From the AP: ...Americans are totally annoyed by the use of "whatever" in conversations.

The popular slacker term of indifference was found "most annoying in conversation" by 47 percent of Americans surveyed in a Marist College poll released Wednesday.

"Whatever" easily beat out "you know," which especially grated a quarter of respondents. The other annoying contenders were "anyway" (at 7 percent), "it is what it is" (11 percent) and "at the end of the day" (2 percent).

(It was) Immortalized in song by Nirvana ("oh well, whatever, nevermind") in 1991, popularized by the Valley girls in "Clueless" later that decade, it is still commonly used, often by younger people.


I'd be interested to hear which words/expressions annoy folks in other countries.

like, um...

How many countries do you have in mind?
Anyway, here is your survey in yesterdays "Spits", one of our two free daily newspapers for commuters by train:

Link

This moment's worst word in the Netherlands ?

Toppie = superb; also used as helemaal toppie= totally suberb -------- Arghhhh! gruwel! We have no surveys like that, but this is only the top of the iceberg.

Absolutely

I'm glad you agree with this

For sure.

Dude

Totally

For all of y'all that are bothered by this word, used in this way (I would suspect you're not bothered by it in phrases such as 'whatever happens, we'll survive') do you remember when you first heard it and what your reaction was to it at the time?

"Whatever" easily beat out "you know," which especially grated a quarter of respondents. The other annoying contenders were "anyway" (at 7 percent), "it is what it is" (11 percent) and "at the end of the day" (2 percent).

you know, I absolutely don't remember when it was; but anyway I do remember thinking to myself, "whatever, at the end of the day, it is was it is."
- joe btfkpst

Heres the thing...............what thing?

do you remember when you first heard it and what your reaction was to it at the time? On the TV show Full House. The dumb neighbor's even dumberer boyfriend would say "Whatever" in response to almost anything. Did I mention he was dumb?
(Wasn't Dumb and Dumberer the title of a movie?)

And, I can certainly see where a constant totally suberb could get annoying! (I expect to see/hear a Dude follow it, as in totally suberb, Dude.)

Wasn't Dumb and Dumberer the title of a movie?

Yes it was a prequel to dumb and dumber. Dumberer was a more apt title.

This from OED

O.E. dumb "silent, unable to speak," from PIE *dheubh- "confusion, stupefaction, dizziness." O.E., Goth. (thumb) and O.N. (dumbr) forms meant only "mute, speechless;" in O.H.G. (thumb) it meant both this and "stupid," and in Mod.Ger. this latter became the only sense. Meaning "foolish, ignorant" was occasionally in Eng. from c.1323, but modern use (1823) comes from infl. of Ger. dumm. Applied to silent contrivances, hence dumbwaiter (1749).

I'm convinced that the term "it is what it is" is an invention of Johan Cruyff,
not only our best football player-coach ever,
but also our best armchair philospher ever. He is great.
I really like it. "het is wat het is". (though it is on some people's irritation-list here too)
What more can you say about the meaning of life?

I know it takes things a while to get to Loouhvll but sounds like the train was already up to full speed by the time you got on board.

PS

Totally suberb?

How you even pronounce that? Is it like 'superb' only with a voice bilabial in the middle or is it like 'suburb' only with a harsher, more upstate NY er?

the term "it is what it is" is an invention of Johan Cruyff

Mr Cruyff, who was born in 1947, probably just made a loan translation. See the late Mr Saffire's musings on what he calls tautophrases cites a usage of the phrase from two years after Johann's birth: What about: "A rose is a rose is a rose" or "it out-Herods Herod"? As somebody, whose name I have forgotten andwho has the time to find out whom when posting on the Web, once said: "Have you ever noticed how clichéd Shakspear's language is? 90% or more of his more famous plays is tired and hackneyed and full of PC solecisms." [link]

heh

Yes, of course, the wheel is being reinvented eight days a week, 337 days a year. Everywhere.
But... should there on this topic, for all clarity, not be a difference between the fashionable expression and the quote from a serious, sensible phrase? The irritating thing about these words is that they are used almost randomly; like a sort of mental tic.

The irritating thing about these words is that they are used almost randomly; like a sort of mental tic.

Sure, but human speech and casual writing are full of these tics.

Yes. Even many officially 'coined' words may originally come from a coiner man's aquaintance. It's just who brings it into the public eye or public hearing first.
Heh! The collective mind? Startrek?

