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Post by bjd on Jun 8, 2020 7:38:46 GMT
I would have rewritten that headline to: Some UK coronavirus victims lay undetected at home for two weeks.
If they had replaced lain with laid, I would expect "laid what? eggs". Laid is a transitive verb isn't it?
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 8, 2020 8:09:28 GMT
Ah, but since there are still some undetected corpses all over the country, the action of lying is not finished yet.
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Post by mickthecactus on Jun 8, 2020 8:45:20 GMT
Izint the Gaudien famuss for htis? No. That's the Grauniad.
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Post by lagatta on Jun 8, 2020 11:50:56 GMT
Or rather infamous, though that sounds more like the body count of a genocidal dictator. Notorious? I don't think the Graun has as many tpyos as in earlier times.
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Post by questa on Jun 8, 2020 12:49:42 GMT
Another usage that makes my teeth itch is when a highly educated and serious newsreader uses "Hung" instead of "Hanged" when talking about capital punishment. My reflex reaction is to mutter,"Was he portrait or landscape?"
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 8, 2020 13:37:39 GMT
What news are you watching to hear so much about people being hanged?
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Post by questa on Jun 8, 2020 23:44:07 GMT
The subject was discussed during the firestorms last year, as a way of dealing with arsonists. Fortunately as the fires cooled down, so did the hot-heads. What the world didn't get told in all the drama of lockdown and viruses, was that the fires were still burning, the fireys had to keep on fighting them. It was another 2 weeks into lockdown before they could stand down. The last fire was in the National Park adjoining the Parliament House in Canberra.
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Grammar!
Jun 10, 2020 6:51:42 GMT
via mobile
Post by whatagain on Jun 10, 2020 6:51:42 GMT
Not sure it belongs here but uf not grammar, spelling... ur instead of your really bothers me. I always wonder what they do with the time they save for the 2 missing letters. Just got a mail with ur and i was wonderi g why i wanted to answer sarcastically ... And the guy was not even Dutch 😈😈😈 - i know, but i could not resist.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 10, 2020 7:02:02 GMT
I think that texting shortcuts are probably a godsend for people who are bad at spelling and grammar, but of course the process dates back to the days of the telegraph when every character used would cost money and precious time. And then it become extremely generalised this century with laziness and the need for everything to look like you are so busy that you have to write as fast as possible.
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Post by questa on Jun 10, 2020 8:18:44 GMT
19th century was awash with commonly used abbreviations, specially names of business partnerships. Wm Shakespeare plays were popular but you had to dress in Moss Bros suits to see them. Robt and Chas play cards with Jas and Jos. but full names are always used in conversation
Women are called by abbreviations nearly all the time...Even Queen Elizabeth is "Lilibet" to her closest friends. Elizabeths were Betty or Lizzie, Margaret had Meg, Peg, Daisy etc.
I read about 5 years ago that a high school in NZ was allowing candidates for their final exams to use text shortcuts and internet language for their exams if they wanted to. It was successful as the students said they had learned the subjects in a new language that they understood better.
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Post by bjd on Jun 10, 2020 8:36:33 GMT
The thing that I always think of when I see text language being acceptable as standard, especially to the exclusion of more traditional forms of words, is when these kids get older and might want to read books or articles written during most of the 20th century or earlier, they won't have a clue. It will be like us reading medieval texts.
This was also my problem with Ebonics in the 1990s, when some educators in the States thought blacks should be able to use Ebonics instead of standard English. It seemed to me that they were being ghettoized within a society even more than they already were.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 27, 2020 23:47:53 GMT
Who wrote this sentence? "[My wife] and I send our prayers to he and his family." sourceHere is a hint. The author of that sentence also wrote these words: "I went to an Ivy League college. I was a nice student. I did very well. I’m a very intelligent person. source
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Post by lagatta on Jul 28, 2020 0:18:36 GMT
That sounds like Dubya Bush.
And huckle, only in adulthood did I discover that I have Afrodescendant relatives, from the Caribbean. Oh,I'm no more that 1/8 (recent) African descent (All human beings are of African descent, most pussycats too, whatever our colour). They are rather snobbish and insist on speaking English, French and Spanish utterly "correctly". Not all Black people in the Americas are "down home" folks.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 28, 2020 3:12:54 GMT
Sorry, LaGatta, I had to push the buzzer on you. You probably didn't get the right answer because you're not constantly awash in US news.
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Post by bjd on Jul 28, 2020 6:29:39 GMT
It sounds more like that very stable genius.
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Post by lagatta on Jul 28, 2020 13:19:53 GMT
Yes, and what US news I do get is mostly filtered through the Guardian, the English-language news medium I read most. I did read local media from Vermont when Bernie was in the running; his town is just a short drive SSE from here.
