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[Bobber]

People that drive too slow.

[Kevin]

Why invent new sayings and words when they're patently not needed? We already have a very large and extensive vocabulary. Use it!!

Ooh oooh! Something we disagree on. I think one of the glories of language is the way it constantly evolves to reflect the people who speak it. Our entire lives are being americanized (see what I did there, with the zeee? Didya?) and so does our language.
I love the way the French are trying to stop this. New words have to be approved by an academy of "betters" (a desperate attempt to save what they see as an endangrered culture, as reflected in the mangling of the language) , yet people still say "le weekend" etc.

ps I strongly recommend Bill Bryson's "Mother Tongue." - a fun journey through the language. According to him americans speak a dialect closer to Elizabethan english than we do. Sir Francis Drake would probably better understand an appalachian hillbilly than you or I. Consarn it!

[Bill Harry]

nite - night; color - colour

[Bill Harry]

You are in a hurry in a supermarket or elsewhere. You have to choose which queue to stand in. You decide on one which should be quick. You get in it and then there is some problem with the people in front. Their card doesn't work. They've forgotten something. There is a problem and the manager has to be called. They have a partner who is still getting stuff they want to pay for. All the time the other queues are speeding by quickly. Five or ten minutes later you are still there and you could have been served and on your way home if you had got in any of the other queues. You say to yourself 'Murphy's law.'

[HeyJude18]

People that drive too slow.

I couldn't agree more!!! That and people that don't signal or try to make a left turn off the busiest street in town!!!

[HeatherBoo]

It irks me when people at work make a mess n the bathroom or breakroom and don't clean up after themselves  

[Jane]

Ooh oooh! Something we disagree on. I think one of the glories of language is the way it constantly evolves to reflect the people who speak it. Our entire lives are being americanized (see what I did there, with the zeee? Didya?) and so does our language.
I love the way the French are trying to stop this. New words have to be approved by an academy of "betters" (a desperate attempt to save what they see as an endangrered culture, as reflected in the mangling of the language) , yet people still say "le weekend" etc.

ps I strongly recommend Bill Bryson's "Mother Tongue." - a fun journey through the language. According to him americans speak a dialect closer to Elizabethan english than we do. Sir Francis Drake would probably better understand an appalachian hillbilly than you or I. Consarn it!

Agree! "Language cannot be enforced. It goes its own way, or the way of its speakers." In this respect remember Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell and its Newspeak.

[Penny Lane]

nite - night; color - colour

Not much love here for Americans, eh?  

[Jane]

Unfortunately the English language is undergoing radical changes and it is not so much because of the American variety as because the whole world is using it, because it is the international language. And so many users are distorting it and subverting it, and twisting it. They say very soon the third person singular will disappear and the perfect tenses will vanish. Like - Ann go to school, and Peter already saw the film. What do you think of that? Do you like it?

[Mairi]

It annoys me when I go through someone's mp3 player or music library and see a bunch of mislabled songs. Not only does it tell me that they've just downloaded them from a filesharing network, but it also says that they haven't bothered to learn much about the music to which they are listening. Not that I'm going to judge someone based on their music listening habits, but it just means that I won't be able to talk to them about music, which is one of my favourite subjects.

[MandyBug]

"To a man, ..."

This drives me insane.  

What's "To a man" mean?

[Kevin]

They say very soon the third person singular will disappear and the perfect tenses will vanish. Like - Ann go to school, and Peter already saw the film. What do you think of that? Do you like it?

Better bloody not - I teach english four nights a week to foreign language students and tenses pay my wages.
To be honest though most english speakers don't use them "correctly" (if correct equals what some Guardian reading middle class goatee bearded takes-his-holidays-in-Swaziland-building-toilets-for-orphaned-monkees type dude puts in a book).
little aside - last week I asked my students to discuss children's TV programmes with violence. Later they told me they heard "children's TV programmes with violins." No matter how I tried they couldn't hear the difference. Take nothing for granted.

[Penny Lane]

^  That reminds me, back when I studied French, I found that it was sometimes hard to remember the sound difference between the French words for poison and fish.  "Poison" (same spelling in both languages) versus "poissons."

[Bill Harry]

The elf and safety nutters in Britain irk me - those who have stopped children playing conkers, who have been closing down playgrounds in case a kid is injured on a swing or a slide, who prevent flower baskets being used on posts in the unlikely event they fall down and kill someone, who have caused countless school holidays abroad to be cancelled because teachers are afraid they'd be sued for the slightest thing and have the elf and safety nutters hounding them. They have not only taken the risks out of childrens lives, but ill equipped them for the future. It's a dangerous world anyway. I remember as a kid being able to play on bombed sites, making swings from ropes on lamp-posts, building carts and playing a variety of kids games that wouldn't be allowed today.

[Bobber]

Bankers getting a bonus.

[Jane]

Better bloody not - I teach english four nights a week to foreign language students and tenses pay my wages.
To be honest though most english speakers don't use them "correctly" (if correct equals what some Guardian reading middle class goatee bearded takes-his-holidays-in-Swaziland-building-toilets-for-orphaned-monkees type dude puts in a book).
little aside - last week I asked my students to discuss children's TV programmes with violence. Later they told me they heard "children's TV programmes with violins." No matter how I tried they couldn't hear the difference. Take nothing for granted.

I`d rather the beautiful English language didn`t lose its beauty! And the tenses. I wonder how it can be that the native speakers don`t use the tenses correctly. Please, Kevin, tell me, which tenses they usually mix up? It is very interesting!
There was a student from Canada who didn`t use perfect tenses, only simple and continuous. He was very amused at perfect. And as far as I know Americans prefer not to use perfect as well.

[Bill Harry]

What about the English words that don't sound phonetically the way they are written? You know the ones, give us some examples. Also, the way posh people pronounce certain words differently from working class people. A working place person would say 'pass' as p -ass'
a posh person would say 'parse.' I notice in the posh pronunciations there is the introduction of the 'r'.

[BlueMeanie]

What about the English words that don't sound phonetically the way they are written? You know the ones, give us some examples. Also, the way posh people pronounce certain words differently from working class people. A working place person would say 'pass' as p -ass'
a posh person would say 'parse.' I notice in the posh pronunciations there is the introduction of the 'r'.

All languages have words that that sound different to the way they are written. And 'parse' isn't posh, it's regional. I'm from the south of England, so I say 'parse'. You're from Liverpool, so naturally you'd say 'pas'. Unless you're one of those northerners that thinks everyone in the south is posh?  

[Bill Harry]

I've been living in London since 1966 and I can say that most of the Londoners I have come across don't say 'parse', it's more of an Upper class thing, a lot depending on which school they went to.

[Octie]

I love all those regional variations in UK-English pronunciation I've always found them fascinating and fun, for some reason. Haha, about the "posh" theme, when we just came to NZ we got friendly with an English family. I was talking the the mum/wife about our house or something, and I mentioned the garage, pronouncing it as "gaRAHGE' , because that's how everyone pronounced in in South Africa (as opposed to "GARrage"). She laughed and said I sounded all posh! She's from up north (I think from Hull...). At the time I had no idea at the time about thoes North/South variations.... interesting

And it's interesting how some people would say FI-nance and some would say fi-NANCE... or DE-tail and de-TAIL... and the funny thing is that I say "eye-ther" for either but "nee-ther" for neither - so inconsistent

By the way, I suppose I'm closer to "parse" than "pas" (grin)

I always thought English was a very cool language