Some more details on the Marist poll:

A) They only had five choices. They didn't ask people what their most despised word was; they offered five choices and people were to pick from the list.

2) There was no "None of the above." They did have "Not sure."

Þ) They did have, in the breakdown of the subsets, Registered Voters. I'm certainly glad to see that. Maybe this will come up in a national referendum sometime soon.

For those interested the complete results are here.

Ah, so that's why they didn't report Americans as being "totally annoyed" by totally.

They didn't have moist on the list. And, whatever you might say you won't convince me that it is the word itself that they don't like. It's the attitude behind it. If these young punk kids these days said, "Moist" instead of "Whatever" it would have scored at least 67%.

I agree.

"Moist" Eww-ww.

I have tried to read up on this but still do not understand it. In the English of my country it is most often used in a positive sense of cakes and other baked confectioneries. The extreme aversion to the word I find bewildering. Perhaps I am better off this way.

You're not alone Lat. The disdain towards it is not so much an incorrect usage of the word, more a dislike of the word or an aversion to it. Much like spiders or Asps conjure up creepy crawlie feelings 'moist' for some people is yucky. It is still a word without mostly negative (seckshewal)connotations down here but the youth of today have a penchant for changing the ordinary into the sad.

Lat?

Lat = latishya?

and my understanding of the word moist is that it has vaginal references. why that's a bad thing, I don't know, but.

annoying: LOL

But, Latysh, are there not in your native language or languages words that irritate you and others when used in a conversation? Not particularly urban or youngster's slang , but just fashionable words that are overused?
There is in French a word that irritates me. In conversations, they very often say: -'génial' for any little thing or idea they think funny, good or pleasant. It baffles me. I never dared make a comment on it, because it does not seem to irritate them one bit.

Here's my top ten most annoying words in English:

1. the
2. of
3. to
4. and
5. a
6. in
7. is
8. it
9. you
10. that

The whole list.

But seriously folks, I really cannot even begin to comprehend why people are annoyed with words. It's like saying that sand annoys you. I can see being annoyed with the people who use the words.

Same as. I get a bit peeved by misuse sometimes, not often, but more by annoying usage. Like Uncle Z says, don't blame the gun.

It is a question of degree. There are words whose sound I dislike but from what I read about moist it seems to generate an unusual aversion a real loathing or revulsion not merely a "oh that's an ugly word" sort of reaction.

-- That really made me laugh. Excuberantly! Annoyed with the people only the for second they use THE word. Toppie. GRRRrrr.....

Sorry Latishya, I always struggle with both with the lenght of your name and always must take an extra look for what to put first, y or i. It doesn't annoy me, but....

it was not primarily for you Branshea. I know you tried and did not intentionally chop my name to one ugly syllable.

Why is one syllable ugly?

Why is one syllable ugly?

Could be because of the meaning of लत (i.e., lat) meaning in Hindi (see especially entry 3 at link).

Good heavens, it sure is easy to cause offense even within one's own culture, isn't it? Let alone cross-culturally. There was an Irishman here a while back who posted that some particular slang term for an Irish person was highly offensive. I remember being surprised reading that, because to me all the nicknames gave the same emotional response (pretty much none). I can't even remember for sure which one he said it was.

Interesting page;gee,how do you find them! There is one lat that's not that bad:
लत lat, = S لتا लता latā, s.f. A creeper; a vine; hanging branch of a creeper; a branch; a tendril; a thread;—the musk-creeper (said to grow in the Dakkhan, and to be used medicinally);—the plant commonly called priyaṅgu; the gramineous plant priyaṅgu; the gramineous plant Trigonella corniculata, related to the Trigonella_foenum-graecum, which we know as fenugreek or fenegriek. The seeds are used in cooking and are said to be beneficial.

or perhaps i simply like my name as is and am not pleased when someone i do not know takes it upon themselves to shorten it without asking for my view on the matter. would the person who called me lat have called gandhiji mo?

on this forum, very likely, yes. in this culture, the shortening of names is usually a sign of familiarity, even affection, and no insult is intended.

how do you find them

I found it from an aggregation of online dictionaries about half a decade ago. Because I have studied both Sanskrit and Hindi, the former much more seriously than the latter, I am familiar with Devanagari, but I did find a a new site for transliterating Latin into Devanagari (link). The Hindi-Urdu dictionary was digitized from a public domain work from 1884.

would the person who called me lat have called gandhiji mo?

