The classic example (and one we actually heard uttered by the felon my OH captured in the act of filching a cashbox at a show!) "I ain't done nuffin'". Guilty as charged - condemned out of his own mouth! :D :D

lol - love it :0

Oh yes, double negatives drive me nuts.  I know a girl who speaks only in the present tense, e.g. "So I'm like walking down this hill right and I see this dog y'know and I speak to the guy who is like really cool..."  Try saying that aloud, very quickly and with a strong Cockney accent.  It's incomprehensible.

How about this: people who finish every sentence with "Know what I mean?

Or this type of thing: "So I turned round to her and said "What are you looking at?"  Then she turned round to me and said "You got a problem with that?  So I turned round to her and said "I'll give you a problem."  So she turned round to me and gave it all that..."

Vicky Pollard eat your heart out.  I have a vision of some people constantly revolving during a conversation!

Misconjugated verbs also annoy me, e.g. "Where was you going?"

M-C

Can I put in my five pennyworth. I hate ' aircraft had a near-miss'. Surely if they nearly miss then they HIT. and also one that came up 'very unique'. bah humbug.
Chris

Actually, I think you've misheard. ;) The term is an 'air-miss', not near-miss!

Are we related?!

I have to raise my hand here as someone who also gets annoyed by sloppy use of language.

My personal pet hate is the misuse of done/seen instead of have done/saw etc. You know what I mean don't you? People who say 'I done that', 'I seen him yesterday'.....AAAAARRRGH!!!! It makes my blood boil!! A couple of members of my family are terrible for this and I am forever correcting them which I know annoys them but I can't help it anymore than that can help saying it in the first place. My brother and his wife are the biggest culprits so my SIL has agreed that she'll send her kids to me to learn the difference when they're old enough :D

Not funny anymore, these posts are now starting to sound like my teenagers!

When my daughter was 5 she heard some boys talking and she said to me "they shouldn't say that should they?" I asked her tentatively what she'd heard worried she might say something I didn't want to hear, but she was picking up on one of them not pronouncing the 't' at the end of ain't.  Bless her, made me laugh.  Unfortunately where we live once they start school they all start picking up rotten habits.

using *what* as in "like what I done" and a real cringer for me is *innit* but why? and worse still, why do most of those I hear say *innit* say it at the end of sentences instead of questions?

One of the very, very annoying things around this area is that anyone who speaks properly is either a "swat" or a "snob" !

My (almost) 16 year old step-grand daughter complains that she doesn't like the way my son speaks to her "Cos 'e sahnds like a proper snob"!

Margot

There's a real double standard when it comes to accent.  As a child I had a very bad stammer and consequently received a lot of speech therapy and elocution.  My parents were quite strict about how we spoke so I now speak very clearly with no discernible accent.  It's not unusual for people (often complete strangers) to make assumptions based on my voice.  I suppose that everyone does that to a certain extent but somehow it's perfectly acceptable to accuse someone of being "posh".  If I were to retaliate and label someone "common" it would be considered very rude. 

Oh well, I don't really value the opinions of people who are so narrowminded.  Who wants to sound like Julie Burchill anyway? (I cannot bear to listen to that woman.  It's torture.)

M-Cx

Ooh, this is getting spooky! I was a stammerer too! However I didn't have any formal remedial help, and to a great extent I've overcome it, though it still recurs every so often. I don't have a regional accent either, and get accused of sounding 'posh'. I reckon it's better to be understood by everyone than a limited number. ;)

JG - that is spooky.  I agree wholeheartedly with your comments.  Often when I speak to a person who has a strong regional accent accent I have real difficulty understanding them, especially when it comes to phone calls.  It reminds me of an international phone call, as there's a bit of a time lag while I translate what's been said!  I went to university in Glasgow and for the first two years I reckon I understood about 15% of what was said to me! 

About three months after I started working for my current employer, there was a big party for the entire practice.  We have quite a few surgeries and although we're all parts of the same group there isn't much interaction between different branches.  At the party there were quite a few people who I'd spoken to on the phone dozens of times but hadn't actually met.  Several of them said, independently of one another, that they were expecting a rather matronly lady in her fifties (I was 21!)  Strange, isn't it?

Don't you find that people who have never stammered cannot really understand how weird it is?  I can remember feeling terribly frustrated when I was little because I had everything right in my head but couldn't get my mouth to work!  Well done you for overcoming it with no outside help.  It took me many years and even now I still stammer occasionally, usually when I'm very tired or very upset.  If I do block on a word now I can usually get around it using a technique (I can't spell that word ;-) ) that is a sort of mental reset.  That's not a great description but I'm sure you'll understand what I mean.

M-C

There are some celebrities whose accents I really cannot bear.  The following would actually compel me to switch off the television.  (When I first typed the previous sentence it ended with a preposition.  The problem with a thread like this is I would feel a bit silly if I were making glaring errors.)

