1. When I sing along with country songs, I correct the grammar. I cannot help it. This is particularly true with subject-verb agreement and the use of the subjunctive. “I wish I were…” Az the Husband, if he notices, pretends not to, which is one of the reasons I love him.
2. I hate recipes that use unrelated, pre-made ingredients. I want to know how much flour, shortening and baking powder to put in, not how much Mrs. McGillicuddy’s Down Home Buttermilk Flavored Biscuit Mix (*no actual buttermilk). If I am in mid-recipe and find an ingredient like “Duncan Crocker’s Pudding-in-the-Mix Devil’s Food Snack Cake Instant Microwavable Pouch,” I may throw something.
3. I watched Pixar’s Cars with my two oldest children. The girls loved it, but I spent a significant portion of the movie speculating on whether Lightning McQueen’s name was misspelled.
4. It wasn’t. Apparently lightning is the flashy stuff in the sky, but lightening is the name for what happens to pregnant women when the baby drops and she can breathe again. Yes, I bothered to look it up, and yes, I am embarrassed that I didn’t know that already.
5. I refuse to use loan words in English that bring no new nuances into the language. “Life setting” is perfectly fine; if you say Sitz im Leben, you are a pretentious schmuck. I do not care how uncool this makes me.
6. So when I order from Starbucks I say “small,” “medium” or “large.” Grande and Venti were put on the menu to make affected poseurs feel hip. I grudgingly say the word biscotti only because if I said “rusk,” the teenager behind the counter, whose connection to American food traditions was severed by a childhood of Big Macs and Lunchables, would look at me with non-comprehension, and I would not get my RUSK.
Surely I am not the only recovering snob in the world. Is there anything you would like to share?
I also correct grammar as I sing, and it’s not just in country songs that one has to do it. Many popular songs include incorrect uses of subjective and objective case pronouns.
I also dislike pre-packaged ingredients in recipes. In fact, it’s not really a recipe if it tells you to throw boxes and cans of “stuff” together.
I know about the spelling of lightning and lightening, but I can remember when I didn’t and had to learn it.
I don’t care for Starbucks and don’t use their silly words either.
Maybe this comment belongs more on your “Christian smartass” post, but I correct the grammar in the “praise and worship” songs at church when I can, and just clamp my lips and hum along when I can’t. By can’t, I mean to indicate the occasions when the lyrics make so little sense that I cannot figure out how to rearrange the words so that they would actually make sense. It happens a LOT.
My dad attempts to say any foriegn words in the accent of the language in which they origniated.
The horror.
I still don’t know the number 12 bad guy you were talking about. I think you should email me and tell me so I can go to bed.
Oh, and hymns written after the 1970s. There should be no references to rainbows, socialism or God as some sort of gender neutral big friendly guy up in the sky. Thank you.
Preach it, sister. I sang a solo in church when I was a teenager, and it had a split infinitive. I changed it. Oh yes, I did.
You’re not alone. I went to a Starbucks a few weeks ago in a Target store. Now, my husband is a Starbucks snob and wanted a “triple tall soy caramel macchiato.” I told the “barista” and he looked at me like I was an alien. “Triple tall?” I said, “Yeah, you know, an extra shot.” He replied, “Oh, most people just say, ‘Add an extra shot.’” Idiot. If you went to the Starbucks not a block from this store, they would know what I meant.
I don’t correct grammar in songs, but I correct all KINDS of grammar on TV. It’s really sad, the writing these days.
My actual last name, let’s pretend it’s Blanchard (it’s not, but it’ll work) is typically pronounced with a hard ch sound. Blan-Chard. My husband’s family pronounces it with an SH. Blanshard. This would be fine, if they were from France. However, they aren’t. They’re from Utah. And everyone else in the family, including his father’s parents, pronounces it BlanChard. My husbands parents decided, AFTER their oldest son went on a mission to France, that they would change the pronunciation.
I hate running into other BlanChards because it makes us seem so prententious and I just want to die a little inside every single time. But what do you say to your inlaws – I think you’re morons? SO NOT going there.
Also, on the pre-made ingredients… I tried making sugar cookies with my kids the other da. Part of the recipe said “Add butter and mix.” I kept re-reading it thinking, what mix? There is a mix? Was I supposed to put the flour and salt together already or ?? And my husband was like, no moron, MIX IT.
You know what drives me mad? Unnecessary apostrophe’s, thrown willy-nilly into signs’ and advertisement’s. And n’ames. That grieves me.
Most of the writing I come across on message boards online makes me want to cry. At times, it’s not even recognizable as the English language – or as any known language, for that matter.
(I’ve just been researching baby names, so if I sound a little extra bitter, it’s because I’ve been browsing said message boards for the last half hour.)
I am so with you on #5 and 6. It drives me crazy when people throw out foreign words and/or phrases just to sound cool or hip, apparently neither of which I am.
I don’t claim to be particularly intelligent, but one thing I try to avoid is intentionally using a word or phrase or other jargon that I know other people will not know the meaning of just to come across as an intellectual. I know people who do this, and it is always evident to me when they do.
I’ve written about this on my blog, but something that I refuse to do, unless I’m being intentionally silly, is to use faddish words, phrases or abbreviations such as saying “tat” for tattoo just to sound hip or with it.
Nope, nothing to add except that I found #2 particularly hillarious.
I rarely go to Starbucks (Tim Horton’s instead), so when I go, I’m always confused about the sizing.
