[kenberg]

I have come to accept many things, might as well do so, but one that gets me is "courtesy call". Eg The phone rings, I pick it up, the caller, calling from our bank, asks to speak to my wife. She's not home right now, can I take a message? "Please have her call this number. There is no trouble with your account. This is just a courtesy call to tell you about our new services."

Seems to be what I refer to as a sales call.

[gwnn]

I'm writing low-quality posts on purpose to prolong anticipation.

[barmar]

Zelandakh, on 2012-December-06, 08:45, said:

Grammar: you ought to absolute love this sentence, set to increasing be a part of modern English. My favourite in this area is the message that regularly goes out that "The system will return to normal operation until 4pm" or "We estimate that the problem will be solved until 11am". This is a classic mistake for native German speakers.

I've often noticed that non-native speakers use words like "until" and "since" incorrectly. I assume it's because they express these ideas differently in their languages, and they're just doing a literal translation rather than changing the idiom.

[Scarabin]

Toothpaste you cannot swallow.

[mike777]

I hate over the years defense will not claim


\they hate it and push us out

[dwar0123]

I hate English that I can not parse, no matter how many times I read it.

[Scarabin]

Sorry if my post is obscure. I have recently found Macleans and Colgate have introduced toothpaste with warnings on the tube that you should not swallow the toothpaste.

This seems to me to be idiotic and I dislike it. I also dislike the fact that I cannot find any alternative that can safely be swallowed.

[Scarabin]

mike777, on 2012-December-07, 02:19, said:

I hate over the years defense will not claim


\they hate it and push us out

"twas brillig and the slithey toves..."

[onoway]

Scarabin, on 2012-December-07, 21:10, said:

Sorry if my post is obscure. I have recently found Macleans and Colgate have introduced toothpaste with warnings on the tube that you should not swallow the toothpaste.

This seems to me to be idiotic and I dislike it. I also dislike the fact that I cannot find any alternative that can safely be swallowed.

doesn't taste that great but plain baking soda works.

[Fluffy]

kenberg, on 2012-December-06, 09:35, said:

I have come to accept many things, might as well do so, but one that gets me is "courtesy call". Eg The phone rings, I pick it up, the caller, calling from our bank, asks to speak to my wife. She's not home right now, can I take a message? "Please have her call this number. There is no trouble with your account. This is just a courtesy call to tell you about our new services."

Seems to be what I refer to as a sales call.

There is no trouble with your account... and you complain?
I had a call like that asking me to get to the bank, with no further instructions, when I went there as qickly as I could I found out that they found on their data that I was the perfect client for their new product.

[Antrax]

Just say no. I generally ignore all calls from my bank - if it's important they'll call again.

[Vampyr]

I was travelling abroad recently, and saw a missed call on my mobile (I thought that it was probably my friend, whom I had been separated from and was trying to find). It turned out that it was a call saying I may be entitled to a refund on the PPI I may have been sold. I spent £.299/minute responding to this call! I wish I had the energy to do something about it. Maybe it is a little perverse, but I feel that I would be willing to spend at least £100 to get my £.299 returned.

[Bbradley62]

Fluffy, on 2012-December-09, 00:17, said:

There is no trouble with your account... and you complain?
I had a call like that asking me to get to the bank, with no further instructions, when I went there as qickly as I could I found out that they found on their data that I was the perfect client for their new product.

Sounds like you're also the perfect client for a new bank.

[blackshoe]

Fluffy, on 2012-December-09, 00:17, said:

There is no trouble with your account... and you complain?
I had a call like that asking me to get to the bank, with no further instructions, when I went there as qickly as I could I found out that they found on their data that I was the perfect client for their new product.

My response to that would be "I'm glad you insisted I come in. I'll be closing my account now".

[gwnn]

[jjbrr]

gwnn, on 2012-December-16, 16:51, said:

variance: During a school trip to Santiago this spring, we weren't invited to Concha y Toro, whose facilities our program had visited annually for a while, because last year one of the students drank too much and vomited all over CyT's white marble floors.

I try to avoid buying CyT wine.

[mgoetze]

Antrax, on 2012-October-05, 06:11, said:

Intellectual Property.

This would make a fine contribution to this thread in its own right, too. I find this neologism rather repulsive.

barmar, on 2012-November-13, 10:02, said:

I have exactly the opposite opinion. Our name is our name, why can't you call us what we want to be called? You don't translate people's names into your own language -- it's Jacque, not Jack or John. So why should it be different with countries? At most you may need to adjust the pronunciation to fit your own phonology.

Yeah, forget about "China", you should start calling it "Zhōnggúo". If that is too difficult for you we could settle for a literal translation, i.e. call it "Middle Country".

But indeed since my favourite (online edition of a) newspaper was shut down and I've been looking around for alternatives, I have been quite peeved by one of them insisting on antiquated forms such as "Peking", "Canton" and "Sezuan". The fact that they are

gwnn, on 2012-November-14, 03:15, said:

just a transliteration anyway,

makes it worse, because

gwnn, on 2012-November-14, 03:15, said:

It just sounds

like a really horrible mispronunciation.


Speaking of

kenberg, on 2012-November-02, 07:13, said:

gmail

, my newest peeve is that Google refuses to recognize that gmail is NOT, in fact, my primary email address, and insists on sending correspondence relating to my order of a Nexus 4 Phone (the pricing of which is another peeve - no, $349 is NOT roughly the same as €349, but at least I don't live in Austria) to said address which I never, ever check.

[gwnn]

I don't have a great Chinese ear but to me both Beijing and Peking sounded about the same as the original (I asked some Chinese friends to pronounce it properly) - I am sure it is bad but the point is that if I wanted to do it, it would sound horrible anyway no?

[dustinst22]

People who....

chomp on gum/eat with their mouth open

talk on their phone in the bathroom

use the word literally incorrectly

use "your/you're" incorrectly

spell "lose","loose"

dont pick up their dog's crap

listen to obnoxious music really loud

talk during a movie

dont do anything about their crying children at a nice restaurant or a movie

walk too slow. Get out of my way.

are never on time

tailgate

pedestrians/cyclists who think they own the road



I must be getting old

[Phil]

Totaled my car today (truth). Some peabrain tried to beat a yellow and then a red. Unfortunately I was in his way and got t-boned. And, consistent with the human scum that drives like that, he left the scene. We did find his car a few hours later fortunately.

Sure it sucks. But not nearly as bad as the moronic comments I've been hearing.

"Oh my God, you are so lucky you walked away from that terrible accident".

Oh, did you think maybe it was a perhaps a stroke of bad luck that me and my car got mangled?



FML