Tuesday, February 12, 2008

I'm a hypocrite about words and definitely a dork for even thinking about this

I'm so weird and inconsistent about how I feel about using and pronouncing words we got from other languages. My overall philosophy is trying to be down to earth and unpretentious, and progressive and I definitely think language exists to enable communication, and that's it. Language constantly evolves, and I don't like the idea that there are definite ways to say things or that grammar/punctuation rules is set in stone. It's helpful to maintain some standards for clarity, and I loooove copyeditors, don't get me wrong, but people who call themselves "grammar-nazis" are really annoying and self-righteous. It's like, you're getting so hung up on these rules, and they're only there to facilitate you in conveying ideas. If people understand what you're saying/writing, then stop being annoying.

Anyway, given what I just said, it really really bothers me when people doubly misuse pronouns. I don't care when people misuse them in the more common way of using the incorrect pronoun as the subject of a sentence (eg., "Bob and me went there yesterday."), but I just hate it when people overcompensate and decide that any time you talk about yourself and someone else, that you should always use the pronoun "I." As in "This is really important to Ralph and I." No no no no no. It's the overcompensation that gets to me, because people make a point of using the subject pronoun when there's actually a distinction on when you use each, and they're trying to sound intelligent and smart by using 'I' in all instances. They know some sort of rule exists concerning the use of different types of pronouns, but they don't actually know what they are. That's what that is.

It bothers me when people misuse other words, too, usually food. Especially bruschetta and panini. Panini means "sandwiches," soooo, when Matt says he's going to make himself a "panini sandwich," he's actually saying that he will have a "sandwiches sandwich." The mis-pronunciation of bruschetta doesn't bother me so much as the misuse. Bruschetta is the bread, NOT a tomato, olive oil, basil mixture. You can have bruschetta with any kind of topping you want, or you could even just eat the bread with no topping and no tomatoes at all, and you'd still be eating bruschetta!

Vahz, Vayse; enDIVE, ahn-deev, I don't actually care, I don't think we should be too hung up. Though, it makes sense to try to pronounce things in the way they originally were, but if you're American, and from the Northeast like me, you probably have a really obnoxious, harsh, nasal accent, and I sound stupid and obnoxious when I start pronouncing "croissant" as "kwasohhhhn." When I worked at the diner, I would pronounce "gyro" as "jai-ro," because when I said it correctly, no one understood what I was saying. Some people said it as "guy-ro," and anyone would have to admit, that's pretty bad, and we should look down on and shun those people.

What's my problem? I know that's how those words are used in America, and I know what I'm getting when I order bruschetta in a restaurant, but whatever. I also have no problem when someone says "axed" instead of "asked," because, you know what, in the year 3000, that's how it's going to be pronounced anyway. (Thanks to Futurama for that little peek into our destiny).

I still order drinks at Starbucks by their actual names. AKA "grahhn-day" for a Medium. My friend who worked there told me people often come in and order a "grand." We laughed a lot about that.

Basically, it's OK when I'm pretentious about certain words, but when other people do it, it's obnoxious and a huge turn-off. That's fair, right?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

As a recovering admitted, annoying grammar-nazi, I can relate to your sentiments. I've mellowed out a lot, but I still cringe at certain usage errors.

I completely agree with your thoughts on people overcompensating and thinking that they're speaking correctly when they're not. I'd add improper "myself" usage to your list. For example, "It is really important to Ralph and myself" is as bad as using "I." I find that overcompensators also like to use the slang phrase "being that" instead of the a more standard (and proper) "because."

"Being that Obama's policies are more sound, many people are choosing him in the polls, including myself" makes me shudder.

I do tend to agree with you that the rules should reflect society's changes to grammar too. For example, I'd say that in a lot of cases people tend to understand sentences ending in prepositions better than their corrected counterparts. "I figured out who she's going out with," is probably better understood than the more correct "I figured out with whom she's going out." (That "out" at the end there looks questionable, but I'm pretty certain it's an adverb to "going" to form the colloquial phrase "going out".) But, even in my mellowing out,I have been caught asking "Up to what are you guys?" (Disgusting, I know.) (And, you can probably tell that I have adopted starting sentences with conjunctions like "but" and "and" in informal writing into the a-ok family.)

Anyways, I'm not sure what my point here is, but I think that I've proven that I am neither recovering nor mellowing out.

P.S. I like your blog! Sorry that my first comment ended up being a big turn-off.

Unknown said...

hey anna,

so, at dinner tonight, Christa was commenting as mom was putting all the food on the table ...

"what am i going to do when i don't have you guys around to cook for me"

pause

(completely seriously) "can you mail it to me?"

Anonymous said...

While we're on the topic of grammar, I really needed to share this article some where: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/nyregion/18semicolon.html?ex=1360990800&en=c00d1c75ab9a5f83&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

I really love semicolons and appreciate any proper usage of them! If you've read Eats, shoots and leaves, you'll find the correction particularly humorous, coincidental, and almost ironic.

Anonymous said...

The url doesn't past well; use this one instead: http://tinyurl.com/37muaj