I have always been slightly uncomfortable in shortening names on Web forums. Some of the processes of picking a hyporcorism are interesting though. And, as Mr Shrdlu says mostly this is for benign and affectionate reasons, it can be for demeaning or insulting ones, too: e.g., Tricky Dick and Slick Willy for presidents Nixon and Clinton respectively. back to the actual formation processes: (1) shortening (the most common), from one or the other or both ends, or sometimes an initialism: e.g., Ed for Edward, Joe, Joseph (but sometimes with a mutated sound, as in Ned or Ted for Edward, Bob for Robert), Topher for Christopher, FDR, JFK; (2) then there are nicknames that have nothing to do with the form of the person's name, like Ginger for somebody with red hair, Nuncle for Zmjezhd (from another of my noms de ouaisbe, Uncle Jazzbeau). What to call people is a socially complex situation in most cultures, and I tend to not shorten a person's name because it's long or difficult to remember. Back to Mr Gandhi: we here in the States usually abbreviate Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi to Gandhi (or Mr Gandhi if writing for newspapers such as New York Times). I noticed in India that most refer to him as Gandhiji (the -ji being a title of repsect and not some lengthening of his name for hypocoristic purposes). Many refer to him as Mahatma Gandhi, thinking that Mahatma is his first name rather than another honorary title.

When visiting my friend's family in India, the adults mostly called me Jim, though on several occasions I was referred to by family members (in the third person with folks outside the family) as Mr Jim. The eldest brother was surprised when I gave him my business card to find out Jim is a nickname form of James and that I had a surname); the children all called me Jim Uncle, though one of the nephews, who's now in the States, asked for Uncle Jim once when my wife answered the phone (becoming culturally acclimated). As I am studying Japanese, I am amazed at how social niceties are handled in Japanese, grammatically (different verb forms) and lexically (different words depending on whether in relationship to the first person or to the second and third person). It is amazingly easy to insult somebody in Japanese.

It is also amazingly easy to insult someone who has a chip on their shoulder -- no connection implied.

and it is normal to do this without asking? Most North Indians have two 'given' names, a legal one and one that is used by family and close friends. It would never occur to me to use the 'intimate' name of someone I did not know well, even if I happened to know it.

When I do it, you can be sure it is done with affection, or at least not meanly. Occasionally I have done it here simply to save myself some time, if someone has a really l-o-n-g screen name.
It can also be, funnily enough, a sign of trust, as in, "I think we have developed enough trust that I believe you won't take umbrage". Thus my facetious (denoted by deliberately bad grammar or spelling) request to call zmjezhd zoom.
Face to face is different, I think. I would call someone by whatever they were introduced. If I met you as Latishya, I'd be very unlikely to call you Lat or Latty, etc. Though some people do, I have to say.
Maybe it's because in English we don't have a set way of indicating a close relationship, such as tu vs. vous in French. When I was in high school I met some Japanese exchange students; when I said "konchiwa" instead of "konichiwa" (sp?) to one guy, he blushed. Oops.

French only has 2?
There are 3 in Hindi - आप Aap for formal and respectful, तुम tum for normal friendship among peers and तू tu for the most intimate and familiar and for addressing god.

THANK YOU! I have been looking for a site to transliterate from devnagri to gurmukhi for a long time now as i wish to learn how to read gurmukhi and i think that being able to compare familiar words will help. This site is a tremendous assistance, thank you once again. Now if only it had nastaliq it would be everything i need.

We do have three too. Gij for very respectful ( Gods and the likes), U for respectful and jij for family and friends.
But confusing those things are. Aap is literally Monkey in our language. I would have problems to say Aap to a person for a respectful approach.

You're welcome.

devnagri to gurmukhi

How mutually intelligible are Hindi-Urdu and Panjabi?

I think the intelligibility is better from Panjabi to Hindi than the other way around. An old Panjabi friend calls his language a bastard Hindi but there are many Panjabi words that are not familiar to Hindi speakers who have not been exposed to Panjabi. Perhaps I could some it up by saying that I find causual eavesdropping on a Panjabi conversation tiring because I have to pay much more attention to what is being said to follow the details of it, though the general gist is clear enough.

Why does (do?) one out of nine Americans live in California? 0% humidity. You should see my Californian sister's reaction to 'moist'. It's visceral. I've lived in semi-tropical climates most of my life and gotten quite used to moist air. I get the impression smells are more pungent in moist air. Anyone know why it may be so?

Non-scientifical answer: Because there is more life active in moist/humid things than in dry?

Sounds good to me!