Grammar Isles

[Bizarro]

via McSweeney's

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B R O T H E R S - I N - L A W .

BY DENNIS DICLAUDIO

- - - -

It really IRRITATES me when people do not use proper grammar. It does not AGGRAVATE me. Do you understand that? IRRITATE means "to annoy," and AGGRAVATE means "to add to." So, if you're already IRRITATING me with your abominable speech and your insistence on smoking a cigar in my living room, your saying, "Hey buddy boy, don't get so AGGRAVATED; I'll open a window," will only AGGRAVATE the situation.

You can no more ALLUDE a former business associate whose job you procured than you can create the ALLUSION of an unprofitable year for the IRS. The words are "ELUDE" and "ILLUSION," respectively. Don't make me repeat this. You can ALLUDE to or make an ALLUSION to The Art of War in an email, and this is quite a different thing than REFERRING to or making a REFERENCE to a specific passage from the same book, because an ALLUSION is an indirect mention, and if you just pull the whole thing off your Quote-A-Day desk calendar, it's a REFERENCE. Sometimes Spellcheck doesn't cut it. Use a dictionary.

I'm going to try to put this as simply as possible, because I realize that some people thought of English as an elective in college. "FARTHER" is a word that refers to distance. "FURTHER" refers to time or quantity. "FARTHER" has the fucking root "FAR" in it. Like "FAR away from my sister." Do not confuse these two. Note these two sentences: "My brother-in-law has his head FARTHER up his ass than I thought was humanly possible," and, "I have no FURTHER interest in hearing your opinions concerning what we should do about the city's 'Jew problem.'"

I was wondering AS TO WHETHER you are intending to offend me with your idiotic opinions or if you actually think I'll sit here and listen to this shit. AS TO WHETHER? AS TO WHETHER? What the hell is "AS TO WHETHER"? Why are you sticking an "AS TO" on the front of "WHETHER"? Just as it is unnecessary for a person to qualify every single statement with, "I'm just saying, I went to Wharton Business School, and...," the "AS TO" is not needed. You're not being paid by the word. Just say "WHETHER." "WHETHER" is fine.

Think about this. Am I IMPLYING that you are a fascist, elitist prick, or can we simply INFER that from the data at hand?

In the name of everything that is good and holy, please, do not ever, ever, ever say "IRREGARDLESS" anywhere near me. What you mean to say is "REGARDLESS." REGARDLESS of whether or not you think of the English language as solely a means of ordering more sushi or bragging about your BMW, its rules must be respected, and there is no such fucking word as "IRREGARDLESS." It makes you sound even more stupid than you actually are. The prefix "IR-" is a negative. The suffix "-LESS" is a negative. How many fucking negatives do you need in one goddamned word? So help me God, I will beat the shit out of you with a tire iron.

I can't even deal with "LAY" and "LIE" right now. I'll smash something. I know it.

Do you actually mean to say that he LITERALLY dropped dead when you told him you were assuming his position in the company? Do you have any idea what you're saying? You're saying that your former boss was lying (not LAYING! not LAYING!) on the floor of his old office, with no pulse, until paramedics came and brought his lifeless body to the morgue? No, I didn't think that's what you meant. Why don't you get that dictionary and look up the LITERAL meaning of the word "LITERALLY," jerkoff?

You do realize that "THAN" and "THEN" are two different words, don't you? Do you know how you can tell? Because they're spelled differently. That "a" and "e" aren't interchangeable, you callous shitwheel. You can't just spell it how you like depending upon your mood. "I'm a stupid, fucking, big-shot stockbroker who doesn't give a shit about anybody but himself and spews his moronic opinions like vomit and probably cheats on his wife, and I think I'll spell "THAN" with an 'e' today." No. That's not how it works, asshole! "THAN" expresses comparison and "THEN" expresses a passage of time or distance! Think of it this way: I'm literally going to grab your dick and pull it farther from your body THAN you can possibly imagine, regardless of how shrilly your screams fall upon my unsympathetic ears, until your dick comes off in my hand and I shove it down your goddamned pontificating, no-good throat! THEN we'll see whether or not you start giving the simple fucking rules of English the respect they fucking deserve!

[Just Some Girl]

That is exactly how I feel every day (at work especially).

[Poop Fresh-Herbed Pickles]

I wish someone would dedicate a blog to unnecessary apostrophe's.

Let's start with this one...

Rat's off to ya!

[Poop Fresh-Herbed Pickles]

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/q27mdvdwOpw" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/q27mdvdwOpw</a>
 

For a paid news consultant, Rod Wheeler really has some sloppy English.

[matthew]

[Just Some Girl]

oh man... there is an escalating bathroom war at my office.

Last week a note appears on the front of the door:

"Please be sure that your entire "deposit" is flushed away before you leave the bathroom.  thanks"

Then a few days later, on the inside of the door on your way out, a note read:

"are you sure its ALLLLL gone?!?"

Now today, this is posted on the stall door:

that's riduculous...

everyone knows that you should always spell out numbers one through nine.

duh

[Poop Fresh-Herbed Pickles]

I almost reposted that here too, JSG!   

