Confessions of a Language Fetishist

Yes, I admit it: I am a language fetishist, more precisely: a fetishist of the written word. Language used correctly turns me on, while language used incorrectly turns me off. Simple as that. I first started noticing errors and mistakes when I was a teenager, at the age of 13 or 14. A German-run Italian restaurant had the following sign outside: PIZZARIA. Correct spelling is of course PIZZERIA.

Over the years, I’ve had to learn to ignore the ever-increasing number of spelling and grammar mistakes surrounding my everyday life, especially, since moving to the UK 6 years ago. Over here, spelling and grammar mistakes are rife and ever-increasing. People simply don’t seem to bother any more.

My particular pet-hate is incorrect apostrophe use. A lot of people, including my BF, don’t care to use apostrophes correctly. So, my BF always writes ‘theres’ and ‘its’, and, while the former is completely incorrect, the latter one can potentially be confusing, i.e. is it ‘it’s’ or ‘its’ (Genitive)? On numerous uncountable occasions on websites, I see ‘FAQ’s’ instead of ‘FAQs’.

What the fuck is FAQ’s supposed to mean? It’s a fucking Genitive – ‘s’ for fuck’s sake (= for the sake of fuck).

The other really common mistake that – mostly native English speakers – make relates to the spelling of ‘their’. In English, phonetically, the following all sound more or less the same:

• their
• there
• they’re

A lot of English native speakers no longer seem to care about or know the difference between these forms, especially, the first two. Check out the real example out of an email I received today (and which, incidentally, was the trigger for my post):

Please could everybody get there student profiles for the web pages to me by the 15th December as we are hoping to get these pages up and running early on in the new year.

This is from an email by a PhD student. Surely they should know by now. When I was teaching at University, a newspaper article regarding this particular phenomenon amongst University students was given to me by another member of staff. The headline read:

They don’t know their ‘there’ from their ‘they’re’.

Maybe I should have forced all students to complete this exercise.

As part of my job, I have over the last 4 years read thousands upon thousands of message board postings and chat conversation by mostly English native speakers, so I have a fairly good idea of the way the written language is going in terms of common, daily usage. With regard to ‘they’re/their/there’, what I have observed is that people tend to simply use ‘there’ in all three instances.

So, prepare yourselves for the disappearance of ‘they’re’ and ‘their’. I don’t mind that the written language is changing – language is never static and has always been in flux. It doesn’t stop me from ranting and raging though 😛 – note though that I’m a language purist, not a language fascist. Its there own choice so if there happy with it then its not up to me to judge there English skills.

PS: automatthias has observed a similar phenomenon – mistakes and errors are also commonplace in a professional context, i.e. job ads.

PPS: I’m not a native speaker but always keen to learn. Any mistakes that I make I’m very keen to correct.

PPPS: I haven’t even talked about punctuation yet – apparently there’s a really good book out about punctuation – Eats, Shoots and Leaves:

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

 

“Why?” asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

 

“I’m a panda,” he says at the door. “Look it up.”

 

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

 

“Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”