phrases or expressions that drive you crazy!

[acreman]

hello all ,new to this,my wife always says this phrase that makes me laugh,"I'll be there now in a minute"

[NoWayPedro]

My sayings that probably get on people's nerves are variations of well known sayings.

Instead of Bob's your uncle, I use Roberts your father's brother! and instead of You learn something new every day, I use every day is a school day.

No sayings get on my nerves. I do get annoyed though with people who attack schools that are "not as good as they used to be". I suppose I would say this as I work in a primary school but on a daily basis I am disgusted by how difficult it is to get parents to listen to their child read.

Parental attitudes are not what they used to be more so than schools not being like they used to be, if you ask me.

[janeyo]

I had a welsh mate at uni once who used to say ' can I lend you pen' instead of borrow, used to drive me bonkers! She also used to say 'where's it to?' which I think meant where is it? Prob just regional variations but my parents were very confused when I stared saying them too!

janeyo

[SlugLobber]

I don't find phrases half as bad as appalling grammar. I'm always correcting OH after years of talking cr@p. I'm surprised he hasn't locked me in the shed!

I was behind a learner driver on Friday. On the advertising placard-type thing, it read, "Julies' Driving School".

Now, either there are numerous 'Julies' giving instruction, or she could have done with some proof-reading before the sign was made...

Other things that REALLY bother me:

Bought being mixed up with brought
Pacifically (when you think about it, the Pacific is a rather large expanse and so it kind of ruins the point of context!)

Oh there's too many. Now you got me all annoyed!

[HeyWayne]

Well I went to school in the 80s and we did plenty of grammar, spelling, separate English language and literature and it annoys me when it's all dismissed as "oh it's not like it used to be".

My point exactly. I have GCSE's (A's) in both English Language, and English Literature. I left high school (which has since become an "academy") in 1992.

[SlugLobber]

I left in 1993 and studied English Lang and Lit separately. However, I only learnt in Latin what a subjunctive was. I don't remember ever learning a Past Participle in English, or Superlative. I sometimes wonder what I'd be like if I hadn't studied Latin and later, French!

[Mikey]

I had a welsh mate at uni once who used to say ' can I lend you pen' instead of borrow, used to drive me bonkers! She also used to say 'where's it to?' which I think meant where is it? Prob just regional variations but my parents were very confused when I stared saying them too!

janeyo

Aha, so glad to see the Welsh is rubbing off on you. The problem here is everything is backward, for example we don't say who's house is that, we say who belongs to that house. The literal translation from Welsh to English creates many such anomalies. My OH favourite word, and all her school children try to get her to say it is, oozing meaning using!!, second language English can be quite tricky.

[Mikey]

hello all ,new to this,my wife always says this phrase that makes me laugh,"I'll be there now in a minute"

Welsh see butt.

[Mikey]

Today, statistics are far more important than how a child can read or write.

valmarg

You are spot on here, unfortunately this has a lot to do with league tables, schools are frightened to vary from the syllabus, and give a more rounded education because this may fair badly on the end of year results.

But don't get me started, the new philosophy is to give children a predicted grade based on their core subject areas. So for example if you are expected to get an A in Maths, and a B in English your other subject areas should follow suit. If for some reason you fail to achieve in one subject area it is then deemed a failure on the teachers part, not that the child couldn't be A***d, or they just didn't like it. When will government realise that when they introduce schemes to judge schools based against other schools, all they do is water down the quality of the service provided.