[Poop Fresh-Herbed Pickles]

I like that I will get to haul around my myriad parts in a larger vehicle.

What I liked best about this post is that you said "myriad parts." I hate when people incorrectly say "myriad of..."   Grammar

Keep the fire burning.

[Bizarro]

The The Impotence of Proofreading

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/OonDPGwAyfQ" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/OonDPGwAyfQ</a>

[Just Some Girl]

Douche.

Clit. Clit. Clit.

Cuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuute.

[Bizarro]

Thomas Jay Ryan breaks down there/their/they're.

(from Henry Fool)

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/U39sZgwSr_s" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/U39sZgwSr_s</a>

[Just Some Girl]

Wow. This is an actual rep inquiry I received. AND dude pasted the whole SCRIPT OF A MOVIE into an email, the idiot. But that part is long gone in my delete box, sorry, so just the inquiry below. I forwarded this to Pogo! and one of his work friends (who is awesome, and who in turn sent it to his wife...too much hilarity not to share) and we dined on it for days...so rich, each re-reading finds new gems. I hope you enjoy.

As if the title alone wasn't offensive enough to women everywhere...

I passed.




------ Forwarded Message

Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2009 21:28:17 +0000
Subject: RE: My Movie Proposal.



The Worlds Biggest Whore

 
Dear Sir/Madam,

I have written a script of a movie about a woman who is promsiscous and in the indulgence of his love for sex through inher life untill she is 27 is chronciled. The script also deals with modern issues like pro-life and pro-choice. The chief protagonist Angela is daughter of a middle class connecticut. She exhibits compusive sexaul tendancies by palying with her crouch. She goes to high school and makes out and have sex with football stars. She takes a year in recess and works at wallmart where flirting with customers lead to her going to bed with them, 

   When she starts college she gets to have love affairs with fellow student and college professor. This eventually leads to her getting pregnant.

 She is in jeopardy  who the father is and the outright denial of the two men leads her in to abortion

 This traumatises and with near fatal back alley abortion. She thanks God for her life but doesnt change her way of life.

 She gets back to sleeping aorund again unfortunately she gets knocked up again. This time she decides to keep the baby and the daddy gratuates and dissapears.

  This burden leads her to drop out of college and take care of the baby of which is a taunting task but as the baby grows she finds out that she needs to take of herslef and cant get a good since she is a college drop out.

 This forces her to find aa job at Red lobster as waitress. This lead to falling in love with the chef.

  Desperate to get out of her parents out she moves in with the boyfriend.

 Financial difficulty, stress of work and taking care of the baby leads them to hatch a plot to rob the restaurant. Since the assistant restaurant manager also banks the money. He goes on a wipe out the restaurant account and escapes to Las Vegas.

  Here they lead a party life of gambling, sex and drugs 24/7

 One eventful night they are stopped for suspicion on drunk driving. Since they know they are a suspect in a crime they attempt to flew the high speed chase leads to a spectacular accident. When they are run through the database. The arresting officer quickly fins out they have an arrest warrant against them. This also leads to finds of contraband in the car.

  After interrogation and hold up. They are taken to court for hearing on extradiction.

 There case is open and after a lengthy legal fight she sleeps with the prosecutor. This makes them drop the accomplice charges and replace it with a lesser charge of aiding a felon. She serves only 6 months in jail while the byfriends is given 10 years.

 In jail she gets to have a lessbian affair with her jailmates ( This merely to create controversy)

 Finally whern she get out of prison she finally sees the light and goes back to school finishes her degree and gets a job as a teacher. The parents take care of her son.

 In university she also meets a medical student and falls in love. 2 yrs later she gets pregnant with her 2nd baby a girl.

 The move ends the way it started in the same hospital bed she was born.

Both parents elated.

  Below is the script. I hope we will bring it to the market.Thank you.

[Poop Fresh-Herbed Pickles]

Thomas Jay Ryan breaks down there/their/they're.

(from Henry Fool)

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/U39sZgwSr_s" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/U39sZgwSr_s</a>

I love this movie.  I love this scene.

"They're the donut people."

[matthew]

Grammar-related "fun"

April 6, 2009
There's No "Eye" in Iran
Obama's Pronunciation Problem

By Dr. M. KAMIAR

My colleague, Dr. Washington, and I were probably among the first group people who suggested an early “Obama victory Party” before anybody else. Mr. Obama got our attention, our contribution and our vote because he was well-educated candidate and also was a professor for some time. During his debates, he sounded so cool, collect collected, and confident. We did not even compare him with the GOP’s candidate, especially when Sarah Palin was added to their ticket. She sounded so arrogant and funny when she did not even try to pronounce the names of Iran and Iraq accurately. She repeatedly called them “Eye-ran and Eye-rack”, respectively. But, wait a minute; didn’t Michelle Obama pronounce these two country names exactly in the same tunes?

The greatest majority of the news media from ABC to XYZ, including NPR and my favorite game show Jeopardy, are unable to pronounce most proper names from the Middle East correctly. The first President Bush still calls the now dead Iraqi leader “Saddam” as “Sodom” as the infamous city in the Bible. Maybe it was for propaganda purpose, but how hard is it for him to put “Sad” and “dumb” together? This would be the most accurate pronunciation of the name.

