Why do people say “brought” instead of “bought” and.

13»

Comments

  • Infamous
    Infamous Posts: 1,130
    Ones quite particular to bike forums... "Bang for your buck" is always spunked around the place... can't stand it.

    oh and "comfy" too, just say comfortable.
  • Crapaud
    Crapaud Posts: 2,483
    Infamous wrote:
    Ones quite particular to bike forums... "Bang for your buck" is always spunked around the place... can't stand it.

    oh and "comfy" too, just say comfortable.
    you really wouldn't want that splashed across your monitor, would you. :lol:
    A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject - Churchill
  • balthazar
    balthazar Posts: 1,565
    Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson, is good fun and covers a lot of this stuff, without the pravailing lordiness of Eats Shoots and Leaves. It should be required reading for the anti american english snobs.

    That said– could of/ should of, etc., (nicely parodied at the beginning of the thread by Infamous), makes me wince.
  • antfly
    antfly Posts: 3,276
    Are you sure it was a parody and not just another error?
    Smarter than the average bear.
  • Infamous
    Infamous Posts: 1,130
    I of done it on purpose, I of always done it, see some have my other posts.
  • antfly
    antfly Posts: 3,276
    Infamous wrote:
    NapoleonD wrote:
    antfly, there is also the two, too and to brigade.

    :x
    Yes, that is literally the worse thing ever.

    OK, I believe you. Was that quote above a deliberate error also?
    I`m not picking on you or nuffink.
    Smarter than the average bear.
  • Infamous
    Infamous Posts: 1,130
    Was I to subtle?
  • synchronicity
    synchronicity Posts: 1,415
    DaSy wrote:
    One that I have seen used on this forum - and I'd hoped it would never happen this side of the pond - is "my bad", it truly incenses me.

    For the love of God, please just say my mistake, it actually means something.

    Me too! :evil:
    But possibly worse than that is when well-meaning foreigners pick up on it to sound cool... :roll:

    Just like "in back", "go figure", "math", "way cool" and a load of other Americanisms... :x

    (and I have to admit that when I learnt Spanish, my English quickly became atrocious)
    vertebr.ae | precision braking & shifting
  • nick hanson
    nick hanson Posts: 1,655
    Someone i work with keeps saying to be Pacific. I REALLY want to say "are you sure you don't mean Atlantic"
    Best not though,as he's one of my supervisors.
    He left me on my own on a job because i was " fully complacent with it"
    Nearly pi**ed myself about that one....my work collegue said he thought the guy meant i was fully conversant with the job
    Second thoughts,maybe my boss is correct after all! :wink:
    so many cols,so little time!
  • st68
    st68 Posts: 219
    i think i have stumbled upon the grumpy old gits forum :lol::lol:
    cheesy quaver
  • synchronicity
    synchronicity Posts: 1,415
    possibly he meant compliant? Git.
    vertebr.ae | precision braking & shifting
  • balthazar
    balthazar Posts: 1,565
    synchronicity wrote:
    Just like "in back", "go figure", "math", "way cool" and a load of other Americanisms...
    "Math", apart from being normal american english, arguably makes more sense, given that we treat maths as a singular noun (maths is / was etc), instead of plural (maths were / are). I'm with you on the rest.
  • nick hanson
    nick hanson Posts: 1,655
    synchronicity wrote:
    possibly he meant compliant? Git.
    Nah,I did say to him,don't you mean conversant? & he said,yea..you know what i mean!
    No wonder british industry is in the state it is,when management seem to get into their positions through a combination of nepotism & chronyism :roll:
    so many cols,so little time!
  • AMcD
    AMcD Posts: 236
    I hate it when people say 'watch yer back" when they really should be saying "excuse me, may I get past". I'd love to reply "why should I watch my back? - you're the one trying to get past me, you numpty - YOU better watch MY back" :lol:

    or the "do you want to get that for me?" when they really should be saying "please, would you ..........etc etc"................aaagghh!.


    When we were kids my brother had a hard time saying "th". He asked a shopkeeper how much Freddo Frogs were, saying "are these free" (meaning three pence). The shopkeeper said, "no, you have to pay for them" :lol: .
  • wiffachip
    wiffachip Posts: 861
    anyway, what do you reckon - compact or tripple ?
  • DavidBelcher
    DavidBelcher Posts: 2,684
    synchronicity wrote:
    foreigners pick up on it to sound cool... :roll:

    Just like "in back", "go figure", "math", "way cool" and a load of other Americanisms... :x

    "Step up to the plate" is one of the worst ones; I wasn't aware we'd become a baseball-loving nation overnight. Surely it should be "step up to the crease"?

    David
    "It is not enough merely to win; others must lose." - Gore Vidal
  • SunWuKong
    SunWuKong Posts: 364
    A guy I used to work with came out with "It's all smoke and daggers" and my favourite "It's like cheese and chaff"
  • Porgy
    Porgy Posts: 4,525
    Blimey! What an uptight bunch you all are.

