Annoying words, and Words You Hate

[Monika]

In Mexico Estados Unidos refers to the United Mexican States and $ stands for Mexican Pesos and that got me very confused.

In German we use Amerika both for the continent (North and South count as 1 not 2) and the USA.

There are 4-7 continents, Wikipedia has a rough list which countries count them how https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent
Anyway there are clearly 5, that's why there are 5 Olympic rings

[Copper Bezel]

They're all arbitrary, but any system that separates Eurasia but not the Americas is just being obtuse for obtuseness' sake.

[Derek]

They're all arbitrary, but any system that separates Eurasia but not the Americas is just being obtuse for obtuseness' sake.

Right? The only real distinction between Europe and Asia is cultural, the geographic borders that are drawn between them are extremely vague and usually just follow some obscure mountain ranges. North and South America aren't even connected by land anymore.

[Monika]

any system that separates Eurasia but not the Americas is just being obtuse for obtuseness' sake.

That's pretty insulting and doesn't make sense, either.

I could also say: Any system that counts South $continent and North $continent as two separate continents even though that's clearly one continent is obtuse for obtuseness' sake.

Additional reason why it doesn't make sense: A system that separates Eurasia into Europe and Asia has already proven that "separated by water" is not the defining criterion for continents, so why should any water, in particular artificial water, be that demarcation line between North and South America and make them into two separate continents? Also, does this mean the British Isles, or any islands (e.g. large parts of Denmark, or Crete) are not part of Europe?

To say it differently: continents are clearly a social construct. Something something historical reasons something something.

Right? The only real distinction between Europe and Asia is cultural, the geographic borders that are drawn between them are extremely vague and usually just follow some obscure mountain ranges. North and South America aren't even connected by land anymore.

Same question to you: Does this mean the British Isles, or any islands (e.g. large parts of Denmark, or Crete) are not part of Europe? Is Japan not part of Asia? Are Australia and New Zealand separate continents? Is Madagascar not part of Africa?

Panama is in Central America. Tell me: Is Central America part of the North American continent or part of the South American continent or split or neither? I looked at the Americas articles, Panama and Panama Canal articles on the English-speaking Wikipedia and could not immediately find a clear answer where the border between North and South America is, specifically it does not say the Panama Canal is that border.


But something more interesting than continental bickering: when you go by boat/ship through the Panama Canal from West to East, are you in the Pacific or the Atlantic? You're in the Pacific. Really, look at it on a map.

[Eebster the Great]

You don't have to get so defensive. The argument is obviously that North and South America are divided by an isthmus while Europe and Asia are not. That's really all. There was no subtle attempt to insult you going on there.

Continents are always divided up arbitrarily. Africa was connected by land to Eurasia until the construction of the Suez Canal. Australia is regarded as a continent but Greenland is not. Antarctica would actually be an archipelago if it were not covered in miles of ice. There isn't even agreement on how many major continental plates there are, due to disagreement on the definition of "major" and trouble delineating plates (e.g. the question of whether the Indian and Australian plates should be counted as one or two).

For what it's worth, in English, Central America is regarded as part of North America, since it is north of the Isthmus of Panama.

[gmalivuk]

any system that separates Eurasia but not the Americas is just being obtuse for obtuseness' sake.

That's pretty insulting and doesn't make sense, either.

How does that not make sense? The Americas are at least as separate as Eurasia, and clearly moreso geographically. It seems like nothing more than Eurocentrism to consider most of Russia and Turkey in a completely separate continent while treating the entire "New World" as a single continent.

It's fine if you want to count the Americas as one thing, just stop pretending Eurasia is still two.

[chridd]

How does that not make sense? The Americas are at least as separate as Eurasia, and clearly moreso geographically. It seems like nothing more than Eurocentrism to consider most of Russia and Turkey in a completely separate continent while treating the entire "New World" as a single continent.

It's fine if you want to count the Americas as one thing, just stop pretending Eurasia is still two.

...or if you want to count Europe as separate, then why are you counting Asia as one continent? Geographically, India is probably more deserving of being its own continent than Europe, and culturally, I'm not sure that, say, Iran and Japan have much in common.

[Monika]

You don't have to get so defensive. … There was no subtle attempt to insult you going on there.