I only recently and accidentally, saw a small part of “Monarchy: The Royal Family at Work” on PBS. I was dumbfounded that the Queen England and her Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, could not correctly pronounce the name of their former colony, Iraq. They both reflected arrogant and ignorant colonial pronunciation aired on their propaganda machine, the BBC. It is more shocking because the Queen is supposed to be one of the most educated and experienced political leaders in the world. As for Dr. Gordon Brown, he has a doctoral degree in history. If both are not lost in time, they are lost in space, while maintaining their ugly colonial speech.   

In a Presidential Debate for the Democratic candidates in Iowa on December 4, 2007, when in the light of a new intelligence report indicating that Iran has had stopped making nuclear bomb in 2003, none of them including Obama, Biden, and Clinton was able to pronounce the name of the country Iran correctly. Now, Biden, Clinton, and Dr. Susan Rice are going to advise our president on the matters of American foreign policy. How are they going to address Mr. Ahmadinejad? Do they know that it is not Ahmadijihad?

In their first debate, neither one of the two presidential candidates, McCain and Obama, knew the difference between the Republication Guards vs. Revolutionary Guards! Actually, it was McCain’s mistake first. Obama only repeated that mistake and the so-called well-informed moderator, didn't catch that little big mistake.

Similar to all of his campaigns and debates, during his first press conference, Obama was cool, calm, confident, and professorial. I kept saying, please get to the point, you are not teaching a class on the state of the world in two hours. I was expecting that this Harvard Law School graduate and former law professor would practice learn, and pronounce proper names properly before his first press conference on February 9, 2009.

He was unable to pronounce the name of Pakistan’s president and mentioned a strange, albeit, abbreviated name of a region, FATA, more than once that sounded like a branch of Palestinian resistant groups. How many of the representatives of the mainstream media who are geographically illiterate knew anything about FATA? After I read the transcript of the press conference, I learned what that name was. According to Mr. Ertan’s site, with 3.0 million people, FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) is located in Pakistan. 

Quoted in Jack Shafer’s (2009) piece, Zadie Smith believes that “Obama can do young Jewish male, black old lady from the South Side, white woman from Kansas, Kenyan elders, white Harvard nerds, black Columbia nerds, activist women, churchmen, security guards, bank tellers…” Let me disappoint Ms. Smith. I wish he could, in regards to pronunciation of proper names, but President Obama has not been able to do an educated person from the Middle East. During his first conference, President Obama probably unintentionally only once mimicked Ms. Helen Thomas’ pronunciation of Pakistan, then he went back to his homemade incorrect way of saying the name.       

Unfortunately, the Harvard graduates, including Zbigniew Brzezinski, Francis Fukuyama, George W. Bush, and Obama, to name a few, never learned any geography lessons. Harvard killed its geography department in 1948 for political reasons. Harvard graduates want to control the world without any maps. Harvard graduates need first to lose their colonial pronunciation and have a little respect for the rest of the world.     

According to my biblical Shibboleth test, the shallowness of their knowledge is so pronounced by their inaccurate pronunciation of proper names for the Middle East. Most of them are lost in time and space. Could our brand new president and his foreign policy team learn that! 

There is no “eye” in Iran or Iraq,

There is no “key” in Pakistan and no “lee” in Taliban, and

There is no “nee” in Afghanistan. No “dee” in Kurdistan.

The above proper names and many more were badly transliterated by the British. One can blame this mis-transliteration and mispronunciation on the British colonialism colonialists and their lack of respect for their subjects. There is only one way to pronounce proper names from the Middle East.

My website “Say It Right” should help, but I need to be given a chance to teach the new people in the White House, the State Department, and the UN how to say these names right, with delight. Even Dr. Brzezinski, a former national security advisor and a professor at the Johns Hopkins University, believes in “Yes, we can” (2009, p. 60). It is simply wrong to be out of tune and out of touch with the rest of the world. Yes, we can do it, with help from the educated people from the Middle East! 

Dr. Kamiar is the author of a forthcoming reference book called Standard Pronunciation Guide for Proper Names from the Middle East. He can be reached at mkamiar@fccj.edu.

Sources

Brzezinski, Zbigniew. “Major Foreign Policy Challenges for the Next US President.” International Affairs, Vol. 85, No. 1, 2009, pp. 53-60.
Ertan, Fikret. “FATA, the US and Pakistan.” http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/yazarDetay.do?haberno=153105.

NPR. “Election 2008: Transcript: NPR Democratic Candidates' Debate.” http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16898435.

Shafer, Jack. “How to speak Obama: Zadie Smith's two cents on how 44 mesmerizes.” Posted Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009, at 5:41 PM ET, http://www.slate.com/id/2211161.

White House. “Obama's first White House press conference.” East Room, 8:01 P.M. EST, Transcript.” By Lynn Sweet, February 9, 2009 9:12 PM, http://blogs.suntimes.com/. 

Say It Right - http://sayitright.fccj.edu/

[matthew]