Completely unimportant language misuses that bug you

[Rockphed]

No, they are not, but I'd argue it needs more commas.

I don't feel like diving in to the seedy nether regions of grammatical minutia, but my memory (from the last time I looked at that sentence) was that at least one of the verb/adjective usages of "buffalo" was describing a state of being, which typically takes a past tense.

[DavidSh]

Grammatically, "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" is isomorphic to "Highland sheep Inverness men shear eat Highland grass." I don't see any problems with tenses, just some missing punctuation. It is "Inverness men shear" rather then "Inverness men sheared", to indicate that the shearing is expected to re-occur from time to time.

[Peelee]

Grammatically, "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" is isomorphic to "Highland sheep Inverness men shear eat Highland grass." I don't see any problems with tenses, just some missing punctuation. It is "Inverness men shear" rather then "Inverness men sheared", to indicate that the shearing is expected to re-occur from time to time.

Psh. Inverness hasn't been the same since they blocked off half the intersections on Highway 280. Local geography jokes are the best jokes.

[2WheelsGood]

Dear Countrymen,

When did we start to say "Can I get...?" Instead of "please may I have...?"? Everywhere I go lately someone orders a burger, or a double-skinny-mocha-caramel-latte-extra-hot-extra-shot-with-a-traffic-cone (whatever the hell that is, anyone remember tea?) with “Can I get...”.

Please, good people we are a civilised nation, we are not Americans.

"A ... please" is a request. It is a way of asking for something. "Can I get...?" Is a question.
"Can I get a cup of tea?" No sir, you may not. I can make you a cup of tea, but you are not trained in the use of this gleaming, steam powered whizzy maker of bubbly and vastly overpriced drinks. I am employed to make coffee for customers who ask for one, which (please to note) you have not yet done. Now, if you are not going to actually place an order please move along.

It isn't trendy, it's sloppy aping of the things we see on foreign TV. Speak English.

Thanking you in anticipation,

Me

[Peelee]

Dear Countrymen,

When did we start to say "Can I get...?" Instead of "please may I have...?"? Everywhere I go lately someone orders a burger, or a double-skinny-mocha-caramel-latte-extra-hot-extra-shot-with-a-traffic-cone (whatever the hell that is, anyone remember tea?) with “Can I get...”.

Please, good people we are a civilised nation, we are not Americans.

"A ... please" is a request. It is a way of asking for something. "Can I get...?" Is a question.
"Can I get a cup of tea?" No sir, you may not. I can make you a cup of tea, but you are not trained in the use of this gleaming, steam powered whizzy maker of bubbly and vastly overpriced drinks. I am employed to make coffee for customers who ask for one, which (please to note) you have not yet done. Now, if you are not going to actually place an order please move along.

It isn't trendy, it's sloppy aping of the things we see on foreign TV. Speak English.

Thanking you in anticipation,

Me

I would like to lodge a complaint; you are not speaking anything like what I've read in Shakespearian plays. As such, I can only assume you are griping about people not speaking in a specific and arbitrary version of English frozen in time, instead of the dynamic living language that it is. So, please speak only the ancient dialect of English as it was at it's conception, as befits one who does not approve of changes to their language.

And while you're at it, can I get a coke?

[2WheelsGood]

I would like to lodge a complaint; you are not speaking anything like what I've read in Shakespearian plays. As such, I can only assume you are griping about people not speaking in a specific and arbitrary version of English frozen in time, instead of the dynamic living language that it is. So, please speak only the ancient dialect of English as it was at it's conception, as befits one who does not approve of changes to their language.

And while you're at it, can I get a coke?

Help yourself

My real gripe is more with the way the “magic words” PLEASE and THANK YOU seem to be increasingly rare in this day and age. To me (old fuddyduddy that I am) good manners are important and it costs me nothing to ask nicely for my morning caffeine or whatever instead of demanding it.

I prithee, Peelee, let us “mind our “P’s & Q’s’ :)

[halfeye]

I prithee, Peelee, let us “mind our “P’s & Q’s’ :)

'p' and 'q' are frequently used as variables in formal logic, minding your "ps and qs" means not making mistakes in logic.

