this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2025
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[–] UncleArthur@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Abberant apostrophes (and missing ones).

Sentences that miss out words for no reason: e.g. "A couple things" vs. "A couple of things".

Confusing envy and jealousy.

The above is a personal list; I don't get judgemental about others' grammar but I do cringe internally.

[–] Deestan@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Are you jealous people who aren;t bothered by those errors?

[–] UncleArthur@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

Well done on that semi-colon: really pushing my buttons!

[–] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The apostrophe thing really grinds my gears. Especially “it’s” vs “its”. It’s not very hard, “it’s” is a contraction meaning “it is”. Otherwise, it’s possessive. This homonym is its own worst enemy.

I hate that “jealousy” has devoured “envy”. “Language is fluid”, they always say, but those two words have very different meanings!

[–] hakase@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

I hate that “jealousy” has devoured “envy”. “Language is fluid”, they always say, but those two words have very different meanings!

You'll have to hate the Greeks for that then, because the usage of Ancient Greek ζῆλος (zêlos, from which we get both of the doublets "jealous" and "zealous") already overlapped with what we now call "envy", and this overlap was borrowed into Latin as zelosus (which still overlapped with the native Latin word invidiosus that became envy), and thence into Old French jalous, which continued to overlap with envie.

That is to say, as far back as we can trace, jealous has always also meant envious, and they've coexisted in that manner since at least Classical Latin.

As with most of the obnoxiously pedantic "facts" about language in threads like this one, this supposed "distinction" is recent, artificial, and only exists to give those in the know a false sense of superiority over those without the "secret knowledge". The secret knowledge is usually (as it is in this case) literally wrong, but all that matters to them, of course, is that they have a reason to think of themselves as better than other people.

[–] UncleArthur@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

That's a bit harsh. When I say someone is envious as opposed to jealous, I am trying to convey a particular meaning. It doesn't bother me if someone uses the terms interchangeably as I can usually work out what they mean, but I do like my communication to be as clear as possible.

[–] hakase@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I wasn't trying to say that you necessarily were trying to feel superior - just that that's why those so-called "distinctions" exist in the first place.

The reality is that natural human languages are always and inevitably unclear, redundant, etc., and there's literally no way to change that. Even if you taught babies a logical conlang (constructed language) like lojban as their first language, within a single generation you'd begin to see ambiguity introduced into the system, because that's just how humans are wired.

Language only has to be clear enough, which is borne out by the fact that every human has a different grammar, and yet we are all still able to communicate satisfactorily. There is no clarity to be gained from a pedantic differentiation between "jealousy" and "envy", since in the vast majority of cases the intended meaning is immediately clear from context, and in the tiny minority of cases where it isn't, an extra word or two will do the trick perfectly well, and that extra word or two will usually come naturally and unconsciously on the part of the speaker.

[–] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] hakase@lemmy.zip 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Here I am, calling out pedants for being literally and demonstrably wrong about language for two (and a half thousand, under the sloppy reading) years and counting!

[–] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

“I see your pedantry, and raise you triple-dog pedantry!”

[–] hakase@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

The difference being that my "pedantry" is informed by history and linguistic theory, and is intended to stop linguistic prejudice, as opposed to the pedantry threads like this are magnets for: perpetuating linguistic prejudice while being completely wrong in the process.

Edit: Typo

[–] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You have an unnecessary comma in there.

[–] hakase@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 days ago

See my comment here about why there is no such thing as confusing envy and jealousy, because "jealousy" has always included the meaning of envy for at least the past 2500 years.