Completely unimportant language misuses that bug you

[VoxRationis]

Unarticulated inflections, particularly in terms of verb forms. I see it a lot. Is it that hard to articulate the final consonant that it's worth reducing the amount of information your words carry?

[dehro]

I'm going to need an example of what you mean

[georgie_leech]

I'm going to need an example of what you mean

I'm going to need an example of what you mean. A statement of what is necessary for understanding.

I'm going to need a statement of what you mean? An invitation/request for an example. You can read the two differently; the latter has an upward inflection on the last word, usually.

[137beth]

Clearly, rather than having gendered pronouns, you could have ordered pronouns, so they refer to the first, second, third thing being described (and so on from third if you want - it might need to go up to six before you decide that your sentence is already unreasonable). So, suppose we make up the pronouns fe, se and te (ignoring that "Se" is already sorta a word and that making up pronouns makes some people irrationally angry), we could have:

"Al and Betty were walking down the road, but there was a hole in the road. Fe fell down te, and se laughed."

Which is unambiguous - Al's fallen down the hole, and Betty's laughing. I don't think there are any actual languages which do that, though.

There are programming languages that do something similar. In Mathematica, when you define a pure function, the first argument is always # or #1, the second argument is #2, the third argument is #3, etc.

[VoxRationis]

I'm going to need an example of what you mean

English, like (although to a lesser extent than) most Indo-European languages, modifies its verbs and nouns according to person, number, case, and tense. When particularly discussing verbs, with a few exceptions ("sing" being a key example), these modifications usually come down to a suffix of some form, possibly with an auxiliary verb (I cough, he coughs, he is coughing, he coughed, etc.). Some speakers tend to ignore these modifications and use the same basic verb form more broadly than is generally accepted (I cough, he cough, he cough).

[Rockphed]

English, like (although to a lesser extent than) most Indo-European languages, modifies its verbs and nouns according to person, number, case, and tense. When particularly discussing verbs, with a few exceptions ("sing" being a key example), these modifications usually come down to a suffix of some form, possibly with an auxiliary verb (I cough, he coughs, he is coughing, he coughed, etc.). Some speakers tend to ignore these modifications and use the same basic verb form more broadly than is generally accepted (I cough, he cough, he cough).

*Twitch. Twitch*

I understand not neccesarily pronouncing the 's' at the end of coughs, but ... GAAAAHRGHLG. I am undone by the stupidity.

*TWITCH*

[Peelee]

*Twitch. Twitch*

I understand not neccesarily pronouncing the 's' at the end of coughs, but ... GAAAAHRGHLG. I am undone by the stupidity.

*TWITCH*

What about people who spell "hiccup" as "hiccough?”

[Vinyadan]

What about people who spell "hiccup" as "hiccough?”

Hey, re-etymologization is an important factor in language change!

[Rockphed]

What about people who spell "hiccup" as "hiccough?”

Having never looked into the etymology of the word, I am not particularly attached to one spelling over the other.

EDIT: Looking at dictionary.com, it looks like "hiccup" is an onomatopoeia, possibly derived from German, of the sound people make when they hiccup. "Hiccough", on the other hand, is a fallacious reverse etymology that should have been extirpated in the 1620s when it first showed up.

[dehro]

Having never looked into the etymology of the word, I am not particularly attached to one spelling over the other.

EDIT: Looking at dictionary.com, it looks like "hiccup" is an onomatopoeia, possibly derived from German, of the sound people make when they hiccup. "Hiccough", on the other hand, is a fallacious reverse etymology that should have been extirpated in the 1620s when it first showed up.

Doesn't 4 centuries or existence grant legitimate status?

[Jormengand]

Doesn't 4 centuries or existence grant legitimate status?

To a linguistic prescriptivist, nothing but etymology will do that, and even then only after a thorough interrogation.

[Rockphed]

Doesn't 4 centuries or existence grant legitimate status?

I'm not arguing for extirpating it now. I'm arguing for going back in time to 1620 and extirpating it then.

[Sinewmire]

I really hate the American "I could care less" as it is just WRONG. It's "I *couldn't* care less". It makes my blood boil every time.

Around my home, a lot of people pronounce an extra D in Demon ("Demond").

[Jormengand]

I really hate the American "I could care less" as it is just WRONG. It's "I *couldn't* care less". It makes my blood boil every time.

I always assumed it was one of those expressions like "Fat chance" which is always sarcastic (though in this case, only in the American English version).

