It's how we got ask and wasp instead of axe and waps.
Which is for the best because if someone said there was a bunch of waps on my front porch I'd like to know what I'm about to get into.
Tangentially, but it's also how we got the word "pea".
You may have heard:
*Pease pudding hot /
Pease pudding cold /
Pease pudding in the pot /
Nine days old*
That isn't a typo, as the word was originally **pease** - and the plural was peases. But, because the common way to pluralize words generally was to end them in an S sound, this confused people into thinking pease was the plural form, giving birth to the simple singular: pea.
Following that tangent a little further, you can see how this same language confusion carries over in modern speakers with the rules for possessive nouns. To say things like "that is James's" is correct, but people get confused about the apostrophe rule as it applies to plural nouns, so some will type things like James'. To note, the "leave the s off" rule *only ever* applies when dealing with pluralized nouns, regardless of what letter a singular noun ends with.
Wait.. so:
- First name James possessive form is James's, so "That is James's car."
- Last name James, referring to a family, in possessive form is James', so "That is the James' car."
Correct?
Oh you sweet summer child. Based on how stupid people are these days, I fear we're about a decade away from "could of" becoming a valid version of "could've".
>Just wait till "your" and "you're" become interchangeable in a few decades
There's no reason a contraction needs to have an apostrophe. It's purely a stylistic choice. For example in Spanish and Portuguese they just spell out contractions as they're pronounced
All right -> Alright
The latter used to be incorrect. This was hammered to some of us back in the day.
I understand that languages morph and evolve over time, but some of those changes are literally a majority of people doing something incorrectly until there is a acquiescence of sorts.
The thing is that… it’s not incorrect.
A language is the way a group of people communicate. Like the way we speak is the way the rules are written. Like the dictionary isn’t there to say what’s wrong or right, it’s there to say what words there ARE. So nobody is doing anything “incorrectly”, but rather it’s how languages work.
This is such a common misconception people have.
There is no incorrect way to speak informally. There is, however, a correct way to speak formally. Of course, formal speech evolves just as informal speech would. Thus is the nature of languages.
Allowing informal speech to evolve while leaving formal speech rigid leads to them eventually becoming different languages and it being an actual problem where only wealthy people with the ability to spend time and money to learn formal speech almost as a foreign language get the opportunities associated with it. A ton of effort is also wasted by these people (or by all people if it's accessible enough) just to do this.
This has happened many times for many languages.
Except "literally" is now officially used for conflicting purposes. - Which is bizarre considering language is supposed to be a tool for communication, and in this instance it's literally useless.
I mean, there are a lot of words that can mean both one thing and the opposite.
Sanction (to approve an activity or to specifically disapprove [economic] activity)
Oversight (to ensure something happens or to forget to do something)
Fast (to move quickly or to secure something so it doesn't move)
Clip (to sever something or to secure something to another thing)
>Except "literally" is now officially used for conflicting purposes. - Which is bizarre considering language is supposed to be a tool for communication, and in this instance it's literally useless.
Except it's *literally* not an issue because any native English speaker can understand when you mean something *literally* or not unless they *literally* don't have a brain.
I've never heard of anyone being confused by someone's usage of "literally" except for when they're deliberately being pedantic
Especially since there are mqny, many examples of literally being used figuratively for some three hundred years, and people have been complaining about the figurative use the entire time.
Meanwhile we have words like Clip (Clip it togethe/Clip that branch), Custom (This is the custom handed down for generations/I got a custom designed, one-of-a-kind guitar), Dust (Dust the shelves to clean them/A light dusting of powdered sugar), Out (The stars are out, you can see them so clearly/Power is out,, no one can see anything) and so on have been around for a long time and no one complains about them.
Interestingly it did come up in a defamation suit against Rachel Maddow. She had said on air of OANN, a right-wing news network, that they were "really literally Russian propaganda" or something very close to that. The suit ended up getting dismissed before trial.
Ironically is another good word, nobody is confused about what you meant if you ironically used it wrong. Language succeeds yet again in getting the overall point across. (Or acrost.)
It's literally not bizarre whatsoever because hyperbole, sarcasm, exaggeration, etc are all normal and common uses of languages since the dawn of history.
