The weird & wonderful world of English grammar...

Spireman · Club Coach

The weird & wonderful world of English grammar...

Spireman · Club Coach

I don't like 'game' as in football game. It is a match. A game implies something less serious, or a game in tennis making then a set and a match. Now I've started on this thread I could be on here a lot....

christ · Futures level

Spireman wrote:
I don't like 'game' as in football game. It is a match. A game implies something less serious, or a game in tennis making then a set and a match. Now I've started on this thread I could be on here a lot....

This can become a serious issue when conversing with a non-expert. Our club mixed matches consist of two pairs from each team (Pair 1 & Pair 2). Pair 2 plays Pair 1 (& Pair 1 plays Pair 2) in a best of three sets match, then Pair 1 plays Pair 1 (& Pair 2 plays Pair 2).

Thus there are many games making up sets to decide a match - twice - as two matches make up a rubber. Then the same again, as two rubbers make up a match. This can be a bit tricky to explain, even to someone that understands tennis scoring.

christ · Futures level

Spireman wrote:
Autocorrect......On the way home from Cornwall a few years ago my phone corrected a message to say we were 'Having lunch in Nude'

... and this was somehow wrong, is one to assume? Did it incorrectly capitalise nude?

christ · Futures level

christ wrote:
I get unreasonably irritated by people that use the wrong near-homophone (either through ignorance or carelessness). An example being defuse/ diffuse. I suspect that it may be dictation software having similar shortfalls to the autocorrecting phones.

And exacerbate/ exasperate.

Blue_Belle · Club Coach

Kiwi's tend to write or say brought instead of bought. As in, "I brought bread from the shop." Rather than "I bought bread from the shop".

It is horrible!

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

My pet hate is when people say of instead of have. As in: he should have won that match or I couldnt have done that.

It seems to be quite normal to say it now in youngsters of my childrens age and below (20s).

eta - the board corrected my typing here - I put in of and it translated it to have in the two examples above

-- Edited by JonH comes home on Wednesday 17th of January 2024 11:49:10 PM

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Spireman wrote:
I don't like 'game' as in football game. It is a match. A game implies something less serious, or a game in tennis making then a set and a match.

I have the same problem. Yank influence. They don't know any better! furious

indiana · Tennis legend

JonH comes home wrote:
My pet hate is when people say of instead of have. As in: he should have won that match or I couldnt have done that.

It seems to be quite normal to say it now in youngsters of my childrens age and below (20s).

eta - the board corrected my typing here - I put in of and it translated it to have in the two examples above

-- Edited by JonH comes home on Wednesday 17th of January 2024 11:49:10 PM

I've not got a particular issue wth "have" in these scenarios being spoken to sound "of". At worst a bit lazy but it has kind just evolved that way and not something I'd imagine many would pick up on.

.My issue is if it is written as "of" which is just very wrong.

PS: "very wrong"? - maybe that's another issue?

indiana · Tennis legend

Stircrazy wrote:
Spireman wrote:
I don't like 'game' as in football game. It is a match. A game implies something less serious, or a game in tennis making then a set and a match.
I have the same problem. Yank influence. They don't know any better!

Football could have a whole subsection biggrin

BTW- I'm not quite sure why the Americans are being blamed in the above example.

Lambda · Challenger level

Words and grammer aren't my forte; I'm a numbers person but among my gripes are:

1. Why is everything 'super' these days as in 'super happy' and other terms where 'very' is a perfectly suitable word to use. Why do few people use 'very' anymore? I feel very sorry for 'very'.

2. Sky news, you are a British channel. Privacy is priv - eh - see not the American pry - va - see.

3. As this is a forum for a sport could all posters please note, it is lose or losing - 1 'o' - not loose or loosing. To be fair, it's not too bad on here, but in other places I'm amazed how many people can't spell lose.

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

indiana wrote:
Stircrazy wrote:
Spireman wrote:
I don't like 'game' as in football game. It is a match. A game implies something less serious, or a game in tennis making then a set and a match.
I have the same problem. Yank influence. They don't know any better!
Football could have a whole subsection
BTW- I'm not quite sure why the Americans are being blamed in the above example.

Because to them everything's a game! wink I don't think I've ever heard one use "match" in the same way as we do.

christ · Futures level

On the subject of Americans I am not a fan of verging nouns: "surfacing issues" for example.

