Good Spoken Language

[wherethewild]

This is something I´ve been noticing recently and has started really annoying me. Lazy spoken English. Anyone else noticed it?

The first was a bunch of young Aussie´s who kept talking about "youse". As in "How´s youse going?" That really got up my nose.

But the worst recently, and which has been the reason that I´ve stopped listening to two podcasts (and I´m close to dropping a third which is shame because the content is interesting, it´s just this insistent phrase!) is "wrote me". As in "Gary wrote me last week to ask....". Gary wrote to you last week, not wrote you last week. If he´d wrote you last week he would have been busy scribbling the word 'you' everywhere. Drives me absolutely bananas.

Has anyone else noticed this, or is it just me?

[Simon Painter]

where I live, everyone has trouble telling the difference between 'lending' and 'borrowing'  IE:

"Can you borrow me a pen?"

which I'm not sure is physically possible.

[wherethewild]

 

"Can you borrow me a pen?"

now that´s a common Germanism!

[Simon Painter]

heh.  I'll always remember my German teacher from when I was living over there, she was always telling us to keep up with memorising 'werbs'

Simon

[wakela]

"times" instead of "multiply."  Like fingernails on a chalkboard.  My eighth grade math teacher did this. 
In New York people wait on line instead of "in line."
New Orleans is a complete train wreck.  You can add the objective pronoun of the subject to the end of a sentence to indicate emphasis.  "I was really scared, me!"  "He's been on vacation for more than a month, him!"

Me: So what exactly is this dish?
Wife (She is Japanese): It's made by fish.
Me: I think you mean "It's made of fish."
Wife: No.  It's made by fish.  Japanese fish are geniuses.  They can do anything.

What a save! That's why I love her, me!

[Mfitz]

"Can you borrow me a pen?"

now that´s a common Germanism!

That's why we say "Please?" when we mean "What?" in Cincinnati, and in some deep dark parts of the west side you still hear older people say "Make out with the lights."

I don't know if I think of that as lazy language, or charming regional variation  in danger of being lost forever because of the mono linguistic culture of TV/Cable/Movies.

[Listener]

"Can you borrow me a pen?"

now that´s a common Germanism!

That's why we say "Please?" when we mean "What?" in Cincinnati, and in some deep dark parts of the west side you still hear older people say "Make out with the lights."

In Georgia, it's "Do what?"

One that really bugs me is "Go from there."  As in, "So we'll implement this policy and go from there."  It wasn't really a bother to me until I started working at this TV station, and now I hear EVERYONE saying it and it drives me crazy.

[jrderego]

I still catch myself using New Bedford Portuguese pidgin sentence structure every now and then. i.e.

Throw me down the stairs my shoes.

Go get the keys for me to the car.

Run me over with the car to the store.

Throw the horse over the fence some hay.

Going to college in the UK for a year and a half broke me of that habit, mostly, but it still comes back when I am in my home town trying to order "six malasadas and meat pies, eight to go with coffee".

[ClintMemo]

I hear "Go from there" all the time.

One thing my 9 year old says is "make me a.." instead of "make a ... for me"

Her: "Daddy, make me a sandwich."
Me: "Ok,  POOF!  You're a sandwich."
Her: "Daaaaaad."

One I listed on another post is "I could care less" when the meaning is obviously "I couldn't care less."  People used to use this phrase correctly but they got lazy and dropped the contraction.

Wife: "American Idle is on!"
Me (who hates reality shows): "I couldn't care less."

[Rachel Swirsky]

I was chatting with haut this morning, and this thread came up, and she made a comparison I thought was really smart.

There's an attempt to reify grammar into a certain set of rules, but many of those rules date only to - eh - the early 20th century, when people started writing grammar text books. The pet peeves of a few individuals (dislike for passive voice, split infiinitives, and so on) have beeen interpreted as dogma when there's plenty of historical precedent for the correct, English use of things like split infinitives. (English is not latin; it is not even latinate; it's a bit silly to assume that it should be regulated by the same rules that regulate latin.)

Anyway, haut's comparison -- grammar isn't a set of absolute rules, regulated like some sort of mathematics. It's more like the rules that govern the composition of music. You play it by ear, to make the words flow in the right rhythms. You do so within a framework, of course, just as music exists within a framework, but the right music will know not only when to follow the rules but also when to break them.

[Listener]

I was chatting with haut this morning, and this thread came up, and she made a comparison I thought was really smart.

