I Could Care Less About The Queen's English
The BBC has published 50 examples of "Americanisms" its readers loathe. I agree with many of the complaints:
2. The next time someone tells you something is the "least worst option", tell them that their most best option is learning grammar.
7. "It is what it is". Pity us.
9. "Touch base" - it makes me cringe no end.
35. "Reach out to" when the correct word is "ask". For example: "I will reach out to Kevin and let you know if that timing is convenient". Reach out? Is Kevin stuck in quicksand? Is he teetering on the edge of a cliff? Can't we just ask him?
In other instances, I'm not entirely sure what the problem is:
36. Surely the most irritating is: "You do the Math." Math? It's MATHS.
38. My worst horror is expiration, as in "expiration date". Whatever happened to expiry?
And some just make me laugh:
14. I caught myself saying "shopping cart" instead of shopping trolley today and was thoroughly disgusted with myself. I've never lived nor been to the US either.
The video below hits on one of my other major pet peeves, though -- saying "I could care less" when you mean you couldn't. What are your language pet peeves?
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Re: I Could Care Less About The Queen's English
Hilarious video, but I have to go with James on "I could care less." The Brits are always accusing Americans of having no sense of irony, but it's clearly the ironic or sarcastic version of I couldn't care less. Like saying, "Right. I care."
My wife and I have a running disagreement over "It is what it is," which she hates but I rather like for its tone of tragic-but-heroic resignation. Hate to disagree with my wife because she's so often right... but it is what it is.
May '11
Re: I Could Care Less About The Queen's English
EJHill
It probably does BUT... as we say in TV, all the news that fits, we print. "Preheat" is less wordy, especially if packaging space is limited by all the crap the government decrees must be printed on the label of everything.
Words and phrases enter and leave the English language all the time. Unlike the Constitution, language is a living, evolving thing. If someone says, "Have you seen my laptop?" is he asking you the whereabouts of his computer or is he inquiring whether you have enjoyed a view of his upper legs?
I used a lot of 1940's slang in post #33. Can you decipher it without Google? · Jul 21 at 9:09am
1940's slang is understandable if you imagine a nasally fast talking radio announcer with a New York accent uttering it.
May '10
Re: I Could Care Less About The Queen's English
Take your best shot then...
Dec '10
Re: I Could Care Less About The Queen's English
Pseudodionysius: Solitary confinement for the next person to say:
"At the end of the day" · Jul 20 at 10:15pm
I believe I first heard this from my English friend.
Aug '10
Re: I Could Care Less About The Queen's English
Susan in Seattle: The various misuses of the word, "impact" irritate me.
"Impact" rather than "effect."
"Impacts" rather than "affects."
The worst, in my regard, is "impactful" rather than "effective." · Jul 21 at 7:56am
Omigosh! My wife and I have been saying this for years. We thought we were alone. (Thank you, Ricochet, for once again reminding us there are sensible like-minded people out there in the cyber-world.)
I once wrote the mighty Rich Lowry for using "impactful." I asked him what comes next - "impactioned? Impactinating?" (To his undying credit, Rich promised to never use it again.)
My theory is this abuse all begins with news announcers, trying to sound more important. I call it Hyperbole Syndrome.
Jul '11
Re: I Could Care Less About The Queen's English
One I've heard since moving to OK and TX is using WHENEVER in the place of WHEN!
Ex.: "Whenever we went to the county fair we had a great time"
WRONG
"Whenever" is used to indicate subjunctive or imperfect past tenses; it is NEVER used in the preterit or future tense.
As a general comment related to this error, most English speakers have no understanding of the many different tenses of verbs. One can always tell the tense in romantic languages because each tense has its own conjugation, but in English several tenses can share a single conjugation. Consequently, people switch between imperfect past and preterit (like in the abomination above) or future and conditional, and most English speakers haven't a clue what subjunctive is anymore.
Maybe we should let the Mexicans take over just so that people will finally learn.;)
-E
Aug '10
Re: I Could Care Less About The Queen's English
This is a wonderful thread. ("Impactful" even.) Fun to see so many Ricos are wordaholics. Evidence we could probably sustain a regular thread on the use, misuse and abuse of the English language.
Jul '11
Re: I Could Care Less About The Queen's English
Susan in Seattle: The various misuses of the word, "impact" irritate me.
"Impact" rather than "effect."
"Impacts" rather than "affects."
The worst, in my regard, is "impactful" rather than "effective." · Jul 21 at 7:56am
Speaking of mixing up similar sounding words, here is a good one from "The Office"
"Toby: Aren't the suggestions meant for you?
Michael Scott: Well... Toby, if you are inferring that I have B.O. then that would be a very poor choice of words.
Creed: Michael, he wasn't inferring, he was implying. You were inferring.
Michael Scott: Was I, Creed? Well, you know what I'm implying now is that when we're on an elevator together, I should maybe take the stairs, cause talk about stank."
Re: I Could Care Less About The Queen's English
Andrew Klavan:
My wife and I have a running disagreement over "It is what it is," which she hates but I rather like for its tone of tragic-but-heroic resignation. Hate to disagree with my wife because she's so often right... but it is what it is. · Jul 21 at 9:23am
My husband and I fought about just this last night! He won, defending it on multiple grounds. It's actually the overuse of the phrase that bothers me more than anything. Particularly when used on occasions when resignation is not the only option ..
