Unique coming to just mean unusual.
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Ending sentences with propositions, and getting them jumbled around. My work does it in their advertisements and i cry every time.
"See what classes you can register for." Or modifying it to be worse; "see what classes you can register for fast"
propositions
Hey sexy mama, wanna kill all humans?
LOL I'm gonna leave it that way 🤣
Ain't ain't a word.
It is now.
Not exactly what you're asking, but double spaces after ends of sentences.
I still use them. I find it makes reading and finding sentences easier in a paragraph. There was a study that it had an impact
Us that technically a missing Oxford comma, or just a missing comma?
The rich couple, me and ScarJo donated ten thousand dollars to a local charity school.
Y'all make a cute couple but she's doing the heavy lifting.
That's typical of her relationships.
Apple put the nail in the coffin for adverbs when "Think different" let illiterates think they were speaking correctly.
*speaking correct
.
I'm so sorry; I couldn't help myself
The one that bothers me most (heard a lot in the software dev world) is when people say process-eez instead of processes, even if it is technically a word now, like ain’t
Australian English language is now largely Americanised, a process that started in the post-war era is now mostly complete.
- Terms such as 'gaol' have been widely replaced by 'jail'.
- 'Programme' is mostly replaced by 'program'.
- A 'car bonnet' is likely to be called a 'hood'.
- 'Play lunch' is mostly replaced with 'recess'.
- 'Pusher' is mostly called a 'pram'
- 'Lacker band' is now mostly just 'rubber band'.
- 'Boomer' no longer means kangaroo, but instead 'Old person.'
I'm not really bothered by it or anything, but it's been interesting to see it shift even over my lifetime.
I'd say pram is still pretty British ("I have to push the pram-a-lot!") in the US it would be almost definitely stroller.
Yes, but we got the good aussie slang!
Like, "no worries". Fucking love it.
Elden Ring is trying to bring the spelling back to "gaol."
I was one of the first years to have the new spelling rules.
It used to be, that a letter appearing more than twice in direct sequence would be cut to just twice. But that was lifted and is now just how many it should normally be. Examples: Schifffahrt, Brennnessel, Seeelefant.
It used to be, that "dass" could also be spelt "daß", but the rules for "ss" and "ß" were made clearer and more concise.
They also changed the way words could be split at the end of a line. If there was a double consonant in-between the syllables that were to split, the first syllable would take both consonants but now they are split evenly.
immer is split im-mer and not imm-er
But ck makes an exception: knackig is kna-ckig instead of old knak-kig
“Decimating” no longer means killing ten percent as the Romans did; now it is used to mean the killing of a majority, so it’s close to the opposite of its original meaning.
We were always supposed to put punctuation inside quotation marks; however, now it seems to be the user's choice of inside or outside. And I have to admit that most of the time when I’m using quotes, it seems more logical to me to place the punctuation outside of them.
We were always supposed to put punctuation inside quotation marks;
Isn't this a US English thing? In India we were taught to close them like brackets - i.e., the one that opened last closes first. So
'Don't wait. I will come later.'
But
He said 'I will come later'.
You know, I actually prefer that it be variable, but only when it serves a purpose.
Like, if Im quoting someone "I might want to indicate that they completed a sentence.", but also continue beyond it.
Yeah, I still feel like I'm supposed to, but frequently I think it makes more sense to pull it outside if it isn't part of the quote. Putting it in the quotation makes it seem like it's associated with the quotation, when it may not be.
"Reticent" used to mean 'reluctance to speak', or, 'holding your tongue', but in the last decade I saw it being used more frequently as a straight up synonym for 'reluctance'. I wonder if people maybe think it's a more authoritative sounding word?
It's not a change of convenience or cultural drift, just a sign of people reading less and subconsciously trying to hide it, I think.
From my perspective, literally being used for emphasis does not actually change its meaning, it’s simply hyperbole.
If you complain that you’ve been “waiting for hours”, even though it’s been 45 minutes, that doesn’t change the meaning of “hours”, you’re just exaggerating.
Hyperbole is a stylistic element; style is a completely different level of language than grammar/spelling/semantics (word meanings). As another example of style, ending a sentence with a preposition is grammatically correct but stylistically not recommended.
The OED actually includes the definition of literally as being what used to be the opposite of its definition nowadays, so I think that it does count as an auto-antonym (a word that means both itself, and the opposite of itself)