Poll: The Misuse of English

[Tadd]

In my field of work as a translator, I often come across a great deal vocabulary, sayings, idioms, expressions and proverbs that are quite difficult to change from English to Chinese and vice-versa. Over here in China I've made several American friends and I often find myself enjoying and musing on the adaptation of how the English language has... (for lack of a better word) "evolved".

BUT, there are just some evolutions of the English language that are simply wrong.. wrong, wrong wrong. When I hear them, I end up gritting my teeth in frustration or biting my tongue to stop myself from correcting and coming across as a pompous asshole... examples:

"I could care less". What they are trying to say: "I couldn't care less".
"I could care less" means that you COULD care less!!! So, in that light it shows that you possibly care! By saying "I couldn't" it means you really have no care at all and it's impossible for you to care any less.

Smth is "whack". What they are trying to say: "Terrible" "Bad" "Out of order" etc
Whack is a verb.. what idiot made it a noun?

So... is there any misuse of English that drives you up the wall? Any words used in the wrong context that makes you want to scratch somebody's eyes out? I'd love to hear your examples so I can make a nice collection of them.

 

[megamanenm]

All languages naturally evolve over time, they don't get better or worse, they just change. Get used to it.

EDIT: Uh, where's the poll?

 

[Biosophilogical]

Well, I'm Australian, so we 'adapted' the eglish nature to suit our laid back lifestyle. For example, we call or close friends 'mate' despite our lack of sexual activity with eachother. However, as far as misues of english goes, I enjoy our minor alterations (though the use of gay as a synonym for bad pisses me off to no end).

 

[SenseOfTumour]

I#d say everyone has their own level of acceptance when it comes to these things, and everyone knows certain little things other people say that annoys the hell out of them.

'innit' bugs me, when 'isn't it' is already a short version, but I've never been one to stress over 'who' and 'whom'.

I think generally, if you're wearing a baseball cap and wearing more than a kilo of cheap gold coloured jewellery, then everything you say will annoy me, if I can even hear you over the bass bins in your car.

I can't really mind too much about gay being used to mean bad however, as I went through school calling everything 'gay' from pens to teachers, and we never meant that any of them were homosexual, oh, except Mr Harris our art teacher, he was a strange one, more camp than gay tho. I guess what I'm saying is when we said something was 'being fucking gay', we didn't mean it was homosexual and therefore bad', just bad, hell, we'd have needed sexual explained to us with diagrams at that age, never mind homosexual.

 

[Valiance]

Yep. I hate this stuff. A lot of my friends misuse their/they're/there, and your/you're, but one of them takes the cake, and instead of "Would've" says "would of."

As in, "I would of been to school on time, but I got a flat tire."

It's atrocious and makes me headdesk often.

 

[Vitor Goncalves]

An example of misuse of English that makes me want to scratch somebody's eyes out is the use in portuguese of some english words just to pretend its more sophisticated when we have in portuguese words that mean exactly the same. And in many case actually the english word does not have that meaning at all.

*snip*

EDIT: Uh, where's the poll?

Its the poll of the hammer he wants to bash on peoples heads when he hear them using those words.

 

[blankedboy]

I hate it when people confuse 'you're,' 'your,' 'their' and 'they're'
IT PISSES ME OFF GODDAMNIT.

bro chill your gon get used 2 it

(j/k, j/k)

 

[OpiateChicken]

"I could care less". What they are trying to say: "I couldn't care less".
"I could care less" means that you COULD care less!!! So, in that light it shows that you possibly care! By saying "I couldn't" it means you really have no care at all and it's impossible for you to care any less.

This actually pissed me off a great deal a while ago, so I researched it. I found this.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ico1.htm
It explained a lot but ultimately left me unsatisfied with how the language is being butchered.


I might also be a grammar Nazi, but one thing that bugs me when people DO correct it is regarding the correct usage of "whom". I think it's a stupid word and should not be used. "Who" is just fine.

