40

Yes yes, language changes over time. I've heard that mantra for decades and I know it. That doesn't mean there aren't language changes that aren't grating when they become fashionable (and hopefully temporary).

For me, "morals" being used as a crude catch-all application of "morality," "ethics," "integrity" or related concepts bothers me. Sentence example: "Maybe if society had morals there wouldn't be so many minorities in prison." lmayo us-foreign-policy

An even more annoying otherwise-fluent-speaker modification I see is when "conscious" is used to mean "consciousness" and "conscience" interchangeably. Sentence example: "Single mothers on welfare that steal baby formula have no conscious." It sounds like they're saying the shoplifter is not mentally aware of their own actions, not that they're lacking sufficient "morals" to let their baby starve for the sake of Rules-Based Order(tm).

There's others, but those two come up enough recently, with sufficient newness, for me to bring them up here. Some old classic language quirks are so established and entrenched that even though I hate them, bringing them up would likely invite some hatemail and maybe some mystery alt accounts also sending hatemail after that. You know, because they "could care less(sic)" about what I think. janet-wink

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] BeamBrain@hexbear.net 24 points 1 year ago

"Maybe if society had morals there wouldn't be so many minorities in prison."

Funny enough, that's correct, just not in the way the person probably intended. The carceral state and institutional racism are indeed signs of a deeply immoral society.

[-] ChaosMaterialist@hexbear.net 24 points 1 year ago

English had a big French spelling phase, so a bunch of our words have entirely different phonetic sounds vs their spelling. I constantly mess this up. Go ahead, make me spell bourgoise or bureacracy the first time. Nope failed again! Conscious/Conscience are definitely in that category.

For me I'm not sure if Math or Maths are correct ohnoes

[-] PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS@hexbear.net 18 points 1 year ago

Me with a time machine: going back and shooting William the Bastard in the head to save the English language

[-] Gucci_Minh@hexbear.net 17 points 1 year ago

You're not a real leftist if you can spell bourgeiouiuiouiise on the first try

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] silent_water@hexbear.net 21 points 1 year ago

use the fucking oxford comma you godforsaken cretins

[-] FourteenEyes@hexbear.net 8 points 1 year ago

There is almost no scenario in which using the Oxford comma fails to improve sentence clarity.

People are just too lazy to use punctuation for its intended purpose, I guess.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[-] WoofWoof91@hexbear.net 20 points 1 year ago

"could care less"

THIS

"it means the same thing!" they say

IF COULD CARE LESS MEANS THE SAME AS COULD NOT CARE LESS THEN THE WORD "NOT" IS ENTIRELY MEANINGLESS

dog-scremAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] Lochat@hexbear.net 19 points 1 year ago

The fact 99% of people use the word "logical" to mean "reasonable" because they literally don't know what logic is.

[-] nat_turner_overdrive@hexbear.net 18 points 1 year ago

I am irrationally irritated when people describe something as "addicting" rather than "addictive". I'm not even sure it's technically incorrect, and language is a fluid thing so this shouldn't irritate me. But I still have to consciously tell myself to not be annoyed by it.

[-] RION@hexbear.net 14 points 1 year ago

In this house the only thing we call addicting is addictinggames.com 😤

load more comments (5 replies)
[-] PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS@hexbear.net 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I really hate the misuse of the word "pretentious." A lot of people use it to mean something like "pompous" when it's root is "pretense." It's only pretentious if someone is dissembling about how much they know about something. If someone actually knows as much about a subject as the appear to then it doesn't matter how annoying they are, it's still not pretentious.

And that's my very specific pet peeve. And having this opinion is itself extremely annoying, but it's still not pretentious goddamnit

[-] SootySootySoot@hexbear.net 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

A pretense doesn't have to be in relation to knowledge that someone holds. A pretense could be someone acting as if they're more dignified or esteemed than they are, which is practically the definition of pompous.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] ikilledtheradiostar@hexbear.net 8 points 1 year ago

A bit pretentious eh?

Fun fact, pretentious and pretense are separated by more than 300 years.

load more comments (3 replies)
[-] Findom_DeLuise@hexbear.net 15 points 1 year ago

Corpo-speak e-mails from bloviating, self-important middle managers who regurgitate such turns of phrase as "at this time" and/or "in a timely manor [sic]" make my eye twitch. I can overlook a lot of the "synergizing our thought leaders with operational tempo" jargon salad, but the aforementioned phrases trigger my fight-or-flight response, probably because they reek of petty tyrant small business night manager mentality and bring me back to the headspace of dealing with bosses like that when I was a kid.

I also once had to work with an IT project manager who insisted on pronouncing the word "processes" as if it had a long-E vowel sound in the plural ("pro-cess-eez"). It would derail my train of thought every fucking time.

Also also once had a direct supervisor who would throw around "irregardless" almost daily.

[-] keepcarrot@hexbear.net 8 points 1 year ago

I love using this language sarcastically

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] muddi@hexbear.net 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

"_ and I" hypercorrection, or maybe reanalysis if we're being more descriptivist.

