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Quote from: Brennus

Don't confuse provincialisms for bad grammar. …

(1) In standard U.S. English, the preposition in the sentence above needs to be with. In standard British English, too.

(2) Confusing then and than may be many things, but bad grammar is not one of them. (Using than as a preposition instead of a conjunction would be a grammatical error.) More often than not, it is a spelling error made by people with minimal education—that is, no more than two graduate degrees in the humanities, sciences, or business.

This and similar errors were once a bar to academic advancement, but they now may be found in what passes for scholarly articles in learned journals and raw manuscripts submitted as chapters of edited volumes. Since reprimanding children—or now, alas, adults, too—for spelling errors is a forthright attack on their self-esteem, it has become a notable hate crime to do so. Thus, confusing then and than or reign and rain and rein or tenant and tenet simply demonstrates that the offender has had a thoroughly modern American "education" and hence has become what people once unapologetically called an ignoramus.

(3) The term applicable to the specific situation you describe in the sentences that follow is regionalism, not provincialism. The latter term invariably has at least a whiff of reprobation about it, whereas the former does not. This is ultimately a matter of democracy in action, like it or not—that is, numbers matter. Twenty thousand Amish folks calling everything they don't like "English" might safely be called a provincial form of expression, but when at least a hundred million Americans call something a "fireplug" and when that word has been in accepted use for fully a century longer than "hydrant," you damn well better refer to it as a regionalism if you want to get out of the lexicographer's annual convention in one piece.

What is more, the plain fact is that fireplug is neither a provincialism nor a regionalism. It is standard English in North America, and in British and Australian dictionaries, the only usage label attached to it is "United States." Put otherwise, your relative may or may not be rude, but he is certainly an ignoramus.

Why hasn't he signed on here at CI, I wonder. He'd feel at home.

I like Quakenbos' old book on rhetoric. Of course, it is a century old and uses "provincialism" so you'll have to live with my archaisms. : )  (Wait until I start referring to "fixed air" "Tartary" "pismires" and "boskets" while failing to "brook" people who won't let me say "clombe" for the imperfect of climb.)   Have you ever heard dogs glasting by the way?

I like the word provincialism also because I believe in provinces. But that is a philosophical topic.

I disagree on then and than. I know people who do NOT know the difference between these words. There is a certain man who is highly placed who believes then is the right word for "greater than." I am not making this up. Since he has a lot of money, he can do as he wishes. I wasn't sure though if it was bad grammar or bad diction.  From your response, it seems grammar was the right choice.  

Thank you for the details on fire plug. I did not know any of that. I thought it was just us here. I'm pleased to see the situation isn't as bad as I thought. I should travel more.  Perhaps a better example would have been "pop" and "soda."

What do you think of the American use of "creek."

What do you think of insisting on the use of scientific terms ONLY in their scientific understanding.  An example would be: "It's not a mountain unless is is (some Gilligan Island professor number) feet high." Or how about terms of art. In my province -- er, I mean state, the legal term for a chartered municipality that is not a city is a "borough." HOWEVER for complicated reasons, there is one place that got itself chartered in the 1870s as a "town." So, people go around saying "There is only one town in Pennsylvania." I think that is silly. "Town" is so old, and generic in its meaning that Blackstone couldn't even make a serviceable definition of it.  A town is a place that is smaller than a city and larger than a village and all three terms are vague.

As a diversion, look at this website. http://www.coalregion.com/speak/speaka.php

Quote from: Charlemagne (Jul 22, 2014, 9:19 am)

Something that drives me crazy: "Should of," as in, "I should of known better."

That's meant to be "I should have known better".  A verb, not a preposition.

More precisely, that's meant to be the contraction " 've " for the auxiliary "have", producing the trio "should've", "would've", and "could've".

"__ould of" is most exasperating when it appears in print as the result of an interview, thus not necessarily recording an error by the speaker, but instead, an error of marginally literate reporting, such as one is accustomed to seeing nowadays from sportswriters.  Especially those claiming college degrees in "Journalism": It's not as if they hadn't time for courses in the technicalities of English; their college course-schedules certainly weren't burdened with required courses in calculus or thermodynamics.

I no longer let myself get noticeably upset by "__ould of".

But there's a relatively recent trend in colloquial United-Statesian English that newly irritates me: Use of transitive verbs as intransitive verbs.  And that produces the secondary irritation of increasing verbosity, by requiring addition of a preposition before what was once understood to be a simple direct object, e.g.:

· to "hate on" S, instead of simply to "hate" S.

Hmmm.  Could this example be related to the modern liberal inflation of any aversion, distaste, or disapproval (no matter how consistent with natural law) into "hate" deserving public censure, using it as an adjective to form politically correct" terms, thus suggesting that the word's use as a verb somehow requires a new additional distinction?

In many other cases, it seems to be the result of monolingual marginal literacy, in which the speaker or writer fails to recognize that the meaning of a needlessly redundant preposition or adverb is intrinsically supplied by its Latin--or Latinate--prefix, e.g.:

· to "advocate for" S.

There's analogous redundancy from some adverbs that follow an intransitive verb, especially in the form:

· to "re____  back",

where the verb is often "report" or "return", even in traditional printed sources.  Do daily newspapers and popular magazines still employ copy editors?

Copy editors?  I shall PM you.