“Alot”

I think it is as simple as the two words are said together so much that people - especially those who are not big readers and see the words written down a lot - assume 'alot' is a word. It is the same with 'aswell' as well.

No but they do sound different from each other. People can surely tell the difference between a word starting “bo” and one starting “bro”?!

One I've noticed recently is "It's not that big OF a deal"

We don't need the of thanks.

I agree but this is how the world is going.
My pet peeve is that people used to correctly use the verb ‘change’ and now everybody is using ‘change it up’. (An American-ism? There is a Jennifer Anniston film called ‘The Change Up’) Nobody seems to be bothered about this except me, including otherwise well-spoken adults.

To get back to the question, I think the reason people write “alot” and “abit” is because they get confused by words like “about” “apart” and “above”.
Add general poor spelling and not being very observant or caring, and there you have the answer.
What annoys me is the ubiquitous use of “the reason why” - you only need to say “the reason” - see above.
I also hate the syntax in so many mm posts which start “Aibu to not want…” Aarghh! It’s “not to want” ffs.

Very good 😂

Oh god, per say drives me mad! And on route!

My favourite ever had to be "wa-la" for "voila" - that really made me chuckle 😂

I always think that "Please can I have..." just sounds a bit more polite and less demanding than "Can I get..."

I don't think it's a reflection on someone's intelligence necessarily. Just perhaps their standards they like to keep.

Yes, i agree. Although a class teacher I had at aged 7 would always over enunciate our by saying it with a real emphasis on the first sound.

My dad has a way of saying it as "ahhhs" but I think it'll be more to do with his Norwich/Norfolk dialect variation more than anything else.

Sorry as I haven't RTFT but my pet hates are "your" instead of "you're", "there's" instead of "their's" and "exaggerate" instead of "exacerbate".

That last one really bloody winds me up. But obviously sometimes it's just because they're not used to seeing the correct word, and I guess must think their ways has been always right. 🤔😳

They're not exactly "cat" and "ouroboros", are they?

Our and are sound nothing alike in my Scottish accent but in some English accents they do.

We had an exercise in a literacy book where the children had to choose our/are in a sentence. Pretty pointless for us as it was obvious.

I have seen it a few times on here.

The thing is you either have to ask for clarification to be sure of the meaning (in many cases, not all) or assume the person has made a mistake. I always thought it was a bit arrogant to assume the person had made a mistake without checking. But you can't ask without people saying you're a dick for asking.

Who is doing that?! I’ve never seen that mistake. They don’t even sound the same.

I’m from Edinburgh and I don’t think these phrases are remotely Scottish.

Reign/rein/rain and bare/bear are quite different from bought/brought though. I can almost forgive the former as they are homophones but I don’t understand how anyone confuses bought and brought?! They are entirely different words!

😆

@JarellQuansahsGolfClubs, for someone who is very engaged with language, you don’t use it very precisely.

The pronunciation of sloth has been codified. It’s right there in the Collins. All you are really saying is that the OED is behind the curve.

And your dictionary snobbery is all fine and good if that’s what you like except that it only really makes sense in a world where the English language does have an “industry authority”. But… it doesn’t. The OED has no authority. Your linguistics (?) industry has no authority. We have no Académie Anglaise.

My original “says who?” was really a question about that. I don’t think there is any authority over how English is used. There are only competing schools of thought.

Yes!!! 🤯

I've just seen, "Please bare with me as I've been busy with uni work"

Hopefully they're not studying English.

You're right: I didn't explicitly say anything about the specifics of "sloth" (although I hinted very strongly at where I was coming from) as I didn't want to out myself as a dictionary snob. But I'll confess: I take no notice of the Cambridge and pretty much any other dictionary as the OED is the "industry" authority. I should have made it clearer in my first post about it and subsequently. This seems to have upset you quite a lot and that was not my intention, so for that I apologise. However, I don't consider it to be an error as the OED lists only "sloth" to rhyme with "both" as British English pronunciation. Other dictionaries are more lax in what they list and that's fine but to me, it doesn't amount to codification. The fact that the Cambridge has the alternative pronunciation of sloth but labels "alot" as a mistake already tells us a lot about the status of those two examples of language change/potential language change.

And that is absolutely not to say that I don't accept that people pronounce "sloth" to rhyme with "cloth" or that I think they shouldn't or anything like that. My first post about it was about codification - that's what I was referring to. I am a very keen observer of language use and language change and find it interesting that widespread pronunciations are not codified.

It's pretty obvious that standardisation for written English will endure longer than for spoken English. "Alot" is wrong for now, but might not be in 50 years' time.

I agree with this.

The worst one I have ever read is "the smorning" what the fuck is a smorning?