At the time when Latin and Sanskrit were spoken there were many different dialects of each language and both evolved over time. What we have today just happens to be the version of the language that was written down and preserved through religion. Looking at period pieces you’ll find differences in word usage and spelling. What is “correct” and “incorrect” is entirely subjective and depends on the who wrote it/spoke it, when and where it was spoken/written, and the context surrounding it. The notion of a language being “right” or “wrong” is a social construct decided by a community.
I don't remember their names but there were two European aristocrats that had only communicated through letters that they wrote to each other in Latin before the met, since it was the only language they both spoke. When they finally met with the intention of marriage, they found that they spoke dialects of Latin that were so different they couldn't understand each other.
In addition to this, a lot of what we know about spoken Latin comes from the Roman equivalent of Grammar Nazis, who wrote documents complaining that common people drop their Hs or mispronounce certain words in certain ways. Some of these comments were included in books designed to help the reader appear higher social class than they really were (think *My Fair Lady*, but a written primer). "Don't talk in this way otherwise people will know you're common" sort of thing.
Romans would find medieval and ecclesiastical Latin to be all sorts of wrong but even in the classic period they would complain constantly and repeatedly between generations about how people weren’t speaking correctly.
The ancient Romans would often also bang on about the superiority of Greek (but usually _only_ Attic Greek) and bemoan how unsophisticated Latin was.
This entire thread is just carrying on a many thousand year old conversation and there is only one constant in it all: the prescriptivists never win.
It perfectly fits the pattern of other English words, however, like "already" (coming from "all ready"), "almost" (coming from "all most"), and "always" (coming from "all ways"). In addition, "alright" is not interchangeable with "all right" in many contexts - "his answers were all right" is more ambiguous than "his answers were alright" ("all right" could mean "all correct" or "decent," while "alright" only means the latter). That is, "alright" can't simply be dismissed as an improper transcription when you can change the meaning of a clause by using it in place of "all right."
The opposition to "alright" as a word comes from it being a more recent development than those other words, rather than anything inherent in its nature.
Yeah. Contractions like these happen all the time, so I'm willing to accept that these evolutions occur. It used to be on spelling tests for me in school, and the teachers were adamant about the two word spelling.
I will, however, never let the misuse of a constructive gerund ever slide! I will die on this hill! :P
> "his answers were all right" is more ambiguous than "his answers were alright" ("all right" could mean "all correct" or "decent," while "alright" only means the latter).
And that's without mentioning the obvious joke-like "all right" as in the direction. 99% of the time that distinction is useless, sure, unless you're trying to direct someone through a maze.
next thing you'll tell me is that bastardizing All Correct as Oll Korrect *and THEN* being so goddamn lazy that you shorten it to just OK *AND THEN* having the *audacity* to insinuate "okay" is an actual *word* is now somehow *ACCEPTABLE?!*
the world 'literally' is has been getting used more figuratively slowly with time
nobody saying "i literally just came here 5 seconds ago" means that they came 5 seconds ago in the room, but that they haven't been in the place that long
that's a cultural affectation not the actual meaning of the word. we all know when someone uses the word literally wrong that they aren't actually using it for its real meaning.
like when someone says "i could care less" vs "i couldn't care less" . both saying's have the same meaning despitethe fact taht if they are literally translated they have the exact opposite meaning. the later is obviously the more correct saying. but "i could care less" is commonly said despite it literally being wrong.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the second definition of the world Literally is this: “in effect : VIRTUALLY —used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is not literally true or possible”
It’s not just a cultural affectation, it is the actual meaning of the word.
I don't get why people have hangups over this. It's just comedic exaggeration, not people using the word wrong. The only reason it works is *because* everyone knows what it means and *because* it is being used correctly, with its usual definition, to *exaggerate*.
In Spanish the word for Bat is "Murcielago", but many people doesnt get it right often, so they say "Murciegalo" and the RAE (Real Academia Española) literally went: I'll allow it...
Actually, the word was included because it is the etymological term, the original word. However, due to linguistic metathesis, it morphed into "murciélago".
The RAE states that they included the word for historical reasons but strongly discourages its use. ☝️🤓
"comprised of" being accepted even though it means "composed of of." I think most editors will changed "comprised of" to "composed of" or "comprising" but the seemingly nonsensical one is still technically acceptable.
Decimate.
It was a Roman military punishment where every tenth soldier was killed, hence the Latin prefix "deci", meaning 10.
Now it means pretty much opposite, large scale reduction or harm.
