Everything Important Ever » English/Grammar

French Friends

TheDude — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 21:57:39 +0000

I think everyone has a few of those built-in mental cross-ups that make you spell or confuse the same words all the time. I consider myself a very good speller, but some words just continually come out wrong. For example, when I want to write both, I always write bothe and then delete the e. And regardless of how many times I look it up, I can never really remember whether the correct spelling is license or lisence.

I think my favorite such nuance is my inability to write fried without first writing friend. Just moments ago I referred to eating friend onions. I don’t have any friends that are onions, but I like to think that if I did, I wouldn’t eat them. I have also written French friends on various occasions. Someone with half a brain could figure out what I meant, but for the majority of the population, there might have been some confusion.

To clear things up, French friends do not come with a Whopper meal at Burger King, I do not dip them in ketchup and I don’t like the burnt ones any better than the rest. That being said, if Burger King is looking to improve relations between the U.S. and France, perhaps throwing in a couple friends wouldn’t be a terrible idea.

Literally

TheDude — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:24:57 +0000

Don’t use the word “literally” when you don’t mean what you’re saying literally.

I feel like an asshole. – ok
I kinda feel like an asshole. – ok
I literally feel like an asshole. – not ok. And if you do literally feel like an asshole, please do not talk to me.

I Do Hate You

TheDude — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:31:36 +0000

Ok, so you get some kind of bill or statement in the mail, and golly gee, there seems to be a mistake. A big mistake. Like, you were double charged on a $2,000 purchase which not only maxed you out, but also drove up that minimum payment so that your online autopayment wasn’t large enough and you got a late charge. Bastards.

So you call to straighten this all out, and you get a nice southern lady on the phone who seems eager to assist you. Unfortunately, she has to follow procedure and it has to be verified with the merchant and blah blah blah. So she’s not saying you’re screwed, but she also can’t help. And then as you try to discuss the inconvenience this is causing you, as well as your worries about your credit score, she keeps saying one thing: “Well, sir, I do apologize.”

You do? You do apologize? This is not the appropriate statement. I wasn’t doubting that you apologize. You should just say, “Well, sir, I apologize.” Take the blame for something that is not your personal fault and move on. But no… over and over it’s “I do apologize,” as if A) I need to be convinced, and B) your apology does a damn thing to help me.

Why is this particular statement only used in customer service? I don’t like it. “I do apologize” has been canceled. Pass it on.

Gruntled and Whelmed

TheDude — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 14:03:16 +0000

I know this sort of thing has been mentioned by others, but I feel it’s worthy of a few lines here as well. I want to start using the root words of words that only ever appear with some sort of prefix. Sometimes people would know what I was doing, and sometimes it would sound ridiculous.

Observe:

I woke up this morning feeling quite whelmed, and after some confusion relating to a strange dream I was having, I became nice and combobulated. I brushed my teeth using a fluous amount of toothpaste, and a hot shower left me feeling gruntled. I hit a bunch of traffic traveling to work, which was a cosm for each day this week due to the school year starting again and students and teachers being back on the road.

Well, I guess this isn’t really practical. The prefixes will continue to reign, for now.

Infixation

TheDude — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:34:30 +0000

I’m a bit of a linguistics nerd. I think I like it because language is such a complex thing and everyone uses it so freely without really having an understanding of why they say what they do. Most people suck at it, too.

Anyway, I took an applied linguistics course in the spring and at one point we discussed affixes. You’re probably familiar with prefixes and suffixes, but there are other affixes as well. Some of them are not used in (modern) English, such as circumfixes. But what I enjoyed was the infix, which has just one use in English.

Am I going to tell you what it is? Abso-fucking-lutely.

“Fucking” is really the only word you just drop into the middle of another word. I guess “freakin” and “friggin” work as well, but only for those who choose to censor themselves. I don’t know why I find such pleasure in this. Maybe because my teacher had to drop an F-bomb in order to demostrate in class. Unavoidable expletives are the best kind.

Apostrophe Catastrophe

TheDude — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:00:13 +0000

I think it’s safe to assume that most of us are on Facebook. And most of us on Facebook have at least a few friends that aren’t actually friends, per se. Acquaintances, friends of friends, people we just want to keep an eye on, people from high school we never really spoke to but felt inclined to request as a friend based on Facebook’s recommendation… there are lots of reasons. So even though I have these so-called friends that I don’t speak to very often, I do tend to read their status messages and comments when I’m bored.

The other important part of this story is that I am somewhat of a grammar nazi. I try to hold it in around people I don’t wish to offend, but it’s hard sometimes. This past Father’s Day, I was on Facebook and saw the following from one of the friends I don’t really ever speak to:

Now, I’m ok with “DadKs.” I mean, it’s not like he thought that was correct. It was probably a phone-related typo. No sweat. “Dad’s,” on the other hand, is a little different. It annoys me when people don’t know the difference between plurals and possessives. But what really eats at me, what really makes my nostrils flare and the vein in my forehead bulge, is trying to be the grammar police and being wrong. “That is the correct plural for the word dad.”
NO. IT’S NOT.

I have no idea who this guy was… a friend of a friend of a friend apparently. But I had to restrain myself from jumping in there and correcting him, which would have made me a bigger douche than he was, but at least I would have provided a valuable lesson. After all, I am here to help.