Yes yes, language changes over time. I’ve heard that mantra for decades and I know it. That doesn’t mean there aren’t language changes that aren’t grating when they become fashionable (and hopefully temporary).

For me, “morals” being used as a crude catch-all application of “morality,” “ethics,” “integrity” or related concepts bothers me. Sentence example: “Maybe if society had morals there wouldn’t be so many minorities in prison.”

An even more annoying otherwise-fluent-speaker modification I see is when “conscious” is used to mean “consciousness” and “conscience” interchangeably. Sentence example: “Single mothers on welfare that steal baby formula have no conscious.” It sounds like they’re saying the shoplifter is not mentally aware of their own actions, not that they’re lacking sufficient “morals” to let their baby starve for the sake of Rules-Based Order™.

There’s others, but those two come up enough recently, with sufficient newness, for me to bring them up here. Some old classic language quirks are so established and entrenched that even though I hate them, bringing them up would likely invite some hatemail and maybe some mystery alt accounts also sending hatemail after that. You know, because they “could care less(sic)” about what I think.

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23 points

English had a big French spelling phase, so a bunch of our words have entirely different phonetic sounds vs their spelling. I constantly mess this up. Go ahead, make me spell bourgoise or bureacracy the first time. Nope failed again! Conscious/Conscience are definitely in that category.

For me I’m not sure if Math or Maths are correct

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2 points

Fun page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences

North Americans contract ‘mathematics’ to ‘math’, most other places shorten it to ‘maths’. I don’t even know if one is more “correct” or if the entire word ‘mathematics’ was a mistake. Honestly, the North Americans might be right about this one.

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Me with a time machine: going back and shooting William the Bastard in the head to save the English language

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12 points
*

Use a Kuh-nife when you do it, you bold Kuh-night of Time!

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17 points

You’re not a real leftist if you can spell bourgeiouiuiouiise on the first try

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6 points

bour-gee-ois-ee is how I remember it

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Intellectuals are haram. Ask Gramsci.

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First off, amazing username.

Anyway, a tip to spell bourgeoisie that someone here recommended was to sing it to the tune of the Mickey Mouse song. Which, embarrassingly, is the only way I can spell it.

B O U … R G E … O I S I E! Bourgeoisie! Bourgeoisie! Who steals the surplus value from you and me? B O U R G E O I S I E!

And then yeah if you need bourgeois just lop off the final I E

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4 points

Young people don’t know how to sing the Mickey mouse song

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9 points

Boojwah.

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Burgersee

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8 points

English had a big French spelling phase

Laughs in William the Conqueror

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15 points

“Grey/gray” trips me the fuck up and I’m an English teacher.

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I never get that right!

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5 points

If it’s in Burgerland it’s gray.

If it’s in Jelliedeelland it’s grey.

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