It’s not in the dictionary yet, but Reddit is going to ensure that “woah” becomes an accepted variation of the word “whoa.” Look it up. For now, one is right and one is wrong.
> *Paid* / Paid.
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
> of the *paid-not-paid* bot.
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Yeah this one was relatively recent and ticked me off a bit at first lol, because it’s literally just defined as “regardless”. But what can you do, language evolves, no sense in getting bent out of shape over it xD
Fun facts from Merriam webster:
> Irregardless
First Known Use: 1795
A somewhat snarky FAQ about the word:
> Is irregardless a word?
Yes. It may not be a word that you like, or a word that you would use in a term paper, but irregardless certainly is a word. It has been in use for well over 200 years, employed by a large number of people across a wide geographic range and with a consistent meaning. That is why we, and well-nigh every other dictionary of modern English, define this word. Remember that a definition is not an endorsement of a word’s use.
Another good example is nonplussed. Originally it meant bewildered, perplexed, or unsure, but I guess the *non* part of nonplussed was kind of counterintuitive or whatever, so people were using it to mean something wildly different.
Eventually it took on the second meaning as well. Now, nonplussed can officially mean either bewildered, perplexed, unsure. **Or** unfazed, unaffected, unimpressed. And it's up to the context to give clues about its meaning. LOL
Not exactly a dictionary example, but the term Daylight Saving Time.
People kept saying Daylight SAVINGS Time and now it's so common that it's believed to be more prevalent than the actual term. It's not something that we ambiguously adopted, it was legislated, so we have a record of when it was introduced and how it is spelled.
We're saving daylight, not opening a savings account.
Take the daylight out of the start and say it and see how it sounds:
Savings Time
Saving Time
Forte
The word meaning an area of expertise is supposed to be pronounced like the word fort, but people usually say it like for-tay so that has essentially become the more common acceptable way.
My first thought when I read the caption was the word "I's."
Real, educated friends of mine are typing out phrases like "my husband and I's cat" in a formal setting. How did it get to this?
It's like the rule of "and I" was beaten into an entire generation to such an extent that they just forgot all other grammar.
If you get rid of the other person the sentence sounds weird “me went to the shops” vs “I went to the shops” “he passed the ball to John and I” vs “he passed the ball to I” it sounds weird
I was just taught that this was the polite way of saying it, and that doing it the other way was being rude since you were putting the importance on yourself.
I was taught that you use whichever you’d use on its own
I’m going to the store so my friends and I or I and my friends are going to the store
The food is for me so it’s for me and my friends or my friends and me
The way to remember is to remove the other people from the sentence and see if it still sounds right:
"me and my friends went out" -> "me went out" = wrong
"my friends and I went out" -> "I went out" = correct
Maybe the other replies hear different English, but no native would say "I and" in my experience. Grammatical rules describe, not prescribe, so I'd say it's incorrect by nature of no native accepting it as correct-sounding.
Putting your pronoun after others' is a matter of politeness and has nothing to do with grammar.
It depends on whether the pronoun phrase is the subject or object of the sentence. Any time a sentence involves you and your friends, consider what the sentence would be if it were just you.
"_____ are going to the movies" (subject)
"_I_ am going to the movies"
"_My friends and I_ are going to the movies"
"My mom drove _____ to the movies" (object)
"My mom drove _me_ to the movies"
"My mom drove _me and my friends_ to the movies"
fun fact, literally was used figuratively before the book on grammar was written, for example authors like Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and F Scott Fitzgerald used it figuratively.
in this thread: Reddit discovers language change
one of the many historical examples: some monk dude who was really into Latin in the 10th century was complaining how more and more people around him made more and more mistakes, and they were all the same ones! and they were so stupid! how could they?! so he made a list of common ‚mistakes‘ he heard over and over again. nowadays, that‘s one of the earliest records of French
Lmao thats interesting, French starts out as people "mispronouncing" stuff, and a couple centuries later non French people are the ones mispronouncing everything when trying to speak French, the French have won again, fuck those guys
wait.. you mean language changes over time and dictionary's regularly update their content to reflect how that language has changed over time?
