Counter-Currents
Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 457
Greg Johnson & Millennial Woes on Common Mistakes in English
Counter-Currents Radio
252 words / 1:49:28
Earlier this week, Greg Johnson and Millennial Woes did a surprise livestream about some common mistakes in English, and it is now available for download and online listening.
Topics discussed include:
00:03:23 “Cliché”
00:04:50 “There is” vs. “There are”
00:07:20 “Bourgeois” vs. “bourgeoisie”
00:08:27 Using “it’s” to mean “belonging to it”
00:09:24 The misuse of “begging the question”
00:13:39 “Eat healthy”
00:16:47 On Latin and Greek plurals and singulars
00:19:08 When to use “me” vs. “I,” and “she” vs. “her”
00:23:06 “Principle” vs. “principal”
00:25:20 “Who” vs. “whom”
00:26:43 “Enormity”
00:29:35 When people erroneously repeat the word “that”
00:30:39 “Hopefully”
00:32:20 “Less” vs. “fewer”
00:33:33 Adding extra vowels to words
00:37:06 “Irregardless”
00:37:28 “Competence” and “competency”
00:41:07 On when to use commas vs. full stops
00:42:48 “Imply” vs. “infer”
00:44:45 “I could care less”
00:45:23 “Disinterested” vs. “uninterested”
00:46:37 “Addicting”
00:48:44 “complement” vs. “compliment”
00:49:54 “On Accident”
00:50:17 “Continual” vs. “continuous”
00:52:45 “Similar to,” “different from,” and “different than”
00:54:54 “The country in which they came from”
00:56:21 “Self-sacrifice themselves”
00:56:43 “Dilemma” and “decimate”
00:59:46 “Extends” vs. “extend” and “has” vs. “have”
01:00:39 “That” and “which”
01:00:54 “That” instead of “who”
01:03:50 “Quote” vs. “quotation”
01:04:48 “Access”
01:05:03 “Interface”
01:06:03 Affect” vs. “effect”
01:08:29 “Hate” as a verb and “hatred” as a noun
01:12:01 “Homogenous” vs. “homogeneous”
01:14:38 Sentences which start with “and” or “but”
01:16:32 “Without further to do”
01:17:51 “If I would have”
01:20:52 What books on writing would you recommend?
01:21:43 “Deep seated” vs. “deep seeded”
01:22:07 “The shop is ran by”
01:23:02 Class: A guide through the American status system
01:31:53 Is Homer Simpson middle class or working class?
01:34:26 On the pronunciation of “formidable”
01:45:54 “Hanged” vs. “hung”
To listen in a player, click here. To download, right-click the link and click “save as.”
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12 comments
(I had the good fortune of watching the replay of this stream before it went behind the paywall. It was informative and highly entertaining.)
Excellent English should be a requirement for being fully accepted in activist circles.
To be a good White advocate one must educate oneself in a variety of scientific disciplines, as those who don’t base their worldview on empirical evidence will rely on intuition and heuristics, and this makes them vulnerable to establishment propaganda. Since most educational material is written in technical English, it’s therefore important to have a strong grasp of the English language.
Moreover, since mastering a language requires intelligence and discipline, demanding this from one’s members would have the benefit of filtering out many low-quality people.
“…would have the benefit of filtering out many low-quality people.”
One would think a movement lacking political power, popular support, and saddled with a very high social stigma for participation would want to filter out very few. I would suppose that “low-quality people” is a personal judgment? Perhaps, I myself am one such low-quality individual, being merely female and admittedly little better than a “mid-wit”. Even so, I refuse to be intimidated by snobbery.
Pronouncing asphalt as if it were ashphalt.
Pronouncing nuclear like the Bushlet does, nucular.
‘Rein in’ written as ‘reign in’.
‘Ad nauseam’ written as ‘ad nauseum’ but that’s Latin.
I’m annoyed by people saying ‘have your cake and eat it too.’ Logically, it should be ‘eat your cake and have it too’, for once it’s eaten, one no longer has his cake.
Finally, I’ve developed the habit of pronouncing words like which, what, where, white, the Jared Taylor way, with the H kinda preceding the W.
This is why Americans are forced to study (but not learn) a second language in middle school, high school and college. It makes you better in English. But I have literally never met an American who actually became fluent in a second language this way.
Loving this, particularly Greg’s explanation of the evergreen ‘Begging the question’ question.
Don’t give up on ‘I’m well’ yet though. There are even a few young’uns who still get it. ‘I’m good’, ‘I’m well’, ‘I’m doing good’ and ‘I’m doing well’ all mean different things at least until these eyes close for the last time.
Fowler’s Modern English Usage is the ur-text for this sort of reasoned pedantry – it used to be some of my favourite bed-time reading.
Wheelock’s Latin Seventh Edition is an incredibly logical and enjoyable introductory college-level text pitched at adult learners. Begin to acquire the learned language of your civilization today and your English too will soar.
The older generation – who still care about such things – will lap this up; so could it please be unlocked fairly soon?
PS. Just got to the end and your comment about auto-didacts and pronunciation made me think of Dr Revilo P. Oliver, a figure of some status amongst these circles, whose improbable name caused me to doubt for quite some time his ever having been a real person. His speeches, like his writings, are superbly crafted, albeit replete with apparent neologisms which can, nevertheless, be found in the Shorter Oxford, but he mispronounces some very simple words including ‘wound’ meaning ‘gash’ but pronounced like it means ‘coiled’. He claims, if I recall, in the introduction to one of his books to have taught himself Sanskrit when he was about ten.
I get the impression that older generations were somehow smarter. How many people under twenty would know what Sanskrit is even?
