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When people mess with the English language...
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Post Tue, Aug 17 2021, 2:20 pm
youngishbear wrote:
This made me laugh out loud. Please compile a list.

I know someone who is prone to mix-and-matching idioms and clichés.

"They got along like two peas in a pod."

And with such confidence.

I knew you'd appreciate them!

I actually had a hand-written list where I'd jot down the examples as I heard them, but of course now when I need that list, I can't find it. I typed up ones I remember.

Anyone is welcome to create their own! The club of messed-up idioms is open to all who desire entry Smile
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vintagebknyc




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 17 2021, 2:25 pm
pause wrote:
I knew you'd appreciate them!

I actually had a hand-written list where I'd jot down the examples as I heard them, but of course now when I need that list, I can't find it. I typed up ones I remember.

Anyone is welcome to create their own! The club of messed-up idioms is open to all who desire entry Smile


Malapropisms!
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pause




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 17 2021, 2:42 pm
vintagebknyc wrote:
Malapropisms!

Not quite. AFAIK, a malapropism is the usage of a wrong, often similar-sounding, word. There's no rhyme or reason for the mess-up although the malapropism can turn out funny.

Messed up idioms are actually pretty clever wherein both original parts of the new creation actually mean the same thing!

For example, a student who is lively can be described as a live wire, but the messed-up idiom is "lively wire." A coat can cost a bomb, or it can cost an arm and a leg, hence "bomb and leg." And so on.
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synthy




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 17 2021, 3:03 pm
b.chadash wrote:

For example, I have seen a restaurant sign misspelled. "BERGER DELI".
Maybe the owner's name was Berger?
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b.chadash




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 17 2021, 3:07 pm
synthy wrote:
Maybe the owner's name was Berger?


No. I dont recall if this was the actual sign. It may have said Barger or been a totally different word. I just remember that it had a corrupted spelling of a common word.
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Sunny Days




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 17 2021, 3:11 pm
zaq wrote:
What's hadtata?

I think it’s supposed to be a slang for ‘had to’.
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vintagebknyc




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 17 2021, 3:20 pm
pause wrote:
Not quite. AFAIK, a malapropism is the usage of a wrong, often similar-sounding, word. There's no rhyme or reason for the mess-up although the malapropism can turn out funny.

Messed up idioms are actually pretty clever wherein both original parts of the new creation actually mean the same thing!

For example, a student who is lively can be described as a live wire, but the messed-up idiom is "lively wire." A coat can cost a bomb, or it can cost an arm and a leg, hence "bomb and leg." And so on.


Yes, you are correct!
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Amelia Bedelia




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 17 2021, 3:46 pm
b.chadash wrote:
I also believe that in many places, having correct grammar and spelling is not a value as much as in other places. It's not something they consider so important.

For example, I have seen a restaurant sign misspelled. "BERGER DELI".
I have seen restaurant menus riddled with glaring errors.

It's obvious that the restaurant owners are not English speakers. But the fact that they did not find it important enough to have a native English speaker proofread their menu before spending the money to print and laminate it shows less about their lack of Engish than it does about their value system. It's just not not a priority.

I have seen CD inserts filled with spelling errors. Although we expect more from a magazine like Mishpacha, I do find myslef cutting them some slack because they are on a tight deadline each week.

But errors on a restaurant sign and menus are less understandable to me.

I've seen stores selling "stationary" too many times to count.
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nchr




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 17 2021, 3:57 pm
Amelia Bedelia wrote:
The problem is that many Yiddish speakers are actually born and bred Americans, and it irks me that they can't learn their native country's language correctly.

Some more common Yiddish speak:

* "Sounds" when they mean "seems" or "feels"
"It sounds like it's Friday today because the kids only have a half day of school."
* "My wedding date is September One."/ "I live on Fifty-Two Street."
* "Country" when they mean "bungalow colony".
"In my country, the pool is only open until 5:00."
"Country" many times being pronounced "Kunt-ree", rolling the "r" like a chassidish "reish."


Please tell me why non jews in America even need to speak a perfect English unless they are an English teacher, author, English language speaker, or cirriculum advisor, etc. Why?
Then tell me if that's the case even for non jews why would a chassidishe individual need to speak a perfect English?
Do you know there is actually an inyan for Yidden to not speak like the non jews. For some this means to intentionally make mistakes in English and for others it just means not to speak nivel peh, but I don't understand why you need to tear apart someone's accent or word usage when it just comes from the fact that this is how language is used by them and those around them and because they speak yiddish more then english.

