Things we say wrong

[Super Nintendo Chalmers]

it's/its
could of/could have
me and Fred went.../Fred and I went... <=== I'm guilty of this when speaking
biannual/biennial <=== I just learned the other day that I've been wrong in my usage of biannual

[SebC]

bonified

[ernie]

Maybe I missed it but the one messed up expression that you hear over and over and over and has even made it's way into movies and TV is: "I could care less" when the person really means to say "I could NOT care less".


On Aluminum/Aluminium....IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry...the folks who make the rules or chemical nomenclature) prefers AluminIum but even in their own publications they are not consistent.

[tete]

Originally Posted by habernac

John Laurie Blvd. Not Laurier.

I see your John Laurier Blvd. and raise you Princess Island.

[ernie]

Originally Posted by Super Nintendo Chalmers

it's/its
me and Fred went.../Fred and I went... <=== I'm guilty of this when speaking

On the other hand you have teachers and parents correcting kids when they correctly use "Fred and me". It is not always Fred and I. In your example it is, but, for example, "He gave the tickets to Fred and I" is NOT correct. It is "He gave the tickets to Fred and me". The "trick" to knowing what to use when is the sentence should make sense if you take out "fred and". "He gave the tickets to I" is clearly incorrect.

With that said... I tend to have poor grammar when posting on message boards and will likely get caught by the grammar police soon.

[Rhetts_the_Best]

There is a reason why the english langauge is, "i believe" the 3rd most difficult language to learn, behind cantonese and Mandarin.
It is mainly due to our stupid rules that "as shown" usually contradict themselves.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by tete

I see your John Laurier Blvd. and raise you Princess Island.

It is Prince's Island Park is it not?

[tete]

Originally Posted by tete

I see your John Laurier Blvd. and raise you Princess Island.

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

It is Prince's Island Park is it not?

Exactly.

[hkstylez]

some kind of = some kinda

[Flamesguy_SJ]

Originally Posted by ernie

On the other hand you have teachers and parents correcting kids when they correctly use "Fred and me". It is not always Fred and I. In your example it is, but, for example, "He gave the tickets to Fred and I" is NOT correct. It is "He gave the tickets to Fred and me". The "trick" to knowing what to use when is the sentence should make sense if you take out "fred and". "He gave the tickets to I" is clearly incorrect.

With that said... I tend to have poor grammar when posting on message boards and will likely get caught by the grammar police soon.

I always just kind of knew that I could sometimes use "Fred and me", but never really understood why until I took a Latin class in university and learned about case-endings and what they denote. The "accusative" case is always applied to things that are the direct object of a sentence, and there are very few words in the English language that have an accusative case (I/me, he/him, she/her are the only ones I think..). You would think it would make sense to teach children things like that so that they understand its usage, instead of just learning by rote.

Also, on the topic of hyper-correction, it seems that "-ed" has replaced the verb endings on past-tense exceptions like dreamt and learnt, which is too bad. Won't be too long until we're saying "keeped" and "weeped"I suppose that is what is so interesting about language: it's always in a state of flux or fluidity and, though there usually are basic guidelines, sometimes you can't really impose a set of structured "rules" or applications.

EDIT: Just want to mention people using "lead" as a past-tense verb. "Lead" is not like "read"; its past-tense is "led".

[Sr. Mints]

"10 items of less" bugs me. It should be 10 items or fewer; less implies volume, something you can measure.

[SeeBass]

we dont say it but some yanks do...Warshington DC or Warsh the clothes.

It drives me nuts

[Ryan Coke]

Remuneration vs. Renumeration.

One is what you get paid, the other is maybe what would happen if they needed to redo the voters list. But I don't think it is even a word, and my google key isn't working right now.

Feel free to rip apart my 'redo'.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by SeeBass

we dont say it but some yanks do...Warshington DC or Warsh the clothes.

It drives me nuts

Oh, don't even get me started on Americans and their pronunciations.

roof - ruff. How the hell do you get ruff out of two O's?

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by flameswin

Oh, don't even get me started on Americans and their pronunciations.

roof - ruff. How the hell do you get ruff out of two O's?

It's kind of like word "book". We pronounce it the same way they say "roof".

[schteve_d]

Alright, well you could have axed me.......

Excape for escape. That one, too. Drives me crazy!

[Doctordestiny]

Kilometre. It's pronounced kill-oh-me-ter, not kill-om-et-er.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Doctordestiny

Kilometre. It's pronounced kill-oh-me-ter, not kill-om-et-er.

Don’t think so. It’s keel-oh-meter. Look at how its pronounced in the pilot’s phonetic alphabet as an example.

[I_H8_Crawford]

Not sure if it's been said yet, don't want to read the whole thread, but I can't stand it when people write/say "That's a mute point"

It's MOOT!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Komskies]

Originally Posted by ernie

Maybe I missed it but the one messed up expression that you hear over and over and over and has even made it's way into movies and TV is: "I could care less" when the person really means to say "I could NOT care less".


On Aluminum/Aluminium....IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry...the folks who make the rules or chemical nomenclature) prefers AluminIum but even in their own publications they are not consistent.