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!
The thing I hate about English is that it pretends to have formal rules for sentence structure and grammar, and they are all basically optional to some degree, but plenty of English speakers get really grumpy when people break them. English isn’t like French where there is a literal governing body who is in charge of setting the formal rules for the language - English is a cluster fuck of borrowed words and structures mashed together in a barely coherent mess, stop acting like “should’a” is a violation of section 16.4 subsection 4
It’s mostly a bunch of feeling over what sounds right. Like big red rubber ball sounds infinitely better than rubber red big ball.
I draw the line at “on accident” though.
I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. “On accident”, fuck me. “I could care less”, too.
We got a governing body that decides what is correct or not when it comes to our two written languages, bokmål and nynorsk. They do not control speach and what is “correct” to say. I recent years the younger generations (I’m millenial, so not young any more 😢) have began merging two sounds, the sj- /∫/ og kj-sounds /ç/ with only the sj-sound. They can’t even hear the diference. This results in funny situations for us who can hear and pronounce the different sounds when used in words.
Kjede, pronounced with /ç/ at the start, means chain (can be used to describe various types of chains).
Sjede, pronounced with /∫/ at the start, means vagina.
The younger generation pronounced both words with /∫/ at the start. This makes the word “kjedekollisjon” not mean “chain collision” any more, but “vagina collision”. “Halskjede” with a /∫/, suddenly means “neck vagina”, not “necklace”. And so on. Language is fun.
I think it’s precisely because there is no governing body for English and all the rules are colloquial, developed through usage, that people do get grumpy! They are the only ones who can create and enforce the rules! Each English speaker feels personally responsible and compelled to correct use they perceive is in violation of the rules the way they want them to be. If they don’t do it right then and there, no one else can.