The Lowest of the Low (Word Usage)

The Lowest of the Low

The majority of the items explored in this series, if not all of them, are defensible if you look at the history of the language, or at how they are most often used today. Even the ones that are considered poor grammar by almost everyone have historical precedents which were completely acceptable at some time in the past, or have been used widely for long enough that they can be considered linguistic developments rather than mistakes. At base, there is really no ultimately objective basis for standard English, and so it relies on a combination of history, tradition, popularity of use, and the authority of scholars both past and present. That being said, there are nonetheless some constructions which mark the speaker as uneducated or ignorant, and while this may be completely unjust, it is nonetheless the case. Therefore, to end this series, I present a short list of the worst offences, mistakes that will harm your standing in academic circles and drive your English mark down shockingly quickly.

"Ain't" is perhaps the most reviled word known to educators in English, and from the time you are old enough to attend school, you are strictly warned never to use it. Although it has a long history in the language as we discussed in a previous article, it is no longer an acceptable form, neither in speech nor in writing. It is obviously a substitute for negative forms like "isn't" or "aren't," but even its status as a contraction makes little sense in modern English. After all, what is being contracted? It looks like "ai" and "not" have been combined here, but the first of these words no longer has any meaning or connection to modern speech. "Ain't" is a four-letter word, and should be treated as such whenever you don't want to sound like a simpleton.

Another group within the untouchable class of English errors is the ridiculed past and present perfect forms of "bring," which are "brang" and "brung." There is a long history associated with these words, and it is easy to see that they follow the same pattern as strong verbs like "ring," which is conjugated "rang" and "rung" in the corresponding tenses. However, the form "brought" has come to replace both of these alternate forms, and this has been the case for so long that the other forms have become inappropriate. Even if used in informal conversation, "brang" and "brung" will likely lead you into a good shaming.

One of my personal pet peeves is sadly gaining some popularity, and I have heard it at least 5 times already this week on television alone. The word is "irregardless," and it means "without consideration for the previous point," or in other words, "without regard for something." However, note that the word "regardless" actually does the job in this case, and we can see that the word "regard" combined with the suffix "less" (meaning "without"), already means "without regard." "Ir" added to the front of this term is redundant at best, contradictory at worst, and has likely only arisen because "with regard to something" is a very similar idea to "with respect to something," and "irrespective" is the proper way of negating that term. Now that you know, don't make this mistake!

Finally, we have an example of what is known as a "back construction," which is when a word in one part of speech (say, a noun) is made into another part of speech (say, a verb). This is very common in English, but problems arise when the newly formed word is based on a word that itself is based on a word which already occupies that part of speech. My least favorite of these is the word "conversate," based on the noun "conversation." In reality, "conversation" is based on the verb "converse," a word that has fallen out of wide popular use. So, being unaware that there was already a verb for the job, some creative individual made up a new one based on the noun, and we are left with a longer verb that does the same job as the old one less elegantly. Avoid this, tell your friends to avoid it, and if you get the chance, please tell my friends to avoid it as well. They are sick of listening to me about it, so I need others to help save my sanity.