Things that make my teeth hurt!

[Wanderer2604]

It hurts my teeth when people can't decide whether "i" or "me" is correct, so to avoid appearing uneducated and maybe to sound more sophisticated, they say "myself" instead. It usually comes across as very pretentious.

[SteveSueMac]

Originally Posted by Denisemdb60

As a former grant writer, those things bother me as well.

But... I try to keep in mind my husband. He is guilty of all stated offenses. Yet, if we have a flat the plumbing doesn't work, you are lost in the woods or in danger rock climbing, he is the man you want with you... hands down! He will save your butt, fix anything that is broken and do it all with a smile without a disparaging word sent your way.

We all have our strengths.

You win the interwebs today! LOVELY post!!

[Rich W]

Originally Posted by Wanderer2604

It hurts my teeth when people can't decide whether "i" or "me" is correct, so to avoid appearing uneducated and maybe to sound more sophisticated, they say "myself" instead. It usually comes across as very pretentious.

Well, "myself" is usually used incorrectly. "myself" is a reflexive pronoun, used for emphasis, as in "I, myself, wouldn't do that". Saying "contact Bob, Ted or myself with your problem", is incorrect. Take out Bob and Ted and it becomes "contact myself with your problem". So it should be "me", "Contact me with your problem."

For I or me, just take one of them out and listen to how it sounds. "Bob and me went to the store"...."me went to the store". So it's "I"....I went to the store.

Probably more than most wanted to know....sorry, sorry....

[Life is a Highway]

Geez I taut all dem posts were more gooder.

Just what we DONT need IS a grammar review.

Give us all a break please ! Big thumbs, Arthritic fingers Siri phone correct don’t let it get to ya. We are just people trying to help each other.

[GCinSC2]

I think we're all trying to have fun here and take a poke at fat finger syndrome, auto correct, spell check and all the rest but one guy at work really ticked me off. Let me vent on this.

He was an ESL and had authority over some stuff and one of his his way or no way was complete butchery of the English language grammar rules.

Punctuation became decoration and spices added to technical documents. All of those goofy unused keyboard symbols were like extra colors on Bob Ross's painting color pallet. And they were used like a drunk chef making gumbo or chili. And this blatant bastardizing of written English got published.

I can easily overlook a post that the fast typing maybe on a device leads to huh, what are they saying? or what's that word. But published technical directions or bulletins, no forgiveness there.

I bet this thread could wander quite a bit. Like if you're asking ME what color to use or how to decorate this or that, just put me in my place cause that ain't my bailiwick, point me back to stuff that needs campfire cooking or wrenches or a meter for diagnostics, that's more comfortable for me.

Carry on and we have 16 guests looking over our collective shoulders as I type.

Gary

[Atwebs]

Be patient, understand spell check is there to humble everyone and hope that someone teaches our children how to use apostrophes! Not only that, rampant English abuse is audible all the time and everywhere...my own personal pet peeve? Not really the question "Do you mind if I ...(fill in the blank), but the answer" "Yes, go ahead!".

That one makes me crazy, causes my eyeballs to roll around in my head.

...Ah well, just shows there is a lot to learn out there.

[bweybright]

Jordan Almonds make my teeth hurt but I like them...then going to the dentist to fix the damage hurts.... Oh weight, we are talking about writin not what really makes your teeth hurt.
Couldn't resist jumping in the pool, especially as I have a family member getting a PhD in English Literature so I am very familiar with grammar and language use correction.

[Protagonist]

Originally Posted by emelaich01

It isn't ain't

"Ain't" is a perfectly good contraction, from Scots Gaelic. It's short for "ain not," which is how Scotsmen say "are not," "am not," or "is not." And lest one try to say that Scots Gaelic has no place in the English language, remember that "Auld Lang Syne" is still a traditional New Year's song.

But on a less pedantic note, as long as the correct meaning is still conveyed, misspellings and incorrect punctuation don't bother me. Not much, anyway. But please, don't get me started on people who actually SAY "hashtag (something)" when they speak, or that type using "r8" for "rate," or "b4" for "before," or "ru" for "are you" or "ty" for "thank you." Twitter will spell the death of spelling AND grammar!

[OTRA15]

U2?

[Moodywelman]

Had I any idea this thread would be so much fun I would have started it long ago.

[markdoane]

Originally Posted by Moodywelman

Had I any idea this thread would be so much fun I would have started it long ago.

Yeah. Lot’s of people take this way too serious.

[Gene]

This is not a funny post. English is a very plastic language. It does not have the same hard and fast rules that made studying Latin an agony 60+ years ago in high school. Irregular verbs are so common they seem regular. English spelling is very difficult given the many different sounds English letters have and the lack if accents to guide us.

English is a combination of Teutonic and Romance languages and thus we have far more words than any other language, and quite different approaches in grammar forced into something that never has stopped evolving. I never was good a learning to speak other languages, but I was good at seeing commonalities and learning about English from other languages. I am now glad I took two years of Latin, although I hated it at the time. I have a good ear for grammar, so in elementary school I never paid attention to grammar lessons and still got it right, but Latin helped me understand what I had heard. Compared to Romance languages, English verbs seem simple, but the totality of English is very complex and full of contradictions.

I too am concerned by the disappearing apostrophe. It does clarify things. But we don't get rid of definite articles even though they are unnecessary too. Do we need plural nouns? We usually use "s" though words like "men" change internally. Declensions in English are certainly far simply than Latin, but do we need any endings at all? "Many house" says the same things "houses". Many languages have no plurals or definite articles. Capital letters are disappearing too because of computers and laziness. But Teutonic languages have even more capital letters and we get along fine without most of them.

