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Funny thing is, Cally, the originator of this thread, hit on my pet peeve.

Today at the supermarket, i spotted signs behind the register

"do you want a Enviro bag"

A Envirobag?

IT'S "AN" ENVIROBAG!!!! not a enviro bag, but an, an, an, an, an

SHEEEeeesh!!!! A little proper English here, lol

Now Cally, grab the edge of your desk, with your knuckles over the edge, and let's see, where did I place my ruler????????


Edited for spelling

Last edited by Koi Keeper at 09-May-2005 20:20

_____________________________________________________________

There is always a bigger fish...

You, Marcus, need, to, learn, to, control, your, comma, usage,

><>Dani<><

The worst example of bad english that just happens to be spreading is: "this train will be next stop <insert train station name here>".

HUH?! WHAT?! THIS TRAIN WILL BE THE NEXT STOP? What is worse is that it is becoming a habbit for all the train guards. Pathetic.

That sounds to me as if the sign was written by a Japanese person who had experienced difficulty mastering English as a second language. Missing words and unusual juxtapositions of this kind are a common feature of bad translations from Japanese to English, as anyone who has had the misfortune to read a printer manual for a Japanese printer produced in the mid to late 1980s will recognise on sight.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Cali, you've just opened up a new can of worms! Engrish, as it is called. The whole site is devoted to labels, signs, etc that were translated to English and, well, a few things got lost in translation. Funny stuff

[link=http://www.engrish.com]http://www.engrish.com" style="COLOR: #FFFFFF[/link] <~ disclaimer, this site is not always family friendly

><>Dani<><

I was waiting for that site to get mentioned.

Where I come from we say "Git Er Doooneee". Down here is Nawleans.

Thats funny I dont care who you are..


FreeBlaze

is that the cable dudes catch phrase? I have a tape of that guy somewhere....

ACID!

What exactly did you think I was grouchy about??

AN AN AN AN AN! Not A!

THAT was what got me grumpy in the first place!
Go get your ruler and find the writer of that original sign!

Its almost as irksome as "an herbal beverage"

H is *shock horror* NOT a vowel, and is not  ounced as a vowel in most of the English-speaking language. If you MUST  ounce herb without the H, fine, you can use an, but it really grates that it is now common to write it as 'an herb' AND I get CORRECTED by some people who obviously think that I missed my primary english classes.

I might be of convict decent, but I do know my language dammit!

(Yes yes, I know that both ways are considered correct, but let me have my gripe )

I just wish that at some stage we could make a larger distiction between American and English than English (US) and English (UK), as there is quite often a very large gap there. Thankyou Mr Webster! *pulls hair out*

I also wish that my MS Word would stay on the language setting *I* choose. Stinking patriotic piece of software ]:|

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

Don't even get me started on this subject
It drives me nuts sometimes and I know it shouldn't.
People who genuinely can't spell because of difficulty at school or whatever are fine, it's good that they even try to write, it's the people that should and do know better like the people responsible for the Edward Scissorhands poster that really tick me off

It's funny you mention that.. i have a t shirt from a fast food chain here that says " Tried A Arby's Sandwich Yet? "

I wear it just to tick people off

Haha... That reminds me of a poster I have hanging in here.

[/font]

---

I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

What amuses me are the people who have certain accents which cause them to add an "r" onto the end of words. I use as an example, the phrase "I have a banana and....." They would say instead, "I have a bananner and..." I am not knocking your accents. I love them.

My husband employs a man who is dyslexic, and he has quite a unique way of speaking. His name is Larry, and we call his language "Lar-bonics". Around here we have a saying used to describe a winding road, or a tree that is very crooked, which is, "Crookeder than a dog's hind leg". Larry says, "Crookeder than a dog's hind's door." If you were giving a number of items, you might say,"Two or three," whereas Larry would say, "Three or two."

I don't get annoyed, I just laugh. There is no point to it. I have an extensive vocabulary, and didn't need to look up any of them big ol' words calli....(dude, yer name is too long) typed out, but I grew up in Idaho, and if I were to speak in such a manner, I would be stared at, and likely burned as a witch Just kiddin'....they hang witches out here.

I think our butchery of the language is by force of habit, environs, laziness, and the company we keep. Let's face it, if you were co-habitating with a big, burly logger, you would get very tired of translating your speech(I know I did), therefore you simplify it a bit.

As a final note, modern-day English is such a total mish-mash and bastardization of most other languages that to be truly technical there are VERY few hard and fast rules to it. I am rather proud of the fact that I speak one of the most difficult languages to master, fluently. Oh yeah, and I can cuss like a pirate in it, also

Whatcha mean bucherin' tha language? Y'all so fooly! Never done spendt no time down south have ya?

