To not understand ect?

[GretaGip]

It just doesn't make sense.

I'm baffled.

^How^ are people pronouncing it to think this makes sense?

After approximately 200 posts, do you genuinely think you're the only person to have said that?

Had you read the OP, (and the rest of the posts) you'd have seen that she's asking how come some people think that "etc" is "ect", not that she doesn't know what etc is.

Reading at least the OP of a thread can be quite useful and help you not to make a fool of yourself 4 hours later.

They really do! Drives me nuts.

A couple of posters have enlightened me that some folk may be pronouncing it differently than I do.

See I don't understand this either.

How did you not come to that conclusion on your own? I would have thought that was just really obvious.

would of instead of would have, could of instead of could have and there, their! and now, of course, there are people who do not understand the complete difference between borrow and lend!! I borrowed him a coat makes no sense but i lent him a coat are the correct words. also a chester draws!!! what the fuck is a chester draws?????? Loose and lose, people do not know which one to use and invariably use the wrong word! are there really so many people who did not attend school and dont even know the basics of English?????

Also affect/effect

I think the worst one nowadays, is the fairly recent use of "yous"!!!! You is a mass noun like sheep. people should not say sheeps, even though i have read this very word in the last two days!! My hubby, in his legal office, constantly has emails in his inbox from a legal office in another city. The writer of those emails insists on using the word "yous"!!!!

And he's instead of his?

I'm seeing this so often in my local FB groups, although sometimes it's the only time you'll see an apostrophe anywhere in a post 😁

Can you give a pacific example?

Yes, I’m not phased by this

Ect means electroconvulsive therapy to me.

Is that wall of poorly punctuated gobbledegook supposed to be ironic?

Recent? I take it you have never spent any time in Glasgow.

Or Ireland. English really loses out by not having district singular and plural versions of "you". In Ireland we have youse and ye, both very useful.

I often see "than" and "then" used incorrectly.

Do people genuinely not know what those two words mean, or are they typos?

Lot's of us pronounce than as th'n, so I guess if you only read social media you won't learn which is which.

I consider this very basic English, but I even saw such a mistake on the front page of the Telegraph - something about inflation rising "faster then expected".

It's posts like this that have caused my previously rampant pedantry to almost burn itself out.

'Yous' is obviously local vernacular, as is 'aks'.

Are they strictly correct? No.

Do we understand what the user is trying to convey? Yes.

I've reached an accommodation with vernacular and slightly mangled grammar. I've realised there's a huge amount of snobbery involved, despite the protestations of pedants regarding clear use of language and the need to be understood.

It's usually very simple to extract the intended meaning. People just prefer not to because it allows them to feel slightly superior.

Words and language obviously matter, if one was drafting a legal document, or parliamentary bill, precise use of language is crucial.

On an inernet forum? Not so much. The worst offenders are those (and you see it here a great deal) who respond to an OP, who often appears to be in dire straits, with utter derision because their use of syntax and spelling isn't standard.

I sometimes read an OP on Relationships with a sinking heart because I know exactly how they will be treated, based on their use of language. I guarantee that if a woman posted exactly the same problem in standard English and poorly written vernacular, the responses would be very different.

The worst!

@allthemiddlechildrenoftheworld.

You speak of language

How many marks do you need

To make yourself heard

A haiku to @allthemiddlechildrenoftheworld's use of question and exclamation marks.

You are a linguicist, according to this thought-provoking article;

Ask or aks? How linguistic prejudice perpetuates inequality (phys.org)

Interesting. I never knew there would ever be a whole article written on this.

I just read that @scorpiogirly, it makes sense.

Most users of native grammar are not linguists.

We use the grammar that makes the most sense to us, as users.

I hate a situation whereby native and educated grammar users dismiss people for non-standard grammar.

I'm not brilliant linguistically, but I always try when I travel, I I see that it's always appreciated even if the person I'm speaking to eventually realises that English may be our lingua franca.

I can't think of a situation where I've tried to use a language and have been mocked. Only welcomed.

But people on MN are routinely mocked.

It is very basic. I do think the people that are so obsessed with 'correct use' maybe feel a little insecure.

And I don't even blame them.

We are all a product of our environment.

Perhaps it is counter-intuitive, but being a spag pedant and enjoying frequent perusals of pedant's corner has definitely reduced how much I judge people for their errors in spag. Well, I do still judge but usually silently, as the mug says! And I hope I am more aware of my classist and nativist prejudices.

Well stop your judging @LauderSyme.

You seem to have come round to sensibliism.

Now, shove it on a bit further.

You seem sound.

This is my biggest grammatical bugbear, and nearly everyone seems to do it.

A lot of the times when I have read "would of" I thought that the person writing the post/article/etc was far more knowledgeable and/or intelligent than me, so I couldn't understand how they could make such a glaring mistake!

However, I do believe that I am quite intelligent even though I know that I make a lot of grammatical mistakes myself (it is ok for me to use the word "myself" in this sentence because it was preceded by an "I" somewhere else in the sentence). My most annoying - to others - grammatical mistakes are probably how often I use commas. Even my own family get annoyed, and/or embarrassed, by my lack of understanding about when are the correct times to use commas 🙈

It's not pronounced et "set" era. In Classical Latin, the "c" is always a hard "c," so it is pronounced et ket era.

Actually @MississippiAF, I don't agree that "affect/effect" should be included here, as I think that they are two of the most difficult words in the English language to use correctly!

Often if the word I should be using is "affect" I have to think about it before using it. I - think that I - know that to affect something is to directly do something to something else. Whereas, if something has been effected by something, it is a resulting action from having something done to it? An example that I think is correct is that:

"He took (affect) his medicine, but it made (effect) him feel nauseous."?

But as I said said before I think that those two words are amongst the most difficult to use correctly, although I do think that the word "effect" is much easier to use correctly than the word "affect".

However, if I am wrong, I am willing to be told that I have not understood what they mean, and their differences, at all - but I may cry 😭🤭
So unless I am much thicker than I realise, I think that in one way or another I have sort of proved my point?