Language fails that make you angry

WannabeNewton

This one is so pervasive and it absolutely drives me insane: the use of your instead of you're when appropriate.

Andre

your kidding Don't lose you're wit.

jtbell

I have to admit that's one plus for text-speak, which would be "yr" either way.

WannabeNewton

hulk smash!!

WannabeNewton

Text speak is so simple yet so powerful

turbo

How does it handle "there", "they're", "their", and other problems? I want to deal with such misuse, but am unable, due to the sheer volume of errors.

English is probably a tough language, but look at Borek's posts. He writes better than most native-speakers!

JizzaDaMan

Care to mention England perhaps? Where English IS the native language.

Andre

It looks like you spelled "Da" wrong.

Curious3141

"I could care less" is an ironic (sardonic) phrasing, which is quite acceptable to me. If anything, it emphasises utter disdain even more than the literal phrasing.

vela

I disagree.

http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/care.html

Evo

True, the correct saying is "I couldn't care less". It's a put down meaning "I don't give a damn."

The mistaken "i could care less" isn't a put down, it means "I do care" and it's just people hearing and repeating the correct phrase wrong.

Fredrik

This isn't entirely true. There are two kinds of calories, "gram calories" and "kilogram calories". The former is the energy it takes to heat 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celcius. The latter is the energy it takes to heat 1 kilogram of water by 1 degree Celcius. Since "kilo" also means 1000, what one person calls "100 calories" can be "100 kilocalories" to another, because the first person means "100 kilogram calories", and the second person means "100000 gram calories". So they can actually both be right, because the same name is used for two different units.

Fredrik

I think Curious meant that some people are saying it wrong on purpose.

We have a few phrases like that in Sweden. One phrase that was popular about 15 years ago is "hur bra är det på en skala?" which translates to "how good is that on a scale?". When I first heard it, I thought the people saying it had to be complete idiots. Obviously, you have to specify the scale, like "how good is that on a scale from 1 to 10?". But I soon discovered that people who use this phrase understand this. They think it's funny precisely because it doesn't make sense.

Of course, there's an important difference between this and "I could care less". The difference is that no one really uses the logically correct question.

Fredrik

People don't seem to realize that most of these errors are typos, not evidence of poor grammar. The words that are the biggest problem for me are "its" and "it's". I understand these words perfectly, and yet, every time I need to type one of them, there's a 50% probability that I'll end up typing "its", and a 50% probability that I'll end up typing "it's". My brain imagines the sound of the word, and then my fingers type one of the words that sound like that, before I have even realized what I'm doing.

There is however no excuse for "should of" instead of "should've" or (better) "should have".

vela

Some people might, but in my experience, most people say "could care less" because they don't know any better. As far as the claim of irony goes, it just doesn't work.

Perhaps for you they're typos, but I think for most, the error stems from ignorance. If they were simply typos, I doubt the use of it's to mean its would be so prevalent.

Evo

Anyone that says "could care less" on purpose, knowing it's wrong (are there really any?) don't realize what they're actually saying. There is no irony, it's just plain wrong and so makes the speaker sound silly.

Andre

Not a single damn was recieved by anybody that day.