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.
I can’t think of abutting that truly bothers me (languages are always changing and I think that’s neat), but one thing that throws me off because it’s not a feature of my dialect is using “whenever” to also mean “when” (i.e. both reoccurring and momentary), which is found in some Southern dialects (among others). Sometimes the meaning is immediately clear from context, but other times it’s ambiguous and so there’s a jarring moment where my initial analysis suddenly stops making sense and I realize the speaker must have this feature. Not great at coming up with examples, but something like this:
Whenever I took a shower, the water was too hot and I got burned.
In context it would probably be clear that the speaker is talking about a specific event, but in isolation I have to go, “Wait, I doubt that they kept getting burned every time they took a shower…must be momentary”.
Positive anymore (e.g. “I wear these shoes a lot anymore” to mean “I wear these shoes a lot these days”) is kind of similar in terms of vibes, but the meaning is always clear even devoid of context so I just find it cute more than anything.
There’s this other tiny thing which I must have read or watched a video about ages ago (wish I could remember the specific source) that doesn’t annoy me or impair my understanding but I can’t unhear:
Grammatical nitpicking that will permanently adhere to your brain
Since we’re so used to saying the sentence pattern “it’s because […]”, the vast, vast majority of people will also say “the reason is because…”, in essence swapping “it” for the more specific noun phrase “the reason”. It’s such a natural construction that I never noticed it until it was pointed out, but from a prescriptivist grammatical point of view the “because” is redundant and doesn’t fit–it should simply be “the reason is…”, since the clause that follows “because” is itself the reason for whatever you’re explaining. Other than the simple pattern of construction, another explanation is that it’s a sort of emphatic double positive in line with saying “the reason why”–using both “reason” and “why” is redundant, strictly speaking, but it drives home the explanatory function of the utterance. Sometimes you’ll even hear the trifecta: “the reason why is because […]”.
As I said, it doesn’t annoy me at all, but my ears always perk up when I hear the first three words because I’m wondering what the speaker will say. I think easily 95+% of people say the “incorrect” thing, even incredibly bright people with excellent language skills. If I hear the “correct” version, I take it to indicate that the speaker is someone who thinks carefully about their words; doesn’t necessarily mean they actually have useful things to say, but I like to think it’s a tiny window into their personality
I just remembered I pointed this “error” out to my examiner when I was getting a neuropsych eval (normally I’d never do that, but I did it in a playful way because she was evaluating my language skills), which probably contributed to me being formally diagnosed as a turbonerd.
Lots of people saying shitty stuff hiding behind a facade of progressivism thinking they’re woke or whatever.
Instead of “u r (ableist slur)” they can fall back to “u r mentally ill” and pretend it’s just concern or even just chant “WHO HURT YOU?” like the passive aggressive cowards they are.
The most annoying one that popped up for like half a year was “ohh damn, is it ableist to make fun of this person?” 😬
I am irrationally irritated when people describe something as “addicting” rather than “addictive”. I’m not even sure it’s technically incorrect, and language is a fluid thing so this shouldn’t irritate me. But I still have to consciously tell myself to not be annoyed by it.
That counts; the quirk doesn’t even necessarily have to be “wrong” to be annoying to an individual.
In my defense I don’t think I’ve ever actually corrected anybody, I just stew inside my own skull
I’ve given up on trying to correct people for the most part because language does change over time and new norms are established whether or not I’m comfortable with them. Sure, some of them are clumsy and staggeringly incorrect (like “conscious” being used in place of “conscience”) but if it’s done enough times, it’ll become the expected way to communicate.
It feels like an Americanism to me. I pretty much only see it on the internet
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
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.
Me with a time machine: going back and shooting William the Bastard in the head to save the English language
You’re not a real leftist if you can spell bourgeiouiuiouiise on the first try
Intellectuals are haram. Ask Gramsci.
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
Corpo-speak e-mails from bloviating, self-important middle managers who regurgitate such turns of phrase as “at this time” and/or “in a timely manor [sic]” make my eye twitch. I can overlook a lot of the “synergizing our thought leaders with operational tempo” jargon salad, but the aforementioned phrases trigger my fight-or-flight response, probably because they reek of petty tyrant small business night manager mentality and bring me back to the headspace of dealing with bosses like that when I was a kid.
I also once had to work with an IT project manager who insisted on pronouncing the word “processes” as if it had a long-E vowel sound in the plural (“pro-cess-eez”). It would derail my train of thought every fucking time.
Also also once had a direct supervisor who would throw around “irregardless” almost daily.