[Vinyadan]

A quote from Bernard Shaw I found in Wikipedia's article about English English:

It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

A quote from Bernard Shaw I found in Wikipedia's article about English English:

From My Fair Lady's "Why Can't The English Learn To Speak"

An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him,
The moment he talks he makes some other
Englishman despise him.
One common language I'm afraid we'll never get.
Oh, why can't the English learn to set
A good example to people whose
English is painful to your ears?
The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears.
There even are places where English completely
Disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years!

GW

[lio45]

Some speakers tend to ignore these modifications and use the same basic verb form more broadly than is generally accepted (I cough, he cough, he cough).

Lolcats do that, yeah... but people?

[VoxRationis]

Oh, yes. I've seen it a lot in certain dialects (AAVE in particular, which I heard a lot of as a substitute teacher), and there are lots of other dialects I haven't experienced personally that are attested in having these features. I've even seen it creeping into supposedly standard American English in TV dramas (the character "Dalton" in NBC's "The Brave," a show I would not recommend watching on its own merits, exhibits occasional but repeated truncations of verb endings). The verb "to be" tends to suffer this sort of neglect in particular, probably because it's easy to assume it's there in the present tense as a default.

[Jormengand]

Not conjugating verbs the way that we do in standard English doesn't really annoy me when the person in question isn't actually speaking standard English or trying to. Also, it's relatively standard to use the wrong tense (Anything from "So I'm walking down the road, yeah, and this guy says to me..." to "Tonight, we dine in hell!")

Though one thing that does annoy me is "Amn't" instead of "Aren't", as in "Amn't I?", even though it's arguably more correct. It just sounds jarring.

[Vinyadan]

Those two are actually very common across languages.

The first one (I'm walking down the road, and this guy comes and says...) is historical present.

The second one (Tonight we dine in hell), I'm not sure it has a name, but it is very frequent, probably because the phrase already contains the time coordinates that show that the action is meant to happen in the future.

I had no idea amn't existed.

[Tvtyrant]

Unarticulated inflections, particularly in terms of verb forms. I see it a lot. Is it that hard to articulate the final consonant that it's worth reducing the amount of information your words carry?

It carries no information, so yes.

He run and he runs are exactly identical to each other.

[Jormengand]

It carries no information, so yes.

He run and he runs are exactly identical to each other.

Of course, you could go the opposite: have verbs whose conjugation carries all the information you need, so you don't actually need the prono...

...oh, hey Spanish, I didn't see you there.

[Tvtyrant]

Of course, you could go the opposite: have verbs whose conjugation carries all the information you need, so you don't actually need the prono...

...oh, hey Spanish, I didn't see you there.

My point is that the s conjugation in English is meaningless, getting irritated by opting out of using a meaningless functiin is silly.

[Jormengand]

My point is that the s conjugation in English is meaningless, getting irritated by opting out of using a meaningless functiin is silly.

Just because I'm responding to you doesn't mean I'm disagreeing with you. I'm just making a point tangentially-related to yours.

[Tvtyrant]

Just because I'm responding to you doesn't mean I'm disagreeing with you. I'm just making a point tangentially-related to yours.

Fair enough :)

I wonder if there is a published scale of conjugation levels in language.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

It carries no information, so yes.

He run and he runs are exactly identical to each other.

Disambiguation/redundancy is a form of information (error-correcting). Yes, if the listener heard the "run" correctly, the 's' is unnecessary, just like the CRC bit is unnecessary if you received the other 7 perfectly. But when you did not, that extra piece of data can be very informative to unscramble the message.

But because English is rather cavalier with it's vowels, the difference between "he ran" and "he run" is way too close, depending on the accent of the speaker, that I'd rather they actually pronounced the 's' in "runs" to make sure I understand the tense of the verb.

GW

[Vinyadan]

The one case in which I found the -s useful is with very synthetic statistics, like:

Allison Boxer

Has won: 37

Have won: 41

[Softae]

Nice discussion.

[Lissou]

The one case in which I found the -s useful is with very synthetic statistics, like:

Allison Boxer

Has won: 37

Have won: 41

I don't get it. Is the second one this person winning as part of a team or something?

I understand finding the S redundant in most cases, but I would think the past marker "-ed" would be pretty useful most of the time, so I understand being annoyed when it's not used consistently.

[Rockphed]

It carries no information, so yes.

He run and he runs are exactly identical to each other.

It might not always carry information in a sentence, but it carries information nonetheless.