3 Cultural Facts That You Hate When People Get Wrong

noiseradio · Post by **noiseradio** » Tue Oct 21, 2003 10:15 am

"Irregardless"

"Exemplarary"

"I had went" (or "ran" or "ate" or any other past participle used in this way).

miss buenos aires · Post by **miss buenos aires** » Tue Oct 21, 2003 10:21 am

I actually don't mind as much when people just make mistakes (cf "I had went"). It's when they're trying to be ultra-correct and still can't get it right that it bugs me. Like "David met Stacy and I at the restaurant." David met I? It annoys me so much more than "me and Stacy met David at the restaurant."

verbal gymnastics · Post by **verbal gymnastics** » Tue Oct 21, 2003 10:39 am

I hate it when people write ect. for et cetera and it's instead of its (or vice versa).

But then I am pedantic.

Not exactly cultural facts though.

mood swung · Post by **mood swung** » Tue Oct 21, 2003 11:22 am

I freed my mind from the slavery of a rigid and structured grammar. Saves on erasers.

DrJ · Post by **DrJ** » Tue Oct 21, 2003 2:47 pm

noiseradio wrote:Coca Cola did not invent Santa Claus, nor did they come up with the idea for the red suit. The way Santa Claus is typically rendered predates the Coca Cola cans by a considerable time. What is true is that Coca Cola popularized the image with its cans. But it's an urban legend that they invented Santa. Take a look at http://www.snopes.com. CLick the "Cokeology" link and see for yourself.

Man, I get annoyed when people say what I've said and leave the same link.

verbal gymnastics wrote:I hate it when people write ect. for et cetera and it's instead of its (or vice versa).

You mean etc.

I love the very pedantic difference between the posessive "its" and the abbreviated "it's=it is". There's a billboard up in Ireland for a spreadable low fat butter and the tag line is "I Could'nt" with the apostrophe in the wrong place. These billboards are all over the country, a bunch of creatives were paid a lot of money to make this campain and nobody noticed. That's worrying, standards are dropping...

Is anyone watching that show "Grumpy Old Men" on BBC2? I'm one of them.

DrJ

LessThanZero · Post by **LessThanZero** » Tue Oct 21, 2003 3:50 pm

You all are some prescriptive sons of bitches! Right Rope?!

A rope leash · Post by **A rope leash** » Tue Oct 21, 2003 4:22 pm

Precisely.

Post by **spooky girlfriend** » Tue Oct 21, 2003 5:08 pm

Wait a minute, Rope and LTZ agreed on something!

Planets are surely about to collide!

DrJ · Post by **DrJ** » Tue Oct 21, 2003 5:38 pm

Yes it is pithy to get all annoyed by grammar what with the war and everything.

DrJ

LessThanZero · Post by **LessThanZero** » Tue Oct 21, 2003 6:15 pm

I agree Dr. J.

I've been listening to a Bob Dylan double-disc greatest hits the last couple of days, and there's all these perfect songs!!!

Boy With A Problem · Post by **Boy With A Problem** » Tue Oct 21, 2003 8:22 pm

1. When people (Tom Brokaw did this the other night) use the phrase - "Deja Vu all over again" - just because it's a Yogism doesn't mean it's not redundant. It was barely funny the first time. And while I'm at it - whenever someone uses the phrase - "It's not your fathers fill in the blank" - it's overused and trite and I see it in the national magazines and the local big city paper at least once a week.

2. Discounting Shemp as viable and funny Stooge. I'll concede that Curly was in a league of his own, but c'mon Shemp is a Howard (Horowitz) and some of the shorts featuring him are hilarious - especially when he plays a drunk. Give it up for Shemp !

3. Another grammatical thing (like I can even spell). Don't you love the liberal and non literal use of the word literally. "I caught Joe Dirt on Cinemax last night and I literally died laughing."

LessThanZero · Post by **LessThanZero** » Tue Oct 21, 2003 8:25 pm

"This isn't your mother's tampon."

I SHOULD HOPE NOT! GROSS!

sulkygirl · Post by **sulkygirl** » Tue Oct 21, 2003 8:27 pm

Boy With A Problem wrote:"I caught Joe Dirt on Cinemax last night and I literally died laughing."

Soooo...

Wouldn't that mean the S.O.B. is dead??
And, if he's dead, how can he say anything??

Boy With A Problem · Post by **Boy With A Problem** » Tue Oct 21, 2003 8:29 pm

I really didn't intend to have you "literally" fill in the blank LTZ.

And thanks for just leaving it at "Deja Vu" on your D&E thread.

Tonight on Pay Per View - "Emoticons Gone Wild"

LessThanZero · Post by **LessThanZero** » Tue Oct 21, 2003 8:33 pm

Boy With A Problem wrote:And thanks for just leaving it at "Deja Vu" on your D&E thread.

Let's call it "The D&E thread". That just sounds kind of gross.

Boy With A Problem · Post by **Boy With A Problem** » Tue Oct 21, 2003 8:37 pm

Suky Girl wrote

Soooo...

Wouldn't that mean the S.O.B. is dead??
And, if he's dead, how can he say anything??

Exactly the point of my rant.

