What irritates you the most with your own language?
What irritates you the most with your own language?
Mine is people who separate words when they write. I'm Norwegian, and we can string together words indefinetly to make a new word. The never ending word may not make any sense, but it is gramatically correct
Still, people write words the wrong way by separating them.
Examples:
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"Ananas ringer" means "the pineapple is calling" when written the wrong way. The correct way is "ananasringer" and it means "pineapple rings" (from a tin).
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"Prinsesse pult i vinkel" means "a princess fucked at an angle". The correct way to write it is "prinsessepult i vinkel", and it means "an angeled princess desk" (a desk for children, obviously)
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"Koke bøker" means "to cook books". The correct way is "kokebøker" and means "cookbooks"
I see these kinds of mistakes everywhere!
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Thresh + hold = threshold. Why did they drop the middle 'H'? You still have to pronounce both 'H's, and they don't even have the same sound. They're the worst kind of portmanteau, but they're in the dictionary.
Hitchhiker is spelled with two hs in the middle?
As for threshold, it's an ancient word...
Good point, my mistake on hitchhiker. My brain just merged it in with my hatred of threshold.
It doesn't matter how old threshold is. They merged the h of hold with the h in the sh sound of thresh. There is an H missing from how it should be spelt.
Linguists aren't sure the second part is "hold".
Liberman (Oxford University Press blog, Feb. 11, 2015) revives an old theory that the second element is the Proto-Germanic instrumental suffix -thlo and the original sense of threshold was a threshing area adjacent to the living area of a house.
Ancient words are weird; meanings/ spellings change and are lost to time. It's what makes it all so interesting. You're not wrong, but this might be a bad example.
I'd accept this as a bad example if it wasn't pronounced "hold". Like, you say "thresh hold" and not "thresh old", and that's why I get ticked off at it only having one H. Even if there's an explanation, it's irritating.