Do members of your family say things that bring out the pedant in you?

[UnquietDad]

MIL always says "them [nouns]", and "what" where she means "that" or "which". It makes me almost homicidal.

"Them books what you bought the other day."

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!!!!

And DW - who in most other ways is a precise user of language and a bit of a stickler - allows herself to lapse when in the presence of her ungrammatical Northern family. So, for example, when talking about her sister, she will say "Me and Jane are going..." I can never stop myself saying "Jane and I".

And they all just look at me as if I have broken wind.

My children make so many mistakes that aren't acceptable though, I need to rein in my correction so that they listen to me. I don't want the sound of mummy correcting them to become like white noise.

Actually, that happened years ago.

Ouch - self flagellation over. I'm covered in bruises.

.........in my defence I'm on an iPad and the self correcting spelling and grammar is American, everything ending in ise gets changed to ize also you have to switch keyboard screens to get to the apostrophe. (bad workman blaming tools, yada, yada, yada)

Apparently not general usage in MIL's house.

I suspect the issue brings the class difference between DH and me into sharp relief and she just cannot help herself. It's worth lobbing in a few random clangers just to see the response.

But I accept you pedants should be able to have your own corner and fight the er, good fight.

Oh, wow - a haven for closet grammar pedants!

Glottal stops are definitely the worst, and although nobody in the family uses them, nursery staff often do. How comes it takes one bad example to introduce a bad habit, and then a year of pedant slavery to get it out of the system???

DD1 has an excellent ear for accents and at the age of 3 invented this game where she shouts at me "My bu'iful pre'y bo'om wants wo'er on Sa'urday" (my beautiful pretty bottom wants water on Saturday - OK, not Shakespear, but quite a good string for a 3 year old!) until I become "the missing T monster" and chase her around the room until she says it properly. Sadly DD2 has picked up on the glottal stops without the sense of humour :-( She even started dropping her Tees in other languages, where it makes no sense whatsoever. Sigh.

And if I catch either of them splitting an infinitive, they will definitely be disinherited :-)

Actually, a split infinitive is not the most dreadful of sins. Sometimes it can help make the sentence flow better. Think of the most famous one, Star Trek's "To boldly go where no man has gone before". Any of the other alternatives would not have the same impact.

Do I have to hand in my Pedant's Card now? :)

Ah, now I am heartily in favour of splitting infinitives; possibly, though, this is because I can explain in an incredibly pedantic manner just why I feel it is justified and therefore give my Inner Pedant a better workout than if I had just objected to the split infinitive in the first place.

thank you fellationelson

I'm sticking up for Alouiseg now - missing off a bit of punctuation is something that happens due to speed, and the informal nature of the way we are communicating here. It's fine. Doesn't mean she doesn't know where it goes!

Whereas people who protest (a bit too much) that they do know where it goes, but don't think it's at all important to get it right, are just liars and they should be burnt at the stake forthwith.

Valium I know what you mean about the white noise....I have to try to limit myself to the really important ones now. the thing is, to me, they're all really important.

It pains me that my children's (sometimes slightly dodgy) peer group is more infuential in this regard than their own dear mother. All those years flogging away for nothing.

I'm often guilty of splitting infinitives, but I think they are a prime example of how grammar has 'mellowed' and changed over the years. Even in reasonably good quality journalism there are split infinitives and no-one has a coronary over it. They are nowhere near as clumsy and clunky, or just plain misleading as some of the more classic grammar gaffes, and split infinitives don't make the speaker sound stupid, just informal and modern.

Whereas 'We done that' and 'they was out' (for southerners) and 'she were ill' (for northerners) is just wrong on every level, makes my ears bleed, and makes the speaker sound a bit thick. A shame really, because it is often an ingrained cultural/class thing, and nothing to do with inherent intelligence at all - but everything to do with shoddy education.

I don't mind glottal stops (well, I don't like them exactly - I think they are ugly, but it's a regional accent thing - some accents are attractive, some aren't) but I don't make judgements about the speaker's intellect on them, whereas I do (rightly or wrongly) on dreadfully clunky grammar.

I don't know what a split infinitive is. In fact I don't know what lots of grammar terms are. Things just sound wrong and feel wrong and make me itch when I hear them.

I went to a bog standard comprehensive school in the 80's and I am certain that Grammar wasn't taught. Yet I managed a "b" in O level English, language and Literature. I'm not convinced it's taught thoroughly now either.

Snap Alouiseg!

Split infinitives are..um...think of an example...

He badly need a haircut. It should be he needs a haircut, badly. Because 'he badly' doesn't make sense on its own.

That's probably a really shite example -and wrong. Someone help me out please!!!

That's not an infinitive, though.

The classic example is Star Trek:

"Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."

should really be, if you are being fussed about split infinitives,

"Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, boldly to go where no man has gone before."

or

"Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to go boldly where no man has gone before."

i.e. the infinitive is "to go" and you "shouldn't" split it by putting a modifier in between the two parts.

However, the whole idea of not splitting infinitives in English comes from a faulty 18th-century analogy with Latin so I tut at it.

I see split infinitives in the books I read to the children. So how WRONG is it really? Is it that English is changing?

oh phew, a split infinitive not a hangable offence according to the mn jury!

Thank you. Told you mine was wrong/crap! I was sort of in the right area though.

I love learning from these threads as much as love preaching teaching in them. I'll admit I don't know it all but I try to have the highest standards at all times!

From a colleague: "please could you advice" err, what? It's not even like practice and practise where the noun and the verb are prounounced the same way.

"I aren't" is normal round these parts, my aim when ds is older is to explain to him that it might be acceptable in speech but only in informal situations (he is 5, it may be some time before he grasps this!).

Where on earth do they say 'I aren't'?

Leeds!

Native Leedsers, please tell me if it's not normal so I can start my campaign against its usage in my house and possibly place of work as well.

As this is the Pedants' Corner, I feel quite justified in pointing out that natives of Leeds are called "Leodensians."

Lest anyone thinks I am a ponce for knowing this, I should point out as well that I only know it from having encountered it 5 years ago in "I Predict A Riot" by the Kaiser Chiefs

Thank God there are other people who share my exasperation with the sat/sitting thing.

'So I'm sat there and he's gone: what are you sat there for?'

ARRRRGH!

(and on the matter of mispronunciations, if I hear one more Masterchef contestant talking about TEW-meric, I'll scream. It's spelt like you say it. TUR-MERIC. FFS!)

You are entirely justified, UQD and I apologise most sincerely - first to the Pedants and second to the fine people of Leeds. I aren't big and I aren't clever

So, my problem is I need to know what an infinitive is before I can contemplate identifying split one.

Another piece of interesting speech that sounds wrong to me but could be perfectly acceptable is "I'm now going to lay the table". I would say "I'm going to lay the table now".

Any ideas?

Do you remember the film Gregory's Girl? It had to be subtitled for the American market!