When I moved to Arizona several years ago I swore I would never say "y'all". Guess I shouldn't swear.

If we had computers a few hundred years ago we would be writing posts about going to ye olde fish shoppe...

Not at all...."olde" and "shoppe" are modern....and bloody irritating. I always wanted to open up "Ye Olde Booke Shoppe" just to drive my collegues insane, but I would only be able to tolerate it for a few days.

today I heard the principle/headmaster thingy say

the students "was" in the parade...

shouldnt it have been,

the students "were" in the parade...

??

thought you ought (ought ) to know

Maybe. Context is an important thing. Maybe he said, "The float made by the students was in the parade today."

PM/email/msg me if you have any questions/comments regarding me or my knowledge or if you want me to read a thread.

In the school newspaper the other day (both in one day, and yes, this is a university, but admittedly more famed for engineering than English)

"it's" as a possessive  oun (should be its)

"letter's" for the plural form (letters)

If these were found in letters submitted to the editor I really wouldn't care, nor would I care that much if they were found in articles or columns. These were editorial mistakes! The first one was in a sidebar summarizing the article it was juxtaposed with. The second was in a note telling readers of the deadline for submitting letters to the editor before the end of the semester.

Considering I can banter this much about the grammatical errors in the school paper, you can imagine what some other topics might be. Let's just say the paper is a chief source of entertainment for my friends and me. I think I'm the only one who notices grammar though.

><>

Funny you should mention that Superlion. I just got into a big flurry of teenage drama when the I wrote a letter to the school newspaper. They had asked for opinions, so I gave mine. It basically said how I was disappointed in the work, and it was pretty harsh. Well-written, and not personally attacking anyone, but harsh. Needless to say, some of the girls in the class freaked out. One of the confronted me at lunch and started a fight, and I was forced to apologize. I had to apologize for my opinion! ]:|. It still bugs the hell out of me.

---

They shade the glow of it with their mossy-misty costumes,
They wear masks of silk, porcelain, brass, and silver,
So as not to mislead with their own, ordinary faces.

I had to apologize for my opinion!

As I said earlier, those are the joys of living in the modern world.

Joe Potato

heh... there this one girl who wrote a satire piece in last week... people didn't get it and there was this flame war amongst the letters about it. Apparently she even got death threats for it, it was so bad. It was fairly obvious except that she didn't really have a clear purpose for what she said. No one in their right mind would write something like what she wrote for any reason other than satire. But people really didn't get it. Sad to see people's analytical skills these days... but that's another topic.

><>

Superlion, you want to visit my neighbourhood sometime. It's known as Jurassic Park ... because it's full of cavemen and dinosaurs


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

it's really accent about 40% if the time, someone says his name is "fill up" beacase of his accent but his name really is "Philip"
...i think...


...

FUNKATISE ME!



Last edited by dude_dude at 30-Apr-2005 02:33

Instead of apologizing, you should have beaten her up .

Last edited by Cup_of_Lifenoodles at 27-Apr-2005 23:49

For the spelling, I just plain can't spell. Spell Check is my friend... most of the time. The correct way to spell a word just doesn't come to mind.

Same with math, I'm good at math, but it's not an immediate thing. I can think most math problems through, but not quickly.

Grammer for me is just plain out the window. I can tack on an "n" in front of an "a" because most of the time, when I'm typing and reading it to myself, it doesn't come out right to say "a" instead of "an".

As for the English Language, I don't think it should be called a language, but rather a collection of words from various languages. How many other languages have multiple words that have different meanings but are spoken exactly alike? Or so many words with the same exact meaning?

How many languages can you say the exact same sentence in more than a dozen ways?

They are the same
They are similar
They are equal
They are like one another
They are alike
They are matchinsg
They are akin
They are carbon copys
They are duplicates
They are equivalent
They are identical
They are indistinguishable
They are interchangeable

Not to mention you can replace they are with they&#8217;re. Speaking of they&#8217;re, there, and their&#8230;

Two things that drive me batty:

1. Improper and excessive use of commas.

2. Improper use of single and double quotation marks.

The latter is absolutely rampant, even in store signage.

&lt;-- is guilty of both in her postings.

thing is though, that in my proper writing i'm pretty good with punctuation.

On here, i'm more interested in conveying voice rhythm and meaning than getting it right



For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

If there is one linguistic disorder that gets to me, it's; "I could care less if...". For some inexplicable reason, I am greatly vexed by the said phrase.

