"Amazing" Should be Banished From the English Language

[TheMann]

Why is an American University saying anything about the English language?

As an Englishman I have to protest that the people in charge of this survey utilise the language incorrectly in hundreds of ways every single day.

Pavement, not sidewalk
Dustbin/rubbishbin, not trashcan
Colour not Color
Lefttenant not Lootenant

Keep English English!

BIG SMARMY EDIT WITH KNOBS ON: Also, Americans can't understand sarcasm.

Ah yes, unfortunately there is probably a mild version of Poe's Law in effect here.
That being said, where do you get Leftenant from, considering that it's spelled Lieutenant. I'm actually curious about that one. Of course, how do we get "ker-nel" from colonel, or "sar-gent" from sergeant? Military ranks are weird like that. I could also drill Brits about the center/centre thing. Shouldn't centre be pronounced "sen-truh" phonetically? And the Aluminum/Aluminium thing: It would seem weird because so many other elements end with -ium, but then again, there's another exception. How many 'I's are in the metal with the atomic symbol Pt? Hilariously, my evil American spell-checker is telling me you spelled "utilize" wrong.

But this all just makes me happier that I'm a math and science guy. We do cool and productive things. We build rockets, spaceships, interplanetary robots and the Havok physics engine. We sit in our nerd caves and think about flying cars and fusion reactors. All these people do is whine about words that bother them the most. Although I am kind of sick of "epic" myself.

but if I did have to ban a set of words, I'd probably go with "knee," "arrow," "in" and "the." Not in that order.

I can fix this. "My friend used to use a Skyrim meme, but then I shot him in the knee with a 9mm. He doesn't walk very well now, but also doesn't use memes, so I call that an overall win."

 

[DTWolfwood]

i get real uppity only when the word ENORMITY is misused. People just assume that its the noun of enormous! ...actually just mentioning it here is making me angry. yes i have language issues XD

 

[DTWolfwood]

"Amazing" Should be Banished From the English Language

I think the only areas in which I have disagreement are:

1. When someone uses a phrase or word as though it had the exact opposite meaning.

"Infer" and "imply," mentioned in the Fry video, are one of those cases. If you "infer" it means you think I said it, while if you "imply" it means I should be lead to think you said it.

For another, more extreme example, consider if someone told you, "That substance is inflammable." If we aren't using the agreed-upon definition, you might be led to believe that substance is not a fire danger. Dire consequences follow.

2. When structure, grammar, or punctuation cloud the meaning of a sentence:

"Flammable. An oddity, chiefly useful in saving lives. The common word meaning "combustible" is inflammable. But some people are thrown off by the in- and think inflammable means "not combustible." For this reason, trucks carrying gasoline or explosives are now marked FLAMMABLE. Unless you are operating such a truck and hence are concerned with the safety of children and illiterates, use inflammable."

Possibly my favourite passage from EoS.

i've learned something new this day. Thank you.

yet another reason why english is such a pain to learn to non-english speakers.

 

[OneOfTheMichael's]

If they make such a big deal about words in the english language the solution is simple.
Learn a different language.

 

[DasDestroyer]

Wait, what's so bad about "thank you in advance"?

 

[Noala]

You can't really push a word out of the English language, short of somehow convincing everyone that they shouldn't ever use it again. What is the purpose of them even making this survey? Do they think that just because one group of individuals doesn't like a word they can actually hope to remove it form use? Isn't that not only a huge fucking waste of time, but conceited and pompous to boot. People are really amazing sometimes.

snip

Honestly, Englishmen do not speak the same as they did 300 years ago. Why do you except all the land you acquired back then to change their manner of speaking every time you do? You shouldn't have claimed more territory then you knew how to keep tabs on if you want everyone to keep up. Unless, of course, you were being ironic (a word people seem to hate but I do not know what else to use in this context), bringing up the fact that language evolves over time and people shouldn't freak out over its misuse. After all, at the end of the day we all just speak terribly incorrect Latin.

Actually, that's an improper use of the word ironic. The true definition of irony is "something having a result that was not intended." IT is one of the most incorrectly used words in the English language.

(might sound sarcastic but it's not)
So an example of irony would be something like, I mix some colours to make blue, instead they made green, would that be irony?

 

[Psychedelic Spartan]

Well. Stephen Fry basically summed that up for me.


They can lecture me on English when they can spell colour correctly.

There's not really a right way to spell color, just british and american english are slightly different.

 

[lunam-kardas]

Well as long as we never lose the right to say "awesome" then I'm cool with it.

Word I wish to add to the "ban" pile-

Synergy

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

I used to think certain words should be banned...then I took a pointed weapon to the patella.

DAMN YOU TO ETERNAL HELLFIRE.

I had to google "scientific name for knee" AND come up with a snazzy alternative to "arrow" (hint: it's not easy). Then I scrolled down to post and found I'd been ninja'd, and not only that, ninja'd with the EXACT PHRASE that I was going to use.

Talking of which, can we ban "ninja'd" yet?

 

[Jezzy54]

Those people sound like snooty twats. If we removed every word that gets misused, we wouldn't have a bloody language left.

 

[tehweave]

I have not used any of those words last year.

Man cave? Really? THAT was popular? Why?

And while I probably did actually use "amazing" a few times, I don't use it that often.

I do say "excellent" way too much.

 

[Mrmac23]

As a posh, middle class white Englishman, good god are these people snobbish.

 

[CAPTCHA]

What's the statue? It's

Spoiler

Fantastigateism.

 

[Smokej]

every year it's the same crap... (here in Germany as well, except those PR-moves are coming from some publishing companies in order to improve sale figures for their non-scientific books on that topic)

why are people even bothering? a backwater college makes a PR stunt, a lot of people are buying it and discussing about how a language should work based on some amateurish or popular scientific linguistic knowledge (for you english speakers such as Stephen Fry, we have Bastian Sick among several others) the academic world settles back and enjoys the spectacle... and after some time, it starts all over again

 

[Alphavillain]

The word "ironic". Somehow nearly always used by smug twats who think they're more clever than anyone else and who invariably don't understand irony. WANKERS.

 

[Skeleon]

Gee, these people sound like the idiots trying go "germanize" the German language by making up all sorts of words to replace words of Latin, Greek, French and lately primarily English origin.

What is wrong with "thank you in advance", by the way?!

 

[Griffolion]

Then how else would my girlfriend describe me in bed?

Just kidding. I'm not that great at it.

And I don't have a girlfriend.

*Get's rope and walks away*