[2D8HP]

I just whined/whinged about how I dislike the terms "UMC" and "middle-class":

Spoiler: off topic whining/whingeing

Show

I'm not going to address the rest of the post (which others have done well first), but I find the use of the term "upper-middle-class" annoying, as it largely seems to be used to just mean "Rich but they know some people who are richer", or "People who shop at Whole Foods".

Bah!

And frankly "middle-class" seems effectively meaningless as well, as the goalposts that define the term keep changing.

It's just simpler to divide the population into "Upper" and "Lower" classes, so which half are you?

And by that standard, I was lower class for 4/5th's of my life.

Boom done.

Unless you have a working definition of "UMC"?

Maybe elsewhere they have some concrete meaning, but where I live in the U.S.A. those terms mostly seem to be used for obfuscation, so I don't like 'em!

[Rockphed]

I just whined/whinged about how I dislike the terms "UMC" and "middle-class":




Maybe elsewhere they have some concrete meaning, but where I live in the U.S.A. those terms mostly seem to be used for obfuscation, so I don't like 'em!

In my vernacular (though I am sure it doesn't completely jive with the use by economists), middle-class means people for whom a new car is a modest luxury. They are the people who can afford to own a home (rather than rent). They have stable, full-time jobs that are often salaried.

Upper middle class, on the other hand, typically means people who are modestly successful business owners. They have an order of magnitude more wealth than middle class people, but most of it is tied up in their business. They are people who own (and typically run) small, successful restaurants, dry-cleaners, bakeries, car-washes, etc.. Their yearly income is about the same as middle-class people, but if they sell off their business they will easily be able to retire. Doctors and Lawyers often end up in this class of people.

Where things get murky is that some salaried professionals are paid significantly more than people who run successful small businesses. Are they therefore upper-middle class, or middle-class.

[BWR]

My real gripe is more with the way the “magic words” PLEASE and THANK YOU seem to be increasingly rare in this day and age. To me (old fuddyduddy that I am) good manners are important and it costs me nothing to ask nicely for my morning caffeine or whatever instead of demanding it.

You know people have been complaining about 'kids these days' probably as far back as humans have existed, right?

Personally, my experience in customer service jobs has been that people ca. 40-60 are the rudest, most self-entitled people you will come across. This is not to say that there aren't rude people in all age categories, or that most people 40-60 are rude, just that this age category has more rude people than the others.

[2D8HP]

In my vernacular (though I am sure it doesn't completely jive with the use by economists), middle-class means people for whom a new car is a modest luxury. They are the people who can afford to own a home (rather than rent).....

That makes no sense, compared to houses most new cars are incredibly cheap, you can buy over 30 averaged priced new cars for the average priced house.

Yeah if you live long enough and retire in the desert many can own a home, but since only a tiny percentage can afford to own a home where most people actually live and work, that sounds more like "rich" to me (top third at least).

I know it was only because of a dip in prices during the last recession and that we'd been working and saving for decades that me and my wife could biy a house, and I make double what most earn!

Since middle (median) income can't buy a house, calling homeowners under 50 years old "middle class" seems false to me, and while the population is getting older, most Americans are still under 50.

That's what bugs me about how the term "middle class" is used (college educated, homeowners, et cetera), as those just aren't things that most people are.

If the middle third of the population doesn't qualify as "middle class", please take the word "middle" out of the term and replace it with something else!

...my experience in customer service jobs has been that people ca. 40-60 are the rudest, most self-entitled people you will come across. This is not to say that there aren't rude people in all age categories, or that most people 40-60 are rude, just that this age category has more rude people than the others.

Since I'm in that age range, I'd say yeah that's a fair cop.
🤷

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Vinyadan]

The middle class has been eroding in the West for some time, with very few rising to upper class and many falling into lower classes due to loss of purchasing power. This has been going on since the nineties. So it's somewhat harder to give it a meaning than it once was.

