Mispronunciations

“If you can’t find the answer your looking for …”

Common English Blunders, Contractions, Mispronunciations, Misspellings

I saw this the other day at the Gizmo5 website.

Problem:
A pronoun appeared where a contraction should have appeared.

Explanation:
The full sentence on one of the pages at Gizmo5.com was “If you can’t find the answer your looking for here please contact us and we’ll be glad to fill in the details.”

Beyond the comma that was missing after the word “here”, the bigger problem was that the author of this sentence used the pronoun “your” where the word “you’re” — a contraction for “you are” — should have appeared.

As I have written in at least one other blog post, many speakers of American English tend to make the common English blunder of pronouncing “your” and “you’re” in the same way, even though these two words have different pronunciations.

I believe that these mispronunciations drive what some would call misspellings — writing “your” where “you’re” is required, and vice-versa.

Solution:
“If you can’t find the answer you’re looking for …”

“Affect” vs. “Effect”

Common English Blunders, Mispronunciations, Nouns, Verbs, Versus

I often see and hear mistakes with these two words.

Problem:
These words are spelled similarly but have different meanings.

Explanation:
The word “affect” is spelled A-F-F-E-C-T.

  • As a verb, the word “affect” means to act on or to produce a change in, as in “You can affect her attitude toward education.”
  • As a noun, the word “affect” means emotion or feeling, as in “The psychiatrist said that the patient’s affect could be a symptom of schizophrenia.”

The word “effect” is spelled E-F-F-E-C-T.

  • As a verb, the word “effect” means to bring about or make happen, as in “Many people believe that he cannot effect the change that he is promoting.”
  • As a noun, the word “effect” means consequence or result, as in “The effects of Hurricane Ike could be seen throughout Houston and Galveston.”

It is a common English blunder — at least in American English — to use one of these verbs as a substitute for the other one. It is also a common English blunder to use one of these nouns as a substitute for the other one.

I believe that mistaken interchanging of these two words is due to mispronunciations, which drive misspellings.

Solution:
Memorize the verb and noun definitions of these two words.

“… no more frequent then usual.”

Adjectives, Adverbs, Common English Blunders, Mispronunciations, Nouns, Prepositions

I heard this recently during a radio broadcast.

Problem:
The word “then” is not a preposition.

Explanation:
The radio broadcaster said a sentence such as “The telephone calls to the radio station during this hour were no more frequent then usual.”

The problem with this sentence is that the word “then” — spelled T-H-E-N — is not a preposition.

Instead, this word is any of the following:

  • adverb, as in “Prices were higher then.”, where “then” means “at that time” in this sentence;
  • adjective, as in “The then president of the club was a nice guy.”, where “then” means “existing” in this sentence;
  • noun, as in “We have not seen a show at the Alley Theatre since then.”, where “then” means “that time” in this sentence.

What the phrase “no more frequent then usual” requires is a preposition, given that the speaker is comparing “more frequent” with “usual”.

The required preposition is “than” — spelled T-H-A-N, not T-H-E-N.

I believe that the common English blunder of using “then” where the preposition “than” is required is due in part to mispronunciation of the preposition “than”, but simple ignorance about these two words certainly could play a part, too.

Solution:
“… no more frequent than usual.”