SHOCKED PIKACHU FACE!!!!!!
fuckin duh, the silliness is all these dictionaries adding slang words and incorrect usages as official terms barely a year after they become commonplace…just to go viral. it’s pathetic “hello fellow kids” behavior
lol perfect example. for 15 years not a single day has gone by without some rascal saying “swag” somewhere on this earth, so i can see the argument for its inclusion whether i enjoy that word or not…but the oxford dictionary hopping on “goblin mode” just because some popular twitch streamers had been saying it for about half a year, that just seems bleak. like let’s maybe wait and see whether these silly words have legs before deciding to immortalize them as part of the *english language*
I have trudged through a lot of absolutes and typos just to find someone else aware of "Prescriptivism vs Descriptivism."
[TED video](https://youtu.be/Wn_eBrIDUuc)
Put simply: Written vs Verbal matters, as well as Native vs Foreign [language].
I no longer know for sure which meaning to apply for “peek/pique/peak” without reading the sentence/paragraph carefully as often at least 2/3 will “fit”.
if it wasn't like that, people in Spain and Italy and Portugal would still be speaking classic Latin, as all Romanic languages derive from mispoken Latin. So people kept fucking up and fucking up until it became different languages.
Just wait till "your" and "you're" become interchangeable in a few decades
[удалено]
3. Yer a Wizard, Harry
Imma wot?
I'm Secretary of State, brought to you by Carl's Jr.
Funnily enough, it's pronounced more like "umma wat?"
Actually no it was “EYE-MUH WHAAUGHT?”
U a wizzad innit
Harry, yer a wizard
Yer a Harry wizard
brrrrrrrrttt
my da beats yer da
Yes and ya. Yer a fuck and ya shits ready to pick up.
Spotted the Scottish guy
*your're
*Y'roue.
*youy’re
\*Your'you'r'yre
Theiy're it is!
Iyersan't
Or yous. - Yous a fuck - Yous a wizard, Harry - Yous piano is out of tune, Harry
In my country, a lot of people would use it like this "What time will yous be there?", "Oh sweet, can I get a ride with yous?"
It's how we got ask and wasp instead of axe and waps. Which is for the best because if someone said there was a bunch of waps on my front porch I'd like to know what I'm about to get into.
i mean id assume you are about to get into some waps. it might help to bring a bucket and a mop, or so ive been told.
fuck you take my upvote see you in hell
Tangentially, but it's also how we got the word "pea". You may have heard: *Pease pudding hot / Pease pudding cold / Pease pudding in the pot / Nine days old* That isn't a typo, as the word was originally **pease** - and the plural was peases. But, because the common way to pluralize words generally was to end them in an S sound, this confused people into thinking pease was the plural form, giving birth to the simple singular: pea. Following that tangent a little further, you can see how this same language confusion carries over in modern speakers with the rules for possessive nouns. To say things like "that is James's" is correct, but people get confused about the apostrophe rule as it applies to plural nouns, so some will type things like James'. To note, the "leave the s off" rule *only ever* applies when dealing with pluralized nouns, regardless of what letter a singular noun ends with.
Fantastic little TIL moment nice
Wait.. so: - First name James possessive form is James's, so "That is James's car." - Last name James, referring to a family, in possessive form is James', so "That is the James' car." Correct?
Oh you sweet summer child. Based on how stupid people are these days, I fear we're about a decade away from "could of" becoming a valid version of "could've".
Ur
Umm ackshually (🤓) ur is for your. To use you’re abbreviated, you would use u’r. >!Source: I made it up.!<
“What is your source senator?” “My source is I made it the fuck up!”
My source: It was revealed to me in a dream.
*ur
*u'r
ur’r
send this man to my basement
I should of see that coming
>Just wait till "your" and "you're" become interchangeable in a few decades There's no reason a contraction needs to have an apostrophe. It's purely a stylistic choice. For example in Spanish and Portuguese they just spell out contractions as they're pronounced
I don't know about Portuguese, but Spanish spells out *everything* as it's pronounced, barring non-hispanicized loanwords.
*ur
Please no
What's an example of this?
All right -> Alright The latter used to be incorrect. This was hammered to some of us back in the day. I understand that languages morph and evolve over time, but some of those changes are literally a majority of people doing something incorrectly until there is a acquiescence of sorts.
The thing is that… it’s not incorrect. A language is the way a group of people communicate. Like the way we speak is the way the rules are written. Like the dictionary isn’t there to say what’s wrong or right, it’s there to say what words there ARE. So nobody is doing anything “incorrectly”, but rather it’s how languages work. This is such a common misconception people have.
