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Why Grammar Matters: A Place To Discuss Matters Of Grammar

candall

By candall
in Everything Else

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shapeshifter

shapeshifter

(edited)

If you live in California, that long road running from San Diego to Sonoma is El Camino Real, not the El Camino Real. "El" already means"the."

Similarly, it is an ISBN, not an "ISBN number" because that would be an International Standard Book Number number. Same with VIN.

I am a reference librarian, so when someone says something like, "I have the ISBN number," I reply, "We can look up that ISBN."

Edited by shapeshifter
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Dimity
Dimity
nokat
nokat

I thought this belonged here. We need the occasional laugh.  

Browncoat
Browncoat

I just had a contractor reschedule an appointment for the second time.  They apologized for any "incontinence" that the rescheduling might cause.  🤣🤣

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Actionmage

Actionmage

Family and friends watching TV with me cringe when they hear a character say "PIN number" or "ATM machine," because they know I'm about to yell at the television.

So, did you even give NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service a try, or did the title angry you up too much? *g* Or CSI: Crime Scene Investigation? I am unhappy that shows think they need to explain the title in the title! I have been fairly quick to recognize when a show is telling me why it is called something, so the (to me) unnecessarily long titles hack me off.  Especially when they decide to leave off the unnecessary part, but leave the colon!  If the CSI in question is not Miami or New York or Cyberdoodle, leave off the flipping colon, huh? Save that extra 5 cents per letter space.

 

(I watched both shows for a while, but I rolled my eyes so hard for a great portion of my watching.)

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Cobalt Stargazer

Cobalt Stargazer

I think this fits in here. When defining something, it's best not to use the word in the definition. The students do this all the time and I correct them. A stakeholder isn't someone who holds a stake in the project.

Actually, according to merriam-webster.com, the definition of stakeholder is "A person or business that has invested money in something (such as a company) or "A person who holds the money that people have bet on something and then gives it to the winner."

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Brandi Maxxxx

Brandi Maxxxx

(edited)
Speaking of redundancies, I despise the phrase "My biggest pet peeve." I just heard Robert Irvine say it on Restaurant Impossible a few minutes ago. I say you're allowed one "pet" peeve, and all the others are just, you know, peeves.

 

People can have more than one pet animal, so I guess having more than one pet peeve makes some small level of ridiculous sense. And by that logic, I say that older, single women may have as many as thirty.

Edited by Brandi Maxxxx
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Raja

Raja

(edited)

I admit to having a lot to learn in this arena but several things bug me to no end:

 

 

2. Has no one mentioned any of the Kardashian/Jenners yet? Can't believe it.  It's difficult not to wince within ten minutes of listening to ANY of them.  They are totally confused by the use of I, me, him, he, her, or she.  The typical start to any sentence or story is,  "Me and Kendall/Kylie/Khloe (fill in any name). . ."   NONE of them get this right - from the young home-schooled twit to the older supposedly college-educated deadpan twit.   Kris' grammar is slightly better but she bugs me too with her over-the-top descriptions - every event is "magical," North is "delicious," and Kanye's every burp is genius. 

 

Their self-absorption can be amusing for a bit, but watching Kim pose  (at all times, everywhere) and check out her reflection (like a Budgie bird in any mirror or reflective surface) gets to be a bore, especially when the sound must be muted to avoid hearing any of them clobber the English language.  

Well I have only actually seen her in a porn scene.

Edited by Raja
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Portia

Portia

People can have more than one pet animal, so I guess having more than one pet peeve makes some small level of ridiculous sense. And by that logic, I say that older, single women may have as many as thirty.

 

Haha!  I see your point; my annoyance with "pet peeve" assumes that the phrase is defining "pet" as "favorite." 

Portia, you made me snot my tablet! Who'd have thunk that the Grammer Nazis would be the funniest posters on this site?

Oh, I'm full of surprises. Thank you. Sorry about the snot.

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DangerousMinds

DangerousMinds

What bothers me about could of, should of, would of, and for all intensive purposes is that they imply, to me, the users have never read a damn book in their blighted lives. They seem like mistakes made by people who have only heard the phrases and never read them.

