Pet peeves, disasters and more!

[Duplicity]

Ditto on the loud existence of some people.
People using French words when there is no need. Eg saying en massse with a psuedo French accent or even just writing it down when 'on mass' means the exact same thing. Generally using foreign phrases when English ones are more succinct and useful. Some foreign phrases are all right, like in lieu of. But most are unneeded.
Wanna, that really annoys me. It is 'want to', wanna is stupid. Including all lazy abbreviations.
People who talk when they are nervous or when the silence is going on too long. Don't chatter inane things it pisses me off to no end. Don't repeat what you just said.
People who say a certain musician/band/genre is thes best and then rubbishes other musicians/genre/bands because they don't like it. Music is subjective, so get over it and yourself. If you don't like the genre, then you aren't allowed to comment on the quality of the people in that genre.
There are many more. Most because I am a generally irritated person.
Basically I am Rodney McKay from Stargate: Atlantis without the intellect.
"No! Even if the idea you have is viable I'm not listening to you because you are annoying."

[napsii]

Ditto on the loud existence of some people.
People using French words when there is no need. Eg saying en massse with a psuedo French accent or even just writing it down when 'on mass' means the exact same thing. Generally using foreign phrases when English ones are more succinct and useful. Some foreign phrases are all right, like in lieu of. But most are unneeded.

Wrong. It is spelled "en masse". French loan words/phrases are common among English speakers and more English words are derived from French than any other language, even Latin. Like, the word mayday is derived from French "venez m'aider", which means "come and help me".

Not to mention words/phrases like clique, chic, chaffeur, attache, concierge, femme fatale, deja vu, entree, facade, faux pas... the list just goes on forever and basically every English speaker has probably used French loan words/phrases many times in their lives. You seriously need to research English. It descends from many different languages, which is why English speakers borrow so many terms from languages like French and Latin. Also, phrases you may not be familiar with are pretty much common vernacular for some people. In law, for example, Latin is the predominant language for legal terminology.

You could say that this is one of my pet peeves: people who are unfairly ignorant.

[Zeus Kabob]

Ditto on the loud existence of some people.
People using French words when there is no need. Eg saying en massse with a psuedo French accent or even just writing it down when 'on mass' means the exact same thing. Generally using foreign phrases when English ones are more succinct and useful. Some foreign phrases are all right, like in lieu of. But most are unneeded.

Wrong. It is spelled "en masse". French loan words/phrases are common among English speakers and more English words are derived from French than any other language, even Latin. Like, the word mayday is derived from French "venez m'aider", which means "come and help me".

Not to mention words/phrases like clique, chic, chaffeur, attache, concierge, femme fatale, deja vu, entree, facade, faux pas... the list just goes on forever and basically every English speaker has probably used French loan words/phrases many times in their lives. You seriously need to research English. It descends from many different languages, which is why English speakers borrow so many terms from languages like French and Latin. Also, phrases you may not be familiar with are pretty much common vernacular for some people. In law, for example, Latin is the predominant language for legal terminology.

You could say that this is one of my pet peeves: people who are unfairly ignorant.

I don't think you mean unfairly ignorant, I think you mean unfairly critical. In general, ignorance allows us to step on each others' toes, and this causes fights. This is one of my pet peeves, and I've been thinking to myself every once in a while about how to solve this issue; how can we interact with people of different cultural backgrounds without offending people? Is the only solution to force everyone into the same culture? It's a sticky issue, and that's one of the reasons I try to mediate when I can.

[napsii]

I don't think you mean unfairly ignorant, I think you mean unfairly critical. In general, ignorance allows us to step on each others' toes, and this causes fights. This is one of my pet peeves, and I've been thinking to myself every once in a while about how to solve this issue; how can we interact with people of different cultural backgrounds without offending people? Is the only solution to force everyone into the same culture? It's a sticky issue, and that's one of the reasons I try to mediate when I can.