Julie Burchill
Anne Robinson
Nicky Campbell
Wayne Rooney (actually most footballers seem to struggle with English!)
Jamie Oliver
Tony Blair (it's not really his accent that bothers me, more the weighty tone he employs, which to me always sounds very contrived)
All sports commentators, except Sue Barker.  I enjoy watching snooker but am forced to switch off the sound.  I'm sure the commentators earn a fairly high salary, which is funded by license payers.  I resent paying for the dubious pleasure of listening to banal nonsense, a typical comment might be "Oooh that shot were right good.  He's doing good here, looking for a result..."  Honestly, it's meaningless drivel. (Can't do angry gremlin, you'll have to imagine one.)

A stammer is so frustrating! You know what you want to say and it just gets stuck. Then people try to guess at what you're trying to say, which is really patronising, and they never get it right which gets you even more frustrated. I spent many years of my childhood being almost silent, when inside I was dying to join in.

I make up for it now by posting lots and lots and lots ...! ;)

A person I can listen to for ages is Michael Wood, the historian. It's like being covered in melted chocolate ... mmmmmmmmmmm!

I bet that you can sing without stammering???

Yes - singing was a great release, because not only could I keep in tune, the words just flowed freely. Bliss!

JG - perhaps we are related.  Pedants of the world unite!

There is a sign on my neighbour's gate which reads  "No Parking.  Gates in constant use."  I'm so upset by this that I have quite seriously considered sneaking over there in the middle of the night with a black marker and replacing "constant" with "frequent".  I think I'm going a bit peculiar! 

I have a giggle every time I use a London Underground escalator.  They each display a sign which states "DOGS MUST BE CARRIED".  I once questioned a member of staff about this peculiar direction.  I had enjoyed a few glasses of wine and thought it would be amusing to ask the ticket guy why every passenger was required to carry a dog when using the Tube.  He didn't seem to find it that funny.  Surely I was the first person to ask that question. ;-) ;-)

The word "literally" is misused all the time,a few days ago someone said to me "This cat just appeared literally from nowhere and then literally set up camp with us."  I managed not to laugh but I kept getting mental pictures of a cat hammering in tent pegs!  Too silly.

M-C

As for the poor supermarket doors: "These doors are alarmed". Well, give them a nice cup of tea to calm them down, then! Perhaps they need counselling!

'Wanted , Casual flower pickers'

Why don't the smart flowers get picked??

'Occasional table'. What is it the rest of the time?

'Part-time person wanted'.

Or the strange sentences you sometimes get in newspapers: *STOLEN: Black woman's bicycle.* (Is her race relevant?)

And what about "BEWARE - HEAVY PLANT CROSSING"

Visions of Giant Nasturiums and Hollyhocks lumbering across the road :D

Margot

I found these Rules to Good English which are worth passing on ;)

1.  Always avoid alliteration.
2.  Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3.  Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)
4.  Employ the vernacular.
5.  Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
6.  Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7.  It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
8.  Contractions aren't necessary.
9.  Foreign words and phrases aren't apropos. Even if they are Lingua Franca.
10.  One should never generalize.
11.  Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "I hate quotations, tell me what   you know."
12.  Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
13.  Don't be redundant or overly verbose. Don't use more words than necessary, it's highly superfluous.
14.  Be more or less specific.
15.  Understatement is always best.
16.  One word sentences? Eliminate!
17.  Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
18.  The passive voice is to be avoided.
19.  Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialism.
20.  Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed. Track them down until the cows turn blue in the face.
21.  Who needs rhetorical questions?
22.  Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

ROFL! :D:D

hee hee.  Oh dear I have to confess I have a regional accent.  I used to care but I don't care now and I don't try to hide it.  It's true that in this country we are judged by accents, I used to be quite envious of my Kiwi friend because her accent is classless and it makes such a difference. 

Hi Chez_swa

I hope my post didn't suggest that there's anything wrong with most regional accents.  I try not to make assumptions based on accent as I know firsthand how irritating that is.  I should have made it clear that I was referring to very extreme accents (think Ozzy Osbourne or Wayne Rooney!)

There are some accents which IMO sound lovely.  I hope my comments didn't offend you. ;-)

M-C

nah, corse not :)

No, not at all, I am sorry if my reply sounded like I had taken offence.  Accents are a very interesting subject though.   I used to work in a call centre (that job eventually sent me back into the education system), anyway I've heard all the British accents hundreds of times but the thing I cannot abide is the mumbling whatever the accent.  Told my lot it makes you sound 'Fick' :D

Here's another one for you - OH just reminded me of it, we heard it a lot when we lived in Birmingham - 'Reversed backwards'  Always makes me laugh ;)

Lisa (got a useless 53 on Test the nation!)

I got 51 but bumped it up to 52 when the apostrophe answer was amended on here :).  Still what you have to remember is that we are in good company, remember the surgeons came 3rd out of the groups in the studio ;)

reversed backwards - lol

Ooh! Another one! I've heard loads of people say that things "float to the bottom of the pool" etc. No, things float to the top! They sink to the bottom!

I used to listen to my son's class read once a week (happy days).  The number of children who read nothing as nuffink grrr.  I used to say, erm, it doesn't say nuffink, try again, shall I help you?  :) Loved being a helping mum

Oooh....OH and I have been sitting here laughing over this thread, it's aboslutely brilliant.  Hubby remembered another one that really peeves him.  He has been asked on numerous occasions 'Can you borrow me a quid'

Frightening!

Lisa

And, of course, that abomination which is 'txt' used on fora! ;) :D