English had a big French spelling phase, so a bunch of our words have entirely different phonetic sounds vs their spelling. I constantly mess this up. Go ahead, make me spell bourgoise or bureacracy the first time. Nope failed again! Conscious/Conscience are definitely in that category.
For me I'm not sure if Math or Maths are correct
Me with a time machine: going back and shooting William the Bastard in the head to save the English language
You're not a real leftist if you can spell bourgeiouiuiouiise on the first try
First off, amazing username.
Anyway, a tip to spell bourgeoisie that someone here recommended was to sing it to the tune of the Mickey Mouse song. Which, embarrassingly, is the only way I can spell it.
B O U ... R G E ... O I S I E! Bourgeoisie! Bourgeoisie! Who steals the surplus value from you and me? B O U R G E O I S I E!
And then yeah if you need bourgeois just lop off the final I E
Fun page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences
North Americans contract 'mathematics' to 'math', most other places shorten it to 'maths'. I don't even know if one is more "correct" or if the entire word 'mathematics' was a mistake. Honestly, the North Americans might be right about this one.
"Maybe if society had morals there wouldn't be so many minorities in prison."
Funny enough, that's correct, just not in the way the person probably intended. The carceral state and institutional racism are indeed signs of a deeply immoral society.
There is almost no scenario in which using the Oxford comma fails to improve sentence clarity.
People are just too lazy to use punctuation for its intended purpose, I guess.
both the oxford comma and the lack of an oxford comma can introduce ambiguity in different situations.
both, the, oxford, comma, and, the, lack, of, an, oxford, comma, can, introduce, ambiguity, in, different, situations,.,
"could care less"
THIS
"it means the same thing!" they say
IF COULD CARE LESS MEANS THE SAME AS COULD NOT CARE LESS THEN THE WORD "NOT" IS ENTIRELY MEANINGLESS
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAThe fact 99% of people use the word "logical" to mean "reasonable" because they literally don't know what logic is.
I am irrationally irritated when people describe something as "addicting" rather than "addictive". I'm not even sure it's technically incorrect, and language is a fluid thing so this shouldn't irritate me. But I still have to consciously tell myself to not be annoyed by it.
In my defense I don't think I've ever actually corrected anybody, I just stew inside my own skull
It feels like an Americanism to me. I pretty much only see it on the internet
I really hate the misuse of the word "pretentious." A lot of people use it to mean something like "pompous" when it's root is "pretense." It's only pretentious if someone is dissembling about how much they know about something. If someone actually knows as much about a subject as the appear to then it doesn't matter how annoying they are, it's still not pretentious.
And that's my very specific pet peeve. And having this opinion is itself extremely annoying, but it's still not pretentious goddamnit
A pretense doesn't have to be in relation to knowledge that someone holds. A pretense could be someone acting as if they're more dignified or esteemed than they are, which is practically the definition of pompous.
I believe everyone should have the right to dignity no matter who they are
As do I, but I'm using 'more dignified' in the sense of claiming to have a higher social status.
A bit pretentious eh?
Fun fact, pretentious and pretense are separated by more than 300 years.
If you have, I've already forgotten and forgiven you
Corpo-speak e-mails from bloviating, self-important middle managers who regurgitate such turns of phrase as "at this time" and/or "in a timely manor [sic]" make my eye twitch. I can overlook a lot of the "synergizing our thought leaders with operational tempo" jargon salad, but the aforementioned phrases trigger my fight-or-flight response, probably because they reek of petty tyrant small business night manager mentality and bring me back to the headspace of dealing with bosses like that when I was a kid.
I also once had to work with an IT project manager who insisted on pronouncing the word "processes" as if it had a long-E vowel sound in the plural ("pro-cess-eez"). It would derail my train of thought every fucking time.
Also also once had a direct supervisor who would throw around "irregardless" almost daily.
"_ and I" hypercorrection, or maybe reanalysis if we're being more descriptivist.
It's an interesting subject, and I'm kind of split on it as an amateur linguist, but as an English speaker it sticks out like a sore thumb to me. I think English prescriptivism has pushed the order of pronouns in collective noun/pronoun phrases too much (eg. he and I, not I and him), and people have started to reanalyze the phrase as a noun phrase in itself, but not everyone so it sounds weird to a slice of the population. Then there's disjunctive pronouns that throws a wrench in the works.
