Thursday, January 24, 2008

Language Gripes

Whenever my life is happy and gay, and I have not a care in the world, I search out a reason to groan and complain.

Well, not really. It's probably the opposite. When I am feeling centred and full of self-actualization I don't worry about icky picky things. When I am overwhelmed or pushed, I distract myself by being bugged by things that really don't matter.

My favourite is trendy language idiosyncrasies and nouveau cliches.

It seems like everyone in the world all at once begins saying the same thing the same (wrong) way and it just bugs me. I know I have griped about this before, and I will again. I know that I do not speak perfectly. My writing isn't perfect either. These are the blandwagon slanguage glitches currently making me squirm:

"I seen..." as in "I seen him coming down the street," or "I seen that movie last week."

"is is" as in "The thing is, is that the price of gas is too low to discourage people from driving." (I know I have complained about "is is" in previous posts, but it's not going away. The thing is, is that people keep saying this and it's it's driving me insane. Just thought I'd throw in two others that bug me - "it's it's and "driving me insane" when you really mean "making me feel irritated." Irritated and insane are not the same thing. One requires benadryl, the other hospitalization and treatment.)

Why use an adverb when an adjective is shorter? This is pretty recent. People drop the "ly" on the word at the end of the sentence as in, "This wine is delicious. Did you know that it is made local?" or "It's so unfair. He was fired from his job indiscriminate."

Using the word "concerning" when you really should use "disconcerting" as in "I find the current situation in Afghanistan extremely concerning."

So now that I have that off my chest I can go be nice again. I will go be nice very sincere. It's it's just the right thing to do. I seen what I look like when I'm not nice, and it's very concerning.

question: why do I let this bug me?

mompoet - petting my peeves

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