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”
To read this, get behind our Paywall
9 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.
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?
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.
If you have Paywall access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.
Note on comments privacy & moderation
Your email is never published nor shared.
Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.