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Post by cheerypeabrain on Feb 8, 2012 16:05:22 GMT
You are kind Annie...but it's my own fault really...I've had opportunities to look into it. I even bought the 'Eats Shoots And Leaves' book but just having it in the bookcase doesn't mean that I will absorb the information from the book by osmosis!
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Post by auntieannie on Feb 8, 2012 16:16:55 GMT
oh, really? so... you mean I maybe should... erm... READ ... the books I get for uni? Really? um... shouldn't be online, then! ;D
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Post by onlymark on Feb 8, 2012 18:24:37 GMT
Cheery - "I moved from was full of children destined to be factory fodder..."
That would have been my class then. Seriously.
I'm not trying to trump you, I'm just showing that you're not alone. (And if I can self educate myself to become one of the top English graduates of Oxford with a 1:1, be feted around the world for my writing skills, be considered one of the top experts on the colon, hyperbole and modesty - then anyone can.)
The eminent author, who was my tutor in the first year, J.R. Hartley, once said of me, "The standard of your English is such that it has never been seen before in these hallowed halls, and I'm sure will never be seen again."
(Note: He then went on to write a letter to the entrance examination faculty berating them for allowing any rif raf with a passing idea of English language and literature to be let in. But I tend to skip over that part of the story.)
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Post by mickthecactus on Feb 8, 2012 19:41:40 GMT
Cheery - "I moved from was full of children destined to be factory fodder..."That would have been my class then. Seriously. I'm not trying to trump you, I'm just showing that you're not alone. (And if I can self educate myself to become one of the top English graduates of Oxford with a 1:1, be feted around the world for my writing skills, be considered one of the top experts on the colon, hyperbole and modesty - then anyone can.) The eminent author, who was my tutor in the first year, J.R. Hartley, once said of me, "The standard of your English is such that it has never been seen before in these hallowed halls, and I'm sure will never be seen again." (Note: He then went on to write a letter to the entrance examination faculty berating them for allowing any rif raf with a passing idea of English language and literature to be let in. But I tend to skip over that part of the story.) I always thought you an expert on the colon Mark....
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 8, 2012 20:31:09 GMT
*SNORK!*
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Post by onlymark on Feb 8, 2012 20:35:10 GMT
Bingo. You were quick to get it.
(further to the above though, I'm only half an expert at some things, you might say, a semi colon.)
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Post by auntieannie on Feb 8, 2012 23:40:03 GMT
Would you be so kind, Dr Only, as to spread your expertise of Colons, Apostrophes, Territorialisms and Semicolons? I, for one, would be extremely grateful.
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Post by onlymark on Feb 9, 2012 5:03:20 GMT
Unfortunately my thoughts are that the best form of learning is to research it and find out for yourself. The subject retains the lesson more than if a teacher simply points things out.
(Quick thinking. Phew. I'm still getting away with the bluff, I think.)
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Post by auntieannie on Feb 9, 2012 11:41:24 GMT
um... you belong to the "new education", don't you? And you're going to prepare a MCQ to test my knowledge afterwards?
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Post by onlymark on Feb 9, 2012 12:49:31 GMT
Don't do tests either. They tend to upset the feelings of those who fail. Far better to have continual assessment which results in a pass mark for all.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 8, 2013 8:42:51 GMT
A woman without: her man is nothing. To get the thread slightly off track again, my English is slowly coming back! The 20 odd years I spent in Germany weren't good. The only person I spoke English with was my mother, not that often. At least I read nearly exclusively English books. When I meet Anglo friends here I find myself looking for colloquial words, it's a bit unnerving sometimes. As for when I meet my francophone friends, even worse. At least I don't have to write it. I see myself losing my German now. I am trying to remember if I ever saw Henning make a grammar mistake even though English was not his first language.
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Post by bjd on Jan 8, 2013 10:40:41 GMT
Thinking about it, I would say not -- he sounded completely fluent and correct. Maybe because it wasn't his first language -- they try harder.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 14, 2013 19:05:40 GMT
Absolutely true, Bjd. Not only was he fluent, but idiomatic. I think anyone reading anything by him that contained no clues would have assumed that he was a native speaker.
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 5, 2013 15:37:09 GMT
Ha! This morning on facebook I gritted my teeth upon reading this headline from Talking Points Memo: Meet The N.M. County Clerk That Started The Same-Sex Marriage License Hullaballoo
I was forced to reply with: "Meet the N.M. County Clerk WHO Started ... etc."
Later I saw that my comment had been removed but, mirabile dictu, the headline had been corrected.
I must have beaten others to the punch this time, because even as standards drop (Slate is a big offender), readers are quick to point out grammatical clunkers. It's depressing how often the mistakes are from "better" news sources.
Incidentally, wasn't there a whole thread about that/who? I couldn't find it.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 5, 2013 16:25:56 GMT
No, we have in the past gotten our panties twisted over the use of who and whom.