No, I did mean ignorant. Respect for the cultural intricacies and ties that generate such things as language is important in understanding our world. I consider this, personally, a more valuable approach than striving for cultural homogeny under the pretense of reducing conflict. I'm already aware this is bleeding into a tangent, but conflicts of interest are an inevitability due to our varied world culture. This said, getting a genuine emotion rise because people choose to use French loan words, for example, just strikes me as flatly uncultured and solipsistic. It's precisely what I mean by respect in actually trying to understand these things rather than just hate them for a paper thin, trivial reason. I can easily draw a connection between people who get mad at this sort of stuff and people who are like, racists, homophobes or misogynists. This isn't to say Duplicity in one, but such beliefs share the same emotional program that lead people to believe in racism, etc.

It's bad for the world.

[LoneWolf]

In general, ignorance allows us to step on each others' toes, and this causes fights. This is one of my pet peeves, and I've been thinking to myself every once in a while about how to solve this issue; how can we interact with people of different cultural backgrounds without offending people? Is the only solution to force everyone into the same culture? It's a sticky issue, and that's one of the reasons I try to mediate when I can.

Like, say, Christianity in Western Europe around 1500 AD?

This is one of my pet peeves; people continually try to come up with ways to 'fix society', almost all of which boil down to "if we can just (insert ideological fixation here) everyone will suddenly stop acting like normal people and we'll all live happily ever after".*

We'll be able to reliably interact with other people (of different cultural backgrounds or not) without offending them just as soon as society no longer contains any idiots, assholes or narcissists. Unfortunately, a society which can achieve that will almost certainly no longer be recognisably human. (I personally suspect that you can strengthen that to 'recognisably intelligent', since there's pretty good evidence that a certain amount of unreliability is unavoidable in a finite 'intelligent' system.)

* Please don't take this to mean that I'm accusing you of this for thinking about the question - I've spent plenty of time wrestling with that kind of thing myself. But I've yet to see anyone come up with an answer that doesn't work that way, and I don't think it's a coincedence.

[Duplicity]

Whoa. Feel the hate.
If you read my post you would read I said some words were fine. But what annoys me is when people use a French Accent when saying such words. Or using the words in text when the English version would serve better. En masse maybe the original, but you ask most people to spell it and they would spell on mass.
George Orwell agrees with me. One of his 'rules' (as much as there are rules) to writing was to never use a foreign phrase when an English one served just as well. Certain words have intergrated into the English language to the extent they are English. On mass is just one, en masse is the French word meaning the same.

English is a bastard son of a thousand mothers whom none would recognise their offspring. I know full well many words derive from Latin, Greek, German, and more. French and Italien deriving from Latin themselves. Plus many more in what is probably an unlimited and unknown stew of words.

I don't really like how you painted me as some ignorant bastard who doesn't know English. I happen to be a professional writer. So I think I have a fairly good grasp on English.
I didn't say I hated people or said they shouldn't use these words. I just dislike it when they use the words in a pretentious way. ie. trying to look cool because they know a French word. A peeve doesn't mean hate, it simply annoys me. As do people hating me for an opinion.

I wasn't telling people what to do, what to think or how they should do either. I simply said certain things annoy me. I don't shout at people as they say cafe, screaming they should be saying 'intergrated sustenance house'. I don't noticibly react when someone says en masse I just feel irked inside.
Besides wasn't this thread just a little bit of fun?

[Jesus]

Missingo that fucking thing I wanted to catch and everytime you fucked my game with loosely your phallic shape!

Considering there is a flame war going on about language and because I'm too lazy to put much energy into this, I have a book in one of these stacks, at a glance I think it's Chomsky's "On Language" but it might be one these other books. I don't really care if I'm right or not, but when people try to argue about the use of a language and phrases, I think about how what was written and the evolution of languages over time being different from predcessors considered the same language. Have you ever tried reading works in their original Latin? It varies from piece to piece, Dantes Inferno being the oddest (to me). It's like 3 am and those posts seem like a lot to read, so tell me if I'm off.

