Lexicon Valley is a great podcast by the linguist John McWhorter, who manages to be fun while also being right about everything.
The latest episode is about linguistic pet peeves, something linguists aren’t really supposed to have – it’s unseemly, like communists having brand preferences. But even people who know most linguistic pet peeves are irrational can’t help having some. I certainly do, and while fully acknowledging their irrationality and pointlessness, I still want to kick people in the head when they say “I’ve never stepped foot in Russia” or “We need to examine our own biaseez.” Arrgh, shut up, morons!
Anyway…here are my takes on the pet peeves mentioned in the podcast:
“You just can’t…” As in, “You just can’t lie around the house all day” instead of “You can’t just lie around the house all day.” I think he’s actually too hard on himself for disliking this one, because it’s still the case that many people perceive a difference in meaning between “just can’t” and “can’t just”: “Lying around used to be Bob’s favorite pastime, but now that all his furniture’s been repo’d he just can’t lie around the house!” (poor him) vs. “When are you going to get a job? You can’t just lie around the house,” (you lazy bum). So they’re not interchangeable and it’s fair to be annoyed when the words get out of order.
“Aren’t I?” – Putting a construction promoted by grammar mavens on a list of your pet peeves is a real power move. This particular one also makes me very happy, because I dislike it as well. It seemed vaguely wrong to me when I was child, and there were a couple of times when I said something like “Ain’t I good at swimming?” and got a smackdown from teachers or even other children who were of the “aren’t” party, so I gave up finding an alternative. I still think “ain’t” makes a whole lot more sense, though. Pro tip: avoid the whole problem by asking, “am I not?”
“Shrimps” (or deers, or sheeps). This would have annoyed me in my early youth but I got over it, as our podcast host apparently also did.
Re “Billy and me are going to the store” (not a pet peeve but something he mentions in passing), I disagree with McWhorter about whether that actually makes sense. IMHO if you want “me” in there instead of “I,” it’s got to be “Billy and me, we’re going to the store.” (Cf. the entire French language.) “Billy and me are going…” feels wrong to me in an instinctive way, not a schoolhouse way. (And yes, I know I said before that he’s always right. He’s probably right about this, too…but I still disagree.)
The bigger problem with those “[someone] and I” constructions is that because teachers insist on making everyone put “I” second, it causes people to say stupid things like “Why are you being mean to Candace and I?” So I fully support the right of pronouns to migrate closer to verbs so speakers can remember what case they’re supposed to be in.
“There’s books on the table.” This used to bother me too, but I got over it by studying other languages where there’s no distinction between “there is” and “there are” and yet their speakers appear to be living normal lives. He mentions German (“es gibt”) and Finnish (?) but there’s also Spanish “hay” and French “il y a” and probably a ton of other examples. Shout-out to Italian, though, which still insists on this distinction (c’è una donna vs. ci sono molte donne).
“Can I get [a Coke]?” – Why would that bother anyone? You’re just asking permission to receive something, which he admits. McWhorter’s very good at critiquing his own pet peeves so I don’t have to. Instead, I’ll just say this one reminds me of people who hate “No problem” as a response to “Thank you.” Why? In so many languages, the standard response to “thank you” is essentially “for nothing” or “please [don’t thank me].” “No problem” is firmly rooted in that tradition; it says, “This wasn’t any extra effort, don’t worry about it, you don’t owe me anything, it’s cool.” Whereas “you’re welcome” has always seemed a little smug to me. I know that’s not the intention, but it seems to entail an acknowledgement that you (the person being thanked) actually did something to earn it, when in fact the general consensus (at least among Indo-Europeans) is that you’re supposed to pretend you didn’t. So I support “No problem.”
Everyone hates something about the way other people are using language. My mother hates any new phrase that gains sudden popularity; she used to hate “sea-change” and now she hates “that’s in your wheelhouse.” My sister once spent a good half hour of her life patiently explaining and re-explaining to a mall survey lady why her questions about a product being “very unique, somewhat unique, or not at all unique” didn’t make any sense because things are either unique or not and you can’t modify it (survey lady: “Oh, OK….So, would you say this product was very unique, somewhat unique…”). My kids’ pet peeves are mostly about pronunciation, e.g. expecially. Some people can’t stand to see “fun” used as an adjective, as it was in my first paragraph. How about you? Tell me in the comments.
Oh, lots of juicy morsels to chew on here but I’ll make just a couple of comments. My Dutch Grandmother used to say “Amn’t I?”, which made the most sense of all, and because she was vaguely aristocratic she got away with it, too. I used to hate a great number of things people did with language but I’ve mellowed. Like your mother, though, I continue to be irked by trendy phrases. “Reaching out” seems to be a popular one of late (as in, “I thought I’d reach out and see if you had any questions”).
Nice, Christine, props to your grandmother!
In addition to my two examples from the post, I get annoyed about:
– adding “s” to Italian plurals (paninis)
– the saying “it’s a dog-eat-dog world” because 1. it sounds like “it’s a doggy dog world” which always confused me as a kid and 2. dogs don’t eat dogs
– people who try too hard to pronounce loan words like “latte” in a foreign-sounding way and end up pronouncing them pretentiously AND incorrectly
– uptalking (something 90% of NPR people are doing these days? I don’t know why? Maybe it’s because they’re insecure?)
