What linguistic constructions do you hate that no one else seems to mind?

TootSweet@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 81 points –

It bugs me when people say "the thing is is that" (if you listen for it, you'll start hearing it... or maybe that's something that people only do in my area.) ("What the thing is is that..." is fine. But "the thing is is that..." bugs me.)

Also, "just because <blank> doesn't mean <blank>." That sentence structure invites one to take "just because <blank>" as a noun phrase which my brain really doesn't want to do. Just doesn't seem right. But that sentence structure is very common.

And I'm not saying there's anything objectively wrong with either of these. Language is weird and complex and beautiful. It's just fascinating that some commonly-used linguistic constructions just hit some people wrong sometimes.

Edit: I thought of another one. "As best as I can." "The best I can" is fine, "as well as I can" is good, and "as best I can" is even fine. But "as best as" hurts.

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I hate that punctuation is “supposed” to go inside quotation marks. If you doing anything more complex than a simple statement of a quote, you run into cases where it doesn’t make sense to me.

Did he say “I had pancakes for supper?” and Did he say “I had pancakes for supper”? mean different things to me.

Similarly: That jerk called me a “tomato!” and That jerk called me a “tomato”!

It feels to me that the first examples add emphasis to the quotes that did not exist when originally spoken, whereas the second examples isolate the quote, which is the whole point of putting it in quotation marks.

Yes! That's a good one.

Once place I've heard this take on punctuation mentioned is in Eric Raymond's (version of) the Hacker Jargon File.

(I just realized when I included a link in the above sentence, I included the word "in" to make it clear I was not referring to the whole Hacker Jargon File, but rather a specific part in it.)

Completely agree, I put puncutation outside the quotes, screw the rules, being sensical is more important.

I agree with this so much. Your understanding just makes sense to me. And it's even worse because we don't do that in German, so I'm used to the sensible way! That just makes it feel extra weird.

Oh yeah 100%. This is a grammatical rule that I specifically refuse to follow. Writing it the “correct” way can and does meaningfully obscure the semantics of the quoted utterance in some circumstances.

I go out of my way to rephrase sentences due to this. That jerk called me a "tomato" for some reason!

Yeah but I shouldn’t have to restructure a sentence because some dipshit centuries ago made an objectively stupid grammatical rule that generally increases ambiguity.

I’m driven insane by the use of “itch” as a verb in place of scratch. ‘He itched his leg.’ Bleh!

"Would of", "could of", and "should of" infuriate me for some reason.

Because they're wrong. And not in a "these kids and their new-fangled language" way, but in a "this is literally improper English" way.

Right, I get that, it's just that that particular incorrect usage annoys me more than most.

Yet "would've", "could've", and "should've" are fine, if a touch informal, and sound literally identical in most dialects and accents. View it as your own personal window into how your conversation partner engages with language.

It's not about sound. Would've is a contraction of "would have" not "would of."

Would of is not a different way to interact with English because the meaning of "have" and "of" are completely different.

LOL, all I really meant is you get to learn that they don't really engage with the language beyond translating sounds into letters. No real thought is given to why they say or write the things they do. It's useful information.

I am all for woulda, coulda, and shoulda.

"On accident"..... That doesn't even make sense. You do something "by accident".

I mean, to me it doesn't really make that much sense one way or the other. Genuine question, how is "by" being used here? What are other examples of it being used this way?

I really can't stand when someone says something happened, or they did something, "on accident".

No. You do something on purpose or by accident.

I vaguely remember hearing that you can know whether someone was born before or after a specific year, depending on whether they use by or on accident.

My junior high math teacher knew what part of town you were from by this.

When discussion leads to another question, it raises the question.

To beg the question is to invoke a presumptive, circular argument.

And yet, now it's to beg the question, even on the US Senate floor by boomers who should know better.

I hate the confusion that "do you mind" questions cause.

"Do you mind if I turn off the light?"

What is meant in response: "No (I don't mind)"

What's said instead: "Yes"

I feel like two people never really know how the other will interpret it, so you almost always have to say something like "yes, go ahead" or "no, I don't mind" (or "no, go ahead"). If they do respond just "yes" or "no", I feel like I have to ask for clarification.

Also can we get the meaning of "semi-" and "bi-" figured out? I generally love the oddities of evolving language so long as we can all still be understood, but these two always require clarification.

