I consider this to be a scientifical question, since it is concerned with linguistics. What do you English-speaking people (native speakers only!) find irritating in the speech of others?
I can give a few examples from my own experience in Dutch:
"Die is groter als die." which should be "Die is groter dan die." but in colloquial speech most of us make this mistake.
This one can raise the small hairs on my arms: "Zij noemt Heleen." which is clearly "Zij heet Heleen." Most Flemish people tend to say this, and most of them are ignorant of the mistake they're making, but it is a BIG one ("She calls Helen" vs "She is called Helen" but it doesn't have the same effect as when you would say these English phrases.)
I guess my question is clear?
And now, for pure amusement, some English sentences my fellow Flemish people often get wrong:
"We are planning the test in the neighbourhood of the third of March." (as spoken by a TEACHER OF ENGLISH for god's sake!!)
"How does it call?" or "How do you call that?" (ick!!) (a fellow student in secondary school)
"How does it come?" (same fellow student, who obviously wanted to ask "How come?")
| Vlien wrote: |
| I consider this to be a scientifical question, since it is concerned with linguistics. What do you English-speaking people (native speakers only!) find irritating in the speech of others? |
I would say that this is definitely philosophical rather than scientific since the question seeks opinion in a manner which has little scientific merit itself* since it doesn't start with a hypothesis or testable posit.
Would you expect to see some similarity in what irritates people in their own languages? That would then suggest that there is some global mechanism at work which transcends the specific language and applies in a more global or universal way. That would be interesting, and would raise issues in meta-linguistics (Chomsky would be a starting point probably) and cognitive science (CS) (do we 'think' in language? If so do we think in our native language? If not then there must be a meta-language which comes before we learn our natural language and this might be universal or at least very widely applicable. One strand of thought in CS is that there is such a language - this is known as the Language of Thought hypothesis
*Unless you plan to correlate or otherwise analyse the results. This is incredibly difficult and rather subjective when the data is personal opinion, particularly in such an open format (as opposed to a structured set of questions which require no interpretation from the questioner and extract factual responses from the respondents in a manner designed to provide some basis for analysis of a hypothesis.
My own no.1 dislike concerning the use of the English language is the use of deliberately convoluted, tortured, euphemistic and weasel-words/phrases, which are designed to mislead, confuse or hide reality. It is at it's most common in military, political and management misuse of language. (George Bush takes it to a new level, but in his case I suspect it may be more because he is genuinely bewildered most of the time).
At work I don't want to touch base with a problem-centred, facilitator in order to push the envelope on this one. Nor do I see the need for some outside the box meetings which engage in some blue-sky brainstorming with a blank sheet of paper in order to facilitate the free-flow of creativity energy in the team and encouraging them to run ideas up a flagpole and see who salutes them.
Neither have I any interest in agreeing a proactive and customer-focussed strategic plan which will allow us to re-engineer the group dynamic by establishing new target-centred and demand-driven systems of communication, which enable synergy between customer facing operation team and the technical support function, leading to an ephemera of permanence and reliability within the organisational support arm.
As for politics and military matters; I do not wish to be told that a friendly-fire incident has led to blue on blue casualties which are now the subject of assessmentation and may be symptomatic of a non-optimal resource allocation challenge
Nor do I want George Bush to tell me that | Quote: |
| The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein, and his willingness to terrorize himself.” |
or that | Quote: |
| It's negative to think about blowing each other up. That's not a positive thought. That's a Cold War thought. That's a thought when people were enemies with each other. |
or | Quote: |
| My trip to Asia begins here in Japan for an important reason. It begins here because for a century and a half now, America and Japan have formed one of the great and enduring alliances of modern times. From that alliance has come an era of peace in the Pacific. |
Unfortunately, I don't have a deep, philsophical or poltical view to give. If you wanted to know what irritates me, just out of light-hearted curiousity, then I'm your man. Personally, it annoys me whenever someone uses an adjective instead of an adverb. It's common, and I don't say anything, but I just note it, and move on. Irritating, nevertheless.
| Drawingguy wrote: |
| Unfortunately, I don't have a deep, philsophical or poltical view to give. If you wanted to know what irritates me, just out of light-hearted curiousity, then I'm your man. Personally, it annoys me whenever someone uses an adjective instead of an adverb. It's common, and I don't say anything, but I just note it, and move on. Irritating, nevertheless. |
I write good.
I just [sarcasm]love[/sarcasm] when people say "Can I go to the bathroom?" or "Can I *blah blah*" in classrooms or when needing permission to leave from a certain place. Now it's not like there is anything wrong but it should be "May I" for permission. x] | DjinniFire wrote: |
| I just [sarcasm]love[/sarcasm] when people say "Can I go to the bathroom?" or "Can I *blah blah*" in classrooms or when needing permission to leave from a certain place. Now it's not like there is anything wrong but it should be "May I" for permission. x] |
Ahh, but maybe the person asking is a 4 yr old with toilet fear and low self-esteem; or perhaps a new student in a wheelchair and not yet familiar with facilities at the school. Here the sentence is syntactically and grammatically correct (although it would be rhetorical in the first example). 
