As someone who is frequently pedantic I sometimes sit and hypocritically brood on which unnecessary pedantry from other people annoys me most I've decided it's people who try to draw a distinction between the word "possum" and "opossum"
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The whole thing is that a certain kind of linguistic pedant always defaults in the direction of maximal disambiguation, even though this isn't really how most humans think (it's arguably the *opposite* of how we think, we name most things directly after other things)
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So if you can find a way to make there be two distinct names for two different things instead of one you always must This is probably a good habit if you're a specialist working in a field But it's really annoying in everyday life
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This is the same as why pedants insist that the "American buffalo" is not actually a buffalo at all but merely *named* for the "true buffalo" (the African buffalo and the Asian buffalo/water buffalo) and instead should always be called a "bison"
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Even though it's pretty damn obvious the Americans who regularly interacted with this animal and saw it as something of a national symbol called it a buffalo! That's what it says in the song! It's where the buffalo roam!
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Where is the city of Bison, NY? Who has ever eaten a bison wing? Has anyone ever exhorted the Bison Gals to come out tonight and dance by the light of the moon?
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End of conversation
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And yet it is still correct to, for example, write "should've" not "should of", and to include the "r"s in words like "February" and "library".
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I hear "February" as "Febuary" pretty often but I have rarely heard "library" as "lie berry"
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Can confirm; used to say "opossum" bc I'm one of those ppl who basically learned to talk by reading nerdy books, and quickly discovered that if you say "opossum" ppl just look at you likepic.twitter.com/F1ZPJpdJZr
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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