10 flagrant grammar mistakes that make you look stupid

[otto85b]

I am not a grammarian, but I think when to use "good" and when to use "well" is pretty easy.

Good is an adjective. Remember, adjectives are those words that describe nouns. e.g. "I am good". The adjective good is describing the subject "I". So, if someone asks how you are you would say "I am good". It is like saying "This food is good." You wouldn't say "This food is well."

Well is an adverb (I think). It describes verbs. She played the piano well. Well is describing how she played. I am doing well. "Well" describes the verb "doing".

 

[andreapalladio]

It and like locutions are a long-standing part of the English vernacular, and if the Grammarians can't keep up, so much the worse for Grammar.

I agree that it's a common usage, if a clumsy one. But that doesn't make it correct.

 

[canarob]

The next time someone asks you how you are, reply "I'm well, thank-you".

My pet peeve is unnecessary hyphens.

 

[paulbali]

"I agree that it's a common usage, if a clumsy one. But that doesn't make it correct."


If even a linguistic "mistake" is common and sticks around long enough, it becomes correct. Language is as language does.

But this case doesn't involve a mistake, pure and primitive. It can be explained, as I have tried, by some of the underlying rules of our language.

 

[bizorky]

"Impact your life."

The above being the new advertising slogan used by Algonquin College in Ottawa.

 

[Brighter Hell]

i guess "affect your life" doesn't have the same ring to it...

#1: Loose for lose
No: I always loose the product key.

Yes: I always lose the product key.

this one drives me absolutely crazy.

 

[building babel]

paulbali:

If you want to be understood clearly, use the English Language precisely. If you merely want to be interpreted, use the Anguish Languish as you will.

 

[Archivistower]

Myself, I am fairly easygoing with others on their language issues. I've always thought language is a river, and trying to separate out how it is supposed to be used from how it is actually used is a losing proposition. How many "correct" usages today were incorrect 300 years ago? That's not to say that anything goes, but language is a river. "Whom", for instance, is clearly on its way out. I am completely indifferent to this.

I feel sometimes that people reach to an imagined past where the practice of language was exercised with more discipline. I think this is largely illusory, since I'm pretty sure that 100 or 400 years ago many poorly educated people would have done a right proper mangling of any sentence they spoke, and the language that has endured to our age would be that of educated people, having moved through formal processes for its preservation.

 

[andreapalladio]

I agree: the rules regarding language useage can and do and have and should change with the times.

However, at any one time, the rules are, for the most part, clear. If you want to be understood, follow those rules. If you want to be obscure, or misunderstood, or ignored, then ignore the rules.

 

[Archivistower]

ap - I agree mostly with you, and also with most of the examples being discussed in this thread in terms of there being a correct and an incorrect usage. However, if langauge does change, then at any given time some aspects of it, perhaps words like "whom", are in a transition from current use to archaic use.

 

[andreapalladio]

Oh absolutely. Though I still love the word whom, even if I honour it's correct use more in the breach than in the observance.

 

[cdl42]

It seems to me that change seems to occur naturally in spoken usage, as new words get invented and others fall out of use and new constructs become acceptable. Written language, however, is created to express those spoken concepts and therefore still needs to be clear and more concrete. Flexibility in spoken language doesn't seem to cause unclarity and confusion like flexibility in written language does.

'Whom' may fall out of use and adjective/adverb use may shift and change; but 'loose' will never come to mean 'lose', 'their' will never come to mean "they're"; and "cactus's", "mouse's", and "Canadian's" will continue to be singular possessive nouns. I think it's safe to say that anything else will continue to poor, unclear grammar.

 

[Archivistower]

Really, thou thinkest?

 

[ganjavih]

I'd like to see more Nadsat used in the English language.

Well, well, well. If it isn't fat, stinking billygoat Billyboy in poison. How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap stinking chip-oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if you've got any yarbles that is, you eunuch jelly thou!

 

[bizorky]

soomka.com/nadsat.html