Note: asterisk means it sounds ungrammatical to speakers of the language in linguistics (me in this case), no asterisk means okay to say. Also later correct reformulation means it's less common but still correct:
Alice, Bob and I are going.
*I are going.
I am going.
Me, Alice, and Bob are going.
*Me are going.
*Me am going.
Want to join me?
*Want to join I?
*Want to join Alice, Bob and I? <-- this is the one that annoys me, but you might think it's fine
Want to join Alice, Bob and me?
Alice and Bob aren't going probably, but me, I'm going for sure
Alice and Bob aren't going probably, but I, I'm going for sure
It's me who is going
It's me who am going <-- this is pushing it
It's I who is going
It's I who am going <-- actually acceptable, but I still do a double take
Alice and Bob like to go more than me
Alice and Bob like to go more than I
I was interviewed by a linguist about my other native language once and it broke my ability to say stuff in that language for a day or two. It's only fair I get to do that to an Anglophone too
I hate linguistic prescriptionism and believe all English is fine if people understand what you mean, so things like this just gives me ammo to bother others in the future.
I could care less about conscious vs conscious before, but now that I know it slightly annoys others I'll never spell it with the e ever again
What's your opinion on the movement to reintroduce singular they into public awareness? Do you hate it for being prescriptivist?
Chauncer and Shakespeare use singular they, while the push for gender neutral "he" was much later, in the 1700s and 1800s. So from this view singular they is descriptive of how language has been used for hundreds of years, while arguing that it's a mistake or wrong would be prescriptive. And this is just anecdotal, but everyone where I live uses singular they (at least for unspecified gender people), even my grandma who uses old words and has heated elder moments.
But even if singular they usage was brand new, I wouldn't consider advocacy as a form of prescriptivism. Prescriptivism usually comes from places of authority over language, like education and publishing, and states what's right and wrong to use. I don't see he-or-she being defined as incorrect by advocates of singular they, just clunky and exclusive. Not so much "this is wrong" as "we can do better than that". An appeal for niceness and understanding, rather than an accusation of improper language.
People stop using words and phrases all the time, both intentionally or just picked up from their environment. Some words become offensive and others become disused, leading to them falling out of favor, and new words are coined all the time, sometimes as direct replacements. Just the inevitable evolution of language.
Wikipedia does state that it may include politically correct language under the label, but I don't normally see that used in linguistic discussions in my experience. I would be hesitant to include that under it, since it seems to kinda stretch the definition to the point of not-super-usefulness where asking someone to stop saying slurs or correcting your name could be seen as prescriptivism. But of course, language is determined by its speakers, so if you would include those under it go ahead.
Sorry that was pretty rambly, but basically I don't think its prescriptivist to ask someone to change their language to not hurt others.
Grammer is really quirky and I could literally talk about it for hours. The affect that grammer has on all of us is really something to behold, it really peaks my interest. Some people "go nucular" when talking about grammer but you and I are on the same page I think.
The reframing of "politics" to whatever people think it means. My cliffnotes of "politics" is "engaging with social relations through the lens of power", not "stuff people in parliament do" or "minority emancipation " or whatever other extremely reductive definition people use.
I keep class signifiers out of conversation, but things like "eckspecially" or "nucular" annoy me. But that's my dad's elitist elocution coming through.
X-of instead of X-have.
"Well actually ", "Consider" and other codewords that suggest I am about to receive a take of breathtaking innanity and self-importance
X-of instead of X-have.
That's because people aren't taught couldn't've, shouldn't've, and wouldn't've, which is what they're trying to spell.
I know. It bothers me. I don't say anything because policing people's language variations is elitist
Using "whilst" where "while" would work fine. Feels like the grammatical equivalent of plastic cutlery spray-painted chrome
Still weird to me how British people would use "whilst," but don't use "gotten." I suppose they would feel the same for USians since "gotten" was already considered old-fashioned before being picked up by USians again.
I'm just like a fancy British guy fr