Bi-annual: Every two years.
Semi-annual: Twice a year

Make it a law!

This is why we need to bring back yae and nay. We used to have two different yes and no words, one set was used in exactly this context. French still has it IIRC. I can't remember which were which in English, I think yae and nay were for positive questions, and yes and no were for negative questions. Aha, quick Google shows that is right, neat.

my peeve is the chopped infinitive, like “it needs fixed” instead of “it needs to be fixed”

IME that's only really a thing among non-English speakers

Nope. Native US English speaker born in Ohio and a lot of the region into Appalachia uses this construction. IIRC it came from Irish and/or Scottish folks that settled there.

I'm guilty of this, and for some reason "the dishes need doing" in particular tickles my brain. That one doesn't even make sense with an infinitive!

that one doesn’t bother me at all. “needs fixing”, “needs to be fixed”, same thing. but “needs fixed” can fuck right off.

One thing I try to avoid when I'm writing is when two words repeat. Kind of like your example "the thing is is that." If I catch myself writing it, I try to rearrange the sentence.

Although a pretty extreme example tickles me: "The cookie he had had had had no effect on his appetite."

Dutch has the same phenomenon, being so similar to English, but the standard way of writing it is by putting a comma after the noun phrase. So in your example, it'd change to "the cookie he had had, had had..." Typically practical solution that forfeits a charming oddity.

Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo.

I hate the recent trend of using "onboarding". It sounds clunky to me and as if you're trying to sound all cool and up to date.

Is there a replacement that you're fond of? We use it all the time at work - onboarding free users, onboarding paid users, onboarding employees.

Using "basis" to mean "based on".

"Basis our discussion, please go ahead and..." "We decided on a price point basis our market research."

It makes me uncomfortable.

I haven't encountered that and it's upsetting and dumb.

Misusing words like "setup" vs "set up", or "login" vs "log in". "Anytime" vs "any time" also steams my clams.

So I use both, depending on context. "Setup" is a noun, "set up" is a verb. "Login" is a noun, "log in" is a verb.

I've been sitting here trying to figure out different proper contexts for "anytime" vs "any time," but honestly, I can decide one way or the other.

“Thanks” “anytime!”

“I wish you had done that any time other than right now.”

Were the first two that came to mind.

To me, “log in” can only be used verbally as a verbal phrase, but “login” could be used as a noun or verb. Though I still wouldn’t say, “As a lumberjack, I login the woods up north”

I have a friend who writes 'a bit' as one word... '"I was feeling abit weird". That really peeves me!

This might be due to the fact that I'm not a native speaker and I encountered this phrase at a later date, but people saying "it's all but xyz" to mean "it's xyz" really gets on my nerves. I get it, "it's all but complete" means that virtually all the conditions are met for it to be complete, but I find it so annoying for some reason.

"The task is all but impossible" registers as 'it's not impossible, it's everything else: possible', so the fact that it means the opposite of that makes my brain twitch.

English intensifiers tend not to follow Boolean logic flows very well (think of double negatives). Instead, try to think of it as a little bit of extra data for your or the speaker's benefit. "It's all but impossible" does mean it's possible, as you say, but there is more there. It means, "while this is possible, it's so difficult or unlikely that we cannot count on normal levels of luck or effort to help us; you should reset your expectations accordingly."

Your other example is similar. "It's all but complete" tells you that the project or event is almost but notyet complete, but more than that. It means "This is very nearly complete. It is so close to complete, in fact, that the remaining time will be trivial. I suspect or know that you are eager for it to be complete, so unless doing so is all but impossible (😁), please try to be patient just a little bit longer."

"All but" is a way to linguistically make a fine gradation in levels of "almost".

What really gets me agitated is when people don't use the helper verb "to be." Examples include, "The tea needs strained," or "The car needs washed." No, you miserable cunts. The tea needs TO BE strained. The car needs TO BE washed. Nothing presently needs the past tense of an action. I know there's parts of the US where this sentence construction is common but those entire regions can honestly fuck off. People say it's a dialect or something. I don't buy it. Not knowing basic rules of your native language isn't a dialect. It's just you being dumb. I hate it so much!

