After reprinting a pub sign for the local pub 'The Pig and Whistle', the landlord complained that there should have been larger spaces between Pig and and and and and Whistle.
Another word that has been hijacked by the trendy youth recently is "vintage"; it seems to be applied to anything that is more than three years old. It has replaced "retro" as a favourite word of irritating, self-centered, hippie-dippie idiots...
They say that if you want to learn to play great guitar solos (or just great guitar) you should study the masters' solos. You can't just expect to pick up the thing and work it all out for yourself. Similarly, if you want to be able to write and speak an interesting English, you need to read stuff - preferably stuff written by other people who are/were good at writing. If you only ever read illiterate Facebook posts, you aren't going to make much progress. Anyway, enough already. (I actually like this strange Americanism, which I suspect is a Jewish Americanism. I can't use it seriously, but it amuses me in its foreignness.) It may interest you to know (it may not…) that the English dictionary is considerably fatter than the French one, which in turn is considerably fatter than the Spanish one. It's a pity, with all these awesome words at your disposal, constantly to recycle the same few, pressing them into uses for which they were never intended. Like.
Have we covered that horrendous Americanism, "different than", yet? e.g. Apples are different than oranges. They're feckin' well not, they're different TO oranges.
Oh yes Mac youre onto something there... what about numbers?? one hundred forty eighty..not one hundred AND forty eight...or twenty eight hundred fifty, not two thousand eight hundred and fifty and so and so....or 'i want to go see it', not ' i want to go AND see it'...we could be here all day... I can handle these differences, well maybe not the word 'math', but most of the others anyway..even pronouncing 'herb' with a silent 'h'...but what i cant abide is this abuse of superlatives...i'm certain that we've inherited this from the PC and X factor culture where everything and everyone is wonderful.. The bar of expectation and attainment is set incredibly low, particularly in the arts and sport....My background is music and i'm disappointed daily but what people consider to be 'awesome'...it's thoroughly disheartening.
21 consecutive ands in a sentence....... Would the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips on my 'Fish-And-Chips' sign have been clearer if quote marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?'
...or when staff serving food respond to your "Thank you" with "Not a problem..." when you have only asked for a standard item on the menu, and for them to do their job of getting it for you.
Probably widely seen already, and not directly aimed at innappropriate use of superlatives, but still relevant I think: That Mitchell and Webb Look Series 4 - Episode 1 (Grammar Nazi) - YouTube
Hendiasys is my pet peeve. "It's nice and warm today." Do you mean it is both "nice" and "warm" or do you mean it is warm, and you find it nice as a result? Is the warmth of the day solely responsible for it being nice, ie "nicely warm"? Or do you have something else going on that you aren't telling me? What do you mean by "nice and warm", huh? Fucking irritating. Hendiasys is so prevalent in society that when I see a sign for, for instance, "The Pig And Whistle", I am confused whether it means there is an actual pig and a whistle, or if there is a whistle made from a pig, or what.
Abso-fkn-lutely. Thanks to Loz for expanding my linguistic envelope. Perhaps we could also discuss the inflectional paradigm in a different thread? Just sayin'