Other things that are a nuiscance
-People that find unfunny jokes funny
-When KFC has no black people other than staff
-Vegetarian girls, I don't really want to hear your life story and how you tried being a vegetarian for (x) days
-"Call of Duty is best game" people
-seeing "Havent you ever heard of green text stories newfag?" Who would want an entire story in choppy green text, its for quotes.
-When "gamers" havent played Ico
-Ernest Hemingway, married a beautiful woman, moved to spain, woke up everyday with a fine glass of red wine, and deserved that shotgun shell to the face for being depressed
-Jackson Pollock, I don't see it
-Picasso, I can recreate "Pipe Smoker" with crayons, I still don't see it
-Cosmology, do I really need to hear a change in opinion every 10 years?
-American Psychology not accepting psychopathy as a neurological disorder, Robert Hare did the research, fuck the DSM
-Frothing douchebags, I once watched the special needs kids dressed and talking the same in highschool
-The parrot thing where something is said, and every guy repeats it like its hard to understand
-Artists and getting lumped in with them, its the same as calling me a bumbling fuck
-Other honors students, I don't like arguing about which magnetic pole is colder (but it's clearly the south pole)
-Charles dickens, I don't need to know where exactly the table in the room is


and finally I HATE FUCKING YOLO, I normally don't care, even if I spot an ED "old fag", but really I do not need to be reprimanded everytime I tell that person to kill themself.

[LoneWolf]

Whoa. Feel the hate.
If you read my post you would read I said some words were fine. But what annoys me is when people use a French Accent when saying such words. Or using the words in text when the English version would serve better. En masse maybe the original, but you ask most people to spell it and they would spell on mass.
George Orwell agrees with me. One of his 'rules' (as much as there are rules) to writing was to never use a foreign phrase when an English one served just as well. Certain words have intergrated into the English language to the extent they are English. On mass is just one, en masse is the French word meaning the same.

Err... no.

I have never, ever seen 'en masse' spelt 'on mass'.

You're certainly right that it's become part of the English language, though, since it's in both of my dictionaries ... spelt 'en masse'. 'On mass' doesn't even get mentioned as an alternate spelling. I've no doubt that there are people out there who would spell it that way, since that's the way it's pronounced, but there are a lot of bad spellers in the world. I'm inclined to take the OED as definitive, not some random person off the street.

I also doubt that Orwell would have approved of 'on mass', since it only makes sense as a corruption of 'en masse'. It's ungrammatical as an English phrase in-and-of-itself - the colloquial English version would be either 'in a mass' or 'massed'. (You could, possibly, construct a sentence where 'on mass' would make sense, but the meaning would be completely different and probably rather obscure.) My guess would be that he'd consider using a misspelled foreign phrase to be even worse than an ordinary one - if you're going to do it, you could at least do it right.

[Duplicity]

I wasn't saying George Orwell was agreeing with me on that particular word. He can't hear me I think, no matter how I yell.

Oh well I guess I am wrong. I always though English being what it is would convert any handy words into non italics, being easier to understand. Funny thing was I thought on mass was a word, guess I should have googled some sort of dictionary rather than depending on my mem..... RAM. I think humans have RAM right
I am tired and just remembered argueing over small little things is also annoying. So I hereby award the award of whatever to who ever wants it.
I go to sleep and maybe wake up less cranky. I sleep to the tunes of Shearer telling me 'I'll Be Right Behind You Josephine'
Good song listen to it on jamendo.com

[napsii]

George Orwell wouldn't have approved of respelling "en masse". What Orwell advised against was using jargon or rhetoric where a simpler word/term would suffice, just as you say. He did not advocate for corrupting already existing terms (somewhat ironically a la Newspeak.) This means that by his rules, you wouldn't have respelled "en masse"; you would have just said "all together" or some other simpler definition of "en masse".

"On mass" is not a legitimate spelling of the term, so it doesn't make sense to see it used deliberately in paper. If you believe it would be too hard/foreign for the reader to pronounce (which again, would be unlikely for a long-time speaker/reader of English) then you should not use it. Breaking down a word phonetically for the sake of clarity is something children learning to spell do. >.<

[Zeus Kabob]

I haven't been up to date on my neurology, but I think humans may have a combination of RAM and SAM. (Sequential access memory).

IIRC, a study of people with photographic memory led a couple of neurologists to estimate our total memory at around 200 terabytes. One terabyte is 1000 GB, and the typical computer hard drive made today has 1 TB of capacity.