It bugs me when people say “the thing is is that” (if you listen for it, you’ll start hearing it… or maybe that’s something that people only do in my area.) (“What the thing is is that…” is fine. But “the thing is is that…” bugs me.)
Also, “just because <blank> doesn’t mean <blank>.” That sentence structure invites one to take “just because <blank>” as a noun phrase which my brain really doesn’t want to do. Just doesn’t seem right. But that sentence structure is very common.
And I’m not saying there’s anything objectively wrong with either of these. Language is weird and complex and beautiful. It’s just fascinating that some commonly-used linguistic constructions just hit some people wrong sometimes.
Edit: I thought of another one. “As best as I can.” “The best I can” is fine, “as well as I can” is good, and “as best I can” is even fine. But “as best as” hurts.
A before u
“A university” sounds fucking weird to me. It melds into a single syllable. University doesn’t start with a consonant unless you have a strong accent.
Huh, how do you pronounce it? I would say “a university” because in my head it’s “yoo-ni-ver-si-tee”
ew-ni-ver-si-tee
yoo- sounds so weird and unnatural to me
If it blends in your accent use “an university”
University begins with the same sound as Yes or Yankee. Would you say An Yes? An Yankee?
I hate the recent trend of using “onboarding”. It sounds clunky to me and as if you’re trying to sound all cool and up to date.
Is there a replacement that you’re fond of? We use it all the time at work - onboarding free users, onboarding paid users, onboarding employees.
“Aren’t I”, as in “I’m still going with you, aren’t I?”, which, when uncontracted, becomes “are I not?” It should be “ain’t I” since “ain’t” is a proper contraction for “amn’t”, but there’s been an irrational suppression of “ain’t”.
which, when uncontracted, becomes “are I not?”
Nope ‘are not I?’
I’d say the suppression of ain’t is perfectly rational unless you want to sound like a cowboy
“On accident”… That doesn’t even make sense. You do something “by accident”.
I mean, to me it doesn’t really make that much sense one way or the other. Genuine question, how is “by” being used here? What are other examples of it being used this way?
By chance or by design would be other examples. Your question prompted me to look into the origins of the phrase and it appears to come from Latin.
https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/pardon-the-expression/by-accident-vs-on-accident/
Well I don’t think there’s any in English I mind, but I cringe about a ton of things in my native language.
However you did make me think of one expression.
You’ll never hear “it did didn’t it?” the same way again.
OP, thanks for asking. I feel seen.
- Using the past tense instead of the subjunctive mood. “What if she was gone?” Nope. It should be “what if she were gone.” People (in the US) seem to get this wrong most of the time, except for a few common phrases like “If I were you, …”.
- The words “whilst,” “amongst,” and “amidst.” I get that there is a certain history to these words, but I personally never use them as they seem like meaningless alterations. When I hear them, I roll my eyes, but I try not to judge too quickly.
- “Irregardless”. It’s not a word.
- “Could care less”. An oldie but a goodie?
- Overuse of commas. I don’t like seeing them as strictly a way to introduce a pause in speech. Commas have specific grammatical purposes, and using them without such a purpose breaks my expectations as a reader.
- Confusing “nauseous” and “nauseated”.
The first one is something of a lost cause, so long as English grammar continues to be neglected in schooling. I very much doubt that more than a couple of students in my high school had ever heard the term subjunctive mood outside of French or Spanish lessons, where it was always presented as this very alien concept.
5 is one that I see a lot lately. People just seem to think, that if they can possibly pause, there’s a comma.
“What if she was gone?”
Not a native speaker. That’s what I was taught. Subjunctive wasn’t a thing in my English lessons. Common phrases like “I wish I were you…” were introduced as a non-standard alternative…
Interesting! It’s possible your teacher was trying to keep things simple, especially since most English speakers probably couldn’t tell you what the subjunctive mood is.
I don’t think I learned about the subjunctive mood in Spanish class for 5 years, by which time I was in the 8th grade.
I’m driven insane by the use of “itch” as a verb in place of scratch. ‘He itched his leg.’ Bleh!
Generally these weird roundabout constructions used in English (not my native language). Like “I’m going forward to do X”. There’s always a bit of padding in language, but English seems to be very “paddy”.
Oh, and very non-descriptive words for very specific things. Like washer. What is a washer? It doesn’t do any washing. In German, we call these things Unterlegscheibe. A disk (Scheibe) to put (legen) under (unter) something. Says exactly what it’s doing.
So the first thing is definitely pulled from corporatespeak, so you sound very professional like you know what you’re doing.
As for a washer specifically, there isn’t really a known etymological origin, that’s just what they’ve been called since the 1300s. The thing about English is that it’s like 5 languages stack on top of each other and eating parts of other languages for sustenance.
