Grammar and language issues that drive you utterly berserk - Pet peeves

When people don't use "myriad" and "plethora" correctly.

It's a plethora of, like "there's a plethora of marine life in this waterway."

Myriad stands on its own, like "there are myriad reasons why the lake is so biodiverse."

At least that's what I thought, until I looked it up. Seems a little more convoluted than I recall but I still adhere to the above general rules.
 
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internet friend said:
Why the fuck does the O in woman suddenly become an I when it's women?
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The Last Stand said:
How about this grammar meme? One moose. More than one moose, MOOSE. One goose. More than one goose, geese. Why not meese? Or mooses? Give me a break with that BS.
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Friendly Primarina said:
FWIW there is a comparison to be made with deer, fish and sheep. These are animal names that have an identical-looking plural like moose. As for why goose retained its ancient plural while others have gained more regular plurals, who knows?
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For the oldest English plurals, they undergo something called i-mutation, for reasons that even this tism-nigger thread would find autistic to detail. In short, the vowel for the plural form becomes a front vowel (i or e). Old words have this, words added later usually don't. Deer, fish, and sheep are exceptions for other autistic reasons (though notice those vowels are already i/e).

Woman/Women pronunciation was influenced but not actually caused by i-mutation, women spelling was changed from wimen (and some other forms) to reflect the singular because... scribes are gay idk.
Lurker said:
yeah, they are pronounced differently.

with 'bury' it's supposed to sound like burr-ee

and 'berry' is supposed to sound like bare-ee (like a long a)

'barry' would be like bah-ree (short a)
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AnOminous said:
Not according to the OED they aren't.
bury, v.
(ˈbɛrɪ)
And berry? Exactly phonetically identical.
berry, n. 1
(ˈbɛrɪ)
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Standard British/American pronounces it the same, though there's many dialects where it's different (I know of NE US and NW England), but obviously OED is only going to have the standard dialect pronunciations.
 
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Magnum Magazine said:
Standard British/American pronounces it the same, though there's many dialects where it's different (I know of NE US and NW England), but obviously OED is only going to have the standard dialect pronunciations.
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@AnOminous rate me dumb all you want

but at least i'm not WRONG

edit: and fat
 
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Magnum Magazine said:
Standard British/American pronounces it the same, though there's many dialects where it's different (I know of NE US and NW England), but obviously OED is only going to have the standard dialect pronunciations.
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People who pronounce them the same also say "fir" instead of "for". What they say about language matters not. Perhaps we should pronounce "pen" as "pin" and "wash" as "warsh" while we're at it.
 
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I apologize if this has been mentioned but calling a female who acts in a movie an actor drives me nuts.
She is an actress.
That doesn't mean she is "less than" an actor.
Just different.
Different is good.
Vive la différence, as they used to say.

It is interesting how the progressive left that claims to support women does their best to destroy anything that is exclusive to women.

If everyone that acts in a movie is an actor, get rid of the separate categories for men and women then.
Let everyone compete equally for half as many awards.

Again they claim to be so "woman positive" yet constantly act like they are ashamed of and or hate to be women.

The ability to give birth is amazing and vitally important to the human race.
Progressives don't like the word vagina anymore because it makes gay men uncomfortable.
Call it a front hole, totally downplay the whole "birth canal, aka the hole humans enter the world from" thing.
The only important thing is it is a place gay men could stick their penis, not that most of them would want to.
Mind you many of these same people consider heterosexual intercourse "rape" yet insist woman should change the terms for their own anatomy to make gay men feel better.

"Women you must redefine your most exclusively feminine and female body part to make men that don't want to have sex with you more comfortable."
Sounds a lot like actual misogyny.
 
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AnOminous said:
You just had to say that from the start and I'd have cut you some slack for the extra chromosomes.
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the most chromosomes, the biggest collection of chromosomes, no one has more chromosomes than i do. they say, "lurker, the number of chromosomes you have brings tears to my eyes."

edit: autistic ocd need to add missing comma
 
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Hinttitroniikka said:
A similar one that bothers me, and is common to European ESL speakers, is "I'll do it until Friday" to express something I would say as "I'll do it by Friday." It's so common that I wonder is there some dialect of English where it's correct. I know in German it's a literal translation (bis Freitag). But to me it sounds like, "I will do this thing every day and stop on Friday whether it's done or not," rather than, "On Friday it will be done and we don't have to worry about it anymore."
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I don't know about there being a dialect of English that works like that but it's something that I struggle to teach my ESL students.
If I were to translate the following two sentences into my language:
"The shops are open until 10PM" and
"I'll do it by Friday"
the words "until" and "by" would be the same word.
internet friend said:
Why the fuck does the O in woman suddenly become an I when it's women?
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You haven't lived until you tried to explain to a bunch of ESL students why in American "wonder" has an "ah" sound and "wander" has an "o" sound while in Bri*ish they sound the same. "English is retarded" is usually a satisfying enough explanation.
 
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The Last Stand said:
Something I just noticed: to scroll down on a touch screen, you have to swipe UP with your finger. And the reverse. I've stumbled on that terminology without noticing it.
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Moving the content vs moving the window. Apple calls it natural scrolling. Their computers also do it this way; and I prefer it.
 
TheGoodNamesHaveBeenTaken said:
I apologize if this has been mentioned but calling a female who acts in a movie an actor drives me nuts.
She is an actress.
That doesn't mean she is "less than" an actor.
Just different.
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Tangentially related, but I really dislike using "woman" as an adjective.

If you say "woman doctor," it sounds like you're a caveman trying to describe a gynecologist. "Woman reporter," OK, that had better be part of the sentence "WOMAN REPORTER, WE HAVE LEARNED YOUR EARTH-LANGUAGE TO GIVE YOU THIS MESSAGE."

"Female" is the adjective, and that's different than saying "females," (and that's fine if you're doing it for biologist or cop or medical uses.)
 
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