BS: Language Pet Peeves

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 26 Aug 21 - 09:00 AM

When watching the UK Channel 4 coverage of the Formula 1 Grand Prix qualifying, I often hear the commentator, when referring to a driver having improved his lap time by 0.15 of a second, say "He's improved by a tenth and a half".

A tenth and a half equals three fifths, not three twentieths. If they must insist on using fractions instead of decimal notation, then it would be better to say fifteen hundredths.


DC

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 26 Aug 21 - 11:40 AM

Thanks, meself.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Sep 21 - 02:11 PM

We've just had a correspondent on our regional news programme pronouncing the word "annually" "anyullee" (twice!): aargh!

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 21 Oct 21 - 11:07 PM

Reading a fascinating article on dinosaurs with graphics and one said Click here for full-size image, and I was instantly afraid to click it.
Then I realized a) they didn't say *life*sized and b) idiot...

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: G-Force
Date: 22 Oct 21 - 05:54 AM

Every time I see 'This door is alarmed' I think in that case I'm bloody terrified!

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: G-Force
Date: 22 Oct 21 - 06:01 AM

And when I see the instruction 'Keep away from children' I think 'I do, if I can help it'.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Oct 21 - 06:18 AM

At the foot of the escalator the sign said "Dogs must be carried." So I couldn't use it because I didn't have a dog...

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Oct 21 - 06:56 AM

I bought a gizmo for descaling teeth the other day. It takes a single AAA battery. The "instruction manual" that was in the box (a piece of paper as big as a sheet of toilet paper) warned me that I mustn't mix old and new batteries...

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Oct 21 - 08:55 AM

Sign in the gents' toilet in Bude:

DUE TO THE COVID-19 OUTBREAK PLEASE KEEP A 2-METRE DISTANCE WHEN USING THESE TOILETS

Well I tried, dammit, but I couldn't make it go that far...

(And underneath that it said "Sorry for the inconvenience...")

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 24 Oct 21 - 08:56 AM

Also dumb, that one.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Oct 21 - 12:43 PM

From the minute-by-minute match report on the BBC website just now:
Man Utd 0-4 Liverpool
I'm looking at a stunned United fan, stroking his chin. He has tears in his eyes.

Well if MY team were losing 4-0 and you came up to me to stroke my chin, I'd be bloody annoyed !

It's 5-0 as I type..:-)

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Oct 21 - 02:46 PM

Following on from that, at the end of the match the BBC radio commentator said "In the first half, United had their trousers pulled down by Liverpool. In the second half, they just toyed with 'em..."

Bwahahaha!

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 26 Oct 21 - 07:36 AM

Good'n!

I had been dogsitting for 2 weeks and the owners were coming home, and texted me I bet you're looking forward to sleeping in your own bed! I know I am!

Prompting me to ask why they wanted to sleep in my bed...

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: meself
Date: 26 Oct 21 - 12:07 PM

From the movies - and, I suppose, real life:

A: I love you!
B: Me, too!

A: I really want to see you!
B: Me, too!

Etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Senoufou
Date: 26 Oct 21 - 12:42 PM

Ha! This reminds me of my husband. A couple of nights ago I screamed blue murder at the sight of a huge spider in the bathroom. My hero rushed forward and dispatched it bravely. The following exchange was in French:
Me (sobbing with gratitude): You are the most amazing man!
Him:(grinning broadly) So are you darling!

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: meself
Date: 26 Oct 21 - 04:17 PM

Now that is funny ... !

I remembered that the one I'm always hearing in movies is: "I['ll] miss you!" - "Me, too!" ... try to work that one out.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: leeneia
Date: 26 Oct 21 - 05:42 PM

California got a sizeable storm, and they don't call it a storm, they call it a bomb cyclone. Hearing that on the news will help little children sleep at night - I don't think.

Kids pick up on this stuff. When I was six or seven, I noticed headlines in the newspaper box about the Army. The army, the army. I asked my mother - are we having a war? What a relief- she said no. Much later I realized the headlines were about the Army-McCarthy hearings.

The "bomb cyclone" brought 5.4 inches of rain. In 1977, Kansas City had a storm that brought 16 inches of rain. Twenty-five people died. The weather service refers to it as a rainstorm.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 Oct 21 - 08:48 PM

Leeneia - Sacramento got more rainfall in one day that it has had in any one-day period in recorded history - it was a three-day storm that is still going on, and Northern California does not have the infrastructure to handle that sort of storm. And before that, Sacramento had more than 200 days without any rainfall at all. There has been localized flooding, but it's certainly not the worst I have experienced - the worst was 1986.


https://www.sacbee.com/news/weather-news/article255268351.html

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Donuel
Date: 26 Oct 21 - 09:48 PM

Owned
Example: Patriots owned the libs on Twitter.
Translation: White Nationists harrased and scared off Democrats.
What do you call it when a person litterally owns another person?