I really can’t stand when someone says something happened, or they did something, “on accident”.
No. You do something on purpose or by accident.
I vaguely remember hearing that you can know whether someone was born before or after a specific year, depending on whether they use by or on accident.
My junior high math teacher knew what part of town you were from by this.
For a period of time on spezsite, people loved posting photos using the title “Just a (whatever the thing in the photo was)”.
I don’t know why, but that convention of using “just a…” started to get under my skin after a while. The fad kind of faded away, though you still see it occasionally.
It’s not that there’s anything wrong with titling a post in that manner. But over time, it felt like nonstop humblebragging.
I’m probably making zero sense. Pet peeves can be weird like that.
There are a lot of phrases from reddit that annoy me due to overuse. “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes” and “fuck around and find out” both annoy the absolute piss right out of me now.
I’m not certain if this is what you were getting at, but these are mine:
An historical - It doesn’t follow the general way of using a or an with consonants and vowels. Nor does it change the meaning if I said a historical (event) instead an historical (event).
Fewer and less. I understand that there is a rule, but the rule is fucking dumb. If I say there are less people or if I say there are fewer people - the end result is the same that there isn’t as much as there was before.
Language is fluid. As long as we understand the meaning of what is being said then who cares?
“an historic” works if you’re not pronouncing the “h”, which is common in some dialects. A vs an isn’t about there being an actual vowel, it’s about the sound. The same happens with honor and herb (again, depending on pronunciation).
dialects
French?
No, mostly British and some parts of New England.
mostly British
No, mostly not British. Only proper cockney geezer really.
Yes and in American English the H sound in historic is always used with “a” unless I’m missing a bunch of examples somewhere. The H sound isn’t silent
Ya “an historic”, when the h is clearly pronounced, strikes the wonderful double blow of being both pretentious and wrong as far as I’m concerned. Looking at you, NPR. Go run up an hill, why donchya?
You may be fewer irritated by this with age
I understood what you were saying! I am fewer irritated. I would personally use less, because it sounds better in this instance, but totally agree. Not sure how I’d put a number to my irritation though. I am not a robot, so my irritation isn’t exactly a quantifiable scale.
Turning words like"competence" and “resilience” into “competency” and “resiliency” because more syllables is moar smartr
Electric, electrical.
Symmetric, symmetrical.
Historic, historical
I feel like the same people who say “best practice” at every opportunity also say “core competency” and “resiliency”.
I say “A part of me thinks […]” (or “wishes” or “wants”, etc) so often that it has started to seriously annoy me.
A part of me thinks that would annoy me as well.
It speaks to an ever-evolving world, culture and society. But nothing and nobody really speaks to me.
What really gets me agitated is when people don’t use the helper verb “to be.” Examples include, “The tea needs strained,” or “The car needs washed.” No, you miserable cunts. The tea needs TO BE strained. The car needs TO BE washed. Nothing presently needs the past tense of an action. I know there’s parts of the US where this sentence construction is common but those entire regions can honestly fuck off. People say it’s a dialect or something. I don’t buy it. Not knowing basic rules of your native language isn’t a dialect. It’s just you being dumb. I hate it so much!
You know what else I hate? “It is what it is.” Of course it is, you dense motherfucker! If it wasn’t what it was, it would be something else, which would then be what it is! It’s the most nonsensical phrase I’ve ever heard and it pretty much exists so you have something to say when you have nothing even remotely worth hearing to say.
I know there’s parts of the US where this sentence construction is common but those entire regions can honestly fuck off.
Also bits of Nothern England. My Geordie friend uses that all the time. It feels really wrong.
“it is what it is” makes sense to me. Yes, it’s tautological. But it’s just emphasizing the point that whatever it is cannot be changed by the people
discussiondiscussing it.There’s any number of better ways to make that point without sounding like a clown.
A former boss of mine was a frequent user of “it is what it is” and now I just associate it with shit decision making and people that manage to fail upward.
Wait till you get to parts of northern England where they say “The car wants washing” 😂
That’s just it. Neither of the phrases is “wrong;” they are just a dialectical feature some people don’t share. There’s a systematic conjugation there, the lack of the helper verb is completely irrelevant if the person uses the construction consistently, and meaning is communicated successfully without it. The only reason to avoid it is as a social choice to avoid being judged by people who would call you a miserable cunt, or maybe to prove you completed a needlessly strict course of instruction in English grammar that proves you’re not a miserable cunt.
“The car wants washing” is fine, thankfully I’ve never heard anyone north or south say “The car wants washed”, which was OP’s concern
