Please state in which country your phrase tends to be used, what the phrase is, and what it should be.
Example:
In America, recently came across “back-petal”, instead of back-pedal. Also, still hearing “for all intensive purposes” instead of “for all intents and purposes”.
Niche is pronounced neesh and not nitch
Depends on the context IMO
How
If I had to take a guess I would venture that this person says “It’s not my nitch.” and “wow that product is very neesh.”
I swear I’ve met someone like this now that I think about it
You got it, dialects are a widely varying thing!
I suppose, if the context is if you prefer to be correct or not?
Lol “being correct” in a language. Take a course in linguistics.
“Its”
As “its” is used to indicate possession by “it”, “its” is an exception to apostrophe-s construction as used to indicate possessive forms.
“It’s”, used as either the contractive form or the possessive form, does not require such an exception. The distinction between the contractive and possessive forms of “it’s” rarely/never introduces ambiguity; the distinction is clear from context.
The word “its” should be deprecated.
I have a much better plan: deprecate the stupid apostrophe for all possessives! It always looks semi-illiterate to me, like the 15th-century Dutch printsetters weren’t hot on English grammar (not sure, but I bet this is in fact how it happened - German possessives manage fine without the apostrophe).
In other news, the possessive apostrophe is now allowed as part of a name (Rita’s Restaurant) in German…
Yes I heard about that! The illogical abomination that is English spelling and grammar is going to destroy the world’s languages one by one!
“Could of…”
It’s “could have”!
Edit: I’m referring to text based things, like text and email. I can pretty much ignore the mispronouncing.
That’s a dialectal difference, not an error.
It’s very much not recommended, and generally seen as an error. But this article puts an asterisk on it.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/whats-worse-than-coulda
I am viscerally against this concept.
It’s one thing to include the spelling as a way to capture the phonetics of an accent or a dialect, entirely another to accept its use in writing when using a neutral voice.
If anything, because it’s so often just a misspelling I would avoid trying to use it as a phonetics thing just as a matter of style. At this point everybody would think I’m making a mistake instead of trying to mimic a way of speech in a way they’d never do with “coulda”.
With you on all counts.
Irregardless is just a synonym for Regardless now and I staunchly oppose anyone who tries to correct it.
“Flammable” and “Inflammable” are synonymous, so…
Yeah but “irregardless” is like “un-non-flammable”
How about “irregardful”?
I like it. Not unbad at all.
To “step foot on”. I don’t care that millennial journalists are now sullying the literal NYT with this, it’s WRONG. It’s to set foot on. To SET foot on.
“Set foot” might be better established (and sound better), but “step foot” is not new.
Yeah yeah I know. But “set” (fun fact: it’s the word with the most meanings in the Oxford English Dictionary) is the transitive form of “sit”, so it’s more grammatical, more elegant and shorter than “step”. Which obviously comes from a mishearing by someone who didn’t read books, yet people will still get indignant and claim that it’s somehow better! I need to lie down. ;)
I like your comment for the most part, but:
obviously comes from a mishearing by someone who didn’t read books
This is assumptive and prescriptive. The link I sent demonstrates that it’s been used extensively and for a long time by people who not only read books, but write books. I’m on board that “set foot” is the better phrase and likely to be the earlier one, but trying to dictate which is correct is - respectfully - a fool’s errand.
Yes yes I know all that. Prescriptivism is bad, tut tut!, a serious linguist only describes language, etc etc.
But whether it was 400 years ago or yesterday, to me personally it’s thunderingly obvious that “step” comes from a mishearing, all while being inferior in every way. It’s even tautological, since the “foot” is already implied in the word “step”. It’s like saying “He was hand-clutching a bag”. One is short, logical, and respects grammatical convention. The other… isn’t and doesn’t.
Occasionally great new coinings come about from mishearings (can’t think of one right now but they exist). This is not one of them.