Middle class will have different meanings depending on where you live. If 2D8HP lives in an area where homes cost a lot, then most of them will be owned by large or very large enterprises, or by banks. They will be too costly for the middle class to purchase. And there's also the matter of "settling down": you can carry a car around, but, once you bought your home, or had it built, you likely don't have any intention of giving it away for decades. If you are middle (or lower) class, you probably took a loan to pay for it. So you better stay there. A car, you can sell it after 5 or 7 or 10 years, if you want to.

It's also very hard to just say "people who get between X and y $/year or month", because there are huge differences in wage both in America and Europe, and now there's a large middle class growing in China, too.

I used to see the term referred to the bourgeois, but I am not sure that they exist any more. After all, with TV and public education, there isn't much of a bourgeois culture left. These would be the capitalists, like shopkeepers and bankers, compared to aristocrats (highest social class) and wage workers/proletarians.

Personally, nowadays, I'd say something like "people who get between 90% and 300% of the median income in their area." With variably placed percentages for lower-middle, middle-middle, and upper-middle class.

It isn't even bound to profession any more. Many jobs are freelance. Others are temporary. But I think that there is a decent degree of responsibility on the workplace bound to being middle-class, so it can require a "thinky" qualification.

[factotum]

That makes no sense, compared to houses most new cars are incredibly cheap, you can buy over 30 averaged priced new cars for the average priced house.

The way you buy a house is different from the way you buy a car, though. Car loans don't go for more than 4-5 years, whereas a mortgage is typically 25, and so the actual repayments in each case aren't as vastly different as your comment suggests. (In my own personal case, my mortgage for a £55k house costs approximately four times the car loan for my £5k car).

There's also the point that a roof over your head--whether you own it or rent it--is a necessity, whereas a car is a luxury.

[2D8HP]

....Middle class will have different meanings depending on where you live. If 2D8HP lives in an area where homes cost a lot...,

Yeah, I work in San Francisco, live in Albany, and grew up and have lived 9/10ths of my life in Berkeley and Oakland, and I just looked at

median household incomes,

and

home prices

and it really looks like I overestimated how many may buy a home most anywhere I've ever lived or worked.

What people say means a "middle class lifestyle" (college graduates which only a minority are) and homeownership (which is more than what people with the middle third in income may buy) doesn't fit the middle.

The ways the term "middle class" are used don't fit each other, so it's a language use that bugs me, because until someone defines which usage they mean, I don't know what they're talking about!

Two new terms are needed, maybe "middle third income" and "lower upper class" (okay that's also confusing, but what I typically see "middle class" and "upper-middle class" used to mean lifestyle-wise is already in the upper third of household income, so income wise that should be upper class right)?

The way you buy a house is different from the way you buy a car, though. Car loans don't go for more than 4-5 years, whereas a mortgage is typically 25, and so the actual repayments in each case aren't as vastly different as your comment suggests. (In my own personal case, my mortgage for a £55k house costs approximately four times the car loan for my £5k car)....

I've always heard that the UK is more expensive than the USA, but in looking up the exchange rate just now, one British pound is worth 1.41 U.S. dollars so a £5,000 car would be $7,050 which is less than many motorcycles in the 1990's and less than a third of what my wife's car cost us in 2004 (I still drive a '91), and a £55,000 house is $77,550 which is less than a tenth of a typical house here, you'd have to buy in the 1970's to get one that cheap, maybe a condo in the 1980's.

But even disregarding how cheap both are, the house is only ten times the price of the car?

As far as I know, you don't have a desert in the UK, and the island just isn't long and wide enough for marathon commutes (distance-wise, I bet it still takes a lot of time).

Huh?

[BWR]

(distance-wise, I bet it still takes a lot of time).

It varies. Some, like my sister, have pretty bad commutes - hers is currently Coventry to Bergen.

[Aedilred]

I just whined/whinged about how I dislike the terms "UMC" and "middle-class":




Maybe elsewhere they have some concrete meaning, but where I live in the U.S.A. those terms mostly seem to be used for obfuscation, so I don't like 'em!

