Irregardless, Grammar is our Friend

[batmom]

This (from Carolyn Hax's Tell Me About It column) is driving me bonkers:

Every couple have unsolvable stuff because every couple have two separate and imperfect people. But not every couple go 12 rounds over a can of tomatoes.

She's using couple as a plural noun (like people); I would have treated it as a singular. Is couple correctly used as a plural or is it singular. For your compare-and-contrast convenience:

Every couple has unsolvable stuff because every couple has two seperate and imperfect people. But not every couple goes 12 rounds over a can of tomotoes.

[pepper67]

Is couple correctly used as a plural or is it singular.

Singular, IMHO.

However:

Every couple has unsolvable stuff because every couple has two seperate and imperfect people. But not every couple goes 12 rounds over a can of tomotoes.

Is still making me itch. 'Every couple has two seperate and imperfect people'. ARGH! She should try 'every couple is comprised of two separate and imperfect people'.

Oh, and it'd be handy if she'd also learn to use a spellchecker.

Edited because "she's" and "she'd" are not the same word.

[brinksteria]

This discussion of "iterate" vs. "reiterate" is starting to make me crazy. The subject is dying a very slow death and I wish I had the power to pull the plug.

I'm sorry because what I'm about to do will bring Bonsai to madness exhaustion ...

P.S. I never said "reiterate" wasn't a redundancy. I just said it could no longer be considered a grammar mistake considering its definition in the OED and its common understanding in speech.

That is plain sense. The Latin iterare and reiterare -- which mean essentially the same thing (to do or say again) and from which "iterate" and "reiterate" derive -- came into existence thousands of years ago. The etymology of these words is millenia-old. And they streamed into English centuries ago. When a pedigree is this ancient, I think a word like "reiterate" gets to be embraced as an A-list synonym rather than merely a skank redundancy.

If the redundancy aspect is really unbearable, there's always the chance that the Latin reiterare did not even emerge as a redundant play on iterare. My pet theory is that reiterare the verb was derived from the noun iter, which means "journey" or "way." If so, then the prefix "re-" would be necessary for reiterare to mean "to do (travel) again."

[batmom]

Help me out here:

Associated with or associated to?

[Deleted]

From Brinksteria:
"I'm sorry because what I'm about to do will bring Bonsai to madness exhaustion ..."

Exhaustion! Yes! That's what I'm going to call it! Not that... other crossed-out word...

[queequeg]

Help me out here:

Associated with or associated to?

It's "associated with" I believe, which reminds me of another one: People always say "compared to" when it should be "compared with". I can't complain much though because I catch myself doing it all the time.

[Cinchona]

It's "associated with" I believe, which reminds me of another one: People always say "compared to" when it should be "compared with". I can't complain much though because I catch myself doing it all the time.

I think the rule is that you "compare [one thing] to [another]" when you're pointing out similarities between them, and "compare with" when you study things for both commonalities and differences.

[kanding]

Can someone help me? What's the difference between "on behalf of" and "in behalf of"?

Thanks!

[pepper67]

Can someone help me? What's the difference between "on behalf of" and "in behalf of"?

Where did you see "in behalf of" used, kanding? I've never heard that one before. So far as I know, it's always "on behalf of".

And I don't know if this has been mentioned, but "your welcome" is driving me nuts. It's everywhere! And as it's actually the shortened form of "you ARE welcome", it's wrong!!!

[snacktastic]

Using incorrect grammar is pure laziness. Having incorrect grammar become part of our current speech just proves how lazy society is. Instead of taking the time and initiative to correct what is wrong, let's just change the rules and make it right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

We have been changing the rules to fit what society generally uses since the beginning of the written language. Standardization of the written language, actually, is relatively new phenomenon and only became a reality, in any way, after the invention of the movable printing press.

Not to be all contrarian, but you know, you may be yearning for a past that never existed. Or yearning for a past where a small elite dictated what the rules of standard English should be to the rest of society, functioning as a way of maintaining the social order.

I was not a literature or an English major, but the mindset of some grammar purists challenge my beliefs as a history major because there is something incredibly ahistorical about the argument that the only reason that language changes is because people are lazy. I get the same feeling that I do when people trumpet the nuclear family as a tradition (it's not) or that the 60s were the first time that women worked (it wasn't). It has nothing to do with the way history has occurred.