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Post by lagatta on Sept 5, 2013 20:20:34 GMT
A fellow got pissed off at the Guardian website because I corrected his geography - he had placed Mexico in Central America. (Yes, there is a cultural term, "Mesoamerican", but not in the context of the ongoing discussion).
I'm sure hwinpp learnt both German and Chinese (or a Chinese language, to be more accurate) before English.
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 5, 2013 21:20:35 GMT
Full disclosure: I often have to look up where something belongs geographically, since I don't automatically know about those areas where Europe and Asia meet, for instance. But hey -- I do look it up. The guy who didn't want to be corrected about Mexico was on the Guardian website, so presumably had quick access to a search site. He should thank you for helping him to avoid making mistake again. Heh heh ~~ after preening over getting TPM to do the right thing this morning, I found this: www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2013/09/language_bullies_pedants_and_grammar_nerds_who_correct_people_all_the_time.html Still, I maintain that any publication that expects to be taken seriously should use good grammar.
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Post by htmb on Apr 14, 2014 13:59:26 GMT
I just finished reading a supposedly "carefully edited" book (the author's words), written by a British author, and found at least three typos/misspellings by British English or American English standards. The book was written in standard British English and was self-published on Amazon.
There were also at least two occasions where the author used the phrase "my wife and me" in a sentence, such as "My wife and me met in our final year at university." Is this proper British English grammar? It certainly isn't proper in American English, and it drives me a bit nuts when I hear it.
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Post by bjd on Apr 14, 2014 14:33:07 GMT
No, it's wrong! It's simple -- just put the pronoun you aren't sure about in its place: "Me met my wife..."
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Post by htmb on Apr 14, 2014 15:09:49 GMT
Thank you, bjd. I knew you would have the answer! I was trying to give the guy the benefit of the doubt, thinking this might be a British English rule not familiar to me. For someone who has had at least two books professionally published, and who claims to have been a writer for twenty years, I expect better. I had assumed he self-edited, too, but he actually credited someone with the editing. The book was horrible. Not the storyline I had expected, but I got sucked into it before I realized it was awful. Since I needed something mindless to read at the time, I got through the whole thing. Fortunately, for me, it didn't cost me anything. Was originally 7USD on Amazon Kindle, but had been marked down to 0.00. THAT should have been a clue.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 14, 2014 16:52:03 GMT
I just looked up who was guilty of writing the lyrics of "Me and My Shadow." Billy Rose, an American. I suppose that anybody confronted with this in songwriting would claim poetic licence. I can't get no satisfaction!
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 15, 2014 0:53:32 GMT
''... and if I was Bobby's girl ...''
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Post by htmb on Apr 15, 2014 2:09:24 GMT
"I still haven't found what I'm looking for."
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 15, 2014 2:51:24 GMT
And that leads me to a pet theory of mine, that we say certain things because there is a rhythm to them that we find deeply satisfying. Htmb's sentence said correctly lacks the circular grace of the incorrect version.
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Post by htmb on Apr 15, 2014 3:03:26 GMT
"Ain't that a shame."
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 15, 2014 4:19:32 GMT
Good one!
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 24, 2014 15:43:50 GMT
I found this interesting. It's from Babbel, an online language school. Here is the intro: April 23rd was Shakespeare's birthday. It was also UN English Language Day. A day to celebrate English, in all its weird and wonderful forms.
But if there are three times more non-native English speakers than native speakers in the world, then who decides what is "proper English" these days?
It's a desirable commodity – and big business. Politicians, teachers, schools, international institutions - everybody is trying to define it and control it. The traditional guardians of English, like dictionary makers and textbook writers, are being seriously challenged by the speed and flow of English around the world.
English celebrated its 1,000,000th word a few years ago. Google has digitised whole libraries. English is the lingua franca of business, science, international travel, and the web. Yet English has no recognised body that decides what is correct and what is not. In the US, it's not even an official language!
So who's guarding the gates?with a link to the longer article: blog.babbel.com/guarding-gates-english/Incidentally, spellcheck is telling me that digitised and recognised are misspelled. I concur. But it also tags lingua franca. Bad spellcheck!
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Post by patricklondon on Apr 24, 2014 16:33:35 GMT
I don't - that's one of the differences across the Atlantic. Are there gates that need to be "guarded"? As long as people can explain (as any good dictionary should) and argue about which changing practices constitute a real loss of meaning, or effective or elegant communication, is this an issue? My blog | My photos | My video clips"too literate to be spam"
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Post by Deleted on Apr 24, 2014 16:38:56 GMT
I have my spellcheck set for British English now since it is the dominant form of the language. Every now and then I override it anyway, nor can I abide by spellings like 'tyre' or 'kerb.' Frankly, Windows has always impressed me with the number of versions of English that it has available (and also the number of versions of French).
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 24, 2014 19:19:22 GMT
I guess we need diacritical marks or something to indicate humor/humour.
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