A silly rant about words.

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**Miguelsan**

Or play any online game. Before playing WoW I wasn`t aware how dangerous colors were. How many times did a hear about the color red "ganking" someone?

M.

**sebster**

warpcrafter wrote:Bah! If you want to experience some really bad english, watch COPS.

This is the thing. A lot of things here are pet peeves, but when it comes to something like ‘literally’ the mistake indicates a complete lack of understanding of a concept (literal vs figurative). People can say they don’t need to know that, but its one less tool they have to form ideas with.

When it gets bad enough you end up with the people on Cops.

EDIT - Or, like Miguelsan says, people in on-line games. Their English is so terrible they not only can’t express a lot of ideas, I suspect they’re incapable of understanding them.

**stonefox**

I fence so it saddens me when someone says "touche" wrong. :(

**Orkeosaurus**

You're supposed to pronounce it "toochy" right?

**Greebynog**

No, no, no. It's pronounced 'towk'.

**chromedog**

No, no, "toke" is nowt to do with fencing, but another more herbal activity. Ref: Cypress Hill for further elucidation on that.

Mispronunciation of the word gauss as "gorse" like it was some kind of prickly thicket.

**smiling Assassin**

Touche = Too-Cheyy (Like Che Guevara).

What used to get to me is how NOBODY can pronounce the French Name Lacroix without sounding like a fool. It's infuriating on Xbox Live, when people (Yes, my name includes Lacroix) go "Lahh Kroyx? What kind of a name is that?"

Oh, and Jaeger. As in Jaegermeister. (The 'a' has an Umlaut, but I can't be bothered to find the Key for it) People are all "Oh yeah, Jayygerrhmeester is the best." For anybody without a basic knowledge of German, it's said "Yayy-Ger."

GAAWWRRHH.

~sA

**P4NC4K3**

What annoys me is, in my region of England (the Norf-Eest like, inni') my peers are unable to pronounce the letters 'T' or 'H' the sound 'Th', for instance, Can I have that glass of water please? Becomes, Can I 'ave vat glass of wa'er? They wouldn't say please either. Another thing that gets on my nerves is use of the word 'Snuck' as in, he snuck around the room, it should be he sneaked around the room

God i'm a nerd
EDIT: Or maybe every one else is stupid (probably)
or Orks (also likely)
or both (that's about right)

**reds8n**

"innit" is the one that bugs me.

It is only acceptable to use the word 'innit' when referring to an object that is placed inside a larger article. Or when forcing your mother-in-law inside her funeral coffin and preceded by the words, 'fething get ...'

**FITZZ**

whatwhat wrote:Well I'm from the school of thought which says as long as you understand what they're trying to say, what is the problem? This is all a bit snoby and pretentious, I think even the op thought a bit of that himself when he titled the thread "A silly rant about words."

I agree, does it really matter if you are greeted with "Good afternoon my friend" or "What's popin' Bro"? I mean so long as the person doing the greeting isn't swinging a brick at my head I have no problem with what's "correct".

**stonefox**

P4NC4K3 wrote:What annoys me is, in my region of England (the Norf-Eest like, inni') my peers are unable to pronounce the letters 'T' or 'H' the sound 'Th', for instance, Can I have that glass of water please? Becomes, Can I 'ave vat glass of wa'er?

I was teased in school for that. In Tagalog we didn't have any soft sounds so I could only pronounce "three" as "tree". I somehow learned how to do it in high school.

I agree, does it really matter if you are greeted with "Good afternoon my friend" or "What's popin' Bro"? I mean so long as the person doing the greeting isn't swinging a brick at my head I have no problem with what's "correct".

I don't know why but in my nerdy circle of friends, bro is not taken well. In the jock circle it's fine and we give each other buttslaps and fistbumps and chestbumps but nooooo, those nerds aren't having any of that.

**P4NC4K3**

One more thing annoying me is when people use never instead of didnt "I never!"
even more infuriating when they say "I never did nowt!" which literally means I did something

fortunately I learn ways to deal with idiots, like this:
IDIOT: hey! P4NC4K3! If you look up stupid in the dictionary there's a picture of you!
ME: well I'm not the one who had to look up stupid in the dictionary am I? And my dictionary doesnt have pictures

**Orkeosaurus**

P4NC4K3 wrote:even more infuriating when they say "I never did nowt!" which literally means I did something

So?
It's the same difference.

I really could care less.

**Greebynog**

Orkeosaurus wrote:
P4NC4K3 wrote:even more infuriating when they say "I never did nowt!" which literally means I did something
So?
It's the same difference.

I really could care less.

Colloquialisms are completely different to incorrect usage of words. I have a Yorkshire accent, and say owt, nowt and summat. I also say 'By me sen' or 'Yoursen' intead of 'By my self' or 'Yourself'. I drop 'h's and 't's, and say 'It were reet' or 'It be reet' instead of 'It was alright' and 'It'll be alright'.