Calling the system used in my part of the world obtuse was not exactly subtle.

Continents are always divided up arbitrarily.

Exactly.

How does that not make sense?

Read the rest of my post, where this question is answered.

It's fine if you want to count the Americas as one thing, just stop pretending Eurasia is still two.

How about no.

[gmalivuk]

Criticizing a single element of your country's educational system wasn't an attempt to insult you at all, subtle or otherwise.

[Copper Bezel]

"It's all arbitrary anyway" doesn't mean that all possible solutions are equally useful. A system could consider Australia part of Asia and consider the UK a separate continent, and that would be only equally "arbitrary" in a strict sense but definitely less useful. The system you're describing does not make practical sense. I don't really care whether it's your country's system, your personal one, my country's system, or whatever. My country doesn't use metric, and that also seems to me fiercely obtuse.

[Aiwendil]

Something that's been bothering me lately: a lot of people seem to be using "equivocate" as a transitive verb, as if it means something like "equate" (and similarly "equivocation" as if it means "equivalence"). I've read news articles, for instance, that say something like "Trump equivocated left-wing protesters with neo-Nazis".

And as long as I'm yelling at people to get off my lawn, there are other intransitive verbs that I keep hearing people use transitively. The one that comes to mind now is "snuggle"; I keep hearing people say "snuggle X" where they mean "snuggle with X". At first I assumed it was some kind of put-on "cute" (i.e. nauseating) child-speak, but after starting to pay attention, I really think these people construe "snuggle" as a transitive verb.

Edit: Thinking about this more, I suppose there are cases where transitive "snuggle" sounds acceptable to me. For example, "Taking the ball in his arms, he snuggled it close to his chest." But my ear definitely demands "I snuggled with my dog all night" rather than "I snuggled my dog all night", and I hear the latter usage frequently.

[gmalivuk]

It's been used transitively like "snuggled her head into the pillow" for over a hundred years, but it's true that uses like "snuggled her dog" seem to be new.

[Ginger]

I hate the words: "Huggles," and "Preggers." I hate the word, "Ginormous," which is not even a real word in my opinions. I hate the misspelling irregardless--It's just "Regardless," OKay?

[Eebster the Great]

I'm not familiar with " huggles," but "preggers" may just be the worst" "cute" version of a word of all time.

[Ginger]

Huggles is a word use a lot re: RPGs communities I hang out in where, like... they clingy hug women and girls in their actions texts... and call it "Huggles for a girl/woman" or w/evs. It's supposed to be cutey yet it just makes me nauseous as F bomb.

[Derek]

My experience with "huggles" is that it's mostly been between pairs/groups of girls or between couples.

[Ginger]

And I kinda dislike the British word "shagging" even though I use it sometimes. Girls seem into using "Shagging" when they wanna exotic up British ppls or sound... like they from Britain or w/evs?

[Eebster the Great]

It's supposed to be cutey yet it just makes me nauseous as F bomb.

It's not as bad as "preggers," but "F bomb" is another one.

[Ginger]

I hate that "DIABEETUS" Garbage and yet: I laugh any time a man says it in that man's voice from the commercial.

[Eebster the Great]

Wilford Brimley is truly a visionary.

[Sableagle]

I find that "alot" and "whomst'd've" are both annoying too, and neither of those is a word.

"Leverage" sometimes annoys me. I'm fine with its use as a noun: "Find a place to stand where you can get some leverage." When some clown tells me to "leverage our assets," though, I'm inclined to swing a crowbar into his crotch.

[gmalivuk]

"alot" is fun because you can imagine Hyperbole and a Half's Alot.

"whomst'd've" is fun because it's always fun to mock people who think "whom" makes them sound more sophisticated even when they don't know how to use it.

"Leverage" is a perfectly cromulent verb for when you decide to binge watch TNT's Leverage, as in "I Leveraged again last weekend and now I'm completely exhausted." I agree that it's annoying when people use it as in your example, though.

[Eebster the Great]

The financial sense of the word makes total sense to me. Leveraging an asset is just using it to gain leverage.

[poxic]

E.g. using as collateral for a loan, which is six more syllables than leveraging.

