<p>Chedva, believe you are correct…“lend” is the correct word choice here. I was thinking of an example sentence and blew it. …couple books/couple of books, etc.</p>
<p>I could fill this space with incorrect usages bI meet every day (college English teacher wkith some intro. comp. courses in sched.), but5 the reality is we’re going to lose every battle. Language evolves and I COULD CARE LESS. LOL.</p>
<p>I celebrate the evolution of language every Sunday while reading William Safire’s “On Language” in the NYT’s magazine section.</p>
<p>Standing behind a couple of professional-looking women while waiting to cast my vote, I overheard this example of articulateness: “I was, like, wow!” So I was interested to read the following:</p>
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<p>Enjoy more analysis at:</p>
<p><a href=“http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004831.html[/url]”>http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004831.html</a></p>
<p>The regionalism I’m currently finding extremely grating to the ear is the process of putting the definite article in front of a highway number. Southern Californians apparently are fond of saying
“I took THE I-5 north”
instead of the Washington (state) use:
“I took I-5 north”</p>
<p>I hate that use of THE… Where am I hearing this? Well, I subscribe to XM radio and they have great traffic reporting (times from one place to another, not just vague descriptions), but they have centralized traffic reporting… so some of their reporters say “traffic is heavy on THE I-5 today” and you find yourself thinking “they’re not from around here.” This is then confirmed when they attempt to pronounce some of our place names (Sammamish, Puyallup, and more)–and I find myself forgetting to listen to the traffic report.</p>
<p>Our radio dj’s do that too but I don’t know anyone in real life who says that.</p>
<p>Since we have several interstates/loops, the dj’s will just say </p>
<p>“trafic is running very heavy on the I’s today”… they don’t even say WHICH “I” half the time.</p>
<p>She graduated Yale in 1998 implies that Yale, the institution, graduated and that the young woman in question presided and/or conferred the degree at the ceremony! </p>
<p>My daughter went to THE prom. I say both in line and on line - more often the latter, I think. Have never heard American news broadcasts that refer to taking someone “to hospital.”</p>
<p>Not to start a political controversy (which I avoid here like the plague), but what is up with the use of the term “Democrat candidate” instead of the “Democratic candidate?” Of or relating to the Republican party is “Republican” and of or relating to the Democratic party should be “Democratic.” :</p>
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<p><a href=“Homework Help and Textbook Solutions | bartleby”>Homework Help and Textbook Solutions | bartleby;
<p>The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.</p>
<p>Dear Mythmom, I believed that the reference I quoted supported your point of view. The “oldtimer” version is still current and is acceptable to 78 percent of the Usage Panel. That’s not very different from 89 percent.</p>
<p>Now, I think you may find more than a few purists who would object to the use of “I could care less” versus “I couldn’t care less” :D</p>
<p>I diagrammed millions (ok, hundreds) of sentences too, except it was in 4th/5th grade</p>
<p>Anyways vs Anyway is very annoying.</p>
<p>Yes, Corranged. That drives me crazy.</p>
<p>What about irregardless?</p>
<p>And how about when people say… “I could care less” when what they really mean is “I could NOT care less”.</p>
<p>It’s the misuse of There, They’re and Their that drives me nuts. And PLEASE—It’s “you’re” that is the contraction of “you are”. It always amazes me how many high SAT scoring, stratospheric GPA garnering kids there are on CC who say “your”, when they really mean “you’re”.</p>
<p>Yes packmom, actually both are correct. When they could care less, it means they are “indifferent” to the level of caring, and that to care less would not bother them. To say they could not care less implies they care “zero amount” and so caring less is impossible. Both convey the idea that a substantial amopunt of caring does not exist. Theoretically, “could not care less” could also mean that such a great amount of caring was necessary that caring less would be impossible- as with caring about the well-being of one’s offspring. I can’t say though, that I have ever heard it used that way.</p>
<p>How about this- If one decelerates in a car, does he “slow up” or “slow down”?</p>
<p>If one turns a standard screw clockwise, does it “tighten up” or “tighten down”?</p>
<p>To reply to post #17. My sister lived in England for over 25 years. No one she ever spoke with put “the” with hospital. We wondered why many times. It is verym common…</p>
<p>Anyone notice the comic strip from Canada where people go to “university” instead of “the university” or “college”? A usage becoming more used here, and I dislike it, is the British “have got” where I would simply say “have”. </p>
<p>Good luck to all the OOS freshmen at UW (the midwestern one) discovering what a bubbler is next week… a term that is shorter and descriptive of the ones I saw as a child; there was one at the zoo where the water literally bubbled up from the stone at various spots. Oh, and “brats” are not the siblings they left behind.</p>
<p>Read the Saturday edition of London’s Financial Times to get many words/phrases strange to Americans.</p>
<p>one of my coworkers constantly says “You welcome.” “Oh You welcome.” “Yes, you welcome”. If I could just teach her to say YOU ARE WELCOME or YOU’RE WELCOME I would be much less annoyed at the end of my days! I almost wish she wasn’t quite so polite that way I could hear it less!</p>
<p>I also get annoyed at the horrible usage of they’re, there, their and as stated above the you, you’re, and your. I’m not the worlds brightest person when it comes to grammar, but I do have those things that annoy the heck out of me.</p>
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<p>A bunch of kids from my high school and I were having a conversation about this! We are all from Southern California, and yet…</p>
<p>For the two local highways, we refer to them solely by number. “I drove home on 18 last night, but I took 330 to go to work.” However, whenever we’re talking about ANY other thoroughfare, be it any of the interstate freeways or other regional highways, we always refer to them with the article (and very, very rarely with the “I” in the case of interstates unless we’re giving directions). “I took 18 to the 30 and then onto the 215.”</p>
<p>I was amused then, and doubly so now that I see it’s a regional thing to do either.</p>
<p>Yes, putting the “I” in front of a highway is a regional thing; I don’t hear it very much in the Boston area. There’s 128, 95, 93, the Expressway, Rt. 9, Rt. 2, Rt. 3 (and some of these are the same roads with multiple names), but very rarely is it “I-95”; that’s in more southern climes. We don’t use “the” with road designations at all. In Boston itself, the streets get abbreviated (Commonwealth Avenue becomes Comm Ave; Dorchester Avenue is Dot Ave).</p>
<p>Oh, and wis75, in New England it’s also a bubbler. I’m from NJ, and it took a while to figure out what it was! The other regional difference is soda, tonic, cola or pop!</p>