"Of" and "have"

[Phil H]

Split infinitives are not "correct" in the US, just because you may see them from us all the time.

I stand "corrected"!!

On the other hand, I think they are acceptable in the US, far more than in the UK. Here the concept is frequently not understood, but educated people will often draw conclusions about the relative literacy and education level of people who split their infinitives and draw conclusions on that basis.

Snobbish maybe, but true.

Phil

[RivkahChaya]

Hi All,

One of my most hated manglings of the English language is "I bought it off him" instead of "I bought it from him."

Regards,

Simon

In the US, "bought it off," rather than "bought it from" means something specific. It's sort of a collapsing together of "took off" (or "got off, but since "got off" also means something else, you don't hear it as often), and "bought from," "took off" meaning something a little shady, but short of actual theft.

Anyway, you'd never say you bought something "off" of Walmart; "bought off" is reserved for stuff you bought from the guy on the corner, who probably did not have a vendor's license, or something someone wasn't even intending to sell, but you talked him into it, or maybe something you haggled for at a flea market.

When you say you "bought it off" someone, one can almost see it happening literally-- you liked someone's interesting jacket, and made him an offer for it, and he agreed, and took it off, and gave it to you.

A common error, for which there is very little excuse, is 'pronounciation' - used by a poster to this very thread!

My tablet does not have the word "pronunciation" in its dictionary, for some reason, and tries to get me to change it to "pronounce ation." I think I've caught it every time. I really hate its autocorrect feature, and I wish I could figure out how to turn it off, but I can't find the manual. Sometimes in trying to fix an autocorrect, where I originally spelled something correctly, but it wasn't in the dictionary, and the tablet changed it to an entirely different word, I end up changing it back, but spelling it wrong. That makes me so mad.

Is "exhonerate" really a correct spelling in Britain? I see it a lot on the board, not just from one poster, so I thought it might be like "faecal matter."

Split infinitives are not "correct" in the US, just because you may see them from us all the time.

[Ally]

Oh I am totally guilty of the it's/its thing. I even know the difference and firmly know that its is possessive. However, nine times out of ten, when I am writing and I go back and look, I've typed "it's". Probably because I use it's more than its and therefore my fingers type it without my brain being consciously aware of it. Drives me crazy when I catch it after the fact, but yes, I am completely guilty of that one.

[caz]

In the Radio Times I was alarmed to see that someone had 'another thing coming' instead of 'another think coming', and I doubt it was a typo.

A common error, for which there is very little excuse, is 'pronounciation' - used by a poster to this very thread!

Also, I have lost count of the number of times I have seen otherwise intelligent posters using 'who's' when they mean 'whose' or 'it's' when they mean 'its'.

'It's' should only be used for 'it is', as in 'it is still pissing down with rain here'.

When the cat is licking its fur, there should be no apostrophe in sight.

Love,

Caz
X

[Mayerling]

I recall another odd word confustion. When I was a kid I had a coloring book about the American Presidents, and while reading the biography of President James Polk I was surprised to find that when he went to a fine type of finishing school before going to college he seemed to have an interest in eastern European languages. The sentence said that at the school he was educated with the finest learning and "polish". For a number of months yours truly wondered why the 11th President, instead of learning Greek, Latin, French (or even German or Hebrew or Spanish) was learning the language spoken in Warsaw. My sister finally explained to me that it was not "Polish" but "polish" referring to proper manners of behavior.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

Jeff, they do sing "Route 66" over there, don't they, and not "Rout 66"?

Hi Robert,

Yes they do sing "Route 66" not "Rout 66", but the song was popularized (by Nat King Cole among others) in the 1950s. It has been since the 1960s that "rout" has become the pronunciation form for "route".

Jeff

[Wickerman]

Irregardless, is one word that always makes me laugh when I hear it.

Oh, and I forgot, my mother always used to ask, "do you depress the clutch, or press the clutch?"

[Smoking Joe]

There was a lorry driver at a place I worked many years ago. He swore that much it was beyond belief. Even when talking in a normal and calm voice the swear words outnumbered regular words.

We had a nickname for him... of course.... We called him F**k C**t S**t B**ls

It might not be grammatically correct, might not even be spelt correctly,but I guess he got the message anyhow.

[johns]

I am certainly not a snob. Therefore I would not go round correcting,or complaining to friends or acquaintances about their use of The English language,as regards Could have-could of- could've etc.Life is much too short for that. What DOES annoy me however is a person who cant speak a sentence without including 3-4 F or C words within it.I recently heard this as I passed by 2 teenage girls as I came out of a shop.One of them spoke this memorable sentence to the other " That F*** pig Cu** Faced a*****e gonna get F****d good "..Charming!True she got her message across ,but my only thought was that the next time she opened her mouth,it would be nice if someone would put their fist in it!

There was a lorry driver at a place I worked many years ago. He swore that much it was beyond belief. Even when talking in a normal and calm voice the swear words outnumbered regular words.

We had a nickname for him... of course.... We called him F**k C**t S**t B**ls

[Phil H]

Does defuse mean?:

a) to take the explosive trigger from = de-fuze; or

b) to scatter or diffuse?

Anyone else shivver at a split infinitive? - I know they are not grammatically incorrect in the colonies.

Phil

[Robert]

Is it my imagination, or has the arrival of online news accompanied a decline in standards even on the part of established news sources? Look at the spelling of 'defuse' :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/golf/22610823

[Smoking Joe]

Hi Riva
Your Mother sounds amazing.Part learned and part natural gift?

[RivkahChaya]

I don't care about private conversations, or whether people want to write catfud on their shopping lists (Gary Larson reference). However, when people are trying to communicate with what they know will be a large audience, or an unknown audience, they really need to do their best to stick to a standard. One of the reasons legal contracts sometimes use language that seems odd, and are usually verbose, is to avoid ambiguity.

For a long time, laws still were written in Latin for the very reason that the language didn't evolve, and you did not get ambiguities because the meaning of a word changed. However, the need for non-lawyers to have access to legal texts prevailed.

My mother is a linguist, specifically, a dialectologist. She can really do that "You grew up in X, but your mother is from Y," by the way you speak, like Henry Higgins. It's uncanny. She can also understand anyone, no matter what their accent, even people who lived all their lives in Kyrghyzistan, and learned English from a scratched record.

[Smoking Joe]

I am certainly not a snob. Therefore I would not go round correcting,or complaining to friends or acquaintances about their use of The English language,as regards Could have-could of- could've etc.Life is much too short for that. What DOES annoy me however is a person who cant speak a sentence without including 3-4 F or C words within it.I recently heard this as I passed by 2 teenage girls as I came out of a shop.One of them spoke this memorable sentence to the other " That F*** pig Cu** Faced a*****e gonna get F****d good "..Charming!True she got her message across ,but my only thought was that the next time she opened her mouth,it would be nice if someone would put their fist in it!

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

One of my most hated manglings of the English language is "I bought it off him" instead of "I bought it from him."

Regards,

Simon