“Alot”

[TheClanoftheDook]

Appreciate I’ll be called all the arseholes for this one. But I am actually interested.

I see this constantly. On here. In real life. On another thread, there is an apparent “commercial lawyer” using it.

Why? Where does it come from? How are people looking at “alot” and thinking it’s a word? Aren’t you having to fight the autocorrect to use it? I did. It autocorrected my title more than once.

So. If you use “alot” - why?

Counsellor vs Councillor too. Not egregious, I know, but I have to re-read most of the time.
CAHMS is another one - makes me think of 'just cahm down', so obviously that's my problem!

Yes I linked to it but it’s not been approved yet

Uneducated plebs use the word and their job/lifestyle doesn't require them to learn the correct grammar.

I agree. Could of, would of, should of are the absolute worst of the worst. Heaven forbid anyone comment on it though.

This is probably the most common SPAG offence on Mumsnet: Should of and Could of.

I'm normally fairly indulgent of spelling mistakes on here as I realise a lot of people had a poor education but I really can't persuade myself there's any excuse for this. Even a phone will autocorrect this.

Brought/bought and reign/rein/rain swaps can be pretty annoying too. Oh, and bear/bare. Bare with me?

Pedantry is looked down upon here but we are all constantly forming judgements of each other. How we dress, how we speak, the company we keep. It's perfectly normal. If someone's posts are littered with terrible grammar it's inevitable others will form conclusions about education level.

I can understand why people say it though. Could’ve, would’ve and should’ve are common contractions used in everyday speech.

Sure, but it stands up to no scrutiny. I could have walked up that hill. I have walked up that hill. I of walked up that hill? It make no sense

It's fine to form conclusions but they don't all have to be voiced. Calling people stupid or lazy purely because they can't spell a word that you can isn't exactly something that needs to be voiced.

I might have an opinion about someone's outfit walking down the street but I'm not going to voice it if it'll hurt them so why do it online. It's not 'victimless' because someone is voicing an opinion online if it's something that's unkind.

Oh, I don't disagree that there's a time and a place to voice it. There's no need to be unkind to someone who's upset about something. It is true though that judgements are formed regardless.

Yes we definitely all form judgements. That's human nature.

It's all over Mumsnet. The people who do it can never have read a book, newspaper or anything published anywhere, which is almost impossible to believe.

Yesterday I read a post where the poster wrote " I could of done x, had I of known about it".

I once corrected someone about it as an aside to a comment I was making. I was crucified by so many other posters for pointing it out, they were really scraping the barrel for imaginary excuses as to why it was perfectly fine for the poster to write it like that and it was appalling of me to even suggest otherwise. That's probably why it has proliferated on here because people are afraid of the backlash if you dare to do so.

But if no one tells you you're wrong, how will you ever learn the correct way?

I've also seen afew. Then there's should/would/could of. And less instead of fewer. It's physically and mentally painful. Especially in formal emails from bosses.

What I don't understand is,doesn't anyone break down their speech? For example, if they're about to say "I should of done it" don't they then go to "I of done it" no wait, that doesn't make sense, so it must be "I have done it" and therefore "I should have/should've done it"

I’ve name changed as I don’t want the specific post I’m talking about to be a drama.
but I was corrected by someone who is also in this thread on another thread a couple of weeks ago, very rudely, it wasn’t done out of kindness, I genuinely hope it made them feel better as it just made me feel shit, which I’m sure they knew, I’ve been through education, tutoring, stressing about it, a rude comment on a forum is unlikely to be the aha moment for most people who have struggled with this continuously.

I really struggle with spag, grammary luckily covers a lot of it for me, but I don’t use it on my phone and I don’t fret about it on a forum that’s just for advice and fun and anyone can scroll past my post and ignore it.

many of the things listed on this thread, where, were, too, to, could of could have, a lot of things that sound similar are things I struggle with, I’m not thick or stupid or a pleb and I like to read these days, there will be all sorts of things people struggle to learn at school or an adult, but unluckily mine is always on full display as it’s spag and we live in a writing world.
There are a whole bunch of reasons why people will struggle with this stuff, people dont want to know though, these threads always go the same way, your thick and your stupid and if you point out the reasons for struggling it’s labelled a poor excuse.

I just don’t care.

i also think pulling up of SAG online is a good demonstration of low intellect and emotional intelligence.

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

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.

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

Hopefully they're not studying English.

Yes!!! 🤯

@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.

😆

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!