May '10
Re: I Could Care Less About The Queen's English
Not to put too fine a point on it, but at the end of the day and in the fullness of time, taking all things into consideration, all of these proposals regarding the language express really excellent suggestions but in view of some of the doubts being expressed, may I propose that I recall that after careful consideration, the considered view of the membership was that while they considered that the proposals met with broad approval in principle, that some of the principles were sufficiently fundamental in principle and some of the considerations so complex and finely balanced in practice, that, in principle, it was proposed that the sensible and prudent practice would be to submit the proposal for more detailed consideration, laying stress on the essential continuity of the new proposal with existing principles, and the principle of the principle arguments which the proposal proposes and propounds for their approval - in principle.
Now that's proper British Civil Service English.
May '10
Re: I Could Care Less About The Queen's English
I hate the incorrect use of disinterested to take the meaning of uninterested, please let us keep the two meanings separate.
Also the simple incorrect use of "to/too" , or "their/there". How can we be educating students to a basic level without getting these simple ideas correct, when my grandparents had eight years of education , and were able to write such expressions correctly, (and in elegant cursive script).
Don't get me started on affect/effect, and fewer/lesser; as I want to (like) stop grinding my teeth kinda.
Apr '11
Re: I Could Care Less About The Queen's English
tabula rasa, thanks for the great chuckles!
Another word that I hear a lot is "flustrated" when the speaker most certainly means, "frustrated." (It reminds me of "refudiate.")
Jul '11
Re: I Could Care Less About The Queen's English
My 4th comment in less than an hour, but I had to present the mother-of-all-Office-grammar quotes (edited for length):
Ryan Howard: What I really want, honestly Michael, is for you to know it, so that you can communicate it to the people here, to your clients, to whomever.
Michael Scott: It's 'whoever', not 'whomever'.
Ryan Howard: No, it's 'whomever'.
Michael Scott: No, 'whomever' is never actually right.
Jim Halpert: Sometimes it's right.
Creed Bratton: Michael is right. It's a made-up word used to trick students.
Andy Bernard: No. Actually, 'whomever' is the formal version of the word.
Pam Beesly: It's 'whom' when it's the object of the sentence and 'who' when it's the subject.
Stanley: How did Ryan use it, as an object?
Ryan Howard: As an object.
Kelly Kapoor: Ryan used *me* as an object.
Pam Beesly: How did he use it again?
Toby Flenderson: It was... Ryan wanted Michael, the subject, to explain the computer system, the object...
Michael Scott: Thank you!
Toby Flenderson: - to whomever, meaning us, the indirect object... which is the correct usage of the word.
May '10
Re: I Could Care Less About The Queen's English
Paul DeRocco:
"It is what it is" -- English (or American) for "Que sera sera".
I wouldn't be surprised if many, or even most, languages have a variation of that expression.
Dec '10
Re: I Could Care Less About The Queen's English
Andrew Klavan: Hilarious video, but I have to go with James on "I could care less." The Brits are always accusing Americans of having no sense of irony, but it's clearly the ironic or sarcastic version of I couldn't care less. Like saying, "Right. I care."
My wife and I have a running disagreement over "It is what it is," which she hates but I rather like for its tone of tragic-but-heroic resignation. Hate to disagree with my wife because she's so often right... but it is what it is. · Jul 21 at 9:23am
"I could care less" is shorthand for "As if I could care less," or the more stylish, "I could care less -- no, wait, I couldn't."
"It is what it is" is overused. It is useful to convey an existential sense that the thing or situation being discussed needs no further explanation or justification, that its extrinsic charateristics in fact reveal all its intrinsic characteristics. That happens less than most people think it does.
Dec '10
Re: I Could Care Less About The Queen's English
Aaron Miller
Paul DeRocco:
"It is what it is" -- English (or American) for "Que sera sera".
I wouldn't be surprised if many, or even most, languages have a variation of that expression. · Jul 21 at 9:49am
I don't equate the two.
"Que sera, sera" indicates that we are adrift in the flow of time and not nearly as in control of our fates as we like to imagine.
"It is what it is" should only apply to things or situations that must be dealt with in the present and based on their obvious surface characteristics. It might be parallel to "Res ipsa loquitur."
Dec '10
Re: I Could Care Less About The Queen's English
They are different because in "last best hope" the two superlatives both modify "hope," whereas in "least worst option," "least" modifies "worst." Since "worst" is a superlative, there is only one worst option: the phrase was and should have remained the "least bad option."
Jun '11
Re: I Could Care Less About The Queen's English
I agree that "Que sera, sera" is not at all the same as "It is what it is"; the latter is realistic, not resigned or fatalistic. I 'm going to go find out what "Res ipsa loquitur" means now.
Jul '10
Re: I Could Care Less About The Queen's English
Louie Rhett: I am surprised that no one has yet mentioned the abusive overuse of "like." I teach junior high students and am probably overexposed to this one.
· Jul 21 at 12:26am
Edited on Jul 21 at 12:28 am
How about speech that is littered with "yaknow?"
"yaknow? yaknow? yaknow? yaknow?"
Makes My ears bleed.
Every time I hear someone say that I answer in the affirmative or negative. Throws them off every time, because they don't hear themselves saying it.
"Quit interrupting me!"
"Quit asking me if I know?"
Mar '11
Re: I Could Care Less About The Queen's English
Please don't pick on my idol, George V. Higgins. He got a pretty good title for a novel out of the expression (minus the definite articles).
Pseudodionysius: Solitary confinement for the next person to say:
"At the end of the day" · Jul 20 at 10:15pm