[Closed] English spelling and grammar anomolies

If you say ‘tuh-mayto’ it sounds weird.

If you say ‘puh-tayto’ it sounds ok.

Potato
Tomato

None of it makes any sense.

This morning in conversation I said ‘prehl-yood’ when I thought that I meant to pronounce it ‘pray-lewd’.

Americanizsation is my nemesis.

Unconscious and subconscious - I always thought "un" meant ko'ed, asleep, NOT-conscious. And "sub" meant in the mind, without thinking er, consciously about something... but I ALWAYS see unconscious being used for the latter. It annoys me as much as electrocuted used to, until I read it's meaning has now changed to just mean a shock, presumably because it's been used to mean that so much!

gaidong

*Anomolies*, c’mon, in the title!

assume and presume are often used incorrectly

To assume is to start from no prior information, to presume is to start from something you know already

A surprising number of people mix up I and me as in "My colleagues and me will be at the meeting."

I try to stay relaxed but this one really grates (was going to type "greats" but couldn't quite do it) on my ear. In threads like this you really have to watch the typos...

Americanizsation is my nemesis.

Stop you right there.

The US artificially butchered the language it's true, largely at the pen of Webster who was attempting to simplify things like colour > color. But the S/Z thing is actually the other way around, AmericaniZation would be the "correct" spelling, the Brits threw away the Z and the Americans kept it.

the Brits threw away the Z and the Americans kept it.

This has happened. Let it go.

A surprising number of people mix up I and me as in “My colleagues and me will be at the meeting.”

"Me and my colleagues..." probably sounds more natural but yes, you're right. The trick here if you're unsure is to drop the '... and...' clause and see if it still scans. "Me will be at the meeting."

Helping your Uncle Jack off his horse.

is different to

Helping your uncle jack off his horse.

“Me and my colleagues…” probably sounds more natural

Not to I.

Out of interest, do French folks ever confuse moi and je? That would feel wrongetty wrong.

I try to stay relaxed, but this one really grates upon my one's ears.

Or something

Americanisation is my nemesis.

Why are so many not-Americanz using "pissed" to mean "pissed off"?! - pissed means drunk! It really pisses me (off).
Sorry, Americanisms is (are?) a different thread ain't it (they).

En cas de doute, moi je mets les deux.

Helping your Uncle Jack off his horse.

is different to

Helping your uncle jack off his horse

but similar to

Helping your uncle, Jack, off his horse

And they're all wrong as you help someone from their horse.

One thing I refuse to say or write is 'aren't I?'

I am, am I, yeah, that tracks. I are, are I? Nope.

I'm going to get pelters for this, amn't I?

Americanisation is my nemesis.

Alot of americanisms are just older versions of English aren't they? like trace them back and you can find them both in usage and eventually the two languages branch off.

ise and ize for example are both perfectly acceptable in british english.

Language pedants are penisses's' who cares, celebrate the continued changement of the spoken word or we have to lose an awful lot of good ones.

If we're starting in on stuff people get wrong, then let's begin with:

Personal pronouns. When I'm King, (and as we all know, it's just a matter of time now) phrases such as "Will it just be yourself I'm making this booking for?" will be punishable with death by public hanging. It's the only way to be sure.

Americanisms that wind me up are the things like "Deplane". You mean "get off" presumably? "Bangs"..WTAF? It's a fringe, there's a word and everything, you don't need to press another word in to do the same job as the EXISTING word!

I think I realised long ago that I'm quite pedantic and it'd be better if I just let other people's errors and malapropisms slide, but incorrect uses of 'less' and 'fewer' absolutely grate on me.

Mrs Tyred just rolls her eyes at me when I bark "FEWER!" during conversation. Can't help it. Maybe she should make less mistakes eh!

I just don't understand why it doesn't feel COMPLETELY WRONG to people as they say it.

Americanisms that wind me up are the things like “Deplane”. You mean “get off” presumably?

My Uncle Jack is on the phone, he wants to meet up with you.

I can forgive a lot of Americanisms. Many are, as above, actually British English that just fell into disuse here, and a lot of others are innocuous. But the one that grips my shit is "momentarily," they've literally redefined the word.

"The plane will land momentarily." Well, crap, I'd better grab my rucksack and run for the door before it takes off again then.

incorrect uses of ‘less’ and ‘fewer’ absolutely grate on me.

