Local speech that drives you crazy

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yous guys have far too much time on your hands to be worried about such trivial things. :)

this thread started out as bashing new jersey. let's keep it on track, k?
 
the funny part about that horrid show is that none of the cast is from noo joisey.

they're from staten island, upstate new yawk, and lawn guyland.
 
They use it in place of annihilate. To be fair, kind of like aint, it has been misused so much that the originally incorrect meaning has now been accepted as correct.

Thanks GB. I get it now. I haven't used "decimate" much, but when I do use it, I use it to refer to things being removed. For example, my supply of paper towels was decimated when the teenagers visited.

Not to me it isn't!
Not to say it can't bother you, just pointing out that it is not actually a mispronunciation like some of the other words mentioned. Please feel free to continue being annoyed by it! ;)

I find it annoying when distance is expressed in time.

It's only five minutes from here.

Aunt Bea, we joke that its a "prairie" thing to express distance as time. People from the prairie provinces tend to do this, while folks from larger urban centers use the actual distance because the time of travel varies so much according to traffic tie ups. We don't have as much grid lock out on the prairies!
 
Around here:

Liberry
ComplimenTARY
Ave. rather than avenue

Others:
"Awesome"
Extragrammatical "like"
Sharing (I did that when I was six. I'm, a big girl now. I say or tell.
Ain't
Would have went

There's another one I was just thinking about, but it won't come to me.

Not speech, but Easterners who wear cowboy hats. I'm from the West. We call them Goat Ropers.
 
Relatives in Florida add an extra preposition at the end of some sentences.

"Where are my keys at?" when "Where are my keys?" works just fine.

Then we have friends in Chicago who leave a word off. "Are you going to take that with?" leaving off the final "you".
 
I remember being in CA as a kid and my father asking for directions. They would always be given in time and not miles, which frustrated him. A lot, lol. Today I always prefer be given directions in time. Probably because I'm better at estimating time than I am distance.
I just heard decimate being used in a movie I was watching last night. I think it's one of those words that has changed meaning, because I'm pretty sure people think in terms of being obliterated, destroyed or "being no longer" when they hear decimate. Or maybe it's just one more way for Americans to shun the metric system... I've never heard of something being centimated or millimated though.
 
centimate? millimate?

hey, this is a family site. lets keep things pg, not avoirdupois rated... :mrgreen:
 
OK, I just looked up the origin and usage of decimate. It was a punishment used in Roman legions. If your century was called upon to be disciplined you would split up into groups of 10, draw lots and one guy in each group got axed. Wow. Don't p!ss off the romans! Decimate now means to reduce drastically but not to annihilate.

Centimate would mean 1 out of 100 men got killed, not even worth noticing I guess.

Hello, I'm Alix, and I'm a word geek.

Did I mention how much I dislike the word "orientate"? I had someone ask me to "orientate" them to the unit. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
 
I dislike the word "orientate"?

Thank you. That's another one of my pet peeves. Also, modernity and rapidity. It used to be: modern or rapid.

And oh yeah, the newscasters who come on and say, so and so is "speaking out" about ......Why can't they just comment? Or make a statement?" Or is there a way to "speak in?"
 
It's not just Florida, Andy. I hear that in my region, too. However, it's NEVER good (or proper) to end a sentence with a preposition. Simply put, it's poor grammar.

Katie, it's not that it's a misplaced preposition, it's that it's unnecessary. That is a situation up with which I shall not put. :angel:
 
"Old-fashioned" is a word that's often used incorrectly.

If you're talking about an antique car such as a 1922 Ford Model T, it's not an old-fashioned car. It's an old or antique car. If something is old-fashioned, it's in the style of a bygone period.
 
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