I haaaate it when people say the letter 'H' as Heich instead of Eich. Really annoys me that does!
| ftv_flung wrote: |
| I haaaate it when people say the letter 'H' as Heich instead of Eich. Really annoys me that does! |
Irish and Anglo-Indian pronunciation is different from the mainstream in that they do pronounce the 'h', as in 'haitch'.Well I personally have grown to loathe the English language because of its inuendos and its outright perversion. No matter what, if you try to say just a normal sentence someone will turn it in to something nasty. For example, since you are in a room with Americans you say "Man this is difficult and time-consuming." Of course, there will be an American that realizes the perfection of your sentence and will say something like "Well if you try hard and long it will be more pleasurable." I didn't just make that up, I actually quoted that from a teacher in real life.
The English Langauge perverts and destroys your mind. My advice is to learn a new language or just stop thinking in English and talking with English.
And the government and TIME magazine use the same language BS. The government also forces everyone to conform and go to their BS schools. It is illegal to be homeless in America btw. Even innocent people use the innuendos that have been encrypted in the English language.
Death to America! Assulaym Allakum! (I am not a Muslim, but Arabic is a damn cool language!) 
| EanofAthenasPrime wrote: |
| Well I personally have grown to loathe the English language because of its innuendos and its outright perversion. |
A language is not perverted in the same way that a TV is not a sexual deviant, even if it is showing images of sexually 'deviant' practices. English is actually one of the most expressive languages in the world and I feel happy and grateful to be a native speaker of this treasure.
As far as profanity/blasphemy goes, this is not a feature of a particular language since different cultures find different references obscene/profane. For example, many European languages use words concerned with sex, excrement and bigotry as profanities. Japanese, on the other hand, uses words to do with rudeness or violating protocols of behaviour as profanities. For example, the word Kisama in Japanese means 'you', but because of the particulars of Japanese this is regarded as a very rude word and would shock some Japanese if you said it in public....
| Quote: |
No matter what, if you try to say just a normal sentence someone will turn it in to something nasty. For example, since you are in a room with Americans you say "Man this is difficult and time-consuming." Of course, there will be an American that realizes the perfection of your sentence and will say something like "Well if you try hard and long it will be more pleasurable." I didn't just make that up, I actually quoted that from a teacher in real life.
The English Language perverts and destroys your mind. My advice is to learn a new language or just stop thinking in English and talking with English. |
Utter nonsense. Innuendo is not new - the Greeks used it widely, nor is it language specific.
In fact much innuendo relies on a shared understanding between those involved for it's success, and is often regarded as a fairly inoffensive form of profanity because the double meaning will often pass by unnoticed by children and other listeners because they lack the shared understanding that a 'melon' for example, is frequently used as a code for a female breast. This is why innuendo is the only real form of 'rudeness' which is tolerated and fairly common in situations where children may be in the audience - consider a Pantomime.
Panto relies hugely on innuendo and often this works at 2 or more levels - the children think they understand why an exchange is funny, but the adults have a completely different and more adult (blue) understanding of the same exchange. Innuendo is unusual in that regard and I think it is a worthwhile part of the spoken language and that we would be the poorer for it's disappearance.
If you find innuendo objectionable then what has that got to do with English? Do you think the form is unique to English? The whole idea is daft since innuendo relies largely on ambiguous or multiple meanings for words/phrases which are apparently very ordinary and usual.
It can be practised, therefore, in most if not all oral languages (although it will most likely make use of different vocabulary for each language - depending on whether words are synonyms or commonly understood to have other meanings.
| Quote: |
And the government and TIME magazine use the same language BS. The government also forces everyone to conform and go to their BS schools. It is illegal to be homeless in America btw. Even innocent people use the innuendos that have been encrypted in the English language.
Death to America! Assulaym Allakum! (I am not a Muslim, but Arabic is a damn cool language!) |
Arabic can be used just as profanely as English - in fact I think Arabic is quite a good language for insult and abuse, like French, since apparently gentle and nice-sounding collections of sounds actually translate into filthy abusive meaning. (The Merovingian (in the film The Matrix Reloaded) expresses it nicely when he says that he finds swearing in French like wiping one's ass with silk....)
Arabic reserves phrases concerned with female relatives and sex as the most offensive and profane terms. In that respect it is similar to English since most of the really juicy English profanities are not much different - either sexual reference, female derogatory reference or, for the really guaranteed insult, mix the two together...
