Attn Grammar NaZis: incorrect or just odd?

They used to just grate on my nerves like a wrong note but now I find myself saying things like this and am shocked.

Another one I don't think I'll *ever* adopt: our principal always says "on tomorrow" like, "We'll be having an assembly on tomorrow." WTF?

Some things are related to learning English though. My native Spanish speakers will say things like "My cousin's going to make a party for my birthday." or "Come over tonight so my mom can make to eat for you."

(oh and I think Teeny's right about the 'let')

"Miss, can you close the lights?"

"I have been practising the snowboarding since five year."

"Me, I am wanting to see Tupac Resurrection."

"Parents do not try to understand the child opinion, instead they argue to attempt convincing them that sex is no good."

"This is the first time I am getting bad marks in English."

"Miss, I am making the party all weekend!"

saying 'i need some haircuts' is 'silly' apparently. wtf?

Southerners of my acquaintance often say 'we're fixin' to eat'.

"Sometimes, when I make the sex, I...."

"No way, you have to be killing!!" ("kidding")

"He was really under drugs!"

"I don't like it when you justifive like that."

"I have the impression that..." (not wrong, but used CONSTANTLY)

Speaking of funny phrasings... ;-)

Languages that don't grammatically mark for tense to thread!

It's workable

Languages that don't grammatically mark for tense to thread!

Clarke, the point I was making was that the Englishman who said that thought he was doing his Czech friend a great favour by using non-English syntax. I beg to differ!

- 2nd verse of "Far From Me," John Prine

BY DENNIS DICLAUDIO

- - - -

It really IRRITATES me when people do not use proper grammar. It does not AGGRAVATE me. Do you understand that? IRRITATE means "to annoy," and AGGRAVATE means "to add to." So, if you're already IRRITATING me with your abominable speech and your insistence on smoking a cigar in my living room, your saying, "Hey buddy boy, don't get so AGGRAVATED; I'll open a window," will only AGGRAVATE the situation.

You can no more ALLUDE a former business associate whose job you procured than you can create the ALLUSION of an unprofitable year for the IRS. The words are "ELUDE" and "ILLUSION," respectively. Don't make me repeat this. You can ALLUDE to or make an ALLUSION to The Art of War in an email, and this is quite a different thing than REFERRING to or making a REFERENCE to a specific passage from the same book, because an ALLUSION is an indirect mention, and if you just pull the whole thing off your Quote-A-Day desk calendar, it's a REFERENCE. Sometimes Spellcheck doesn't cut it. Use a dictionary.

I'm going to try to put this as simply as possible, because I realize that some people thought of English as an elective in college. "FARTHER" is a word that refers to distance. "FURTHER" refers to time or quantity. "FARTHER" has the fucking root "FAR" in it. Like "FAR away from my sister." Do not confuse these two. Note these two sentences: "My brother-in-law has his head FARTHER up his ass than I thought was humanly possible," and, "I have no FURTHER interest in hearing your opinions concerning what we should do about the city's 'Jew problem.'"

I was wondering AS TO WHETHER you are intending to offend me with your idiotic opinions or if you actually think I'll sit here and listen to this shit. AS TO WHETHER? AS TO WHETHER? What the hell is "AS TO WHETHER"? Why are you sticking an "AS TO" on the front of "WHETHER"? Just as it is unnecessary for a person to qualify every single statement with, "I'm just saying, I went to Wharton Business School, and...," the "AS TO" is not needed. You're not being paid by the word. Just say "WHETHER." "WHETHER" is fine.

Think about this. Am I IMPLYING that you are a fascist, elitist prick, or can we simply INFER that from the data at hand?

In the name of everything that is good and holy, please, do not ever, ever, ever say "IRREGARDLESS" anywhere near me. What you mean to say is "REGARDLESS." REGARDLESS of whether or not you think of the English language as solely a means of ordering more sushi or bragging about your BMW, its rules must be respected, and there is no such fucking word as "IRREGARDLESS." It makes you sound even more stupid than you actually are. The prefix "IR-" is a negative. The suffix "-LESS" is a negative. How many fucking negatives do you need in one goddamned word? So help me God, I will beat the shit out of you with a tire iron.

I can't even deal with "LAY" and "LIE" right now. I'll smash something. I know it.

Do you actually mean to say that he LITERALLY dropped dead when you told him you were assuming his position in the company? Do you have any idea what you're saying? You're saying that your former boss was lying (not LAYING! not LAYING!) on the floor of his old office, with no pulse, until paramedics came and brought his lifeless body to the morgue? No, I didn't think that's what you meant. Why don't you get that dictionary and look up the LITERAL meaning of the word "LITERALLY," jerkoff?

You do realize that "THAN" and "THEN" are two different words, don't you? Do you know how you can tell? Because they're spelled differently. That "a" and "e" aren't interchangeable, you callous shitwheel. You can't just spell it how you like depending upon your mood. "I'm a stupid, fucking, big-shot stockbroker who doesn't give a shit about anybody but himself and spews his moronic opinions like vomit and probably cheats on his wife, and I think I'll spell "THAN" with an 'e' today." No. That's not how it works, asshole! "THAN" expresses comparison and "THEN" expresses a passage of time or distance! Think of it this way: I'm literally going to grab your dick and pull it farther from your body THAN you can possibly imagine, regardless of how shrilly your screams fall upon my unsympathetic ears, until your dick comes off in my hand and I shove it down your goddamned pontificating, no-good throat! THEN we'll see whether or not you start giving the simple fucking rules of English the respect they fucking deserve!

