Thread: English Pet Peeves & Common Mistakes

Originally Posted by bitpicker

Furthermore, redundancy is not always unwanted. In fact, much of normal speech is peppered with redundancy because if you really began to speak without redundancies the signal to noise ratio would be such that people would have a hard time understanding you. We actually like a certain amount of noise in between signals to digest them.

Robin

Dearest, are you always this logical? Your teacher and parents, what on earth did they do with you as a child? How many teachers are now wearing little white jackets and are in padded cells? And I can just see your sons trying to pull a fast one on you or begging you for something. I think I need to start coming to you for parental comebacks!

I never ever would have thought that we actually need "and plus" in our lives! Olya, rejoys and go forth and, "and plus" to your little heart's content! But just know I will still be wanting to correct you when you do so!

Originally Posted by sperk

The catch phrase "think outiside the box" has to go.

Ballpark figure and many others.
All cheesy business speak expressions should be banned in fact. Just nonsense used by people who want to portray themselves as a corporate superstar....

"Win a trip to Rio... and plus a host of other prizes"

Rockzmom ---- well I am a bit out of my depth in this thread I think... I get the feeling you know your grammar quite well.... But yeah I can see that "and" is not needed in the sentence above.

Jumbo shrimp.

Pre-owned car.

Free gift.


Scott

Okay folks... I first tried to post this around 7:30 a.m. my time and one of two things must have happened...the little gremlins don't like me picking on Robin OR they don't like my sense of humor as my posting went off into never never land... so without further ado, here is what I remember of that wonderful witty posting. You of course all may laugh 'til your sides hurt.

Originally Posted by bitpicker

if you really began to speak without redundancies the signal to noise ratio would be such that people would have a hard time understanding you. We actually like a certain amount of noise in between signals to digest them.

Robin, dearest... what must you have been like as a child I wonder? Were you always so logical? You poor teachers and parents. How many teachers are now wearing nice white jackets and are in padded cells? And your sons...do they ever win an argument? Maybe I need to come to you for parenting advice???

Olya, I guess I was wrong and you may use "and plus" to your heart's content!


Now, new posting....

Originally Posted by Johanna

Rockzmom ---- well I am a bit out of my depth in this thread I think... I get the feeling you know your grammar quite well....

Okay, everyone who knows my writing...just keep on laughing about what Johanna wrote. Go on, I don't mind. I know I absolutely "suck" with grammar, punctuation, spelling, etymology... you can add on to the list if you like ... Don't forget to breathe a little. Okay, go on laugh some more at that one.

Originally Posted by rockzmom

Originally Posted by bitpicker

I would say I learned English because I sang along with songs from bands I liked no matter what the lyrics actually meant (good for pronunciation, did nothing for my singing voice), Robin

It is funny that you say this because that is how my husband started to learn English as well. When I first met him he hardly knew any English and one day we were at work and The Moody Blues were on TV and he started to sing along to Nights in White Satin. We all turned around and looked at him surprised because he knew all the words to the song, yet could barely speak a complete sentence in English. We then found out he knew the words to almost all of the Creedence Clearwater Revival songs a ton of heavy metal songs yet he had almost no clue what the words meant.

This is amazing! But it exactly what I have in mind when I post Russian songs with its lyrics.

Originally Posted by Lampada

This is amazing! But it exactly what I have in mind when I post Russian songs with its lyrics

That's very sweet when you do that.
When I get better I'll get back to those folk songs that I like, that you posted the lyrics for... I have liked those melodies all my life! But my first goal is to learn about 1000 words and some rudimentary grammar.

It's kind of tricky in Russian that the word order is quite different from Germanic and Romance languages. I think it's really only possible to get the hang of that by listening to music, films... reading.... etc...

Originally Posted by rockzmom

Okay, everyone who knows my writing...just keep on laughing about what Johanna wrote. Go on, I don't mind. I know I absolutely "suck" with grammar, punctuation, spelling, etymology... you can add on to the list if you like ... Don't forget to breathe a little. Okay, go on laugh some more at that one.

