Grammar, Spelling and Usage Peeves

[bilby]

I am not a grammarian. I think you are confusing things like context and meaning. I think an orange juice kiosk sells orange juice not orange juices, but of courseit does not sell the same one glass of juice all day. A carpet vendor sells carpets, but not the same one carpet. The sentences do not make juice or carpet collective (mass?) nouns even if the noun is first used in a collective fashion. A herd of moose is never many mooses, it is many moose, the noun never changes from the singular. Same with a flock of sheep, it many sheep But all that is only IMHO.

The examples you give (carpet vendor, etc.) are technically adjectives, where the noun is being described or specified by another word. Notice how the juice kiosk sells juice (singular!) and the carpet vendor sells carpets (plural!). That's the ambiguity I'm talking about.

A kiosk that sells a variety of drinks sourced from different fruits is selling juices.

 

[PyramidHead]

I am not a grammarian. I think you are confusing things like context and meaning. I think an orange juice kiosk sells orange juice not orange juices, but of courseit does not sell the same one glass of juice all day. A carpet vendor sells carpets, but not the same one carpet. The sentences do not make juice or carpet collective (mass?) nouns even if the noun is first used in a collective fashion. A herd of moose is never many mooses, it is many moose, the noun never changes from the singular. Same with a flock of sheep, it many sheep But all that is only IMHO.

The examples you give (carpet vendor, etc.) are technically adjectives, where the noun is being described or specified by another word. Notice how the juice kiosk sells juice (singular!) and the carpet vendor sells carpets (plural!). That's the ambiguity I'm talking about.

A kiosk that sells a variety of drinks sourced from different fruits is selling juices.

Right, but it can also be said to sell juice. A vendor that sells shirts cannot be said to sell shirt.

 

[bilby]

A kiosk that sells a variety of drinks sourced from different fruits is selling juices.

Right, but it can also be said to sell juice. A vendor that sells shirts cannot be said to sell shirt.

But he is a shirt vendor.

 

[PyramidHead]

A kiosk that sells a variety of drinks sourced from different fruits is selling juices.

Right, but it can also be said to sell juice. A vendor that sells shirts cannot be said to sell shirt.

But he is a shirt vendor.

That's because the "shirt" in "shirt vendor" functions as an adjective, not a noun.

 

[4321lynx]

I am not a grammarian. I think you are confusing things like context and meaning. I think an orange juice kiosk sells orange juice not orange juices, but of courseit does not sell the same one glass of juice all day. A carpet vendor sells carpets, but not the same one carpet. The sentences do not make juice or carpet collective (mass?) nouns even if the noun is first used in a collective fashion. A herd of moose is never many mooses, it is many moose, the noun never changes from the singular. Same with a flock of sheep, it many sheep But all that is only IMHO.

The examples you give (carpet vendor, etc.) are technically adjectives, where the noun is being described or specified by another word. Notice how the juice kiosk sells juice (singular!) and the carpet vendor sells carpets (plural!). That's the ambiguity I'm talking about.

The vendor sells various carpets, the kiosk sells one kind of juice,, orange juice. If it sold various, it would be said to sell juices.

I just looked at my wife's English grammar -- she is learning the language. It talhs of Singular, Plural and Collective nouns.,

Singular -- the world, the sky, the dark,the future, the past Obviously the writer was no Cosmologist

Plural -- the police, your clothes, his likes and dislikes. Also pants, pyjamas, trousers

Collective -- army, audience, public, government, gang

All this is from Elementary English Grammar Published by Collins or one of its subsidiaries

Seem to base classification on use, rather the way you do.

In meantime I await someone who will point out the howler I committed in one or more of my posts above.

 

[PyramidHead]

I am not a grammarian. I think you are confusing things like context and meaning. I think an orange juice kiosk sells orange juice not orange juices, but of courseit does not sell the same one glass of juice all day. A carpet vendor sells carpets, but not the same one carpet. The sentences do not make juice or carpet collective (mass?) nouns even if the noun is first used in a collective fashion. A herd of moose is never many mooses, it is many moose, the noun never changes from the singular. Same with a flock of sheep, it many sheep But all that is only IMHO.

The examples you give (carpet vendor, etc.) are technically adjectives, where the noun is being described or specified by another word. Notice how the juice kiosk sells juice (singular!) and the carpet vendor sells carpets (plural!). That's the ambiguity I'm talking about.

