Your hot button issue

[angus]

poor grammar, in general.  more specifically, the use of the nominitave form of the personal pronouns in cases which require the objective form. 

[angus]

I especially hate it when people use the object/accusative pronouns when they should be using subject/nominative.  Here's a few examples

those bug me too, as implied in my post, but do not rise, for me, to the level of "hot button"  When people use the nominative when they should use the objective really gets under my skin.  When that happens, I really want to reach out and give the speaker an open-handed, full-frontal cheek-slap, the way a pimp would strike an unruly hooker, or the way you'd slap a panic-striken person in order to knock some sense into them.  Man, I know people with PhDs in Physics, Engineering, or Chemistry who can't put together the simplest sentences.  And they brag about it!!!  "oh, my gramar is horrible.  Good thing we have secretaries."  Yeah, like they are any better.  Dorks.  It's very frustrating.  I'd say the grammar skills (or lack thereof!!!) being imparted by our public schools are a major pet peeve.  Oh, let's not even get started on their history, geography, algebra, ...

Your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen! 

[angus]

sehr lustig Herr Tondheim

I'm serious, the internet has done for language skills what calculators have done for arithmetic skills.  You don't know how many times I have had to watch a student root around in a backback for ten minutes looking for a calculator so they can know the sum of seven and three.  It's really very frustrating.

[angus]

Ain't is okay.  I'm over contractions.  Seems the language has evolved in a way that contractions are acceptable in places like the WSJ nowadays, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. 

I also don't care for the new rules for pluralization of latinate words.  I still think the plural of scrotum ought to be scrota, and the plural of apparatus ought to be apparati.  I remember I got into a big argument with the GRS advisor over the use of the word apparati in my dissertation.  So he whips out his Yuppie Dictionary and shows me how the New American Yuppie Dictionary or whatever that birdcage liner publication was to show me how it should be apparatuses.  ignorant shallow yuppies running the country.  What's next? Octopussies? Morons.

[angus]

I also don't care for the new rules for pluralization of latinate words.  I still think the plural of scrotum ought to be scrota, and the plural of apparatus ought to be apparati.  I remember I got into a big argument with the GRS advisor over the use of the word apparati in my dissertation.  So he whips out his Yuppie Dictionary and shows me how the New American Yuppie Dictionary or whatever that birdcage liner publication was to show me how it should be apparatuses.  ignorant shallow yuppies running the country.  What's next? Octopussies? Morons.

Viri instead of viruses?  Feti instead of fetuses?

How about the genitive?  Is it "the apparati's purpose" or "the apparatorum purpose"?  Or better yet, "purpose apparatorum"?

By the way, "octopus" is Greek, not Latin.  "Pus" means "foot" and the plural form is "podes" not "pi".  The correct plural forms would be "octopodes" (almost never used) or "octopuses" (or "octopusses", as in the "buses/busses" problem), but not "octopi".

Your dissertation annoyance is sympathized with, however.  My dissertation was changed to strictly passive voice to conform to the "proper" style.  This change was resisted, but the decision was made to conform so that my degree could be received.

Foeti, even

I'm actually a passive sort of guy, and actually had the opposite problem with my committee, who preferred the active voice.  Now that I'm on the other side of the desk, however, I can sympathize with having to find something wrong with what is really a perfect paper. 

 

[angus]

Heavy Metal Gospel Music.  I forgot how weird I thought that combination was till I was recently looking through some Nederlandse websites for another reason, came upon an article entitled "Hard and Holy; de geschiedenis van de Christelijke hardrock"

geschiendenis usually translates as "history"

and it reminded me of Stryper and all those 80s hair bands who bang on guitars and scream about God.  Weird stuff.

Not as offensive as bad grammar, but certainly one of those flavor combinations that Mother Nature really never intended.