It's an interesting subject, and I'm kind of split on it as an amateur linguist, but as an English speaker it sticks out like a sore thumb to me. I think English prescriptivism has pushed the order of pronouns in collective noun/pronoun phrases too much (eg. he and I, not I and him), and people have started to reanalyze the phrase as a noun phrase in itself, but not everyone so it sounds weird to a slice of the population. Then there's disjunctive pronouns that throws a wrench in the works.

Note: asterisk means it sounds ungrammatical to speakers of the language in linguistics (me in this case), no asterisk means okay to say. Also later correct reformulation means it's less common but still correct:

Alice, Bob and I are going.

*I are going.

I am going.

Me, Alice, and Bob are going.

*Me are going.

*Me am going.

Want to join me?

*Want to join I?

*Want to join Alice, Bob and I? <-- this is the one that annoys me, but you might think it's fine

Want to join Alice, Bob and me?

Alice and Bob aren't going probably, but me, I'm going for sure

Alice and Bob aren't going probably, but I, I'm going for sure

It's me who is going

It's me who am going <-- this is pushing it

It's I who is going

It's I who am going <-- actually acceptable, but I still do a double take

Alice and Bob like to go more than me

Alice and Bob like to go more than I

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] Zezzy@hexbear.net 12 points 1 year ago

I hate linguistic prescriptionism and believe all English is fine if people understand what you mean, so things like this just gives me ammo to bother others in the future.

I could care less about conscious vs conscious before, but now that I know it slightly annoys others I'll never spell it with the e ever again stalin-garrison

load more comments (5 replies)
[-] wtypstanaccount04@hexbear.net 12 points 1 year ago

Grammer is really quirky and I could literally talk about it for hours. The affect that grammer has on all of us is really something to behold, it really peaks my interest. Some people "go nucular" when talking about grammer but you and I are on the same page I think.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] GaveUp@hexbear.net 11 points 1 year ago

People using "reactionary" instead of "reactive"

[-] AlicePraxis@hexbear.net 13 points 1 year ago

and when you actually use "reactionary" correctly they think you mean reactive

[-] culpritus@hexbear.net 10 points 1 year ago

run the gambit

when they mean

run the gamut

Maybe it's because I've been familiar with color gamut since like Photoshop 5 or something. And I know people that really likely know the gamut word but they just got the telephone version of the phrase at some point I guess.

load more comments (11 replies)
[-] RION@hexbear.net 10 points 1 year ago

Using "whilst" where "while" would work fine. Feels like the grammatical equivalent of plastic cutlery spray-painted chrome

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] keepcarrot@hexbear.net 10 points 1 year ago

The reframing of "politics" to whatever people think it means. My cliffnotes of "politics" is "engaging with social relations through the lens of power", not "stuff people in parliament do" or "minority emancipation " or whatever other extremely reductive definition people use.

I keep class signifiers out of conversation, but things like "eckspecially" or "nucular" annoy me. But that's my dad's elitist elocution coming through.

X-of instead of X-have.

"Well actually ", "Consider" and other codewords that suggest I am about to receive a take of breathtaking innanity and self-importance

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] raven@hexbear.net 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This might be the perfect place for me to take the soapbox and tell you all about my opinion on singular "they" (no, it isn't that one)

Singular "they" should be treated as any other singular pronoun for the sake of clarity.

They ~~are~~ eating pancakes.
They is eating pancakes.

[-] temptest@hexbear.net 9 points 1 year ago

Doubling down on the "I could care less" as a misinterpretation of "I couldn't care less".

The phrase "I could not care less" means someone doesn't care whatsoever. Saying "I could care less" implies the person does care. I had no idea how widespread it was until I started using US websites.

Also, it doesn't so much annoy me, but

spoilergendered language. using neutral terms for everything is actually easier and simplifies the language.

[-] NewLeaf@hexbear.net 9 points 1 year ago

"she has no conscious" makes me lose my mind. Same with "would of". The education system is beyond terrible. So many adults are borderline illiterate

[-] GrainEater@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 1 year ago

I agree with "could care less"

also "all but" meaning "very nearly", I know there's probably some explanation but it still Grinds My Gears(TM)

[-] silent_water@hexbear.net 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

"all but" is short for "all but < enumerated exceptions >". the speaker is just eliding the exceptions. people using it as an adjective/adverb phrase are just nodding at the whole thing, even though the exceptions wouldn't neatly fit grammatically. wouldn't be entirely surprised if it got smushed into a single new word over the years - albut or something.

[-] FourteenEyes@hexbear.net 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

"Cue" means "to indicate to another party that it is now time to undertake a previously planned action"

"Queue" means "to line up neatly"

They are not interchangeable and the only explanation I can think of is people seeing "queue" on their phone's music player and thinking that means "start music"

Oh and while I'm whining "discreet" means "secret" and "discrete" means "its own separate thing" GET IT RIGHT meow-tableflip

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] AlicePraxis@hexbear.net 8 points 1 year ago

"same difference"

it's like they took the phrases "same thing" and "no difference" and combined them into one phrase that makes no sense

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
40 points (100.0% liked)

askchapo

22749 readers
384 users here now

Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.

Rules:

  1. Posts must ask a question.

  2. If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.

  3. Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.

  4. Try !feedback@hexbear.net if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS