Can't s
stand this kind of thing:
he loves his football. she loves her politics. he loves his beer etc etc...
and similarly I hate pluralising
eg. well, when you look at your chelseas, your man uniteds, your liverpools...etc etc
annoying turns of phrase
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QuizMaster
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Matt Vinyl
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Yes, but at least that is grammatically correct - the "the problem is is that" phenomenon is not correct, by contrast.Nixxy wrote:Numerous colleagues at work can't help but blurt out: "Well, what it is is ..."
Most frustrating!
Your example reminds me of that old chestnut: think of a grammatically correct sentence with the word "had" nine times in a row in it...
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Istenem
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i get like sooo narced by all these and more, if you know what i mean:
"passengers awaiting for the xx.yy train to", otherwise intelligent people saying "less" rather than 'fewer', mispronunciation of russian names, black women who say "arks" instead of 'ask', people who say "what" when you know damn well they can hear what you just said and who, halfway through your trudging, laborious repeat, answer the question with an interruption, people who start a conversation with "guess what..?" (impossible syntax), people beating me at word games with disgusting non-words, 'hate' as a noun (it is 'hatred' dear) and the spanish.
i also have a list of banned words in my office (which i have circularized
), top of them is 'quintessential' which, by definition, means like an impossibility and just below is 'unique'. everything is unique; it is impossible to be not unique. ffs.
but it is my job to be a linguistic pedant.
"passengers awaiting for the xx.yy train to", otherwise intelligent people saying "less" rather than 'fewer', mispronunciation of russian names, black women who say "arks" instead of 'ask', people who say "what" when you know damn well they can hear what you just said and who, halfway through your trudging, laborious repeat, answer the question with an interruption, people who start a conversation with "guess what..?" (impossible syntax), people beating me at word games with disgusting non-words, 'hate' as a noun (it is 'hatred' dear) and the spanish.
i also have a list of banned words in my office (which i have circularized
), top of them is 'quintessential' which, by definition, means like an impossibility and just below is 'unique'. everything is unique; it is impossible to be not unique. ffs.but it is my job to be a linguistic pedant.
nobody ever wins on those things.
Yes, the list is long.
NOW THEN, NOW THEN
Dear Jim,
Could you please fix it for me so that I can go about my daily life without ever having to hear an ungrammatical construct I'm especially prone to and what* makes me so jittery, namely these ones/those ones/them ones. I'm starting to knock points off people's IQs.
Dear KO,
I will replace all CCTV cameras with long-range microphones, round up the culprits, and shoot the buggers. And to fix your earlier request to sort out over-surveillance of the citizenry I'll take the microphones down when I've got all 'em pesky Pokemons.
Dear Jim,
Awesome!!! Double bonus!!! Now where's my medal?
Dear KO,
It's in the post as I'm no longer on TV and can't invite you on to a show that doesn't exist.
Dear Jim,
That makes sense. But can you tell me how you'll know when you've, erm, dealt with all those sloven solecists?
Dear KO,
Thinking about it, there seems to be no definite end to the scheme does there. Oh well, that's the price to pay I suppose. Bummer hey! Good luck anyway and watch out what you wish for.
Dear Jim,
Go shove a Marathon up .......
YOU'LL LIKE THIS, NOT A LOT ... NO, WE WON'T
Meanwhile, on the proliferating use of like to mean 'he said'/'she said',
Mr Grammar (I forget his name) also mentioned the use of like in place of 'as though': The grammar fascist had a right go at me, it was like he's never made a mistake before.. Whilst non-standard, according to some sources, this use of like (at least in speech) is not an irritation like the Vicky Pollard-cemented meme has become.
# Correct/standard/formal usage can sometimes be more annoying than
# incorrect/non-standard usage.
# Contexts and curtains anyway.
FROM YOOFIMISM TO EUPHEMISM
Language is fluid though and there will always be points of misusage (and 'correct' usage - Churchill's jest on the supposed rule that sentences should not end with a preposition comes to mind) that lather the passions of those who care about it. The greater concern, however, comes not from ignoramuses (ignorami?) but from the educated mobs who deliberately employ turns of phrase to mislead. I'm tempted (and it is tempting) to make up some pretentious dissertational distinction term such as invidious language abuse. I don't think that's particularly obscurant though, just fancy, so come on down you political charlatans and marketeers.
Take Hillary Clinton (please). She doesn't lie, she merely misspeaks. Her husband leans on a technical definition of the term 'sexual relations' which does not include the 'smoking' and 'lighting' of his manhood as if it were a cigar (unless of course he too misspoke). The US administration does not undertake illegal kidnapping. Why would it? It has a 'legitimate' process which it calls extraordinary rendition. Similarly, the whiter-than-white Whitehouse doesn't advocate the use of torture by the CIA but instead backs the agency's use of enhanced interrogation techniques which has included that of 'waterboarding' which sounds like some fun seaside activity on first hearing.
