It seems people can no longer be bothered with adverbs - AIBU?

[Q2C4]

I keep seeing comments online in which people confused adjectives and adverbs. For example:
"He's done amazing to get this far."
"It's made different to other ones."
"She talks so loud!"

Can people no longer be bothered to write out the extra "ly" which is usually required to turn an adjective into an adverb? Or don't people know the difference?

YABU - English grammar is hard and teaching is patchy. Stop being pedantic.
YANBU - social media & smart phone auto correct have made people lazy and they should make the effort!

Colloquial English is different from formal English. People speak in different ways for different occasions, and dialects vary too. This has always been the case; it's nothing to do with either teaching or laziness, really. Language - particularly informal language - changes over time, and always has. Quirks come and go.

There was a time when the word 'Hello' was considered an awful, lazy modern abomination by a lot of people. And 'OK' too.

Yanbu. People speak and write dreadfully. However you will get a mixed response here and are likely to be told to go and hide in Pedants Corner.

YANBU!

Yanbu.

Yan bu at all

YANBU.

The one that makes me cringe though I am starting to realise the shift is probably permanent, is people using the past tense instead of present participle.

e.g. 'it needs mended' instead of 'it needs mending' or 'it needs to be mended.'
It's so lazy and I know this is snobbish but it sounds so uneducated. I always wonder if they ever listened at school.

I also hate ‘it needs mended’ 😡😡 I also hate I’m full of cold’. I actually stop reading posts whenever someone writes the second one.

I absolutely agree with you on this.
In the last couple of days I've read:
"It needs investigated"
"It needs done"
"It needs eaten"

Why have the words "to be" been completely missed? It drives me batty!

It’s a mixture, isn’t it? Some people won’t know the difference because they didn’t pick it up at school; some people will be speaking English as their second language and getting things a bit “wrong” occasionally, just as you would if you were trying to speak fluent Thai or Swahili; some people write in the same way they speak, with colloquial regionalisms and dialects. Using the past tense instead of the present participle is an example of something that features widely in west of Scotland dialects and has done for centuries. It isn’t some new social media phenomenon; but social media does offer us greater exposure to people who don’t live in our immediate vicinity and have different speech patterns.

In terms of weird things to judge people on, this has to be at the top of the list for me. Plenty of really nice, clever people speak very differently to the way I do. Plenty of entirely dislikable idiots speak “correctly.”

*especially when cold is pronounced code. But that’s a westcountry thing.

YANBUly

YANBUly formal, in my opinion. It’s an extra two letters, usually. I think it’s down to people just not knowing how to use adverbs.

@Draughtycatflapreturns Great minds.

YABU.

What does it matter? As long as I can work out what others are saying, it is not an issue to me.

When I see it pointed out on forums etc, it just comes across as pedantic for the sake of some faux superiority.

We don't need to take it upon ourselves to school other people, nor feel any way about how they talk or write.

I mean I got 99 problems and this isn't even in the top 8 billion

I'm noticing more and more that there's a generally low level of literacy that's masked by technology and simply by picking up the phone.

Even intelligent friends do this - little clues like the fact that one friend says "We Three Words", even when it's called "What Three Words", and we'd been using it all day.

(Point of interest, is "needs done" a Scottish thing at all? My Scottish line manager says it a lot, and I cringe when she uses similar in public. She's generally useless though :D)

I used to hate this and now have found myself slipping into it. I think Americans don’t use ‘LG’ as often which is perhaps part of the drift.

Sorry autocorrect - ‘ly’ that should say not LG

YANBU.

@ClottedCreamAndStrawberries can I ask what’s wrong with saying “I’m full of cold”? I haven’t heard that before.

I got pulled up on this by my MIL, I hadn't been taught adverbs and now I find myself adding 'ly' on the end after a beat when talking and the sentence needs it. Feels awkward!

My school was a fairly ok school! It must have just passed me by.

I regularly correct my children in this regard.

However, like another PP, I also don't understand the issue with 'I'm full of cold'?

YADNBU

I constantly tell my children that there’s no charge to use adverbs, but I will fine 50p for each incorrect omission. 😁 A short while later, my son asked the penalty for incorrect spelling, and showed me an email his teacher sent the class that read “…don’t panick if you can’t learn all your spellings by Friday, I’ll still give marks for making an effort …”

Also no idea what the issue is with “full of cold”. it’s grammatically correct. It means “my body is full of the cold virus”, or “my nose is full of mucus, caused by fighting off the common cold virus”

It’s just a less graphic way of saying you are stuffed up and viraemic. “Full of snot” would also work.

I don’t get the issue with “full of cold” and use myself on occasion. I agree re adverbs though and do pull my DC up on them regular like!

YABU- language changes and as long as it can be understood what's the real harm, but I do find it irritating.

However, although I would agreed that as long as it can be understood it SHOULD make no difference (especially when used informally) I think there is a problem when children only ever hear the grammatically incorrect version. They will be expected to learn the correct version in school and are tested on grammar so it's much harder for the children who don't hear the correct usage. Plus it can become another thing that makes children for disadvantaged backgrounds stand out if they want a professional career/leadership position etc.

The one place that I think it's unforgiveable to misuse grammar is in primary schools by teaching staff. It happens in my DC school regularly (including in letters/displays) and my view is that if they think it's important to teach children to use correct grammar then they should demonstrate it consistently. don't get me started on notices in school about SAT's (not my apostrophe)