The more I learn about the English language, the more irritating it becomes. Not because there’s anything wrong with English itself, but because its misuse in general society becomes more and more apparent. There are all the usual suspects – ‘must of’ instead of ‘must have’, for instance – but the deeper you dig, the more you find.
One I hear all the time, particularly on radio and TV ads, is confusion between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’. I only picked this one up myself relatively recently when by chance I saw the usage explained in a dictionary while I was looking up an unrelated word.
‘Less’ refers to an amount rather than a number, for example:
When I had finished mopping the floor, there was less water in the bucket.
‘Fewer’, on the other hand, refers to a number:
I tried to eat fewer chocolates each day in a bid to lose weight before the wedding.
It’s amazing how annoying the confusion of these words becomes once you’re aware of it. I almost wish I had never learnt it – sometimes ignorance really is bliss.
Or take ‘jealous’, which must be the most misused word in the English language. My wife’s high school English teacher taught her (and by extension, me) the difference between ‘jealous’ and ‘envious’, but ‘jealous’ has been so frequently misused over the years that most dictionaries now list that as an extra definition. So what’s the difference?
‘Envious’ means a person wants something that another person has. For example:
I was envious of the fascinator she wore to the Melbourne Cup.
‘Jealous’, on the other hand, implies one person is afraid another person will take something away from him or her.
As my wife talked to her personal trainer, I found myself becoming jealous even though I knew she would never cheat on me.
Since grammar has fallen out of favour at schools, pronunciation has begun to suffer too. I hear the word ‘alleged’ mispronounced at least twice a day on radio and television. If it is used as a verb ("It is alleged that Mr Brown was a robber") the word should be pronounced 'uh-ledged'. If it is used as an adjective ("The alleged robber was Mr Brown") it is pronounced 'uh-ledge-ed'.*
God, there are so many others – the use of an adjective instead of an adverb (“Think Different”, “Eat Interesting” and Game of Thrones), the ever-present ‘I could care less’ (if you could care less, then you must care, you idiot!), “He did a total 360” (about which Tywin Lannister has something to say), ‘lay down’ instead of ‘lie down’, ‘I feel nauseous’ instead of ‘I feel nauseated’ (which like ‘jealous’ has slipped into accepted usage). The list is almost as long as the dictionary itself.
I suppose most writers who properly apply themselves to learning the inner workings of their craft (and I have nothing but contempt for those who don’t) end up with their own bugbears. I’d love to hear about yours in the comments below.
* Then there’s the Americanised pronunciation of words, which I won’t even get into here, save to list a few of the most annoying examples: rabid, semi, quasi, zebra, python, Madagascar, coupé, route, Bernard, moustache.