(the moaning guy, not alext)

"Learn me how to use this software."

Drives me up the fucking wall.

Like "you were 2 hours late!"

"That's why I missed the bus".

What?

the piece is satirical, it's from mcsweeneys.net

I can't think of another one.

is that what you mean?

What are the patient's age, weight, and gender?
What is the patients age, weight, and gender?

I'm pretty sure it's the latter, but I keep second-guessing myself.

What is the patient's ageweightandgender? 32197M.

It's the first, surely.

That should cover it.

The patient's age, the patient's weight, and the patient's gender *are* still three separate things, and still plural.

In my flat, there is a bathroom, a toilet, a kitchen, a lounge and a bedroom.

You'd never say 'are' in this sentence.

I wonder if...

What are the patient's age, weight, and gender?
What is the patients age, weight, and gender?

... might be singular for the same reason.

Every person has|have an age, a weight and a gender.

Something to do with the "what" reflexive r something. (rusty on grammar terms here..)

I disagree with Laura here. Using 'their' as a non-gender specific singular pronoun has a much longer history than people seem to think, sounds natural, and is far preferable to the sexist 'his' or the clunky 'his/her'.

(Why do threads about grammar make me say things like "a fact to which this thread attests"?)

I would use 'is', though I admit that in reply I might say "John's age, weight, and gender are 30, 12 stone and male." Except I would probably say "His age is 30, his weight is 12 stone, and he's a he," or some such. Technically I think it 'should' be 'are', but I think virtually no one would say that, and 'correct' English is about usage, not pre-existing rules.

how about "what are the age, weight and gender of the patient?" a little bit better, though not much.

I agree that the English language is lacking in a third person gender neutral pronoun, but it doesn't change the fact that "their" is plural.

sure, but tons of languages overload pronouns by using plural forms to indicate singular number in certain situations. english is one of them. read up on the history of english pronouns, especially second person... they've undergone all kinds of interesting shifts.

There's also something this sentence leaves out -- you'd only use "their" as a gender-neutral pronoun in cases when you're speaking of a hypothetical ungendered person-at-large. Which is a specific enough condition that it wouldn't be particularly rule-breaking, I don't think, to use plural forms. (In fact, in lots of cases you can evade the issue altogether by going straight to the plural: instead of saying "A writer should use his words with precision," you say to "Writers should use their words with precision." In most cases there's still some plural formulation that gets across the person/rule kind of statement you're trying to make.)

"English lacks a common-gender third person singular pronoun that can be used to refer to indefinite pronouns (as everyone, anyone, someone). Writers and speakers have supplied this lack by using the plural pronouns [and every one to rest themselves betake -- Shakespeare] [I would have everybody marry if they can do it properly -- Jane Austen] [it is too hideous for anyone in their senses to buy -- W.H. Auden]. The plural pronouns have also been put to use as pronouns of indefinite number to refer to singular nouns that stand for many persons ['tis meet that some more audience than a mother, since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear the speech -- Shakespeare] [a person can't help their birth -- W.M. Thackeray] [no man goes to battle to be killed. But they do get killed -- G.B. Shaw]. The use of they, their, them, and themselves as pronouns of indefinite gender and indefinite number is well established in speech and writing, even in literary and formal contexts. This gives you the option of using the plural pronouns where you think they sound best; and of using the singular pronouns (as he, she, he or she, and their inflected forms) where you think they sound best.

I mean, it's just like using the conditional ("if he were here"); I'm sure that sounds off to plenty of people, and kind of should, but we understand that it's a particular case which necessitates its use, and so under those circumstances it sounds perfectly and communicates well. It seems to me that everyone is coming to that point with "their."

I generally err on the side of prescriptive grammar myself, but "their" takes it too far for me. I wouldn't allow it in formal writing; business English, as we all know, allows for many solecisms. The above examples from Shaw, etc., are good--but Shaw is implying *number* there. It's kinda like the rule for "none"--followed by singular noun, use "is"; followed by plural noun, use "are." However, as Chicago Manual of Style points out, sensibly, it's "correct" if stilted to use "is" following singular noun for *special emphasis." I think sometimes you got to use your ear...

The 'ze'/'hir' phenomenon to identify a third grammatical (trans) gender is pretty facile, i think, despite the idealistic "theory-in-action" of sexual rights groups...

adults that consider it appropriate to talk stupidly to babies, however, should be fucked by goats in the ear.

?

actually, on reflection it is a little much. but there is a lot of pressure in a thread about grammar to sound very 'proper'....

Re "their": Of course, no one likes to see or hear a tortuous string of "him/her"s. There are a lot of choices you can make when constructing any sentence, and any number of ways to write things with both style and correct grammar. nabisco's point above about making the subject plural is one great example.

If the language needs to change because of a gap in its ability to communicate an idea, that's one thing. But let's not do it because we're lazy.

semantics is fun, though, if you like language.

nick, are you going to take that university of chicago editing course?

i think the problem is that some people, usually aunts, do it badly

some people have a problem with 'passive speech'.

why?

a problem with passive speech is had by some people

passive voice: approved of or shunned by you?

aww i love that thread.