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What you say drives me crazy.

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Lady Day

I'll Lock Up
Bartender
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Crummy town, USA
Do people not know how to speak good no more?

Im not only commenting on proper grammar, or putting yourself before the other in a sentence ("Me and him . . " :rage: ), but there are certain phrases in the English language (slang aside) that just irk me to no end.

Examples:

"They were all the same, except for the blue one."
NO then THEY were not all the same its, "The blue one was different from the others."

Or being redundant when talking of an amount of something. "I have one single ring on this finger." GRRRRRRRRR

Or the need to fill necessary silence with the word "like"
Cant you use "an example would be", or "for instance" or NOTHING AT ALL?!


Or the dreaded "I dont know," which has become the ultimate trail off in any poorly worded or thought out conversation of us twenty somethings.
Heaven help us.

My mother was a teacher, so this sort of schoolin' was ever constant in my home.
*sigh*
:(

LD
see what I think of at 2 in the mornin . . .
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
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33,053
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
Your mom would've been terribly frustrated at my school -- my high school geometry teacher used to talk about the properties of a "Round Circle." As opposed, I guess, to the trapezoidal kind.

My language beef is the mainstreaming of obscenities. Now, I've been known to cut loose with a few choice syllables myself after jamming my hand in a door or dropping something on my foot or stabbing myself in the thumb with a needle -- but there's too many people nowadays who inject certain four-letter Anglo-Saxon words into every phrase and every sentence as general purpose intensifiers, and that gets real old real fast. I talk to my fifteen-year-old niece, and hear her casually using words that would've made my grandfather blush, and it makes my head hurt....
 

Shaul-Ike Cohen

One Too Many
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1,176
Location
.
LizzieMaine said:
certain four-letter Anglo-Saxon words

I'd like to point out that while xxxx, xxxx, xxxx and xxxx are clearly Anglo-Saxon, xxxx might well have a Skandinavian origin, and xxxx is demonstrably of the French or Norman part of the English vocabulary. Let alone xxxx. XXXX is from French, too, but the last letter is the plural s (may I reveal that much?), so I'm not sure if it counts - funnily, in the older language it's actually four-lettered in the singular, either in the form of xxxx or of xxxx. Xxxx is either French, too, or directly from Latin.
 

Michaelson

One Too Many
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1,840
Location
Tennessee
The most irritating thing I can think of is the practice of some folks bridging sentences together with the words 'you know'. If you sit back and listen to some folks, and I mean supposedly INTELLIGENT individuals, they start a comment, connect all their sentences with 'you know', then finish an entire novel of a tale in one breath....and one sentence!:eusa_doh:

We had a speaker come here to the Space Institute this past Spring to give a commencement speech, and I'll be DARNED if he didn't do just that!!! All I could do was hope he spoke this way to get to the level of the guest high school students who were attending, or shake my head an wonder how in the WORLD he was making it so well in the business he was in? It sure wasn't through the lecture circuit.....I hope!!!!:eek:

Regards! Michaelson
 

Feraud

Bartender
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17,190
Location
Hardlucksville, NY
Michaelson said:
The most irritating thing I can think of is the practice of some folks bridging sentences together with the words 'you know'.
True!
How about "um"? Some people....ummmm while trying to string together their next group of words...ummm tend to use this as a filler!

Talk about..ummmm distracting! lol
 

Cousin Hepcat

Practically Family
Messages
774
Location
NC
Miss_Bella_Hell said:
Not to mention constant misuse of apostrophes... WHAT IS IT'S CAUSE?!!!
lol lol :)

Honestly though, you guys are making me really self-conscious now... (grew up using very poor grammar)
 

Pilgrim

One Too Many
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1,719
Location
Fort Collins, CO
"I've got to..." vs. "I have to...". You don't "have got".

"Very unique", "Highly unique", and other modifiers improperly attached to "unique".

Let's not even start about people who either never use apostrophes, or who feel compelled to insert them before the last letter in any word ending in "s". There is no hope for them. If they cared at all, they would have learned better.
 

Marc Chevalier

Gone Home
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18,192
Location
Los Feliz, Los Angeles, California
The misuse of such adverbs as "luckily" and "hopefully". Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Correct, if somewhat awkward: "Hopefully she went to the job interview, trusting that she would get the job."

Incorrect: "Hopefully, she went to the job interview. She often forgets her appointments!"



.
 

jake_fink

Call Me a Cab
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2,279
Location
Taranna
Baron Kurtz said:
Tony Blair is a forthright proponent of the use of "you know" to begin sentences. Every sentence! Apparently this is a rhetorical device.[huh] Typically also when he's employing the glottal stop in desperate attempt to sound "common".

bk

Our PM, Steve, does something similar. He says, "Well, you know..." in his best, barely-patient-with-the-plebs, paterfamilias tone and we're all supposed to defer and say "oh, yes, he's absolutely right." It is the tone of authority (implied superiority) if not authority (or superiority) itself.

HUMBUG!
 

Pilgrim

One Too Many
Messages
1,719
Location
Fort Collins, CO
The late, great Ian Fleming pointed out something in one of his novels which I didn't realize prior to reading it there:

"Presently" means in the near future. It does NOT mean "now".

"At present" means NOW.

I don't hear "presently" used correctly one time in 100.
 
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