"Oritentated"?

[cosmolinguist]

Sarah finished off my box of Kleenex yesterday (or the day before) and then gave me her illness. I have a sore throat, a headache, an aching body, sinus pressure right behind the bridge of my nose, no Kleenex, and no idea what went on in my classes today. All I remember is that Gothic lit took much too long and that my CSci professor kept saying "orientated." I hate it when people do that! She'd write "object oriented language" on the board, but she'd say "object orientated language." Gah!

I plot vengeance on my teachers. I compose course evaluations in my head to soothe myself. "You assign 100 pages between Tuesday and Thursday classes, and a 40-page article to print off (a .pdf, so it's a pain), and we're supposed to write four-page papers about some of those articles? Knock it off!" Or "You either spoon-feed us information, or expect us to figure it out on our own? It doesn't work that way; no one is learning anything in this class." It's not even the middle of the semester yet and I'm already thinking about the end of these classes.

I might learn a real programming language just to spite the CSci professor and the stupid, uesless one she's going to teach us. I haven't yet figured out what to do to be subversive in my Gothic lit class, though. I think doing all my assignments will be sufficient for that.

Nothing inspires ambition in me like being really annoyed.

Ha, ambition; what am I saying? All I want is to sleep, preferably until I'm not sick any more.

Comments

Orientated

[tragicallyjulia.livejournal.com]

Oooh! I hate that, too - "conversated" is one I hear a good deal.

Re: Orientated

[cosmolinguist]

"Conversate" is a new one to me, but it's on the same principle. People, just because you say "conversation" and "orientation" doesn't mean you should say "conversate" or "orientate"!

I hear (and maybe first heard) "orientate" at work. "Tony orientated today ... " At first I could hardly keep myself from saying "He did what?" but now I just want to shake my head and weep.

My grammar and language professor would say that such things are not grammatically incorrect, they're just differences in how we use our language. She probably would say they're cool; she's like that. And I think such unorthodox usages are cool too, to some extent ... but some grate on my nerves. Like "orientate."

Re: Orientated

[tragicallyjulia.livejournal.com]

(BTW - I hope you feel better soon! Make someone buy you tissues! :-))

I agree with your professor and also with our irritation. :-) There are worse things in the world than incorrect/unorthodox grammar, and I'm no stranger to those mistakes myself (I wonder how many I'll make in this comment ;-)), but it's just amazing that 'educated' people can consistently make those mistakes - when it seems like anyone who graduated from high school should know better! :-)

Had to mention this ...

[cosmolinguist]

I heard someone say "conversate" at work like that. I barely noticed at first, but a few minutes later realized that that was indeed what it was, conversate. Wow.

Re: Had to mention this ...

[tragicallyjulia.livejournal.com]

:-) I've politely (I swear!)corrected friends who've said "conversate," and then they decided to do it all the time just to bug me. :-)

Supposebly?

[paninogirl.livejournal.com]

There was this one episode of Friends where Joey thought "supposebly" was the correct way to say "supposedly." Since seeing that episode, I swear I've heard at least one person using that word. There's no b in the word! AHHH!

Then there was the longest time when my mom would say "fajitas" with an "r." Frajitas? C'mon! I got her to fix that one, though. :)

Gotta hate it when people butcher a language.

Re: Supposebly?

[cosmolinguist]

I know people who say "supposebly." Jeez. Such things wouldn't be so bad if people actually bothered enough to care if someone points out a mistake to them.

My mom has difficulty with words like "parmesan" and "mozerella." Perhaps it's these foreign foods that give our mothers trouble ...

Re: Supposebly?

[paninogirl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, no kidding. I won't even get started on butched spellings like you're/your...

Good point. Maybe the foreign countries are messing with our moms...

Re: Supposebly?

[paninogirl.livejournal.com]

Uh, that's butchered...not butched. I noticed that RIGHT as I clicked "post." D'oh!

Re: Supposebly?

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah, I hate it when that happens. The problem with these comments is that you can't edit them!

Re: Supposebly?

[paninogirl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, which is totally weird. You can edit your entries, so you should be able to edit your comments as well.

[cosmolinguist]

Well, obviously the lack of a chance to edit comments indicates some evil conspiracy on the part of the LiveJournal people. Diabolical, don't you think?

[paninogirl.livejournal.com]

Yes. They are evil geniuses.

[kratkrat.livejournal.com]

First off: Feel better soon!

One of my peeves has always been "nuclear." People pronounce it "nuke-you-lar". That makes me nuts! It's "nuke-lee-ar," gang! Of course, in the written language, the one that gets me is people typing "definately". That one bugs me... I have no idea why.

Okay, that aside: What language are you thinking of learning?

[cosmolinguist]

First: Thanks. A little sympathy--even if it's just normal cold-like illness--does me good! :-D

Second: What's even worse is people who say "nu-ka-ler."

Third: I have no idea. I know very little about them. My boyfriend has been telling me for months that I should learn a programming language--it used to be his answer to me saying, basically, it's summer and I'm bored. Despite his insistence that it will make me cooler and more impressive, I have yet to learn any programming languages. (Well, I know Basic--or used to, at least--but he says that doesn't count. Can't imagine why!) I don't even know where to begin.

[kratkrat.livejournal.com]

Well, since you are a Linux fan, how about you just start with some simple scripting there? You can do some pretty cool stuff with basic scripting. It's as good a place to start as any, really. In fact, I've seen some rather complicated, ingenious stuff done completely via UNIX scripts... not an ounce of a higher order language needed at all.

That said, I think programming even a little can be a very useful tool. Still, before going on to something else, try your hand at scripting stuff in Linux, and let me know how that goes.

[internetsdairy.livejournal.com]

But this is how language changes. It's not really incorrect. It constantly erodes, changes, mutates. This is how we got from Old English to nowadays - not because Websters printed a whole new 'official' dictionary every few years. 'Supposebly' may end up in a dictionary one day - though it's less likely now, as there is so much written material nowadays, which has a slightly freezing effect on language drift.

Anyway! That is my half-baked, half-remembered diatribe from a single book I read months ago. Make up new words! It's fantabular.

[cosmolinguist]

No, you're absolutely right; as I said in an earlier comment, I know people use language in all kinds of interesting ways and that's cool. And I make up words myself all the time, I think it's fun. But that's mostly for lack of knowing a real word for whatever I want to say; so I wouldn't use "orientated" when I'm happier with "oriented." I mean, the only reason English is so confusing and has so few rules (and so many exceptions) is because it's so flexible. That can be a great strength in a language, but I really think in the hands of inexperienced users it can be a weakness, too.

Anyway, that's my half-baked diatribe. :-) (I love the word "diatribe" recently. It seems to be so useful in my life, too.)

[internetsdairy.livejournal.com]

The best thing in this one linguistics book was reading about an obscure African language that has about nine genders. It has a whole gender for 'shitty little' (as in 'shitty little monkey'), and a whole gender translating roughly as 'big ol'' (as in "Get off my bike, Gentle Ben, you big ol' clumsy bear!").