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Post by questa on Jul 28, 2020 13:41:47 GMT
Can someone enlighten me as to the past participle of 'sneak'please. With all the people trying to get into Bordertown away from the lockdown and disease all the news readers are using 'snuck', as in "4 young men who snuck across the border..." It sounds wrong to my ear and surely there is nothing wrong with 'sneaked'...I sneak...I sneaked. I peek...I peeked' not I puck!
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 28, 2020 13:44:07 GMT
I have written this relatively recently: I totally refuse the incorrect past participle "snuck" even though it is clearly gaining ground.
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Post by bjd on Jul 28, 2020 14:53:29 GMT
It sounds okay to me.
I just found this on Merriam-Webster: "Both regular and irregular verbs date back to Old English, but over the centuries most verbs that had been irregular developed regular forms, eventually leaving only the most common of the irregular verbs – among them be, do, say, go, take, and get – with their quirky conjugations.
But sneak bucks the trend. Over the past 120-odd years snuck has become by some estimations the more common past tense form in the US. Some people object to the sneaky upstart – especially speakers of British English – but it appears regularly and without commentary in respected publications on both sides of the pond."
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 28, 2020 15:03:36 GMT
I think that grammarians like to use "snuck" when they are slumming since it refers to a generally negative activity.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 29, 2020 1:53:03 GMT
"4 young men who snuck across the border..." It sounds wrong to my ear You are right and people who say snuck are just wrong. I totally refuse the incorrect past participle "snuck" even though it is clearly gaining ground. I admire and applaud you! While we're on the subject of "everyone says", I would like to rant. First of all, as in snuck (shudder), that is not a good reason to do something. And second, what the living doo-doo is this stupid, irritating, confusing crap of having to refer to a non-binary person as they or them??!!! There are 26 letters in the English alphabet. Would it really be so difficult to come up with a made-up word, or to snitch a word from another language, something English does all the time anyway. What do other languages do about this?
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Post by onlyMark on Jul 29, 2020 2:20:34 GMT
How do they cope with the simple sentence, "He/She is stupid"? If 'They are stupid' is written or said, the 'are' makes it plural, not one person. Maybe "They is stupid"?
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 29, 2020 2:48:33 GMT
My point precisely! I read an article the other day about a man raising a non-binary child. Every time he referred to the child it was by they or them. It was confusing as hell! Edited to add the article. To make reading it even more confusing, the parent of the child (note I got the sex wrong above) "identifies as non-binary trans", so the parent is also they/them. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/jul/08/parent-raising-gender-free-child
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Post by bjd on Jul 29, 2020 5:19:12 GMT
I think I'm just getting old and set in my ways, but I find bringing up a child as non-binary just imposes the parent's own ideas on a little kid. Rather like bringing up a kid in a sect. If it decides to act in a way other than its birth sex, well, let the kid decide.
And I agree about the use of 'they'. Find another word, but don't take one used so commonly and confuse everybody.
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Post by mossie on Jul 29, 2020 7:04:34 GMT
All that crap is getting ridiculous. Sorry but I have to be blunt. Either it has a cock or a cunt.
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Post by lagatta on Jul 29, 2020 10:24:53 GMT
Well, actually the proper word is "it", but humans rarely like to be called that. I tend to avoid this discussion as much as possible, as it swiftly gets very nasty.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 29, 2020 10:54:08 GMT
Especially when people start writing "it's" as the possessive.
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Post by questa on Jul 29, 2020 13:34:51 GMT
I read a short story aeons ago where all the characters were either 'Shee'(he/she) or 'Shim'(him/her) 'Shem' was (They/them')Fortunately the whole of the story was in normal English and the strange tongue used for speech, which carried the story rather than descriptions. It was weird and I wish I could find it again. Indonesian language has no gender differences in the language...they just use "laki-laki" to show male and "perempuan" for female.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 29, 2020 14:54:16 GMT
That seems to be a major gender difference to me.
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Post by bjd on Jul 29, 2020 15:37:35 GMT
How can anyone not enjoy reading the Guardian? Especially about grammar.
On Trump Jr's new book:
"“The RNC was able to raise almost a million dollars from their fundraising campaign with my first book, Triggered,” said Trump Jr. “I look forward to helping them fundraise once again for the benefit of the Republican party.”
Trump Jr’s website promises the book will reveal “the facts the media refuses to cover”, including “countless liberal scandals, years of entrenched racism in the democrat party and decades of failed polices”.
It is assumed that “polices” actually refers to “policies”, rather than being an unusual plural for police."
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