At my local Sainsbury's there's a sign hanging from the ceiling denoting the "12 items or fewer" checkout. But the word 'fewer' is actually a patch on the sign. It gives me hope for the world that presumably at some point a pedant walked past it and went "less?" and Sainsbury's cared sufficiently to change it.

Possibly worth noting that English isn't a dead language, usages are changing over time and always have, I doubt most serious academics get strung up on correcting the common minor glitches. Anyone concerned with the Americanisation of the language, which is happening apace with more Americans and US-taught folks teaching English as a 2nd language around the world, should rest assured that the quickest way to devalue the language would be to insist on a proper version like what various Frenchies are trying to do.

"Can I get?" bugs me however. There's being incorrect and there's being obnoxious, and this is both.

incorrect uses of ‘less’ and ‘fewer’ absolutely grate on me.

...which is why I try to be relaxed about this stuff. It's prescriptive versus descriptive grammar. Where is mixing less and fewer ever going to impede comprehension? It isn't. They've always been used fairly interchangeably in colloquial language, regardless of interventions from Victorian grammarians.

On which, these days I always try to deliberately split infinitives, English not being a dialect of Latin. I still find this difficult to do, for some reason.

Off-topic sorry. There's a lot of misinformation about this but apparently it was a very near thing that the US didn't spend 250 years mangling the German language instead.

Hold on folks

I read somewhere that when “English” as it was then was being transcribed by the monks (they were basically the only people who could read and write at the time) there was no standard to work to and each monk essentially made up his own rules.

It doesn't go back that far, AFAIU. There wasn't any standard spelling until I think Johnson made the first dictionary. Even after literacy had become much more widespread people just spelled the way they were taught or if they'd never read a word before they just made it up. Which brings me on to

Potato
Tomato

None of it makes any sense.

These words are both imports from other language. The sound of the word defines the word, not the spelling. The spelling is merely an attempt to put it into letters. And there aren't enough letters to properly express all the sounds that we have in English. We could spell tomato like 'tomarto' but if someone from America, the West country or possibly Scotland were to read 'tomarto' it'd come out wrong. So it's actually pretty difficult to transcribe words when you don't have enough letters.

The US artificially butchered the language it’s true, largely at the pen of Webster who was attempting to simplify things like colour > color.

I don't think this is true - I suspect that like everyone else he just set down things the way he'd been spelling them. It just happened to be different to Johnson.

But the one that grips my shit is “momentarily,” they’ve literally redefined the word.

This happens ALL the time. Isn't it great? Or possible even awesome? There's an example where a word has actually come to mean its opposite, but I can't remember what the word is.

Alot of americanisms are just older versions of English aren’t they?

Some are, but also some Britishisms are older versions of Americanisms. They've just diverged, that's all - which is entirely reasonable.

the US didn’t spend 250 years mangling the German language instead.

They haven't been mangling English - it's just evolved slightly differently to how it has here. 250 years ago no-one in England spoke like we do now.

These words are both imports from other language.

Yes, Dothraki.

Alot

Not a real word. Stop it please.

Helping your Uncle Jack off his horse.

is different to

Helping your uncle jack off his horse

No it isn't. It's different from.

The practice/practise thing was once explained to me as "you can't see (C) a verb, you can C a noun". It works for me.

Americanisms that wind me up are the things like “Deplane”. You mean “get off” presumably?

Presumably they thought "alight" could cause panic.

At my local Sainsbury’s there’s a sign hanging from the ceiling denoting the “12 items or fewer” checkout. But the word ‘fewer’ is actually a patch on the sign. It gives me hope for the world that presumably at some point a pedant walked past it and went “less?” and Sainsbury’s cared sufficiently to change it.

It gives hope to those who are unnecessarily prescriptive. "Less" was used freely for count nouns until a single author's opinion somehow became a rule, and ignores all the exceptions in common usage, particularly for money, weights and measures.

More to the point, nobody is confused by the meaning of "ten items or less".

There wasn’t any standard spelling until I think Johnson made the first dictionary.

Johnson wasn't even consistent when he wrote the dictionary. retained (for example) the 'p' in receipt, but left it out of deceit (both from Latin, both should have had the 'p') he also used Uphill, but downhil , and he often just made stuff up as he went along and of course; famously as seen in the documentary series about Thickie George IV, didn't include the word Sausage.