Do you think t would make sense if I would start a thread asking why some chassidishe people from some places say wrong things like אויפבעזעמען, נעמען א נאפ, כ׳האב מיך פארברענט,א.ד.ג? I assume whoever is speaking like that just doesn't speak yiddish daily or with adults and doesn't read much in yiddish. I still wouldn't ask them why they can't speak the language of their society properly because it's just rude or write about it in front of them. I don't even think I would point it out to someone who is speaking that way because I would just assume they have no reason to speak yiddish properly. Still, it makes more sense for a chassidishe person to speak yiddish than to speak a perfect English and I don't think it's fair for you to make fun of it.
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English3




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 17 2021, 4:00 pm
It irritates me when ever I read a word wrong, or a sentence that is a mumble Jumble like mine. Yet when I write I struggle, I can tell you what's wrong with your sentence but I get stuck on my own.😃
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chanatron1000




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 17 2021, 4:02 pm
Amelia Bedelia wrote:
I've seen stores selling "stationary" too many times to count.

That's fine as long as it doesn't move.
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egam




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 17 2021, 6:34 pm
watergirl wrote:
Hi! I have dyslexia (and dyscalculia). I was diagnosed when I was in elementary school when I was in third grade and my teacher realized something was wrong - I could not read. One of the first things I was taught after being diagnosed was this amazing thing called "Spell Check". Back then, no one had a home computer, but we all had word processors, and even those came with a spell check feature. Imamother has a function where any misspelled word gets a red underline. Any program such as Microsoft Suite G Suite has spellcheck. There is no reason for a coworker to misspell anything, much less to be proud of it in a work environment. Even on imamother, (where a lot of people like to just relax and not care to correct the red underlined words), it's generally seen as a lack of respect to use shorthand, text-speak, and a paragraph full of errors (non-native english speakers - I take my hats off to you for every post no matter how many errors. I can't imagine doing this in hebrew!).

Please do not use something like dyslexia as an excuse for poor spelling. All of us in this club know how to fix our spelling and most of us are so self-conscious about the dyslexia, we are even MORE careful with the spelling!

(By the way, Bubby6, you spelled dyslexia wrong in your post twice, each time with a different spelling, both incorrect Wink )


No spellcheck will help you with correctly spelled wrong words. Like than and then, poor and pour, and many others. It won’t tell you where to use the and a, or that the word police is always plural. Or the proper sentence structure.

I have a DC with dyslexia and auditory processing disorder and poor kid is struggling. So I view these kind of posts as bullying. Maybe I’m projecting, but I know what my child had to go through in school.
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youngishbear




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 17 2021, 6:59 pm
I used to get worked up about these, and I had quite a collection of pet peeves, too.

I've since decided that most people have a story why their English is less than perfect - whether English is their second or third language, they received a less-than-stellar education, they have a learning disability of some sort, or they simply don't have a knack for it and struggle to remember the difference between lie vs. lay the way I was hopeless with the quadratic formula.

And of course, there's nothing quite as humbling as committing some major errors of my own.

The only thing that still gets my goat is when professional communicators mess up.

Our magazines and book publishers need to do better. Advertising agencies should require their work to go through multiple layer of quality control - editing, proofreading - and no, they're not the same thing!

A random person using words weirdly is okay, but not when it's their job to get it right. Of course, mistakes can slip through even after multiple reviews.

https://twitter.com/nycgov/sta.....31648

But if professional communicators would do their jobs right, people would be exposed to better "mentor texts," to borrow an educational term, and hopefully learn by observation. Otherwise, if people continue to get paid to mangle language, there really is no hope.
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Choirmistress




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Feb 15 2022, 9:58 am
As a government proofreader, I have plenty of pet peeves:

Between 9 to 5 (It's either "between 9 and 5" or "from 9 to 5", folks. "Between" does not belong with "to". Same rule applies to "Between A to B", which is easier to remember not to use.)
Being/Seeing that... (Ouch! Try "Given that", "In view of (the fact that)...", or similar.)
If a person is going to use his/her ability(talent/privilege/right/etc.) to do such and such, they should... (Ouch again. NO PLURAL pronoun with a singular antecedent. I don't care if Oxford/Webster now recognizes "they" as a gender-inclusive/gender-neutral supposed singular. It is still plural. I can work a lot of figurative magic with incorrect language, but not literal magic to change its rules.)
The proof is in the pudding. (The correct saying is "The proof of the pudding is in the eating.")
I will only have one slice of kokosh. (Ask me for a single-sheet file attachment of how "only" changes meaning with its position in a sentence.) It's "I will have only one slice of kokosh."
Between you and I,... (Really? Would you shorten "Give it to Leah or I" to "Give it to I"?!)
My brother is older than me. (Elton John in "Daniel" made that mistake too. Then he compounded it by using "you see more than I" correctly only two or three lines later.)
Thank you so much. (My sister-in-law uses this one a lot. It's all I can do to keep from acting on my proofreader's reflex and pointing out that "so" means "to the extent that". So she thanks someone so much that what? It's "very" much, thank you. You are SO voted off the island.)
And one of the most common: It's versus its. Here's a simple rule of thumb: Would you put an apostrophe in "his" or "her"?
There are probably scads of others that I have forgotten. I'll probably remember them later, when I don't need them for this post!


Last edited by Choirmistress on Tue, Feb 15 2022, 10:17 am; edited 1 time in total
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BrisketBoss




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Feb 15 2022, 10:04 am
Choirmistress wrote:
As a government proofreader, I have plenty of pet peeves:



Ma'am, I take my tichel off to you. I used to think I was a prescriptivist but I will never be on your madreiga.
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Choirmistress




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Feb 15 2022, 10:06 am
chanatron1000 wrote:
That's fine as long as it doesn't move.


Good one!
An easy tip to remember the respective spellings: Imagine "stationery" being pronounced by a Briton. He/she will tend to slur over the "e" to make the syllables closer to three than four: STAY-shun-ree. But he/she will keep the four syllables of "stationary" as four clear syllables.
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Choirmistress




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Feb 24 2022, 9:58 am
More of my betes noires:
"like" for "such as".
"like" for "as if".
"meantime" for "meanwhile" -- it takes all three words "in the meantime" to be equivalent in meaning to "meanwhile".
"I'ma" for "I am/I'm going to".
"like" and/or "you know" every second sentence (teenagers being the worst offenders); teachers should have an offender's classmate click one of those crowd-counter gizmos every time the offender uses either of them, and penalize the offender (in coins, classroom tasks, or other form).
"mischievious" -- there are two "I"s, not three; look it up; the root noun mischief has TWO syllables, with the stress on the first, so the adjective has three syllables, not four.
"restauranteur" -- as with "mischievious", this "word" with this spelling does not exist.
"So I go, 'yaddah yaddah', so he goes, 'blah blah'" -- what happened to plain old "So I said, 'yaddah yaddah', so he said, 'blah blah'"? Again, teenagers are the worst offenders.
"going forward" to mean "in future" or "from now on" -- "going forward" describes a physical position or location, and has nothing to do with time.
"scared" or "frightened" to mean "startled".
"a minute" to mean quite a while.
"snuck" to mean "sneaked".
"shrunk" to mean "shrank" -- somebody shrank something, but that thing was shrunk.
"sunk" to mean "sank" -- see above.
"pled" for "pleaded" -- to enter a plea is to plead. As with "snuck", "shrunk", and "sunk", so too "pled" is not a legitimate past tense.
"break and enter" for "breaking and entering". Blame police officers and organizational gobbledegook for this one, just as with legalese (see above).
objective case instead of proper possessive after a gerund; extreme example to illustrate its ridiculousness: "Why does me pointing out this rule bother you?"
"issues" for "problems" -- an issue is a point or topic to be discussed or debated.
"who's" for "whose".

Well, that's it for this second installment. Again, be warned: I may come up with enough for a third round.
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penguin




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Feb 24 2022, 11:52 am
One of the best I've seen (sorry if I said this already : )
in Chaim Potok's book, I believe My Name is Asher Lev

for all intensive purposes

there was another one there too in the papers his mother was grading, I believe.
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Iymnok




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Feb 24 2022, 12:13 pm
In honor of purim; laundry gets hung, Haman was hanged.
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iyar




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Feb 24 2022, 12:18 pm
Choirmistress, I'm with BrisketBoss, my sheitel is off to you.

(How many grammatical errors did you find in my sentence? Confused )
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