Sports example: The Astros owned the Red Sox.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Senoufou
Date: 27 Oct 21 - 06:31 AM

Norfolk-Speak is so full of malapropisms that it's best to enjoy them. But being a retired teacher, I have to bite my tongue before starting to correct them.
Chester drawers. He dew or he dornt. Sustificate. TV Licence defective van. Puter. Git yer winter draws on, cos winter draws on.
I spend most of my time here surreptitiously giggling.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 28 Oct 21 - 09:59 AM

Tu l'as dit, bouffi!

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Lighter
Date: 28 Oct 21 - 02:46 PM

I heard 'puter here in the U.S.A. in the early '80s.

The same doctoral candidate also used to say, "I'm Audi!"

For "Goodbye! I'm outta here!"

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Oct 21 - 08:01 PM

My pet peeve is that language itself is a tool of thought. It appeared accidentally around 300,000 years ago. It is more than communication. Even bacteria and insects communicate. We have two voices the inner subconscious voice and the conscious voice. We don't seem to be able to access subconsious thought but it leaves a trace as real as dark matter leaves a gravitational trace. As a tool of thought we can describe things we can not see like the future. With this tool we no longer think by ourselves. We can obviously access knowledge from the living or dead. We can modify language with metaphor, thought and imagination.
Language as a tool of thought is wasted on many. They focus on the typo and not the thought. We may not have non human language concepts that can get us beyond the 2% of the known universe we live inside of. I've tried to demonstrate thinking outside the box which is naturally not understood by people devoted to use language only for communication and not a tool for thought. Perhaps we need another evolutionary accident.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Oct 21 - 08:10 PM

I believe there is even an invisible inner subconscious language that is shared by many and is called ESP because we don't know exactly what it is.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 29 Oct 21 - 08:34 PM

"Language as a tool of thought is wasted on many. They focus on the typo and not the thought."

Bullshit. That's just your excuse, and you're attacking people who think that your posts are just bollocks, an entirely respectable point of view. On this forum, very few people focus on typos, and, if you want to be honest with yourself, your "typos" are the result of sheer hurried, careless, unthinking, unreviewed typing. You also hide behind your alleged dyslexia, yet you can post pretty articulately when you want to. Odd, that. What I'd like to suggest to you is that good communication requires that you express yourself in simple, plain English. It's easy if you try. Still, if you'd rather disappear up your own obscurantist arsehole, as you frequently appear to do, don't let us stop you. It's nothing if not entertaining.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Oct 21 - 11:47 PM

silence?

The previous rant was a paraphrased Noam Chomsky although he is a bit mechanistic from my POV. The process of the miraculous thought is elegantly derived from the quantum universe as well as the megaverse.
In a sense we are practically halfway between both.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: BobL
Date: 30 Oct 21 - 04:19 AM

I thought that language as a tool of thought was pretty well covered by George Orwell in 1984. But that's only a second-hand opinion, I've not read it myself.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 30 Oct 21 - 07:44 AM

1984 is the only novel I've ever read end-to-end since I left school (I was forced to read a couple at school in order to pass my Eng Lit 'O' Level). I've started a few others but generally found that once I'd put them down I couldn't pick them up again. 1984 is a good read...very prescient...

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Donuel
Date: 30 Oct 21 - 08:30 AM

George Orwell is an excellant example Bob. We are actually living an example of an attempt to follow the Big Trump.
On another note on language as thought tools, you have watched your pets dream which are absract thoughts of things that do not exist but they are deliberate.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Donuel
Date: 30 Oct 21 - 08:46 AM

edit
but they are not deliberate.
thats another gripe, those three letters of 'not' can overturn everything and if accidentaly absent it can cause disaster.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 30 Oct 21 - 09:51 AM

They started calling soldiers peacekeepers back in the 80's, and I remember thinking It isn't even 1984 yet!

And Steve Shaw, you have picked on me for typos, so kettle, pot.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 30 Oct 21 - 11:27 AM

Er, because you bragged about your proofreading prowess! :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: leeneia
Date: 09 Nov 21 - 01:17 PM

A newspaper article had a language thing I dislike. I've named it 'the noun chain.' The article was about the arrest of two men who were stealing guns out of parked cars and selling the guns on Facebook (thanks, Facebook).

