Please state in which country your phrase tends to be used, what the phrase is, and what it should be.
Example:
In America, recently came across “back-petal”, instead of back-pedal. Also, still hearing “for all intensive purposes” instead of “for all intents and purposes”.
“that begs the question”. I wish people would just use the more correct “raises the question”, especially people doing educational/academic content. I hear it across the English-speaking internet
Using “uncomfy” instead of uncomfortable. I recognize this one is fully style, but it’s like nails on a chalkboard. Break the entirely fake rules of grammar and spelling all you want, but have some decency when it comes to connotation.
Comfy is an informal and almost diminutive form (not technically, but it follows the structure so it kinda feels like it) of comfortable. You have to have a degree of comfort to use the less formal “comfy,” so uncomfy is just…paradoxical? Oxymoronic? Ironic? I’d be ok with it used for humor, but not in earnest.
Relatedly, for me “comfy” is necessarily referring to physical comfort, not emotional. I can be either comfy or comfortable in a soft fuzzy chair. I can be comfortable in a new social situation. I can be uncomfortable in either. I can be uncomfy in neither, because that would be ridiculous.
FWIW I would never actually correct someone on this. I would immediately have my linguist card revoked, and I can’t point to a real fake grammatical rule that would make it “incorrect” even if I wanted to. But this is the one and only English usage thing I hate, and I hate it very, very much.
What entitlement means vs false sense of entitlement.
I tell people they are entitled to their rights and have an entitlement to their social security money for example, and they get offended thinking I mean “false sense of entitlement” instead.
The vast majority of these issues could be solved if people a) read any halfway-decent book, b) and didn’t choose to remain willfully ignorant. It’s fine to misunderstand or just not know something. We’ve all been there, we’ll be there again. NBD. But to be shown or offered the correct way and still choose to do it wrongly? That’s not cool at all.
Irregardless
Irregardless.
Without regardless
Without without regard
With regard
I’m going to end my emails with irregardless and see what happens. What’s the worst that can happen?
“Irregardless, MajorMajormajormajor.”
I’m writing with regards to the issue of…
That’s very friendly and I’ll be sure to forward your regards…🙄
This is literally a restaurant near me. Quite good one too
It’s “I didn’t taste it, let alone finish it.” not “I didn’t finish it, let alone taste it.”. Not those exact words, of course. People get it wrong more often than not IME. The wrong version never makes sense, and it always trips me up.
Oh man, “let alone” is severely misused. Good one!
Don’t think I’ve seen that myself, but that would be pretty fucking annoying for sure.
Using loose instead of lose.
I’m losing friends for loosing dogs on useless losers’ loose use of lose and loose
Some weirdos write decades as a possessive. Writing “90’s” implies that there’s a 90 that owns something.
It’s not a decade thing. People do that anytime they’re not sure if it’s a “s situation” or a “ies situation”, or confusing with some other plural problem.
People’s names. I think it’s dismissive/disrespectful to mispronounce someone’s name.
I have a rare last name (for the US anywa), and the pronunciations I get are amazing. My favorite was Mr. Tubbo, at the bank. I’ve also gotten Tugboat. My name has no G in it.
Whenever I go somewhere where I know I’ll have to spell my name (like the bank, gov offices, et cetera) I always offer them a dollar if they can pronounce it. I’ve had to pay a dollar one time in 30 years, and that’s only because she was involved with a French company. It never really bothers me when people can’t pronounce it. What bugs me is when I tell them how to say it and they still can’t get it. It’s spelled all fucked up and French, but it’s only 2 syllables, and a very, very simple name to pronounce. But they can’t get the spelling out of their head, and fuck it up every time
Thibault? That’s the first 2 syllable French name that comes to mind that I could see people mangling to Tubbo or Tugboat
You can’t really blame people for mispronouncing a rare or foreign name. It would only be a problem if it was done repeatedly with the intent to offend.
I do get irritated when they have 2 different pronunciations of a name that’s spelled the same. And they assume the less common one.
Absolutely. It’s not fair to blame people for honest mistakes. If I implied it was, then that was a mistake!
It’s always going to be the “of” people. Its “would have”, “should have” etc and not “would of”.
My pet peeve is when people use “then” but they actually meant to use “than”. I think it might be mainly due to flaws in predictive text on phone keyboards though.
Fuck yes. Most annoying mistake in English. Seems to have sharply risen during the last few years
More then a few made the mistake back than, too.
It’s one of those ones that bother me too as a non-native speaker, they’re such different words from each other when you learn them more from reading than oral exposure. The they’re/their/there trio is another one where I can’t fathom how people have issues distinguishing them.
“If worse comes to worst…”
In British English, they often say the phrase as “if worst comes to worst,” which is based on archaic grammar.
In the US, there’s a mix of verb tenses. The only ones that make sense in this day and age is “if what is worse comes to be the worst,” or “if worse comes to worst.”
This point can be argued, but I will be severely wounded (maybe not so much as dying) defending this hill.
As a non native speaker, it really irks me when people mix up “brake” and “breake”, specially among car enthusiasts.
Every time I try to slow down my car, I hear chopped up and recontextualized Amens…
This thread peaks my interest.
I hope my words
piquedsomeone else’s interests more.Using “women” for the singular use. I don’t understand how this happens because it couldn’t be more clear if you sound out the word.
Woman = 1 person
Women = 2 or more persons
Why everyone resorts to only using “women” baffles me.
You forgot “Every Woman= Chaka Khan and/or Whitney Houston”
I’ve seen this too! It baffles me!
It’s like, “Hey if your sentence contains ‘a women’, or ‘one women’, you’ve got a subject-number agreement error.” Lol
Not sure I’ve noticed this one. As in a singular woman is called “women” or people dance around calling a woman “women” or say lady or female or something other than “woman”?
I’ve seen people uncomfortable with saying “woman” for some reason, but haven’t noticed if the same people say “women” or not.
I see it a lot in online comments. Not so much on Lemmy but other places like YouTube and Instagram.
When my mom was in elementary school (in the 60s) she was taught that “woman” was not a word. That “women” was the only acceptable spelling, and that it was pronounced differently depending on context, but it was always spelled with an e.
Where did she grow up?
Columbia, South Carolina. Her teacher was just weird, I think.
That’s interesting, I’ve never heard that before. I’ll have to see, maybe I’m wrong lol.
Fairly sure that her teacher was just weird.
Yoy’re not.