Yeah, in Britain class has a lot more going on because of our social history, but in America where status largely boils down to money it doesn't really make a lot of sense.

Spoiler: An attempt to explain the British class system to an American

Show

I say "British" but really what I mean is "English". Many, probably most, of the same principles apply to the class systems in the other nations but they tend to break down a little on contact with each other to an extent because people can't use some of their normal identifiers to assess class (accent being the most common/obvious).

The upper class are the titled and/or landed aristocracy and their immediate relatives and descendants (generally [i]not/[i] including life peers).
The middle class are professionals and white-collar businessmen.
The working class are blue-collar workers.

The upper-middle class is comprised of those families that have an aristocratic background but no titles of their own and no prospect of inheriting any, so have taken up a career in the professions.
The lower middle class is made up of working-class families who have acquired an education and some money and so present themselves as part of the middle class, but the "rough edges" of working-class-dom are still visible to those in the know.

There could be and sometimes also is identified the underclass which is basically made up of criminals, illegal migrants and the like, and people who live entirely on benefits, but it's not polite to talk about them as such.

Note too we don't, here, talk about "lower class". The working class may be social inferiors but it would be terribly rude to refer to them so openly as such.


Money or, rather, income, is largely irrelevant. The penniless loafer with impeccable upper-class credentials is a staple of certain kind of literature. Successfull footballers (soccer players, to Americans) sometimes become phenomenally rich but tend to remain working class or at best lower-middle class.

More important to class status than money are birth, behaviour and social circle. Because much behaviour is learned early in life (and many connexions made in the same period), education can make a big difference and the quickest way for a rich working-class boy-done-good to fast-track his descendants into the upper middle class is to pay through the nose for them to go to Eton, Harrow or the like.

As that implies, it's hard for someone to rise more than one rung on the ladder over the course of their lives (and with the moratorium on new hereditary peerages, virtually impossible to join the true upper class save through adoption or by marrying into it). Even if a barrow-boy is made a duke, the other aristocrats will tend to bow politely to his face and laugh at him behind his back.

(Note that this snobbishness can even apply to the monarchy in some cases. Some of the older families may acknowledge that the royal family is sovereign, but nevertheless consider them parvenus in pedigree terms).

If the upper class have a day job it will generally be in finance, the armed forces, politics, or (more rarely these days) in the church or judiciary. Most clergymen are middle-class although they stand slightly outside the class system, as do most foreigners. Academics were historically middle or upper-middle class but are becoming increasingly proletarianised as spending on higher education tightens.

There is some slight fuzziness around farmers, who can be of any class, but even where they would otherwise be in it, are usually considered separately from the "working class" which has an urban, post-industrial ring to it.



Historically there was the aristocracy and everyone else; the middle class grew up gradually during the late Mediaeval/early modern period as commerce became important from enterprising peasants and minor aristocrats who fell off the bottom of the inheritance tree. The stereotypical position is that the working class look up to the middle class and upper class, but don't aspire to be like them. The middle class look up to the upper class and aspire to become a member of it. The upper class look down on the middle class for their grasping aspirationalism and feel a condescending paternalistic affection for the working class.

While this probably still remains the case for some members of the aristocracy, otherwise most of the elements of this fiction have been essentially debunked by and large. Indeed many of the upper-middle and upper class will expend a lot of effort pretending not to be, these days, especially if they are in politics where they want to appear to have the "common touch". This usually fails to convince anyone.


I suspect that, etymologically, "middle" indicates not that such people represent the median population in terms of prosperity (they will always have been relatively rich in such terms), but that, as a class, they are "in the middle" of the upper and working classes, neither one thing nor the other.

There is a bit more to it than that but it is hellishly difficult to explain. If you grow up in Britain it tends to be something you just internalise to an extent, which makes it difficult to explain.

[2D8HP]

Yeah, in Britain class has a lot more going on because of our social history, but in America where status largely boils down to money it doesn't really make a lot of sense.

Spoiler: An attempt to explain the British class system to an American

Show

I say "British" but really what I mean is "English". Many, probably most, of the same principles apply to the class systems in the other nations but they tend to break down a little on contact with each other to an extent because people can't use some of their normal identifiers to assess class (accent being the most common/obvious).

