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

Nicely illustrating one of *my* pet hates - the use of infer when imply is meant, and vice versa. Gaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!

Noggin

Unfortunately, there aren't many people that notice.

az

As an Aussie I bemoan the loss of some of our more colourful idioms. We are being besieged by Americanisms, a sign, I know, of globalisation but the wonderful old Australian expressions are fading.

I once had a friend ("of a certain age" is the way she referred to her age) who had a glorious turn of phrase. She taught me "as restless as a blowfly in a tripe shop" and "as flash as a rat with a gold tooth" among other phrases. Sadly those evocative phrases and their ilk are very rarely heard these days.

I am a language snob too, and can be a pedant when it comes to written language but in it's place colloquialism both written and spoken adds spice, like a touch of paprika in an otherwise bland stew

RE: 'goes' this is quite an old one I think, I remember when I was 6 or 7 (about 20 years ago) hearing a friend's older brother using 'goes' instead of 'said'.

I have to admit that 'like' has crept into my spoken English recently, albeit in a hippy way(that's, like, so heavy) rather than in a modern way ('and he was like...').

One of the things I've began to notice is the 'er' sound at the ed of somewords being replaced with an 'ahh' sound... combined with a glottal stop it really makes me cringe. Bu'ahh, wa'ahh = butter, water.

Another thing, which perfectly illustrates the lack of decent English teaching methods (although most lack of education is down to lazy kids rather than bad teachers), is people writing words the same way as they pronounce them (an extreme case was a piece of writing I saw which had been done by a 14-year-old boy which contained the words 'summart' and 'wott' instead of 'something' and 'what').

Language evolving? I would say it is devolving.

I work in retail, and am totally fed up with people asking if an item is 'On Sale'.
Surely 'On Sale' implies it is for sale, and as it is a store, therefore it must be 'On Sale'.
Why can't people actually say what they mean? Surely 'Is it a Sale item?' is the correct phrase.

Another pet hate is 'What have you got on today?'. Can the person not see what clothing I am wearing? Do they mean 'What have yopu planned for the day?'

Yes, I am a word pedant, and shall defend that right for as long as possible. I do not have a problem with language evolving, however there is now a theory that Human vocalisation is actually regressing (i.e. going backward) although I cannot find the link.

As a rule, language and humans tend to find the easiest and shortest methods of communication. A language which doesn't evolve over time is a dead one.

Did you know that in Victorian times the correct pronunciation of "waistcoat" was, in fact, "weskit"? Because the word was in such common usage, as indeed were the waistcoats themselves, the pronunciation was altered to make it easier to say.

A similar phenomenon happened with "rabies", which originally was pronounced something like "baby-ease".

I have been a grammar and spelling pedant ever since I did my English Language A-Level. I'm finding that my grammatical skills are dying now I work with engineers who can barely spell, let alone construct sentences properly .

I have to admit that one of my pet hates is people who write "thankyou". It's "thank" and "you" - it isn't one word, for goodness' sake!!! That seems to be a relatively modern phenomenon.

What about Christ's Mass?

I think That people who complain about grammar should keep going I am thoroughly amused by the incadescent hue of purple visible from their collar line to the top of their forehead.

What a bunch of donuts.

If you can understand what people are saying just get on with your life and stop whingeing.

I remeber my grandad saying "wescut" for waistcaoat and thought he was just being his old "Goon Show" influenced idiomatic self.

Going back to "like" and "you know what I mean" they are both seeking affirmation. I have an idea they might be inluenced by the spread of the telephone. Words replacing visual clues that the listener is on your wavelength. As they get used more and more they have crept into face to face conversation and even into written language with younger people

Maybe they are fads and will die out, innnit.

I like the way things change, though Im not hppy with all the changes, I think it would be daft of me to complain about change in general as so many grammar pedants do. English has always been changing and its utter stupidity to draw some arbitrary timeline in the shifting sands of language and say that nothing should be changed after this point.

one love

Nice. Thank you.

