This just irriates me beyond belief. Prime culprits are media people who evidently didn't excel in English at school but then shouldered their way into critical analysis anyway, such as sports commentators. Or just people on the internet, of course - but not just kids, independent journalists and the like writing for decent publications, too. It's everywhere. I was reminded when I saw this And no, it's not reviewing a 3D version. Not a published professional writer, but again, you'd be surprised how many do it. I've got a book somewhere that lists inanities and oddities uttered by reporters and TV presenters; one football commentator's words were It's hilarious, but also retarded. "Literally" isn't a superlative: it just means "not in a metaphorical sense". So in this case it means precisely that Sheffield were murdered on the pitch and are now dead. People do it all the time. It's nobody's fault, really; just a general failing of our education systems to correct in time. It's a nice, accessible word you can throw in anywhere (and people do, constantly) so it's shifted far too fast for anyone to point out that we're all actually using it incorrectly.
I literally don't understand why everyone on Bit is whining about the silliest things this week. :-| On topic: I agree.. hardly anyone (myself included) speaks English correctly. Literally sounds good when used the wrong way, everyone understands what you're trying to say, and if you're using it correctly (Ex: "Doctor, I'm blue" "I have a psychiatrist friend.." "No, I'm literally blue, I think I have argyria or something") everyone still gets what you mean.
You'll find with errors like this, grow with repitition (obvious huh?), I am quite sure someone likeminded to yourself was watching television and heard it uttered in a broadcast for the first time and raged. Unfortunately it just gets worse from there, it reminds me of my last visit to London, I heard all sorts of strange slang, obviously coined by the youths. I returned home, several months later I heard it on TV and still had no feckin idea what it was supposed to mean. Now let me see if I can remember that term..
I could of done it if I want to. A double whammy! Oh, and "I could care less", which is used by Americans in particular. I literally kill anyone I hear saying it.
Ambiguity isn't silly. Ambiguity is bad mojo. However, I am lazy and can't be bothered to learn lojban.
I agree.................but i do it all the time anyway lol The one thing of this nature that really is bugging me is the totally random and utterly retarded slang which is appearing all over the place. Where i live the current slang term in vogue is 'bare' to mean lots, loads, in plentyful supply. A conversation on the telephone goes like this: Pondlife A - "You goin' dahn tahn tonoight bruvver?" Pondlife B - "Yeah man, i gots me bare dollar n' gonna blow the load!" Pondilfe A - "Safe bruv. Make sure that gimp dont come this time, he's fair spesh. Catch ya ina bit." Pondilfe B - "Safe. BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!" Pondlife A - "BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!" Excuse the horrible attempt at phonetic spelling but it is spelled exactly how it sounds. For the 'BIIIIIIIIIT' part imagine saying the word bit but hyper-extending the I and forcing your voice about 4 octaves too low. This is how they close a call instead of the usual, good-bye, cya, later or whatever.(I know some of those are slang but at least they don't make you sound like your brain has been replaced with peppermint custard) I'm not kidding either. I actually hear exchanges like this on an almost daily basis. I literally want to beat each one to death with a dictionary..........the complete, concise, all in one massive feckin volume Oxford English Dictionary. Yeah that's a pretty wide tangent but i think it extends to this. I hate the murder of the language in general. Personal number one pet hate? (sorry in advance those over the pond and i know not all of you do this) 'Erbs.....It's Herbs! There is an H for a reason!
Just so. Using "could care less" usually indicates you're happy using phrases without ever having thought about them and simply assuming the person you heard using it was an editor of the Oxford English Dictionary or something. I mean, you have to avoid thinking about it for any length of time to fail to realise how wrong "could care less" is*. *If it's not obvious to you why it's wrong, run around in the middle of a frisbee game until it hits you.
'Literally' is only marginally more annoying than the word 'Basically' I despise people who use "Basically" as an introduction to a complicated idea. Almost always, the condescending ***** who is speaking has absolutely no idea what he's talking about.
I 'literally' put a word jar up at work and the first word we started collecting quarters on was 'literally'. I had people pay a dollar in advance b/c they knew they couldn't avoid saying it. MAde some dough on that word we did!
The only worlds that really get my ire up would be "like" and "yo" along with the excessive usage of "I" or "um". Listing yourself in front of a chain of names is another annoyance for me ("So me, Jake, Phill and Bryan were heading out..."). There is one particular person I work with that somehow manages to fit a minimum of five separate instances of "yo" within every single phrase he manages to squeak out. I realise he is brain-dead from the amount of drugs he does, but it still gets rather annoying and I just want to reach out and smack him upside the head.
To say "I literally <something metaphorical>" is fine if used as an exaggeration for example "My wife is literally going to kill me" is correct as in this sense the person is humerously saying that their wife will kill them. You can also deliberately use it 'incorrectly' as bathos for example: "It's literally raining cats and dogs!".
It's not fine. To say something is literaly <metaphor> is to use the wording of the metaphor but to say that this thing actually happened in real life. "My wife is going to kill me" is the humorous exaggeration. "My wife is literally going to kill me" is a statement about what one's wife intends to do in life. It's jus' retarded. I also despise the over-use of "technically" - unless you're a chef, then there is nothing technical to be talking about when we're discussing what to have for breakfast.
Thank god im not the only one. My cousin talks like a **** and every time she opens her gob she comes out with something else... she said "keh" the other day. What in gods name is that supposed to mean. Most of the time i ask her to repeat it in English. We dont speak much.
