Your single biggest grammar pet peeve?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Going to hospital.

Got a call from a friend who is a no native speaker who said “sorry I missed you. I’m in the hospital.”

I said “oh no, what happened?”

She said “My aunt is sick!”

I said “Friend, you are AT the hospital!”

I am not a native speaker, like your friend, and I find your corrections extremely annoying. They won't be your friend for long if you keep talking down to them like this. Perhaps, learn their native language and see how you do with such fine nuances.

But are you not interested in learning the quirks of language in America? "I'm in the hospital" does in fact mean you are sick or injured. If you don't want to learn, are you ok with misrepresentating yourself?

And the best time to learn is when you are in hospital. Empathy be damned.

Except she wasn’t IN the hospital. She was AT the hospital. This is a good friend and a good laugh was shared. She makes fun of my Russian. It goes both ways.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:What? I have never heard anyone pronounce forté as fort. How long has this been going on?

The e is accented so you know it's silent and not long a. /s

You are giving out misinformation. A simple Google search on pronunciation would end this silly argument.

There is some controversy over how to correctly pronounce forte. Common choices in American English are "FOR-tay" and "for-TAY," but many usage commentators recommend rhyming it with fort. In French, it would be written le fort and pronounced more similar to English for.

Anyone who has had even rudimentary musical training would use the Italian pronunciation of FOR-tay, which is a common and acceptable usage.

Both are clearly acceptable

Who is the sole person that keeps arguing about the pronunciation? Take the "L" and give it a rest.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:When people put a qualifier with “unique”, which means one of a kind so it cannot be compared. It is incorrect to say very unique or a little unique or less unique. It’s just unique.

Also forte is pronounced without the e, like fort.

I thought it was pronounced "for-tay"

Only by rubes or Italians.

According to Merriam-Webster, both pronunciations are correct.

DP. Yes, now both pronunciations are correct but that’s only because people so commonly mispronounced it as fort-ay for so many years that the incorrect pronunciation became accepted. This happens often…people mess up a word so much that it becomes the common parlance and is actually eventually accepted into the lexicon.

That is how language develops

Now one would sound like a pretentious tw@t insisting upon the French pronunciation.

Nasty comment but back when I was young and dinosaurs roamed the earth, we were taught that pronouncing anything in it's foreign pronunciation was wrong. Thus fort vs fortay.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:less and fewer
And not putting punctuation inside quotation marks such as:

He called this flower a "buttercup." <--- correct
He called this flower a buttercup". <----- inccorrect *unless you're from England.

They only use a single, double quote in England? Who knew?

Funny. I'm old and grew up in the south and was taught the incorrect version. We also were taught gray was grey and color was spelled colour.

Np, I have a habit of spelling words using British grammar, too (colour, cancelled, aesthetic, flavour, etc.), and I don't know where it stems from. I chalked it up as possibly being British in a past life.

I chalk it up to you being pretentious.

In certain parts of this country back in the day, they taught us English grammar.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Going to hospital.

Got a call from a friend who is a no native speaker who said “sorry I missed you. I’m in the hospital.”

I said “oh no, what happened?”

She said “My aunt is sick!”

I said “Friend, you are AT the hospital!”

I am not a native speaker, like your friend, and I find your corrections extremely annoying. They won't be your friend for long if you keep talking down to them like this. Perhaps, learn their native language and see how you do with such fine nuances.

But are you not interested in learning the quirks of language in America? "I'm in the hospital" does in fact mean you are sick or injured. If you don't want to learn, are you ok with misrepresentating yourself?

Perhaps brush up on your native language? See the second to last word in your post.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:When people put a qualifier with “unique”, which means one of a kind so it cannot be compared. It is incorrect to say very unique or a little unique or less unique. It’s just unique.

Also forte is pronounced without the e, like fort.

I thought it was pronounced "for-tay"

Only by rubes or Italians.

According to Merriam-Webster, both pronunciations are correct.

DP. Yes, now both pronunciations are correct but that’s only because people so commonly mispronounced it as fort-ay for so many years that the incorrect pronunciation became accepted. This happens often…people mess up a word so much that it becomes the common parlance and is actually eventually accepted into the lexicon.

That is how language develops

Now one would sound like a pretentious tw@t insisting upon the French pronunciation.

Nasty comment but back when I was young and dinosaurs roamed the earth, we were taught that pronouncing anything in it's foreign pronunciation was wrong. Thus fort vs fortay.