Okay, dont flame me for saying this, but I think different dialects of a language evolve from the butchery of the language itself.

Silly as it may sound, India has 26+ languages ( I say 26+ because I have lost count). That figure doesnt even include the different dialects and unregistered rural languages. Quite a few of them are combinations of one or more languages.

I live in Maharashta, and the official state language is Marathi, whereas, Konkani is the language spoken in the west of Maharashtra towards the coastal areas and sounds just like Marathi.

Obviously, one evolved through the abuse of another, though nobody remembers which is which.

On the flip side, I myself am often irritated with Indians who cant speak English making a fool of themselves by trying to speak English on a channel where they could get away with Hindi.

I was once watching this show about Indian celebrities "Koffee with Karan" (dont know why they would spell it that way) where the host said to the celebs at the end of the show:

"Please sign the coffee mugs that are right 'next door to you'"

I am bilingual and English is not my first language, so I am definitely not as fluent as I would like to be but this was outright ridiculous.

P. S. Excuse me for any spelling or gramatical errors in the above post. I have never checked my post so carefully before :%)

"Koffee with Karan" (dont know why they would spell it that way)

Argh! I hate it when people do that! Intentionally misspelling words so their beginning letters are the same is so stupid. It is especially bad when they are already the same. Something like "Krazy Kats", when it would be just as easy to spell it right!

---

They shade the glow of it with their mossy-misty costumes,
They wear masks of silk, porcelain, brass, and silver,
So as not to mislead with their own, ordinary faces.

If there is one linguistic disorder that gets to me, it's; "I could care less if...". For some inexplicable reason, I am greatly vexed by the said phrase.

It's actually supposed to be "I couldn't care less if...", but lots of people are really stupid and get it wrong (they're not stupid for getting it wrong, they're stupid because they don't realize that by saying it wrong, they don't make any sense).







Last edited by Cory Addict at 29-Apr-2005 22:37

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

Yes, I am aware of that; which is why it ticks me off. In countless attempts to point out this linguistic flaw, I attract my fair share of blank stares from my friends.

Another annoyance... "would of" as in, "I would of done that..." It's "would HAVE," thank you.

I'm not so concerned about the local drawls/twangs/pro-nunciations, though. Y'all... heck, even *I* say that and I was born and raised in and around Chicago! If people from New Orleans want to call it N'awlins, then go right ahead. (Pardon if I mangled the phonetization of that.)

One thing that annoys me is the five-year-old mentality in an adult... for heaven's sake, there IS no word such as "bestest!" (And other such improvizations.)

Now, it's all fine and dandy to play games with the language. I myself make up random words... If you hang around in the chat room long enough, you're likely to see a "huggle," "tacklehug," or some random sound erupting from me. It is another thing entirely to misuse the language and deviate from the rules set forth for it.

On the subject of "meh," agreed, it doesn't mean "me," it's a sound. It's along the lines of "eh" or a shrug, as has been said. I believe the other word in question was "lates?" I'm thinking that could possibly be a misspelling of "laters," which some use as a substitution for "see you later." Don't ask. Not one of my habits.

I'm with Cali totally on the l337 speak as well as what I like to call "IM cant." (Cant - The special vocabulary peculiar to the members of an underworld group - according to dictionary.com) This "language" - and I use the term lightly - is nothing more than words that can never be spelled out properly. The word is "you"... substituting the letter "u" for the word is not acceptable. (There are hundreds of such examples.) As Cali said, it's fine for text messaging or the like, where characters are limited, but when it's not, for pity's sake, take the extra second it takes to type out the word! In some cases, it likely takes LONGER to spell out the cant word/phrase than it would take to actually use English. Besides, it takes ME longer to read and translate it, and the more it is used, the more likely I am to ignore a post, thread, or conversation in the chat room.

Granted, we all use abbreviations such as "brb" and "lol." I'm as guilty as anyone of using them. However, I refuse to reduce myself to the level of speaking in IM cant.

As for the wealth of such inventions as the "evirobag"... well, I have no answer for that. Sometimes it's amusing, but most times, it's just sheer laziness. Like, "gee, someone might not be able to understand a big word as'environmental,' let's dumb it down!" Argh!

Edit: Oh... as for having fun with the language... I love to have fun. I have a mini "dictionary" named the "terms of goofiness" that includes words created by myself, as well as my sister and one of our friends. Many were initiated into the "terms" after horrible misspellings or typos. It's quite fun. Hey, if you can't laugh at yourself.........

Last edited by Kitten at 10-May-2005 14:52

~Meow. Thus spoke the cat.~