For all "intents and purposes."

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Shannon L.

Shannon L.

(edited)

Newscasters strike again.  Last night I heard "There is a lot of wires down there." and, talking about the intense heat here, "How long will it be on?"  If there's an off switch, I wish someone would flick it right about now. 

 

 

What about "deep seeded" instead of "deep seated?" I hear and see this all the time.

Heh.  I never wrote that one out (don't recall seeing much either, and I read a ton) because I wasn't sure.  Seeded kind of makes sense, though, at least to me, so it's not quite as bad as things like "intensive purposes". 

Edited by Shannon L.
Ohwell

Ohwell

I'm watching The Roosevelts:  An Intimate History on PBS right now.  The narrator is Peter Coyote (who has done many narrations for PBS and other shows) and he said the dreaded word "misCHEEvious."   I can't believe that a supposedly intelligent man wouldn't know any better.  I have a headache. 

Portia

Portia

I'm watching The Roosevelts:  An Intimate History on PBS right now.  The narrator is Peter Coyote (who has done many narrations for PBS and other shows) and he said the dreaded word "misCHEEvious."   I can't believe that a supposedly intelligent man wouldn't know any better.  I have a headache.

I feel like I've been hit in the gut.
shapeshifter

shapeshifter

Speaking as a proud and glorious Newfoundlander, you guys are so lucky I don't bust out my Newfinese.  I predict at least one or two aneurysms. :)

I love to hear Newfies talk! Grammatical mistakes only bother me when they are used by people who are otherwise speaking "standard" English.
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Sandman87

Sandman87

This from an expert interviewee on tonight's PBS Newshour regarding American aid for the Ebola outbreak: "We are extremely late to the game; the house has almost burned down, and only now is the cavalry arriving." Metaphors are like drink ingredients; when you mix too many of them together, they make me throw up.

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Brandi Maxxxx

Brandi Maxxxx

Ugh.  I can't stand it when people misuse "myself."  When I used to watch Ghost Hunters, Jason was such a big offender, I almost couldn't stand to hear him talk.  "So Grant and myself hear a noise, and we go to investigate."  The eardrums!  They bleed!!

That seems to be my dad's pet (or pettest) grammar peeve too.

JTMacc99

JTMacc99

My husband and I used to collect signs misusing quotation marks.  It is so prevalent that we became bored with the hobby. 

 

"Fried chicken" this Saturday at town common fair.  

"Free hot dog" with a fill up (at local gas station).

Interestingly, I would be much more concerned if I saw either

 

"Free" hot dog

 

or

 

Free "hot dog"

 

I'd take my chances with "Free Hot Dog" over Free "hot dog" any day.

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Sandman87

Sandman87

Our local newscasters strike again. One of them said this while commenting on the weather this afternoon: "The sky seems so hopeful this morning when you were looking at them." I don't even know where to start with this one. Hell, I don't even know what the "them" was supposed to be. And the best thing about it is that it was the station's News Director, the person who runs the news department, who was speaking.

 

I just noticed that the Super Beta Prostate commercial tells me that taking it will mean that I will have "less urges to urinate at night." The word they're looking for is "fewer" not "less."

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Aquarius

Aquarius

This is, I think, New York Tri-State Area most of all. That said, I doubt it's misunderstood anywhere else.

 

I've been obsessing over how I say it since first reading about Alyssa Milano's pronunciation.  I can't tell if I'm saying "kwar-ters" because i am aware now, but "kore-ters" doesn't sound bad to me, so maybe that is how I naturally say it.  I'm in New Jersey.

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Rick Kitchen

Rick Kitchen

It is NOT a long ROAD to hoe, it's a long ROW.

I heard "supposably" about a dozen times today on Dr. Phil. Just put an icepick in my eardrum and get it over with.

Eta: auto- correct is a bitch in this thread!

 

I was watching a soap opera yesterday with the closed captioning on, and one of the actors kept saying "supposably", and the captioning kept rendering it as "supposedly".