I don’t know a living, properly educated person who would say: “Cooking is not my fort.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When people put a qualifier with “unique”, which means one of a kind so it cannot be compared. It is incorrect to say very unique or a little unique or less unique. It’s just unique.

Also forte is pronounced without the e, like fort.

I thought it was pronounced "for-tay"

Only by rubes or Italians.

According to Merriam-Webster, both pronunciations are correct.

DP. Yes, now both pronunciations are correct but that’s only because people so commonly mispronounced it as fort-ay for so many years that the incorrect pronunciation became accepted. This happens often…people mess up a word so much that it becomes the common parlance and is actually eventually accepted into the lexicon.

That is how language develops

Now one would sound like a pretentious tw@t insisting upon the French pronunciation.

Nasty comment but back when I was young and dinosaurs roamed the earth, we were taught that pronouncing anything in it's foreign pronunciation was wrong. Thus fort vs fortay.

“Fort”, when the definition meaning speciality is being used, is correct, but seldom used, unless DCUM pretentiousness is cranked to 10. Fortay refers to the musical usage.

All of these sticklers learned this minutiae from daily emails and grammar nazi blogs. It doesn’t matter in daily life. And, frankly, I know many of these rules and I cringe when people conspicuously deploy underused pronunciations or definitions because it is nakedly pretentious.

You are a bunch of Eliza Doolittles.

This is the same phenomenon that is happening in the UK where everyone wants to speak with the Surrey/south of England RP to sound posh. You’ve got the children east London dock workers sounding like Lord Grantham. But, it’s all about “Keeping Up Appearances”, I guess.

But it risks erasing the myriad local dialects and accents across Britain. Here, we hardly have the variation, but clearly many want to erase the little bit of region-specific culture we have. Assimilate or be destroyed. Resistance is futile.

[Anonymous]

Supposably

[Anonymous]

Y’all

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When people put a qualifier with “unique”, which means one of a kind so it cannot be compared. It is incorrect to say very unique or a little unique or less unique. It’s just unique.

Also forte is pronounced without the e, like fort.

I thought it was pronounced "for-tay"

Only by rubes or Italians.

According to Merriam-Webster, both pronunciations are correct.

DP. Yes, now both pronunciations are correct but that’s only because people so commonly mispronounced it as fort-ay for so many years that the incorrect pronunciation became accepted. This happens often…people mess up a word so much that it becomes the common parlance and is actually eventually accepted into the lexicon.

That is how language develops

Now one would sound like a pretentious tw@t insisting upon the French pronunciation.

Nasty comment but back when I was young and dinosaurs roamed the earth, we were taught that pronouncing anything in it's foreign pronunciation was wrong. Thus fort vs fortay.

“Fort”, when the definition meaning speciality is being used, is correct, but seldom used, unless DCUM pretentiousness is cranked to 10. Fortay refers to the musical usage.

All of these sticklers learned this minutiae from daily emails and grammar nazi blogs. It doesn’t matter in daily life. And, frankly, I know many of these rules and I cringe when people conspicuously deploy underused pronunciations or definitions because it is nakedly pretentious.

You are a bunch of Eliza Doolittles.

This is the same phenomenon that is happening in the UK where everyone wants to speak with the Surrey/south of England RP to sound posh. You’ve got the children east London dock workers sounding like Lord Grantham. But, it’s all about “Keeping Up Appearances”, I guess.

But it risks erasing the myriad local dialects and accents across Britain. Here, we hardly have the variation, but clearly many want to erase the little bit of region-specific culture we have. Assimilate or be destroyed. Resistance is futile.

I feel like I could have written this. Non- linguists can be grammar snoots to the nth degree, but they don't really understand language.

[Anonymous]

Does anyone else hate the over use of “would?” Just read an otherwise beautifully written story. One section of the story suddenly shift into “would” territory - something like: “The king would go down into the town. He would seek out the poor and there he would give them gifts.” Why the would?

[Anonymous]

I wish people would refer to young humans as children and not kids. Kids are the young of goats.

[Anonymous]

Data is a plural word!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People who do not use "I" and "me" properly.

Susie and I went to the store. (CORRECT)

Tom went to the store with Susie and I. (INCORRECT).

Tom went to the store with Susie and me. (CORRECT).

This drives me crazy and it’s so common now, along with the incorrect use of “myself”: “They gave the award to Jane and myself.”

Also, everyone using “verbiage” for written words instead of “language” or “words.” I also worked with someone who would say “wordage.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wish people would refer to young humans as children and not kids. Kids are the young of goats.

That ship has sailed.