Ask Lemmy

I get annoyed at people who wait at pedestrian crossings but never push the button.

Are they waiting for someone else to push it because it’s beneath them? Do they think it has cooties? Do they secretly not want to reach their destination? Do they think the buttons are fake, and traffic engineers are waiting to laugh at them on hidden cameras?

Proper usage of ‘s.

Guy joined my team a few years ago and uses ‘s for literally everything, and now most of the team does it too.

It bothers me every time, and I’ve typed corrections into the message box so many times but never hit send.

I think it's mostly that particularly poor common grammar drives me nuts. Like, there's no excuse to not know the difference between you're and your. Once could be a mistake or a typo, but if it's a pattern of behavior you're just not trying. Get your shit together. :)

People who think anyone uses literally to mean figuratively are annoying and too caught up in their crusade to realize their take is idiotic. No one uses it to mean figuratively. People use it to emphasize regardless of the figurative nature of language. It's semantic drift that happens to most words that mean something similar to "in actuality" (e.g. really, actually). Even in other languages.

Germany did not invent döner kebap and it's insane that they claim that. Anyone who insists on it displays a tragic lack of understanding about what a kebab even is and should be ashamed of themselves.

What they did invent is their own way of preparing and serving döner kebab, an existing dish that is itself a variation of other existing dishes that came before it. In the kebab world, that's not only allowed but also basically encouraged. Everyone is welcome to modify dishes to their heart's desire. There are countless kebab dishes in Turkish cuisine that are nothing more than slight variations on existing dishes. What you should do after creating your own variant, however, is to also give it your own name to mark the difference. That's what the Germans have not done. They're continuing to use the name of a dish they did not invent. That's a bit of a dick move. Seriously, look up Adana kebab and Urfa kebab. They're essentially the exact same thing except one is hot and the other is not. Yet they have different names, because that's how it's done.

The German döner kebab is a distinctly different thing than the "real" döner kebab. According to the long standing kebab traditions, it must be given its own name. Otherwise no, döner kebab was most certainly not invented in Germany. Name it something else and make a proper claim. It would even help enrich your exceptionally poor and boring cuisine a little bit.

More like pet peeves, and not something I'd lose my sleep over, but they're hilariously pedantic. I'll focus on Latin because I'd rather not pick on existing linguistic communities.

⟨V⟩ and ⟨U⟩ are not different letters in Latin. Deal with it. The "right" way to use them is like this:

• Upper case - ⟨V⟩, always
• Lower case - ⟨u⟩ or ⟨v⟩, pick one, but don't mix them

People fāiling to follow the əbove ɑre æs ənnoying æs someone insistently respelling English ⟨A⟩ with rændom junk bāsed on the sound. Like I æm doing now.

Same deal with ⟨I⟩ vs. ⟨J⟩. J'm not gojng to stop you from dojng so, but you can almost hear my "tsk, tsk, tsk" from a djstance.

There's one way to pronounce Latin ⟨C⟩. It's /k/ (as in "skill"). If you use /tʃ/ (as in "chimp"), /ʃ/ (as in "shampoo"), /ts/ (as in "cats"), /s/ (as in "silly"), you're doing it wrong. Unless you're handling Late Latin, but then follow some consistent set of rules dammit, not just "I use Latin like the Church does".

"Veni, uidi, uici" is supposed to be pronounced ['we:ni: 'wi:di: wi:ki:]; or roughly "WAY-nee WEE-dee WEE-kee". Once you pronounce it with random stuff like "vany VD vaitchy", you're wrecking all its alliterative appeal.

Speaking on that, Brutus is an unsung hero for going all stab-stabby against the guy who said the above. A shame that nobody did it against his adoptive child.

A power supply, the thing that gets plugged into AC mains power and outputs some sort of DC (usually USB now) to power electronics is not a "charger". It (usually) doesn't know anything about charging batteries, and connecting its output directly to a Li-ion battery would lead to an explosion. The charger is integrated into the device receiving that power.

"Portable battery" is a terrible term to describe a USB powerbank. Thousands of battery types are portable, but don't have USB ports or output exactly the right voltage. Some powerbanks are sold without batteries.

The way most people in my region pronounce the words "jewelry" and "realtor" really annoys me. I'm in the tiny minority who pronounces them the way I do, so I never say anything. But the locals almost all add a "LUH" to the middle. It's an extra syllable that just isn't in the spelling.

They say jew-LUH-ree and ree-LUH-ter. I pronounce these jewel-ree and reel-ter. I'm absolutely delighted when I hear someone say them the "correct" way, like I do.

Similar thing for how most around here say the year. When people say "two thousand and twenty-four" it grinds my gears. Just say "twenty twenty-four", FFS.

Ha! How much time have you got?

Shallow and pedantic is my speciality.

But for the sake of brevity I'll simply say that hearing (or reading) less in cases where fewer would be more appropriate is like driving an ice pick into my brain.

Yes...both are technically correct, but I have to fight the urge to be that guy whenever I hear it.

Socks and slides is only acceptable footwear for taking the bin to the kerb or checking the mailbox. If you're wearing them in public I immediately assume you are a classless dumbass and your opinion on anything is irrelevant.