Kromm

Kromm

(edited)

I'm watching the latest installment of The Roosevelts:  An Intimate History.  Apparently, someone got to Peter Coyote.  He was describing their dog, Fala, and called it mischievous--and he pronounced the word correctly.  Yay!

Mis-chev-us vs. Mis-chieve-e-us?

Edited by Kromm
Bastet

Bastet

Poor Peter Coyote (well, had he not brought it on himself).  I had lunch yesterday with a group of friends and it turned out all of us were watching the Roosevelts documentary ... it also turned out all of us are fans of Coyote, especially his voice, but were distracted by that mispronunciation.  I'll be ridiculously pleased by the correction in tonight's offering.

Wings

Wings

(edited)

Could someone help me - I'll be catching up with The Roosevelt's tonight. I have heard mischievous pronounced with three and four syllables, online Websters shows either to be okay. How does Peter Coyote mispronounce?

 

 

Webster adds new pronunciations over time when they become a main stream mistake.  The first definition and pronunciation is the one that has been correct up until people who refused to go with it use it over and over and over and over.

 

They also add to the definitions. Gay, is a good example of that. 

Edited by wings707
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Ohwell

Ohwell

I really don't understand why online Websters could say that either pronunciation is correct.  All you have to do is look at the spelling.  I'm assuming that Websters still acknowledges that the correct spelling is "mischievous."  There is no "i" in the last syllable, "vous."  Therefore, I could never understand how the word was mispronounced in the first place. 

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Wings

Wings

I really don't understand why online Websters could say that either pronunciation is correct.  All you have to do is look at the spelling.  I'm assuming that Websters still acknowledges that the correct spelling is "mischievous."  There is no "i" in the last syllable, "vous."  Therefore, I could never understand how the word was mispronounced in the first place. 

 

 

Because they made it correct with their policy to include "mistakes" that have repeated over a long period of time.  The English language has been changing for centuries and continues.  

Ohwell

Ohwell

(edited)

I know the English language has been changing, but the point of my post is the spelling of the word.  I haven't seen Websters online, but, as I said, if the spelling of the word is the same, then I don't see how anyone could pronounce it "mis-chee-vee-ous." 

 

Edit:  OK, so I went to Websters online:

 

"Usage Discussion of MISCHIEVOUS

A pronunciation \mis-ˈchē-vē-əs\ and a consequent spelling mischievious are of long standing: evidence for the spelling goes back to the 16th century. Our pronunciation files contain modern attestations ranging from dialect speakers to Herbert Hoover. But both the pronunciation and the spelling are still considered nonstandard."

 

I bolded the last sentence. 

Edited by Ohwell
shapeshifter

shapeshifter

(edited)

One last thing: If you go to other online dictionary websites, there's a little microphone icon that you click on to hear the proper pronunciation of the word. On each one of those sites, the voice says "MIS-chie-vous." Not "Mis-CHE-VEE-ous."

Ok, I'm done beating the dead horse. : )

Trigger: Thank God!

The four syllable version sounds wrong to me, but no more wrong than the the flat-a pronunciation of pajamas. I learned at age 10 when moving to the midwest, that the taste of water and milk were different, as was the sound of many words, and even the words themselves, for example, "jelly donut" (or jelly doughnut) on the east coast and "Bismarck" in the midwest. Sometimes it is necessary to use the local vernacular in order to communicate and make alliances.

On TV, should we expect to always hear the most common pronunciation? Was that ever the case? I think in the early days of "talkies" actors probably did all sound the same. They even changed their names to sound more uniformly WASPy. But now we have all kind of accents and dialects, which I believe give flavor to setting and fictional personalities, and are useful to clarify the differences in scene changes and characters.

Still, when a character/actor delivers an entire monologue using the pronunciations to which I am familiar and then throws in a word I would expect to hear differently, it is like hearing a wrong note in a piano solo. In both cases, I twitch a little and then try to forget it.

Trigger: Are you done now?

Edited by shapeshifter
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