The upper class are the titled and/or landed aristocracy and their immediate relatives and descendants (generally [i]not/[i] including life peers).
The middle class are professionals and white-collar businessmen.
The working class are blue-collar workers.

The upper-middle class is comprised of those families that have an aristocratic background but no titles of their own and no prospect of inheriting any, so have taken up a career in the professions.
The lower middle class is made up of working-class families who have acquired an education and some money and so present themselves as part of the middle class, but the "rough edges" of working-class-dom are still visible to those in the know.

There could be and sometimes also is identified the underclass which is basically made up of criminals, illegal migrants and the like, and people who live entirely on benefits, but it's not polite to talk about them as such.

Note too we don't, here, talk about "lower class". The working class may be social inferiors but it would be terribly rude to refer to them so openly as such.


Money or, rather, income, is largely irrelevant. The penniless loafer with impeccable upper-class credentials is a staple of certain kind of literature. Successfull footballers (soccer players, to Americans) sometimes become phenomenally rich but tend to remain working class or at best lower-middle class.

More important to class status than money are birth, behaviour and social circle. Because much behaviour is learned early in life (and many connexions made in the same period), education can make a big difference and the quickest way for a rich working-class boy-done-good to fast-track his descendants into the upper middle class is to pay through the nose for them to go to Eton, Harrow or the like.

As that implies, it's hard for someone to rise more than one rung on the ladder over the course of their lives (and with the moratorium on new hereditary peerages, virtually impossible to join the true upper class save through adoption or by marrying into it). Even if a barrow-boy is made a duke, the other aristocrats will tend to bow politely to his face and laugh at him behind his back.

(Note that this snobbishness can even apply to the monarchy in some cases. Some of the older families may acknowledge that the royal family is sovereign, but nevertheless consider them parvenus in pedigree terms).

If the upper class have a day job it will generally be in finance, the armed forces, politics, or (more rarely these days) in the church or judiciary. Most clergymen are middle-class although they stand slightly outside the class system, as do most foreigners. Academics were historically middle or upper-middle class but are becoming increasingly proletarianised as spending on higher education tightens.

There is some slight fuzziness around farmers, who can be of any class, but even where they would otherwise be in it, are usually considered separately from the "working class" which has an urban, post-industrial ring to it.



Historically there was the aristocracy and everyone else; the middle class grew up gradually during the late Mediaeval/early modern period as commerce became important from enterprising peasants and minor aristocrats who fell off the bottom of the inheritance tree. The stereotypical position is that the working class look up to the middle class and upper class, but don't aspire to be like them. The middle class look up to the upper class and aspire to become a member of it. The upper class look down on the middle class for their grasping aspirationalism and feel a condescending paternalistic affection for the working class.

While this probably still remains the case for some members of the aristocracy, otherwise most of the elements of this fiction have been essentially debunked by and large. Indeed many of the upper-middle and upper class will expend a lot of effort pretending not to be, these days, especially if they are in politics where they want to appear to have the "common touch". This usually fails to convince anyone.


I suspect that, etymologically, "middle" indicates not that such people represent the median population in terms of prosperity (they will always have been relatively rich in such terms), but that, as a class, they are "in the middle" of the upper and working classes, neither one thing nor the other.

There is a bit more to it than that but it is hellishly difficult to explain. If you grow up in Britain it tends to be something you just internalise to an extent, which makes it difficult to explain.

Wow!

Thanks for that!

They way you described it sounds simpler in some ways, and more complex in others.

More complex, because of so many graduations, but simpler because it clearly means social rather economic placement, while over here the meaning seems murky.

[Bohandas]

Are the nobility actually still taken seriously, or just kept around as a sort of historical curiousity?

[Rockphed]

That makes no sense, compared to houses most new cars are incredibly cheap, you can buy over 30 averaged priced new cars for the average priced house.

Yeah if you live long enough and retire in the desert many can own a home, but since only a tiny percentage can afford to own a home where most people actually live and work, that sounds more like "rich" to me (top third at least).