The vendor sells various carpets, the kiosk sells one kind of juice,, orange juice. If it sold various, it would be said to sell juices.

Sure, but my point is that it's also grammatically correct to say they sell juice, even if they sell various kinds of juice. If you asked them "Do you sell juice here?" they wouldn't say "No, we sell juices."

I just looked at my wife's English grammar -- she is learning the language. It talhs of Singular, Plural and Collective nouns.,

Singular -- the world, the sky, the dark,the future, the past Obviously the writer was no Cosmologist

Plural -- the police, your clothes, his likes and dislikes. Also pants, pyjamas, trousers

Collective -- army, audience, public, government, gang

All this is from Elementary English Grammar Published by Collins or one of its subsiduries'

Seem to base classification on use, rather the way you do.

In meantime I await someone who will point out the howler I committed in one or more of my posts above.

It's all academic as long as we understand each other. English rarely makes sense.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

To further my rant, one word... Heteronyms, the hermaphrodite of grammar.

One word, two plus definitions, two different pronunciations.

And to make matters worse, apparently a lot of these words are quite common and most likely can get mixed up and we might not even notice!

For instance I attribute this problem to the attributes of the fucking assholes responsible for the English language.

 

[Angry Floof]

Chip from Fixer Upper just said, "grammarically speaking..." lol

 

[gmbteach]

People who say and write ‘learnt’ and ‘burnt’ instead of ‘learned’ and ‘burned’.

So you don't like British English. I think that British dialects sound great, but Shakespeare's plays are more accurately pronounced with a North American "Northern dialect" accent, which retains all of the syllable-final r sounds and vowel pronunciations.

umm, I am British and prefer it. I believe the way I prefer it is the correct pronunciation.

But let me check with Bilby.

 

[bilby]

People who say and write ‘learnt’ and ‘burnt’ instead of ‘learned’ and ‘burned’.

So you don't like British English. I think that British dialects sound great, but Shakespeare's plays are more accurately pronounced with a North American "Northern dialect" accent, which retains all of the syllable-final r sounds and vowel pronunciations.

umm, I am British and prefer it. I believe the way I prefer it is the correct pronunciation.

But let me check with Bilby.

I am happy with either usage. But I am rather less happy at being singled out as some kind of oracle.

I like English; I love to play with words. But I have done very little formal study of language - I have learnt it the hard way, by deep immersion in both the written and spoken forms.

IMO the great strength of English is that it has combined so many different precursor languages, which gives it a huge stock of synonyms, and a vast flexibility of grammatical forms. These have then been allowed to take on variant meanings as circumstances render these useful, so for example words that were synonyms taken from different precursor languages, such as 'sow' and 'pork', or 'cow' and 'beef', have come to have different meanings that allow the distinction between the animal when being farmed, and the same animal when being served as a meal. At the same time, the plurals 'swine' and 'kine' have been discarded in favour of 'sows' and 'cows' - so by and large, the grammar simplifies over time, while the vocabulary becomes more diverse and nuanced.

'Learnt' and 'burnt' seem to be examples of an older grammar that has not yet been simplified; 'learned' and 'burned' I believe are the simplified, more modern forms. In my lifetime, the word 'shewn' has been replaced by 'shown', and 'gaol' largely supplanted by 'jail'. Which one should use depends a lot on context - if you are trying to give an 'olde worlde' feel to your writing, the older forms might achieve that better; and many old forms also give a feeling of formality. If I were discussing the fate of a convict of the 18th Century, it would seem odd to me to describe his place of incarceration as a 'jail', and not a 'gaol'; But a discussion of 21st century prisons would almost certainly see me use 'jail'.

The difference between 'olde worlde', which implies faux medievalism, and 'old world' which implies the continents known to Europeans prior to the so-called 'age of discovery' (ie Europe, Asia and Africa, as opposed to the 'new world' of the Americas and Australasia) is a good example of the sort of thing I am talking about - use of the archaic (or even archaic looking) spelling provides a depth of meaning that is absent from a strict definition of the words as one might find in a dictionary. This distinction is sufficiently useful that people now often pronounce the previously silent 'e' at the end of each word in 'olde worlde', highlighting the distinction from 'old world' that would otherwise only be apparent in the written form.

Interestingly, the spell-check in my browser flags 'learnt' as an error - but not 'burnt'.

