The Murder of the English Language

[Alex De Kok]

i.e. used when e.g is meant. Rattles my cage every time.

i.e. = that is

e.g. = for example

Got it? Good. Now f**king remember!

Alex

 

[OhMissScarlett]

Here are a few that seem to crop up when I've overheard my mom talking to her redneck friends in the store. Actually, a woman we know used both of these in the same sentence, which both horrified and oddly impressed me.

Ammonia instead of pneumonia. Example: "The baby had ammonia," What the fuck was the baby doing with ammonia? Don't her parents watch her?

Ambliance instead of ambulance. Example: "The baby had ammonia, so they took her to the hospital in an ambliance,"

My boyfriend and his construction worker friends, when talking about telling someone off, seem to say: "I ate their ass out about it," rather than most of us would say "I chewed their ass out about it,". They don't seem to understand that they're implying that they just performed a sexual act on someone.

 

[minsue]

I have a friend who says wasn't in place of didn't in one particular phrase. As in, "I wasn't used to be a brunette." Somehow, I find that charming.

I must admit, I was moved to yell at the radio while driving to work listening a government official being interviewed on NPR repeatedly saying complexify instead of complicate. Then the interviewer started saying it. I thought my head was going to explode.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

My father-in-law's big on "irregardless". I haven't the heart to tell him.

Feb-you-ary always gets me too, but I think that's a lost cause.

On the South side, I ran into a lot of "been being", as in "Oh, I've been being out of work for a year now."

---dr.M.

 

[Pure]

In cold climates, it's not just the temperature, but the wind that matters, if you're to stay warm.

Here, the weather man/woman commonly gives a 'Wind Chill' factor-- ie. it will feel (and be) like 20 below, when the temperture is only, say 10 below.

My friend always calls this the "windshield" factor.

 

[carsonshepherd]

I must admit, I was moved to yell at the radio while driving to work listening a government official being interviewed on NPR repeatedly saying complexify instead of complicate. Then the interviewer started saying it. I thought my head was going to explode.

I actually like complexify. It strikes me in a certain way...
We've started saying electricianer instead of electrician, I have to remind myself not to!

I almost forgot the worst one; the one that gets me every time. And we are talking people with medical degrees say this:

mirra

translate: mirror. I could understand maybe "meer", but "mirra?"
Ugh. And Heel instead of hill.

 

[BlackShanglan]

My father-in-law's big on "irregardless". I haven't the heart to tell him.

Oh dear God. *shudder* My personal nemesis. My father uses it when he wishes to torment me. It usually prefaces his unshakeable fallback position when faced with facts to which he has an instinctive opposition: "Well, I just think that ..." As in, "Well, irregardless, I just think that there was religion taught in the schools when you were young, and that's what's wrong with the schools today." No amount of factual evidence is capable of penetrating the amazing bulwark of this defense.

It took me some time to get used to the English use of the word "pressurize" - or at least, what one assumes might be the proper use of the word given its application by BBC staff, although they do make plenty of their own slips. In England, the word appears to be used in the same way that people in the United States would use the verb "pressure" - i.e., they describe a vocal minority as "pressurizing" the government to make concessions. This is comical to American observers, of course, as for us the verb "pressurize" generally involves inflating things. Look out, Prime Minister Blair is pressurized and about to blow!

In related insanity, I still remember making the mistake of explaining to my students that poetry could be used as mnemonic device. On their tests, a number of them dutifully recorded its role as a "pneumatic device."

Shanglan

 

[carsonshepherd]

Prime Minister Blair is pressurized and about to blow!

So that's why he always has that pained expression on his face!

 

[millennium_bard]

I hate it when someone uses axe instead of ask.
As in "Hey man, let me axe you something."

 

[carsonshepherd]

Oh! Oh!

This is the best one yet. There needs to be some kind of award for these; and the winner would be my boyfriend's mom.

Disney World is in "Hernando", Florida.

Not to be confused with Hernando, Mississippi?

 

[cloudy]

In Mississippi they almost speak their own language (Sorry, Colly - you know I love you).

an RC cola is an "arrah see"

and you don't have a friend come get you and take you to the story, they "carry" you there.

skripes = stripes

skroller = stroller

 

[OhMissScarlett]

Over the weekend, I stepped on a sliver of glass and it was in my foot for awhile before I could get it all out. While I was hobbling around, I recounted the story of how it happened to my younger cousin. She told me: "You should really go to the hospital and get some antibodies, it could be infested."

 

[SlickTony]

they "carry" you there.

They carry folks places in Texas, too.

 

[cantdog]

My father was annoyed at all the earnest young lefties I was hanging out with as a teenager. He called them suede-o intellectuals.

At first, I imagined he was doing it to annoy, but he just didn't know. It's one of those you read but seldom hear.

 

[carsonshepherd]

My father was annoyed at all the earnest young lefties I was hanging out with as a teenager. He called them suede-o intellectuals.

At first, I imagined he was doing it to annoy, but he just didn't know. It's one of those you read but seldom hear.