There is no incorrect way to speak informally. There is, however, a correct way to speak formally. Of course, formal speech evolves just as informal speech would. Thus is the nature of languages.
Allowing informal speech to evolve while leaving formal speech rigid leads to them eventually becoming different languages and it being an actual problem where only wealthy people with the ability to spend time and money to learn formal speech almost as a foreign language get the opportunities associated with it. A ton of effort is also wasted by these people (or by all people if it's accessible enough) just to do this. This has happened many times for many languages.
See: Arabic
Formal is just informal from a long time ago.
Well, no
But actually yes.
So...pray tell how "formal" languages are formed.
The fact that you speak modern English enans that yeah it's true.
Except "literally" is now officially used for conflicting purposes. - Which is bizarre considering language is supposed to be a tool for communication, and in this instance it's literally useless.
I mean, there are a lot of words that can mean both one thing and the opposite. Sanction (to approve an activity or to specifically disapprove [economic] activity) Oversight (to ensure something happens or to forget to do something) Fast (to move quickly or to secure something so it doesn't move) Clip (to sever something or to secure something to another thing)
These words are called autoantonyms.
I've always known them as contranyms.
It seems both of them are synonyms.
Thanks for teaching me another term for them.
I just want to chime in to say that I never thought about this before and it's really cool!
Bi-weekly (occuring twice per week or once every two weeks) This kinda fits, but it's not really opposite.
>Except "literally" is now officially used for conflicting purposes. - Which is bizarre considering language is supposed to be a tool for communication, and in this instance it's literally useless. Except it's *literally* not an issue because any native English speaker can understand when you mean something *literally* or not unless they *literally* don't have a brain. I've never heard of anyone being confused by someone's usage of "literally" except for when they're deliberately being pedantic
Especially since there are mqny, many examples of literally being used figuratively for some three hundred years, and people have been complaining about the figurative use the entire time. Meanwhile we have words like Clip (Clip it togethe/Clip that branch), Custom (This is the custom handed down for generations/I got a custom designed, one-of-a-kind guitar), Dust (Dust the shelves to clean them/A light dusting of powdered sugar), Out (The stars are out, you can see them so clearly/Power is out,, no one can see anything) and so on have been around for a long time and no one complains about them.
Interestingly it did come up in a defamation suit against Rachel Maddow. She had said on air of OANN, a right-wing news network, that they were "really literally Russian propaganda" or something very close to that. The suit ended up getting dismissed before trial.
Ironically is another good word, nobody is confused about what you meant if you ironically used it wrong. Language succeeds yet again in getting the overall point across. (Or acrost.)
It's literally not bizarre whatsoever because hyperbole, sarcasm, exaggeration, etc are all normal and common uses of languages since the dawn of history.
That’s like saying “dead” is a useless word now…
So it's a Contronym?
Tell that to Latin and Sanskrit
At the time when Latin and Sanskrit were spoken there were many different dialects of each language and both evolved over time. What we have today just happens to be the version of the language that was written down and preserved through religion. Looking at period pieces you’ll find differences in word usage and spelling. What is “correct” and “incorrect” is entirely subjective and depends on the who wrote it/spoke it, when and where it was spoken/written, and the context surrounding it. The notion of a language being “right” or “wrong” is a social construct decided by a community.
I don't remember their names but there were two European aristocrats that had only communicated through letters that they wrote to each other in Latin before the met, since it was the only language they both spoke. When they finally met with the intention of marriage, they found that they spoke dialects of Latin that were so different they couldn't understand each other.
In addition to this, a lot of what we know about spoken Latin comes from the Roman equivalent of Grammar Nazis, who wrote documents complaining that common people drop their Hs or mispronounce certain words in certain ways. Some of these comments were included in books designed to help the reader appear higher social class than they really were (think *My Fair Lady*, but a written primer). "Don't talk in this way otherwise people will know you're common" sort of thing.
Romans would find medieval and ecclesiastical Latin to be all sorts of wrong but even in the classic period they would complain constantly and repeatedly between generations about how people weren’t speaking correctly. The ancient Romans would often also bang on about the superiority of Greek (but usually _only_ Attic Greek) and bemoan how unsophisticated Latin was. This entire thread is just carrying on a many thousand year old conversation and there is only one constant in it all: the prescriptivists never win.
