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Bonus 5: Hypercorrection
🕑 Added 2017-07-07 20:07:54 +0000 UTCIs it "you and me" or "you and I"? Does "octopus" pluralize as "octopuses", "octopi" or "octopodes? If you're ordering a nice bottle of champagne, how do you say Moët? And what does that say about you?
People care a lot about talking "correctly" -- sometimes so much that we over-apply things we've been corrected on even in contexts where they didn't originally apply, a phenomenon known as hypercorrection.
Hypercorrection and what we even think of as "correct" or "fancy" isn't just about the rules of grammar: it can also tell us a lot about the rules of society.
If you have other examples of hypercorrection, feel free to share them with your fellow lingthusiasts in the comments!
This topic was nominated by Rob Hoelz (thanks Rob!), and voted on by all of our lovely patrons.
Here are the links mentioned in this episode:
- you and me/you and I
- Ever wondered what the plural of octopus is?
- How do you say Moët? Linguistic snobbery and knowledge
- How to pluralize loanwords
- Hypercorrection in ELLO (English Language and Linguistics Online)
You can listen to this episode on this page, via the Patreon RSS or download the mp3. A transcript is available for this episode as a Google Doc. Lingthusiasm is also on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Email us at lingthusiasm [at] gmail [dot] com or chat to us on the Patreon page.
Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic. Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.
Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our producer is Claire Gawne and our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles. Recorded on June 30th 2017.
Comments
This episode made me think about how we in Norwegian tend to over-generalize words we've taken in from other languages based on our (often) incorrect understanding of the source language's rules. Maybe especially with French, where one example would be the word "pommes frites" (which we didn't even change the spelling of to make it look more Norwegian, we just use the French word). We did as mentioned in this episode, just dropping the end consonant sounds in a misguided effort to sound sort of French and ended up pronouncing it something like "pom (short wovel sound) fri (long vowel sound, maybe easier to think of as "ee" in English)" 😅
Thanks for your answer :) That clears it up.
Lingthusiasm
He was French, but the surname Moët is ultimately Dutch. Here's a website quoting a representative from the company: http://lucire.com/2002/0530ll0.shtml
Hi, I was very interested in your discussion about champagne. Can you share a source for that? Wikipedia just says the founder of M&C was french.
Lingthusiasm
And now you know it's just hypercorrection!
Anna Parikka
I'm much more annoyed at people who use I when you're supposed to use me than the other way around... I have actually explained this to several native speakers :p
Lingthusiasm
I think grammar vampirism is entirely appropriate for the people who suck the fun out of grammar!
Lingthusiasm
Hmmm.... *starts plotting*
Lingthusiasm
As JKR should have known herself -- surely it's the same root as "crucio"! (This is Gretchen, obvs)
Richard Almy
I love it! The next time I see someone correct (or incorrect) someone else's grammar on the internet, I will mentally give them a Dracula accent.
(This reminds me of an incident in Harry Potter fandom, where a popular podcast host speculated that the plural of "horcrux" should really be "horcri" and eventually JKR herself agreed that it would be "horcri" if she had used the Latin plural, and then here I am going NO IT WOULD BE "HORCRUCES")
Latin plural for pes is also pedes! So "octopi" doesn't work in Latin either!
Fetian
I'll vote for singing!