 

[Finalfan]

While it's true language evolves over time it doesn't mean i have to like it! Chavs annoy the hell out of me, as does musicians like Lilly Allen and the such

 

[SenseOfTumour]

Oh hell, the above reminded me of another, going in the other direction, people using big or rarely used words when there's no need. Communication is meant mainly to share ideas or information, not just to make you look all clever.

I know someone who'd never yell fire if he has time to shout 'conflagration', and then explain to people what he means.

Another time he was asked what an mp3 was. (there's another one that bugs me, even tho I'm not sure if it's grammatically correct, I feel it should 'an' mp3, an S&M show or an X rated movie, but a B-movie and a TRX-80 calculator.)

Anyway, he goes on to explain the acronym and the technical specifications, until I can step in and rescue them by saying, 'essentially, its how a computer stores music, you put the cd in and copy it to mp3 files on the computer.'. Of course he was more correct, and gave more information, but there's social situations where the briefest answer is best.

I fear you could have given birth to a monster here, given the pedantry lurking under the surface in so many escapists!

I seem to remember a magazine that launched a 'Pedantic's Corner' and the first letter they printed was from someone telling them that actually, it should be Pedant's corner'.

 

[Eleuthera]

I know someone who'd never yell fire if he has time to shout 'conflagration', and then explain to people what he means.

If people don't know what a conflagration is let them burn. People shouldn't have to explain normal words.

And I'd probably over explain the MP3 thing as well, but then I tend to now communicate with people I don't know, and the people I know wouldn't ask that question.

OT: I definately agree with the could/couldn't care thing.

 

[blankedboy]

I hate it when people confuse 'you're,' 'your,' 'their' and 'they're'
IT PISSES ME OFF GODDAMNIT.

bro chill your gon get used 2 it

(j/k, j/k)

YOU'RE AN IDIOT. >.>

Jesus christ, dude, it was a joke. I'd've thought that the 'j/k's made it obviouse.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

I know someone who'd never yell fire if he has time to shout 'conflagration', and then explain to people what he means.

If people don't know what a conflagration is let them burn. People shouldn't have to explain normal words.

And I'd probably over explain the MP3 thing as well, but then I tend to now communicate with people I don't know, and the people I know wouldn't ask that question.

OT: I definately agree with the could/couldn't care thing.

I can't really agree there, fire is a perfectly acceptable word that 100% of people know and understand, using a rare and long word when a simple one does the job better, to me is just trying to make yourself look smart, and there's better, more inclusive ways to do that. I'm of course not saying there's a place for longer, more descriptive and poetic words, but in general terms of just sharing information and opinions, I feel it's best to be able to share it with the greatest number of people, to the point where I do limit myself in certain company and express myself more fully in other company.

After all a lower vocabulary doesn't make a friend any less of one.

I'm with you entirely on the MP3 thing however, that's more a case of different social networks coming together, he's a techy type, and she wasn't, so he spoke in tech mode, and she looked confused in 'social' mode.

 

[Hurr Durr Derp]

"I could care less". What they are trying to say: "I couldn't care less".
"I could care less" means that you COULD care less!!! So, in that light it shows that you possibly care! By saying "I couldn't" it means you really have no care at all and it's impossible for you to care any less.

I tend to use this handy graphic for informing people of the proper way to use this:
http://i436.photobucket.com/albums/qq84/DurrHurr/meme%20-%20copypasta/i-could-care-less.jpg

Smth is "whack". What they are trying to say: "Terrible" "Bad" "Out of order" etc
Whack is a verb.. what idiot made it a noun?

Verbing nouns is common practice where I'm from.

 

[Eleuthera]

snip

I also can't keep myself from exaggerating, so while I wouldn't use "conflagration" in such a situation, I do use the (in my opinion) most appropriate word for whatever it is I'm trying to say, and more often than not that means using "a rare and long word".

 

[Halceon]

Smth is "whack". What they are trying to say: "Terrible" "Bad" "Out of order" etc
Whack is a verb.. what idiot made it a noun?

Adjective.

Anyway, there are too many transgressions for me to list them all. And i'm not even a native speaker.