I know it was only because of a dip in prices during the last recession and that we'd been working and saving for decades that me and my wife could biy a house, and I make double what most earn!

Since middle (median) income can't buy a house, calling homeowners under 50 years old "middle class" seems false to me, and while the population is getting older, most Americans are still under 50.

That's what bugs me about how the term "middle class" is used (college educated, homeowners, et cetera), as those just aren't things that most people are.

If the middle third of the population doesn't qualify as "middle class", please take the word "middle" out of the term and replace it with something else!

Yeah, I work in San Francisco, live in Albany, and grew up and have lived 9/10ths of my life in Berkeley and Oakland, and I just looked at

median household incomes,

and

home prices

and it really looks like I overestimated how many may buy a home most anywhere I've ever lived or worked.

What people say means a "middle class lifestyle" (college graduates which only a minority are) and homeownership (which is more than what people with the middle third in income may buy) doesn't fit the middle.

The ways the term "middle class" are used don't fit each other, so it's a language use that bugs me, because until someone defines which usage they mean, I don't know what they're talking about!

Two new terms are needed, maybe "middle third income" and "lower upper class" (okay that's also confusing, but what I typically see "middle class" and "upper-middle class" used to mean lifestyle-wise is already in the upper third of household income, so income wise that should be upper class right)?

The middle in middle class is indeed a hold-over from the more hereditary class systems of Europe. It typically doesn't encompass the middle third of incomes or wealth, but more like the 4th quintile. As for why I list home ownership, it is because of how people typically buy homes. In order to get a loan to buy a house, the buyer typically needs to front 10% of the cost. Establishing that much liquidity takes time or a high earning power. Note that I don't list education as a requirement for either middle or upper-middle class. Yes, Lawyers and Doctors typically end up in the upper middle, but it is related to both the high earning power they achieve and that they typically become partners in their practices. Also, the insanely inflated housing prices in California are Legendary and should not be used to make blanket statements about the relative size of the middle class in various parts of the country. In Detroit, the middle class is full of blue-collar, skilled workers. The white collar, college-educated workers are also middle class or upper middle class.

The gradations I see are between people who don't have well paying, consistently houred jobs and those who do. Then between well paying, consistently houred folks and small business owners. Then between small business owners and executives/large holders of large businesses. This is why you could not pay me enough to work or live in California, despite my parents being from the Bay area. They left in the late 70s.

[2WheelsGood]

Are the nobility actually still taken seriously, or just kept around as a sort of historical curiousity?

It depends on who you talk to, there are republicans in the UK and efforts have been made to reduce the influence of hereditary peers in the House of Lords. The peerage is more of a plutomeritocracy (you have to do “good works” but being wealthy is also rather a prerequisite) nowadays.

Most of us are in favour of the monarchy and find little in the current honours system objectionable enough to make a fuss about. Henry Dennison-DeVere’s ancestors may have come over on the same boat as William the Conqueror and pinched a county or two from the locals - that’s not a reason to hate him.

The average Brit comes into contact with the nobility about as much as they do the super-rich and I have to say most people take them as they find them - I occasionally see the local lord in the village shop, he lets the local school and drama club hold events at the hall - he’s a nice chap.

I’ve met Prince Philip (the Duke of Edinburgh) and thought he was a scream, Prince Andrew (Duke of York) was nice too (remember he flew HMS Brazen’s helo during the Falklands war) a good storyteller and very down to earth. I used to serve with an army reservist who had been in the Navy who complained that he had famously stinky feet though.

[Rockphed]

I used to serve with an army reservist who had been in the Navy who complained that he had famously stinky feet though.

If this is the worst real complaint about the House of Windsor, then they are doing a pretty good job ruling their empire.

[factotum]

I've always heard that the UK is more expensive than the USA, but in looking up the exchange rate just now, one British pound is worth 1.41 U.S. dollars so a £5,000 car would be $7,050 which is less than many motorcycles in the 1990's and less than a third of what my wife's car cost us in 2004 (I still drive a '91), and a £55,000 house is $77,550 which is less than a tenth of a typical house here, you'd have to buy in the 1970's to get one that cheap, maybe a condo in the 1980's.