In English, the idea of 'right and wrong' is a bit to simplistic. Rather there are a wide variety of what a strict dictionary and grammar text based approach would call 'errors', that can be used to enrich and give nuance to ones writing and speech - And the things that really make me peevish are not so much problematic because they are errors, as because they are either unintentional errors, or errors that give a nuance that is in opposition to the user's intent (or both).

 

[Copernicus]

From the perspective of those who study language, most languages are equally flexible and equally complex, the major exceptions being creoles and pidgins. English is no more flexible or complicated than French, Chinese, or Sanskrit. It is just flexible and/or complex in different places.

Now, getting back to mass and count nouns... I really hate to break it to you, but you can purchase an orange juice (singular count noun) at your local juice counter. You can also buy a beer or a coffee, even though "beer" and "coffee" are also mass nouns in English. What makes a noun "countable" is quite arbitrary, although English speakers construe countability as motivated by concepts. What is going on in English is a grammatical process of incorporation of the unit meaning into the meaning of the word. So any count noun can actually be turned into a mass noun or vice versa. A beer is simply a conventionally understood unit of beer, where the convention refers to the container (glass, bottle, pint, etc.).

One last thing--for those interested in linguistic arcana: There are many languages that lack count nouns. That is, they don't have a productive means of incorporating unit meanings into nouns. Hence, in those languages, one cannot say something like "Give me five apples." You have to say something like "Give me five round thing apple" or "Give me five fruit thing apple." That is, those languages require classifiers in cases where countability is a needed feature. Most of the time, however, countability is not an issue. When native speakers of such languages learn English, they have a terrible time mastering the count/mass distinction, and native English speakers tend to think they are just stupid.

 

[bilby]

From the perspective of those who study language, most languages are equally flexible and equally complex, the major exceptions being creoles and pidgins. English is no more flexible or complicated than French, Chinese, or Sanskrit. It is just flexible and/or complex in different places.

As I said, I am not a linguist; I speak of English because it is the only language in which I am fluent - I presume that other languages are also flexible and complex, but I am not really qualified to have an opinion.

I am aware that English has adopted technical terms from the languages of the pioneers of new concepts (for example in aviation, where English simply incorporated the French words for things like 'aileron' or 'fuselage'; and earlier in seafaring, where Dutch/Flemish words such as 'yacht' and 'lubber' were adopted) rather than developing new words from within the existing English language. This kind of thing inevitably goes both ways, (as with the French adoption of 'weekend' and 'camping'). Living languages are in a constant state of flux, as they adapt to the changing needs of their users.

 

[Copernicus]

From the perspective of those who study language, most languages are equally flexible and equally complex, the major exceptions being creoles and pidgins. English is no more flexible or complicated than French, Chinese, or Sanskrit. It is just flexible and/or complex in different places.

As I said, I am not a linguist; I speak of English because it is the only language in which I am fluent - I presume that other languages are also flexible and complex, but I am not really qualified to have an opinion.

I am aware that English has adopted technical terms from the languages of the pioneers of new concepts (for example in aviation, where English simply incorporated the French words for things like 'aileron' or 'fuselage'; and earlier in seafaring, where Dutch/Flemish words such as 'yacht' and 'lubber' were adopted) rather than developing new words from within the existing English language. This kind of thing inevitably goes both ways, (as with the French adoption of 'weekend' and 'camping'). Living languages are in a constant state of flux, as they adapt to the changing needs of their users.

Right now, it is fair to say that most languages are adopting far more English loan words than English itself is adopting from other languages. The reason for that is that English has become the world's trade language. If you go to international conferences now, you find that most speeches and presentations are given in English. If you want your work to be noticed by the international community, you publish in English. If you want your child to study a useful foreign language (and your native language is not English), then English is the most useful language for that child to learn.

So, English is putting pressure on a lot of languages around the world. One could argue that the dominant dialect of English is Standard American English, but the truth is that most English speakers are not native speakers of English these days. It is the most rapidly growing language, but I suspect that the world standard is going to differ rather markedly from American and other national standards of the language. Whenever large numbers of non-native speakers adopt a new standard, they tend to introduce significant changes. For example, the differences between Old English (Anglo-Saxon) and Middle English arose mainly from the large numbers of French speakers acquiring English. There are some very significant grammatical features of English that arose purely from exposure to French (e.g. the use of question words like "who" and "which" as relative pronouns, vs the native Germanic "that").