Pedantry may be pointless, but I don't see the point in getting things wrong when it's so easy to get them right. I could listen to Stephen Fry talk for hours, about anything, purely because his vocabulary and sentence structure are so, well, glorious. I think they evoke a wonderful atmosphere (maybe I'm nostalgic for a time I didn't experience, and probably never existed) and display a level of respect for the listener/reader.

Threads like this give my typo-paranoia, and the spelling heeby-geebies.
Just thought I'd mention that!

<> I have to agree with you. I find postings much clearer and easier to read if they're structured with at least a passing nod to grammatical correctness.

That said, my husband is dyslexic, although not severely so, and often he can mix up letters in the simplest of words, and mix up words in sentences. It taught me that just because someone spells something incorrectly or doesn't structure a sentence correctly, it doesn't mean that they're not intelligent - an assumption I'm afraid I had made from time to time .

Grammar pedantry is not my bag. But I do have a petty hatred for phonetic mistakes in language. The spoken word should be correct whenever possible.

Personal favorites are

Would you like a bag of crisp?
(Arggggg where's the SSSSSSSSSSssssssSSSSSSSSS)

and


Would you like a sangwidge?
(g there's no g, the word is sandwich, not a nasal sangwidge)

I bet you hate 'haitch' too

and 'pitcher' when they mean 'piCture'.

Another thing I have found myself doing is turning adjectives into nouns when describing people. So if a group of my associates are being cliquey and sneaky I will call them 'the sneakies'. I don't know if this reflects a trend but someone on here recently was stating their irritation about calling a gay person 'a gay'.

I know one person who will most probably become violent if you say "one foul swoop" instead of (the correct) "one fell swoop".

Come to think of it, what is a "fell swoop"?

Fell adj cruel or fierce; terrible; destructive or deadly.

Noggin

<>

Bog normal Cockney, Mr D. I can hardly Adam and Eve it that you've not heard it before.

Nogg

<>

This accent has become known as Estuary English as it's no longer restricted to Cockneys (Cocknies? ), and is widespread around London and bordering areas, such as Essex. Apparently it has been spreading, in part due to the influence of EastEnders.

Maybe one day we'll all be Cockney

Estuary English is most certainly *not* old school Cockney. Estuary is far more whiney and nasal. I can speak old Cockney but I couldn't begin to write it down here, not even phonetically. The closest I can come to pointing people toward what it might sound like would be (at a pinch) Arthur Mullard, or Warren Mitchell when he was Alf Garnett, but neither of them come close to a bloke I used to know when I was working in Plaistow (pronounced Plarsto).

Oh, and I suppose I ought to add that I have always pronounced 'timber' as 'timba' and 'feather pillow' as 'fevva pilla'

When I said butter to someone from the 'Bu'ahh-saying' regions before, it didn't just sound odd to him, he hadn't a clue what I meant. His ear didn't pick 'butter' out of it at all; all he got was 'b-r-r-r-r"

Things I've noticed that I don't like:

"was like" instead of "said" - I must admit this is so prevalent I've even noticed myself doing it in speech.

"Vicious cycle". It's CIRCLE.

"Not that pacific one". The word is SPECIFIC.

"Could of" or "Should of" instead of "could HAVE" or "should HAVE".

And finally my absolute pet hate: this used to be something restricted almost entirely to black chavs, but spread for some reason to educated black people and I've now started hearing it from white people -

"I only arksed for one."
"He axed me to do it."

What, precisely, please, is so f**king complicated about pronouncing the THREE LETTER WORD "ask"? I think the reason this winds me up the way it does is because it is, as far as I can make out, an act of wilful ignorance designed to mark oneself out as different. And of course, by irritating people like me, it works.

Etc.

Ooh, if I had my way, anyone using the word "axe" thus would quickly understand what the word AXE means because one would hit them in the mouth.

SoRB