Language is under constant attack but then it probably always has been. And I suppose “under attack” isn’t the right term - English seems to be thriving to the point that some of the people using it have turned it into something new and wonderful, so far away from the original as to always amaze and enchant - and confuse!
The beef I have with modern people’s take on English, apart from the awful abbreviations (u, b4, lol) is the increased use of capital letters and apostrophe before plural s (”I prefer to take Taxi’s, lol”).
Slack upbringing! Bad teachers!
Yes yes, I know. Nothing terrible will happen if you write “I never read Book’s.”
Everybody can understand, and communication is the most important, blah blah. But it’s damned irritating all the same. Hand in hand with this misuse of apostrophes and capital letters comes the puzzling insertion of inverted commas in the strangest of places.
I thought inverted commas were meant to indicate irony or that you doubt the validity of the word (Donald Tsang is a “great” leader, “admired” by “all.”) or for the title of a thing or something that isn’t real (She picked up the 1000 page volume “Great Thoughts of Donald Tsang”)
But now people put inverted commas everywhere: “Let’s go for a “bite”!” (But you’re actually going to take in the food intravenously?)
“Last night I had a “great time” with the “gang”!” (You had a terribly time by yourself?)
“When you want to get “physical” with a woman …” (But what you’re really doing is sitting in a different room communicating with her spirit by telepathy?)
Here’s an example from Shenzhen so OK, maybe their English isn’t so good. But the poster is stuck to a shop window and shows a woman shopping. So what’s the irony here? Do they mean not shopping? She’s actually been stealing the stuff?
As usual, there are two types of people in this world; those who care about this kind of thing and those who couldn’t give a flying teapot. Guess who rules the world. But then they would, wouldn’t they?
Hey Cecilie
We “all” have things that “annoy” us about language. My “current” pet “peeve” is people who “over-use” the word ‘literally’.
“It was so funny, I literally died.”
“I literally laughed my pants off.”
“I literally can’t wait a second longer.”
Sigh.
I care! Once I worked for an editor who used to write headlines like:
Man “killed” in assault
I like to think he meant to imply “allegedly” but I doubt it.
Ha ha! “Killed” eh? So that meant “man given a stern talking to, then slapped”? He probably didn’t mean allegedly. Too many syllables.
A case in point: One of the less charming replies to my Cantonese series on YouTube:
“fucking white foreign guia lo’s should just stfu, give up, and fuck back to america. they dont belong no where near asia. ”
“White foreign guia lo’s” as opposed to local ones, I presume. But “lo’s” what? What??? No. I expect, nay, DEMAND an object after apostrophe s!
First:
“Inverted commas?” Really? Do they not call them “quotation marks” or “double quotes” in Norway?
‘ = single quote
” = double quote
‘/” = quotation marks
Second: Misusage of the apostrophe-s construction probably comes from modern people combining languages that really have no business being combined, such as in your example, and not knowing how to pluralize them. For simple readability, they go with an improper (but easily understood) usage that keeps the challenging word (gwai lo, in our example) in it’s simplest, least likely to be misinterpreted form.
I thought all gwai lo’s knew that.
In Norway they call them ANFØRSELSTEGN but this particular blog is written in English, so: Inverted commas. No I don’t do american English except “dude.”