Room 101

[thirdcrank]

Beachcomber (the OP) said "Remember there's no right or wrong. It's what you dislike."

So, are you nominating something for Room 101, or correcting somebody else?

PS I'll nominate television programmes (and their spin-offs) which trivialise the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

[jezer]

The use of 'less' when 'fewer' is meant. If you can count them, it's 'fewer', so - Less sand, but fewer grains of sand.

Confusion about plurals - 'Blankshire Council are in favour of virtue and against sin'. No it aren't; its officers and (possibly but I doubt it) its members are, but the organisation is.

The use of the American term 'Regular' for 'Ordinary' or 'Small'.

Definitely incorrect use of plurals. Even the BBC says "the Government ARE planning......"
Also call centres, especially a certain bank called Ll.... owned mainly by the taxpayer.
Oh, and dentists, I have an appointment in an hour

[Si]

The use of the American term 'Regular' for 'Ordinary' or 'Small'.

Oh yes, that reminds me, OFSTED and its use of "satisfactory" to mean "not acceptable". These are the people trusted with ensuring the standards of education for heaven's sake.

[AlanD]

Core competency assessment's and annual appraisal interviews. YUCK!

[The Mechanic]

Bus drivers who travel at 15 MPH because they are ahead of schedule and hold up the rest of the town.

Do they actually do that?
Why not wait longer in the bus stops? That's what I do, or pull in a layby for a few minutes when I'm driving the community bus.

Yes they do

[meic]

The use of 'less' when 'fewer' is meant. If you can count them, it's 'fewer', so - Less sand, but fewer grains of sand.

Confusion about plurals - 'Blankshire Council are in favour of virtue and against sin'. No it aren't; its officers and (possibly but I doubt it) its members are, but the organisation is.

The use of the American term 'Regular' for 'Ordinary' or 'Small'.

Definitely incorrect use of plurals. Even the BBC says "the Government ARE planning......"
Also call centres, especially a certain bank called Ll.... owned mainly by the taxpayer.
Oh, and dentists, I have an appointment in an hour

Does this in any way reduce the effectiveness of communication?
They may visualise the government as a collection of people rather than as a single entity.
In Welsh we do the opposite, so the Government would be unarguably singular as would the children. So the BBC's mistake neither defies logic nor impedes communication, it just breaches a convention.
A convention which a minority is trying to desperately uphold against the masses.

[karlt]

The use of 'less' when 'fewer' is meant. If you can count them, it's 'fewer', so - Less sand, but fewer grains of sand.

Confusion about plurals - 'Blankshire Council are in favour of virtue and against sin'. No it aren't; its officers and (possibly but I doubt it) its members are, but the organisation is.

The use of the American term 'Regular' for 'Ordinary' or 'Small'.

Definitely incorrect use of plurals. Even the BBC says "the Government ARE planning......"
Also call centres, especially a certain bank called Ll.... owned mainly by the taxpayer.
Oh, and dentists, I have an appointment in an hour

Does this in any way reduce the effectiveness of communication?
They may visualise the government as a collection of people rather than as a single entity.
In Welsh we do the opposite, so the Government would be unarguably singular as would the children. So the BBC's mistake neither defies logic nor impedes communication, it just breaches a convention.
A convention which a minority is trying to desperately uphold against the masses.

Language is not always logical; its use is coloured by thought patterns. Indeed, it's oft stated that one of the tragedies of losing a language is losing a particular way of thinking. People use plural verbs after words like "government" because the word does refer to more than one person - the very essence of plurality.

[tangent]
The Welsh use of singular third person verb forms with plural noun subjects is interesting though; Cornish uses them with any subject, including pronouns, although in these cases the verb follows the subject ("abnormal word order", the norm in Cornish and Breton (guess which language the people who gave it that name studied) and Middle Welsh but rare in modern Welsh). A similar structure, no longer in use, probably accounts for the fe and mi particles in Welsh. You can imagine how much fun linguists have arguing exactly how and when it happened.
[/tangent]

[meic]

That does rather prove your point about the language reflecting the thought. In Welsh it is obvious that the children is singular as it is only one group of children but English is perverse.

[karlt]

That does rather prove your point about the language reflecting the thought. In Welsh it is obvious that the children is singular as it is only one group of children but English is perverse.

Oooh! Foul!

Mae'r plant yn chwarae, the children are playing OK, singular verb, but:
Maen nhw yn gweiddi hefyd - they are shouting as well (i.e. the children, who we now know we're talking about) - plural verb

Let's leave aside that the singular of "plant" is shorter than the plural...

[Mick F]

In English, "children" is plural and "the government" is singular.

[tonythompson]

People who don't read all through the previous posts (hope no else had that one already)
Freewheels that wont undo (had a bad day with that)
People taking my photo and not asking for an autograph

[thirdcrank]

In English, "children" is plural and "the government" is singular.

I'm not sure it's quite a simple as that. There's far too much for me to copy type it in full here but have a look at the current edition of Fowler ie the 3rd edition edited by Burchfield, which includes this:

agreement (in grammar) ....
5 Collective nouns. ....in BrE, collective nouns may be correctly followed by either a singular or a plural verb....In AmE it is customary for a singular verb to be used with collective nouns.....

[Mick F]

In British English, it is generally accepted that collective nouns can take either singular or plural verb forms depending on the context and the metonymic shift that it implies. For example, "the team is in the dressing room" (formal agreement) refers to the team as an ensemble, whilst "the team are fighting among themselves" (notional agreement) refers to the team as individuals.

So it 'depends' on what is being meant.

'The government is a coalition' is singular because it refers to the whole.
'The government are a load of idiots' is plural because it is referring the members of the government.

[beachcomber]

The programme Room 101 has recently returned to our screens

Those who watch the programme will know the format. For those who don't, Orwell wrote about room 101 containing the worst thing in the world. It was a different thing to each person. The thing they feared the most.

The TV programme give participants a choice of three things that they would put in room 101. Things they dislike the most.

What would be your three choices and why.

Remember there's no right or wrong. It's what you dislike.
(Please stay within forum boundries)

We have been half way here before. No room nice last time around.

[beachcomber]

Darn it. The last post was intended to attach to Cyclecat's thread.

Perhaps I should put 'people who can't operate computer forum posts correctly' into room 101.