View Single Post
addabox
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: oaktown
 
2011-05-29, 02:58

Quote:
Originally Posted by Xaqtly View Post
Off topic but related to English: What is the deal with this grammatical nonsense I'm starting to see everywhere now? It's when people take the words "to be" out of the sentence "needs to be fixed", so all they say is "needs fixed".

Did I miss something? Is that considered acceptable English now? "That door needs fixed." What? You could say "that door needs fixing" or "that door needs to be fixed", right? It's spreading like some kind of virus. I'm starting to see it everywhere now, in emails at work, on facebook, everywhere. "That meeting needs scheduled." "My dog needs fed."

It's like how the internet has made it easier for people to pick up on how to spell things wrong, which then propagates to everybody who doesn't know any better. Which is most people, apparently. And then the misspelling starts to become the accepted way of spelling it.

"Oh pardon me sir, but my balls need scratched."
Sweet jesus I haven't encountered that yet. Maybe we can just keep going and get rid of tenses: the door needs fix, the dog needs feed, the halfwit needs kill.

I was listening to NPR and there was a piece on some girl looking for college funding, I imagine the intent was to elicit empathy with the plucky gal. But in every recorded interview segment she came off sounding like a complete moron on which a college education would be a complete waste. The culprit was that old standby "like." "He was like all enthusiastic, and I was like all excited, but then he was like 'Oh maybe not' and I was like 'Wait, what's up?" and then my girlfriend was like getting offers and I was like bummed and it was like pretty disappointing." No doubt, since college scholarship programs are generally like discriminating. Maybe she need slap.

That which doesn't kill you weakens you slightly and makes you less able to cope until you're completely incapacitated
  quote