... and I shout at the TV every time "very" or "quite" or "more" are used to qualify "unique".

... and on the words/ numbers - newscasters misuse of statistics & graphs beggars belief most of the time.

Mea Culpa:

I have a habit of starting sentences "... and".

... and I abuse commas - I sprinkle them liberally as I type - I try to go back and remove most of them before I press "send", but there are still way too many. Sorry!

-- Edited by christ on Thursday 18th of January 2024 12:22:25 PM

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

The comment that launched a thousand (well, a couple of dozen anyway) replies:

A short report on [Kyle's] match by the ITF, including some facts & figures.

Off topic, how nice to see the word "operations" used in connection with Kyle's medical treatment instead of the cringeworthy "surgeries" or "procedures". "Surgery" is an uncountable noun & therefore has no plural, unless it is used to refer to the premises in which a doctor or a dentist treats patients - or you're a Yank!

I'm now going to try to reproduce the responses. I hope the layout's acceptable. I've tried to cut out as much duplication as I could in the hope of preventing them from becoming too spread out & split them into three parts. Any unattributed post is one of mine.

Nix wrote:
Blue_Belle wrote:
What is an uncountable noun? Genuinely interested.
It's a noun you can't put a number in front of, like flour. You can't say I'll have two flours, you have to use another noun if you want to specify a number: like two bags of flour. You can, however, say two biscuits, so biscuits is a countable noun.
The word surgery has evolved from being a uncountable noun, to sometimes being used interchangeably with operations, but it was originally used only in sentences like, I'm going to have surgery on my leg. If you had two lots of surgery, you'd have said e.g. I need two operations on my leg.

Thank you, Nix. I couldn't have put it better myself, though I would add that the test often used to distinguish between countable & uncountable nouns is whether you can put "a/an" in front of them. That said, those who now regard "surgery" as a synonym for "operation" would doubtless argue that it is countable...

Blue_Belle: Thank you both for your explanations. Very interesting.

*****

Coup Droit wrote:
And I'm sure old-fashioned (but correct ) English teachers would also add:

You use 'less' in front of uncountable nouns

and 'fewer' in front of countable nouns

i.e. less flour but fewer bags of flour

Which leads to the 'big debate' about supermarkets that have signs saying: 'If you have less than 5 items, use this till'

It has to be 'if you have fewer than 5 items, use this till'

(unless you think this is just ridiculously hyper-correct and only for boring old pedants )

I agree, but then, I'm a boring old pedant. wink

*****

Coup Droit:

I try hard not to be - and I honestly like the idea that we should go with the flow, and let things evolve etc etc etc - I try and tell myself to not be so ridiculously picky - but when push comes to shove, I still think why can't people 'say it right' ???

1980's as a plural just kills me, for instance, and it's so common, I need to learn to chill about it, but it ain't easy

(not making a distintion between, for instance, 'the boy's clothes' and 'the boys' clothes' is another one)

*****

KK in response to CD's previous post:

My mother succeeded in getting Marks and Spencer to change their less than 8 items check out! She failed with Sainsburys!

Sometimes it can be vital. I write exams and if someome suggests there should be less difficult questions it means something different to fewer difficult questions.

*****

JonH comes home wrote:
Im a go with the flow type of guy - life is too short!

I'm just grammatically challenged smile

Didn't really learn any grammar in school and if I am honest, I have learnt more about grammar through learning Spanish than I ever did when growing up. (Bob in Spain)

Yours Truly in response to Bob:

Same with me, except that it was learning German that really opened my eyes. Then grasping the principles of the subjunctive in A Level French made mastering Spanish, in which it more common, a piece of cake. wink

*****

Stircrazy wrote:

JonH comes home wrote:
Im a go with the flow type of guy - life is too short!
Easier said than done when you're a trained linguist: make mistakes in English, think in English & then repeat them in another language as a result & you'll be laughed out of court/not taken very seriously.

I get that- fortunately that isnt me. In my work situation, though, Im quite pedantic on language and messaging style. But outside of work, its like the Wild West!

Parts 2 & 3 to come.