– the way a few existing words suddenly become super trendy and overused. “Pivot” took off during the 2016 election when all the news people were wondering if Trump was going to “pivot” to a different style after the election, and it’s still getting more use than it deserves. When I notice a word like this, I try to avoid it and think of various phrases containing substantive information about specific situations instead. (e.g., when you wonder if Trump will “pivot,” what are the specific things you expect him to stop/start doing?)
– written sentences where the grammatical elements don’t relate to each other logically: “As a child, the A-Team was my favorite TV show.” (the A-Team was never a child)
I was trying to think of what Scott’s pet peeves might be but I couldn’t think of any. Is this because he has the perfectly serene and detached attitude of a non-prescriptivist linguist?
I also plan to write a post on things that could bother me but don’t.
In the last few days, I have heard “a whole ‘nother” three times from people on TV
I like “a whole ‘nother.” It makes the phrase more fluid and easier to say, and it does not obscure the meaning. It’s one of those change-ups that serve a purpose when we speak but does not get used when we write. It makes the language more rich by giving us options.
I actually like “a whole nother,” too — I find it rather charming. As a proofreader, though, I’d correct it in a written text. If I remember correctly, there was a lot of discussion of it in the nineties when the Texas tourism people came up with the slogan “Texas: it’s a whole nother country.” Right?
I remember that “very unique” episode, I think I was in the same shopping mall at the time.
Here’s a peeve of mine: saying “I could care less” when you mean “I couldn’t care less.”
Not sure if this is a peeve, but I generally try to avoid using expressions if I don’t know the origin of them. For a long time I avoided the phrase “kick the bucket” until I discovered it was related to hanging. Now I can use it because it makes sense to me.
Combining this with an actual peeve: the expression “hoisted on your own petard.” Turns out a petard is actually a bomb, so the correct expression is “hoisted by your own petard.”
Apparently Shakespeare said “Hoist with his own petard.”
Very clever on his part: having it both ways!
I had forgotten about the “very unique” episode. Thank you, Laura, for reminding me about it?
Just heard someone say “as best as they can.” I hate that too.
“There’s five cars in a row there” is what gets on my nerves. Why do we even need plural or singular then? We can get rid of all the plural and just use singular for everything. But no! We have plural! Let’s use it!
The very, very worst, though, is how that fast food chain ruined our use of present tense only for strong verbs. We don’t love, hate, like, or dislike anything any more, we have to “be lovin’ it” or someone is “hating that new commercial.” Y U C K. I miss the days of “Yes, I love that food” or “No, I hate that drink.” Things used to be so much clearer and less continuous.
And then there’s less vs. fewer. I’ll stop there. My soapbox has already been well used today. 😉
I lived in Kenya for awhile, and people there use that construction all the time, and since I like Kenyans I find it charming (but OK not in advertising). I remember the first time I noticed it I was visiting someone in her home and a man who was also visiting pointed at a bottle of wine on the table and said, “I am fearing that one”.
Ha ha, John McWhorter wrote a whole book where one of the main points was that our excessive use of the present progressive tense in English makes us sound “oddly caffeinated.”
Oh how fascinating, Ann. Contextually that reaction sounds priceless. And HAHA! Oddly caffeinated is perfect.
The other thing that really, really gets my goat every time is:
“I JUST REALLY FEEL LIIIIIIIKE…that’s a good idea.”
No, actually, you don’t. You feel like ordering a pizza, you feel sad that the pizza is late, or maybe you think (yes, you do!) that something is a good idea.
I object to “no problem” as a reply to “thank you”. I shudder every time I hear it. It implies that what you have been doing could have been a problem, but the thankee is forgiving you. If I am a customer in a shoe store and somebody who is working there and knows all about shoes sells me a pair and is thanked, when that person replies “no problem” it implies that my custom could have been causing a hardship for her. But she wants me to buy shoes!
At a café in Port Orchard, WA, the barman constantly said “no worries, I got you covered” to every order or request. I found it annoying at first, but I figured it was a verbal tick this guy somehow got stuck with, and then I found it oddly charming because it was an aspect of his character.
Ha ha that made me laugh.
These are all excellent, and language is among the few spheres where I think we have the right, but also and especially _the duty_, to want it both ways. It is utterly coherent to be a non-prescriptivist with peeves: that is the essence of style.
Here’s one that gets to me: the insistent promotion of bloodless ‘good’ writing, understood as short sentences, no adverbs, low adjective count, etc. Is that what happens when people who did not read Strunk and White picked it up via osmosis or trickle-down? Is there a professional resistance to engage with the question and substance of style?
“I’ve never stepped foot in Russia” I can handle, but only with a wry smile, given the unwitting pun of “stepped” and “steppe”. However, I really got annoyed by “Siberian steppe” recently as the story was based in Northern Siberia and therefore should have been “taiga”.
Oh no, an unwitting pun! Curse me. I should have said, “I’ve never stepped foot in the Cross Keys.” (I never set foot in the Cross Keys, though someone who did told me it was much more student-friendly than its reputation suggested.)
That might have been me. I set foot in the Cross Keys and came out intact. I have no idea how it acquired its savage reputation.