13 August 2020 @ 11:51 pm
Forever linguistically pet-peeved  
Would anyone be terribly annoyed if I went on for a bit about some language pet peeves of mine? I've pent them up for months (some even for years) and they're about to drive me nuts. Might be a side effect of the pandemia.

Speaking of which: Instead of "pandemic" I use "pandemia" as the noun because the -ic suffix is for adjectives. There's this habit in English (might only be a North American thing) of using adjectives without their following nouns. Another example is "inaugural". Inaugural what?! Just say "inauguration", ugh!

That reminds me how I wondered why we call that one ocean "Pazifischer Ozean". What's "pazifisch"? For some reason I didn't make the connection to Latin, although I do know some words (Like "pacifist", ffs!). Possibly because I tend to encounter Latin much more in English than in German. And then I recently heard "Stiller Ozean" (Silent Ocean) in a documentary. Hadn't heard that name in years, so for a moment I tried to remember which ocean that was, and when I did, I made the connection to English (Pazifik/Pacific, same difference), which lead me to Latin and the lightbulb went on: "silent" → "pacific" as in "peaceful"! It's practically the same name, just translated. No idea how I hadn't realized the meaning before, but better late than never. 👍

Something at which I'm only very mildly annoyed: People like to verb their nouns.

Ha, I didn't mean for this entry to be this long. I wasn't planning to include examples, I just remembered them and had to vent. Well, now you know what you're in for if you don't object to further languange rants.
 
 
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wendelah1: reading[personal profile] wendelah1 on August 14th, 2020 12:05 am (UTC)
There are many nouns in English which have -ic as an ending. Attic, panic, traffic, comic, academic, Arctic, to name a few. The use of pandemic goes back to the 17th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Pandemia works if you're speaking Spanish, however.

Rant away. I've about given up worrying about language. (There are too many other things to worry about--my husband's health, defeating Trump, etc. I can't worry about everything. I'll go nuts.) The apostrophe, though beloved of grammarians everywhere, is doomed. We'll survive without it. At least I won't have to cringe every time I see one missing or misused.
fueschgast[personal profile] fueschgast on August 22nd, 2020 07:26 pm (UTC)
I know there are other English nouns ending in -ic, but they seem (=I haven't looked up all of them) to have different etymology to pandemic.

I guess what bothered me about "pandemic" is that in German we call it "Pandemie" instead of "Pandemik", so I thought it must be a case of adjective-turned-noun, which was confirmed when I looked up its etymology. "Pandemia" is actually a valid word in English, although admittedly rare.

I think it's a defense mechanism that I obsess about languange. That way I take a break from worrying about rl shit.

Btw, I'm glad to hear your husband's better! Sorry I didn't say so in your post. Sometimes I feel I'm not close enough to some people, as if commenting (especially on such a personal thing) is inappropriate. I'm weird that way.