There's an attempt to reify grammar into a certain set of rules, but many of those rules date only to - eh - the early 20th century, when people started writing grammar text books. The pet peeves of a few individuals (dislike for passive voice, split infiinitives, and so on) have beeen interpreted as dogma when there's plenty of historical precedent for the correct, English use of things like split infinitives. (English is not latin; it is not even latinate; it's a bit silly to assume that it should be regulated by the same rules that regulate latin.)

Anyway, haut's comparison -- grammar isn't a set of absolute rules, regulated like some sort of mathematics. It's more like the rules that govern the composition of music. You play it by ear, to make the words flow in the right rhythms. You do so within a framework, of course, just as music exists within a framework, but the right music will know not only when to follow the rules but also when to break them.

I've never heard the word reify before.  Nice.  I might have used "codify" myself.

As a former English tutor at the college level, and a writer, it was a constant battle to help people massage their grammar just right so it was still "good" but also "artful".  The trick is to know the rules before you break them.

I'm running into a similar problem at work.  We have to follow the AP style guide, which says that "website" should be written as "Web site".  Come on, now, does anyone really notice the difference?  And how long has it been since anyone who uses the web for work every day capitalized it?

[Mfitz]

One that really bugs me is "Go from there."  As in, "So we'll implement this policy and go from there."  It wasn't really a bother to me until I started working at this TV station, and now I hear EVERYONE saying it and it drives me crazy.

My hot button businessism is "Ask the question."  What question?

[jrderego]

One that really bugs me is "Go from there."  As in, "So we'll implement this policy and go from there."  It wasn't really a bother to me until I started working at this TV station, and now I hear EVERYONE saying it and it drives me crazy.

My hot button businessism is "Ask the question."  What question?

I have two businessisms that drive me up the wall.

"Let's move forward on this." and "Where the rubber meets the road."

Whoever coined those two phrases should be killed slowly and painfully.

[ClintMemo]

I've always been fascinated at how nouns get transformed into verbs over time or how "verb versions" of nouns get created.
Microwave
Email
Calendarize

 

[Mfitz]

[
I have two businessisms that drive me up the wall.

"Let's move forward on this." and "Where the rubber meets the road."

Whoever coined those two phrases should be killed slowly and painfully.

By being moved forward where the rubber meets the road?

[jrderego]

[
I have two businessisms that drive me up the wall.

"Let's move forward on this." and "Where the rubber meets the road."

Whoever coined those two phrases should be killed slowly and painfully.

By being moved forward where the rubber meets the road?

I am officially moving forward with the startup sequence of my doomsday "laser"...

LOL

[Michael]

I have read that accents are actually deepening and becoming more divergent despite the homogenizing effect mass media was supposed to be having on our speech.  Evidently North-South accent differences are far greater now than during the civil war.  Grammar variations seems to accompany accents. 

[wakela]

I hadn't even thought of business speak.

I used to work at a website Web Site design company.  People talked about the functionality or componentry of a site.  A case can be made for functionality, but I still hate it.  Also, once a client complained of logistical problems with one of the site because it kept crashing.  I've since wondered what he thought logistical meant, and I've concluded that he was just using the word to beef up his sentence. 

[ClintMemo]

I have read that accents are actually deepening and becoming more divergent despite the homogenizing effect mass media was supposed to be having on our speech.  Evidently North-South accent differences are far greater now than during the civil war.  Grammar variations seems to accompany accents. 

I moved from western Massachusetts to Louisville KY in the mid 1970's when I was 11.  I had a VERY difficult time adjusting not only to the accent, but to some of the expressions.
The one I remember most had to do with time.  This was in the pre-digital watch age, where approximations were good enough.  If the time were 9:45, in KY, they said "quarter till ten."  In the north, we would say "quarter of ten."  The first time I said "quarter of ten," the person looked at me and said "is the before or after?"
The other thing I couldn't figure out was who this "Joe Daddy" character was and why everybody had such a low opinion of him. 

[Kurt Faler]

Lets not forget the attempt by Ohioans to streamline spoken English by dropping verbs that are clearly implied. To be or not to be? Not to be, if you're from around here. The Web site needs updated, the UPS batteries need changed, and my tense usage needs spanked.

[Planish]

New Orleans is a complete train wreck.  You can add the objective pronoun of the subject to the end of a sentence to indicate emphasis.  "I was really scared, me!"  "He's been on vacation for more than a month, him!"

No doubt that's a Cajun French thing. Around here (New Brunswick, Canada) there's a large Acadian population, and you'll hear things like "Me, I went to the store", with the pronoun at the beginning. In Acadian French, at least, this is perfectly correct.