...or have just noticed recently.
The English language is a tough one. It is a fusion of a few different languages; Latin, Greek, Norse and Norman-French to name a few. Britons should consider themselves lucky that they were raised learning English because it's one of the hardest languages in the world to learn. Despite the fact that it is 'our' language, I still notice mistakes every single day, some of which I've been guilty of too.
Bought/Brought
‘Bought’ relates to buying something. ‘Brought’ relates to bringing something. For example, "I bought a new donkey and brought it back to my farm." The easy way to remember which is which is that ‘bring’ and ‘brought’ both start with ‘br’. ‘Buy’ and ‘bought’ start with ‘b’ only. This is one of those awkward ones that a spellchecker won’t catch. - Also, I realised I don't actually own a farm, so does anyone want this donkey? I named him Dave.
Your/You're
This one grates on me like a chalkboard being scratched. I find it so simple, yet I see it on Facebook and MSN all the time! ‘Your’ - belonging to you. ‘You're’ - You are. "You're your father's son" or "You're going to annoy me if you can't get your ‘your’s and your ‘you're’s the correct way around."
The thing that makes me lose faith in the educational system is when I see kids typing ‘ur’ and ‘ure’ and still getting it wrong!
Affect/Effect
When people get grammar or words wrong, it has an effect on me. How does that effect affect you? Well, you end up reading this blog post for one. ‘Effect’ is almost always a noun, and it is the result of something. To ‘affect’ something is generally a verb. The effect is the change, and affecting something is the process of changing or influencing something.
Accept/Except
This is a minor one, but not many people realise that they're doing it. You may be thinking to yourself that you never get these two words mixed up, and you may be right. The reason that they're on my list is because of the way that a lot of people pronounce the word ‘acceptable’. I hear it pronounced ‘exceptable’ all the time, which is not a word. Try saying both versions out loud and determine if you're one of those people. Broken down, acceptable becomes ac-cep-ta-ble, and due to the ‘ac’ and ‘cep’, we get a false ‘X’ sound. It's the first ‘ac' sound that makes all the difference. - Pronouncing it as ‘exceptable’ is unACceptable!
Lose/Loose
An understandable one, this. In our language, a single ‘O’ makes an ‘oh’ sound, whereas a double ‘O’ is pronounced ‘ooo’. The way that ‘lose’ is spelled, implies that it should be pronounced ‘lohse’, and I think that's why many folks get it wrong. ‘Loose’ is an adjective, meaning the opposite of tight, take away one ‘o’ and you get ‘lose’.
- The modelling agency told me to get lost because I needed to lose some weight. I returned in a month to prove my weight loss by showing them that my trousers were loose. They told me I was too ugly anyway. Their loss, losers.
Its/It's
Guilty. I make this mistake often, despite knowing the difference between them both. ‘It's’ means ‘it is’, while ‘its’ is a possessive pronoun. The reason that this sometimes catches me out is because usually when something belongs to a man, it's the man's possession (notice the apostrophe usage), but when something belongs to ‘it’, it's its. Oh well -
if it wants its own section in my blog, it's going to get it.
Alot
...is not a word. - I still see it a lot though.
Literally
Right, this one is a bit different. It is used wrongly so often that we've forgotten its actual meaning. ‘Literally’ means "it really happened". So when you tell me that your dad literally exploded when he found out you were having sex, and that he literally flew out the door to go to your boyfriend's house, I find it hard to believe that he could fly, especially after having just exploded. What you mean to say, is figuratively. - Unless of course, he literally did explode for some reason and the explosion caused him to fly out of the door. Nope, probably not.
Desert/Dessert
I don't really blame people for getting this one wrong. Words like ‘desert’ have only one ‘s’ in them and it's normally pronounced like a ‘z’. So why then does ‘dessert’ have two of them and yet still they get pronounced like a ‘z’. Are we being purposely confused? Who thought that was a good idea?
Two/Too/To
Two turtles went to my house. Two toucans went to my house too. We should all know these by now? Surely? No? You're a lost cause.
Crotch/Crutch
This one annoys me. You walk around with the aid of crutches. You can kick a guy in the crotch, not in the crutch -
unless he's been maimed, uses crutches and you want him to fall over, you evil person. The word ‘crotch’ gets confused with ‘crutch’ because crutches were fashioned from the crotch of a tree, which is where its limbs divide (the same goes for our bodies).
After searching for images relating to this confusion, I found out that there is such a thing as a crotch crutch:
Wow.
Accidentally
A lot of people write this as ‘accidently’, which is wrong. The way to remember the spelling of this word is thinking about the root word: ‘accidental’. The same goes for a few other, similar words. He said he did it accidentally. Incidentally and coincidentally his friend said he did it unintentionally too.
Receive, Relieve, Believe etc.
"I before E, except after C" seems like a good rule to live by, but then you grow up and realise that actually... your teachers set you up to fail in that regard. There are actually hundreds of words that this rule does not apply to; deity, foreign, science, height, beige, society, veil, weird, seismic, neighbour, seize, protein, either, forfeit, feisty are quite a few examples. This isn't counting the plurals of many words ending in ‘cy’, such as; frequencies, fallacies, vacancies and indecencies.
I still have to double check after I type a word like ‘receive’ or ‘believe’. I propose a new rule: "I before E, occasionally".
Irony
You all have Alanis Morissette to blame for this one. When something is ironic, it is unexpected. It's that simple. Alanis Morissette had no clue when she sang "it's a free ride when you've already paid" or "it's like rain on your wedding day". This is not irony - it is misfortune or coincidence. - A traffic jam when you're already late... to receive an award from the Municipal Planning Board for reducing the city's automobile congestion by 70 percent. Now that's irony.
This is but a select few that I can be bothered to write about today. There are a lot more though, feel free to let me know which ones you notice the most. Also, bonus points to anyone who finds errors in my post, it would be quite ...ironic.