The man was an exceptional intellect even for his own time but he was a tenured professor who devoted his entire life to the study and preservation of Aryan culture and the people who are the culture-bearers. His knowledge was immense but we have a few similar figures today, who are semi-public, like Dr Johnson, with comparable heft.
We also need intellectual foot soldiers who consider litterae their vocation even if not their occupation and who can inspire our people to revel in the vast assembly of stories stretching back three thousand years and more.
One important point is that every person’s name has a story. Spend a couple of afternoons reading a baby name book with the meanings of those names. Read the old and new testament stories and the Greek and Norse myths and you will have a panoply of anecdotes which are shared remembrances with the ancestors. When you meet somebody ask them about their Christian name and guess or ask them why their parents named them so, then ask them to tell you about their name. Many may sadly know little but if you can supply the missing fable you will have given that person a gift and a new story to tell about themselves.
As well as a Christian name an Anglo-Saxon has a name and the name is traditionally more important for it endures through the generations. This is no doubt true also in many other cultures. To not use one’s name, to be ashamed of it, is to dishonour one’s mother and her choice of man to father her children.
Until at least the end of the Soviet era boys at elite British diaspora schools would be adressed by their surnames only, both by the masters and usually also their schoolmates. Often surnames would be abbreviated or altered in some way to provide a nickname by the other boys. This was an important part of the status hierarchy and boys who could make up humorous nicknames were prized by their peers. As the boys grew into men they would be addressed as Mister followed by their name. Naturally they would not dream of calling the others’ parents or heaven forbid the teachers by their Christian names, unless given permission to do so.
‘But you tell the young people of today that and they won’ t believe ya’…….or will they?
Anglophones makes tons of mistakes. One that I hear all the time is “there’s some stuff…”, when it should be “there are…” because the object is plural.
Those Anglophones are right actually. ‘Stuff’ as a noun is tricky. Its an informal way of referring to a collection of matter, objects or materials but it refers to a collection, always considered as a whole, and is only used in the singular. You can have no stuff, some stuff, too much stuff, stuff everywhere, lots of stuff, even lots of different stuff and not give a stuff but you can’t have stuffs, except in the case of the very fussy and somewhat different compound word ‘foodstuffs’. Or would anyone like to disagree?
I had lots of fun listening to this one — thank you both!
Another one like that—I’m not sure if they talked about it as I’m just about to listen—is “all’s fair in love and war.” This is commonly misinterpreted as meaning anything goes in love or war, meaning you can f* your lover over, but that’s wrong. It’s really a pun on the archaic use of fair, as beautiful, lovely. All is fair in the sense of wonderful when you are in love, and all is fair, in the sense of allowed, in a state of war. It’s not a pass to be a butt.
“To boldly go…” 😉
A splendid and if I might say so, long overdue treatment of the subject of solecisms and general grammatical and linguistic idiocy and its underlying narcissistic causes.
I’ve become increasingly conscious of the (perhaps obvious) fact that while substance may take precedence over form, the disregard of the latter when it comes to correct grammatical usage can often be a short-cut to weeding out dubious content; a rich vein of this type can be found in the podcasts of those examining faux law and similar oddities of distraction.
A handy companion to the subject of grammatical gaffes is SEARS, K.: Grammar 101 which I found nestling at
https://ia601401.us.archive.org/0/items/e-books-collection/Crash%20Course/Grammar%20101.pdf
Additionally there is the dry wit of
https://archive.org/details/comic_english_rg_librivox
The Comic English Grammar
by Percival Leigh (1813 – 1889), read by Ruth Golding. (Some voicings (chameleon-eque biology?) make it almost funny).
Yes, a further instalment on this Counter-Currents podcast’s subject is desirable. It can never want for material. Here are a couple of random examples of the genre which seem to be encountered daily (can’t recall if they have figured in the *first* instalment):
– “due to” when used adverbially – time was that one heard “the man’s death was due to poisoning” [adjective] but now it is debased to “due to poisoning the man died” [adverbial appropriation…?].
( this one seems to occur *without comment* in Fussell’s Chapter 7 you referenced). (The author being Donald T. Regan, then then (~1983) Professor of English Literature at the University of Pennsylvania).
– “simplistic” being used to mean simply (ahem) “simple”.
– “transpired” – when meaning “happened”.
– “neither… or” instead of “neither… nor”.
– contamination of the verb’s number by the noun most proximate to it – “a crowd of pupils wait for lunch”.
Excellent that you picked up “(I’ll be there) momentarily” meaning imminently (sigh).
Re: the discussion of “I’m good”. This one’s not past salvation.
It surely originated as a Ebonics abomination (c.f. “wicked” designating “mischievously praiseworthy”). Otherwise, if I’m feeling unwell, am I now instead to feel “ungood”? Maybe even double-plus ungood?
I recall someone saying she’d heard this Ebonics affirmation of wellness being met once by “I wasn’t asking as to your moral probity!”
– “What” -vs-” “that which” – I admit to remaining querulous faced with this one. Enlightenment in due course avidly awaited.
Last – similar to the preceeding [sic, sc.: preceding]: did I discern a solecism from Dr Johnson himself @11.20 – “Like I said”…? Again, one that through constant repetition has worn away my capacity to say if it’s right or wrong; on this occasion it seemed to be the faux-adverbial form. Personally speaking (but for whom else would it be?) I favour “As I said”. “Like [what/that which] I said” presumably was the original form when used with “like”; again the adjective since being repurposed to adverb…?
An excellent topic overall and full of interest for people “like you and I” (LOL!). OK; one might be forgiven such as: “to We-the-People” as a collective noun in a dative case but … “like you and I”…; people who say that, live on air, should be mercifully terminated by asphyxiation with pensioner pantyhose.
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