Haha, well if so you are not the only one... I DID learn all the grammatical terminology at school, but I really don't remember any of it anymore -- other than Verb, Noun, Adverb, Adjective.... I can't think of anything more boring than picking up a book and cramming that again. I know that there ARE such a things as "Superlative", "Pluskvamperfekt", "Pronomen", "Predikat" and many, many more, however I seriously can't remember what they were.

But for what it's worth your English seems fine to me at least! I know many native speakers whose written English... leaves a lot to be desired. Not the case with you in my opinion.

erm, did I use "whose" correctly? I hate that word!!!

Okay gang....let me know what you think of this one... Record vs. Recording

I've seen a number of Russians use this one like this:
"I'll make a record for you," or "I'll make a new record," instead of saying "I'll make a recording for you," or "I'll make a new recording."

To me, a record is a phonograph (or now days a CD or MP3), or a document as a "record of birth" or a way of documenting as in "for the record" or "off the record."

AND when someone "records" their voice, they make a "recording" of it.

Now I understand that a music record is now a MP3, but I don't thing they are really saying, "I'll make an MP3 for you to listen to," I think they are saying, "I'll make a recording of me reading this passage for you and then you can tell me how I sound."

How does this compare to your understanding of "record" and "recording" and how it is being used?

Originally Posted by rockzmom

Robin, dearest... what must you have been like as a child I wonder? Were you always so logical? You poor teachers and parents. How many teachers are now wearing nice white jackets and are in padded cells? And your sons...do they ever win an argument? Maybe I need to come to you for parenting advice???

First, computers do what I tell them to. They fear me. That's probably why you lost your first post. I'm one of those geeks who, by merely standing next to you when you want to show them a computer problem, make that problem go away.

Now, jesting aside, your sympathies should really go to my wife - my sons are just as bad as I am.

However, you may be glad to hear that I'm with you on the record / recording subject.

Robin

Originally Posted by Johanna

erm, did I use "whose" correctly? I hate that word!!!

Yes, you did. And that's another fine example for a common mistake in English: writing "who's" instead of "whose". "Who's" is short for "who is" or "who has" only.

Robin

Next item up for discussion! Ordinal Numbers and enumeration! First, second, third.. Firstly, secondy and thirdly... First, secondly, thirdly??? Is it British vs. American yet again, an idiom?

Two things here. The first mistake people make is to start off with "first" and then never have a second. If you have a first, you must have a second.

The second, and I must admit I am part of this second part, is to add the "ly" to the numbers.

Apparently you are NOT to add the "ly" to the numbers.. here are three articles...

http://languageandgrammar.com/2008/0...t-not-firstly/
http://brunerbiz.com/tag/first-second-third/
http://teacherseducation.wordpress.c...-wednesday-33/

What have you been taught? What do you actually write and/or speak (see article 2).

Adverbs (-ly) really don't make sense here. You can usually replace an adverb with a phrase like 'in X fashion': he replied eagerly = he replied in an eager fashion. There is no such thing as something going on in a first or second fashion.

Robin

Maybe I wasn't clear enough as it is used all the time and what made me think of this was Olya's posting in the movie thread..

Originally Posted by Оля

Firstly, at Tolstoy's times, there was no cinema.

Originally Posted by Johanna

All cheesy business speak expressions should be banned in fact. Just nonsense used by people who want to portray themselves as a corporate superstar....

Johanna, I don't know what exactly those from your list are, are there amongst them any of these – proactive, paradigm, synergy? Just like they sound makes me hate them, let alone what they mean, because what they mean I think is a load of crap in a fancy wrapping. As always The Simpsons agree with you on that one by

Aren't those just buzzwords that dumb people use to sound important?

And a huge pet of a peeve that is your 'political correctness', the abomination invented in the West invariably conquering the world. To call a woman chairing a conference a chairman is abuse of her womanhood, manholes should be called manholes only when a man pops out of the hole, when a woman does that they should be referred to as what? You’ll never guess. Manchester as of this moment must be called Personchester, and all that Afro-American instead of black stuff, isn’t that ridiculous?

Originally Posted by rockzmom

Two things here. The first mistake people make is to start off with "first" and then never have a second. If you have a first, you must have a second.

Originally Posted by rockzmom

Maybe I wasn't clear enough as it is used all the time and what made me think of this was Olya's posting in the movie thread..