Here's the noun chain:

Authorities allege the men were identified as subjects of interest in
a larger stolen-gun trafficking conspiracy investigation...

"stolen-gun trafficking conspriracy investigation" Now that's too many nouns in a row. Amateur writers think that being concise means using as few words as possible, so they produce these noun chains. But if the reader has to stop and untangle them, it's irritating and bad for circulation.

My husband, a senior geologist, has mentioned how he had to tell younger staff to make explanations longer, to put more words in. He always got a surprised look in return. =

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Lighter
Date: 09 Nov 21 - 06:01 PM

Those "peacekeepers" were an ad-hoc multinational UN force created under the UN Charter to help implement and protect cease-fires in local conflicts.

They were (and are) not combat soldiers, and they fired only if fired upon - if then.

The phrase "United Nations peacekeepers" seems to have supplemented "United Nations peace-keeping force" in the early '60s. Their first deployment was in 1948.

In the 1980s, of course, there were the Peacekeeper ICBMs.

In the spirit of Mutually Assured Destruction, they really were intended to keep the peace.

And, in service from 1986 to 2002, they apparently helped do just that.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Donuel
Date: 09 Nov 21 - 07:56 PM

Peace keepers don't give peace. Peace makers spread peace.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: meself
Date: 09 Nov 21 - 08:04 PM

'Peace keepers' is a little catchier than 'peace maintainers'.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: leeneia
Date: 10 Nov 21 - 02:57 PM

Donuel, I noticed your post about "not." This thread is about language, so I'll share a language thought.

I don't like it when people talk about what isn't true and then put NOT in. Like this:

    Do NOT lay a little baby on its side or its stomach. Its face can get
    pressed into the bedding, and the baby might suffocate.

In my opinion, one should write about what's right. You want the reader to make a mental picture of the right thing to do. Like this:

    Always put a little baby down on its back.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Nov 21 - 08:52 AM

The MP Barry Gardiner, speaking about his pride in being Scottish, has just been saying that he nevertheless married an English wife.

I hope he's happy to be married to a bigamist...

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 14 Nov 21 - 01:01 PM

Is there a way of kind of having 1st-person imperatives in English without using Let's? As in, the French Allons-y?

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: meself
Date: 14 Nov 21 - 09:33 PM

Altogether now! Come on! Everybody! Charge! Shall we? Heave away, haul away! Last one in's a rotten egg!

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Nov 21 - 04:40 AM

"Altogether now!"

Heheh...

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Donuel
Date: 15 Nov 21 - 04:14 PM

I ask, is rarely said that way. People most often say I assed or I axe.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Thompson
Date: 15 Nov 21 - 05:03 PM

I'm enraged by ladylike incorrectness, like people who say 'purposefully' when they mean 'purposely' because, I suppose, it sounds more Mrs Bouquet so must be the correct form; and 'sewerage' instead of 'sewage' ditto.
But then at this stage of the day I'm so old-fashioned that, with Yeats, I say I have a FANatic heart.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Nov 21 - 06:52 PM

"Purposefully" has a strong ring of intent or determination about it. "He was hell-bent on finishing painting the room before dark so he set about the task purposefully." I can't remember ever hearing anyone say "purposely" this end and I think it could be a bit of an eyebrow-raiser, though* its antiquity can't be denied. I think we tend to say "on purpose" or "deliberately." I've seen "sewerage" on my annual bills from the water company but I haven't heard anyone saying it (in which case it would almost certainly be being used in error). Sewage is always in the news here as a scandalous item, and we have Surfers Against Sewage, who are very high-profile, so that's the word we're all conditioned to use this end.

*I could have said "albeit" there, I s'pose... ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: meself
Date: 15 Nov 21 - 07:49 PM

According my TV news, just now: "Biden and Xi will both be meeting each other ...." Good to know it's not just one of them meeting each other, or both of them meeting the monolithic, collective other, I suppose ... !

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Mrrzy
Date: 16 Nov 21 - 09:47 AM

Thanks, meself! In other words... No.

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: leeneia
Date: 16 Nov 21 - 12:34 PM

I've heard purposely before. "He purposely fell into the pond, trying to get a laugh."

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: meself
Date: 16 Nov 21 - 12:40 PM

Never uncommon in my neck of the woods (Canada). ("Purposely", that is).

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Nov 21 - 01:47 PM

Well that's interesting. I'll ask around...

Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 16 Nov 21 - 04:33 PM

‘Purposely’, in the sense of ‘on purpose’, is in common usage here in the Backwoods. Likewise ‘purposefully’ meaning ‘with purpose’, ‘determinedly’…