My bad - English?

[artme]

Remember a Holden T shrt some years ago? "When your hot your hot."

How about the cretin who advertises " A small amount of houses in this price range"
Them things, those things.
Perogative?
Vunerable?
Pricipal,principle?Remember the principal is your pal.
Incident, incidence, and (shudder) incidences.
Numerous numbers of.....
Will this list never end?
Am I tethered to a different planet?

[Outbackrr]

Will this list never end?

Advise - Advice

Choose - Chose

Loose - Lose

And so on.....

Then there's pleonasms, such as 'free gift' or 'I know from past experience'

[Big Shed]

Thank you outbackrr for adding a new word to my vocabulary, must confess I had to look up what a pleonasm is.

There is an interesting list of pleonasms here.

[Ivan in Oz]

When Holden brought out the Statesman;
or was it the Brougham;
they had a Mandatory Option
I believe it was for a Limited Slip Differential

Also is it pronounced

MANdatory
or
MandaTORY

[wheelinround]

Fee Fie Foe Fum

Thee shall have thy way with ye wench
thoust
joust
a jest
begone

[Cliff Rogers]

I hate "return home"

You go home or you went home, you can return to where you came from, or return a book, or re-turn a bit of wood that jumped off the lathe (after you return it to where it came from)

Return home is weird....

[HappyHammer]

Or a particularly english one

"I were going to do it"
"was you?"

Hey, and leave punctuation and pelzing out of it
Can we just stick with grammar.

( wos gooin to say "stay wiv gramma") (Manchester)
but it dint seem so poetic like.(Nottinghamese)

and don't even ask me to do it in Cumbrian

Astrid

Bloody northerners no idea how to speak proper English...

HH.

[HappyHammer]

And then there are the yanks who invent words on the fly....

winningest

HH.

[jerryc]

I know language is a living, moving, thing. It's an argument I've used myself. However the mangling of language by Americans stems, not from a robust need to find new expression as was the case with Shakespeare and often from slang, but from a total lack of knowledge and understanding. Latest example at which I cringed

The verb --"To Opine" Example "The craftsman opined it was not right."

Mind you they cannot cope with past participles
"He dove into the water."

Jerry

Everyone is entitled to my opinion

[astrid]

Regarding local acents and grammar, things get a bit confusing.
Lots of local english speach still has grammar grounded in Saxon, Celtic
or whatever.
This is a beatiful mix that is sadly disappearing.
I have noticed that with the british population being more migratory than30 years ago, many have lost their regional accents and the language is morphing
(excuse contraction, i cant spell metamorphisize) into a rather dull and ugly essex/ southern hash.

Local dialects are an important part of a culture and should be presered without assistance from the "Proper english/grammar police"
This is probably happening all over the world, another loss to globalisation.

Astrid

[wheelinround]

How's your grammar??

Resting in piece I hope they both passed away years ago.!

[astrid]

that took me a few minits to work out
For some reason, my spell checker is a bit irratic, hows yours.

Astrid

[jerryc]

On the matter of correct pronunciation of English, there is one area that does annoy me. That is the mispronunciation of the "a" and"o" in certain words.
The "a" should often be pronounced as an "o" as in "what" and that old English word "tw*t". In the working class south London area I came from the word was in common use and was definitely "t* ot "
The other, and more common mis pronunciation is the "o". This in many cases in English should be given a "u" sound as in "London". But now a "cunjurer" has become a "conjurer", and we "covet" our neighbours goods, instead of "cuveting" them. Just watch how often TV announcers, and worse still TV personalities, mangle the language. I know that in the old days (ah, the good old days, he says sadly, sobbing quietly into his beer) the English BBC had a department where announcers could go to get correct pronunciations of words, places and names. "Don't need it now. We're more educated, like. If the wogs don't like the way we say their names, well tough."

Jerry

Everyone is entitled to my opinion

[Big Shed]

Then we can move to NZ and start talking about "i" and "e"

[astrid]

BBC English is invented and bears no relation to upperclass english.
One shouldn't compare accents with grammer and who invented correct grammer anyway, Tis but a standardization.
English derives from germanic Saxon and roman French, the gramatical structure of which are quite different.
Its the same with pelzing, Damn Dr Johnson

Was used to be pronounced Wass but the language changed. As Johnson wass a native of Litchfield, and area with strong Saxon ties even today, he probably said Wass himself which is possibly why he wrote it that way.
His Lexicon wass only intended as a collection of words not a spelling or pronunciation bible.

Astrid