[Sableagle]

"whomst'd've" is fun because it's always fun to mock people who think "whom" makes them sound more sophisticated even when they don't know how to use it.

The second person singular "~st" ending is also wrong there.

[gmalivuk]

Yeah no shit that's part of the point

[chridd]

Yeah, it should be whomth.
Or would it be whometh? I don't know the rule for when to insert an epenthetic vowel in the -th ending.

[Sableagle]

The first rule would be "if it's not a verb, don't stick a verb ending on it," wouldn't it?

Another annoying word, annoying purely by circumstance: stay.

The circumstance? Some radio station playing a recording of a guy going: "If you let me ... STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY ... If you let me ... STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY ... If you let me ... STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY ... If you let me ... STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY ... If you let me ... STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY ... If you let me ... STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY ... If you let me ... STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY ... If you let me ... STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY ... If you let me ... STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY ... If you let me ... STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY ... If you let me ... STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY ... If you let me ... STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY ... If you let me ... STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY ... If you let me ... STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY ... If you let me ... STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY ... If you let me ... STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY ... If you let me ... STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY ... If you let me ... STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY."

I'd actually have preferred to listen to that Carpenters guy say "anno" 17 times in a row again.

[gmalivuk]

↶
The first rule would be "if it's not a verb, don't stick a verb ending on it," wouldn't it?

This is English. We stick verb endings on whatever the fuck we want.

[chridd]

↶
The first rule would be "if it's not a verb, don't stick a verb ending on it," wouldn't it?

Thising ised Englishes. We-ed sticked verbing endingsings onning whatevered thes fucking wes wanting.

FTFYed

[Sableagle]

That just sounds like an impression of a drunk Glaswegian.

On behalf of my favourite Glaswegian, "och aye tha noo." As an annoying thing, I mean. It actually means: "Oh yes, right now." There are circumstances under which a Scot would say such a thing, like when asked "Will we be leavin' soon?" Under any other circumstances, it doesn't make you sound Scottish. It just makes you sound like a prat.

Well, that's what she said, anyway.

[Mega85]

"Ghoti" doesn't make sense. "Gh" is never pronounced like "f" at the beginning of a word nor is "ti" ever pronounced "sh" at the end of a word. "Phoche" would make more sense as a spelling for "fish" .

[WriteBrainedJR]

"Ghoti" doesn't make sense. "Gh" is never pronounced like "f" at the beginning of a word nor is "ti" ever pronounced "sh" at the end of a word.

Right, but to know that, you'd have to know English well enough to already grasp most of the language's odd spellings that the joke is intended to draw attention to. The point of the joke is that English is confusing to novice foreign speakers, not that anybody is actually going to use that as real misspelling of the name of a psychedelic jam band.

That's the joke, right?

[MathewCox]

This may sound strange but I genuinely hate the word "awkward" I always forget how to spell it even through I think is an easy word

[Eebster the Great]

But the joke is bad because no speaker, foreign or native, would ever spell the word that way in a million years or pronounce "ghoti" as "fish", because that is not in fact how English orthography works. It's not just that the words that are spelled that way are exceptional, it's that they literally don't exist at all.

[Grop]

Also it would only be a decent joke if you could say it loud (and manage for it to be funny).

[Quizatzhaderac]

"rate of speed", it just sounds like somebody stupid is trying to sound smart by throwing in extra words. I reached a new level of irritation hearing it from a lawyer on a radio add. Which suggests 1) an educated person still made the mistake on and nobody editing it caught it. Or worse 2) that phrase actually means something under the law.

[Eebster the Great]

Maybe he meant to say "rating of speed," because your speed is rated on a scale from 1 to 10 along with accuracy and level of difficulty.

[SuicideJunkie]

Perhaps it is a way to filter out people, much like the bad spelling in Nigerian scam emails?

Huh. And it does come down to "give us money, and we'll totally get a big payout of money to you from somewhere, trust us" in both cases.

[Eebster the Great]

Many of the radio lawyers advertise no fees unless you win. Typically they settle though, so it doesn't mean they are necessarily representing justice here. They profit by settling large numbers of cases and taking commissions on each.