I think you need to lighten up and consider that language is a tool for expression. The tone and profanity of the expressions exchanged are far more a result of the choices and intentions of the linguist than they are a result of a particular language or vocabulary.....you can swear and abuse people in any language.
In Arabic I like the style of insult which uses a combination of sexual imagery and familial insult to deliver the ultimate insult....examples would include the very rude phrases below which I will not provide translations for - that's up to the reader to discover
(I don't speak Arabic - I leaned some phrases and expressions many years ago when travelling in Morocco and North Africa generally but sadly that has all long since gone from my head due to lack of use. Phrases below were taught to me by a couple of Moroccan guys (one, I still remember, was known to friends as Mustapha Italiano because of his stories about meeting Jagger and the Stones in Italy and setting them straight on a few matters of music and guitar technique which made them the band they are....He was a fantastic character because the taller the tales he told, the more earnest and sincere he would become and it is only after some while that you understand that this is part of the enjoyment and pleasure of the tall-tale and that although he appears to wish the listener to believe him, it is a game being played which is also something of a test of the listener. The reaction he gets tells him much about the other person and he uses it as one way to weigh people up. If you don't challenge his outrageous tales then you will not see him the next day or thereafter. If, however, you tell him that his lies are reaching a new height and that he will soon be a bigger liar than (select any Western Politician at this point) my choice at the time was Ronnie Reagan since this was in the mid 80s. I thought he was mad at me for a few tense seconds before he erupted into the most infectious and positively obscene sounding laughter. We laughed for the next hour or so until it was painful to laugh any more and became firm friends on the spot. (This laughter had nothing to do with his funny roll-ups, because I asked him and he said not. Neither did it have anything to do with the fact that we spend the next couple of hours wandering the Medina in Tangier looking for chocolate and crisps. He assured me of it most earnestly.)
Arabic Profanity...(the phrases below WILL get you into a fight in a Muslim country pretty certainly).
Add ma emmak neketo la bayyak men tizo, hebil fik men bayadto.
Enta neket emmok oo' khelafto ekhtok.
Aire fe mabda'ak
Bidde neek immakUnfortunately, none of you really got my question. No philosophical stuff and fancy long sentences please. Just examples of common errors the people around you tend to make. Errors, mistakes, ... no meta-linguistics or cognitive science! Just... wrong verbal forms? Wrong syntax? Like the examples I gave you.
I didn't post this in the language forum; that's for "learning languages"?
Sigh. So: science, linguistics!
Well Bikerman, I guess you are right...but I think it is the overall crudeness of America that I despise.
"May I..." turn things around a bit and say what I don't like in what some of the native English speakers say?
...
Thanks.
Groceries pronounced as GroSHeries (with SH sound..)
This year, pronounced as ThiSH year (with SH sound instead of S, or worse with ZH sound...)
Annoys the hell out of me!!! 
Also, a KILLER...: When some people, while asking to repeat something, say "What was that?".
As if whatever the other party said cannot be even considered as speech, they'd just call the speech "that".... Very disrespectful in my opinion. | Drawingguy wrote: |
| Unfortunately, I don't have a deep, philsophical or poltical view to give. If you wanted to know what irritates me, just out of light-hearted curiousity, then I'm your man. Personally, it annoys me whenever someone uses an adjective instead of an adverb. It's common, and I don't say anything, but I just note it, and move on. Irritating, nevertheless. |
Absolutely - that is one of my pet peeves too... it can drive me crazy! And as no one in the US seems to use adverbs at all, most of the TV I watch is completely devoid of any adverbs. I've formed a stupid habit of correcting the characters on-screen. ('He was going real quick' - 'No, he was going really quickly'). No one else seems to really notice though! The number of times people reply to "How are you?" with "Good" is astounding.
Also, I hate the made-up words (and generally atrocious spelling) of (primarily) US English. Take for example 'deplaning' to describe the process of leaving an aeroplane (no, it is not an airplane!) What was wrong with 'disembarking', a very respectable word, or even just 'leaving'!
A final peeve is when people write 'got', 'get' or 'gotten' frequently. It's such a useless word, why bother with it? If you find you yourself writing it, then you're just being lazy. There's always a much better word to use.One thing that annoys me in speech is the slurring of words, which seems to be more common among teenagers I know. One young fellow, I'll call him Zeb, introduces himself in a phone call with what he intends to be the words "This is Zeb" but instead it's "thizizeb", very hastily spoken.
Another one that bugs me a little, because being corrected on this particular grammar error as a child really sticks in my mind for some reason: The contraction of the word "have" after another word, for example "could have" contracted to "could've" SOUNDS like "could of" and is very commonly written that way by mistake. I see this everywhere on the internet. Is this one example you were looking for?
All of the three last examples were satisfying! Thanks a lot, that's what I was looking for! It's really weird to see that people who speak other languages make annoying mistakes in their own tongue too...
