MovieChat Forums > General Discussion > Bad grammar that bugs you?

Bad grammar that bugs you?


I just heard an example. “I was bit by the shark.” You can say “It bit me” but it should be “I was bitten.”

“I done it yesterday” instead of “I did it.”

And the word pet replacing pat. You Pat a dog, how can you pet it? It sounds like you’re making it a pet.

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Like instead of said.

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Yes, I definitely hate when people say axed instead of asked.

I am from Australia and I have noticed that some Americans say it that way. Is it more common in certain states or parts of the U.S.A?

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Americans dropping Ts bugs me. Australians do it too but it's more previlent with americans. They say 'inner-net' and 'inner-view'.

Australians who say 18 as 'eigh-een' is annoying.

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Oh yes, Australians can decimate the English language too!

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It's considered pretty ghetto to say ax instead of ask.

"...if you look at the history of the English language, you can't tell if the correct pronunciation is "aks" or "ask." The "aks" pronunciation goes back 1000 years. It's in Beowulf. It's in Chaucer." - Jesse Sheidlower, Editor at Large of the Oxford English Dictionary

In America it can trace its origins to some of the English who emigrated to the American South from certain parts of England, the ones who developed the Southern "redneck" culture, which became the culture of Blacks. These speech patterns disappeared in England and amongst American whites, but much was retained by Blacks.

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Thanks for your detailed explanation..

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It's usually African Americans who use "axe" instead of "ask". They seem to have trouble pronouncing "ask".

😎

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Pet is also a verb. I mean you wouldn't say heavy patting. :)

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I hate when people say "should of" instead of "should have". I also hate when people say "I could care less".

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As Kspkap likes to demonstrate on my posts, I hate it when someone says 'I seen'. No. You saw or you have seen.

I also get irritated when I would get an email at work with someone asking me to advice them on something. Spellcheck didn't like the word advise.

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It's hard to tell if people are actually saying "should of" instead of "should have", but when I see it written as could of, should of, would of,etc, I go ballistic! I shouldn't, but it bugs me.
I had a pen pal who did that all the time. I tried to correct her by explaining how "of" is a preposition and not part of the verb. She ignored my advice of course. She couldn't spell either. She mentioned that she liked "chilli". I told her it's spelled chili. She said that she forgets. HOW can you live in Texas and not know how to spell chili?? She couldn't spell Mattel either. She had a collector's edition of a Mattel doll and spelled it Mattell. I could spell Mattel when I was six!

At work I am constantly amazed at how incredibly poor some of my co-workers are with spelling and grammar. I work in a company where we support intellectually and/or physically disabled individuals. I swear, if you read the e-mails and memos around here, you'd think half the staff was intellectually disabled! The American education system is in the toilet.

I have in front of me a printout of a new system we are using to document our residential notes. The supervisor wrote in a few things to explain the new system. On the front page, "This will need changed if you work on another program."

I want to scream when I see that. It's "Needs TO BE changed". My last supervisor did the same thing.

This needs fixed, this needs changed, this needs done,etc. Needs TO BE!! It's as if English is a second language for these people. And it's not.

They can't spell either. For instance, on the grocery list for our house, one woman will write "toliet paper". How the freak hard is it to spell TOILET? At first I thought it was just a mistake. But she spells it that way all the time.

The list goes on. I just don't know if Americans are getting dumber or if the education system is so poor that people graduate high school with the language skills of a fourth grader.

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"Irregardless." Like, WTF...I thought we were past this mistake, but I just saw this in an online article!

Also, when people use the longer noun version of a verb, either to sound sophisticated or because they don't know the actual verb form. I can't remember any specific examples, just know I remember hearing people say stuff like, "It was a mystification," instead of just saying, "It was mystifying," or, "I was mystified." I think this is a bad habit that started with Dane Cook. He was the guy that did that as a joke, but then it caught on.

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"I could care less."

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Yup, this one annoys me.

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Misuse of there/their/they're makes me want to break things.

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