Poll: Help to end this debate...

[MrGFunk]

Yeah it's "thing" think would be a grammatical error. I quite often hear a lot of similair mistakes, one of my favourites (that my mum always does, and I love to bring her up on it) is pronouncing "skeleton" as "skelington" always makes me laugh.

As above. This does not need to be a poll, this is not a debate of what people think is right. It's a poll of who's wrong.

I get easily irritated by these errors. It's just lazy and shows how bad teaching/learning is.

I know people who say acrossed instead of across - bugs me.

The worst, though, the single worst missuse which gets my goat is:
the pronunciation of the letter 'H'. This is spoken as aitch. Heytch makes my skin crawl.

 

[Graustein]

The worst, though, the single worst missuse which gets my goat is:
the pronunciation of the letter 'H'. This is spoken as aitch. Heytch makes my skin crawl.

That's a dialect difference, not a grammatical mispronunciation. It's like Zee versus Zed, or Aluminum versus Aluminium.

On topic, I thought it was think. Thing makes less sense to me.

 

[MrGFunk]

The worst, though, the single worst missuse which gets my goat is:
the pronunciation of the letter 'H'. This is spoken as aitch. Heytch makes my skin crawl.

That's a dialect difference, not a grammatical mispronunciation. It's like Zee versus Zed, or Aluminum versus Aluminium.

On topic, I thought it was think. Thing makes less sense to me.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/aitch [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/aitch]

It does say French people spell it hache but I think this pronounced "heche" like (Anne Heche). It's been a while since I did French language though.

Edit: I don't mean for this to be annoying, I'm sorry if it sounds that way.

 

[Graustein]

The worst, though, the single worst missuse which gets my goat is:
the pronunciation of the letter 'H'. This is spoken as aitch. Heytch makes my skin crawl.

That's a dialect difference, not a grammatical mispronunciation. It's like Zee versus Zed, or Aluminum versus Aluminium.

On topic, I thought it was think. Thing makes less sense to me.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/aitch [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/aitch]

It does say French people spell it hache but I think this pronounced "heche" like (Anne Heche). It's been a while since I did French language though.

An American dictionary that lists only one pronunciation for a word isn't the best way to end an argument that deals with regional pronunciations. Haitch appears to be the standard where I am.

 

[MrGFunk]

The worst, though, the single worst missuse which gets my goat is:
the pronunciation of the letter 'H'. This is spoken as aitch. Heytch makes my skin crawl.

That's a dialect difference, not a grammatical mispronunciation. It's like Zee versus Zed, or Aluminum versus Aluminium.

On topic, I thought it was think. Thing makes less sense to me.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/aitch [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/aitch]

It does say French people spell it hache but I think this pronounced "heche" like (Anne Heche). It's been a while since I did French language though.

An American dictionary that lists only one pronunciation for a word isn't the best way to end an argument that deals with regional pronunciations. Haitch appears to be the standard where I am.

I just grabbed the first dictionary I found in Google.

I am English. I thought as it is spelling this would be the same across English speaking nations. It does seem to have some differences though, as I discovered in Wikipedia.

Thanks for giving the a reason for this but how do I stop my skin crawling?

 

[crazyjackal]

If you think the answer to this question is "think", you've got another thing coming!
*Makes a fist*

 

[JMeganSnow]

I'd say that the word ought to depend on how you mean the phrase. If you're telling them "think again!", then it should be think. If you're telling them "I'm gonna give you something you ain't gonna like!", then it should be thing.

I always assumed that the phrase meant the latter, which is why "thing" sounds correct to me, but I can see how you could use it in the former context as well. It's a cliche'd bromide anyway so there really is no "correct" way to use it in conversation. Even if you get the phrase "right" you're still committing the sin of unoriginality.

 

[Grimm91]

Who thought that it was think?

 

[sky14kemea]

i always say "thing"

ive never heard anyone say think, but i guess depending on how you look at it, they both make sense

 

[Varchld]

I'd say thing...but really the best word to use would be "thought".

"If you think you're going out tonight you've got another thought comming"
As in you're going to change your mind when you realise i'm not letting you out tonight.

 

[xxDarlenexx]

http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/thing.html


I would be more inclined to agree with the older members of the group. The expression has been around awhile and it may outdate them, but they're closer to its origin than younger members of the group.

EDIT: I just looked at Alice in Wonderland and that line isn't in there. I must be remembering it from some other story. But I do remember it was an older book. Sorry I can't remember exactly what it is!

 

[beddo]

At work today one of my bosses was saying how their daughter had laughed at them for saying the phrase "If you think you're going out tonight you've got another think coming", saying think instead of thing. When most of us said we would have done the same we turned to polling the staff, which gave us half agreeing with think and half agreeing with think (and those saying think being of an older generation, bar one 65 year old)and the other half saying it was thing. So I'm curious, what do you say, And what which is right?

The correct word is "thing", using the word "think" is either a misspelling or if the word "think" is used by its correct definition then the sentence makes no sense.

It doesn't matter if some people think otherwise, they are simply wrong. If they don't understand why it's wrong then have had a poor education. Using it as a point of conformity is not unexpected though it simply adds to the recent dumbing down of the English language.

Relying on the general public for information is rarely a sensible thing to do. The number of people who don't understand statistics but talk about them anyway just annoys me, case in point; Tony Blair said words to the effect of:

"It's not fair that half of students get less than the average."

Seriously, if you don't understand something, don't bother sprouting your ignorance.

 

[Graustein]

I just grabbed the first dictionary I found in Google.

I am English. I thought as it is spelling this would be the same across English speaking nations. It does seem to have some differences though, as I discovered in Wikipedia.

Thanks for giving the a reason for this but how do I stop my skin crawling?

No way I can think of. My skin crawls whenever somebody informs me that they could care less, as if the 'nt were optional.

 

[Sewblon]

It's thing. Think is a verb, it can't be an object in a sentence. Thing is a noun, it can be an object.

I agree with xitel.

 

[letsnoobtehpwns]

"ThinK coming" got pwnd.