    I've worked in engineering all my life and feel obliged to point out that poor spelling and grammar does not equate to low intelligence. I'm surrounded by highy qualified people at work - some with Masters and PhDs. Many can't spell - it was the same when I was at Uni - but they can grasp difficult mathematical concepts. Me - I'm better at spelling, though carp at typing. :D

    I can be pedantic with spelling too - but it really doesn't matter that much does it? As long as the meaning is clear.

    Language doesn't stay the same - it constantly evolves. The standard of spelling and grammar is probably the highest it has ever been (excepting maybe a blip in the 50s/60s/70s) as prior to the early 20th century only a tiny minority were taught standard English.

    Inevitably as we move into an era of global English - and digital technologies - English is going to evolve quite quickly again after a relatively long period of stablity.
  • robmanic1
    robmanic1 Posts: 2,150
    I think you lot are just swinging the leg
    Pictures are better than words because some words are big and hard to understand.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/34335188@N07/3336802663/
  • neeb
    neeb Posts: 4,473
    Language doesn't stay the same - it constantly evolves. The standard of spelling and grammar is probably the highest it has ever been (excepting maybe a blip in the 50s/60s/70s) as prior to the early 20th century only a tiny minority were taught standard English.
    One of the best examples of this is when King James II saw St. Paul's cathedral for the first time he said it was "amusing, awful and artificial".... meaning, according to the usage of the day, pleasing, awe-inspiring and created with great skill!
    Inevitably as we move into an era of global English - and digital technologies - English is going to evolve quite quickly again after a relatively long period of stablity.
    I read an interesting article about this once. English is now spoken by more people as a second language than as a first language, and arguably it will be the trends among "bad" English speakers that will determine how the language will evolve in the future. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it will lead to (amongst other things) greater regularisation (I go, I will go, I goed...).

    It's a pity however when words that are really useful are lost from the language . It's actually more clear and less ambiguous to say "one can cycle there in ten minutes" than "you can cycle there in ten minutes", but these days nobody says that for fear of sounding like Prince Charles... :wink: Also, "yonder" is a useful word as it carries a different meaning from "there". This tree is beside us, that tree is nearby, but yonder tree is further away.
  • Le Commentateur
    Le Commentateur Posts: 4,099
    What irritates is macho middle-manager business slang impacting -- er, I mean, affecting -- the general, everyday vocabulary.
    Un uomo solo al commando
  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Posts: 79,665
    Le Commentateur wrote:
    What irritates is macho middle-manager business slang impacting -- er, I mean, affecting -- the general, everyday vocabulary.

    Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh yes.
  • jc4lab
    jc4lab Posts: 554
    A lot of mispellink is cos of just using two fingers typing and you are just too eiger to get your posting on your favourite forum..so you can quickly get that wonderful feedback that gives you a fix for the rest of the day.You cant be arsed to change any mistakes...
    jc
  • flester
    flester Posts: 464
    The administrator's should of putting the breaks on this tread before now because its gotten to long
    'I do not believe in the three-speed gear at all', the sergeant was saying. 'It is a newfangled instrument, it crucificies the legs, the half of the accidents are due to it.' (From 'The Third Policeman')
  • Stewie Griffin
    Stewie Griffin Posts: 4,330
    jc4lab wrote:
    A lot of mispellink is cos of just using two fingers typing and you are just too eiger to get your posting on your favourite forum..so you can quickly get that wonderful feedback that gives you a fix for the rest of the day.You cant be arsed to change any mistakes...

    and I is at wurk 2 so I dont got the time 2 mak shur its speeled proply.
  • 2Phat4Rapha
    2Phat4Rapha Posts: 238
    st68 wrote:
    i think i have stumbled upon the grumpy old gits forum :lol::lol:

    You did.

    I have always presumed the purpose of writing, unless simply notes for oneself, is so that others may read it. It behoves writers to take such care as to make their words easy to read . There is an unpleasant trend for writers to do the opposite. That is to merely dump their own thoughts as quickly as possible into whatever 'language' happens to suite them at the time and with not a thought to their readers. This is selfish and the results unreadable.

    "Put it before them briefly so they will read it,clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it, and above all,accurately so they will be guided by its light"

    ... Pulitzer

    As for usage, maybe it's time we reclaimed 'English' and request that Americans now speak, well, American.
    I may be a minority of one but that doesn't prevent me from being right.
    http://www.dalynchi.com
  • neeb
    neeb Posts: 4,473
    Interestingly though, these days I sometimes find myself knowingly using colloquial or even ungrammatical English for the sake of clarity. The shopkeeper will probably understand you better if you say "can I get..." than "may I have...", simply because he hears this phrase more often. Email has a lot to answer for in this respect, for good or bad. There used to be a clear distinction between written English and spoken English, with grammatical correctness more important in the former, perhaps because the layer of meaning provided by intonation is lacking. Email is somewhere in between written and spoken English and so the boundaries between the two are blurring.

Categories