I bought my house in 1990 when things were a lot cheaper--I have no idea what its value is *now* because I'm not intending on selling it, but similar houses on my road have been sold in the last few years for £130k. As for the car, it's a 2012 base spec Fiat Panda, so it's probably a bit smaller and less well-equipped than what you consider a typical car over there, and it was five years old when I bought it. Oh, and it was only a bit over £4k, it was a dealer three-year service guarantee that pushed it up to nearly 5k.

[2WheelsGood]

“Alrighty” (Matt Mercer I’m talkin’ to you 😏)

It isn’t a word.

[Peelee]

As for the car [snip]t's probably a bit smaller and less well-equipped than what you consider a typical car over there,

I assume you ride in a recliner on the roof while steering with a rope and a mop.

[factotum]

I assume you ride in a recliner on the roof while steering with a rope and a mop.

If Fiat could get away with it they'd probably make you do that, yes...it's astonishing where they'll cut a corner to encourage you to buy the higher spec model!

[Velaryon]

Sorry to drudge up a post from a couple pages ago, but... I'm not really that sorry.

Does anyone know if there is a frequent habit of using "her" instead of "his" or "him"? I just saw it used in an interview, and I found it odd that it was reported without a [sic] or edited out. The speaker was Rod Stewart.

I couldn't say how frequent it is universally, but I do recall the Vampire: the Masquerade rulebook that I bought in ~1997 using a female default for pronouns. So it's not a totally newfangled thing.

[Zollqir]

I hate when people say "pacific" when they mean "specific" (or sometimes even vice versa).

[Fiery Diamond]

Oh, I have another one. It bugs me when people use "an" instead of "a" before words with a pronounced "h" like "historic" or before words that start with a vowel but have the same starting sound as "youth," like "European." It doesn't matter how it's spelled, only how it's pronounced.

Side note: if you're an American, it would be "an herb," if you're a Brit, it would be "a herb," since in the U.S. "herb" has a silent "h" and (at least to my knowledge) it doesn't in British English.

[snowblizz]

Oh, I have another one. It bugs me when people use "an" instead of "a" before words with a pronounced "h" like "historic" or before words that start with a vowel but have the same starting sound as "youth," like "European." It doesn't matter how it's spelled, only how it's pronounced.

Side note: if you're an American, it would be "an herb," if you're a Brit, it would be "a herb," since in the U.S. "herb" has a silent "h" and (at least to my knowledge) it doesn't in British English.

As I read this I realise it bugs me that you derive spelling rules from how things sound not how they look on paper.

Also, just struck me how do you tell a historic site from an ahistoric one?

More complex, because of so many graduations, but simpler because it clearly means social rather economic placement, while over here the meaning seems murky.

It's also murky because "class" has a strong personal association. I mean you self-identify with a class, more or less. Like e.g. in Japan there's a middle middle-class that people claimed to belong to (if I remember an author who liked to write about the differences of the places he had lived in correctly) because culturally you don't want to stick out. What you feel is your "class" is maybe not how other's see you.

Take e.g. one of my favourites from 6-8 years back in Sweden. The head of the social democratic party (doesn't get more working class than that) lived in a manor estate he had bought. At the same time the party leader of the moderate conservatives (a traditionally leaning on upper-class party) lived in a row-house in a Stockholm suburb, and that's about as middle class as you can go in Sweden. Our current president around 12 years ago launched a presidential bid by styling himself as the "working man's president" and "even the president is a worker" despite belonging to a conservative party again more aligned to business interests than traditional workers. The social democrats were not pleased, and also unable to provide concrete proof on how they were more "for the workers" beyond "but it was our slogan for decades!".