You know what else I hate? "It is what it is." Of course it is, you dense motherfucker! If it wasn't what it was, it would be something else, which would then be what it is! It's the most nonsensical phrase I've ever heard and it pretty much exists so you have something to say when you have nothing even remotely worth hearing to say.

"it is what it is" makes sense to me. Yes, it's tautological. But it's just emphasizing the point that whatever it is cannot be changed by the people discussion discussing it.

There's any number of better ways to make that point without sounding like a clown.

Wait till you get to parts of northern England where they say "The car wants washing" 😂

That's just it. Neither of the phrases is "wrong;" they are just a dialectical feature some people don't share. There's a systematic conjugation there, the lack of the helper verb is completely irrelevant if the person uses the construction consistently, and meaning is communicated successfully without it. The only reason to avoid it is as a social choice to avoid being judged by people who would call you a miserable cunt, or maybe to prove you completed a needlessly strict course of instruction in English grammar that proves you're not a miserable cunt.

"The car wants washing" is fine, thankfully I've never heard anyone north or south say "The car wants washed", which was OP's concern

I know there’s parts of the US where this sentence construction is common but those entire regions can honestly fuck off.

Also bits of Nothern England. My Geordie friend uses that all the time. It feels really wrong.

A former boss of mine was a frequent user of "it is what it is" and now I just associate it with shit decision making and people that manage to fail upward.

Yeah, I've noticed something similar. It's always the worst people who use that phrase to paper over their shit ideas or decisions.

"Next weekend" "Next Friday" etc. Wherein they use "Next" to mean "the one after" rather than "the soonest interval in which it will reoccur"

If it is Wednesday and you say "Next Friday" I will immediately think of two days from now, not 9 days. I also especially dislike it because if feels like on a whim that it'll change. for some "next weekend" will be in 5 days if it's Monday, or 10 days if it's Wednesday! What the heck people??

On a Wednesday I would use "This Friday" or just "Friday" to describe 2 days away. Using "next" in the context you're describing seems weird to me.

If it's Wednesday, "Friday" or "this Friday" would describe the day in 2 days. "Next Friday" would be 9 days away. I think it's clear and have never had an issue with people not knowing which day is being discussed. Maybe people around here are more consistent about it than other areas?

That is always confusing to me. If I am on a bus stop: "This bus" doesn't make sense, it doesn't exist yet. Next bus, is the next occurance of event "Bus".

If it's Wednesday, the "this Friday" doesn't really make sense. There doesn't exist a Friday in Wednesday, that you call this. Next Friday however is quite clear - it's next occurrence of event "Friday" on the timeline, so it's the one in two days.

Ok but if you're at a bus stop, and the bus is just coming round the corner into sight, you can say "this bus" even though it's not parked up yet.

Same thing with this Friday. If it's close enough to be in mind, you can use this.

I hate the ambiguity in that too. My usual goto instead is "the coming Friday"

Or Friday next week for... You know... The next week's Friday

"Aren't I", as in "I'm still going with you, aren't I?", which, when uncontracted, becomes "are I not?" It should be "ain't I" since "ain't" is a proper contraction for "amn't", but there's been an irrational suppression of "ain't".

which, when uncontracted, becomes “are I not?”

Nope ‘are not I?’

I'd say the suppression of ain't is perfectly rational unless you want to sound like a cowboy

The thing is is that it's just a phrase to hold space while you collect your thoughts before you speak. You know you have something worth saying, but may not have organized it into a cohesive sentence/words just yet

The context in which it is used makes sense, but the extra “is” is just there. By all rights it should be ungrammatical, but people pretty frequently have that extra “is”, and I do find it absolutely bizarre how pervasive it is.

"Going forward" bothers me so much and I have no idea why. It wasn't used when I was younger, but that's true for lots of things.

Also "cringe" is pretty annoying.

”Going forward”

Because it’s a management phrase meant for discussions in directing a group that’s been co-opted by peers to make them sound more authoritative than their relative position actually is.

Had a co-worker say this to me the other day about something and I realized that I don’t like being spoken to as a subordinate by my peers.

Going forward is the worst of corporate-speak. I refuse to use this phrase.

Turning words like"competence" and "resilience" into "competency" and "resiliency" because more syllables is moar smartr

I feel like the same people who say "best practice" at every opportunity also say "core competency" and "resiliency".