It perfectly fits the pattern of other English words, however, like "already" (coming from "all ready"), "almost" (coming from "all most"), and "always" (coming from "all ways"). In addition, "alright" is not interchangeable with "all right" in many contexts - "his answers were all right" is more ambiguous than "his answers were alright" ("all right" could mean "all correct" or "decent," while "alright" only means the latter). That is, "alright" can't simply be dismissed as an improper transcription when you can change the meaning of a clause by using it in place of "all right." The opposition to "alright" as a word comes from it being a more recent development than those other words, rather than anything inherent in its nature.
Yeah. Contractions like these happen all the time, so I'm willing to accept that these evolutions occur. It used to be on spelling tests for me in school, and the teachers were adamant about the two word spelling. I will, however, never let the misuse of a constructive gerund ever slide! I will die on this hill! :P
> "his answers were all right" is more ambiguous than "his answers were alright" ("all right" could mean "all correct" or "decent," while "alright" only means the latter). And that's without mentioning the obvious joke-like "all right" as in the direction. 99% of the time that distinction is useless, sure, unless you're trying to direct someone through a maze.
next thing you'll tell me is that bastardizing All Correct as Oll Korrect *and THEN* being so goddamn lazy that you shorten it to just OK *AND THEN* having the *audacity* to insinuate "okay" is an actual *word* is now somehow *ACCEPTABLE?!*
K
“Incorrectly” isn’t the right idea. People dictate language, if that’s the way most people use it, then it’s correct
the world 'literally' is has been getting used more figuratively slowly with time nobody saying "i literally just came here 5 seconds ago" means that they came 5 seconds ago in the room, but that they haven't been in the place that long
Mark Twain used "Literally" in that matter.
He was following a [then-200-year-old](https://www.thecut.com/2018/01/the-300-year-history-of-using-literally-figuratively.html) tradition.
that's a cultural affectation not the actual meaning of the word. we all know when someone uses the word literally wrong that they aren't actually using it for its real meaning. like when someone says "i could care less" vs "i couldn't care less" . both saying's have the same meaning despitethe fact taht if they are literally translated they have the exact opposite meaning. the later is obviously the more correct saying. but "i could care less" is commonly said despite it literally being wrong.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the second definition of the world Literally is this: “in effect : VIRTUALLY —used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is not literally true or possible” It’s not just a cultural affectation, it is the actual meaning of the word.
It's literally describing hyperbole
Exactly. The first definition means "without exaggeration" and the second definition means "to exaggerate"
I don't get why people have hangups over this. It's just comedic exaggeration, not people using the word wrong. The only reason it works is *because* everyone knows what it means and *because* it is being used correctly, with its usual definition, to *exaggerate*.
In Spanish the word for Bat is "Murcielago", but many people doesnt get it right often, so they say "Murciegalo" and the RAE (Real Academia Española) literally went: I'll allow it...
Actually, the word was included because it is the etymological term, the original word. However, due to linguistic metathesis, it morphed into "murciélago". The RAE states that they included the word for historical reasons but strongly discourages its use. ☝️🤓
Oh 😯
So the Lambo is literally called the "Lamborghini Bat"? I did not know this, and that's kinda cool lol!
The same RAE that accepts “whiskey” written as “güisqui”
Really? I rarely seen that one. It sounds like guisquil tbh
"comprised of" being accepted even though it means "composed of of." I think most editors will changed "comprised of" to "composed of" or "comprising" but the seemingly nonsensical one is still technically acceptable.
comprised've
Whenever I come across “comprised” when I’m reviewing a document at work, I swap it out because I am sick of looking up the correct usage.
Decimate. It was a Roman military punishment where every tenth soldier was killed, hence the Latin prefix "deci", meaning 10. Now it means pretty much opposite, large scale reduction or harm.
It’s not in the dictionary yet, but Reddit is going to ensure that “woah” becomes an accepted variation of the word “whoa.” Look it up. For now, one is right and one is wrong.
Payed / Paid. The amount of people using the first to mean the second is shocking
> *Paid* / Paid. FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Thank you bot but I'm afraid you've lost the battle and now your watch is over.
Good bot
I think this is my favorite appearance of the paid-not-payed bot.
> of the *paid-not-paid* bot. FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Sorry, the paid-not-paid bot.
