kiwifan
Rohan
May 26 2012, 8:14pm
Views: 5352
|
Thank you so much, Ataahua, for this article!
|
|
|
And I enjoyed the explanations, especially the tuna bit. I'm definitely a word-lover (and probably qualify as a member of the word-police), and I'm so glad you included the unspeakable 'could care less' which must be an American idiosyncrasy because I keep reading it in American novels, and not only in those of less than stellar quality, and have also come across it in posts on TORn, time and time again. People simply will not think about the meaning of sayings that some idiot started to distort out of sheer ignorance or laziness into phrases that simply don't make sense, and then the great majority follow said idiot's example, and eventually these abominations become common usage, and whenever the word-police protest, they are roundly snubbed for not being up to date, linguistically speaking (as happened to me in a TORn thread last summer). Actually, I feel quite puffed up in my own esteem since I know all the expressions in your list and use them correctly, and I'm not even a native speaker of English. Or perhaps that is the reason why! No, seriously, I've always loved the language, never really had to study much to learn it (unlike Spanish and French, which were actually work because of all the grammar, and I don't feel comfortable using those languages now as I'm totally out of practice); I lived for several years in different English-speaking societies (England, Canada, the U.S.), and as a translator, I'm required to be very careful with words. So it's an occupational hazard, combined with a passion for English, that makes me so allergic to violations of it. That doesn't mean my own posts are always error-free, alas, but at least I do try!
'Goodness gracious, you really are a messie!' 'Oh no, I'm not, these are all just mathoms...'
|