I’m not certain if this is what you were getting at, but these are mine:

An historical - It doesn’t follow the general way of using a or an with consonants and vowels. Nor does it change the meaning if I said a historical (event) instead an historical (event).

Fewer and less. I understand that there is a rule, but the rule is fucking dumb. If I say there are less people or if I say there are fewer people - the end result is the same that there isn’t as much as there was before.

Language is fluid. As long as we understand the meaning of what is being said then who cares?

You may be fewer irritated by this with age

I understood what you were saying! I am fewer irritated. I would personally use less, because it sounds better in this instance, but totally agree. Not sure how I’d put a number to my irritation though. I am not a robot, so my irritation isn’t exactly a quantifiable scale.

"an historic" works if you're not pronouncing the "h", which is common in some dialects. A vs an isn't about there being an actual vowel, it's about the sound. The same happens with honor and herb (again, depending on pronunciation).

Yes and in American English the H sound in historic is always used with “a” unless I’m missing a bunch of examples somewhere. The H sound isn’t silent

Ya "an historic", when the h is clearly pronounced, strikes the wonderful double blow of being both pretentious and wrong as far as I'm concerned. Looking at you, NPR. Go run up an hill, why donchya?

I don't care so much when I'm just listening to people talk, but there's something about seeing people use needs washed constructs in otherwise normally composed and edited messages that drives me absolutely mad, for some reason. Stuff like "I need paid more to afford to live there." I first started seeing it on reddit a few years ago, but it seems as though I'm seeing it more and more now, all over the place. It's not something that is used anywhere I've lived, and it's just jarring to see sentences constantly missing a couple of words. I suppose I expect more variance in spoken language, especially in less formal contexts, but seeing it written is something else.

I've only heard this said by Indian people, so I've been assuming that when I see it written online it's Indians. Per that link it looks like all over the US it's at least occasionally used. That's crazy, and I can't stand it; hopefully this doesn't become standard.

Agreed, it's pure laziness, leaving out the prepositional phrase

I don't think it's necessarily actually laziness, but rather a failure to change register as appropriate for the medium and context. The Yale link does show that the construct has its own grammatical structure that is followed, so to me, it's more an error akin to writing, "Yeah, so check this: World War I was started because many countries said 'You with me, bro?' and others replied, 'Yeah, you know it, boy' but then shit got real when this guy ran up on Archduke Franz Ferdinand and blasted him." when writing an essay.

That said, it's painful to read.

I hate it when people call the product of a company the name of the company; like "let's go get some Taco Bell" instead of "let's go get some tacos from Taco Bell" or "Let's go eat at Taco Bell".

That's a curious one, can you explain why it bothers you? Or is it just one of those things?

Couldn't explain it, really; I just want to grab the person and explain that Taco Bell (or whatever) is not an object you can get some of, and Taco Bell doesn't sell Taco Bells in any amount, they sell tacos! (In the voice you would speak to a toddler in, of course)

"As a ________, this is my opinion about a related topic to the field in which I'm in...."

It's the Internet. No one needs your credentials. People lie about credentials all the time anyways. People cheat through college. It's a humble brag, nothing more. Just give us your thoughts, not your resume.

It's a lot harder to cheat through a career

Every single career is literally filled with under performing unqualified workers. The Peter Principle will always be around

Edit: i had to fire a licensed physician that wanted to attempt cranial sacral therapy on me a couple months ago. The odds people are incompetent is a lot higher than people think, even among professionals.

I hate when people use the transitive “going to be” to describe “is.”

“Hey, what’s your phone number?” “It’s going to be 911-551-0911.”

Her phone number is 911-551-0911 and has been such for a while now. Why does she feel the need to use a transitive verb structure to describe that it will change to that in the future?

I see people using this “it’s going to be” structure for ordering food (they are ordering food now, saying “spaghetti, please” is much less weird than saying “it’s going to be spaghetti”), as part of my job when someone is reporting current or past statistics, and events that aren’t coming up or aren’t scheduled, and are in the past.

Don’t dial that phone number to see if it works; you’ll get the fuzz.

People who say "nucular" strike me as being completely brain damaged.

I'm sure you say that in jest to some extent, I do know some people who say "arks" instead of "ask" and they have never realised it until it was pointed out. I'd say a similar phenomenon happens with "nucular"

I work in IT and the one that kills me is when someone says or writes "On premise" when they mean "On premises". I have worked for cloud companies and even the official literature is wrong. It has gotten to the point where so many people get it wrong that the official meaning is going to be changed because people are dumb and we can't have nice things.