Irregardless
Yeah this one was relatively recent and ticked me off a bit at first lol, because it’s literally just defined as “regardless”. But what can you do, language evolves, no sense in getting bent out of shape over it xD
Fun facts from Merriam webster: > Irregardless First Known Use: 1795 A somewhat snarky FAQ about the word: > Is irregardless a word? Yes. It may not be a word that you like, or a word that you would use in a term paper, but irregardless certainly is a word. It has been in use for well over 200 years, employed by a large number of people across a wide geographic range and with a consistent meaning. That is why we, and well-nigh every other dictionary of modern English, define this word. Remember that a definition is not an endorsement of a word’s use.
I heard they did it with „irregardless“. It’s been a while though(ongoing for over a hundred years) and still somewhat disputed.
Another good example is nonplussed. Originally it meant bewildered, perplexed, or unsure, but I guess the *non* part of nonplussed was kind of counterintuitive or whatever, so people were using it to mean something wildly different. Eventually it took on the second meaning as well. Now, nonplussed can officially mean either bewildered, perplexed, unsure. **Or** unfazed, unaffected, unimpressed. And it's up to the context to give clues about its meaning. LOL
Nonplussed is a great one lol. Every time I read it in a book I have to guess from the context which definition they mean
Not exactly a dictionary example, but the term Daylight Saving Time. People kept saying Daylight SAVINGS Time and now it's so common that it's believed to be more prevalent than the actual term. It's not something that we ambiguously adopted, it was legislated, so we have a record of when it was introduced and how it is spelled. We're saving daylight, not opening a savings account. Take the daylight out of the start and say it and see how it sounds: Savings Time Saving Time
Forte The word meaning an area of expertise is supposed to be pronounced like the word fort, but people usually say it like for-tay so that has essentially become the more common acceptable way.
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Because dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive.
I'm sad that I had to scroll down so far to see that comment...
Thank you!
"Me and my friends"
As a non native speaker, what's the problem?
My friends and I
Thanks
Depends if it’s at the start or the end, subject or object. My friends and I will watch a movie. George will watch with my friends and me.
It’s not gibberish if enough people say it. 
My first thought when I read the caption was the word "I's." Real, educated friends of mine are typing out phrases like "my husband and I's cat" in a formal setting. How did it get to this? It's like the rule of "and I" was beaten into an entire generation to such an extent that they just forgot all other grammar.
If you get rid of the other person the sentence sounds weird “me went to the shops” vs “I went to the shops” “he passed the ball to John and I” vs “he passed the ball to I” it sounds weird
I was just taught that this was the polite way of saying it, and that doing it the other way was being rude since you were putting the importance on yourself.
I was taught that you use whichever you’d use on its own I’m going to the store so my friends and I or I and my friends are going to the store The food is for me so it’s for me and my friends or my friends and me
The way to remember is to remove the other people from the sentence and see if it still sounds right: "me and my friends went out" -> "me went out" = wrong "my friends and I went out" -> "I went out" = correct
Would it be correct to say "I and my friends went out" then?
It would be, grammatically speaking, though convention is to put "I" last.
Yes, but a more typical structure would be "I went out with my friends"
Maybe the other replies hear different English, but no native would say "I and" in my experience. Grammatical rules describe, not prescribe, so I'd say it's incorrect by nature of no native accepting it as correct-sounding.
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Putting your pronoun after others' is a matter of politeness and has nothing to do with grammar. It depends on whether the pronoun phrase is the subject or object of the sentence. Any time a sentence involves you and your friends, consider what the sentence would be if it were just you. "_____ are going to the movies" (subject) "_I_ am going to the movies" "_My friends and I_ are going to the movies" "My mom drove _____ to the movies" (object) "My mom drove _me_ to the movies" "My mom drove _me and my friends_ to the movies"
Sometimes it's correct. "Will you do this for me and my friends?" is correct.
Because the 'me' is the object in that sentence, not the subject. 'You' is the subject.
I think they know
"My friends and I are hanging out" "They shoved me and my friends" Is this correct? I'm non native and still haven't figured out which is right
Norwegians using the skj sound when your supposed to use the kj sound 🤢🤮
Så fint skjede du har rundt halsen.
I smell an insult in this response, am I right?
Not an insult - much worse. A pun.
Literally
fun fact, literally was used figuratively before the book on grammar was written, for example authors like Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and F Scott Fitzgerald used it figuratively.
