Things That Annoy You

[dpareja]

"Can you raise my grade? You gave me <grade lower than what I need>, but I really would rather have <grade I need>. So could you just change it?"

No, no, no. I will not change your grade because you need to pass this course, I will not change your grade because some other course requires a higher grade than what you got as a prerequisite, I will not change your grade because it will make you cry if I don't, I will not change your grade because if I don't you'll have to retake the course and pay tuition again. I will change your grade if we actually fucked up our evaluation of your work, but you've got to prove that we did.

Fucking students.

[chitoryu12]

On the plus side, we don't have to deal with gendered nouns. So at least there's that.

We also don't have to deal with changes in pronoun for formal and informal speaking. We're also not a tonal language like Chinese, so exact pronunciation isn't as big of a deal most of the time.

[mellenORL]

Southern U.S. English pronunciations;

Filet = fill-ay

Fillet = fill-ett

Foyer = foy-yay (over-enunciated Vs French)

Garage = gah-rahj

Tomato = toe-may-toe

[Katsuro]

Oddly enough the "t" in fillet is pronounced in the UK.

Well mostly, sometimes it isn't.  It seems to depend on wheather it's being used as a noun or a verb...sometimes.

What nobody knows though is why in the UK we pronounce leuitenant as leftenant.  Literally - I looked it up once and  no one seems to really know how or why that happened.

And while we're on the subject, will you Americans please lean how to pronounce van Gogh's name for fuck sake.  As well as names ending in "stein" too while you're at it. 

[Ironchew]

Foyer = foy-yay (over-enunciated Vs French)

You left out the "er".

Garage = gah-rahj

Tomato = toe-may-toe

The default pronounciations are annoying? Whatever bizarre dialect you're advocating for sounds way more annoying.

[Katsuro]

Foyer = foy-yay (over-enunciated Vs French)

You left out the "er".

Garage = gah-rahj

Tomato = toe-may-toe

The default pronounciations are annoying? Whatever bizarre dialect you're advocating for sounds way more annoying.

Sounds like she's advocating English English.  In the UK it's gar-aj (not quite but I didn't really know how to write the pronounciation) and to-mat-o, and it's our language so we get to decide how it's words are pronounced so fuck yoooooouuuuuuu....



(That's a friendly, joke "fuck you" btw I'm not actually insulting anyone)

[mellenORL]

Foyer = foy-yay (over-enunciated Vs French)

You left out the "er".

Garage = gah-rahj

Tomato = toe-may-toe

The default pronounciations are annoying? Whatever bizarre dialect you're advocating for sounds way more annoying.

Sounds like he's advocating English English.  In the UK it's gar-aj (not quite but I didn't really know how to write the pronounciation) and to-mat-o, and it's our language so we get to decide how it's words are pronounced so fuck yoooooouuuuuuu....



(That's a friendly, joke "fuck you" btw I'm not actually insulting anyone)

Obligatory video response, but at least it's of the original version of the song...

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ3fjQa5Hls" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ3fjQa5Hls</a>

[Ironchew]

it's our language so we get to decide how it's words are pronounced so fuck yoooooouuuuuuu....

Last time I checked, American is our language. If it was good enough for Jesus Christ, I don't see what the UK is dragging its feet about.

[Sigmaleph]

How old were you when you first started learning English? I always assumed you grew up bilingual, being that your spelling and grammar are better than that of most Native speakers.

Around 6 years old, which is also around the time I learned to write, so you'd think I'd have gotten used to the insanity by now.

Edit: On the plus side, we don't have to deal with gendered nouns. So at least there's that.

Oh, sure. There's a lot of things that Spanish fucks up as a language (did we really need seventeen verb tenses?). That's why I like to acknowledge the one thing it does right.

[Sleepy]

I actually sometimes wish English had a formal "you" equivalent, since I've occasionally felt awkward saying "you" to someone when I was trying to sound more respectful.

[chitoryu12]

I actually sometimes wish English had a formal "you" equivalent, since I've occasionally felt awkward saying "you" to someone when I was trying to sound more respectful.

I never have. I handle respect simply by not saying or doing anything blatantly disrespectful, like acting all chummy around someone I don't know and not bringing up sensitive or personal topics like religion, sex, or politics.

Then again, I'm someone who pretty regularly deals with people who think that they're high and mighty, and occasionally they actually have reputation, money, or power to back that up. I've spent just about all of my current adult life speaking to people who would ordinarily demand respect, and I've found that (while you don't want to be openly rude to them unless they really deserve it) they can usually be handled by simply treating them as people and not being afraid to be firm when you can't simply bullshit and let them think that they're right.

[Sleepy]

Well yeah, refraining from saying something disrespectful is a good start, but I've been in settings where the situation warranted more than that.

[Ironchew]

I actually sometimes wish English had a formal "you" equivalent, since I've occasionally felt awkward saying "you" to someone when I was trying to sound more respectful.

Technically, it does. "Thou" was the singular form which would be used to address superiors or equals, but it got merged with the plural "you" in Middle English.

[Igor]

Actually, if I'm remembering correctly, "you" was the formal form, with thou being the more familiar word (like tu in French). Also I'm fairly certain thou wasn't dropped until well after Middle English...

[The Right Honourable Mlle Antéchrist]

^^ Yep. "You" was formal, "thou" was informal. The exact connotations varied in each era, but "you" was typically the polite version.

Oh, sure. There's a lot of things that Spanish fucks up as a language (did we really need seventeen verb tenses?). That's why I like to acknowledge the one thing it does right.

Gender tense has always been the most difficult part of French for me. Everything else, I can grasp fairly easily -- even the stuff that differs pretty drastically from English grammar -- but my brain just doesn't seem to want to retain which nouns are masculine or feminine, outside of the select few words that are intuitive. I don't speak Spanish (beyond knowing a few common term and things I've picked up from American TV shows [¿Los Pollos Hermanos? ¡Si! La metanfetamina es muy bueno.], and recognizing words that are similar to their French or English translations), so I can't really comment on it, but French gender tense looks every bit as insane to an Anglophone as English spellings look to Spanish speakers.