Originally Posted by Оля

Firstly, at Tolstoy's times, there was no cinema.

In Russian using "First" without "Second" is a common practice when the "First" is used as "The following thing should be beared in our minds during all the following talk". I don't know whether it is correct in Russian and does not hurt some grammar fans. So what would be the correct version of such an introducing statement in English?

I think in the sense of 'before we consider the main things, let's first discuss X' you can well use 'first' without a 'second'. You could also use it with 'then', either spelled out or implied.

I'd tend to use "firstly, secondly..." more often than "first, second...", but I have no objection to either, with a couple of caveats.

Should my enumeration end with "lastly" or "finally", I'd be more like to use the ~ly form. "Last" in place of "lastly" feels odd, and "final" in place of "finally" is plainly wrong, and using the ~ly forms throughout just seems more elegant.
If I had a lot of points to make I would more likely use "first, second,...", because higher numbers sound silly in the ~ly form. "Seventhly". Ugh. That said, I can think of no circumstances where I'd ever want to go that high in speech, and if I was writting I'd use bullet points instead.

I also disagree that if you have a "first/ly" then you need a "second/ly". I think a "first/ly" on its own indicates that everything said subsequently relates to that original point, wheras continuing to enumerate suggests that you're making several distinct points.

EDIT, JUST SAW SCOTCHER'S COMMENT! Haha we thought the same thing!
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Originally Posted by rockzmom

Next item up for discussion! Ordinal Numbers and enumeration! First, second, third.. Firstly, secondy and thirdly... First, secondly, thirdly??? Is it British vs. American yet again, an idiom?.

Well, I always say "Firstly", "Secondly" etc.... Rockzmom I strongly suspect you of using an American grammar book as "proof"! What we need is something like the "Oxford Guide to the English" language
No but seriously, I didn't know that there was a difference in how Americans say it. Either way seems fine to me, I don't think I would notice it.

But there is one thing that drives Brits crazy about American speech. That's when you/they exclude "-ly" on the adverbs:

He was screaming loudly (Americans drop "-ly" I think)
Things are going well, everything is well with me. (Americans would use "good" I think)
She is driving carefully
Come quickly!
It was brutally cold outside

I'm not sure if these examples are very good, but I think most native speakers will know what I am talking about.

One more American phenomenon which I hear on TV is "oftentimes"! It's funny when an academic is interviewed and repeatedly uses a word which sounds like it was made up by a child....! A really strange mix of "sometimes" and "often"???

Originally Posted by alexB

Originally Posted by Johanna

All cheesy business speak expressions should be banned in fact. Just nonsense used by people who want to portray themselves as a corporate superstar....

Johanna, I don't know what exactly those from your list are, are there amongst them any of these – proactive, paradigm, synergy? Just like they sound makes me hate them, let alone what they mean, because what they mean I think is a load of cr@p in a fancy wrapping. As always The Simpsons agree with you on that one by

Aren't those just buzzwords that dumb people use to sound important?

Alex, yes all the words you mentioned. However these words have SOME limited valuable usage outside of business...
Here are some more:

Going Forward --- Going forward, we must make sure that we..... (means "from now on")
Seamless --- Now that was hardly a seamless transition, was it?
Take ownership ---- What we need is somebody to take ownership of this issue
Team Player ---- James is a real teamplayer!
Touch Base --------- Let's touch base later on today
Manage Expectations ---------- You need to manage that customer's expectations properly
Mission Critical ---------- That database is mission critical and must not be allowed to go offline for a second.
Out of the box --------- This excellent idea is a good example of Jane's ability to think out of the box.
Push Back --------- It's time we pushed back a bit with XCorp, they're getting far too aggressive...

There are more but I've had enough....


.

I know, one should never throw stones in glass houses...

The following was taken from an email I received today (it was also sent to 31 other people!). The author is in her late 40's or mid-50's and IS American born.

As you alll know... at 7:00 p.m at the... The festival is being held from October 23-25. It will cost $10 and apart of the proceeds for the festival go to Breast Cancer awareness. I will be attending and going to the reception. I hope to see you all their.

How many errors can YOU find????? (yes, I did delete some parts of the email, to protect the innocent and all that jazz.)