Words have meaning, stop fucking them up!

I hate the word "cleanse" because it means the same thing a "clean" but uses two extra letters. Fuck the word "cleanse."

I've recently started hearing people say "It needs cleaned." Meaning it needs cleaning or it needs to be cleaned, and it just shifts to the wrong gear.

I also hate the word "leverage" in the bullshit business lingo sense of the word. Just makes me think "Your business leverages solutions, and uses people." Tell me, when did your brain die?

I think cleanse and clean are not quite interchangeable. Cleanse has a gravitas that clean lacks. For example, growing up, I heard a lot of things like "be cleansed of your sins". "Be cleaned of your sins" makes me vaguely uncomfortable.

Hard agree on business lingo, though.

But how do I justify my pay grade by leveraging lowly words like "use?"

Also: ATM machine. So...the machine machine? Not just the machine?

I assume I'm unusual because whenever I say an acronym I think the entire phrase. So repetition like this grates on my nerves.

People do this with other acronyms...can't think of other examples now.

PIN number would be one, and related to your ATM example too.

PNS Syndrome - or PIN Number Syndrome Syndrome - or Personal Identification Number Number Syndrome Syndrome

"Anyways". Don't fucking add the s to the end, it adds literally nothing but costs you more effort. Say or type "anyway".

I think this is just a vestige of the original form "anywise" still popping up, so at least I can understand this one.

The most grating to me right now has to be the comma splice (run-on sentence). For example: "Every one of our talented art students will have artwork represented in the show, it is always an impressive event."

I see it everywhere lately! Even in official business/marketing emails. Someone got a college degree and got hired to write that email ffs. Use a damn period or semicolon.

"In terms of" when it relates to nothing in the discussion. It's just a fluffy pile of nothing to either make you sound smarter, make your idea sound smarter, or fill in space like "um".

"In terms of the design, we're choosing blue."

OP, thanks for asking. I feel seen.

  1. Using the past tense instead of the subjunctive mood. "What if she was gone?" Nope. It should be "what if she were gone." People (in the US) seem to get this wrong most of the time, except for a few common phrases like "If I were you, ...".
  2. The words "whilst," "amongst," and "amidst." I get that there is a certain history to these words, but I personally never use them as they seem like meaningless alterations. When I hear them, I roll my eyes, but I try not to judge too quickly.
  3. "Irregardless". It's not a word.
  4. "Could care less". An oldie but a goodie?
  5. Overuse of commas. I don't like seeing them as strictly a way to introduce a pause in speech. Commas have specific grammatical purposes, and using them without such a purpose breaks my expectations as a reader.
  6. Confusing "nauseous" and "nauseated".

"What if she was gone?"

Not a native speaker. That's what I was taught. Subjunctive wasn't a thing in my English lessons. Common phrases like "I wish I were you..." were introduced as a non-standard alternative...

Interesting! It's possible your teacher was trying to keep things simple, especially since most English speakers probably couldn't tell you what the subjunctive mood is.

I don't think I learned about the subjunctive mood in Spanish class for 5 years, by which time I was in the 8th grade.

5 is one that I see a lot lately. People just seem to think, that if they can possibly pause, there's a comma.

The first one is something of a lost cause, so long as English grammar continues to be neglected in schooling. I very much doubt that more than a couple of students in my high school had ever heard the term subjunctive mood outside of French or Spanish lessons, where it was always presented as this very alien concept.

Homogeneous, meaning having a uniform composition. Hoe-moe-jee-nee-us (or hoe-muh- and/or -jee-nyus; point is, there's an ee sound before the last syllable). Saying homogenous (huh-mah-jeh-nus) in that sense is not only wrong but also means something else.

Like Alan Turing?

Not gonna lie, I thought about your comment multiple times today trying to make sense of it, and only just now did I realize what you meant by it.

Yes, like Alan Turing. Ugh.

Sometimes it really annoys me if a perfect spot for a proper "whom" is missed. Even worse though is a misplaced "whom". Both instances are easy for me to spot because we decline pronouns quite a lot in German.

