it makes sense

[tigriswolf]

This morning, while listening to a song, I realized why people use 'loose' when they meant 'lose.'

'Loose' looks like it should rhyme with 'choose.' Alas, it does not. 'Lose' does. Because English is weird.

You know what else is odd? ‘Goose,’ ‘moose,’ and ‘loose’ all rhyme. ‘Choose’ and ‘lose’ don’t rhyme with any of those. And then there’s ‘chose,’ which I’ve seen when people meant ‘choose.’ And ‘chose’ doesn’t rhyme with any of the other words in this post. (Okay, it does, but not any of the words in quotation marks.)

So, yeah. ‘Loose’ vs ‘lose’ has been bugging me for a while, and I’m just glad to finally get the mistake.

Comments

[ericadawn16.livejournal.com]

Hmm, could be...

I always though it was because pressing keys twice in a row is so fun/easy

but more likely, I thought it was because if lose was bad, then loose must somehow be even worse? Like loose was a more serious version of lose, the way you have worse and worst?

I get especially irate on AOL comments, someone said "they should loose their lives" and I thought, so you want to shuffle them loose from the mortal coil?

[tigriswolf]

*sporfle* Okay, that thing about pressing keys twice in a row has merit. And so does 'loose' being a stronger version of 'lose.' Hmm.

[zou2.livejournal.com]

I'm by no means the best grammarian but I see some of these mistakes or misuses and I cringe. The thing that is getting to me the most right now is floor vs. ground. As I read somewhere else, "the floor is on the the ground but the ground is not the floor." I might be reading a perfectly ok piece of fiction and then suddenly the bad guy who is running down the street is shot and suddenly "falls to the floor". Really? The floor?

We also get "passed vs past" and "laid vs layed". It is all so very confusing (and if I see that the writer is not a native English speaker all is forgiven in my book).

The other one that I have seen A LOT and am at a loss to understand is the use of the phrase "was sat". I cannot fathom how there is suddenly an epidemic of phrases like" Peter was sat at the table waiting for Neal to arrive" or "When Neal arrived he found Peter was sat at the table waiting for him." Now unless some third party actually placed Peter at that table and therefore he "was sat" there like some inannimate object, HE WAS SITTING!!!!

Not only does it seem that the conjucation of verbs is causing problems but the misplacement of modifiers often leaves me shaking my head in confusion. Sentences like" Neal opened his bright blue eyes still wearing his Devore suit." Really, his eyes had on a suit? Or "Peter ate his deviled ham sandwich doing the New York Times crossword." Now that is one smart sandwich. Was it the Sunday edition I wonder? How do people not see that these makes no sense.

Now I have had my own grammar rant (which ultimately will mean nothing because some folks just don't care and won't even bother to run spellcheck much less do a grammar check). However, your comment about rhyming of words made me recall an old comedy skit by Gallaghar from 100 years ago. It did a whole section on how english words that are spelled the same don't sound the same etc. It was very funny and really showed just how illogical English can be. I found it on Youtube and attached it here. I think the grammar part starts at about 4:30. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDFQXxWIyvQ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDFQXxWIyvQ)

[rionaleonhart]

'Was sat' (or 'was stood') is a dialectal thing; it's commonly used in some regions of the UK. Might be appropriate for certain Harry Potter characters; wouldn't be appropriate in White Collar fanfiction, but I suppose it doesn't occur to many people who grow up saying 'was sat' that it's not used in all English-speaking regions, just as it doesn't occur to many Americans that much of the UK doesn't use 'gotten'. They seem like such basic aspects of language that people don't question them. I didn't discover until today that apparently the US doesn't use 'half four' for 'half past four'.

[tigriswolf]

Okay, that makes sense. It's been bugging me, too, and I had no idea where it came from.

What's used instead of 'gotten'?

[rionaleonhart]

We just say 'got' in the south of England (I think 'gotten' might still be used in the north); there's no got/gotten distinction. In the US you'd say 'I haven't gotten around to that yet' (I - I think; there's a chance I'm getting this wrong), whereas you'd hear 'I haven't got around to that yet' over here. People will call 'gotten' an Americanism, but that's not strictly correct, because it didn't originate in America; we used to say 'gotten', but it fell out of use over here at some point after America was colonised. We do still say 'forgotten', though.

(That was a slightly longer answer than necessary. Er, sorry. I'm incapable of shutting up about the English language.)

[tigriswolf]

(Me, too!)

[tigriswolf]

'Floor' vs 'ground' might be an ESL thing; I tutor a woman in ESL and that's the kind of mistake she makes sometimes.

I'll forgive a lot if the writer isn't a native English speaker; it's the ones who've grown up with the language that most annoy me. Jeeze.

Those example sentences could be cleared up with a comma, which is another thing that bugs the crap out of me. I love commas.

I will definitely be checking out that video when I'm not at work. Sometimes, the only thing I can tell my student is that English makes no sense. There's really no way to explain that I know when something is wrong because it doesn't sound right, you know?

[noybusiness.livejournal.com]

Haven't seen that particular mistake much. The one that really bugs me is "conscious" vs. "conscience". Or people putting apostrophes into plurals for no reason (ex. "The Harmon's live there." or "There were horse's at all the carnival's.")

[tigriswolf]

Oh, extraneous apostrophes annoy me almost as much as incorrect/missing commas do.

[rince1wind.livejournal.com]

Apostrophe abuse is appalling! And "conscious" and "conscience" confusion is very annoying.

Some errors that drive me nuts are the use of "peak" or "peek" when "pique" is meant (or each other, for that matter), lie/lay confusion, and past/present tense inconsistency. And I don't care what ANYONE says, "literally" does not mean just "a whole lot of emphasis." So "I literally leaped out of my skin" is the description of a miraculous event by someone who should no longer be among the living!

[tigriswolf]

My uncle posted on his facebook about 'literally' - according to google, apparently, it's gone legit. *hee*

I've never really understood its use like that, though; it just makes no sense. *shrugs*