Abuse of the English language

Surely this whole thread is based around you trying to be clever? Hypocrite.

TSR users, I am creating a thread as I am very irritated by the lowering of standards when it comes to the English language. Even on TV there are those presenters who sound ridiculous. I would like to be reassured that some people have sense. It is quite shocking and I weep for the future of the country if this continues. My biggest pet hates are:

- The mispronunciation of the letter H. It is aitch. It always has been and always will be. Check the dictionary. People say it is down to the region, when actually that is a load of nonsense. It is very annoying when presenters say "live in haitch D".

- When people add the word 'ink' to words such as everything, anything, something, nothing etc.

- How some idiots say was instead of were. For example, "you was", "we was", "they was" etc. . It's disgusting. Alternatively, when people say were instead of was. For example, "I were".

- The use of 'them' instead of 'those'. For example, "them houses".

- The mispronunciation of quite easy and simple words.

- "Your" instead of "you're" when shortening it from "you are".

- Annoyingly common voices.

- When people type using language that's only acceptable for texting.

I have many others, but those are at the top of my list with regards to the abuse of English. It is a problem. If I have children I don't want them to be encouraged by the negative influences around them. What is even more annoying is when people are teased for having nice accents.

Please share your pet hates when it comes to speech, pronunciation, grammar etc. How far does everyone else agree? Discuss.

"There are all kinds of pedants around with more time to read and imitate Lynne Truss and John Humphrys than to write poems, love-letters, novels and stories it seems. They whip out their Sharpies and take away and add apostrophes from public signs, shake their heads at prepositions which end sentences and mutter at split infinitives and misspellings, but do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with joy at language? Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss? Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it? Do they use language to seduce, charm, excite, please, affirm and tickle those they talk to? Do they? I doubt it. They’re too farting busy sneering at a greengrocer’s less than perfect use of the apostrophe. Well sod them to Hades. They think they’re guardians of language. They’re no more guardians of language than the Kennel Club is the guardian of dogkind.

The worst of this sorry bunch of semi-educated losers are those who seem to glory in being irritated by nouns becoming verbs. How dense and deaf to language development do you have to be? If you don’t like nouns becoming verbs, then for heaven’s sake avoid Shakespeare who made a doing-word out of a thing-word every chance he got. He TABLED the motion and CHAIRED the meeting in which nouns were made verbs. New examples from our time might take some getting used to: ‘He actioned it that day’ for instance might strike some as a verbing too far, but we have been sanctioning, envisioning, propositioning and stationing for a long time, so why not ‘action’? ‘Because it’s ugly,’ whinge the pedants. It’s only ugly because it’s new and you don’t like it. Ugly in the way Picasso, Stravinsky and Eliot were once thought ugly and before them Monet, Mahler and Baudelaire. Pedants will also claim, with what I am sure is eye-popping insincerity and shameless disingenuousness, that their fight is only for ‘clarity’. This is all very well, but there is no doubt what ‘Five items or less’ means, just as only a dolt can’t tell from the context and from the age and education of the speaker, whether ‘disinterested’ is used in the ‘proper’ sense of non-partisan, or in the ‘improper’ sense of uninterested. No, the claim to be defending language for the sake of clarity almost never, ever holds water. Nor does the idea that following grammatical rules in language demonstrates clarity of thought and intelligence of mind. Having said this, I admit that if you want to communicate well for the sake of passing an exam or job interview, then it is obvious that wildly original and excessively heterodox language could land you in the soup. I think what offends examiners and employers when confronted with extremely informal, unpunctuated and haywire language is the implication of not caring that underlies it. You slip into a suit for an interview and you dress your language up too. You can wear what you like linguistically or sartorially when you’re at home or with friends, but most people accept the need to smarten up under some circumstances – it’s only considerate. But that is an issue of fitness, of suitability, it has nothing to do with correctness. There no right language or wrong language any more than are right or wrong clothes. Context, convention and circumstance are all."

If Stephen Fry has nothing against it, then you're in no position to either.

http://www.stephenfry.com/2008/11/04/dont-mind-your-language…/

How far does everyone else agree?

Pronouncing the letter H as 'haitch' is like pronouncing the letter W as 'wouble you'.

- The mispronunciation of the letter H. It is aitch. It always has been and always will be. Check the dictionary. People say it is down to the region, when actually that is a load of nonsense. It is very annoying when presenters say "live in haitch D".

Are you joking?

Alas, I am not joking; it is a crazy scenario and would not happen, because we are animals with developed brains that mean we understand that to be successful in this world that the human race as a whole has created for us, and so we would not let a breakdown of communication, such as this, occur and hence why we do follow the 'rules' of the English language. Nonetheless, theoretically, if we all used our own invention of what grammar, spelling and pronunciation should be, eventually we would lose the ability to communicate. I probably didn't communicate this very well. I should have maybe used my ability as a human being to qualify myself more accurately. I'm sorry.

So you still pronounce the "h" in "why"?

No, see here I was going to explain more, but thought that would just be too long. Again, an error. There are certain conventions about how we pronounce words that people are taught, such as not pronouncing the 'h' in why, (although some (arguably those who have 'perfect' elocution) do pronounce the 'h'), but generally, if you see a letter in a word, you take into account the effect it has upon other letters in the word and it will affect the way you pronounce it. Otherwise it wouldn't be there.


Nice slippery slope argument there. You're saying that we should all speak "properly" so more people get into uni?

It may have elements of a slippery slope argument, but it also has many elements of the truth. And I would argue that this is taken slightly out of context. No where did I say that more people should be going to Uni - infact I believe that fewer should as in many cases I believe that an apprentice-type qualification/training would be far more useful for many professions (although I am aware that in the modern world they NEED the uni qualification to get the job, I don't think they should have to). But the fact of the matter is that if a Uni was interviewing two candidates that were equal in every other way, but one spoke 'properly' and the other spoke with a 'common' accent and there was only one place they could offer, in the vast majority of cases, the one who spoke properly would get it. I know it's not fair, but it's reality. And not correcting people when they are not pronouncing things correctly/using the correct grammar can only be harmful to a student's future.


Connexions is a word! It's also (I've just looked it up) the "proper" way to spell "connection" as it derives from the Latin "connexio".

Aw STFU OP. I might have a common accent but I'm still smarter than you and your petty little ****ing threads.

i'd much rather speak to a funny person with an unusual dialect and regional accent than speak with a tin-eared bore like yourself. i recommend you find a job that doesn't require you to write anything. have mercy on us all.

I can't stand americanisations... like color, or favor, or realize. And what's even more annoying is the fact that colour, favour and realise end up underlined in red when I type them into this quick reply box. I mean, really? Can we not forget that it was the English who spoke English before the Americans?

RP and the Queen's English are the most desirable accents.

I hate it when people:



use unnecessary hyphens,



fail to use question marks when they're necessary,



and just generally write in bad style.