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Grammar, spelling and the decline of the English language

3 replies

SoupDragon · 24/02/2003 15:31

Moving from the Weird Habits thread, I thought I'd share my favourite typo, spotted only last week in Tescos where they were advertising Winnie the Poo play mats. This was both on the big print sign and the smaller shelf label.

My, how I sniggered in a puerile fashion!

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MNHQ

tech · 24/02/2003 18:45

Sorry to jump in, but I really get irked when people try to sound posh and "correct" and end up making errors as a result. I think "yourself / yourselves" in non-reflexive sentences - "We'll discuss it with yourselves" -comes from this, as does "from Jane and I" instead of "from jane and me". I think people get so used to being in trouble as kids for saying "me and Jane are going out" instead of "Jane and I are going out" that they end up mis-applying the rule. I think that might be where "haitch" comes from as well, as people fear dropping an H and sounding common. I love "innit" though. I guess people for whom English isn't a native language just made it up to compensate for English having no easy way to make a tag question - such as n'est-ce pas or these days just "hein" in French, or verdad in spanish. The Americans do the same with "right" of course, as in "You're going to be there, right?" Something about email makes typos more likely I think. I don't know what it is, but I caught myself putting an apostrophe in a possessive "its" the other day. bad bad.

... tech bores on indefinitely - one of my pet fascinations. Those two Steven Pinker books - "The Language Instinct" and "Words and Rules" are really great reads for anyone interested in all this stuff.

MNHQ

tech · 25/02/2003 18:15

Hi bells2 - it's correct in the sense that many people say it and we all understand what they mean. It comes down to the difference between prescriptive and descriptive grammarians.
This page explains the distinction quite well.

MNHQ

tech · 27/02/2003 10:27

Hi Frieda,

Growing the business is a bit like growing flowers only different and less pretty. Benchmarking just means setting benchmarks - techo-jargon for setting a target and measuring performance against it. I have to listen to that kind of rubbish all the time. "Leverage off of" is a particular bugbear. Seems to mean "take advantage of" only it's more clever and more modern and needs a visionary to spot the opportunity to do so. Or something. I blame this fashion for MBAs.

My favourite bit of gobbledegook of all was something I heard one time on PeopleExpress, a long-defunct budget airline in the US. You used to pay on the plane. It was really cheap though, so you could forgive them a lot.

Just before they came round to collect fares, the flight attendant said: "At this time, we shall shortly be commencing our ticketing system process". What?

Anyway, I'd just better go and leverage off of the presence of coffee and begin the kettle ignition process.

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