Grande – large, right?!
Heidi
I was floored in high school when I heard the song that went, “I can’t see me loving nobody by you all of my liiiiife!” What? What sort of romantic song is that? The girl should slap him and run! Ack!
And I also can’t sing some praise songs, especially the ones with with way out there theologically or ones in which ‘my darling’ or ‘Fred’ could replace any references to Deity to make a schmaltzy love song. Cringe.
And I agree, nix on boxed mixes.
I always use small, medium, large at Starbucks just to see their reaction.
That Lightning McQueen thing is going to bother me now…
I cannot relate to the struggle over subject verb agreement, dangling participles, or split infinitives.
I bought two tickets in a loud voice to the movie “less miserable” instead of a movie with a French name spelled very similar. I wasn’t sure my wife would follow me into the theater after making the purchase but that is another story.
brother
Definitely with you on the Starbucks sizes. I also find it annoying when businesses mess with the size names unnecessarily. I tried to order a medium pizza once and was informed that they only have small, large and jumbo. That makes the large a medium, doesn’t it? On the basis of its position in between the smallest and the biggest pizza?
“Duncan Crocker’s Pudding-in-the-Mix Devil’s Food Snack Cake Instant Microwavable Pouch”
*snort*
That’s too good to waste on just this post. Couldn’t you make it a tag-line or something?
Also, I just stared at the word “McQueen” for awhile, wondering if it ought to be spelled “Maqueen” before I got to item #4.
And – I actually use the term “Sitz im Leben” for my in-class demonstration of pompous language (the word “pompous” having been taken from the department grading guide, which describes A essays as being characterized by language that is “neither pompous nor breezy,” a phrase I consider rather pompous itself).
A biscotti is a rusk? I had no idea. I rather thought a rusk was an apple.
Just this weekend had the Starbucks conversation – it’s small people! Not grande, there is nothing grand about a small coffee.
I could go on. I have a whole list of faux snobbery stuff that bugs me, but being in the holiday spirit and all, I’ll just skip it.
So with you on #6. I refuse to say venti or whatever the heck it they call it. Whatever happened to small? How is tall small?
I actually just e-mailed QVC over a product description “accordian women’s wallet” The rampant misspelling of the word “accordion” is a pet peeve of mine and, I pointed out, the word referred to the wallet not to the women!!
I was just feeling like a pedantic twit for e-mailing them, when I read your list and was pulled back to my senses. If we don’t correct them, who will? If not now, when?
No, don’t skip it, but send more. It’s hilarious. I am always on the look out for people who seem to be thinking the same cynical thoughts that I am. I am most comforted by this at the holidays. Send more!
OK, I confess I am not a snob, I am clueless. I so want to be able to correct the grammar in the songs, but child of the public system I am, I often don’t know if it is wrong! My blog would drive you all nuts!
I don’t shop at Starbucks, not out of principle, just that I am too cheap to pay 4 bucks for a drink, no matter how good it is.
I’m not even going to tell you how much Bisquik maes the world a better place, but suffice it to say, you won’t ever want to eat here!
Still love your blog, just feeling a bit ashamed now!
I told you I was clueless. I got interrupted and did not finish proof-reading before hitting submit. Bisquick makes the world a better place not maes. Sorry.
I’ll admit to grammar snobbery and a deep loathing of a split infinitive. Completely agree on the packet mixes too…. and if it’s a small coffee shouldn’t it be piccolo not grande? So now I’m an Italian snob too!
I now love you even more.
I feel your ingredient pain too. I even have trouble with recipes that tell me what brand of vegetable oil or canned tomatoes to use. I just sneer, mutter something like “You’re not the boss of me”, and intentionally use a different brand of whatever it is. (I have to confess that in the previous sentence I nearly used the term sotto voce and then I remembered my audience.)
One of the things I love the most is watching the expression on a barista’s face when the Loved orders his coffee. He orders a small drip. There is usually a long pause and they launch into the different sizes. He just steadfastly says “small”. Do you mean short or tall? they ask. Small, he says.
You should see his face when they ask if he wants room left for cream. Thunderous might be the correct adjective to use.
When I first started going to Starbucks I was totally lost trying to decide between “Grande”, “Venti” and “Tall” (which was actually the shortest of the options. It really is a silly naming scheme. But it does seem to have worked, because everyone uses it now! I wonder what it is about it that made it stick?
How did I miss this post earlier? I am a TOTAL snob and have been known to offend people.
Who else would watch a heart-warming, inspiring story about a teenage surfer who got her arm bitten off by a shark and, gutsy kid that she is, kept right on surfing, and have the entire thing ruined for them by inappropriate apostrophe use in the word “love’s,” used as a verb not as an adjective?
But HOW could people think that loves should have an apostrophe? Honestly, I think they have the problem, not me.
And I’m quick to spot errors in praise songs. Our church used to sing “How great is your love, O Lord?” and I would cringe. It’s not a question, silly people! It’s an expression of awe.
I totally agree about the prepackaged ingred. in recipes.
I also ramble on in comments.
I also have never heard sitz em leban. What is it? Where’s it from and what does it mean?
I will admit to being sensitive about this though. I’ve been living overseas and sometimes I can’t think of the English word, only the French one. There is no way to do this without coming across like a pretentious shmuck. But I really can’t help it sometimes.
[...] topic was inspired by Veronica, who posted on ways she is a snob. I could relate to her post, but I cringed at her number 5, about [...]