 

[bilby]

From the perspective of those who study language, most languages are equally flexible and equally complex, the major exceptions being creoles and pidgins. English is no more flexible or complicated than French, Chinese, or Sanskrit. It is just flexible and/or complex in different places.

As I said, I am not a linguist; I speak of English because it is the only language in which I am fluent - I presume that other languages are also flexible and complex, but I am not really qualified to have an opinion.

I am aware that English has adopted technical terms from the languages of the pioneers of new concepts (for example in aviation, where English simply incorporated the French words for things like 'aileron' or 'fuselage'; and earlier in seafaring, where Dutch/Flemish words such as 'yacht' and 'lubber' were adopted) rather than developing new words from within the existing English language. This kind of thing inevitably goes both ways, (as with the French adoption of 'weekend' and 'camping'). Living languages are in a constant state of flux, as they adapt to the changing needs of their users.

Right now, it is fair to say that most languages are adopting far more English loan words than English itself is adopting. The reason for that is that English has become the world's trade language. If you go to international conferences now, you find that most speeches and presentations are given in English. If you want your work to be noticed by the international community, you publish in English. If you want your child to study a useful foreign language (and your native language is not English), then English is the most useful language for that child to learn.

So, English is putting pressure on a lot of languages around the world. One could argue that the dominant dialect of English is Standard American English, but the truth is that most English speakers are not native speakers of English these days. It is the most rapidly growing language, but I suspect that the world standard is going to differ rather markedly from American and other national standards of the language. Whenever large numbers of non-native speakers adopt a new standard, they tend to introduce significant changes. For example, the differences between Old English (Anglo-Saxon) and Middle English arose mainly from the large numbers of French speakers acquiring English. There are some very significant grammatical features of English that arose purely from exposure to French (e.g. the use of question words like "who" and "which" as relative pronouns, vs the native Germanic "that").

Not only is English the language of trade today; It is also the language of science and technology. New words tend to be coined by English speakers, or at least in an English language context, such as a scientific paper or technical presentation.

I deal with a lot of people in South East Asia (particularly Singapore and Malaysia, but also Indonesia and Hong Kong), and their English is distinctly different in a number of ways from Australian, British or American English. I also deal with a lot of Indians (subcontinental, not Native American) and they have yet another way of speaking English. As there are a billion plus people in India, most of whom speak (or aspire to speak) some English, and a further three billion or so in SE Asia (including China), it seems unlikely that they will not have a significant influence on the future development of the language.

One thing I have certainly noticed amongst Indian speakers of English is that fluency in English is considered a sign of status. However, this doesn't manifest (as one might expect) as a desire to improve, but more often as a resistance to correction - wealthy Indians in particular tend to be very keen to be congratulated on their English, but quick to take offence if corrected, and as a result their commonest errors have become incorporated into the 'standard' for English on the subcontinent. I strongly suspect that a few tens of millions of British, or hundreds of millions of American, English speakers are going to struggle to avoid being influenced by a few billion Indian and Asian speakers over the next few decades.

Already my (very Aussie) boss has taken to saying 'Please do the needful', in a tounge-in-cheek reference to the language of his Indian counterparts. Imitation may or may not be a sincere form of flattery, but it is certainly a step down the road of long-term change in the use of language. I bet the British seafarers of the middle ages were joking about the poor English of their Flemish peers when they started calling each other 'lubber'.

 

[Copernicus]

I would treat the Indian dialect of English as a legitimate English standard, because English has been an official language there for quite some time. People actually do switch between Hindi (or some other indigenous language) and English in everyday discourse, and there are very precise rules that govern language-switching of that sort. You see this kind of thing a lot in Bollywood movies.

However, there are some very significant differences between the Indian standard and standards in other countries. Like many other foreign colonies, the English that is native to India is a variant of British English as it was spoken in the late Empire. The spelling largely (but not completely) follows British rules, as opposed to American rules. There is no question that Indian English sounds like some kind of non-native bastardization of English to those of us from other English-speaking countries, but that is only because it has evolved under the influence of non-native speakers adopting it as a new language. It is a fairly stable dialect of English these days.

 

[Hermit]

The use of plural forms as though they were singular.

"The disease is caused by a bacteria". "Radio is his favourite media".

"My criteria for deciding what is right or wrong is..."

"That" for "than" just grates. So does the confusing "principle with principal" and of course random use of "they're", "there" and "their"?The list goes on, seemingly forever. Annoying as these crimes against language are to me, they seem to serve as a safety valve for my mild-ish CDO. In case you wonder now what CDO is, click here.