Edit: Sorry that's not a construction, so much as just an error. For constructions one thing that gets on my nerves is if you try to tell someone about your previous state of mind to clear up a misunderstanding like "I thought the water had boiled already" and then they say "no" to tell you that your assumption was incorrect. This is annoying because first of all the information they are conveing is already known to you by the time of this discussion and secondly in the grammatical sense they are actually disagreeing with your state of mind, not the content. I always have the urge to say: "Yes, actually, I'm telling you that's what I thought, you can't disagree with me about what I was thinking."

The letter w. Absolutely unjustified existence vhen v can be used instead. Also referring to people as pupil. Nothing else in English sounds as bad. Like, there isn't even anything fundamentally vrong with it. It's just bad.

Vhile ve are at it, Chadus, let’s get rid of the letter u as vell. It is redicvlovs to have so many letters to keep track of vhen a covple can do dovble dvty as consonants and vovels alike, as the letter y does. Actualli, let’s do avai vith “y.” And “j” too for simpliciti. “I” mai vork iust as vell in both iobs.

That's vhere yoo are vrong. Replacing u vith v overemphasizes the letter vhen it doesn't deserve it. I propose oosing dooble o as a replacement instead.

In English, I hate both "from where" and the rarer "from whence". I first found out about the words "whence", "whither", "thence" and "thither" (respectively meaning "from where, "towards where", "from there" and "towards there") while reading the Lord of the Rings in English. I found these were powerful words that could make many sentences shorter and clearer and that it was a shame they went out of popular use...

But then, I also heard "from whence", which struck me as far worse because it was redundant and stripped the word of its power. I first thought it was a mistake, but after seing it several times I looked up how it was meant to be used to see if I wasn't in the wrong and saw that while it had started as a mistake, it came into use several hundred years ago and was used by many famous classic authors, making it acceptable.

Imo, that's probably what killed these words. I guess it had the merit of being less easily misheard, but when "from whence" and "from where" mean the exact same thing, why bother remembering "whence"?

In my native language, French, I kinda dislike "C'est quoi ?" (Litt. "It's what ?", pronounced [sekwa] meaning "What is it ?). It's a vernacular expression often found incorrect... But I also kinda understand why it exists. The most correct way to ask "what is it" is "Qu'est-ce ?" ([kɛsə] or [kɛs]). It works well when written, but I guess being too short, it can be easily misheard. For example, "caisse" (a large box) is pronounced the exact same way. The other alternative, more common in oral speech is "Qu'est-ce que c'est ?" (litt. "What is it that it is ?"). It might seem too long, but it's pronounced [kɛskəse], which has the same number of syllables as "What is it". It is redundant tho, so I understand why "C'est quoi ?", which doesn't sound like anything else, rolls off the tongue and has two syllables is winning over, and will probably be the correct way in the future, but it still kinda sounds wrong to me.

For a period of time on spezsite, people loved posting photos using the title "Just a (whatever the thing in the photo was)".

I don't know why, but that convention of using "just a..." started to get under my skin after a while. The fad kind of faded away, though you still see it occasionally.

It's not that there's anything wrong with titling a post in that manner. But over time, it felt like nonstop humblebragging.

I'm probably making zero sense. Pet peeves can be weird like that.

There are a lot of phrases from reddit that annoy me due to overuse. "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes" and "fuck around and find out" both annoy the absolute piss right out of me now.

My absolute most hated saying from reddit is 'boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, that's why I shit on company time'. I don't know, it just really irritates me! I totally agree with the sentiment, it's just the rhyme makes it feel so childish and reactionary.

Reddit is global, and I'm sure they would pretend to be highly diverse. But the vibe I always got there was, "early teens, white boy, east coast, USA".

ITT: people who understood the question and people who hate certain pronounciations for no reason.

I say "A part of me thinks [...]" (or "wishes" or "wants", etc) so often that it has started to seriously annoy me.

The over usage of "that" on news broadcasts.

"It's that time of ___!" (Insert day, week, year, fall, spring, summer, etc)

There are many countless examples. It's like nails on a chalkboard every time I hear it

Just because thing, [that] doesn't mean other thing.

You can't even prove that it's grammatically incorrect!

But it sounds awful. And I can't even come up with an alternative.

"Correlation is not causation" is the phrase I use in that situation.

#Reason being is

wtf is that

That actually ended up evolving over the last 75 or so years. Reason being is that I'm just playing, just wanted to use it.

