Joe

A preposition always takes the accusative case.

A more common error - and it may now be acceptable according to the likes of Fowler - is shown in the example "John is taller than me." It should be "John is taller than I" as what it is really being said is "John is taller than I (am)."

Of course, it's totally wrong anyway because I'm six feet tall and John is five feet nine inches...
 
Originally posted by BrianH@Mar 22 2005, 05:18 PM
A preposition always takes the accusative case.
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And charges a fortune for it too...

I can't remember the last time I heard of 'cases' being used in English grammar. You're showing your age, Brian. Of course, the rule doesn't apply in other languages.

There are many other misuses of English which have become acceptable, e.g. 'who' instead of 'whom'

We could re-write English literature for the modern dumbed-down generations, e.g:

For Who The Bell Tolls


Feel free to add some of your own.
 
Sorry Ardross. So many people are too quick to put this:-

:lol: :lol: :lol:

and omit to say who the :lol: it refers to.
 
Surely, "Sorry, Ardros's"? :D I have so many betes noires grammatiques it's impossible to list the lot, but along with misplaced apostrophe's (like that one), and the misuse of him and me/I, it's the use of 'of' as in "I would of thought so". It's because we shorten the verb to "I would've" instead of "I would have" and the dikkops out there think it's "of".

And, furthermore... :angy: ... constant annoyance at the ignorance over collective nouns. "The Jockey Club have..." No, they bloody well haven't! The Jockey Club is a collective noun - examples of 'collectives' are a club, a society, a group, a bank, a church, a committee, etc., etc. all collective nouns, standing as ONE entity. So it's "the Jockey Club HAS", "Brighton Racecourse has", "the government has" and so on.

Mes' got to go for a lie-down, me have, as Im getting far too overwrought from all this' ... (sic)
 
David Ashforth was perpetuating the myth that it is acceptable English to use layed for laid last week in the RP
 
Yes, all those grammatical errors enrage me!

Why don't British people have more of a love of, and knowledge about, their own language, compared with other nations, like the French? After all, we all studied English language or "grammar" at school didn't we?

Which reminds me...you've got somebody speaking in, say, French, on the radio or television, and a broadcaster in this country nearly always does one of two things - he either talks very loudly over the top of the speaker so you can't hear what's being said, or else he starts giggling about not being able to speak the language.

Why on earth do they do that, it seems childish and ill-mannered, perhaps bordering on racist? I don't think you'd find this sort of thing happening in mainland Europe. In any case, organisations like the BBC have vast numbers of people working for them, you'd think that they could find people who are multilingual, wouldn't you?
 
The Beeb's World Service on radio used to be full of multilinguistic broadcasters. Perhaps it still is, I don't know, but it seems that when television 'presenters' (they're never called 'broadcasters' now, are they?) are at large, not one can speak the language of the country they're covering, and have to rely on interpreters. Why? I was very lazy about learning Arabic because so many Arabs speak very passable English, and it wasn't essential to my job, but why does Caroline Hawley never speak directly in Arabic to the people she's interviewing almost daily in Baghdad? She's been there long enough to be capable, if not fluent, but she relies on translators.
 
I agree - the World Service is rather different, but the mainstream stations like radio 4, 5 etc seem to be populated almost entirely by monoglots.

I remember a few years back when the football World Cup was held in France, Radio 5 had a woman reporter doing "vox pops" - one day she didn't perform for several hours because her interpreter hadn't turned up! Pathetic.

Yet a lot of people criticise the BBC for being too pro-Europe!

If only.
 
Originally posted by Venusian@Mar 22 2005, 11:09 PM
Yes, all those grammatical errors enrage me!

Why don't British people have more of a love of, and knowledge about, their own language, compared with other nations, like the French? After all, we all studied English language or "grammar" at school didn't we?
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If only that were the case, Venusian. Children now are not encouraged in English lessons to use proper sentence construction, indeed it is positively discouraged at times.

I remmeber back to the summer and an article by a GCSE examiner of English whpo stated that he was hamstrung by the markscheme and was forced to give and "A" grade to a candidate and used the phrase

"Juliet was like yeah whatever"

In English literatute exams, there are no marks for the quality of language used, which strikes me as irresponsible. We are already breeding an entire generation of people for whom grammar is a legend. Tragic, really.
 
An institution purporting to educate and using a dreadful portmanteau word like 'markscheme' should be razed to the ground with immediate effect.

"Yeah, loadsa times have I beheld you down the, uh, Rialto, mate."

"Is this, like, a dagger-thingy I see before me?"

"Parting is such sweet sorrow, innit?"

"Oh, shit! Out, out, goddam spot!"

"Yo, Caesar, waaasup, my man?"
 
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