Some of the best writers of all time literally misused the word
in this thread: Reddit discovers language change one of the many historical examples: some monk dude who was really into Latin in the 10th century was complaining how more and more people around him made more and more mistakes, and they were all the same ones! and they were so stupid! how could they?! so he made a list of common ‚mistakes‘ he heard over and over again. nowadays, that‘s one of the earliest records of French
Lmao thats interesting, French starts out as people "mispronouncing" stuff, and a couple centuries later non French people are the ones mispronouncing everything when trying to speak French, the French have won again, fuck those guys
wait.. you mean language changes over time and dictionary's regularly update their content to reflect how that language has changed over time? SHOCKED PIKACHU FACE!!!!!!
Thou art mistaken. The essence of the jest lies not in the perpetual flux of tongue, but in the lamentable ubiquity of foolish speech.
This guy talks
fuckin duh, the silliness is all these dictionaries adding slang words and incorrect usages as official terms barely a year after they become commonplace…just to go viral. it’s pathetic “hello fellow kids” behavior
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lol perfect example. for 15 years not a single day has gone by without some rascal saying “swag” somewhere on this earth, so i can see the argument for its inclusion whether i enjoy that word or not…but the oxford dictionary hopping on “goblin mode” just because some popular twitch streamers had been saying it for about half a year, that just seems bleak. like let’s maybe wait and see whether these silly words have legs before deciding to immortalize them as part of the *english language*
Wow someone should of told me, I wouldn't of bought all these dictionaries
I sincerely hope "should of" never gets added. That's just using the wrong word due to ignorance.
Language has never been a static format, rather it has always dynamically changed as the users change it.
Moreover, the dictionary describes language, it doesn't define it. It's like blaming a doctor for giving you flu when he writes your diagnosis
I wish more people understood that about books...
It amazes me how so many people fail to understand that simple concept.
Language evolves constantly, one of the reason there are extinct Languages is because they Evolved over time into new distinct ones.
Redditors discover descriptivism
I have trudged through a lot of absolutes and typos just to find someone else aware of "Prescriptivism vs Descriptivism." [TED video](https://youtu.be/Wn_eBrIDUuc) Put simply: Written vs Verbal matters, as well as Native vs Foreign [language].
I know that but I will still fight against should of and would of until my last breath.
All words are made up anyways looool
People who write "should of" instead of "should've": I will exchange all the parmesan on your pasta with smegma while you're not looking.
That's literally how language works...how it's most commonly used \*is\* the rule and all rules are subject to change.
Waiting for the day "Let him cook" becomes something I can write in a formal letter.
You can do that now. The only thing stopping you is fear.
Formal rules change slower because all the pendants get enough power to exert pressure against the change.
If it's general use, then it's not a mistake. They should teach linguistics' basics at high school
So true "Words and symbols don't have meaning" is communication 101
Last I checked, language wasn't controlled by some "authority" that decides what you can and cannot say.
Cry in french.
Some languages are. German recently added a new letter!
If the majority of society agrees, they are the authority
You know fr no cap boss that this has been happening forever af. The prob is that we didn't have the internet to check us on it.
I hate this alot....
I mean, what are they gonna do even if they don’t allow it? Dictionaries don’t dictate language, they just record it.
That is how dictionaries work , they are descriptive rather than prescriptive.
That's how languages work, lmao
That's....that's how languages work....like all of them....
Dictionaries just document the evolution of language, they don't dictate anything.
Soon saying “would of” and “could of” will be proper grammar and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Definition follows usage. Language is fluid
I desperately hope Lose and Loose don't become interchangeable
You ain’t wrong
This is to many for me too handle
I also dislike it. But it's a natural process for the development and evolution of languages.
It was on accident
I no longer know for sure which meaning to apply for “peek/pique/peak” without reading the sentence/paragraph carefully as often at least 2/3 will “fit”.
happens or to forget
irregardless
if it wasn't like that, people in Spain and Italy and Portugal would still be speaking classic Latin, as all Romanic languages derive from mispoken Latin. So people kept fucking up and fucking up until it became different languages.
People in Belgium got “als” mixed up with “dan” and now it’s considered correct Dutch.
Isn’t that just how language evolves?
Dictionaries don’t allow or disallow anything, they just report the way words are being used.
The best part of this thread is all the people who are mad at you but can't spell.