Pedants' safe-house

[oldbutgold]

In view of the strong feeling expressed towards inveterate error-spotters (aka passive-aggressive bullies/pedants/twats etc) what about a thread for all the spelling errors/grammatical mistakes seen stricly outside MN in RL?
Like journalist Keith Waterhouse who was president of the AAA - campaigned throughout his career for the Abolition of the Abhorrent Apostrophe.
Spotted by self recently:

Ladie's hairdressers (in town)
Childrens' Society (on BBC)
10 items or less (everywhere)

no, i know there wasn't a specific time when that happened!

you could probably back it up to the printing press, when everyone was able to get hold of the same book/paper in the same language.
but certainly when we started to have formal education - i can't back it up with references because i'm still largely speculating...

what i'm trying to say is that we know there are rules, and most of us learned them at school, and those that didn't probably should have done.
i learned most of mine by reading because my own school was one of those progressive schools (that's why i haven't a clue what most of the things are called!)

Yes, bimonthly is a good example of where simplification causes confusion.

I do hate a lot of business jargon and management speak, but also know that my occasional rants on the subject look very like those of the early moderns railing against "inkhorn" terms - we'd barely blink at most of those now.

no, i suppose you can't stop change.

but linguistic ambiguity has a lot to answer for.

i think that happens when someone hears something (be it right or wrong) and assumes it to be right, then repeats it, and then we lose the right version along the way.

Was it Bill Bryson or John Humphreys that did a book about English that kept giving Lost Causes, where the proper version of the word or phrase has been so far lost that it can't be retrieved (especially as the "new" version has been accepted as the correct form)

let's change tack ,then.

shall we think of words/phrases of which we mourn the passing?

i love to spell connection as connexion, as that's how my copy of Pride and Prejudice spelled it.
so, we can assume that in the 18th century, it was spelled connexion.

just sounds so much nicer.

actually, it sounds the same!

i meant looks nicer....

But the "rules" are inferred by people, and it's by no means clear cut, hence some of the work on fuzzy grammar. And the rules your great-grandparents learned at school aren't quite the same as those you learned - it's not like maths.

And no, you can't have the printing press - that was a response to emerging mass literacy, not a trigger, and books were certainly not all printed in the same language then - the variety of forms in Middle English is astounding. There's a famous tale of Caxton struggling to buy eggs, and neither he nor the shopkeeper understanding each others' plurals.

ds awake now - must go! This is a very civil discussion, despite our differing stances. Many thanks.

Oh god, back to rail - don't get me started on John Humphries, Bill Bryson or Lynn Truss. Why don't books by actual linguists ever sell as well?

And agree about connexion - it's very pretty. I am really going now, I am. Really.

true, i take your point about rules and bow to you!

Blimey - you guys have been busy. I just went on the school run and there's a whole page and a half of new postings!

Nickelbabe - I was joking too about the borrowing/stealing but there was a point in there somewhere about assimilation, and when does a word stop being "foreign" and become anglicised, and I don't think it necessarily has to be changed in order for that to happen.

Just out of interest, do you feel a need to pluralise German loanwords according to German rules? Would you say "strudels" or "strudeln"? "Zeppelins" or ?? (Eek - out of my depth - nearly 30 years since my German O-Level so I can't remember what that would be in the plural! And would there be an umlaut on "strudeln"?) Bungalow comes from Hindi - how do they create plurals and do you adhere to their rules?

Anyway, I think we're going round in circles on this one....

FWIW, I prefer "connection" but I understand your need for the alternative.

I've never got "bimonthly", so I would always paraphrase to clarify.

Habbibu. I agree that some of the popular language books are lacking (I find John Humphries quite reactionary and annoying). I've read a lot of David Crystal's work (and quite enjoy his blog occasionally), and snap anything else I spot in Waterstones. As our language prof, can you recommend any other good linguistic reads?

What about die/dice, ladies?
I read somewhere recently that 'dice' is now the accepted singular in one dictionary. I would feel a complete idiot asking my DCs to 'pass the die' for snakes and ladders.

Well, I'm a bit out of the loop wrt new atuff, but two I love are:

Jean Aitchison on languge change

and

this on swearing, slang, etc

Ooh yuck, someone posted this on another thread:

"People bulk at the idea that it's possible to go without sex and still be happy (perhaps they are missing something?)"

Bulk.

oh Snobear, that could just be a speller though - my 'a' is a bit hard to hit sometimes as well.

I get more irate at obvious errors, of which 'loose' for 'lose' is still my major bugbear. 'Peak' for 'peek' is one I've seen a lot of recently; and people "pouring" over maps and books instead of "poring".

Going back to one of nickelbabe's suggestions of nicked words - criteria (s'Greek isn't it, singular criterion) and its "relative", phenomena/phenomenon - what else can we do with it? We have to use it as is now - we can't create a completely new singular form for it.

Whoever said about Zeppelin - I think the plural would be Zeppelinen, but am not sure.

[snort] at bulk!

you're not allowed to comment on MN errors on this thread Snobear.

i still go with die, pl dice.
it just sounds odd otherwise.

wrt to the German words - if there's an english equivalent, then i'll use the english - if i use the German word then i'll say it in a beautiful (in my head) German accent and use the correct version of the plural.

Zeppelin should be Zeppelin airship, i think (please correct me on this if i'm talking out of my arse!) as it's a ship named after Mr Zeppelin. (but Zeppelinen sounds correct if you're not putting on airship)

i don't think we can change criterion/criteria, as criterions is just plain weird-sounding. however, many people seem to think that criteria is a singular noun.

oh, sorry, wanted to add, that the German language quite often uses -s as the pluralization on modern words and "borrowed" words. I'm sure i hear someone say Zeppelins in German once. (so both is correct, then!)

Thanks for the recommendations Habbibu. I have a really old copy of the Jean Aitchison book (I might get it out for a re-read). And I'll have a look at the other one. I'm always up for a bit of smut.

The point about Zeppelins is surely you would just add an "s" for the plural in English, not use the correct Germanic form.

But I think we're going to have to agree to differ about these plurals, nickelbabe.

yyy. that's not what i meant! i was trying to skirt the issue entirely.

Have been away so was really pleased to see this thread is still alive and kicking.
A week at the seaside - ice's, sandwich's, adults's and childrens' flip-flops.....
Anyway, my pet peeve of the mo is when people write '...he walked passed me'...etc or
'...it past me by...
Also, is it correct to say a behaviour is 'Barbaric' instead of 'Barbarous'? See and hear it a lot. I thought Barbaric was like Hispanic, referring to ethnicity. To behave like a Barbarian should be Barbarous?

dunno.

i've just googled it (new verb - apparently Google hates it...). they seem to be interchangable.

although, barbarous: 1. Primitive in culture and customs; uncivilized.

1. Lacking refinement or culture; coarse.
2. Characterized by savagery; very cruel. See Synonyms at cruel.
3. Marked by the use or occurrence of barbarisms in spoken or written language.

and barbaric: 1 a : of, relating to, or characteristic of barbarians b : possessing or characteristic of a cultural level more complex than primitive savagery but less sophisticated than advanced civilization 2 a : marked by a lack of restraint : wild b : having a bizarre, primitive, or unsophisticated quality 3 : barbarous 3

technically, everything we do must be barbaric, as we're not Greek.

Barbarians, those old Greeks.

nah, everyone who ^isnt Greek is a barbarian - it come from the sound bar bar bar bar that they think foreigners make when they talk

Is this thread still alive?
Today I saw '...your comments never seize to make me laugh...'