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

This was probably covered somewhere upthread, but the misuse of the subjective "I" for the objective "me" has spread through the English language like a plague.

Meh, morphological case has been disappearing from English for about a thousand years now. Anyone with even minimal knowledge of the history of the English language knows this. Nouns in English lack distinct nominative vs oblique forms and surprise! It confuses nobody because we have an extremely complex and completely intuitive way of marking case in English: word order. Which is elegant, beautiful, and totally unappreciated. Frankly, using "I" and "me" interchangeably in conjunctive noun phrases just doesn't fucking matter, and to me falls squarely into the category of reactionary bullshit. Here's an idea: instead of wasting all that time and energy adhering to made-up shibboleths about a language you already speak perfectly well (or even worse, policing other people's usage), try learning another language! A far better use of your limited time on Earth.

"and to me worrying about it falls squarely into"

itt: f.hazel being correct

this has been my quarterly linguist rant, thank you for listening

Don't know if I told you guys my teacher's joke about the pair of English teachers at the airport who, upon hearing their flight announced, turn to each other and exclaim "Darling, that's we!"

Love when f hazel shows up to linguist-rant
10/10!! I agree too.

I think "reactionary bullshit" is a little strong. That's just I, though.

"Give the book to I" will never be right.

That's just I, though.

So...the Rastas had it right all along?

If you are the big parse tree...

F. Hazel speaks truth, says me

And yet, annoyance in itself is a valid grounds for posting itt.

Love when f hazel shows up to linguist-rant
10/10!! I agree too.

(or even worse, policing other people's usage)

Yeah but that's this thread's very reason for existence

Grammar police, arrest this man

Two borads separated by a common gramsplaining.

"Give the book to I" will never be right.

Also not something any native speaker of English ever really says so pretty irrelevant? Generally speaking, the I/me uncertainty arises in conjunctive noun phrases (the ones with and in them) or with pronouns appearing directly after a copula ("It is I"). As a linguist, this is pretty representative of why this grammar maven bullshit is irritating... not only does it not matter, you don't even seem to understand the distribution of the usage you're criticizing!

Yeah but that's this thread's very reason for existence

I'm on board with good-natured grousing about corporate-speak and overripe zeitgeisty terms, but if you decide you're going to rant about nonstandard dialectal usage or grammar maven BS, I'm gonna show up because that shit is bigoted and hateful whether you realize it or not. Like, do you know that it's a feature of Black English dialects to have invariant pronoun forms? Do you fully understand the forces you are teaming up with when you say such-and-such nonstandard pronoun usage is "a plague"?

I'm not teaming up with anyone. This is supposed to be light hearted, and my "good-natured grousing" is not aimed at non-standard usage in the form of ethnic dialects. I rarely, if ever, correct anyone's usage unless they specifically ask me to. Go ahead and flex your linguist muscles all you want, but do it with someone else.

I remember a poem by Mutabaruka where's he's calling out the worship of Robert Burn's idiomatic english while the same worshipers view spoken Jamaican is some kind of crude pidgin

I'm telling you that the history behind that sort of language judgement is not light hearted at all and it's worth interrogating where those sorts of beliefs come from, what kind of epistemological frameworks they rely on (like the idea that our language is diseased or decaying), and if you really want to be on board with that stuff. This goes for everyone who posts here, not just you.

Errrrr, Robert Burns btw. Sorry.

In any case, if you think Scots or Scottish English is considered just hunky dory you should visit the UK sometime.

oh right of course

I understand the point being made, and it's one I was already aware of. I'd also understand your fervor on this point if I had actually complained about a non-standard usage that was specifically associated with a particular ethnic or other group. Complaints about non-standard or "wrong" usage may in general be conservative or even reactionary (to use your word), but I don't think every one has to be necessarily rooted in racism or other forms of oppression. I don't generally view any language as being diseased or decaying, rather evolving, and my use of the word "plague," while perhaps ill-advised, was tongue-in-cheek.

A plague on both your usages!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nydUgAr3xek

Out of curiosity, I searched every post I've made to this thread and found only three instances where I expressed annoyance at particular words or phrases: "eye candy" as dehumanizing when applied to humans, "pissed" used as equivalent to "pissed off" instead of meaning "drunk", and the mock-sophisticated phrase "not unlike".

Incidentally, during my search I ran across f. hazel's most resplendent otm post among all 8000+ posts in this thread:

the amount of info we can convey with language across even the noisiest channels should make you weep with joy each morning upon waking, it's probably one of the most amazing things in the entire universe. and all the various things people complain about are, for the most part, manifestations of an underlying playfulness that is essential to making language work as well as it does.

― avellano medio inglés (f. hazel), Monday, April 13, 2020

let's table that for now

I'll piggyback on that and say we need to calendar it for next week, we'll touch base then.

grammar maven BS

Quoth the maven,"I'm a bore."

f.hazel OTM, but speakers being pissed off by words, usages and phrases is part of the resilience and durability of languages, which otherwise would dissolve into a soup of catchy argot and burn their continuity with past writers.

language is a land of contrasts

Truly is a "land of confusion"

on the contrary, I would say it’s a tower f. hazel

A cloud of unknowing

A miasma of mystery

A chocolate-coated mystery

wrapped in an enigma

Then a layer of paradox

Then a tasty nougat center

With peanuts

Unless you're allergic

In which case, no peanuts

Not my personal annoyance, but I was in line with some people on Record Store Day and was getting along with them pretty well, but then one of them turned out to be the type of person who has a revulsion towards the word "moist". It's a fairly common dislike, but to me it seems maybe too common? Like, it's the bacon of words that annoy.

Yeah, I feel like I remember discussing this phenomenon recently (maybe even on ILX?) of how it started out as being something that genuinely annoyed certain people, and was even slightly funny in that Seinfeld sort of way, but a bunch of people who had never given a second thought to the word "moist" jumped on the "I hate moist" bandwagon in a bacony way. Personally, I am indifferent to "moist."

a good friend of mine in the early 90s told me of her disgust for this partic phrase:

"moist gusset"

…and so they went with Wet Leg

#onethread

nice

Moist metaphors are the trombone in the soup of language.

she also hated all forms of the verb "to pump"

but the worst was probably "pumpin'"

i have warmed on moist but will never give up on mouthfeel

Probably not the correct thread, but I fear that the word 'losing' (in its correct context) is slowly morphing into the spelling 'loosing', I keep seeing old and young people misspelling it online.

I'm sure that was happening before online too

A chocolate-coated mystery

wrapped in an enigma

Then a layer of paradox

Then a tasty nougat center

With peanuts

Unless you're allergic

In which case, no peanuts

TS: pump vs bobo honkin'