What irritates you the most with your own language?

CurlyMoustache@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 200 points –

Mine is people who separate words when they write. I'm Norwegian, and we can string together words indefinetly to make a new word. The never ending word may not make any sense, but it is gramatically correct

Still, people write words the wrong way by separating them.

Examples:

  • "Ananas ringer" means "the pineapple is calling" when written the wrong way. The correct way is "ananasringer" and it means "pineapple rings" (from a tin).

  • "Prinsesse pult i vinkel" means "a princess fucked at an angle". The correct way to write it is "prinsessepult i vinkel", and it means "an angeled princess desk" (a desk for children, obviously)

  • "Koke bøker" means "to cook books". The correct way is "kokebøker" and means "cookbooks"

I see these kinds of mistakes everywhere!

242

You are viewing a single comment
View all comments

(American) English: Inflammable vs flammable vs non-flammable.

Inflammable means flammable?! What a country!

Inflammable and flammable don't strictly mean the same thing.

Flammable can be set alight

Inflammable can set itself alight.

I've known the difference ever since I decided to look it up one day, but I've always felt the 'in-' prefix was the wrong choice (especially when labeling potentially dangerous substances). "In-" is more often used to qualify a word as "not".

"Autoflammable" would have been my choice.

It's prefix is in- because of "it can become inflamed".

1 more...