What pisses me off? People’s speech

Ok, my favourite gripe for quite a while now has been that whenever I watch television news, some gee-whiz reporter refers to a picture as a ‘pitcher’.

This is plainly bad English and really gets on my goat. Almost, but not quite as bad as a sales girl asking “Are you right ?” (read; “Youright ?”). These two gems never fail to raise my ire and get me going.

I practically scream at the TV in dismay and remark, “Its supposed to be PICTURE, you silly woman, gees!” Or in the case of the laxidasical sales assistant, “No, I’m not right. I’ve been standing here waiting to be served for the past half hour, how can I possibly be right ?”

Just last night Monday May 5, a reporter on ABC said the word ‘pitcher’ about eight times, referring to pictures he was discussing. Instantly the little hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Is it just me, or am I being too uppity ?

This is just plain laziness and really reflects badly on the reporter or the sales staff, whether it be in a Fish n Chip take-away or down at the local bank. Standards of customer service should be held highly, as many times I’ve walked out and felt “Why did I bother?”.

The TV ‘personalities’ need to lift their game also. It’s one thing to mispronounce place names, but quite another to completely muck up the Queens’ English, for Pete’s sakes.

It’s sort of like the overuse of the word ‘icon‘ which is a religious painting by the way, but none the less nowadays we have sporting icons and icons of politics and business, the list goes on. Sheesh!

A lot of Americanisms have also crept into everyday use. Another favourite bug-bear is ‘train station’. To my way of thinking (and to my old-skool upbringing, correction: 50s childhood), it was always ‘Railway Station‘, because this refers to a station on the railway. Whereas ‘train on the station’ somehow doesn’t make much sense to my delicate sensibilities.

Maybe I’m just being grumpy, but it does seem to me that people are getting lazy with speech, or maybe it’s a result of the texting age we live in. Lol, roflmao, or did I just make that one up ?

I guess it’s just a natural progression, everything has to be shortened because we live in such a busy, time-poor world and we have to abbreviate speech as well as thought. Or maybe there is time, if we want it.

Then there is Spell Checker. Mine is chockers with modified English that has become modified American and I find I have to un-modify some words, lest I infuriate myself and fly into an uncharacteristic rage. I had no idea so many words had been changed.

I was reasonably good with English at school, not that good, but I prided myself on my ability with that because I was a failure in other areas of the learning process, but now that I use a computer daily with spell checker I realise how bad my spelling has become.

The only problem is, that I don’t have it on Notepad which is what I’m using now… Help anyone?

Oh well, back to reality. I could go on and on, you realise. But I really don’t have time for that. Anyway, I guess I should go text my friend and arks if she brought a ticket for the filym. Oh gawd, maybe I’ll ring her instead. “Owyergoinmate?” Lol!

What is your speech and language pet-peeve? Tell us what it is and why it pisses you off in the comments below…