The Macintosh Man · Post by **The Macintosh Man** » Tue Oct 21, 2003 9:57 pm

Two phrases I can not stand because they are so misused: per se, which means intrinsically, but is so often used to mean "that is to say" and;

it begs the question when what people mean is "it raises the question". Begging the question occurs when one uses an unproven statement to argue a point.

noiseradio · Post by **noiseradio** » Tue Oct 21, 2003 11:40 pm

DR. J,

Didn't see the link. I was just trying to elaborate. I had went to that site before, and found it helpful. I wasn't trying to, per se, be redundant. That would be deja vu all over again.

Which begs the question:

How many of these can I cram into one post? Its enough to literally boggle the mind, ect.

LessThanZero · Post by **LessThanZero** » Wed Oct 22, 2003 12:16 am

That's GOLD Jerry! GOLD!

El Vez · Post by **El Vez** » Wed Oct 22, 2003 7:29 am

1. That Canada is a part of the United States. This annoys me to no end. Look, Canada seceded in 1973 over a state's rights dispute when President Polk put the veto kabosh on the single payer plan. Read some history, people!

2. The debate over who invented rock & roll. It wasn't Elvis Presley. It wasn't Chuck Berry. It wasn't when Sam Phillips helmed any obscure song about a rocket and it damn sure wasn't Little Richard! Pat Boone INVENTED rock & roll in 1947 when he wrote and recorded Tootie Fruttie.

3. Another musical misconception is that Bob Dylan polarized the folk audience in 1965 when he "plugged in" during the Newport Folk Festival. By 1965, electric sets at Newport were passe considering that Mississippi John Hurt played the Albanian national anthem with his teeth on an electric guitar way back in 1923 at the first Newport Folk Festival while Donovan was backstage threatening to cut the power chord.

miss buenos aires · Post by **miss buenos aires** » Wed Oct 22, 2003 9:26 am

The Macintosh Man wrote: it begs the question when what people mean is "it raises the question". Begging the question occurs when one uses an unproven statement to argue a point.

Ooh, I'm with you there, Mac.

This is why I get annoyed by poor grammar: it's imprecise. You're not saying exactly what you mean, and anyone can get distracted or misled. It betrays certain limitations, allowing others to discount your argument on the basis of a perceived lack of culture or intelligence. Which brings us back to the war in Iraq (to which DrJ implied that us nitpickers were giving short shrift): look at all the careful grammatical parsing of what Bush did and did not say about imminent threats.

Here's another cultural error that freaks me out: when you see that most Americans believe that Iraqis were among the hijackers in the September 11th attacks, and that there were no Saudis involved.

selfmademug · Post by **selfmademug** » Wed Oct 22, 2003 12:49 pm

I don't care much about grammar as long as people do their best and don't have an attitude about it. And points of particular cultural ignorance I find interesting, but not (usually) loathesome-- e.g. that the 'immaculate conception' refers to the virgin birth. I'm pretty sure that's wrong, cause I was listening that day in Sunday school. The point is, we've all had different sorts and levels of education. I don't tolerate arrogance, but ignorance is not the same thing (granted, they often accompany one another, and I try to give the benefit of the doubt that the former is often based one the latter).

But here's what I don't like: snobbery. I don't like it when people poo-poo something simply because it's popular. As a white upper-middle class person in the '70s you were persona non coola if you so much as admitted to accidentally hearing disco, Abba, the Monkees, loads of stuff people find cool in various forms now. And those are not even good examples; I'm groggy, sorry. A common way people become cool these days is exposing the inherenrt coolness of stuff that was previously seen as uncool: see Tarantino, Quentin. There's this fervency to be ultra, ultra authentic, which in this context usually means clinging tight to some identity you wish you occupied but don't, or which doesn't even exist.
*shakes fist*

OWWW.
I'm probably making no sense... back to my percocet...

bobster · Post by **bobster** » Wed Oct 22, 2003 8:59 pm

I've always been driven crazy about the "literally" thing.

My favorite usage that was quoted from a sports comentator on a football game: "It's literally a dogfight down there!"

Was the commmentor saying that an aerial battle was taking place in the stadium, or that canines were actually engaged in combat?

But my smugness was called to account when I heard NPR resident linquist (admittedly a usage liberal) who said the use of "literally" to mean "really" was actually okay. He found usages from several respected authors, including Mark Twain.

I was literally beside myself!

Misha · Post by **Misha** » Thu Oct 23, 2003 12:19 am

1. That George H.W. Bush won the election.

2. That Arnold has any idea what the hell he is going to do.

3. English screw ups by people who should know better, or by those who don't but have people advising them that do know better, but insist on speaking for themselves anyway. G.H.W. Bush again. In fact it is always entertaining to see him wing-it. You know the speechwriters are slamming back the shots to keep dealing with it.

Also, bad lyric that has been rattling around in my brain for years, can't remember the song:

"Some guy screaming in a leather jacket"--Oh, wait I think it is a Suicidal Tendencies song?--Anyone else see some guy with his face inside of a leather jacket screaming?

noiseradio · Post by **noiseradio** » Thu Oct 23, 2003 11:18 am

George H. W. Bush did win the election. It was, in fact a trouncing. Dukakis didn't even come close.

George W. Bush's election, on the other hand, is more controversial.

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3 Cultural Facts That You Hate When People Get Wrong

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