Lay lie, ffs why differentiate Who whom, it serves no great purpose Words like recie||eive, do I need to explain? Must not should be must’n

Commonwealth vocabulary versus non-Commonwealth vocabulary. Despite being commonwealth in terms of my native culture, some of it sounds like we're trying too hard to be contrarian. Take chips and fries for example. The British call potato chips "crisps" and french fries "chips" and they'll have that discussion with you all night long, but they were patented as chips and fries respectively. Or how about "mom" versus "mum"? Despite interchanging them, I prefer "mom", especially in a world where "ma" and "mama" are common, which makes "mum" just sound like you're auditioning as Wednesday Addams. If you look in historical documents from the past, it's certainly never "mum". It all doesn't bother me so much as what bothers me is when those people (you know, the ones who call it the telly instead of a TV) say other people are the derivatives or must bend to them. If I visit London, I'm ordering french fries from McDonald's, not McChips.

Absolutely nobody is checking the god damn patents for the name of either variety of chip

That said, in British English, chips and fries are different things. McDonald's don't sell chips. Those are the thick-cut ones. Fries are the skinny ones.

How did the names get mixed up then though (for them and other things I've noticed) if there was always one name for each thing already established?

Both the flat ones and the long ones have been around for over 200 years, it would honestly be weirder if regional differences in the names had never developed. After all, why would someone in York, UK and someone in Boston, USA in the 1820s know or care what the other called their fried slices of potato? "Chips" is a pretty reasonable name for both of them, so maybe the flat ones got popular in America first but the long ones got popular in Britan first, so then each had to find another name for the other sort. I'm guessing here, but I don't think it's in any way strange that it happened, however it did happen.

British English using "fries" for thinner chips (chips in the British sense) actually is because of American influence, though. In the same way that Americans call their long fried potato "French fries" because they are fried in the French way, Brits call those thinner ones "fries" because they're fried the American way. You wouldn't usually say "American fries" here because "fries" by itself alreadyy means that, but if you did people would immediately understand that you mean the thinner sort that you get at McDonald's, not the thicker sort you get at a fish & chip shop.

Generally these weird roundabout constructions used in English (not my native language). Like "I'm going forward to do X". There's always a bit of padding in language, but English seems to be very "paddy".

Oh, and very non-descriptive words for very specific things. Like washer. What is a washer? It doesn't do any washing. In German, we call these things Unterlegscheibe. A disk (Scheibe) to put (legen) under (unter) something. Says exactly what it's doing.

So the first thing is definitely pulled from corporatespeak, so you sound very professional like you know what you're doing.

As for a washer specifically, there isn't really a known etymological origin, that's just what they've been called since the 1300s. The thing about English is that it's like 5 languages stack on top of each other and eating parts of other languages for sustenance.

It speaks to an ever-evolving world, culture and society. But nothing and nobody really speaks to me.

I loathe: "With that said...".

This is almost always meaningless words thrown in to make the listener(s) think you're more intelligent. I always think the opposite.

I use it to mean and all these arguments lead me to the following conclusion.

But yeah, I read a lot and was trained as a kid to be a walking factoid dispensor so I can seem pretentious.

Isn't it generally used to mean the opposite of that? "Despite what I just said, I hold or will present the following apparently contrary position," more or less. Like if you spent a couple of paragraphs talking about the excellent cinematography of a film and then followed it with "That said, I didn't actually enjoy it. I found the protagonist insufferable."

I can see it used that way. Yes, but then I'd think there'd be an obligation to explain why the proceeding arguments trump the previous ones if it's not obvious. With that said is certainly a bridge from one part of an argument to the next.

One that bugs me a lot that I noticed just in the last 5 years or so is over pronouncing the T in words like celebrity and community - yes it's spelled with a T but it's not fully voiced like you're saying the word Tea. I noticed it first on YouTube and now in some audiobooks and even the occasional coworker.

A before u

"A university" sounds fucking weird to me. It melds into a single syllable. University doesn't start with a consonant unless you have a strong accent.

Huh, how do you pronounce it? I would say "a university" because in my head it's "yoo-ni-ver-si-tee"

University begins with the same sound as Yes or Yankee. Would you say An Yes? An Yankee?

If it blends in your accent use “an university”