That's another good one. I gotta be careful or I'll start picking up some of these like I have "electricianer".

 

[BlackShanglan]

He called them suede-o intellectuals.

Wins my vote for the "Freestyle Competitve Irony" competition.

Shanglan

 

[cantdog]

Yeah, we thought so, too. Delicious, isn't it?

 

[Windblown]

As someone who spent their formative years in the South, all I can say is... Yankees have some reather unique hangups when it comes to grammar. Allow me to explain what I have come to call the Law of Conservation of R's.

Part 1: An R at the end of a word or following the letter A may be dropped or replaced with the letter H at will.

Example: The infamous phrase "I pahked the cah in the yahd in front of my gahden."

Part 2: An R thus saved can then be inserted in other words.

Example: The one that comes to mind at this late (early?) hour is "drawring", but there are many others.

To think, this region actually won the War of Northern Aggression...

 

[cantdog]

I agree, in an abstract sense.

Too many of these examples are simply renditions of regional speech and regional pronunciations. Those are completely acceptable, and not in any way mispronunciations or malapropisms.

Dilatate, orientate, suede-o, irregardless, ammonia for pneumonia, that sort of thing-- those are demonstrably wrong. They deserve the fun we poke at them, if not the ire some of us seem to feel.

But mere regional speech variations like woof for wolf, cah for car-- there's nothing wrong with that stuff. People are just showing themselves up when they mock the regional speech of people from other parts of the English-speaking world. Soda, tonic, pop, and so on, used region by region for the same thing, or carrying folks as remarked upon above-- that too, is regional speech.

 

[Pure]

millenium:

axe (which I'd spell 'aks') is well known Black English. I believe it can stand respectably as a dialect, since it occurs among educated speakers.

cant had talked well about this. there are regionalisms like INsurance for inSURance, and I believe 'carry' would count, as cited by Cloudy, after all, a car carries passengers, as does a train. By taking you in a car, I 'carry' you there. The Engineer is in charge of carrying the passengers to their destination.

 

[OhMissScarlett]

I agree, in an abstract sense.

Too many of these examples are simply renditions of regional speech and regional pronunciations. Those are completely acceptable, and not in any way mispronunciations or malapropisms.

Dilatate, orientate, suede-o, irregardless, ammonia for pneumonia, that sort of thing-- those are demonstrably wrong. They deserve the fun we poke at them, if not the ire some of us seem to feel.

But mere regional speech variations like woof for wolf, cah for car-- there's nothing wrong with that stuff. People are just showing themselves up when they mock the regional speech of people from other parts of the English-speaking world. Soda, tonic, pop, and so on, used region by region for the same thing, or carrying folks as remarked upon above-- that too, is regional speech.

I try to only mock the people who live in the same region as me and I openly admit I am no better. Just today I found myself asking my son if he intended to drink the rest of his "sody" instead of soda or pop or coke or whatever.

 

[cantdog]

There you touch upon a rich source of uniquely American words and phrases, with "sody." The rough men who guided the '49ers west-- Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Zeb Pike-- belonged to a class of backwoodsmen called mountain men, among other names. They had lived many years in the vast empty west before the settlers got around to putting together their trains of conestogas.

During that time, their exposure to English speakers was rare, and only to each other. They held rendezvous in the mountains together, to keep that contact and swap their experiences and knowledge-- and trade their goods-- with one another.

They developed their own speech, a sort of pidgin. The usual name for it among etymologists today is Plug-a-plew. (A plug of t'baccy could be bought with a "plew," which means a skin, a pelt, fur stretched and ready for market.)

It is when '49 rolled around and these men became reintegrated with ordinary American English speakers that the enrichment occurred. The Plug-a-plew word "gal" and the English "girl" both remain in American speech today, for instance, but they have different connotations, even though they both refer to young women. When you speak of a gal you mean a certain sort of girl. It gives you a new nuance.

There are hundreds of these words. And there is a certain color to be had stringing those Plug-a-plew words together. People who talked in that colorful way were more common when I was born. You'd see that way of talking mocked for humor's sake in magazine articles and stories, and films, too. No one would have mocked it if there was nothing left to mock. Backwoods speech persists even now, but there aren't a lot of people doing it. Television and radio have homogenized all regional variants to some extent.

 

[snooper]

As your President would say "English is betterificated when is is translexicated across our Atlantic into proper English."

 

[SensualCealy]

"It took me a few seconds to realise what he was asking. And then a few more seconds to control myself and not laugh out loud. He's a boy of the metric age and pounds and ounces mean nothing to him.

Oz and lb. Ounce and pound."

Too funny! My daughter did something quite similar. T, s, p's and Illibles for lbs! Awzes for oz. Yackamoli for Guacamole (sp), Hanga burger instead of hamburger.

My son still says "beltseat" instead of seat belt. As a little one he said puffet instead of puppet.

The only thing that really bothers me is the use of AINT! My mom in law always uses it and so does my husband and now my daughter. It sends shivers up my spine every time I hear it!
Cealy

 

[Pure]

there ain't, anymore, a global rule against using 'ain't' in speech.