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Transfer from the Loughborough M25 thread Part 2

9vicman:

Am loving this discussion and agree with the basic principle. But there are other viewpoints out there. For example Fowler's Modern English Usage states: "Supermarket checkouts are correct when the signs they display read 5 items or less (which refers to a total amount), and are misguidedly pedantic when they read 5 items or fewer (which emphasizes individuality, surely not the intention)."

And for those wanting to go down a rabbit hole, strong arguments for using less are in the following article: itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003775.html

I can see how less might work if 5 items is seen as a singular amount of shopping.

*****

christ:

Irritatingly grammatical (and spelling) errors enter common parlance, then become normalised, and then the dictionaries pick up the incorrect usage and reflect it: then users use the dictionary as evidence that it is (now) acceptable. Fowler's is a good example - it reflects "usage", not rules.

I have to say that I get increasingly flummoxed when I correct someone, and they ask in response "did you understand what I meant"? They are often correct - I understood, so maybe the rules are unnecessary? Either way I keep ploughing my own furrow, calling out egregious grammar when I see it, regardless of what the trendies think.

*****

Coup Droit wrote:
Yesterday, some person said to me:

"I not in deep group. Others working in light manner"

Yes, I understood she was saying she was not in a strong group and the others in her group were lazy so-and-sos

But just because I understood it, it doesn't make it good English !

(She's foreign, obviously, so it's not an issue, just that I agree with Chris - understandability is not the be-all-and-end-all)

Blimey! I wouldn't have understood it. I needed your interpretation of it. It will come as no surprise to anyone that I wholeheartedly agree with Chris, too.

*****

9vicman wrote:
I agree that understandability is not the be all and end all, but I also think there are degrees of bad grammar. If someone said "the person who (rather than whom) I saw", I don't feel so strongly about it than someone who confuses it's with its. In fact bad use of apostrophes makes my blood boil. Maybe I am not so laissez faire after all.

On the who/whom point, I quite enjoy reading the letters section of Metro during the week. This morning I came across a response to one published yesterday. I won't bore you with the substance of the debate, but this particular respondent, referring to membership of the Commonwealth, came up with what I think is the first example I've ever seen which demonstates complete ignorance of the difference between the two:

those [countries] which left it and those whom never joined in the first place...

On aberrant apostrophes, I confess to reading a blog dedicated to the trials & tribulations of my home town football club, Middlesbrough. One particular contributor's English is so bad that I rarely bother to read his posts because they're virtually unintelligible. He has a particular problem distinguishing between "were", "we're" & (believe it or not) "where" (a not uncommon failing, as I know only too well from reading readers' comments on Times Online articles). I glanced at one two or three days ago, as it was mercifully short, & he'd used "we're" twice in the same sentence when he clearly meant "were". I give up!

9vicman:

I had to Google "aberrant". And have learned a new word, thanks.

*****

Bob in Spain wrote:
JonH comes home wrote:
Bob in Spain wrote:
Given how sensitive people seem to be about grammar/punctuation etc, I am thinking I might have to leave the board before I upset somebody
Im with you, Bob! I blame typing on phones for a lot of it!
That would be "I'm", Jon

Haha/ that would also be my phone, Bob, and me never checking! I type and post and regret

it later. I think Indy follows the same school!

*****

Bob in Spain wrote:
Given how sensitive people seem to be about grammar/punctuation etc, I am thinking I might have to leave the board before I upset somebody

Aw, don't do that, Bob. After all, to whom else would I dare to give some stick for, for example, mixing up "principles" & "principals"...? wink

*****

CD:

I have no problem with typos - especially with people posting from phones, say, where the keyboard is really small, you might not have your glasses on, autopredict is often truly ridiculous etc etc

So a lot of 'we're/were' problems can be typos, especially if done from a phone

However, there are other things that are clearly just not understood - which, again, is not a hanging offence - I rather like it as a way of pointing out my own pernickitiness (is that a word ? ) - I see it, see red, and go, honestly CD, get over yourself

However, I love the people who use 'whom' randomly, thinking it makes them sound posh

On a separate point, why are auto-predict programmes so useless?

I have a pretty posh mobile phone

It absolutely cannot see past the first letter

If I type in 'she lived in Nanchester and was really veautiful' - it will autocorrect to 'she lived in Nanking and was really vertical' - I mean, is this really so challenging for the tech world ????