisimo

az

Agapathus and jwf,

>> What is the point of speaking one of the most versatile and subtle languages on the planet, with one of the largest vocabularies, if all you can do with it is mulch it down to three verbs and four adjectives. <<

Agreed, but to quote Robertson Davies:

"What is the use of a large vocabulary of words if one has only a small range of ideas?"

Which I think is sort of what you were talking about, in reverse, but with a similar end result.

az

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

...actually

aaaaaargh! I hate it when that word is overused. It's even worse when it is used more than once in the same sentence. For example...

"Actually, that dress actually does look good on you"

or, when 'actually' and 'actual' are used in the same sentence...

"as you can see, the actual colour is actually disappearing as we speak"

the worst culprits of over actualisation are those numptys on the shopping channels that have to spout on about a product for 10 minutes when thay have run out of things to say after 2. actually.

Doesn't matter what the words used to mean. It matters what women want today. I'd rather satisfy women and maybe cuddle with one of them than stubbornly continue calling people "chairman" and try keeping warm with my verbal Pyrrhic victory.

Pragmatically,
Deidzoeb

Perhaps friggin' when used as an adjective ("That was friggin' cool!")

liberate (v.) - to invade

But.
More effectively used with a hesistant stutter.

"brb, ttyl, bbl... LOL()"

it is absolutely miserable listening to people talk when they...

use those acronyms in conversation!

But RTFM is acceptable!?

Gutted