Equestrian Court of Grammatical Peeves

[endlessclimb]

My recipients are not that fussy, thank goodness lol

[NoSuchPerson]

@Bluey

For me, I am also hard of hearing, is two languages, one the spoken one, another the written one, that correspond to each other lightly.

Do you remember the old TV show “My Three Sons?” In one episode, Dad is called to a parent-teacher meeting because the son’s new teacher thinks he cheated on a writing assignment because it was written so differently from the way he spoke in class. When Dad questioned his son, the son said, with great exasperation, “Well yeah, that was writin’. Writin’ and talkin’ are two differ’nt things.”

[SillyHorse]

@blue_heron

There was this lady who used to board with me who did all the local APHA breed shows. She called her APHA-registered horse a “pinto.” It drove me crazy.

If her horse was spotted, she was correct to call it a pinto. Pinto is the color; Paint is the breed. Most Paints are pinto, but many pintos are not Paints. I had a pinto warmblood and I never really was ok with people referring to him as Paint. I have nothing against Paints, but he wasn’t one.

[ShenanAnna]

Re: “woah”, I saw a TV commercial recently for an amusement park that said the park was WOAH! Are they misspelling “whoa” or is this some obscure acronym? Way Out Amazing Heights?

[OTTBs]

@Impractical_Horsewoman

when people see the same error over and over again, they start to assume it is correct.

This is the reason I want to (but usually don’t) correct spelling on Facebook. I myself have seen the wrong spelling of words so often that the correct spelling begins to look wrong. Someone actually uses “affect” correctly and my mind says “effect.”

[OTTBs]

@atr

The company I work for has an ad emblazoned all over Facebook talking about “the holiday’s.”

I’m embarrassed. I may need to call head office. It won’t go down well.

You reminded me of the hospital I used to work at. SO many grammar and spelling problems on signs, the Employee’s entrance that led to the Employee hallway was one of my pet peeves.

[sophie]

Actually, coming from French and having learned German as first foreign language in school, I thought English was pretty easy. France may not have a spelling bee, but it has a yearly “Dictée de Pivot” (named after a famous journalist whose specialty is Culture). I routinely fail that dictée, even though I was earned high marks in spelling in French school (French kids are tortured with dictées on a regular basis).

[sophie]

@NoGreatMischiefAgain

Also not necessarily horse related but “wallah” (in the context of “there it is!” at least) is NOT A WORD. It’s French, and it’s “voila,” or “voilà” if you want to get particular about it! Heck, I’d even accept viola, at least an attempt was made

“Viola” in French is the past tense of the verb “to rape”!!! Not the same pronunciation though (vee-o-la)

As for “Wallah” - back when I worked as a counselor / instructor at pony camp in France, we sometimes had groups of school children coming from elementary school in the Paris outskirts. Lots of kids from North-African families, who would routinely use Arabic words mixed with French. One of those words was Wallah! which was heard a lot when they first learned trotting bareback on the ponies. Picture kids bouncing around on their ponies’ backs, yelling Wallah! Wallah! Wallah! They told me it more or less means Oh My God!

[NoGreatMischiefAgain]

@sophie

Viola” in French is the past tense of the verb “to rape”!!! Not the same pronunciation though (vee-o-la)

Right! I was thinking of the word viola more in the context of how it’s used in the English language: a large violin or a small flower or the Canadian Civil Rights activist (Viola Desmond, who is on our $10 bill) … I was just saying that if people go for voilà and misspell it viola, at least they were on the right track, spelling-wise.

[SolarFlare]

@atr

Apostrophes.

The company I work for has an ad emblazoned all over Facebook talking about “the holiday’s.”

I’m embarrassed. I may need to call head office. It won’t go down well.

Send them this:

Bob the Angry Flower rocks. Apostrophe misuse sucks!

[fledermaus]

@erinmeri

I cannot for the life of me spell temperament correctly. And when I read it, it looks wrong. So, apologies if I spell it “temperment”!

Because you are slovening the word when you pronounce it (this is a real linguistics term), that is, eliminating or swallowing syllables, which is common to many languages and dialects. Tem-per-ah-ment. Many misspellings are due to trying to spell the way you pronounce. Don’t do that!

Difficult words, for me, sometimes need breaking into their component parts to get right. Conformation for example – a horse’s body is FORMED a certain way, not firmed. Confirmation is to ‘make firm’, like confirming where we are all going to meet.

[Jealoushe]

@fledermaus

Where did that come from?

Blossom.

Joey.

Best of Blossom - "Whoa!"

[Mondo]

@blue_heron

She called her APHA-registered horse a “pinto.” It drove me crazy.

She’s not wrong. A Paint horse is a pinto. It just happens to also be a Paint. But yeah, that would bug me too. My first homebred was registered as a Paint. It never occurred to me to think of her as a pinto.

[Mondo]

@dressagetraks

NO! Petted. It’s just one more syllable. We really have enough time in life to state/type/read that one additional syllable. You pet your animals. They love to be petted.

dressagetraks, will you marry me? OMFG this makes me INSANE! It’s almost as bad as “I seen” which makes my ears bleed when I hear it.

[Paint_Party]

@IronwoodFarm

They may be incorrect but I use them Aghasted is favorite of mine

I remember the thread and the poster who first used this word oh so many moons ago.

Amazing how it’s become part of the COTH vernacular.

[blue_heron]

But her horse was a Paint. He was registered APHA and she called all Paint horses pintos.

[blue_heron]

She seemed to have them backwards.

[S1969]

@Mondo

She’s not wrong. A Paint horse is a pinto. It just happens to also be a Paint. But yeah, that would bug me too. My first homebred was registered as a Paint. It never occurred to me to think of her as a pinto.

A Paint could be a pinto, but not necessarily. My APHA mare is solid black.

But yes, I would not think of a registered APHA as “a pinto” but as a Paint. My Dutch WB is bay but I don’t refer to her “a bay” or “my bay”. I refer to her as “my WB” unless I’m talking to people who know nothing about horses, so I might say “my black horse” or “my brown horse”…although usually I would say “my fat horse.”

[2bayboys]

@Mondo

@dressagetraks

NO! Petted. It’s just one more syllable. We really have enough time in life to state/type/read that one additional syllable. You pet your animals. They love to be petted.

dressagetraks, will you marry me? OMFG this makes me INSANE! It’s almost as bad as “I seen” which makes my ears bleed when I hear it.

Silly @dressagetraks, everyone knows the proper term is “scritched”.
You pet your animals.
They love to be scritched behind the ears.

@Mondo, I feel seen.

[Luseride]

I will say autocorrect has to be “trained” to recognize terms that are very specific to an industry. You should see the struggle when I am trying to type of things for my ag classes.