Words, usages, and phrases that annoy the shit out of you...

well it's not really scolding

Yeah, that was an enjoyable, well-crafted, and stimulating post that wasn't scolding.

Agree it was enjoyable and stimulating. And just a little scolding. Linguistic explanations unavoidably tend to come off that way, or at least sound a bit condescending to those who misguidedly posit human agency.

Conversate in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnK5si4ZQnM

I've talked about the distinction in one of the rolling linguistics threads, but it's sorta a division between explicit and implicit knowledge, two different kinds of learning - native speakers have a large body of implicit knowledge about their language, and don't exert that much agency over those aspects of it. One reason why this thread has over 5,000 responses-even though you may hate a neologism or catchphrase, you often can't stop yourself from thinking it or even using it. Language is an animal thing. Unique (maybe) to us, but animal still. We tend to overexplain language change, because like our own histories, the events are no longer accessible to us. All we have is the narrative. (this is exploratory rambling)

Language does not evolve, it changes. You can map the changes, but it does not lead anywhere. You're making constellations from stars; the stars themselves are not involved.
<3

always good posts about language from f hazel

Evolution also doesn't lead anywhere tho.

it's about the journey

Evolution also doesn't lead anywhere tho.

True, but a common folk belief about language is that it is constantly being degraded by its own speakers and will go to ruin without intervention. The ongoing intelligibility of the language does not ameliorate this worry... it is instead explained away by narratives about past successes with conscious optimization or holding the line against neologisms.

always good posts about language from f hazel

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Monday, June 10, 2019 3:50 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes! Great posts F Hazel.

What's up with the way lawyers say "defendant" ending with ANT instead of the normal, unstressed "uhnt"? Speakers do a similar thing when they mention a legislaTORE. I don't know what impression they're shooting for. They annoy the shit out of me.

what is this, a court for ANTS?

To me, "Nailed it" has gone from totally unremarkable to kind of annoying. There's something very buzzfeed-headline about it, at least when it's used in a kind of cutesy enthusiastic way.

boom

'smashed it', 'smashed my gym goals' etc hate hate hate this

yeah, anything like that. smashed it, killed it, bossed it. ugh.

I do kinda like the way slang like this passes through predictable phases as we experience it individually... hearing, understanding, initial use, normal use, ironic use, silent revulsion, violent protest

totally
also the fact that it serves a banal purpose -- in this case, bragging

no one would write "i accomplished my fitness goals today" and then post it but for some reason it's deemed acceptable to write "smashed my gym goals" with an emoji of user's choice

so many items shared could be filed under the even more banal category of "showing off" -- and because "no one likes a showoff" is a perennial truism, we remain annoyed. like sand through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.

"nailed it" and "spot on" are both v useful early warnings of writing that's bad and you are better off not reading it

ditto when writing is described as "brilliant" -- ignoring it is living your best life

relatedly https://qz.com/547463/are-you-the-friend-that-everyone-finds-insufferable-on-facebook/

'smashed my gym goals'

Seriously?

smashed my gym goals, workout buddy, car into a stop sign on the way home

"Smashed it" annoys but not "crushed it"? Has "crushed" made it to the acceptably ironic phase?

cremated it

I think actual conversation has the advantage of a blow-softening ephemerality that social media posts definitively lack

if anyone said "spot on" to me in conversation i'd jab my finger in their eye

I also think LL raises a good point, to some extent the nucleus of any social media post is a brag.

my maxim is that ppl go onto social media to boast or complain (hi haters)

social media has always felt to me like answering a question that no one asked, providing more or less unsolicited information.

How about the overuse of "prior" and "prior to" when "before" works fine?

(xpost)
I also like how often slang that has jokey origins so predictably gets stripped of all irony when it passes from an insider group into wider usage. I believe this happened somewhat with "rockist". The most striking recent instance, which you could trace practically in real time, was "Like a Boss". (Granted, SNL is hardly confined to insiders.) Within months of the video showing Andy Samberg doing decidedly non-bosslike stuff, it had passed from mildly self-deprecating popular use to straight up bragging.

^I guess Slim Thug coming first undermines that example, but the pattern stands.

"nailed it" and "spot on" are both v useful early warnings of writing that's bad and you are better off not reading it

i love "nailed it," i used it twice yesterday

would never describe anything as "brilliant" that wasn't light-based tbf

Specifying one's age before posting to this thread should be mandatory.

'Nailed it' is fine (34).

To me, "Nailed it" has gone from totally unremarkable to kind of annoying.

oh what a coincidence, "to me" really annoys me

I'm still unaccustomed to the overuse of 'brilliant' in the UK.

How about the overuse of "prior" and "prior to" when "before" works fine?

a colleague does this; see also 'within' rather than 'in' and unnecessary use of 'in order to'

not sure I ever use "brilliant" un-sarcastically

last used last night as my train was cancelled due to flooding

I'm guilty of using 'prior to' and 'in order to'. Might be a holdover from French ('avant de', 'afin de') and Romanian ('înainte de', 'pentru a').

Prior to when? Prior to that point in time.

https://www.atvtoday.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/fast-show.jpg

When students use the phrase, at least I get it: word count requirements. For example: "Prior to lunch, I went to the gym."

Consonance is occasionally a factor.

tbh my attitude to most stuff in this thread is: go for it! not only don't get OFF my lawn, get ON it! my generation left yours an utterly fucked world, even if most of us don't acknowledge this yet, and i'd rather spend time being charmed by the babble of the invention of new silly habits than aggrieved that it's no longer something i get to do

― mark s, Thursday, January 18, 2018 1:03 AM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the problem with "nailed it" and "spot on" in my experience is less to do with age than with judgment: the people who use it are always wrong, and what they're pointing at excitedly is always bad not good

Besides, doesn't "nailed it" carry unsavory associations in this Me Too era?

I disapprove of this slangy use of "went" as the past tense of "go", tell your students they should be using "yode"

there's nothing wrong with disliking some innovations in language (or even some older parts of language) and if enough ppl dislike them they probably won't have staying power. acknowledging that language is an evolving thing and that there isn't an abstract or platonic right way to speak it doesn't preclude finding certain innovations in it clumsy, redundant, obscuring meaning, trite, vapid, etc.

Maybe but then why is this thread so unrelentingly bad

level 1. SAE the way i was taught in school (or by my grammatically anal retentive parent) is the correct way to speak and write and people who stray from this are monsters
level 2. any way ppl want to speak and write is fine bc language evolves and we should be descriptivists and ppl who criticize are monsters
level 3. lots of ppl use language in stupid + clumsy ways often cribbing cliches that they learnt yesterday on twitter/in the boardroom nonetheless we should always be open to creative + novel uses of language bc it can enrich our lives

put some exploding brain meme pic next to each of those or something