Jacob – Yes, I agree about hyper-bowl and so on, and also about the tact. I had my pronunciation of ‘glib’ corrected a while back, but only after the ‘corrector’ had rolled about in laughter, got me to repeat the sentence and rolled about in laughter some more. Not cool. (Note to self: I keep meaning to write about the difficulties of having a greater written vocabulary than spoken).

Alistair – I too would make those changes. And I’d probably change ‘try and’, as well, if I was subbing and it was outside a quote.

Erin – Thanks for the link.

Krissie – That’s interesting. I wonder if that’s because ‘try to’ implies a slight lack of confidence in the other person’s ability, whereas ‘try and’ puts the emphasis on whether they’ll have the time or the inclination.

Penny – I agree that you can get formal English wrong, as well as standard grammar, punctuation, spelling or even pronunciation. I meant more that recognised turns of phrase or a styles of communication can’t be wrong in themselves. They can certainly be wrong for the context, medium or circumstances, though, and long may it keep us in chocolate digestives.

Martyn – Hurrah the Tolkien!

And since nobody else has said it yet: “Do or not do. There is no ‘try’.”

I imagine it would only be a problem when using harshly bad grammar outside a quotation. People say things like “I could of been killed” but I would change copy that said ‘he claimed that he could of been killed’ to ‘he claimed that he could have been killed’.

For some reason, “try and” doesn’t fall into this bracket. Although it is a bit colloquial, it does not come across as particularly naughty.

I think you can criticize another’s speech if you know they’ll take it well, and you have a suitable sense of perspective about the importance of the issue (i.e. not especially).

So, outright saying a regional pronunciation is wrong is cool if you know the person and it’s all friendly. A friend of mine used to mock my pronunciation of ‘southern’ (suvven), which was great as it was all in fun, and it does sound weird when you think about it.

It’s also okay in many cases to point something out if someone is outright mispronouncing something that isn’t part of their cultural heritage. For myself, I like it when someone points out that I’m saying something incorrectly. I don’t want to go around saying epy-tome or hyper-bowl or Albert Cam-mus.

I suppose the main thing is being tactful with this, as with most controversial things. Like you say, speech is reflective of our identities and to criticize it can be rather like criticizing our politics or religious beliefs. I know someone who is forever mocking the way I speak (he’s got an inverted snobbery about ‘posh people’) and it’s very trying. It should be approached with caution.

ack-ack beri-beri bling bling bunga bunga chi-chi chop chop dikdik dum-dum froufrou gaga hubba hubba juju never-never pip-pip rah-rah so-so tom-tom ylang ylang