While supposedly economical transfers (ie taxes) should even society out, and it has compared to say the US, there's still a certain stratification. Incidentally it borrows, knowingly or not, from the English system of going to the right school(s) where the remnants of a defunct nobility, the descendants of early industrialists and various noveau riche come together to sorta mellow out an "upper class". Similarly in France, goign to the right school is kinda how you define class. President Macron along with almsot all higher echelon politicians come from the same school (I guess college or university is more appropriate).

Sometimes it goes the other way, e.g. a social democratic leader in the 70s-80s and a famous author in Sweden who both came from the upper class self-identified with the working-class and spent their lives working for them (and in the case of the politician in certian circles was called the class-traitor).

I can see why people try and stratify the concepts though. Because there's a huge spectrum to e.g. "rich". For most outside what seems "rich" a millionanire or billionaire is largely the same, for those more involved the differnce is huge, as huge (or even more so) as the difference between a "working man" and the millionaire. XKCD did a really cool graphical representation of the ownership of wealth in the US e.g. I should find it I guess.
Similarly as middle-class tends to span a fairly great span of the populace both in number and amount of wealth it becomes meaningful to define which end you are talking about. Basically all of the middle class (still... may change in the future) can afford a house* and a car (but it will be major purchases), but what type of house and car is vastly different. What separates them from the next class "up" is that they can afford 2-3 of each easily. Roughly speaking, no matter how we draw lines there's a spectrum.

At the same time as mentioned e.g. the middle class is losing ground and share of the gross national incomes in most places. I know many on the left now speak of the precariat instead of the proletariat as actually having a secure job is becoming more of middle-class than working/lower-class. So I guess we are in a translational period, the old terms of lower, middle, upper class are not really adequate and we have yet to formulate what the new ones will be.

Edit:
Because the topic interests me I decided to analyse myself.

Working class? Nope, no way, I neither socio-economically nor mentally identify with this group. Interestingly my grandparents were solidly working-class but my parents "worked their way up" so to speak. It has connotations of interests that never fit me.

Upper class? Err no, not nearly rich enough IMO. A girl in my elementary school class was definitely upper class, well monetarily speaking. Did not have much class if ya get my drift. (Much like her mother had a terrible attitude to things, her father, the source of the 'upper' was a much more down to earth guy ironically)

Middle class? I guess that's the natural starting point, most of my social peers growing up fit into this one way or another. Though I early cottoned on to an important difference. Everyone else had a mortage on their house*, my parents did not. And I realised it was probably best not to mention that.

Today though? I went to university and I have PhD in Economics, that doesn't exactly scream middle class. I work in a non-profit teaching ICT to small busines owners. And earn less than most regular workers ironically, so that's kinda working-class. Then again I do have property beyond what most peopel my age does. Because I didn't buy cars and booze with everything I earned when I turned 18, I bought stocks. That's more upper class maybe?

So ironically the upper-middle class tag seems kinda apporpriate, socio-economically I find myself above most middle-class people as best as I can observe, though nowhere near what I'd consider an uppper class, university degree notwithstanding.

This all ignoring how inappropriate I find the "class" thing to define myself. Which I tihnk is problem inherent in modern life. We got labels on us that are increasingly irrelevant. I don't know most of the people living around me and feel a much greater kinship with random people on a webcomic/RPG message board than people I grew up with and live close by despite society still thinking somehow physical proximity means shared interests.

(*) if you have a mortgage for tax purposes you are probably upper-middle class or "better"

[Anonymouswizard]

[removed to stop it going places we don't want]


For me, the biggest one is not pronouncing hs (especially in herb/herbal), and the good old 'we all live in America' problem. Is it really so hard for stuff people are publishing over here to work colour and honour our way? Or to use 'football' for association football? This isn't something I'm that concerned about unless it's a published thing though, I can deal with it on the internet and in day to day life.

Another one is referring to 'the country of Britain', or equating England with the entire United Kingdom. A guide below:

Spoiler

Show

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a country that consists of four countries, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

The kingdoms of England and Scotland along with the principality of Wales make up Great Britain, the largest of the British Isles.

The second largest island is called Ireland, and holds two countries. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, while the Republic of Ireland is not.

Most of the other islands in the British Isles belong to one of the other countries.