It is just so confusing for me when people who I know use English as their mother tongue writes something that sounds/looks like an error to me. I always end out questioning MY own English, since English is not my mother tongue – thinking that they should know a lot better than I do. Since I’m not sure, I regularly end out having to search for answers, to clarify whether or not I need to remember to change the way I write something. Today (again!) I had to conclude that even if I’m not from an English speaking country, my memory isn’t that bad when it comes to what we were taught in school way back when. It really seems to me that a lot of people does not master the *basics* of their own language very well. I wonder if the case is that many just do NOT CARE when it comes to written text. Even in articles in newspapers and magazines, BASIC errors are made, something that very rarely happened before. Then the media seemed to take pride in their usage of their language and articles were diligently proof-read… With the fancy spell checkers etc. that we have today, one could expect that things got better, but instead it has got a lot worse, I think. Schools should focus more on these things, and make kids proud of mastering their language (grammar, spelling etc.), because it is a sad to see how much errors are made now (not unique to English, it’s the same with my language, Norwegian and I have seen examples of the same in Danish and Swedish too, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it is a global problem).

Hmmm… I can’t help myself, I think it is annoying! And that also includes oral use of terms, not just in writing. E.g. yesterday I watched Judge Judy on a local cable channel. She said that doing something was the person’s “perogative”. She is quite quick to comment if somebody else uses some term or phrase wrongly, and she frequently tells people that she is smarter than they are. If she is that bright, she should know that the term is “prerogative”, and that it should NOT be pronounced with a silent ‘r’ either! Hmmm… Wonder if she would have said: “correct pronounciation is perogative”, LOL… Well, I guess it would be her prerogative to say ‘pronounciation’ rather than ‘pronunciation’ – after all, she is a mighty judge AND she even plays one on TV, right?

When it comes to hangovers, which some commenters have mentioned, I have always thought that e.g. “He was pretty hung over after that party.” sounds right… Doesn’t it? It sounds right to me too to use two separate words rather than “hungover”. Or?

Thanks again and sorry for the long tirade! I guess I’ve been pretty darn frustrated… I’ll get off that soap box now!