Then there are the faux-learned ponces who show off their edjamacation by using Latin, only to get it wrong. "Ad nauseum", anyone? I'd rather hear them say "goes on for, like, forever".

Not that I can talk. My English skill is average at best, except for punctuation, which can only be described as a shocker.

Also, I am quite tolerant with some grammatical nonos. To casually split infinitives is OK with me. Dangling participles are usually cute.

...I attribute this problem to the attributes of the fucking assholes responsible for the English language.

That would be the series of invasions, that made English literally a mongrel language. For those who have an interest in its development I recommend Melvyn Bragg's non-academic look at it in The Adventure of English. It's available on DVD, which does not cost much, but you can also watch all eight episodes on Youtube.

 

[bilby]

The use of plural forms as though they were singular.

"The disease is caused by a bacteria". "Radio is his favourite media".

"My criteria for deciding what is right or wrong is..."

"That" for "than" just grates. So does the confusing "principle with principal" and of course random use of "they're", "there" and "their"?The list goes on, seemingly forever. Annoying as these crimes against language are to me, they seem to serve as a safety valve for my mild-ish CDO. In case you wonder now what CDO is, click here.

Then there are the faux-learned ponces who show off their edjamacation by using Latin, only to get it wrong. "Ad nauseum", anyone? I'd rather hear them say "goes on for, like, forever".

Not that I can talk. My English skill is average at best, except for punctuation, which can only be described as a shocker.

Also, I am quite tolerant with some grammatical nonos. To casually split infinitives is OK with me. Dangling participles are usually cute.

...I attribute this problem to the attributes of the fucking assholes responsible for the English language.

That would be the series of invasions, that made English literally a mongrel language. For those who have an interest in its development I recommend Melvyn Bragg's non-academic look at it in The Adventure of English. It's available on DVD, which does not cost much, but you can also watch all eight episodes on Youtube.

Your misuse of 'criteria' reveals a hidden agendum.

 

[PyramidHead]

^ LOL.

Another good one (or a needless convention that I cling to for no reason) is the subjunctive 'were'. I think the rule is to use 'were' when talking about something that could have been happening right now and 'was' to talk about something that could have happened in the past. So: if I were a banker, I would probably drive a nicer car; if I was smarter in college, I would have become a banker. Is this accurate?

 

[Hermit]

"My criteria for deciding what is right or wrong is..."

"That" for "than" just grates. So does the confusing "principle with principal" and of course random use of "they're", "there" and "their"?The list goes on, seemingly forever. Annoying as these crimes against language are to me, they seem to serve as a safety valve for my mild-ish CDO. In case you wonder now what CDO is, click here.

Then there are the faux-learned ponces who show off their edjamacation by using Latin, only to get it wrong. "Ad nauseum", anyone? I'd rather hear them say "goes on for, like, forever".

Not that I can talk. My English skill is average at best, except for punctuation, which can only be described as a shocker.

Also, I am quite tolerant with some grammatical nonos. To casually split infinitives is OK with me. Dangling participles are usually cute.



That would be the series of invasions, that made English literally a mongrel language. For those who have an interest in its development I recommend Melvyn Bragg's non-academic look at it in The Adventure of English. It's available on DVD, which does not cost much, but you can also watch all eight episodes on Youtube.

Your misuse of 'criteria' reveals a hidden agendum.

Yes! My misuse is wilful sabotage of the distinction between singular and plural. For instance, I would never write something like: "Intel have announced..." even though that seems to be the thing to do because Intel employs thousands of people, so how can it possibly be singular?

 

[PyramidHead]

Yes! My misuse is wilful sabotage of the distinction between singular and plural. For instance, I would never write something like: "Intel have announced..." even though that seems to be the thing to do because Intel employs thousands of people, so how can it possibly be singular?

I've heard arguments for both ways on that one, and oddly enough there seems to be a US/UK divide in the popular music press when talking about bands. This is just anecdotal, but I see US publications saying "Radiohead is playing at Madison Square Garden" more often than not, while UK outlets would have said "Radiohead are". Of course, both will use the plural verb if the band name is plural, like "The Cars were popular in the 80's."

I almost want to say it depends on whether there's a "the" at the beginning, though. "Talking Heads was an early example of new wave" sounds OK to me.