Friday, February 11, 2011

Schuft-speak


This morning my friend Brian Meyer from work posted something on Facebook looking for our grammar pet peeves. The things that people say that drive us crazy.

You know me, I love being given a soapbox like that!

Before I knew it I was dominating the conversation. So to avoid driving everyone crazy I thought I would allow myself the luxury of listing on the Web log the top things that drive me crazy about how everyone talks. Me, of course, my speech is perfect. Not. I remember in California I would get into some convoluted sentence and Pennario would start laughing at me and I would say, "And Leonard, I promise I will use better sentence structure when writing the book."

Ha, ha! But enough about me.

Here are my Top Irritants.

1.) Like, like, like, like, like. This is the one I wrote on Brian's page. I wrote, "What drives me crazy is the word "like," over and over. Women are the worst offenders. In the gym locker room all you hear is "It's like... it's like... I'm like... like... like... like..." I guess it's better than what you hear in guys' locker rooms ; ) but until women stop talking like this I do not want to hear any talk about glass ceilings."



That is a picture of me in the locker room!

Ttalk of locker rooms reminded me of another peeve which is:


2.) Swear words whenever you turn around!


Well, that is kind of off topic. Let me continue.


3.) "Disrespect," used as a verb. It seems to be accepted everywhere now.


4.) That nasty ugly "suck," everywhere you look. "That sucks!" It is so obscene and no one thinks about it. It is as if everyone has turned into Beavis and Butthead, you know?


5.) That reminds me, "you know."


6.) "Snuck." You see this in print and it kills me. "He snuck into the house." It just looks so unprofessional. I get great pleasure out of writing, correctly, "sneaked."


7.) "Really, really, really whatever." My dad yelled at me for piling too many really's on top of each other with the result that I always notice it.


8.) This one is timely: "Feb-yoo-ary." 


9.) This one is in the kiddie pool, I realize I am being fussy but I do not like when people say "their" instead of "him or her." "Got someone special in your life? Name a star after them!" I do not like that!


10.) "Omigod" and "I swear to God." Usually the same person is guilty of both.


Wow, 10 gripes, about 15 seconds. That was as long as I took to write that!


Next week I should do the next 10!

4 comments:

Gary Baker said...

May I add the use of 'bring' instead of 'take' to that list.
I hear it a lot on TV shows. And, for some reason, it drives me nuts!
This very morning, Debra (TV character)looked into a bag hubby was about to leave with and axed, "What are you going to bring with you?"
Axed? OhMyGod, I'm infected!

Prof. G said...

Real hair-splitter: I hate "normalcy" when it should be "normality", but I think that dates back to the Harding administration. I mean like, ya know?

Mary Kunz Goldman said...

Gary and Prof., thanks for the additional gripes! How about "ironic"... you could write a book just on that. And here is a timely one ... Feb-yoo-ary.

I'm almost ready to forgive anything though if I could only not hear that "like" all the time. No like!!

Prof. G said...

PS: Dick Cavett refers to us as "word prigs". He's also one.