What oft-repeated quote or common cliché do you find the most annoying when someone says it to you?
"One of the only"
It's "one of the few" or "the only" or perhaps "one of only (quantifier)" ... it's up there just above pronouncing the "T" in "often" - it's silent, people.
Comments
Irregardless is another. Most of my pet peeves at work tend to be for people who misspell words.
Fun, fun. :-)
-Spiritwolf.
Saying the t in often is perfectly acceptable English.
No, you'd like me to, and if you ask nicely and I'm in a good mood I might, but I might also refuse simply because you're trying to pressure me into it.
It's just as reasonable for me to start pronouncing the e at the end of all words, and the k in knife. (NOT, in both cases.)
http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/mispron.html
Specifically, "We have mastered the spelling of this word so well, its spelling influences the pronunciation: DON'T pronounce the [t]! This is an exception to the rule that spelling helps pronunciation."
Doing some more research (mostly language forums, where this topic seems to pop up a lot) reveals a pretty wide debate on this, but it would appear that the pronunciation of the 't' dates back to around 1800. Before that it WAS silent... just like 3/4 of the letters in Worchester (which I *can* pronounce right, being from Boston and all...).
However, the pronounced 't' seems to have become quite acceptable language a while ago and is listed in every dictionary I've seen printed, both paper and online. It's become an issue of dialect, not "proper" English.
Amusingly, the more common debate about the word often is how to pronounce the 'o'... hard or soft. Again, just like the 't', it seems to comes down to dialect. And just like the 't', both pronunciations are in the dictionary.
So at this point telling someone to stop pronouncing the 't' in often is about as useful as telling a Boston resident to pronounce their 'r's... with the exception that the 't' is actually in the dictionary.
Oh, BTW, thank you for backing foomf up. If one is going to make a bold declaration, one should be prepared to defend it with evidence and logic.
It's not really dialect so much as class and education that drives this one, and it's common to find the enunciated t in the middle-class with public education, which slanders the people who don't pronounce it as uneducated. The thing is, it's also pretty common to find it pronounced differently based on the consonantal context - if it's easier to say "offen" then it'll be pronounced that way even by people who otherwise make it a point to pronounce the t in other places.
So besides coming off as a bit pretentious sometimes, it makes the word more complicated to parse and use.
"'Cool H-Whip.'"
"You're eating hair!"
"*cough*"
-Brian and Stewie-
I use this myself, but am trying to wean myself off it.
At least "que sera, sera" sounds good as a song.
I am such a geek.