What is your English language pet peeve?

Mine is probably the use of "is, is". In case you don't recognize this, I'm referring to people saying "the problem is, is that ....." or even (if you can believe it) "the event that bothered me was is that ....." and "the problem was is that ..."

(NOTE: If you think you've never heard this, you probably say it and never noticed. That is what I usually find. Obama says it. Many, if not most TV commentators say it. Etc.)

Then there is "where did you say it's at?" "Is that where it's at?" (drop the "at"!)

And of course, "take it off of the stove." (drop the "of"!)

The English language is being destroyed.

Got any pet peeves besides me?

 

People moaning about technical grammatical errors or quirks in casual speech.

 

I already covered that. Check my final sentence.

 

Inserting 'both' ahead of two distinct elements - it's superfluous, not to mention irritatingly pretentious, and it makes for a clumsy narrative. It's even worse when 'both' is followed unwittingly by three distinct elements ; and worse still, when a subsequent passage mentioning two distinct elements but 'both' is conspicuous by its omission!

Right, I'm going for a lie down in a darkened room now!

 

'pretty' this, 'pretty' that, and especially 'pretty much'

 

I seen

You hear it all the time on eyewitness news interviews, it's just low class.

"I seen the car run off the road and hit a tree."

 

Synonyms...

... must drive foreigners crazy...

... tryin' to learn the language.

 

People who say irregardless.

 

YES!

YOUR and YOU'RE........


THERE and THEIR......


and their continued misuse by Americans who were allegedly educated...

...and the fact that Americans think there is only one adjective, "amazing". Can you believe Americans think there is only one adjective.....

I hate that word.......but if it was outlawed people wouldn't know how to describe anything !!!!!

 

People moaning about how they were misunderstood so they got into an argument and a black eye since they don't know that language is how we communicate and if you don't want to be misunderstood it helps to know the language you allegedly learned form birth......

 

I wasn't being entirely serious to be fair, hence the smiley. I'm said "not less, fewer" under my breath countless times.

I say it under my breath because I know it isn't really important. Like the examples in the OP, it doesn't affect the actual meaning. If anything, people trying to force their natural speech in to strict structures of formal language are probably more like to be unclear with their meaning. Formal and written scenarios would have a slightly higher line.

 

Strict structures of formal language makes things clear to all if "all" knows them.....


Humans now travel outside the village or country where the dialect is understood by the locals but not the locals on the other side of the country....a basic language is key to understanding each other....

 

I hope AboveAlpha reads that?

 

I have several, but the most annoying is the use of "I" in the objective case: The objective case is the form of a noun or pronoun used in the direct object, indirect object, object of preposition, object complement, and subject of an infinitive. In English this is significant only with personal pronouns and the forms of who.

And so you get people saying "I" in an attempt to sound cultured and erudite: "There was a discussion of the issue between Jim and I."

 

I'll mention another one while I'm thinking about it: have you ever heard someone say "infer" when they mean "imply"? Those who do it do it a lot, and so I think they discovered the word "infer" (probably by someone else misusing it), fell in love with it, and misuse it as much as possible just to show off.

 

Help me out, I don't get that...I would've thought that "I" was correct.


I'd like your opinion on the following sentence : ""....she thought he'd make a much better member of the institute than her.""

"her" ? Shouldn't it be "she" ? ..as in " she thought he'd make a much better member of the institute than "she would" "

 

Yes, I agree. Than is not a preposition so you should use she. This gets harder: suppose you knock at my door and I say "Who's there?"
Good English is either "It's Fox" or "It is I." Right? But now suppose you and Jim are both knocking. If I say "Who is it?" you should both say "It is we." Sounds ridiculous but it's correct grammatically.

 

Thanks! We's learnin' !

...and even successful well known authors make mistakes....

 

That stuff doesn't bother me. It's the interrupters that irritates the hell out of me when you're trying to have a conversation. I have no patience for it.....

 

That pretty much sums it up.

 

Using "ironically" when it should be "coincidentally." "Irony" means something that is against what is expected. It's not "ironic" that Bob Jones and Bob smith both have the same names. What IS ironic is if George S. Patton's son turns out to be a tree hugging liberal pacifist.

 

Both of your three complaints bug me too.

 

"I could care less"...instead of the correct "I couldn't care less"....Here's an old one...."That's the 64-dollar question" Nope....the correct statement is "That's the 64,000-dollar question" after the now debunked 50's-60's game show.

 

That one annoys me also. Another is the deletion of the past participle, where people say and write, for example, "have went" instead of "have gone." This is a major change in our grammar that is being permitted to take place for no good reason, and it's only because people don't pay attention to their language. Mostly, though, my pet peeves involve common orthographical mistakes such as writing "would of" instead of "would have," mixing up your/you're, there/their/they're, using aspostrophes in plurals when they only belong in possessives, and so on.

Languages evolve, and as we see here, they can lose (idiots might write "loose", a different word entirely) complexity as a consequence. English has lost a lot already over time. Modern grammar is extremely simple, with most verb and noun transformations being gone now and the concept of noun gender being completely lost. It's interesting that so many other languages have retained these features even to this day, but English has somehow deteriorated and lost them. The greatest tragedy to come out of this is going to be functional illiteracy with respect to texts from the past. It is also a shame to see prose replaced by horribly simplistic, utilitarian English, such as what is commonly used online today. Publications are increasingly resembling colloquial speech, and those mistakes I've pointed out earlier are increasingly creeping in also.

 

YES!!!! THAT drives me crazy....