I can never remember if it is “you can’t see (C) a verb, you can C a noun” or “you can’t see (C) a noun, you can C a verb”.

Fortunately I remember Practice and Practise and that helps me remember it correctly

Multiple meanings for the same word is also problematic

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/set

and

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fine

Spelling in Devon....

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Americanisms - people should be shot for using them, putting 'like' or 'out'  in a phrase when not needed & things like   'can I get' 'colorway' etc - morons!

Could of, would of.

Kill them before they breed.

Yes of and have are very confusing aren't they?

I like words with more than one meaning. For a short while I was in a band called "Fast"

When asked if it was because we played quickly I explained we just didn't eat
When asked if it was because we didn't eat I explained that it was because we were stuck and couldn't be moved
When ask if it was because we were stuck...

Well, you get the picture. I think that took longer to type than I was in the band 🙂

Overuse of "Due to..."
Because people have forgotten when it's "Owing to..."

There are a few words that mean the opposite of what they used to.
Restive used to mean lazy, now it means fidgety. Terrific used to mean terrifying.
A lot of people dislike double negatives but nobody never didn't misunderstand what you mean.
I'm always puzzled by "aren't I". Shouldn't it be amn't I?

On the subject of Americans again, why have they changed the 'couldn't' in 'I couldn't care less' to a 'could'? It makes no sense.

Meh

Could of, would of.

My girlfriend says this.

I used to pull her up on Messenger and she'd go 'oh, yes,' and correct herself.

But she doesn't just type it. She says it.

*twitch*

On the subject of Americans again, why have they changed the ‘couldn’t’ in ‘I couldn’t care less’ to a ‘could’? It makes no sense.

I think this is just a mistake? But you're right, it makes no sense, "I could care less" means the opposite of its intended meaning.

See also, "if you think that then you've got another thing coming." Utterly nonsensical and for all practical purposes didn't exist until the Judas Priest song.

Helping your uncle, Jack, off his horse

And they’re all wrong as you help someone from their horse.

Jack isn't looking for help dismounting his horse - this is about a man conspiring with his nephew to have his horse murdered, gangland style.

The sound of the word defines the word, not the spelling. The spelling is merely an attempt to put it into letters. And there aren’t enough letters to properly express all the sounds that we have in English. We could spell tomato like ‘tomarto’ but if someone from America, the West country or possibly Scotland were to read ‘tomarto’ it’d come out wrong. So it’s actually pretty difficult to transcribe words when you don’t have enough letters.

Which is where letter combinations come in I guess - some letters are there to be spoken some are there to give very minor accents to a word - there are certain words we think of as homophones but they're not really. The difference in spelling isn't just to indicate a different meaning* its also a different way of making a sound even if its the same sound. We tend to think 'threw' and 'through' sound the same so why should we spell them differently  - but say them and think about what your mouth is doing when you do - sometimes its very subtle sometimes not - you can feel the difference in your mouth when you say different homophones - an good example is 'free' and 'three' - really quite similar sounds even though your mouth is doing very different things to make that sound. Mite and Might. Flower and Flour; Hear and Here. Idol and Idle.

The speaker knows which of those words they are saying but a listener can only hear those very subtle nuances if they also read and write. Someone who has only learned English by speaking and hearing it rather than by also reading typically doesnt say 'three' or 'free' differently and can't really hear the difference either.

* we've never needed different spellings for all 430 different meaning of 'Set' and the next Oxford English Dictionary is anticipated to have 645 different things that can be meant by the word 'Run

On the subject of Americans again, why have they changed the ‘couldn’t’ in ‘I couldn’t care less’ to a ‘could’? It makes no sense.

It's probably time to put this one to bed as well. 1. It isn't an Americanism (the phrase appears in British newspapers in the mid 19th C all the time), 2. Strictly speaking; it's an idiom, so it doesn't have to make any sense. 3. both are understood to mean the same thing, so just use the one you prefer.

The ones I like best, are words that used to have a general meaning, but now mean just one thing. The best one is Ejaculation. It used to be a reasonably common word for surprise or exclamation, and as my partner is a Lecturer in 18thC literature, the bookcases are filled with novels where the hero of the story is often "ejaculating in surprise", or when confronted with surprising news, it'll say; "What d'you mean?" He ejaculated... which must take a terrible toll on the trousers...