...See, when something's askew, wrong, ill-fitting? It does not jibe. Now, if someone can't hack the patois, if they're not hip to the sprach, unable to doubletalk and befuddle The Man, then -- and only then, my brother, my cousin, my no-relative-of-mine, may you say that they do not -- cannot! -- jive.
But I should'a knowed you'd hone right in on that, no doubt as a part of your constant homing of your linguistic skills.
Pfui! Next person pulls one of those, I'm gonna throw my Unabridged at him. 'Salright, I've got a spare -- 'cos "Two is one and one is none," and a goodly number of persons, many of them in possession of keyboards, appear to be well down in the negative numbers.
Look, there are plenty of common spoken contractions and slang terms you may sensibly use in writing, especially informal writing, but there are other spoken usages that are just plain wrong. The people who use 'em have never seen the correct versions and probably don't read much other than cereal boxes and the sports pages, lips moving as they do. Don't let them haul you back down into the crab bucket.
Could you give a couple examples? I'm going over my neighbor later. It will probably come up in connection to his being an English teacher*.
ReplyDelete(Please don't hit me. I just feel like jerking a few chains this morning.)
stay safe.
* - He teaches Shop at the local HS. He's from England. :P
What, pacifically, are you referring to?
ReplyDeleteI think we need to resurrect Barbara Billingsley be the mnemnonic for this one:
ReplyDelete"Pardon me, I speak jive"
(And yes, it bothers me, too, when people say stuff won't "jive")
I have the tact to not take the wrong tack.
ReplyDeleteKing Juan Carlos I has reigned in Spain for 39 years. The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain, obscuring my vision as I rein in my horse. Are those giants in the distance? Charge! Shut up, Sancho!
My supervisor back in the IUPUI days had two that always grated on me: She called the fiscal year the "physical" year, and called a computer error message an "air message".
ReplyDeleteAxe me no questions, I'll just drive home in my Excape.
Irregardless of that, I could care less. I'll still hold down the fort.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I know "language evolves". Doesn't mean it shouldn't put up a fight.
I may have to return home, so that I can hone in on the knowledge expounded here.
ReplyDeleteWould the services of a homing pigeon be useful, on the return?
Certainly, my knowledge shall be much sharper after said honing is completed.
Curiously, I wanted to say that I would "hone my course" towards home. While that seems a good usage, I'm not quite sure that is is...
I'm (no snarking) confused by the second paragraph. Does one not "home in" on things? Does one not "hone" (sharpen, polish) one's skills?
ReplyDeleteOne does, but Roberta switched between the first and second paragraphs. The second one was wry humor.
ReplyDeleteI think.
Indeed I did and indeed it was. ::sigh::
ReplyDeleteMy favorite "beat 'em with a dictionary" moment is when someone screws up "for all intents and purposes" as "intensive purposes".
ReplyDeleteI damned-near blew a gasket when I saw it in a sales proposal written by our business development director.
I definately know what your talking about.
ReplyDeleteI was really down when I wasn't axed about the new weals.
ReplyDeleteRunnin and duckin...
Eck!
In misplaced faith, I think a lot of it is taken from the Farnsworth people. Who, I think, generally arrive from schools of one or another sort.
ReplyDeleteSo long as they have some naval oranges. (Yes, they're now printing that on boxes.) Showed them the orange umbillicus. Explained "NAVEL" they said "No, no, Naval because I guess they come by sea." (From Florida. To CO. Sure.)
ReplyDeleteTyping fast I've been known to commit all those ... almost all those errors. Reign rain rein particularly, because something there is in my brain that loves Phonetic spelling. (If you take in account most of this is from another universe, so j and i are interchangeable, so are w and u and as far as my back brain is concerned, f is an upstart. THE ONLY way to make the sound ffff is ph. So, you know, phirst we phind that J uas really tjred uhen I wrote something becawse it looks phine like this.
Sarah Hoyt