And from language underplay to hyperbollocks and that >100% mentality of 'Excellence'. The most heinous of them all? Persil Power's super-detergent formula. So powerful was this 'white-than-white' shite that it damaged clothes and they had to pull the product. There's a metaphor in there somewhere.
I'll finish by paraphrasing Philip K. Dick who was mindful of the fact that reality is shaped by language. And whoever manipulates language can manipulate the reality of those who use it. Maybe he just copied Orwell.
See what you've started me on.
With apologies to Jimmy Servile.
* I have the impression of a rise in the careless use of what instead of that: 'the one what got away' rather than 'the one that got away'. Another one for Jim to fix.
NOW THEN, NOW THEN
Dear Jim,
Could you please fix it for me so that I can go about my daily life without ever having to hear an ungrammatical construct I'm especially prone to and what* makes me so jittery, namely these ones/those ones/them ones. I'm starting to knock points off people's IQs.
Dear KO,
I will replace all CCTV cameras with long-range microphones, round up the culprits, and shoot the buggers. And to fix your earlier request to sort out over-surveillance of the citizenry I'll take the microphones down when I've got all 'em pesky Pokemons.
Dear Jim,
Awesome!!! Double bonus!!! Now where's my medal?
Dear KO,
It's in the post as I'm no longer on TV and can't invite you on to a show that doesn't exist.
Dear Jim,
That makes sense. But can you tell me how you'll know when you've, erm, dealt with all those sloven solecists?
Dear KO,
Thinking about it, there seems to be no definite end to the scheme does there. Oh well, that's the price to pay I suppose. Bummer hey! Good luck anyway and watch out what you wish for.
Dear Jim,
Go shove a Marathon up .......
YOU'LL LIKE THIS, NOT A LOT ... NO, WE WON'T
Meanwhile, on the proliferating use of like to mean 'he said'/'she said',
As it happens boys and girls, the resident grammarian on this week's 'Word of Mouth' was discussing this precise usage of like (or not so precise as it happens). In a descriptivist comment upon this replacement he was like "Yeah, well, it does have a distancing effect, a half-heartedness to it, more sketchy, less direct and what-have-you." (I may have misquoted him a little there.)Matt Vinyl wrote:So does it mean that they never actually do / are anything? They were just like it?
Mr Grammar (I forget his name) also mentioned the use of like in place of 'as though': The grammar fascist had a right go at me, it was like he's never made a mistake before.. Whilst non-standard, according to some sources, this use of like (at least in speech) is not an irritation like the Vicky Pollard-cemented meme has become.
# Correct/standard/formal usage can sometimes be more annoying than
# incorrect/non-standard usage.
# Contexts and curtains anyway.
FROM YOOFIMISM TO EUPHEMISM
Language is fluid though and there will always be points of misusage (and 'correct' usage - Churchill's jest on the supposed rule that sentences should not end with a preposition comes to mind) that lather the passions of those who care about it. The greater concern, however, comes not from ignoramuses (ignorami?) but from the educated mobs who deliberately employ turns of phrase to mislead. I'm tempted (and it is tempting) to make up some pretentious dissertational distinction term such as invidious language abuse. I don't think that's particularly obscurant though, just fancy, so come on down you political charlatans and marketeers.
Take Hillary Clinton (please). She doesn't lie, she merely misspeaks. Her husband leans on a technical definition of the term 'sexual relations' which does not include the 'smoking' and 'lighting' of his manhood as if it were a cigar (unless of course he too misspoke). The US administration does not undertake illegal kidnapping. Why would it? It has a 'legitimate' process which it calls extraordinary rendition. Similarly, the whiter-than-white Whitehouse doesn't advocate the use of torture by the CIA but instead backs the agency's use of enhanced interrogation techniques which has included that of 'waterboarding' which sounds like some fun seaside activity on first hearing.
And from language underplay to hyperbollocks and that >100% mentality of 'Excellence'. The most heinous of them all? Persil Power's super-detergent formula. So powerful was this 'white-than-white' shite that it damaged clothes and they had to pull the product. There's a metaphor in there somewhere.
I'll finish by paraphrasing Philip K. Dick who was mindful of the fact that reality is shaped by language. And whoever manipulates language can manipulate the reality of those who use it. Maybe he just copied Orwell.
See what you've started me on.
With apologies to Jimmy Servile.
* I have the impression of a rise in the careless use of what instead of that: 'the one what got away' rather than 'the one that got away'. Another one for Jim to fix.
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QuizMaster
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