**Orkeosaurus**

So is what exactly are the colloquialisms and incorrect usages of words in what you quoted?

I'm a little confused.

**Greebynog**

Well, the difference betweem local slang and the use of 'random' and 'literally' is that colloquialisms don't prevent the full understanding and use of communicative devices and concepts. If you say literally all the time, you can't differentiate from something that is figurative. If you say 'owt' instead of anything it is the direct transposition of an understandable new word, so doesn't have the problem of double meaning.

It's that thing of 'if everyone understands you it's ok'. I agree, that's why I don't like the usage of random and literally in those fashions.

**Kilkrazy**

My advice is to become a manager.

Then, when you recruit new staff, your first line of defence against large numbers of CVs is to reject any that are full of grammar and spelling mistakes.

That's what I do, and it reduces my recruitment workload by about 30% each year.

**Greebynog**

Yep, how I speak and how I write are two seperate things...

**LunaHound**

been / being
then / than
desert / dessert

i make alot of english mistakes, people always tell me that ...

**Fallen668**

One thing I see on a nightly basis... the defendants inability to say "no contest" when they are before the judge. They go over it something like three times on what pleas can be entered... guilty, not guilty and no contest. Nearly 85% of the time when they use the no contest plea it is said "no content". That drives me up the wall so much I really wish the judge would tell them that is not a plea recognized by the court and they will have to come back at the next setting, and to use the time to rethink their plea. The real kicker to this though is the other night when someone who is here illegally, and needed a translator gave his plea in english saying it right!!! What the hell... the illegal can get it right but the people who are from here cant?

**Envy89**

:

**Morathi's Darkest Sin**

Miguelsan wrote:Or play any online game. Before playing WoW I wasn`t aware how dangerous colors were. How many times did a hear about the color red "ganking" someone?

M.

I feel like that on occasion, although to be fair it has as much to do with what the person is doing I find, fighting while typing usually means you are neither looking at what you are typing or having the time for a spell check.

If nothing else MMO's improve your typing speed, I thought I typed quickly before I played WoW. Two years later and my typing speed has gone through the roof and aye sometimes I spell things wrong but usually thats because I'm chatting while fighting and need to get the text down quick so I can activate my next ability.

Of course if I do spell it wrong I nearly always correct it straight away as well, as do pretty much all of the Guild I belong to, even in WoW we have some standards.

**Deff Dread red Edition**

I have become rather angry at my sister usage of the word "Plox",which means:please.Yet I have so far been unable to purge here of the use of the word.

**Kilkrazy**

Don't MMOs have Team Speak?

**Morathi's Darkest Sin**

Only if you pay for the headphones etc, something I haven't done as yet, and only a handful in the guild I'm in have it atm anyway.

It is something I plan on doing eventually, although to be fair our raiding policy is pretty much grab players, stumble in door, die often, escape with the loot. We aren't a shining beacon of WoW raiding.

**Elnicko5**

I've got a friend who insists the phrase is " It's a mute point" or "the point is mute". He claims it makes sense because the point lacks the ability to speak for itself. For a long time I thought he was being obstinate and let it slide. Then he put it in something he was writing for publication.

**Kilkrazy**

That's why we need editors.

My wife, who is Japanese, makes a lot of mistakes writing because of the sounds in English that don't exist in Japanese and get translated as something else. A couple of recent gems...

Jet rug (jet lag)
Grabs (gloves)

OTOH I make some equally silly mistakes in Japanese, thanks to words that are very similar sounding...

Hospital / Hairdresser
Fiance / Devil's Foot Jelly
Persimmon / Oyster

(Trust me, they sound very similar in Japanese.)

**Miguelsan**

No they don´t!, or so my wife says

I have the same problem.

M.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

Well, here is a truly delightful example of South East Englands god awful 'Estuary English'....

When I moved from Scotland, some 17ish years ago, I started High School (slightly different timings meant I just got dropped straight in). And, in my Tutor Group, I was informed by one girl...and I quote...

'You Scotch don't talk proper you don't'

Anyone care to pick apart the above statement for even the merest hint of accuracy?

And now there is the most god awful accent creeping around Britain...where words such as 'like' are pronounced 'lahk'. It's an unholy mix of Jamaican and Cockney, and how the hell someone in Birmingham develops said accent escapes me. Unless of course they are just trying to be hip cool and rap with the kids.

**Apone**

I really don't like the way the people of one country in particular can't pronounce the French words used in the English language.

Chassis, pronounced sha-see. Not the common 'ch' sound in English.

Tourniquet, pronounced Torni-kay. Not Torni-ket.

And Route. Root not Raowt. That pronunciation is used for things like "being routed (raowted) from their position". Where as "that is the shortest route" is pronounced root.