Month: March 2008

“Avalanche” vs. “Landslide”

Common English Blunders, Nouns, Versus

I often hear these words treated as if they were interchangeable.

Problem:
The nouns “avalanche” and “landslide” are not synonyms.

Explanation:
The noun “avalanche” means a large mass of snow, rocks, or debris suddenly detaching from a mountainside and then falling or sliding down.

The noun “landslide” means a mountainside falling or sliding down.

Winter sports enthusiasts have to watch out for avalanches, whereas many people in California suffer from landslides.

“Avalanche” should make one think of individual items coming down a mountainside. “Landslide” should make one think of the entire mountainside coming down.

If one were on a mountain during an avalanche, one might be able to stay put with little or no damage. If one were on a mountain during a landslide, one definitely would move with the mountainside.

Solution:
Use “avalanche” when referring to something coming down a mountainside. Use “landslide” when referring to the entire mountainside detaching and coming down.

“Reoccur”

Common English Blunders, Verbs

I often hear this.

Problem:
This is either a mispronunciation or an unnecessary invention.

Explanation:
Some people know the verb “occur” and assume that the repeat form of it should be pronounced “reoccur”; this is wrong.

Other people know the verb “occur” and assume that they must invent “reoccur” as the repeat form of it; this is wrong.

The correct verb — “recur” — already exists (and has no “oc” sound within it).

Wondering whether this speech problem also occurred in writing on the Web, I searched Google for “reoccur” and “recur” and got about 455,000 and 3,800,000 matches, respectively. That tells me that Web authors have written the word correctly by a ratio of 8.35:1, which is okay. And, because the most popular “reoccur” matches returned by Google talk about why this is a misspelling / mispronunciation of “recur”, the ratio of correct use to incorrect use probably is higher.

Solution:
“Recur”

“He don’t.”

Common English Blunders, Contractions, Outsider's Perspective

Although this is illustrative of bad grammar, it is somewhat logical.

Problem:
The contraction “don’t” is not a contraction of “does not”.

Explanation:
Forget about the source of contractions while you consider these plural forms:

  • We won’t. We don’t.
  • You won’t. You don’t.
  • They won’t. They don’t.

Now, consider these singular forms:

  • I won’t. I don’t.
  • You won’t. You don’t.
  • He won’t. He doesn’t.

In other words, only the third-person, singular contraction for not doing something uses “doesn’t” instead of “don’t”.

The reason for this is that the third-person, singular, non-contracted form for not doing something is “does not”, whereas all of the other non-contracted forms are “do not”.

From an outsider’s perspective, though, “He don’t.” is somewhat logical, especially when going by sound alone and when failing to remember that “don’t” is a contraction of “do” and “not”.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following phrases (with the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “He doesn’t” — 5,770,000 matches
  • “He don’t” — 5,230,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have written the phrase correctly vs. incorrectly by a ratio of 1.10:1, which is a bit pathetic.

Solution:
“He doesn’t.”