Commonly Misused Words (Not the Bad Kind talking Grammer WIse)

Ostentatious Poinsettia said:
I am in 4th grade and what do I get 16 year old people saying anyways is a word. And anyway I was in a rush when I made the thread so who are you guys to criticize me? Huh
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Huh, don't try to be cute. If you criticize us for using anyways, of course we're going to criticize you for misspelling grammar. Though, there's no harm in it all. Lighten up; we are discussing our flaws anyways. c:

Anyways, I use that word all of the time. I may abuse ain't (which is not a real word) and ya'll (idk, it's considered slang). Acronyms are bad, but you gotta love them. I'll say things like I "lol'd," I'm "loling," and this is "lolness" but it makes sense to me.

Another thing my teacher mentioned: You know the ol' AOL phrase? You've got mail! Yeah, you have got mail is so improper but we're used to the lolness of the internet.
 
I will NOT lighten up OK because as an American society we are SOOOO lazy with our grammAr even though some of you don't live in America anyways is SOOOO babyish Thx
 
Ostentatious Poinsettia said:
I will not lighten up okay? As an American society, we are so lazy with our grammar. Even though some of you don't live in America, "Anyways" is so babyish. Thanks.
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I tried to fix this up.

I like the fact that you're lazy with your punctuation.

People around the world don't write the same way they speak. I use words such as "Anyways" or "Ain't" everyday and I don't write using those words. I'm sure many people on The PokéCommunity also do this.
 
I'll be the first to admit that I'm a grammar nazi.

But, as such, I still insert "like" into my sentences a lot. I didn't know about the "anyways" thing either. I guess it's so colloquial that I don't stop to think about it too much. It really grinds my gears, though, when people mess up things as simple as contractions. Now, I don't mean "ain't" by this – "ain't" is a dialect thing; you can't blame people for using it. At least, not too much.

But when people mix up "it's" and "its" (the first is the contraction "it is," the second is the possessive) and "there," "their," and "they're" (first is a location [preposition? I'm a little too lazy to think right now], second is possessive, third is the contraction for "they are")... There are a few other little quirks that get me (like "alot" versus the correct "a lot" and "alright" as opposed to the correct "all right;" games are a severe violator of that rule), but nothing as much as those two.

Semicolon use is another thing that makes me twitch. Yes, I use them too, but I try and make sure they're in the correct spot. From what I remember, at least with my experience in Maryland schools, English teachers don't really even go over semicolon use all that much. In fact, I learned more about commas than I did about semicolons. I dunno about other places, but...
 
I learn most of my grammar from books, so I'm pretty proficient with it...

Though any word spoken by any person used to mean any thing is considered a real word. Think about it, "you" was once "ye", and even before that was "yea", words evolve over time, and new ones are always being added to speech...

That aside, one word I use at least ten times an hour is "eh?", and it has too many definitions to count XD
 
That's where I got most of my grammar from: books. Though schooling does help a little bit. I mean, that's what half of English classes are for, if not for just literature.

I'm actually highly interested in linguistics, which is the study of language, so I have a book on the history of the English language. I haven't had a lot of time to read it (given all my actual schoolwork *cough*), but I'm sure there's quite a bit of change that the language has gone through to get to this point. It also doesn't help that English "steals" quite a lot of just about every form of language – it's a Romantic, Germanic, Greek, and Occidental language all at the same time.
 
I know its Japanese, but 「役不足」
While it means "something that is too easy/simple and is not fit for a particular person", there are many young people who use the word as "a task too hard and not fit for the particular person" - the complete opposite.

Cassino said:
Another mis-used word is hentai, it is Japanese for "pervert", not "anime porn". A nice modern example of how words in one language become corrupted for use in another.
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Oh god pet peeve.
Though I guess this will stick with us for a long time.
 
I'm assuming the reason why "hentai" is used for that purpose is because someone who is a hentai would be the person looking at it?
 
Ashen said:
I'm assuming the reason why "hentai" is used for that purpose is because someone who is a hentai would be the person looking at it?
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I'd suspect a perfectly healthy teenager to be looking at drawn porn too, though people may disagree with me.
 
You have a very good point there. I wonder, then, why it's used colloquially the way it is.

I just remembered another thing in grammar that grinds my gears: ending sentences with a preposition. It's improper and just bad form – you actually get graded down on university papers if you end sentences with prepositions. At least, most professors will grade you down if you do that.
 
Ashen said:
Semicolon use is another thing that makes me twitch. Yes, I use them too, but I try and make sure they're in the correct spot. From what I remember, at least with my experience in Maryland schools, English teachers don't really even go over semicolon use all that much. In fact, I learned more about commas than I did about semicolons. I dunno about other places, but...
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I don't remember any of my teachers teaching us about semicolons either, except for the rare times that if they were reading my report or some other written assignment, they might suggest I use a semicolon.
 
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