English, on one hand, tends to simply itself because of internal contradictions, but those same contradictions also can complicate things as the language changes. It is a very dynamic language and certainly creative wiring is easier with all those words, irregularities and fluidity of spelling and grammar. My 8th grade teacher back in 1953-54 used to lecture us on how improper it was to say "swell" when something was wonderful. The use of that word as slang was disappearing by the early 1950's, but Miss Grundy (I can't remember her real name, but it was pretty close to that) never noticed since she was locked into the 1920's. There was some irony in her rigidness since the problem had already resolved itself years before. She was a language Nazi.

We all know how to spell thousands of words and some how to spell tens of thousands and maybe more. That amazes me (maybe it is possible to read Chinese with all those little pictures). In English we have to memorize spellings much more than other languages because of the irregularities, so misspelling should be better accepted. Yeh, I don't like to read about a truck's "breaks" either, but in the grand scheme of things, so what? And English gives so many opportunities for creative writing.

[OTRA15]

Originally Posted by Moodywelman

Had I any idea this thread would be so much fun I would have started it long ago.

Your rite!

Peter

[Landshark]

Gene (post #53) is correct, and to add a little more detail that explains the complexity of English (OK, TMI), the original language of England was that of the Angles, the resident tribe. At some point--forgotten the date--the Saxons, a Germanic tribe, moved in from the continent and the two languages merged to become Anglo-Saxon, or Old English, which is as a foreign language to us today. Then, just to complicate things further, the French conquered England and ruled for 400 years, thus adding a huge number of French words and constructions to English, not to mention relegating Anglo-Saxon to a language of serfs and therefore not worth teaching for those 400 years.

Is it any wonder that English is so irregular?? And while English-speakers are mostly very flexible about adding new words and simplifying spelling and grammar, keep in mind that if we are too flexible and allow our language to change too fast, we lose greatly in clarity of communication, which we can see already, I think, in the abbreviations that have become common in texting and through that to ordinary written English: TMI? WTF? IMHO? etc.

So while I made gentle fun of those whose teeth hurt, they do have a good point in terms of keeping English what it is supposed to be: accurate communication among us quarrelsome humans.

[Gene]

Cerberus, wrap one of your heads around this: actually I have nothing, but I liked writing that.

I had college English professor who could read Chaucer in Middle English and it sounded vaguely close to French and was quite a pretty and musical language. I could not understand anything, but it was easier to read in Middle English, but not very easy. It was a much softer language than today's English, perhaps because of the Great Vowel Shift (don't ask). How often can I write of the Great Vowel Shift? And add some Norse to the mix as the Norsemen captured a number of coastal areas a millennium or so ago. After Scotland and Northern Ireland and maybe even Wales leave the UK, will the remaining English paint themselves blue again? Anyway, Middle English sounded so pleasing that maybe we should go back to that and never change again? it might be harder to argue.

Long ago I had a girl friend who was studying graduate linguistics. Her feeling was that languages inevitably change and what is most important is klaritee. Ironically the spell checker keeps trying to correct my tortured speelings.

I'd better break this.

[Landshark]

Originally Posted by Gene

Cerberus, wrap one of your heads around this: actually I have nothing, but I liked writing that.

It takes all three of my heads to remember all this stuff! And I have strong elements of your Miss Grundy: she objected to "swell," I object to "awesome" (which thankfully seems to be on the way out, but is being replaced), and "sweet."

You do yourself an injustice; it is my dog who is named "Cerberus," and you would be surprised that only about 3 people of the 30-40 who have been introduced to him recognize what Cerberus is, and 2 of those associate it with Harry Potter, no further back than J.K. Rowling. You have a good eddikashun my friend.

[mefly2]

Aye, two ... Have we really dumbed down our education to this? ... YES ...says DW.

['55 Airlight]

Originally Posted by Protagonist

"Ain't" is a perfectly good contraction, from Scots Gaelic. It's short for "ain not," which is how Scotsmen say "are not," "am not," or "is not."

In Ireland I was once answered with "I'm a volunteer, amn't I?", a kind of contraction of "am I not?"

Michael,
(Call Me A Vintage Aluminum Trailerist)

[batman]

My grandmother was an elementary school teacher. She was the grammar police around my house. I have the scarred knuckles to prove it, lol. However I have come to realize most people now do not seem care about proper grammar when writing or speaking. I gave up trying to correct the young guys I work with," where is bob AT" they can't even tell time on an analog clock. Ask a millennial to meet you at a quarter after the hour and see the look on their face. Is that 25 minutes after? My spelling is not as good as I would like, thank goodness for spell check, there should be "grammar check" but that's an other thread.

However, I couldn't let an opportunity to stir up a little controversy slip by. So the thing that makes my teeth hurt these days are folks who misuse terminology like, Boondocking. It is kind of like using a grammatical error over and over. There, Their, They're. "Lets go boondocking at Walmart!" That would be fine if the Walmart parking lot was a mile out of town, in the boondocks! Once again some folks just don't know any better. Maybe proper use of terminology is going the way of the proper use of grammar, Take any word you want and change the meaning to suit you immediate need. Maybe it is as simple as, people like to say Boondocking.

-Dennis

[MissingLink5]

Originally Posted by turk123

I have issues when I write. Investing in a subscription to Grammarly was an excellent investment!

https://www.grammarly.com/

To err is human; to edit, divine.

Maybe you have far too much time on your hands! Let our Airstream owners enjoy the great site without worrying about grammer!